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The Strategic Consequences of “Grexit”

June 29, 2015

The Strategic Consequences of “Grexit” The Gatestone Institute, Peter Martino, June 29, 2015

Last January, ISIS revealed that it is smuggling terrorists into Europe by hiding them among the immigrants leaving Turkey.
“If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with immigrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave… there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State, too.” — Panos Kammenos, Defense Minister of Greece
Greece is a member of NATO. The whole world witnessed how the Defense Minister of one NATO country was threatening other NATO members with unleashing Islamic terrorists on them.
A Greek exit will lead to a power vacuum in the southeastern corner of Europe, which Russia (and China) will be only too eager to fill. The Chinese are currently negotiating with the Greek government to acquire an even larger part of the port of Piraeus.

Last weekend, Greece failed to reach an agreement with its three creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. A bankruptcy of the Hellenic Republic is now imminent. If it materializes, a so-called Grexit will follow: Greece will be forced to leave the Eurozone — the group of 19 European Union (EU) member states that use the euro as their common currency. Leaving the Eurozone automatically means that, under the EU treaties, Greece will also have to leave the EU.

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Across Greece, people have been lining up to withdraw money from cash machines, most of which have run out of money, after the government ordered banks to close for six days starting Monday. (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)

Grexit is likely to lead to economic and political turmoil in Greece, a hugely important strategic country, which borders on an increasingly unstable part of the world. Greece lies on the Mediterranean, fewer than 350 kilometers to the north of the Libyan coastal town of Derna, a stronghold of the Islamic terrorists of ISIS. It was here that, last February, ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Egyptian prisoners, and vowed to conquer Europe. The threat to Greece’s eastern borders is even greater. Greece is currently being inundated by illegal immigrants, arriving from Turkey by sea. Each day in June, human traffickers were transporting between 650 and 1,000 migrants by boat from Turkish ports to Greece. Last January, ISIS revealed that it is smuggling terrorists into Europe by hiding them among the migrants leaving Turkey.

If Greece leaves the EU, it is highly unlikely that it will try to prevent the illegal immigrants from travelling on to the rest of Europe. On the contrary, in March, Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos vowed to flood the rest of Europe with immigrants if the EU should allow Greece to go bankrupt. “If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with immigrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic immigrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State, too,” the Greek minister said. All the newcomers to Greece, Kammenos said, would be given papers, so they “could go straight to Berlin.” Greece is a member of NATO. The whole world could witness how the defense minister of one NATO country was threatening other NATO members with unleashing Islamic terrorists on them.

A Greek exit from the EU will not only mean a rupture with its Western European neighbors, who are all members of NATO as well, but is also likely to affect the entire Atlantic partnership. It will lead to a power vacuum in the southeastern corner of Europe, which Russia will be only too eager to fill.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was recently in Moscow to sign a gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The deal allows the Russians to build a natural gas pipeline across Greece that will carry Russian gas to Europe. The construction of the pipeline will not only create 20,000 new jobs in Greece, but Russia will also pay Greece hundreds of millions of dollars annually in transit payments. Speaking about the pipeline deal, Putin offhandedly remarked to the international media that he saw no support for the Greeks from the EU.

There are also rumors that Athens might allow Russia the use of Greek military bases. Russia is expanding militarily in the Black Sea and the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Greece could also serve as a base for the Russians to strengthen their position in the Balkans. If Greece were to turn its back on NATO, it could become a geographical link between Russia and its Balkan vassal, Serbia — a process that would link the three Christian-Orthodox nations of Russia, Serbia and Greece.

But the Russians are not the only ones closely following the events in Greece and hoping for geopolitical benefits. For some time, China’s influence in Greece has also been expanding. The Chinese state-owed Cosco Group recently bought the container terminal in Greece’s largest port, Piraeus. The port was privatized after demands from the EU. The Chinese are currently negotiating with the Greek government to acquire an even larger part of Piraeus.

Both Russia and China are eager to strengthen their position in Greece if it were to turn its back on Europe and NATO. The consequences of Grexit will not merely be economic. The strategic implications are at least as important, and far-reaching.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, European Union, Greece, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Terrorism
Tags: European Union, Greece, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Nato, Terrorism

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Who is Responsible for the Atrocities in the Muslim World?

June 27, 2015

Who is Responsible for the Atrocities in the Muslim World? The Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, June 27, 2015

If colonialism were the main problem, Muslims, too, still are, colonizers — and not particularly “humanitarian” ones, at that.
Islamic jihad and Islamic violence; the sanctioning of sex slavery; dehumanization of women; hatred and persecution of non-Muslims have been commonplace in the Islamic world ever since the inception of the religion. Deny everything and blame “the infidel.”
But is it America that tells these men to treat their wives or sisters as less than fully human? If we want to criticize the West for what is going on in the Muslim world, we should criticize it for not doing more to stop these atrocities.
Trying to whitewash the damage that the Islamic ideology has done to the Muslim world, while putting the blame of Islamic atrocities on the West, will never help Muslims face their own failures and come up with progressive ways to resolve them.

Every time the ISIS, Boko Haram, Iran, or any terrorist group in the Muslim world is discussed, many people tend to hold the West responsible for the devastation and murders they commit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Blaming the failures in the Muslim world on Western nations is simply bigotry and an attempt to shift the blame and to prevent us from understanding the real root cause of the problem.

When these Islamic terrorist groups abduct women to sell them as sex-slaves or “wives;” conduct mass crucifixions and forced conversions; behead innocent people en masse; try to extinguish religious minorities and demolish irreplaceable archeological sites, the idea that this is the fault of the West is ludicrous, offensive and wrong.

Western states, like many other states, try to protect the security of their citizens. What they essentially need, therefore, are peaceful states as partners with which they can have economic, commercial and diplomatic relations. They do not need genocidal terrorist groups that destroy life, peace and stability in huge swaths across the Muslim world.

Western states also have democratic and humanitarian values, which Islamic states do not. The religious and historical experiences of the Western world and the Islamic world are so enormously different that they ended up having completely different cultures and values.

The West, established on Jewish, Christian and secular values, has created a far more humanitarian, free and democratic culture. Sadly, much of the Muslim world, under Islamic sharia law, has created a misogynistic, violent and totalitarian culture.

This does not mean that the West has been perfect and sinless. The West still commits some appalling crimes: Europe is guilty of paving the way for the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust, and for still not protecting its Jewish communities. Even today, many European states contort logic to recognize Hamas, which openly states that it aims to commit genocide against Jewish people.

The West, however, accepts responsibility for the failures in its own territories: for instance, not being able to protect European women from Muslim rapists. These men have moved to Europe to benefit from the opportunities and privileges there, but instead of showing gratitude to European people and government, they have raped the women there, and tried to impose Islamic sharia law.

If we want to criticize the West for what is going on in the Muslim world, we should criticize it for not doing more to stop these atrocities.

The West, and particularly the U.S., should use all of its power to stop them — especially the genocides committed against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in the Muslim world.

We should also criticize the West — and others, such as the United Nations and its distorted Gaza War report — for supporting those who proudly commit terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, and we should criticize the West for not siding with the state of Israel in the face of genocidal Jew-hatred.

We should criticize the West for letting Islamic anti-Semitism grow in Europe, making lives unbearable for Jews day by day.

We should criticize the West for having accepted without a murmur the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus for more than 40 years.

We should also criticize the West for leaving the fate of Kurds, a persecuted and stateless people, to the tender mercies of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria — and now the Islamic State (ISIS). On June 25, ISIS carried out yet another deadly attack, killing and wounding dozens of people in the Kurdish border town of Kobani, in Syrian Kurdistan.

And we should criticize especially the current U.S. government for not being willing to take serious action to stop ISIS, Boko Haram and other extremist Islamic groups.[1]

The list could go on and on. Moreover, it would not be realistic to claim that these groups or regimes all misunderstand the teachings of their religion in exactly the same way.

It would also not be realistic to claim that the West has created all these hundreds of Islamic terror groups across the Muslim world.

The question, then, is: Who or what does create all these terrorist groups and regimes?

In almost all parts of the Muslim world, systematic discrimination, and even murder, are rampant — especially of women and non-Muslims. Extremist Islamic organizations, however, are not the only offenders. Many Muslim civilians who have no ties with any Islamist group also commit these offenses daily. Jihad (war in the service of Islam) and the subjugation of non-Muslims are deeply rooted in the scriptures and history of Islam.

Ever since the seventh century, Muslim armies have invaded and captured Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian lands; for more than 1400 years since, they have continued their jihad, or Islamic raids, against other religions.

Many people seem to be justifiably shocked by the barbarism of ISIS, but Islamic jihad does not belong just to ISIS. Violent jihad is a centuries-long tradition of Islamic ideology. ISIS is just one jihadist army of Islam. There are many.

All of this is an Islamic issue. The free West has absolutely nothing to do with the creation and preservation of this un-free culture.

The West has, on the contrary, been the victim of Islamic military campaigns and imperialistic pursuits: Christian peoples of Europe have been exposed to Ottoman invasions and subjugation for centuries. The fall of Byzantine Empire marked the peak of Islamic Jihad in Christian lands. Many places in Europe — including Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and Cyprus, among others — were all invaded and occupied by the Ottoman armies. Other targets, including Venice, Austria, and Poland, had to fight fierce defensive wars to protect their territories.

The historical and current troubles in the Muslim world are not, therefore, problems “imported” from an outside source; they are internal cultural and political problems, which Muslim regimes and peoples have reproduced for centuries.

Some of the things that women in Saudi Arabia may not do were listed in The Week magazine: Saudi women are not allowed to “go anywhere without a male chaperone, open a bank account without their husband’s permission, drive a car, vote in elections, go for a swim, compete freely in sports, try on clothes when shopping, enter a cemetery, read an uncensored fashion magazine and buy a Barbie and so on.”

Of course, there is nothing specific in Islamic scriptures about cars, fashion magazines or Barbie Dolls. But there is enough there that indicates why all of these abuses, and more, are widespread across the Islamic world, and why the clerics, imams and muftis approve them.

The central issue is to see how the lines that the Islamic theology draws seed the soil in which this kind of discrimination systematically buds, why it is extolled and how it is advocated.

Saudi Arabia is not the only Muslim country where women are dehumanized. Throughout almost the almost the entire Muslim world — including Turkey, considered one of the most “liberal” Muslim countries — women are continually abused or killed by their husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers or other males. [2]

Is it America that tells these men to treat their wives or sisters as less than fully human?

Is the West really what stops them from respecting human rights or resolving their political matters through diplomatic and peaceful ways? Are Muslims too stupid to make wise decisions, and act responsibly? Why should Americans or Europeans have evil wishes for the rest of the world?

Demonizing Western nations — even after all of their cultural, scientific and rational progress — is simply pure racism.

“The belief that the West is always guilty is among the dozen bad ideas for the 21st century,”wrote the Australian pastor, Dr. Mark Durie. “This irrational and unhelpful idea is taught in many schools today and has become embedded in the world views of many. It is essentially a silencing strategy, sabotaging critical thinking.”

Another term that prevents one from understanding the root causes of the conflicts in the Muslim world is “moral relativism” — a politically correct term that really means moral cowardice.

Defending “moral relativism” and saying that “all cultures are equal” really means saying a culture that encourages child marriages, beating women and selling girls on slave markets has a value equal to a culture that respects women and recognizes their rights, and which renounces wanton violence.

Another popular target of blame for the failures in the Muslim world is historical British colonialism.

If colonialism were the main problem, however, Muslims, too, were, and still are, colonizers — and not particularly “humanitarian” ones, at that. The Muslim colonizers do not even seem to have contributed much to the culture of the places they invaded and colonized. In fact, they have actually delayed the progress of the areas they colonized. The printing press, for instance, came to the Ottoman territories almost 200 years later than to Europe.

“Books… undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge, since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can master literacy,” wrote Professor Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites. The Ottoman sultans and religious establishment feared the creative destruction that would result. Their solution was to forbid printing.” [3]

“European Empires — the British, French and Italians — had a short-lived presence in North Africa and the Middle East compared with the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over that region for more than 500 years,” said the historian Niall Ferguson.

“The culture that exists in the greater Middle East and North Africa today bears very, very few resemblances to the culture that Europeans tried to implement there, beginning in the late 19th century and carrying on through to the mid-20th century.

“You can’t say it is the fault of imperialism and leave out the longest living empire in the Middle East, which was the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim Empire, which went back much farther than any of the European Empires mentioned in that piece.”

Muslim states continue to occupy and colonize various territories — including Kurdistan, Baluchistan and the northern part of Cyprus, an EU member state.

“One of the most tragic consequences of the 1974 Turkish invasion,” according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, “and the subsequent illegal occupation of 36.2% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, is the violent and systematic destruction of the cultural and religious heritage in the occupied areas.

“Hundreds of historic and religious monuments in various regions of the occupied areas have been destroyed, looted and vandalized. Illegal ‘excavations’ have been carried out and cultural treasures have been stolen from museums and private collections and were sold abroad.”

Muslim groups and regimes continue to persecute indigenous peoples such as Assyrians, Chaldeans, Mandaeans, Shabaks, Copts, Yezidis, and Bedoon, among many others.

“A substantial segment of the Bedoon population lives with the constant threat of deportation hanging over it,” according to the analyst Ben Cohen. “Around 120,000 Bedoon live without nationality and with none of the rights that flow from citizenship.”

“Its members cannot obtain birth or marriage certificates, or identity cards, or driving licenses. They are banned from access to public health and education services. Their second-class status means they have no access to the law courts in order to pursue their well-documented claims of discrimination. And on those rare occasions that they summon the will to protest publicly—as they did in 2011, when demonstrators held signs bearing slogans like, ‘I Have a Dream’—the security forces respond with extraordinary brutality, using such weapons as water cannons, concussion grenades, and tear gas with reckless abandon.”

It is not the West or Israel committing these crimes against the Bedoon community; it is Kuwait, a wealthy Islamic state, which treats defenseless people as if they are slaves.

In Qatar, another wealthy Islamic state, Nepalese migrants building a football stadium, “[h]ave died at a rate of one every two days… This figure does not include the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers…. The Nepalese foreign employment promotion board said that 157 of its workers in Qatar had died between January and mid-November” last year. In 2013, the figure for that period was 168.”

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The family of a Nepalese migrant worker, who died in Qatar, prepares to bury him. Nepalese laborers in Qatar are forced to work in dangerous conditions, and die at the rate of one every two days. (Image source: Guardian video screenshot)

“In Libya, naturalisation is only open to a man if he is of Arab descent,” reported the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “And many Akhdam in Yemen, a small ethnic minority who may be descendants of African slaves, are reportedly unable to obtain citizenship.”

Is that not apartheid?

In Kuwait, only Muslim applicants may seek naturalization, while Libya’s nationality law allows for the withdrawal of nationality on the grounds of conversion from Islam to another religion.”

Is that not apartheid? Apartheid laws seem to reign over many places in the Muslim world.

Trying to whitewash the damage the Islamic ideology has done to the Muslim world, while putting the blame of Islamic atrocities on the West, will never help Muslims face their own failures and come up with progressive ways to resolve them.

“All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though,” wrote the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on Twitter, after which other Twitter users piled on to criticize him.

It seems that having oil reserves, per capita, that dwarf anything available to Western countries does not create leading scientific nations.

What holds Muslims back when they have unmatched advantages of underground treasures? Why did the scientific revolution not happen in the Muslim world? Why has much of Islamic history been marked by aggressive jihad?

Islamic jihad and Islamic violence; the sanctioning of sex slavery; dehumanization of women; hatred and persecution of non-Muslims and homosexuals; suppression of free speech; and forced conversions have been commonplace in the Islamic world ever since the inception of the religion.

Many teachings in the Islamic scriptures, as well as the biographies of the founder of the religion, set up the parameters where these abuses not only occur but remain protected on a gigantic scale. These are the teachings that have become the culture of the Muslim world.

Sadly, most Muslims have wasted much time, energy and resources on killing and destruction, but — with the exception of some civilization’s most dazzling artistic splendors — not on scientific and cultural advancement.

Recently, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar, said that claims that Qatar paid bribes to win the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup were “not fair” and stemmed from the West’s Islamophobia and racism towards Arabs.

Recent events indicate that he was, at best, “misinformed.”

Deny everything and blame “the infidel” for your shortcomings. Nothing is more important than your honor, and nothing worse than your shame.

If Muslims wish to create a brighter future, nothing is stopping us but ourselves. We should learn to analyze critically our present and our past.

Human rights activists and academics in the West are lying to Muslims about their culture, and bashing and threatening America, Europe or “Zionism” for the problems of Muslims; this can never lead to any positive developments in the Muslim world. It is the Islamic culture and religious ideology that are responsible for these problems

If there is ever going to be an enlightenment, reform or renaissance in the Muslim world, only a hard look and hard questioning can be its starting point.

_________________

[1] Also the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Republic of Iran, al-Qaeda, Al-Badr, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad, al-Nusra Front, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al Ghurabaa, Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, Al-Mourabitoun, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, Jamaat Ul-Furquan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Jamiat al-Islah al-Idzhtimai, Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, Al-Shabaab, Abu Sayyaf, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, Supreme Military Majlis ul-Shura of the United Mujahideen Forces of Caucasus, to name just a few.

[2] See: “Gender Equality Gap Greatest in Islamic Countries, Survey Shows“, by Patrick Goodenough, October 29, 2014; “The Treatment of Women In Islam,” by Rachel Molschky, October 7, 2013; “Women Suffer at the Hands of Radical Islam“, by Raymond Ibrahim, January 9, 2014; “As Muslim women suffer, feminists avert their gaze“, by Robert Fulford, National Post; Ayse Onal, a leading Turkish journalist, says in her book, Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed, that in Turkey alone honour killings average about one a day — 1,806 were reported in the period between 2000 and 2005.

[3] Daron, Acemoglu & Robinson, James (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Publishing Group.

Categories: Christians, Culture, Dishonor, England, Europe, Executions, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, Kurds, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, Obama, Obama's America, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, United Nations
Tags: Christians, Culture, England, Europe, Executions, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, Kurds, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, Obama, Obama's America, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, United Nations

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Iraq Residents: ‘We Know America is Providing ISIS with Weapons & Food’

June 27, 2015

Iraq Residents: ‘We Know America is Providing ISIS with Weapons & Food’

“We now think ISIS is being used as a tool by America to divide and weaken Iraq”

via » Iraq Residents: ‘We Know America is Providing ISIS with Weapons & Food’ Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Wall Street Journal

The people of Iraq are increasingly blaming the United States for the spread of ISIS in their country, a Wall Street Journal report reveals.

While interviewing Iraqi refugees in a tent city in Baghdad, journalist Yaroslav Trofimov discovered that a growing number of residents believe ISIS is receiving direct support from the American government.

“We all know that America is providing ISIS with weapons and food, and that it is because of American backing that they have become so strong,” said Abbas Hashem, a 50-year-old who recently fled Ramadi.

Others, such as prominent lawmaker Alia Nusseif, made equally striking comments, accusing the US of using ISIS as a proxy army to split up the country.

“We don’t have any trust in Americans anymore,” Nusseif said. “We now think ISIS is being used as a tool by America to divide and weaken Iraq.”

Sabah Karhout, chairman of the Anbar Provincial Council, stated that America’s shockingly “shy” role towards ISIS has been disastrous for opposition groups.

“If you want to help someone, do it with strength to achieve results, not with drip-drip-drip as if you expect them to die anyway,” said Karhout. “The Americans are playing a very shy role—and if this American support had not been so shy, the Sunni tribes would not have gone over to the side of ISIS.”

In response to the comments, the Wall Street Journal alleged that “such conspiracy theories about America’s support for Islamic State are outlandish, no doubt,” a statement that ignores key points regarding the continued rise of ISIS.

Declassified Pentagon documents recently obtained by political watchdog Judicial Watch revealed that the US has deliberately supported al-Qaeda and other radical groups in an attempt to destabilize Syria.

As noted by Insurge Intelligence writer Nafeez Ahmed, the US went forward with the policy despite admittedly knowing it would lead to the rise of ISIS and the fall of Iraq.

“According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq,” Ahmed wrote. “Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the ‘Syrian opposition’ — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels.”

Since the secret 2012 report was written, the Obama administration has continued its support of so-called “rebel” groups despite their admitted ties with ISIS.

Just last September, a commander with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a group deemed “moderate” by the President, admitted to cooperating with multiple terrorist groups including ISIS.

“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in… Qalamoun,” Bassel Idriss, an FSA commander, told the Daily Star.

In July of 2014, “several factions within the FSA” openly gave their US-supplied weapons to ISIS shortly after pledging allegiance to the group.

An ISIS fighter speaking with Al-Jazeera the year prior confirmed that the FSA would regularly donate or sell their weapons after reciving shipments from the US, a well-known issue ignored by the Obama administration and supporters of the Syrian war.

“We are buying weapons from the FSA,” Abu Atheer said. “We bought 200 anti-aircraft missiles and Koncourse anti tank weapons. We have good relations with our brothers in the FSA.”

One of the most troubling aspects for Iraqis has also been the repeated US weapons airdrops to ISIS fighters, a continuous mistake according to US officials.

The Obama administration’s transparent support of radical extremists in the region, a move aimed solely at toppling the Assad government, has even lead to a drop in ISIS’ recruitment numbers, causing ISIS leaders to demand potential jihadists ignore “sinful” conspiracies.

US troops also protested the arming of terror groups in 2013 by posting photos of themselves online holding up signs stating they would not fight on the same side as terrorists in Syria.

Unsurprisingly, this endlessly-documented issue is mainly deemed conspiratorial by mainstream news outlets, ISIS recruiters and corrupt elements of Western intelligence.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Caliphate, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Jihad, Middle East War, Obama, Terrorism

Comments: 21 Comments

Behind the French “Peace Initiative”

June 26, 2015

Behind the French “Peace Initiative,” The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, June 26, 2015

It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to which it gave birth — all waiting for the order to run riot through the streets of France.
If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.
It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190 members — even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient.
When the Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire, the churches, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were turned into mosques; that is the dream of the Islamists today, to turn the Vatican into a mosque.
Currently, Qatar is currently investing millions to overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing millions to finance incitement among Muslims around the globe by means of its Islamist network and da’wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood’s variety of Islam.
The Arabs always secretly believed that anyone who hated their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did, and who actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction during the Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them from occupied Palestine.
Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid of the Jews now.

The latest missile to split the skies over the Middle East is not a rocket; it is the French “peace” initiative.

No one in the Middle East has the slightest doubt that whatever its objective may be, it will not promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to which it gave birth — all waiting for the order to run riot through the streets of France.

We, the Palestinians, have suffered, and continue to suffer, from the creation of the Islamist terrorist organizations within the Palestinian Authority territory; it is they who keep us from reaching a peace agreement with the Jews.

One has to be deaf, dumb and blind — or genuinely desperate, which is more likely — to present a unilateral peace agreement like the French one. If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.

One also has to be simply ignorant not to understand that the Middle East is going up in flames and that the Arab states are disintegrating. There is no logical reason, therefore, to construct a new state, which will be both unstable and prey to local and regional subversion. It will also be subject to a quick takeover, and the first people who will suffer will be the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The Israelis know how to look out for themselves, but we will be left to the tender mercies of Hamas and ISIS mujahedeen. Just as they have done in Iraq and Syria, they will slaughter us without thinking twice, on the grounds that as we did not all become shaheeds [“martyrs” for Islam] trying to kill the Zionists, and even tried to reach a peace agreement with them, we are not sufficiently Muslim.

The French initiative is not a benevolent gesture meant to help the Palestinians. Without a doubt, the French government and its intelligence services know full well that the secret of the Palestinian Authority’s existence today — and its ability to function as a sovereign entity, demilitarized and de facto recognizing the State of Israel — is its security collaboration with the Israelis. It serves the interests of both sides. When, therefore, a Palestinian state is declared unilaterally, as the French propose, Israel will stop collaborating with it and the state, not even fully formed, will almost instantly fall prey to Islamist extremists. That is obvious to us: even our institutions of higher learning are ruled by Hamas today, as can be seen by Hamas’s landslide victory in the recent student elections in Bir Zeit University.

The recent visit of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham to Israel helped the Palestinians understand even more thoroughly that behind the French initiative is an attempt, as with many members of the U.N., to “be a player.” It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190 members — even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient. One way of doing spreading such beneficence is to take over the peace process through the Security Council, force both sides into a unilateral solution, and not even to feign dismay when its first victims are the Palestinians.

Senator Graham referred to the drastic nature of the initiative and stressed that the United States supported the solution of two states for two peoples, according to the vision of Israel’s current Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. It favors a demilitarized Palestinian state that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and make it possible for everyone, both Jews and Palestinians, to live with self-respect and independence.

Graham threatened the UN, saying that if promotes the French initiative, he would bid to halt American funding for the UN — nearly a quarter of its budget.

Today, the UN’s funds are twisted into sending peacekeepers, who have diplomatic immunity and therefore cannot be sued, out to Africa to demand sex, often from children, in exchange for food or other necessities; and to passing resolutions aimed at harming Israel, while the organization callously ignores floggings in Saudi Arabia, slavery in Mauritania; escalating executions, calls for genocide and violations of nuclear treaties in Iran, just for a start.

The situation is grotesque. They are basically accusing Israel of “terrorism” for defending itself against by rockets fired from Hamas, in a confrontation where Gazan children were hurt because Hamas used them as human shields — while ignoring the real terrorism against the children of Africa committed by the U.N.’s own peacekeepers, Boko Haram, Iran and Sudan. When they so twist logic as to accuse Israel of “terrorism,” while turning their back on the horrendous abuses by other states, they are essentially giving paedophile UN “peacekeepers,” Iran’s torturers, executioners, and nuclear weapons factories a green light.

Graham was very clear about the American point of view. He said that any country that tried to bring Israel to the International Criminal Court in The Hague would have sanctions imposed on it by the United States.

The parade of the grotesque is the direct result of the Western surrender to Islamic terrorism. Now, sadly, the Vatican has also joined France. The assumption that the Islamists can be pandered to and propitiated by harming the Jews is yet another prevalent misconception. Every gesture to the Islamists, even if it is aimed at “helping” the Palestinians, sends a message of weakness and vulnerability, and increases the Islamists’ aggression against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities.

In the Middle East, anyone who “turns the other cheek,” such as the Pope saying that the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, could be “an angel of peace,” will find his neck under the sword. When Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire, its churches, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were turned into mosques; that is the dream of the Islamists today, to turn the Vatican into a mosque.

The dangerous European surrender to radical Islam is not only an attempt to hold off its threat to the free society of Europe just a little longer. It is also the result of the economic distress of the Western world, which is seeking to keep afloat by selling itself, literally, for petro-dollars. The Vatican is in desperate financial straits — there are fewer practicing Catholics and therefore fewer donating Catholics. It is hard not to feel that the anti-Israel manipulations of the Vatican administration are motivated not by a genuine desire to help the Palestinians or to save Christians in the Middle East, but by a genuine desire to extricate itself from its financial straits.

Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; Boko Haram sells girls for the price of a pack of cigarettes, and Europe is selling itself and the Israelis to Qatar.

Europe is in the same situation as the Vatican; and so are many American universities, which are selling radical Islamist education for petro-dollars from the Persian Gulf. This enables the Islamists to rewrite history and endanger the open way of life in the gullible West.

There is already a Muslim Brotherhood lobby in the United States, a syndicate trying to force the administration to undermine the current Egyptian president, who is an enemy of the murderous Muslim Brotherhood. Their aim is to restore to power the Islamist dictator Mohamed Morsi (who is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), and to sabotage the measures Egypt is currently taking to rehabilitate itself.

The ease with which Qatar, the petro-dollar heavyweight, manipulates terrorist organizations in the Middle East is unnerving. The country both hosts and finances senior Muslim Brotherhood figures such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others responsible for spreading the doctrine of radical Islamism and terrorism around the world.

Qatar finances a wide range of subversive Islamist terrorist organizations, among them ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various other global jihad organizations operating under the aegis of the Arab-Muslim regimes. Qatar also seeks to carve out enclaves in Africa and the West, and to turn the West’s pluralistic melting pot into a seething cauldron of terrorist operatives who will, when given the signal, bludgeon Europe and America to the ground.

The petro-dollars of the Qatari feudal lords, totalitarians who dictate their whims to a population with no rights, direct a global network of propaganda and incitement, through vehicles such as Al-Jazeera TV in Arabic, light years more toxic than Al Jazeera in English. It crowns kings and topples regimes throughout the Middle East, as it did by endlessly replaying the self-immolation of the young Tunisian fruit vendor who could not get a license, until it whipped up the Tunisians and Egyptians to start the “Arab Spring.” Currently, Qatar is investing millions to overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing millions to finance incitement among Muslims around the globe by means of its Islamist network and da’wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood’s variety of Islam.

The Arabs always felt that the Europeans had a soft spot in their hearts for them. They always secretly believed that anyone who hated their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did, and who actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction during the Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them from occupied Palestine. Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid of the Jews now.

Just look at the extensive corruption of the heads of FIFA, bought and paid-for by Qatar. All it took was $100 million, and Qatar could host the World Cup. It makes one wonder what Qatar would be willing to pay for other projects, doesn’t it?

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Now where did that envelope of cash go…?
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter (R), then president of FIFA, is pictured patting his jacket pocket a moment after awarding the hosting of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (L), on December 2, 2010. (Image source: PBS Newshour video screenshot)

Categories: Abbas, Appeasement, Arab nations, Caliphate, Christians, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Egypt, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Support for terrorism, Two state solution, United Nations
Tags: Abbas, Appeasement, Arab nations, Caliphate, Christians, Egypt, Europe, Fatah, Foreign Policy, France, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Qatar, Support for terrorism, Two state solution, United Nations, Vatican

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Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State

June 23, 2015

Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, June 23, 2015

The United Nations’ verdict of guilty to Israel, in its “Schabas Report,” issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.
Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.
All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas — whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel — would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.
Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.

The Middle East is at it again. At the top of the list, no one, it seems, is even thinking of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability — and by extension at least several other countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.

First, It is dangerous enough for any openly expansionist regime, theological or not, to have nuclear weapons; Iran has recently shown itself to be nothing if not expansionist. Second, and, if possible, worse, several of the countries around Iran — who correctly feel in its crosshairs, have already announced that they will be building or buying nuclear weapons as well; and have probably already started. The Islamic State (ISIS) is also rumored to be on the market for a nuclear warhead; you too can apparently buy one for around $400 million. So we shall all have uncontrolled and uncontrollable nuclear proliferation to look forward to.

On top of all that, the Americans and Europeans are rumored to be at it again, pressuring the Palestinian Authority (PA) to renew peace negotiations with Israel. The London-based newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, recently quoted a senior Palestinian who suggested that the PA Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to jump-start the stalled negotiations.

New signs of triggering antagonism between the Palestinians and Israel are also reflected in the Vatican’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the State of Palestine, despite the vandalizing of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and other acts that led to the mass-exodus of persecuted Christians from the Palestinian territories, and despite the PA having joined with the terrorist group, Hamas, in the so-called Palestinian National Consensus Government [“Unity Government”]. This union enabled Israel to accuse it of responsibility for the war crimes that really only Hamas committed against Israeli civilians during the last war. At the same time, the tottering Palestinian Authority is trying to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of war crimes in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Neither of these attacks bodes well for either Israel or the PA.

The ICC in The Hague also recently announced that it would unilaterally investigate Israel for alleged war crimes committed in the last clash in the Gaza Strip. This project will not end well for the Palestinians, the Israelis or the politicized “Jim Crow” International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Unite Nations’ verdict of guilty, in its “Schabas Report,” issued this week, was written even before the trial began.

The Obama Administration has also increased its pressure on Israel with not-so-subtle threats. Susan Rice and other sources within the US administration openly claimed in early March that, in view of Israel’s “refusal” to make peace, and because of its interpretations of statements made by Netanyahu during this Israel’s elections this year, Washington would not veto unilateral European proposals to establish a Palestinian state.

President, Barack Obama, on May 22, tried to reassure the Jewish community to the contrary and said that he was “an honorary member of the [Jewish] tribe,” but his assurances are suspicious. Obama has earned a reputation for not telling the truth, from blaming the 2012 slaughter of Americans at Benghazi, Libya on a YouTube video (even two weeks after he knew the video was not the reason), to welching on his “red line” commitment when Syria’s government used chemical weapons on its own people.

The Israelis regard the American stance as an anti-Israeli vendetta based on Obama’s personal dislike of both Israel and Netanyahu. Although Netanyahu has said that now might not be the best time for a Palestinian state, he has, in fact, never changed his fundamental policy: that a Palestinian state could potentially be in Israel’s best interests.

What Netanyahu did say, with justification — as hard as it is to admit he was right — is that, given the current regional chaos, establishing a Palestinian state at this time would mean establishing a terrorist state in the West Bank. To do so now would simply lead to what is euphemistically called “further regional destabilization” — namely, war. Recognizing a Palestinian state at this time will also encourage terrorist activities by giving extremist Islamic elements — presently operating throughout North Africa, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — even more territory from which to expand their operations.

This new Islamic extremist land-and-power grab would be similar to that of Hamas after it took over the Gaza Strip, after when Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005; or the ISIS takeover of Syria and Iraq when the US withdrew or failed to act. Currently, Hamas and ISIS in the Gaza Strip menace the security of both Israel and Egypt.

A new Islamic emirate in the West Bank at this time would also be dangerous for Jordan. Even without an Islamic emirate, Jordan has to cope with waves of refugees, among whom are Islamist terrorist operatives infiltrating the kingdom with the goal of overthrowing the Hashemites and turning Jordan into a territory ruled by ISIS or the Muslim Brotherhood. Given Iran’s efforts to exploit the weakness of Sunni Islam in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain, there seems no need for another extremist Islamic arena in Jordan.

Considerable pressure is also now being directed at the Palestinian Authority to renew negotiations with Israel. Some of the pressure comes from former President Jimmy Carter’s possibly well-intentioned but totally counterproductive demand that the Palestinians hold elections.

All public opinion polls in the PA indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas, as in 2006, would win in a landslide.

Unfortunately, many decision-makers in both the United States and Europe view the situation through the lens of Western democracy and practices. The overwhelming Hamas victory in the student council elections at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, should have been a wake-up call. Unfortunately, it was ignored.

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Hamas supporters march during a student council election rally at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, on April 20, 2015. The overwhelming Hamas victory in the student council elections should have been a wake-up call to the U.S. and Europe.

Mahmoud Abbas has a dilemma. If elections are held in the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas– whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel — wins, the PA will cease to exist and Israel will be able to avoid the peace process for all time.

If, however, elections are not held, Mahmoud Abbas will continue to rule without international or Palestinian legitimacy. Not only did his four-year term expire six years ago, but at this point, he barely represents the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The almost two million Palestinians on the other side of Israel, in Gaza, are represented almost exclusively by Hamas, with continuing attempted inroads by ISIS. Abbas is thus unable to represent “the Palestinian people” in any serious political process. The proposal for elections is therefore an embarrassment for Abbas, and is generally ignored.

Tragically, to shore up its status locally, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has taken a series of hasty, contradictory and dangerous steps. Since the PA’s chance at controlling the Gaza Strip has disappeared forever, the PA, to ensure its own continued survival, coordinates security with Israel to prevent further Hamas subversion in the West Bank.

In the meantime, senior figures in the PLO and the PA compete with Hamas in issuing strident, extremist messages to the Palestinian populace, which is consequently being radicalized — to the point now of supporting Hamas and ISIS.

Mahmoud Abbas and his high-ranking associates, nevertheless, continue to hold formal ceremonies to honor terrorists killed during attacks on Israeli targets.[1] Abbas also continues to commemorate “shaheeds” [those who die in the cause of Islam, often called “martyrs”] who killed dozens of Israeli civilians in suicide bombing attacks. Abbas erects monuments, names town squares after them, and holds sports and chess tournaments in their honor.

On this year’s Nakba Day — “the day of catastrophe,” which commemorated the 67^th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel — during the May 15 ceremonies, Mahmoud Abbas promised the Palestinian masses that the occupied territories and the Palestinian diaspora would soon be restored to the independent state of Palestine. He also swore that the “resistance” — that is, armed violence and terrorism against Israel — would continue until the goal was achieved: destroying the State of Israel and establishing the Palestinian state on its ruins.

These intentions are not a secret to Israelis. They therefore do not trust his sincerity when he claims he wants “peace.” Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.

The deliberate tension crafted by the Palestinian Authority has, as its only objective, bloodshed — both Palestinian and Israeli. This tactic can usually be seen when the level of violence falls below what the PA finds acceptable. It then trots out the old saw, first coined by the anti-Israeli Islamist sheikh Ra’ed Salah (whose right to free speech is protected by Israeli law), “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger!”

At the beginning of May 2015, Sheikh Yusuf al-Dayis, the PA Minister of Religious Endowments [Waqf], made headlines in the Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, with the incendiary statement that the fate of the entire Muslim nation hung on the 35 acres of the Temple Mount. He even provided a list of what he claimed were Israeli “attacks” on Al-Aqsa mosque. Sadly for him, visitors to the Temple Mount can see every day the exorbitant security measures taken by the Israelis to protect the site. In point of fact, the record shows that every time the Palestinians want to provoke another pointless round of violence and slaughter, they say, “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger!” It invariably causes hundreds of casualties on both sides and achieves absolutely nothing.

The last time a mosque actually was damaged was recently, in the Gaza Strip, when Hamas’s security forces removed the holy books, then used three bulldozers to raze a Salafist mosque. Hamas claimed it was in retaliation for an alleged Salafist attack on Hamas “jihad fighters” south of Khan Yunis. Sources in Gaza confirmed that seven Salafist-jihadi operatives were arrested in the mosque, and that Hamas had recently arrested 30 Salafist-jihadi Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis members. Having started terrorism in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is now reaping the result: terrorism there is “going viral.”

All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would quickly turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity. Each time governments encourage Islamist movements, or ignore them in the hope that they will attack someone else, these movements have boomeranged into their own backyards and then moved on to their neighbors’. This will be the fate of Syria’s Bashar Assad, who let Hamas and other terrorist groups set up shop in Damascus. Former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat let Hamas into the neighborhood, and the Palestinian people are now being repaid by Hamas. Arafat wrongly assumed that letting Hamas in the door would serve him by forcing Israel to make concessions. Mahmoud Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last August, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him. “We have a national unity government and you are thinking about a coup against me,” he said to Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal.

The Islamist terrorist enclaves are wholly the fruit of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine freely being spread around the Middle East and the democratic West. The so-far isolated incidents of bloodshed in Europe, Africa and the United States are just at the beginning stages of a long, bloody campaign to engulf the world.

Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. Libya and Lebanon may follow next. If the West pressures Palestinians and Israel to create a Palestinian state now, the West Bank and Jordan will be sure to follow. Enabling an expansionist Iran to have a nuclear threshold capability will also throw the region into war.

We, the Palestinians who live in the Palestinian Authority and within Israel, have not stopped dreaming of a Palestinian state, but we also witness the chaos around us and are relieved that so far the catastrophe has not harmed us or our families.

Some Palestinian politicians have turned to more extreme rhetoric to find favor with Israeli Arabs, but despite the tendency in Palestinian society towards extremism and terrorism, what is certain is that even if the establishment of the Palestinian state is postponed, most Palestinians hope the West will not make the mistake of permitting Iran to go nuclear. A nuclear Iran will create a nightmare that will make the Nakba look like a coming attraction.

____________________

[1] For recent examples, see: “Fatah glorifies arch-terrorist who planned killings of 125,” May 14, 2015; “PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists,” May 11, 2015; “PA sports presents terrorist murderers as role models,” May 4, 2015.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Caliphate, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Jordan, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace process, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Jordan, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace Process, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Two state solution

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The Iran scam worsens — Part III, Human rights and support for terrorism

June 22, 2015

The Iran scam worsens — Part III, Human rights and support for terrorism, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 22, 2015

(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

It is likely that the P5+1 nuke “deal” with Iran will be approved soon. Military and other nuke sites which Iran has not “disclosed” will not be inspected. Nor will Iran’s nuke ties with North Korea — which P5+1 member China seems to be helping, Iran’s massive support for terrorism and abysmal human rights record be considered because they are also deemed unnecessary for “deal” approval. Sanctions against Iran are moribund and will not be revived regardless of whether there is a “deal.” However, a bronze bust of Obama may soon be displayed prominently in Supreme Leader Khamenei’s office and one of Khamenei may soon be displayed proudly in Dear Leader Obama’s office.

Iranian support for terrorism

According to the U.S. State Department, The Islamic Republic of Iran continued its sponsorship of terrorism during 2014. The linked article observes,

Iran has increased its efforts to finance and carry out terrorist activities across the world and remains a top nuclear proliferation threat, according to a new State Department assessment. [Emphasis added.]

Iran is funding and arming leading terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere, according to the State Department’s 2014 Country Reports on Terrorism, which thoroughly documents how Tehran continues to act as a leading sponsor terror groups that pose a direct threat to the United States.

The report comes as Western powers work to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran ahead of a self-imposed June 30 deadline, though it is unclear whether the new findings will come up in negotiations.

It seems clear that the new findings will not be considered.

Among many other terrorist organizations, Iran supports the Taliban.

Afghan and Western officials say Tehran has quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters, posing a new threat to Afghanistan’s fragile security.

Iran’s strategy in backing the Taliban is twofold, these officials say: countering U.S. influence in the region and providing a counterweight to Islamic State’s move into the Taliban’s territory in Afghanistan. [Emphasis added.]

According to James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, the intelligence community considers Iran to be the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism.”

The assessment came after criticism from the Senate that the information was omitted in a global threat assessment submitted to Congress [in February of this year.] Initially, Iran and Hezbollah were not included as terror threats in the intelligence community’s report to the Senate in February. [Emphasis added.]

Might the Obama administration have been trying to ignore Iran’s continuing support for terrorist activities because of its fixation on getting a “deal” with Iran in the ongoing P5+1 “negotiations?” Probably, but that was then. Now, it is apparently not a problem to report on Iran’s terrorist activities because they are deemed unworthy of consideration by the P5+1 negotiators. It’s terrible, but so what?

Iran is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. Its tentacles have a hold on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. Its terrorist operations know no border and its proxies partake in mass killings and war crimes. But as it has been demonstrated time and time again, the West appears unperturbed by all that. It views Iran as a potentially constructive state actor, which, as long as it gets its way, could serve to stabilize the region. [Emphasis added.]

Iran could, of course, “stabilize” the region with its own military and its terror proxies in much the same way that Hitler tried to “stabilize” Europe — by gaining military control and forcing his ideology on subjugated residents. At first, there was some resistance but that was shown to be useless as Britain under Chamberlain gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. Eventually, Britain and later her ally, the United States, became sufficiently upset to intervene militarily.

As noted in an article at Asia Times on Line, the “free world” is unwilling to confront Iranian hegemony:

For differing reasons, the powers of the world have elected to legitimize Iran’s dominant position, hoping to delay but not deter its eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons. Except for Israel and the Sunni Arab states, the world has no desire to confront Iran. Short of an American military strike, which is unthinkable for this administration, there may be little that Washington can do to influence the course of events. Its influence has fallen catastrophically in consequence of a chain of policy.

. . . .

President Obama is not British prime minister Neville Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich in 1938: rather, he is Lord Halifax, that is, Halifax if he had been prime minister in 1938. Unlike the unfortunate Chamberlain, who hoped to buy time for Britain to build warplanes, Halifax liked Hitler, as Obama and his camarilla admire Iran. [Emphasis added.]

The bountiful windfall soon to be given to Iran if the P5+1 “deal” is approved, via a “signing bonus” and other Sanctions relief, will help Iran’s terror sponsorship.

[S]hould the “treaty” with Iran be consummated, this sponsor of global terrorism will receive at least $100 billion in sanctions relief. Not only will this money be used for Assad, but it will bankroll Hezbollah and Hamas with a new generation of rockets and weapons.

For Tehran, money buys weapons, and weapons buy power and influence. President Obama is counting on an accommodative Iran that receives foreign assistance. But is there any reason to embrace this hypothesis? And even if someone does, at what point can the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), or any other relevant body, determine the turnabout in Iran’s nuclear program? How do we know when a genuine peace has arrived? [Emphasis added.]

Iranian leaders have made it clear that dreams of a Persian kingdom dance like sugar plums in their imagination. For that to happen, the money pump cannot run dry. There is a need to support their Houthi surrogates in Yemen; resupply Hamas rockets that were destroyed in the last war with Israel; continue to add to the Hezbollah war machine that is poised to attack Israel; and keep Assad afloat, the mechanism by which control of Lebanon is retained. [Emphasis added.]

Iran’s abysmal human rights record is getting worse

According to Iranian Human Rights,

[T]he Iranian regime has executed a prisoner every two hours this month.

“So far in 2015, more than 560 have been executed, and we are just in the first half of the year… What we are witnessing today is not so much different from what ISIS is doing. The difference is that the Iranian authorities do it in a more controlled manner, and represent a country which is a full member of the international community with good diplomatic relations with the West.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesman for Iran Human Rights. [Emphasis added.]

Now the West, with the possibility of a nuclear deal, stands to increase Iran’s diplomatic standing.

According to officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran,

Iran has “the best human rights record” in the Muslim world;^[11] that it is not obliged to follow “the West’s interpretation” of human rights;^[12] and that the Islamic Republic is a victim of “biased propaganda of enemies” which is “part of a greater plan against the world of Islam“.^[13] According to Iranian officials, those who human rights activists say are peaceful political activists being denied due process rights are actually guilty of offenses against the national security of the country,^[14] and those protesters claiming Ahmadinejad stole the 2009 election are actually part of a foreign-backed plot to topple Iran’s leaders.^[15] [Emphasis added.]

Conclusions

Iran’s abysmal and already worsening records of human rights violations and support for terrorism will likely get even worse as it gets (or gets to keep) the bomb, along with a reward of massive further sanctions relief. None of that is deemed worthy of consideration by the P5+1 “negotiators,” lest Iran decline to sign a deal or lest its feelings be hurt — as they would be were IAEA inspections of “undisclosed” sites be demanded or if any Iranian demands were not met.

Iran and North Korea share not only nuclear weaponization technology; they also share a common contempt for human rights. Yet the North Korea – Iran nuclear nexus (denied by Iran) appears to be of no concern to the P5+1 “negotiators.”

Obama long ago “opened his heart” to the Muslim world.

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama declared in his first inaugural address. The underlying assumption was that America’s previous relations with Muslims were characterized by dissention and contempt. More significant, though, was the president’s use of the term “Muslim world,” a rough translation of the Arabic ummah. A concept developed by classical Islam, ummah refers to a community of believers that transcends borders, cultures, and nationalities. Obama not only believed that such a community existed but that he could address and accommodate it.

The novelty of this approach was surpassed only by Obama’s claim that he, personally, represented the bridge between this Muslim world and the West.

ALL of My policies are the best ever

ALL of My policies are the best ever

Obama does deserve some credit: His foreign policies are the most foreign in U.S. history to the security of the United States and of what’s left of the free world. Much the same is true of His domestic policies.

Categories: Appeasement, Caliphate, Chamberlain, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Executions, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Germany, Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran military, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Michael Oren, Middle East, Munich, Muslims, North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Regime change, Sanctions, State Department, Support for terrorism, Terrorism
Tags: Appeasement, Caliphate, Chamberlain, Executions, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, Germany, Hamas, Hezbollah, human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran military, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Michael Oren, Middle East, Munich, Muslims, North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Regime change, Sanctions, State Department, Support for terrorism, Terrorism

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Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross

June 22, 2015

Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, June 22, 2015 (Originally published by PJ Media.)

(Apparently Obama, who appears to favor Islam over all other religions, hopes that when The Islamic Republic of Iran gets or gets to keep the bomb and enjoys lots of sanctions relief its behavior toward non-Muslims will improve. — DM

Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of life—one that crosses continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity.

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Last May in Italy, a Muslim boy of African origin beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck. The African schoolboy, who had only started to attend the school approximately three weeks earlier, began to bully the Christian girl—“insulting her and picking on her in other ways all because she was wearing the crucifix”—before he finally “punched the girl violently in the back.”

What is it about the Christian cross that makes some Muslims react this way?

The fact is, Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of life—one that crosses continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity.

Doctrine and History

Because the Christian cross is the quintessential symbol of Christianity—for all denominations, including most forms of otherwise iconoclastic Protestantism—it has been a despised symbol in Islam.

According to the Conditions of Omar—a Medieval text which lays out the many humiliating stipulations conquered Christians must embrace to preserve their lives and which Islamic history attributes to the second “righteous caliph,” Omar al-Khattab—Christians are “Not to display a cross [on churches]… and “Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims.”

The reason for this animosity is that the cross symbolizes the fundamental disagreement between Christians and Muslims. According to Dr. Sidney Griffith, author of The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, “The cross and the icons publicly declared those very points of Christian faith which the Koran, in the Muslim view, explicitly denied: that Christ was the Son of God and that he died on the cross.” Thus “the Christian practice of venerating the cross and the icons of Christ and the saints often aroused the disdain of Muslims,” so that there was an ongoing “campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity, especially the previously ubiquitous sign of the cross.”

Islam’s hostility to the cross, like all of Islam’s hostilities, begins with the Muslim prophet Muhammad. He reportedly “had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into his house with its figure upon it.” He once ordered someone wearing a cross to “take off that piece of idolatry” and claimed that at the end times Jesus himself would make it a point to “break the cross”—an assertion the Islamic State regularly makes.

Islamic history following Muhammad is riddled with anecdotes of Muslims cursing and breaking crosses. Prior to the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which pitted the earliest invading Muslim armies against the Byzantine Empire, Khalid bin al-Walid, the savage “Sword of Allah,” told the Christians that if they wanted peace they must “break the cross” and embrace Islam, or pay jizya and live in subjugation—just as his Islamic State successors are doing today in direct emulation. The Byzantines opted for war.

In Egypt, Saladin (d. 1193)—regularly touted in the West for his “magnanimity”—ordered “the removal of every cross from atop the dome of every church in the provinces of Egypt,” in the words of The History of the Patriarchate of the Egyptian Church.

Europe: Growing Violence against the Cross

Centuries later, not much has changed concerning Islam’s position towards the cross, though much has changed in Western perceptions. In other words, an African boy punching a Christian girl in Italy for her crucifix is part of a long continuum of Islamic hostility for the cross. Perhaps he learned this hatred in mosque—the same European mosques where Islamic State representatives call Muslims to jihad?

After all, earlier this year in Italy, another crucifix was destroyed in close proximity to a populated mosque. The municipality’s Councilor, Giuseppe Berlin, did not mince words concerning the identity of the culprit(s):

Before we put a show of unity with Muslims, let’s have them begin by respecting our civilization and our culture. We shouldn’t minimize the importance of certain signals; we must wake up now or our children will suffer the consequences of this dangerous and uncontrolled Islamic invasion.

Nor is Italy the only European nation experiencing this phenomenon. In neighboring France, a “young Muslim” committed major acts of vandalism at two churches. Along with twisting a massive bronze cross, he overturned and broke two altars, the candelabras and lecterns, destroyed statues, tore down a tabernacle, smashed in a sacristy door and even broke some stained-glass windows. (Click for images.)

And in Germany, a Turkish man who checked himself into a hospital for treatment went into a sudden frenzy because there were “too many crosses on the wall.” He called the nurse a “bitch” and “fascist” and became physically aggressive.

Of course, other times Europeans willingly capitulate to Islamic hostility for the cross. Real Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team in Spain reportedly stripped the traditional Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi—“so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates.” And in the United Kingdom, offensive crucifixes are being removed from prisons in order not to offend Muslim inmates (who are further provided with food baths for Islamic rituals).

Muslim World: Christians Killed for the Cross

If this is how some Muslims react to the Christian cross in Europe—where Muslims are aware of their outnumbered, minority status—how do other Muslims react to the cross in the Islamic world, where vastly outnumbered and ostracized Christian “infidels” are easy prey?

The answer is murderous—literally, Christians are being murdered by Muslims provoked at the sight of the cross:

Last year in Egypt, a young Coptic Christian woman named Mary was mauled to death—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to Muslim Brotherhood rioters. According to an eyewitness who discussed the episode, Mary Sameh George was parking her car by the church to deliver medicine to an elderly woman:

Once they [Brotherhood rioters] saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rearview mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked.

In response, the Coptic Christian Church issued the following statement: “Oh how lucky you are, Mary, you who are beloved of Christ. They tore your body because of the Cross. Yet they offered you the greatest service and gave you a name of honor as one who attained the crown of martyrdom.” The statement also quoted Christ’s warning to believers: “Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service” (John 16:2).

In October 2011, seventeen-year-old Ayman Nabil Labib, a Coptic student, was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and some fellow students—simply for refusing to obey the teacher’s orders to remove his cross. Student eyewitnesses present during the assault said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross, which many Copts wear. Not only did he refuse, but he defiantly produced the pectoral cross he wore under his shirt, which prompted the enraged Muslim teacher and students to beat the Christian youth to death.

Before that, an off-duty Muslim police officer on a train from Asyut to Cairo shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and opened fire on six Christians, killing a seventy-one-year-old man and critically wounding the rest. Before opening fire he had checked for passengers with the traditional Coptic cross tattooed on their wrists. (Days ago, another Coptic woman was “shot dead by an Egyptian police officer. Although officially an “accident,” the Muslim officer is notorious for hating Christians.)

In Pakistan, when a Muslim man saw Julie Aftab, a Christian woman, wearing a cross around her neck,

The man became abusive, shouting at her that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam. He left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head. As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. ‘They all turned against me . . . even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me’. . . . 67 percent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been. The doctors predicted she would die any day. Despite the odds she pulled through.

All this because she was wearing a cross.

Even in Muslim nations deemed “moderate,” violence provoked by the cross is not uncommon. In 2012, a 12-year-old boy in Turkey who converted to Christianity and decided to profess his new faith by wearing a silver cross necklace in class was spit on and beat regularly by Muslim classmates and teachers.

In the Maldives, October 2010, authorities had to rescue Geethamma George, a Christian teacher from India, after Muslim “parents threatened to tie and drag her off of the island” for “preaching Christianity.” Her crime was simply to draw a compass in class as part of a geography lesson. The compass was mistaken for the Christian cross.

Christians ‘Killed’ Again for the Cross

If some Muslims kill the wearers of the cross, so do they disturb the slumber of those already dead for having the cross on their tombstones. A few of the many examples follow:

Libya, March 2012: A video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery near Benghazi appeared on the internet. As the Muslims kicked down and destroyed headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urged them to “Break the cross of the dogs!” while he and others cried “Allahu Akbar!” Towards the end of the video, the mob congregated around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemetery’s cenotaph monument, and started to hammer at it, to more cries of “Allahu Akbar.”Other Christian cemeteries in post-“Arab Spring” Libya have suffered similarly.
France, April 2015: Christian crosses and gravestones in a cemetery weredamaged and desecrated by a Muslim. After being apprehended, he was described as follows: “The man repeats Muslim prayers over and over, he drools and cannot be communicated with: his condition has been declared incompatible with preliminary detention.” He was hospitalized as “mentally unbalanced.” (See his handiwork.)
Malaysia, February 2014: AChristian cemetery was attacked and desecrated in the middle of the night by unknown persons in the Muslim majority nation. Several crosses were destroyed, including by the use of “a heavy tool to do the damage.”
Germany, June 2014: After Muslims were granted their own section at a cemetery in Seligenstadt, and after being allowed to conduct distinctly Islamic ceremonies, these same Muslims begandemanding that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery be removed or covered up during Islamic funerals.

—–

One can go on and on with more recent examples of Islam’s hostility to the cross. Last April in “moderate” Malaysia, a Muslim mob rioted against a small Protestant church due to the visible cross atop the building of worship. It was quickly removed.

And in Pakistan, a nation where the mere accusation of offending Islam get Christians burned alive—a Muslim shopkeeper is allowed to sell shoes which depict the Christian cross on their sole: “In Pakistani culture, showing the sole of one’s shoe or foot is offensive because placing anything on the ground is considered to be an insult to the object. Therefore, something on the sole of a shoe is going to be constantly insulted as the person walks.”

From an African School Boy in Italy to ‘ISIS’

In light of the above, it should come as no surprise that the Islamic State—“ISIS”—also exhibits violence to the Christian cross. In its communiques to the West, hostile reference to the cross is often made: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah…. [We will cast] fear into the hearts of the cross worshippers….”

After carving the heads of Coptic Christians off in Libya, the lead executioner waved his dagger at the camera and said, “Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of as-Sham and Dabiq’s plain [Syrian regions], chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.” He concluded by declaring: “We will fight you [Christians/Westerners] until Christ descends, breaks the cross and kills the pig” (all eschatological actions ascribed to the Muslim “Christ,” Isa).

Moreover, the Islamic State has committed countless atrocities against and because of the cross: it made and disseminated a video showing its members smashing crosses in and atop churches in territories under its sway; it beheaded and stabbed a man with his own crucifix after it exposed him as a Christian; and it published pictures of its members destroying Christian crosses and tombstones in cemeteries under its jurisdiction — and quoted Islamic scriptures justifying its actions.

Careful readers will note the similar parallels here: destroying crosses in churches and cemeteries and even killing Christian “infidels” for wearing them, as documented above, is not limited to “ISIS” but is happening all around the Muslim world, and even in Europe.

In short, Islam’s age-old hatred for the Christian cross—and what it represents—is not a product of the Islamic State, but of Islam.

Categories: Christianity, Christians, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Peace process, Sanctions, Terrorism
Tags: Christianity, Christians, Foreign Policy, human rights, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Peace Process, Sanctions, Terrorism

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Terror will not be defeated with reports

June 22, 2015

Terror will not be defeated with reports, Israel Hayom, Dr. Gabi Avital, June 22, 2015

(Please see also, US: Iran’s Support for Terror Undiminished. — DM)

Iran is led by rational and calculated religious clerics, whose goals are openly declared and well-defined. The rationality one should expect to find in the State Department has dissipated in a haze of illusions, which are exacting a heavy toll. Meanwhile, only the Islamic State stands to outflank Iran, and that is only under the assumption that these two terrorist entities are on completely divergent paths. To be sure, that is quite the baseless assumption.

Yet those who with one hand sound the alarm over an increase in terror, while with the other help the perpetrators of said terror rule the roost by giving it nuclear weapons, must provide convincing explanations. The United States, with its utter foreign policy failures — from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Egypt and Iran — is not forthcoming with such explanations.

Where is Michael Moore when you need him? The State Department can see what is happening, but Kerry is on his way to a nuclear deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Not much could be worse.

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Understanding history is a tricky proposition. Its lessons are sometimes hidden to us for long periods; often only subsequent generations can achieve the proper historical perspective, after a series of fateful events has unfolded. Even so, within less than 40 years we have witnessed global events that many political scientists correctly predicted.

The time is the late 1970s. All signs point to an oncoming revolution in Iran. However, U.S. President Jimmy Carter (whom some call the worst president ever), is instead consumed with the wording for a peace deal that undermines pre-existing agreements and international accords. Egypt wins the entire pot in a peace deal with Israel. Iran rises in prominence; the Soviet Union bolsters its standing across the globe, until the arrival of Ronald Reagan, who in an effort to defeat the Soviet Union in the ongoing Cold War, announces his Star Wars program.

We know the ending. Almost every single international relations expert points to that declaration as the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1989, Reagan concludes two terms in office, and the Soviet Union falls apart.

Terrorism spreads across the globe. The leading sponsors are Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran. An extensive report, examining the dangers of mass terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, is being compiled. The conservative-democratic pendulum in the U.S. swings toward the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton. The egregious disregard of the report, now collecting dust, brings terrorism to its horrific pinnacle on Sept. 11, 2001. All fingerprints lead back to Saudi Arabia. Everything had already been laid out in the dust-covered Pentagon report. What the democratic Pentagon and State Department cooked up, the Republican George W. Bush was forced to eat.

The State Department has now published its annual report on terrorism. The seeds of this report were planted in the Carter era, when peace at all costs was championed without any understanding of the world in general and the Middle East in particular. Iran is led by rational and calculated religious clerics, whose goals are openly declared and well-defined. The rationality one should expect to find in the State Department has dissipated in a haze of illusions, which are exacting a heavy toll. Meanwhile, only the Islamic State stands to outflank Iran, and that is only under the assumption that these two terrorist entities are on completely divergent paths. To be sure, that is quite the baseless assumption.

So what does the report say? There will be a dramatic 35% rise in global terrorist acts. Iran supports terrorist organizations all over the world and in the Middle East especially; it backs the Shiite fighters in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria, with arms, training, money and intelligence. And we haven’t even mentioned Syria yet, or Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Yet those who with one hand sound the alarm over an increase in terror, while with the other help the perpetrators of said terror rule the roost by giving it nuclear weapons, must provide convincing explanations. The United States, with its utter foreign policy failures — from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Egypt and Iran — is not forthcoming with such explanations. Russia is back on the Cold War track; the Islamic State group is emboldened by the conduct of the U.S. president and his team at the State Department; Iran is envisioning a nuclear bomb in its arsenal; and Saudi Arabia is looking on nervously as the carpet of reciprocity is being pulled out from under it and its oil fields.

Only a week before Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the pillars of this dangerous U.S. foreign policy, takes off to pursue the deal with Iran, Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, tells us: “We continue to be very, very concerned about [the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] activity as well as proxies that act on behalf of Iran.”

What then, is Kerry really unaware of the findings in the 388-page report? And does he not understand that the deal with Iran, the seeds for which were planted in the Carter era and now being cultivated by Obama, is terrorism itself, and that there is no need for any report to merely sit and collect dust again in the State Department cellar?

Where is Michael Moore when you need him? The State Department can see what is happening, but Kerry is on his way to a nuclear deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Not much could be worse.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Free world, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Rogue nations, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Support for terrorism, Terrorism
Tags: Foreign Policy, Free world, Funding terrorism, human rights, Ideology, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Obama Administration, Obama's America, Rogue nations, Saudi Arabia, Support for terrorism, Terrorism

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The Myth of Muslim Radicalization

June 18, 2015

The Myth of Muslim Radicalization, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 18, 2015

Usaama Rahim

Usaama Rahim

Mainstreaming extremism is . . . Obama’s policy. It’s the logic behind nearly every Western diplomatic move in the Middle East from the Israel-PLO peace process to the Brotherhood’s Arab Spring. And these disasters only created more Islamic terrorism.

****************

After some of its quarter of a million Muslims headed to join ISIS, Quebec decided the answer was a $2 million anti-radicalization center headed by a specialist in cultural sensitivity. But if you’re about to be beheaded by a masked ISIS Jihadist, a specialist in cultural sensitivity isn’t going to help you much.

Western governments nevertheless keep rolling out their culturally sensitive approaches to fighting ISIS.

The key element in Obama’s strategy for fighting ISIS isn’t the F-15E Strike Eagle, it’s a Twitter account run by a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer which claims to “Counter Violent Extremism” by presenting moderate Islamists like Al Qaeda as positive role models for the Islamic State’s social media supporters.

So far 75% of planes flown on combat missions against ISIS return without engaging the enemy, but the culturally sensitive State Department Twitter account has racked up over 5,000 tweets and zero kills.

Cultural sensitivity hasn’t exactly set Iraq on fire in fighting ISIS and deradicalization programs here start from the false premise that there is a wide gap between a moderate and extremist Islam. Smiling news anchors daily recite new stories about a teenager from Kentucky, Boston or Manchester getting “radicalized” and joining ISIS to the bafflement of his parents, mosque and community.

And who is to blame for all this mysterious radicalization? It’s not the parents. It certainly can’t be the moderate local mosque with its stock of Jihadist CDs and DVDs being dispensed from under the table.

The attorney for the family of Usaama Rahim, the Muslim terrorist who plotted to behead Pamela Geller, claims that his radicalization came as a “complete shock” to them.

It must have come as a truly great shock to his brother Imam Ibrahim Rahim who claimed that his brother was shot in the back and that the Garland cartoon attack had been staged by the government.

It must have come as an even bigger shock to Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, the Imam linked to Usaama Rahim and his fellow terrorist conspirators, as well as the Tsarnaev brothers, who had urged Muslims to “grab onto the gun and the sword.”

The culturally insensitive truth about Islamic ‘radicalization’ is that it is incremental.

There is no peaceful Islam. Instead of two sharply divided groups, peaceful Islam and extremist Islam, there is a spectrum of acceptable terrorism.

Muslim institutions have different places on that spectrum depending on their allegiances and tactics, but the process of radicalization is rarely a sharp break from the past for any except converts to Islam.

The latest tragic victim of radicalization is Munther Omar Saleh; a Muslim man living in New York City who allegedly plotted to use a Tsarnaev-style pressure cooker bomb in a major landmark such as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Saleh claimed to be following orders from ISIS.

Media coverage of the Saleh arrest drags out the old clichés about how unexpected this sudden radicalization was, but what appears to be his father’s social media account shows support for Hamas.

Likewise one of Usaama Rahim’s fellow mosque attendees said that Rahim and another conspirator had initially followed the “teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood” but that he had been forced to cut ties with them when they moved past the Brotherhood and became “extreme”.

Despite the media’s insistence on describing the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate organization, it has multiple terrorist arms, including Hamas, and its views on non-Muslims run the gamut from the violent to the genocidal.

A year after Obama’s Cairo speech and his outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood, its Supreme Guide announced that the United States will soon be destroyed, urged violent terrorist attacks against the United States and “raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.”

Despite this, Obama continued backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power across the region.

There are distinctions between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, but the latter is a splinter group of the former. Al Qaeda’s current leader came out of the Muslim Brotherhood. A move from one to the other is a minor transition between two groups that have far more in common than their differences.

And since the Brotherhood controls much of the Islamic infrastructure in the United States, the idea that Munther Omar Saleh or Usaama Rahim became radicalized because they went from a Jihadist group that takes the long view in the struggle against the infidel, putting political structures into place to make a violent struggle tactically feasible, to a Jihadist group that focuses more on short term violence, is silly.

Radicalization isn’t transformational; it’s incremental.

It’s the Pakistani kid down the block deciding that instead of joining the Muslim Students Association and then CAIR to build Islamist political structures in America, he should just cut to the chase and kill a few cops to begin taking over America now.

Radicalization is the moderate Imam who stops putting on an act for PBS and the local politicians and moves to Yemen where he openly recruits terrorists to attack America instead of doing it covertly at his mosque in Virginia.

Radicalization is the teenage Muslim girl who forgets about marrying her Egyptian third cousin and bringing him and his fifty relatives to America and goes to join ISIS as a Caliphate brood mare instead.

It’s not pacifism giving way to violence. Instead it’s an impatient shift from tactical actions meant to eventually make Islam supreme in America over many generations to immediate bloody gratification. ISIS is promising the apocalypse now. No more waiting. No more lying. You can have it tomorrow.

Radicalization does not go from zero to sixty. It speeds up from sixty to seventy-five.

It builds on elements that are already there in the mosque and the household. The term “extremism” implicitly admits that what we are talking about is not a complete transformation, but the logical extension of existing Islamic beliefs.

Omar Saleh seemed cheerful enough about Hamas dropping Kassam rockets on Israeli towns and cities. Would he have supported his son setting off a bomb in the Statue of Liberty? Who knows, but his son was already starting from a family position that Muslim terrorism against non-Muslims was acceptable.

Everything else is the fine print.

When Usaama Rahim followed the way of the Muslim Brotherhood, he was with a moderate group whose spiritual guide, the genocidal Qaradawi was the godfather of cartoon outrage and had endorsed the murderous Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

The slope that leads from Qaradawi’s cartoon rage to trying to behead Pamela Geller isn’t a slippery one; it’s a vertical waterfall. And this is what radicalization really looks like. It doesn’t mean moderates turning extreme. It means extremists becoming more extreme. And there’s always room for extremists to become more extreme which turns old extremists into moderates while mainstreaming their beliefs.

In the UK, Baroness Warsi, Cameron’s biggest mistake, blamed Muslim radicalization on the government’s refusal to engage with… radicals. Or as she put it, “It is incredibly odd and incredibly worrying that over time more and more individuals, more and more organisations are considered by the government to be beyond the pale and therefore not to be engaged with.”

The reason why the government is refusing to “engage” with these organizations is that they support terrorism in one form or another. Warsi is proposing that the UK fight radicalization by mainstreaming it.

Mainstreaming extremism is also Obama’s policy. It’s the logic behind nearly every Western diplomatic move in the Middle East from the Israel-PLO peace process to the Brotherhood’s Arab Spring. And these disasters only created more Islamic terrorism.

The Muslim teenagers headed to join ISIS did not come out of a vacuum. They came from mosques and families that normalized some degree of Islamic Supremacism and viewed some Muslim terrorists as heroes and role models. It’s time for Western governments to admit that the ISIS Jihadist is more the product of his parents and his teachers than of social media Jihadis on YouTube and Twitter.

Radicalization doesn’t begin with a sheikh on social media. It begins at home. It begins in the mosque. It just ends with ISIS.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Culture, Diversity, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Leftists, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Peace in our time, Political correctness, Talliban, Terrorism
Tags: Al Qaeda, Culture, DIversity, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Leftists, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Peace in our time, Political correctness, Taliban, Terrorism

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Islam’s ‘Baby Jihad’

June 12, 2015

Islam’s ‘Baby Jihad,’ Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, June 12, 2015

Islamic aspirations to dominate the world are set to happen—if not through might of arms, then apparently through sheer numbers.

In 1900, the Muslim population of the world was less than 200 million. Conversely, the Christian population of the world was almost 560 million—almost three times the number of Muslims.

Times have changed. According to the findings of a Pew Research Center in America:

The number of Muslims will increase at more than double the rate of the world’s population, which is expected to rise by 35 per cent in the next four decades.

There will be more Muslims than Christians in the world in less than sixty years, new research revealed.

The [Islamic] religion’s share of the world’s population will equal the Christian share – at roughly 32 per cent each – in 2070, analysis by the Pew Research Center showed.

[…]

By 2050 Muslims will make up around ten per cent of Europe’s population.

For a better idea of what is in store for Europe, simply look to the UK’s “Londonistan”—the apt name for London and other regions with a notable Muslim presence: Already with a 10 percent Muslim population, Londonistan is a reflection of Europe 35 years from now when it too is projected to be ten percent Muslim (and by which time the UK will likely have an even much larger Muslim population).

The same sorts of anti-infidel violence and sexual abuse that is a daily fixture in Muslim majority nations is already a normal feature of Londonistan with its mere 10 percent Muslim minority.

Put differently, if “ISIS” and other Islamic groups regularly behead “infidel” men and sexually enslave “infidel” women in the Middle East—so are “average” Muslims doing so in the UK:

Recall how in 2013, two Muslim men shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight no less. They even boasted in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped.

Or recall how Muslims were recently busted for running a sex ring in Rotherham, England: 1,400 British children as young as 11 were plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused in cabs and kabob shops.

It was at least the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims to be uncovered in England—Muslims who only make 10 percent.

During the trial of an earlier Muslim-run sex ring “Several of the men on trial in Liverpool apparently told their victims that it was all right for them to be passed around for sex with dozens of men ‘because it’s what we do in our country.’”

In fact, that is exactly what some Muslim men do to infidel girls in their country. Seemingly not a day goes by without Christian girls in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, and any number of other Muslim majority nations being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/forced to convert (See Crucified Again, pgs. 186-199 for a sampling, plus the doctrinal justification.)

When a Muslim man savagely raped a nine-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan, he told her “not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls.” Commenting on this case, local human rights activists said, “It is shameful. Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.”

Indeed, there is no end of patterns of abuse against Christian minorities in the Muslim world that are now occurring in the West. While many are now aware that “ISIS” destroys churches and Christian cemeteries, few realize that Muslims—not “ISIS”—just average Muslims—are doing the same thing in the West.

Days ago in Canada, which has a miniscule Muslim population, a Muslim man vandalized and desecrated a church on several different occasions. Among other things, he covered the Christ statue in front of the church with black paint and broke its fingers and tore up Christian books inside the church.

Weeks earlier in France, 215 Christian gravestones and crosses in the cemetery of Saint-Roch de Castres (Tarn) were damaged and desecrated by a Muslim man later described as follows: “The man repeats Muslim prayers over and over, he drools and cannot be communicated with: his condition has been declared incompatible with preliminary detention.”

And last March in Germany, a potential jihadi attack on the cathedral and synagogue in Bremen was averted following action by police.

In short, along with all the other forms of jihad to be wary of—the sword jihad, the tongue jihad (deceit/propaganda), the money jihad (financial support to jihadis)—the West should also be aware of the baby jihad.

If the same sorts of crimes being committed against Christian minorities in Muslim majority nations are already being committed in Europe and North America—despite the fact that Muslims are currently minorities—how then when, as projected, Islam becomes the most adhered to religion in the world?

Categories: Britain, Caliphate, Christians, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Religion of Peace, Terrorism
Tags: Britain, Caliphate, Christians, Europe, Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, religion of peace, Terrorism

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