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Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War

January 19, 2015

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, January 19, 2015

(Can’t win, or refuses to win? — DM)

Take another look at the video filmed under the Charlie Hebdo’s building, the black car of the terrorists who had no fear of death and are advancing by shooting, while the white car of the policemen is forced to retreat.

We are capitulating.

The West cannot win this war. Take the last French mass rally with dozens of heads of states from around the world: it was a silent march, a mute show where nobody took the podium. As if these people didn’t know what to say. As if these Western leaders didn’t really believe in what they were doing in Paris.

A few days ago, Martin Wolf in the British daily Financial Times gave voice to the deep estrangement of Europe’s élite. He suggested using massive doses of multicultural recognition of equality between different cultures in order to combat Islamism. Mr. Wolf is implicitly saying that we must surrender, that we cannot win, that we have to contain terror and finally find a way to coexist with it.

The French horror doesn’t lie in the killings per se. A few hours later, in Nigeria, Boko Haram destroyed many villages and burned hundreds of people to death. Europe’s horror lies in the fact that the terrorists came from the heart of the continent. The Chouaci’s brothers, the British bombers and Theo Van Gogh’s killer didn’t came from Raqqa, in Syria, or Al Qaeda in Yemen. No, they were born and raised in European democracies.

Europe gave everything to these terrorists: schools, education, entartainment, sexual pleasures, salaries and freedom. The French terrorists rejected the French values of liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British suicide bombers rejected British multiculturalism, while Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri, who slaughtered the film maker in Amsterdam, rejected the Dutch mute values of moral indifference.

A few days ago, I was talking with Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the cartoons in 2006 and now lives protected by the police. He told me the shocking truth nobody wants to hear:

“I am pretty pessimistic about the future of free speech, though I am delighted that so many people came out to support Charlie Hebdo”, Rose told me. “I knew several of the cartoonists who were killed, and I was a witness in a criminal case against CH in 2007. My fear is that this support will not translate into real decisions and changed behavior when we get back to our day-to-day life. We have seen that before. Madrid 2004, Theo van Gogh 2004, London 2005, Kurt Westergaard 2008 and 2010 (one planned attack and another real attack in which he was nearly killed). Every time lots of support and solidarity with the victims, but very little has changed in reality, quite to the contrary, apart from CH no European newspapers have dared to publish Mohammed cartoons since 2008”.

Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were brave people, defiant, but if they are the Western heroes, we have already lost. “Charb” and the other cartoonists didn’t believe in anything.

A few years ago, at my newspaper in Italy. I suggested we publish a letter that Mohammed Bouyeri released from his Dutch prison. Bouyeri says he does not feel remorse for what he did. The tone of the letter is marked by a kind of puerile candor. Bouyeri never mentions Van Gogh, but he makes it clear that he has fulfilled a religious duty by killing him.

The West cannot win this war. The price it would have to pay is the loss of European values: reducing the civil rights of many people, deporting them, declaring a war of values, sending boots on the ground in the Middle East, imposing Western civilization on them. Europe will never do that. Europe itself doesn’t believe in these values anymore. This is also one of the reason why Europe hates Israeli Jews who daily confront evil and fight it, so deeply.

The terrorists of Charlie Hebdo talk a religious language and use terms like honor, faith, prophet and loyalty, while the West replies to them with words such as freedom, democracy, rights, respect and tolerance. They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

It is a sad joke. The truth is that people in the West are relieved that they don’t have to fight, that we are surrendering, that life goes on as usual. Hurray, we are capitulating!

Categories: Diversity, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Sharia law
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Hamas says EU appeal to keep it on terror list ‘immoral’

January 19, 2015

Hamas says EU appeal to keep it on terror list ‘immoral’, Yahoo News, January 19, 2015

Foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states decided at a Monday meeting to appeal the decision taken by the General Court of the European Union on December 17, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

The EU ministers were meeting in Brussels to discuss how to boost cooperation in the face of a growing Islamist militant threat following deadly Paris attacks and anti-terror raids in Belgium.

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Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas slammed as “immoral” Monday an EU appeal to keep it on the bloc’s terror blacklist, a month after a European court ordered its removal.

“The European Union’s insistence on keeping Hamas on the list of terrorist organisations is an immoral step, and reflects the EU’s total bias in favour of the Israeli occupation,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

“It provides it (Israel) with the cover for its crimes against the Palestinian people,” he added.

Foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states decided at a Monday meeting to appeal the decision taken by the General Court of the European Union on December 17, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

The ruling by the EU’s second highest court had said that the blacklisting of Hamas in 2001 was based not on sound legal judgements but on conclusions derived from the media and the Internet.

Hamas, which has dominated the Gaza Strip since 2007, had appealed against its inclusion on the blacklist on several grounds.

Israel’s closest ally the United States has urged the EU to keep up its sanctions on Hamas, saying the US position had “not changed” and Hamas is still a “designated foreign terrorist organisation.”

Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel during a 50-day war last summer in which the Jewish state pounded Gaza with thousands of its own strikes.

The war killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 on the Israel side, mostly soldiers.

The EU ministers were meeting in Brussels to discuss how to boost cooperation in the face of a growing Islamist militant threat following deadly Paris attacks and anti-terror raids in Belgium.

Categories: European Union, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Jihad
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Israeli Strike in Syria Killed Iranian Commander

January 19, 2015

More significant than the elimination of Jihadi Mughniyeh is the death of six Iranian soldiers, including one commander.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu

Published: January 19th, 2015

via The Jewish Press » » Israeli Strike in Syria Killed Iranian Commander.

 

Iranian Gen. Allahdadi, among six Iranian killed in IDF aerial strike on Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian Gen. Allahdadi, among six Iranian killed in IDF aerial strike on Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards.

 

Hezbollah is threatening to take deadly revenge on Israel for Sunday’s strike on terrorists in Syria, but more significant is that Iran has admitted that one of its commanders and six soldiers were killed in addition to Hezbollah’s casualties.

Lebanese sources identified the Iranian field commander as Abu Ali Tabtabai.

The IDF is on high alert for a Hezbollah attack and communities on the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee are on a virtual war-footing.

Unlike previous attacks in Syria on missiles and other weapons destined for Hezbollah, Sunday’s raid struck Hezbollah terrorists on the ground, hitting three vehicles traveling in the Golan Heights.

As usual, Hezbollah responded with threats, especially since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week warned that he will order an attack on Israel at some time or another.

Hezbollah has denied that its fighters are on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, but the aerial bombing on Sunday erased that lie. It said one of the dead was a leading commander, Mohammed Amed Issa, and it admitted that an Iranian also was killed.

The established  presence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Israel’s border will make it even harder for President Barack Obama to take a dovish position on the Iranian nuclear threat without Congress, as well as Israel, doing everything possible to stop an appeasement policy. J. E. Dyer wrote in The Jewish Press here on Sunday:

Syria is now uniquely important to Iran’s nuclear aspirations because of the internal turmoil.  There is no meaningful mechanism for enforcing “national” Syrian accountability to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.  This is an ideal situation for Iran, and is only enhanced by the fact that the Syrian nuclear program has been on the alternate path to a plutonium bomb, as opposed to Iran’s well-advanced path to a uranium bomb.

A nuclear weapon aimed at Israel is Hezbollah and Iran’s ultimate revenge.

Meanwhile, no one is discounting Hezbollah threats, but it will not have an easy time to attack Israel, especially now that it is clear that Iran is operating across the Golan Heights border.

Hezbollah has enough rockets to cripple Israel, but the price of an attack could be suicidal for the terrorist army as well as Lebanon.

It will be a lot easier and less risky if Hezbollah takes revenge by attacking Jews outside Israel.

It remains to be seen if the death of Alberto Nisman, the state prosecutor in the Hezbollah-directed bombing of the Argentine Jewish Center bombing, was a suicide, as originally suggested, or was murder.

Was it a coincidence that he was shot dead hours after Israel killed six Hezbollah commanders?

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War unlikely, but some Hezbollah response certain, experts say after strike

January 19, 2015

War unlikely, but some Hezbollah response certain, experts say after strike

Lebanese group will need to retaliate, but launching a large scale attack on Israel too risky at this point, some say

By Mitch Ginsburg January 19, 2015, 12:01 am

via War unlikely, but some Hezbollah response certain, experts say after strike | The Times of Israel.

n February 16, 1992 an Israeli Apache helicopter tracked the car of Hezbollah leader Abbas Moussawi and released a missile, killing him, his wife, his son, and four other people. It was reportedly Israel’s first assassination by helicopter.

The operation was not fully planned. It had begun as intelligence work and had morphed, hastily, into a targeted killing.

It is still unclear whether this is what happened in the town of Mazrat Amal near Quneitra Sunday, when an Israeli helicopter was said to have attacked a convoy of senior Iranian and Hezbollah leaders, killing the son of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s slain commander of military operations; Mohammed Issa, a Hezbollah commander responsible for the organization’s operations in Syria and Iraq; and Ali Reza al-Tabatabai, an Iranian adviser to Hezbollah, among others, according to reports.

“I don’t think this was a targeted killing,” said Prof. Shlomo Shpiro, the head of the political studies department at Bar-Ilan University and a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Instead, he said, it appeared to be a preventative move, meant to thwart a developing attack. “The Golan Heights is flammable enough without this sort of thing,” he said.


An illustrative photo of an Israel Air Force Apache helicopter, taken on December 25, 2014 at Hatzerim Air Base in Israel (photo credit: AP Photo/ Tsafrir Abayov)

He suggested that the senior Hezbollah commanders may have been on an officer’s patrol — a pre-operation reconnaissance — and said the situation was akin to the Syrian fighter jet that crossed into Israeli air space, a threat too near and too grave to ignore.

Indeed, a “Western security source” quoted widely in Israeli media after the attack said Hezbollah commander Jihad Mughniyeh had been planning attacks on the Golan and even “had a few in the chamber.”

Much of the initial focus of the attack surrounded Mughniyeh, the son of former top commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was reportedly killed in an Israeli operation in 2008. Jihad Mughniyeh was close to Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and had reportedly been given command of Hezbollah forces on the Syrian Golan Heights last year.

An Arab affairs commentator on Channel 10 news called him “a computer kid,” raised in the best schools, who had no real command capacity.

Yoram Schweitzer, head of the INSS think tank’s program on terrorism and low intensity conflict and a former head of the army’s counter international terror section, said he was “operationally involved” in Hezbollah’s action on the Syrian border.


Jihad Mughniyeh sits during a memorial service for his father Imad in his hometown of Tair Debba, south Lebanon on Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008. (photo credit: AP/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

Later, though, it became clear that among the nine killed, perhaps the largest Hezbollah death toll since 2006 at the hands of Israel, were Tabatabai and Muhammad Issa, commanders with far more experience.

Shpiro said there was “no doubt” that Hezbollah would respond. He doubted, though, that the response would come in the form of a missile barrage on central Israel, which would mean war, or a deadly attack against innocent Jews abroad.

In 1992, after the Mussawi assassination, Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29 people; two years later, the organization struck again, killing 85 more people at the Jewish AMIA building in Buenos Aires.

“I did not have sufficient awareness to the degree of the possible response in Argentina, a matter that would have led, it stands to reason, to a second thought about the decision to undertake the mission,” the head of military intelligence at the time, Maj. Gen. (ret) Uri Saguy, told Yedioth Ahronoth in 2009.


Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah speaking in southern Beirut on November 3, 2014 (photo credit: AP Photo/ Hussein Malla)

Shpiro, a longtime Hezbollah scholar, said Hezbollah had recently condemned the Paris attack against the journalists of Charlie Hebdo; he doubted a Buenos Aires-like response was in the cards.

“The war is in the media,” he said, submitting that the organization would likely be looking for retaliation away from Europe, “in our region,” that would outdo the Islamic State and have “the legitimacy of the muqawama,” or resistance.

Schweitzer, too, said that he did not expect a brazen response. A strong retaliation from within Lebanon is “the most dangerous for the organization,” he said, because it could lead to a new front, which Hezbollah is not interested in at this point.

After several failed attempts to avenge the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, who was reportedly killed by Israel in Damascus in 2008, and now the killing of his son, Hezbollah has an array of potential responses, and “even if the organization does respond immediately,” Schweitzer said, “they keep careful count of these sort of things.”

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800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad

January 18, 2015

800,000-strong Shiite militia calls for formal recognition by Baghdad, RUDAW, January 18, 2015

(RUDAW is a Kurdish media network. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. From the inception of Hezbollah to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been one of Hezbollah’s primary goals. [Footnotes omitted.] — DM)

97644Image1Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad after ISIS stormed across Iraq in June and captured a third of the country. AFP photo.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The leader of Iraq’s Hezbollah met with Shiite clerical authorities in Najaf Sunday to discuss formal recognition of hundreds of thousands of militiamen by the government and putting them on official payroll, a Hezbollah statement said.

Sheikh Abbas al-Mahmadawi, leader of the Shiite militia group Hezbollah, said that he met with Shiite clerics in Najaf, including Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed al-Hakim, to seek recognition “for the success of the militia groups in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).”

Al-Mahmadawi added that the Shiite volunteer militia should be recognized by the authorities and compensated financially “because many of them do not have any salaries and many have been wounded and handicapped.”

According to al-Mahmadawi, there are 800,000 volunteer Shiite fighters in Iraq who joined the fight against ISIS last June.

But he added that “the numbers have been inflated by some political parties” by more than double.

“We do not have any such numbers on the ground which is put down as 2 million volunteers,” he said in a statement following his visit to Najaf.

Al-Mahmadawi hoped that Baghdad would put the Shiite militia on its payroll now that the country is about to pass this year’s budget.

Thousands of Shiite men responded to a call for jihad against ISIS by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani last year, when the extremist Sunni group captured Mosul and made a lightening advance towards Baghdad and important Shiite shrines.

A great number of Shiite militiamen are based in the towns of Jalawla and Saadiya, north of Diyala, which they jointly liberated from ISIS in November.

Local residents, mainly the Kurdish population, have remained apprehensive about returning to their homes for fear of the armed militia groups, which operate outside government control and have been accused by Sunnis of acting as vigilantes.

On Saturday, Iraq’s parliament speaker Salim al-Jibouri met with Kurdish leaders in Sulaimani on forming a joint committee to facilitate the return of displaced peoples to Jalawla and Saadiya.

Meanwhile, around 200 tribal and political figures in Diyala met on Saturday to discuss normalizing the situation in the province after some of the fiercest battles between ISIS and a joint force of Peshmerga and Shiite militia groups.

Categories: Baghdad, Coalition, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Kurds
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No Room for Parody

January 18, 2015

No Room for Parody, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, January 18, 2015

I was sound asleep when the phone rang and so I cannot be absolutely sure the conversation was not a dream, but it seemed real enough.

“Hello,” the caller began. “My name is Mr. Mensch, I am president of the Parodists of the World, professional comedy writers, and we want to engage you in a suit against the administration for tortious interference with our livelihood.”

“What exactly are you alleging, I mean specifics?” I responded.

He then launched into a litany of grievances against the administration which the Parodists claimed had made it impossible for them to continue making a living.

“First, our country sent no one to the important anti-terrorism demonstration in Paris, and then there’s Valerie Jarrett calling the march against the slaughter of innocents in Paris a ‘Parade’, as if this were some sort of celebration.‘ Certainly We Would Have Loved To Participate In The Parade,” But We “Got The Substance Right”’.” She said and then proceeded to claim that Holder couldn’t attend because he was in a very important terrorism conference at the time, forgetting that we knew everyone else at the conference made it to the march except Holder. So at the time of the march he was meeting with himself, it seems.”

“Well, that was silly, “I agreed.  “And?” I waited for the next item.

“Then our secretary of state, John Kerry, whose entire life has been fashioned around his self-imagined superior diplomatic skills and international affairs expertise, shows up speaking execrable high school level French, accompanied by  an aging ex-druggie who sings to the grieving French ‘You’ve Got a Friend’”

“I have to agree that was preposterous and really embarrassing. One wag suggested the French ought to respond by having Carly Simon sing, ‘You’re so Vain’ to the President and his Secretary of State. ‘Send in the Clowns’ comes to mind.”

“It’s all of a piece you know. It’s cutting substantially into our employment prospects. Let me read this to you,” Mensch said:

“ ‘A scandal has erupted in the American Consulate in Jerusalem, as three Israeli security guards have quit following a plan to hire 35 armed Palestinian guards from East Jerusalem. The Palestinians have been undergoing weapons training in Jericho in recent days. The decision to hire and arm the Palestinian security personnel was made by the consulate’s chief security officer, Dan Cronin. The plan is to employ them mostly as escorts to American diplomats’ convoys in the West Bank. Their operating base will be at the consulate in the city’s west, as well as six other facilities around the city belonging to the consulate, of which five are in western Jerusalem.

The plan is a breach of a 2011 agreement between the consulate and the Israeli government, which determined that only former IDF combat soldiers hired by the consulate would be allowed to carry weapons. That year, Israel gave the consulate approval to keep about 100 guns for its security guards, but only if they’re American diplomats or Israelis who served in the army. While the consulate employs scores of guards from East Jerusalem, they have not been armed up until now.’”

“Sounds like a bad joke to me,” I replied. “With the world’s attention focused on Moslem extremists. New jihadi groups showing up all through Europe, and Palestinians continuing to attack our ally Israel  and we train and arm Palestinian guards to protect us in Jerusalem in violation of  our agreement with Israel?”

“Even the liberal foreign policy pundit Leslie Gelb is concerned that the administration is absolutely clueless,” sputtered Mensch.

“And he keeps releasing men from Gitmo who then return to fight against us. He released Mullah Abdul Rauf and immediately on his return he’s recruiting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

By this time Mensch was on a roll.

“The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest is tripping over his own tongue trying not to say the magic words ’Moslem extremist’. Listen to this circumlocution of his: ‘We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism. And they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’”

“Then there’s the nonsensical negotiations with Iran,” I interjected.

Mensch sputtered, “Thursday Obama announced he would not tighten sanctions on Iran which is violating the sanctions already in place because if we tighten the reins it will only drive them to war. Think about that! If we impose stricter sanctions on them, they’ll go to war, and if we don’t, they’ll go to war with nuclear weapons.”

“That’s nothing to joke about,” I said.

“Precisely! Obama‘s leaving us nothing to parody. We can’t make a living in comedy. He and his administration are themselves the joke. We might as well just send in news clippings to our editors as try to dream up anything wackier than what they’re doing. And, look, it’s not just foreign affairs. Take the Keystone Pipeline — I mean it should be clear to everyone that we are hurting Iran and Russia financially each time we and others increase the supply of gas and oil on the world market and we need jobs badly, so why is he still sitting on this? George Will captured this bit of nuttiness,” he added and I heard the rustle of newspaper as he read this to me.

Actually, there no longer is any reason to think he has ever reasoned about this. He said he would not make up his mind until the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled. It ruled to permit construction, so he promptly vowed to veto authorization of construction.

The more Obama has talked about Keystone, the less economic understanding he has demonstrated. On Nov. 14, he said Keystone is merely about “providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.” By Dec. 19, someone with remarkable patience had explained to him that there is a world market price for oil, so he said, correctly, that Keystone would have a “nominal” impact on oil prices but then went on to disparage job creation by Keystone. He said it would create “a couple thousand” jobs (the State Department study says approximately 42,100 “direct, indirect, and induced”) and said, unintelligibly, “Those are temporary jobs until the construction actually happens.” Well.

“I understand your distress,” I sympathized, “but to make your case you have to prove that Obama intended to harm your business, and as Will notes it’s just that he isn’t that smart.”

“C’mon,” the parodist, countered, “Almost every professor in America supported and voted for him. Are you calling them all stupid?”

 

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Humor, Insanity, Iran scam, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Jihad, Kerry, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama administration, Sharia law, Terrorism
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Don’t ignore the writing on the wall

January 16, 2015

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, January 16, 2015

(It’s much easier and much less stressful to look forward to hope and change. Briefly. –DM)

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

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In 539 B.C.E., Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall — as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel — and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Daniel 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which is gathering momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies — due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking — have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human losses. When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Daniels.

For example, during the 1930s, the writing was on the wall in glaring letters: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament, reparations and territorial concessions; German military spending skyrocketed, military conscription was reintroduced and the Rhineland was remilitarized; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and annexed Austria. Still, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, declaring “peace for our time.” He refused to recognize Hitler’s strategic, global, supremacist goal, assuming that Hitler’s appetite could be satisfied with a tactical, limited gain in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, signing a “peace accord” that triggered the “war of all wars.”

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

During 1977-79, U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not read the writing on the wall, supporting the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s battle against the Shah of Iran, who was, in fact, the U.S.’s policeman in the Persian Gulf. Overwhelmed by denial and wishful thinking, and heavily influenced by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Carter ignored the litany of sermons delivered by Khomeini, which exposed the Iranian cleric as an enemy of Western civilization and civil liberties. He despised the U.S. and aligned himself with the enemies of the U.S., while protected by a Palestinian PLO praetorian guard. Thus, the U.S. betrayal of the Shah eliminated a most effective and loyal strategic partner of the U.S., gave rise to the most lethal, conventional and nonconventional threat to vital U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond and generated a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism.

In 1990, on the eve of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. stated that an Iraq-Kuwait military clash would be an intra-Arab, rather than a U.S., concern. The Bush/Baker administration assumed that “the enemy of my enemy [Iran] is my friend [Iraq],” supplying Saddam with dual-use sensitive systems, providing him with $5 billion loan guarantees and concluding a U.S.-Iraq intelligence sharing agreement. The 1990 policy of denial triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the U.S. taxpayer, 4,500 U.S. military fatalities, a surge of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

In 2011, Western democracies denied the eruption of an Arab tsunami, welcoming the violence on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring that would transition the Arabs toward democracy. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood (while giving a cold shoulder to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi), refusing to recognize its well-documented intra-Arab terrorism, the offshoot of its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is the constitution; the prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

The 2015 failure to carefully read the Iranian writing on the wall could produce a nuclear conflict that would cost the U.S. taxpayer trillions of dollars, incur an unprecedented level of fatalities, spark a tidal wave of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe, including in the U.S., decimate the pro-U.S. Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, create an unprecedented disruption of the supply of Persian Gulf oil, further radicalization of the anti-U.S. regime in Venezuela with ripple effects in Latin America, including Mexico, and additional tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

At stake is not only freedom of expression and the safety of European Jewry, but the survival of Western democracies.

Solidarity demonstrations and eloquent speeches will not spare Western democracies the wrath of Islamic terrorism and domination, unless accompanied by clarity, realism and the willingness to take military, legislative and political action to thwart the writing on the walls of the mosques: submission of humanity to the Prophet Muhammad; submission of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish kuffar (“infidel”) to Muslims and to Shariah laws; jihad — holy war on behalf of Islam — is the duty of Muslims; waqf — Muslim land — is ordained by Allah; Dar al-Islam (the residence of Islam) must take over Dar al-Harb (the residence of war); and Islam-sanctioned taqiyya (dissimulation, deception and concealment of inconvenient data) aimed at shielding Islam and “believers” from “disbelievers.”

Categories: Antisemitism, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Authority, Peace process, Terrorism
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Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America

January 16, 2015

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America, Commentary Magazine, , January 16, 2015

[T]he French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

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One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. While the real problem is the administration’s lack of comfort in standing up for the rights of cartoonists to offend Islamists as evidenced by the decision to stay away from the rally, it also tells us something significant about the inadequate man who is serving as the nation’s chief diplomat.

That Kerry would think schlepping an aging rock icon from his youth to Paris to tell the French that “all you’ve got to do is just ca-aall” if they need us is the sort of thing that makes one longs for the diplomacy of an earlier era when envoys wore uniforms, swords, and feathered hats and stuck to rigid formality.

That’s not just because such a gesture is jejune as well as puerile, though it is both of those things as well as a clear reflection of Kerry’s lack of seriousness as a public official. It’s that the French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

This is an administration that has spent six years offending and snubbing allies all the while seeking in vain to appease old foes and rivals such as Russia and Iran. Though U.S. and French policies often intersect, Paris and the rest of Europe have come to understand that Obama is as uninterested in their point of view or their needs as he is of those of congressional Republicans. In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

As is well known, French opinion about the United States is decidedly mixed with resentment of American wealth and culture often overwhelming the basic commonality of interests shared by two great democracies. A James Taylor concert won’t make things much worse but neither will it improve the situation. What it will do is to remind Europe and those enemies once again that this is an administration that neither understands symbolism or how to reaffirm an alliance.

It is no small irony that an administration that came into office determined to work with the international community, and our allies rather than to be Bush-like unilateral cowboys, is now reduced to this sort of nonsense. What the French or any ally wants is not a touchy-feely Oldies song but a sense that the U.S. believes it is still part of the war against international terror. To the contrary, Obama’s instincts are such that allies have come to expect his contempt or disinterest in their problems.

Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Europe, France, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Kerry, Obama, Terrorism
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Open Letter to the French President

January 14, 2015

Open Letter to the French President

by A Palestinian Journalist in Ramallah

January 14, 2015 at 5:00 am

via Open Letter to the French President.

 

Your Excellency, many Palestinians nearly fell off their chairs upon seeing their president march at the front row of a rally in your capital to protest against terrorism and assaults on freedom of the media.

Undoubtedly, you are unaware of the fact that President Abbas is personally responsible for punishing Palestinian journalists who dare to criticize him or express their views in public. Every day we see that the Western media, including French newspapers and magazines, does not care about such violations unless they are committed by Israel.

Your Excellency, you are completely mistaken if you believe that Abbas and his Palestinian Authority are tolerant toward satire or any form of criticism. While he was attending the rally, a human rights group published a report accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank.

President Abbas has managed once again to deceive you and the rest of the international community. He now has managed to create the false impression that he cares about freedom of speech and independent journalism

Palestinians like me will now pay a heaver price because Abbas has been emboldened and will now step up his assaults. France will be helping to establish another corrupt and repressive Arab dictatorship — one that glorifies and rewards terrorists no different from those who carried out the Paris attacks.

I hope now your Excellency understands why I am too scared to reveal my identity.

His Excellency, François Hollande

Dear Mr. President,

First, I wish to express my deep condolences over the killing of innocent citizens in the recent terror attacks in Paris.

Second, I want to apologize to Your Excellency for not revealing my true identity. After you read my letter, you will realize why people like me are afraid to reveal their real identity.

I decided to write to you this letter after hearing my president, Mahmoud Abbas, declare that you had invited him to attend the anti-terror rally in Paris earlier this week.

Like many Palestinians, I see President Abbas’s participation in a rally against terrorism and assaults on freedom of speech as an act of hypocrisy — a condition that is not alien to Palestinian Authority leaders.

In fact, many Palestinians nearly fell off their chairs upon seeing their president march in the front row of a rally in your capital, in protest against terrorism and assaults on freedom of the media.

President Abbas’s participation in the rally is an insult to the victims of the terror attacks. It is also an insult to Western values, including freedom of expression and democracy.

Your Excellency, myself and other journalists living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were the first to be offended by the invitation you extended to President Abbas to attend the anti-terror rally.

Undoubtedly, you are unaware of the fact that Abbas is personally responsible for punishing Palestinian journalists who dare to criticize him or express their views in public. Of course, Your Excellency, we cannot blame you for being unaware of this assault on public freedoms because the mainstream media, including French newspapers and magazines, deliberately turn a blind eye to these practices. Every day we see that the Western media does not care about such violations unless they are committed by Israel.

That is why, Your Excellency, you are probably unaware of the cases of several Palestinian journalists who have been arrested and intimidated by President Abbas’s security forces over the past few years. Yes, this is the same Abbas who came to Paris to express his condolences over the brutal killing of the Charlie Hebdo journalists.

The most recent example of Abbas’s crackdown on Palestinian journalists occurred shortly before Your Excellency phoned President Abbas to invite him to Paris. The case involves my female colleague, Majdolin Hassouneh, who was detained for “extending her tongue,” or insulting, President Abbas.

Your Excellency, please allow me to tell you that you are completely mistaken if you ever thought that President Abbas and his Palestinian Authority are tolerant toward satire or any form of criticism. And of course, you haven’t heard of the Palestinian Authority’s decision to cancel the only popular satirical show on Palestine TV, Watan ala Watar (Country on a String).

The show was forced off the air in 2011 because President Abbas believed it had “crossed a line” by mocking his top officials in Ramallah. This is the same Abbas who came to Paris to protest the massacre at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

And, Your Excellency, if you want further evidence of President Abbas’s clampdown on political satire, you can ask Palestinian comedians Abdel Rahman Daher and Mahmoud Rizek. The two men are currently in Jordan because they are afraid to return to the West Bank. No, Your Excellency, they are not afraid to return home because of Israel. They are afraid of being arrested by President Abbas’s security forces, which accuse the two men of insulting their leader.

President Abbas, Your Excellency, should be the last person to walk in a march honoring journalists who were massacred because of their satirical work. His participation in the Paris rally is not only in an insult to the memory of the slain journalists, but to all those who believe in freedom of expression and media.

I also want to bring to the attention of Your Excellency that while President Mahmoud Abbas was attending the rally in Paris, a human rights group published a report accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank. According to the report, 24 students have been arrested in recent weeks by Abbas’s security forces for “political reasons.”

Again, I’m sure Your Excellency did not hear about the crackdown on university campuses because Western media outlets and foreign journalists based here do not report about such stories. You read and hear about such incidents only when the Israeli army or police are involved.

I do not want to take much of your time, Your Excellency, by telling you about President Abbas’s double standards and hypocrisy on the subject of terrorism. You can learn a lot about this by going on the Internet and seeing, with your own eyes, how our president often condones and glorifies terrorism and terrorists.

You will even discover that our president, who will soon celebrate his 80th birthday, is prepared to stay awake all night to welcome Palestinians released from Israeli prison for murdering Jews and committing terror attacks no less serious than the ones your country experienced last week.

You will also discover, Your Excellency, that our president also rewards terrorists by granting them monthly salaries and other privileges.

What would be your reaction, Your Excellency, if someone decided to reward financially the families of the terrorists who massacred the innocent civilians in Paris?

Your Excellency, perhaps it is now too late to talk about the decision to invite President Abbas to the anti-terror rally. The damage has already been done, as far as I and many Palestinians are concerned. The way we see it is as follows: President Abbas has once again managed to deceive you and the rest of the international community by placing himself on the side of the good guys in their fight against terrorism and extremism. Even worse, President Abbas has managed to create the false impression that he cares about freedom of speech and independent journalism.

Undoubtedly, now Palestinians like me will now pay a heavier price because President Abbas has been emboldened by his participation in the Paris rally. President Abbas will now step up his assaults on public freedoms because he knows that the international community will only see photos of him marching together with Your Excellency and other world leaders in defense of freedom of expression.

By extending the invitation to President Abbas, you have caused damage to Palestinians like me who have been hoping that someone — maybe even a leader like you — would finally expose the dictatorship of the Palestinian Authority for what it is. President Abbas’s participation in the Paris rally is a severe blow to people like me who are genuinely opposed to terrorism and suppression of free speech.

Your Excellency, now that the damage has already been done, all that is left for people like me is to beg you to take all what I have said into account in your future dealings with President Abbas. Please do not hesitate to raise these issues with President Abbas the next time he requests your support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Otherwise, France will be helping to establish another corrupt and repressive Arab dictatorship — one that glorifies and rewards terrorists no different from those who carried out the Paris attacks.

Finally, Your Excellency, I hope that by now you understand the reason why I am too scared to reveal my identity.

Sincerely,

A Palestinian Journalist with No Name or Voice

 

World leaders link arms at the Paris anti-terror rally on January 11, 2014. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stands at the far right of the front row. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

 


ZUM KOTZEN

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Nasrallah: Hezbollah has Huge Weapons Arsenal

January 14, 2015

Nasrallah: Hezbollah has Huge Weapons Arsenal Against Israel

Hezbollah leader boasts that group has ‘whatever weapon comes to mind’ amid rumors of an inevitable war in the north.

By Tova Dvorin

First Publish: 1/14/2015, 12:22 PM

via Nasrallah: Hezbollah has Huge Weapons Arsenal – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva.

 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in rare public appearance

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in rare public appearance
Reuters

Hezbollah has “every type of weapon” in its arsenal, the terror group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah stated Tuesday.

“The resistance in Lebanon has everything the enemy can imagine and not imagine,” he said, in a late-night interview to Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen.

“We have weapons of all types; whatever [weapons] comes to mind,” he added.

According to estimations, Hezbollah already has a rocket arsenal ten times as powerful as that of Hamas. The IDF has assessed that like Hamas, Hezbollah likely is digging terror tunnels into Israel so as to attack, but Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday there is no evidence of such tunnels at the moment.

Aside from gaining weapons from Iran, Hezbollah also is estimated to possibly benefit in a $3 billion arms deal the Lebanese army recently sealed with France. Reports have already revealed how weapons and intelligence make their way from the army to Hezbollah, which has a strong presence within the army.

Nasrallah’s remarks surface amid escalating tensions between Israel and Lebanon.

Last month, veteran military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki stated to Arutz Sheva that a future war with the group is “inevitable.”

IDF sources have reported to Arutz Sheva that the army is covertly conducting an investigation of reports that Hezbollah has been building a complex network of terror tunnels.

Security officials stated to Kol Israel Radio in October that the IDF is, indeed, losing control along Israel’s northern borders – and that any attacks by Hezbollah would be disastrous.

Alarm has also been raised after the IDF and Defense Ministry cut guard duty near northern border communities – just one year after a similar move along the Gaza Belt saw an escalation in terror and, eventually, war.

Northern residents have responded to the apparent apathy to the situation by arming themselves, and gun ownership along the Lebanese and Syrian border communities has risen as high as 60% in recent weeks.

Hezbollah itself declared that it was “ready to fight Israel” in October.

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