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Death by Lashing: Saudi Arabia

June 11, 2015

Death by Lashing: Saudi Arabia, The Gatestone Institute, Salim Mansur, June 11, 2015

Nothing could uplift the universal image of Saudi Arabia and King Salman more than if today he issued a pardon. World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has so far been silent on the issue, should immediately speak out — as should the media and human rights groups.
There was no insult of Islam, of the prophet, or of the Quran, in what Badawi wrote; and, truth be told, God, Islam and the prophet are all beyond insults, and beyond the reach of profanity that occasionally spills forth from the bigoted or tortured minds of individuals.
The treatment of Raif Badawi stands out, not merely for its cruelty, but how it has come to symbolize the grotesquely repulsive nature of the Saudi kingdom and what it represents behind the mask of religious austerity.

Tomorrow, Friday, the virtual death sentence by 1000 lashes, delivered “very harshly” according to the flogging order, fifty at a time, might continue for Raif Badawi, a 31-year-old Saudi blogger and father of three, for allegedly “insulting Islam.”

The flogging sentence, plus ten years in prison, was upheld last week by Saudi Arabia’s supreme court, and can now only be overturned by a pardon from King Salman.

Although Badawi, who is ill and frail, would most certainly perish, in Saudi justice there is little concern for sentences to be proportionate to the crimes for which the accused are found guilty, or for adequate legal representation. Badawi’s lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khair, was also jailed, effectively for the crime of representing him.

Badawi was accused of insulting Islam in his blog posts. In a country where thinking is forbidden, Badawi had expressed forbidden thoughts by questioning the nature of his society and going public with them.

Badawi, for instance, had written, “Muslims in Saudi Arabia not only disrespect the beliefs of others, but also charge them with infidelity — to the extent that they consider anyone who is not Muslim an infidel. They also, within their own narrow definitions, consider non-Hanbali [the Saudi school of Islam] Muslims as apostates. How can we be such people and build… normal relations with six billion humans, four and a half billion of whom do not believe in Islam?”

1106

Raif Badawi and his children, before his 2012 arrest.

There was naivety in putting such thoughts in writing, as Badawi did, and drawing the attention of Saudi thought police. In another post, Badawi suggested, “Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone… Secularism is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.”

It appears Badawi wrote in the first blush of what seemed to have been a breath of fresh air, characterized as the “Arab Spring,” that wafted across the politically bleak landscape of the Arab world in early 2011. There had come news of a Tunisian vendor who had put lit himself on fire protesting police brutality, and had died as a result; his death sparked a movement against Arab despots.

The anguish of the Tunisian vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, was genuine. His tragic death brought people into the streets, and the Tunisian strongman, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, eventually fled into exile in January 2011. The Tunisian protest stirred Egyptians to rise against their strongman, President Hosni Mubarak, and succeed in toppling him in February 2011.

The “Arab Spring,” for those brief few weeks in early 2011, held forth the promise of change for better across the Arab world. And young men like Raif Badawi could be forgiven for imagining that they, too, in Saudi Arabia, could no longer be denied freedom, democracy, and secularism — the accepted norms in the West.

But the hard realities of the Arab world turned the promise of the “Arab Spring” into the nightmare of religious terror and counter-terror. Saudi Arabia is the incubator and citadel of Islamic fascism, otherwise known as Wahhabism. And here in the land of the two holy cities of Islam — Mecca and Medina — religion and politics are inseparable, and anyone who trespasses either does so at the risk of losing his head — literally — in the public beheadings that are the hallmark of the Saudi kingdom.

Raif Badawi was arrested, and has been held in prison in Jeddah since June 2012. The arrest of Badawi and Souad al-Shammari came after they together set up the web site called Saudi Liberal Network. It was promptly closed by the authorities when Badawi posted criticism of the Saudi religious police.

The initial sentence for Badawi by the Criminal Court in Jeddah for mischief and subverting public order was for 600 lashes and seven years in prison. He appealed, and the court returned the verdict by raising the sentence to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison. The Saudi supreme court has upheld this sentence.

In the interim Badawi was given 50 lashes in a Jeddah public square in January of this year, while further lashings were suspended on medical grounds. Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, fears the lashings will resume — according to court order the 1000 lashes are to be completed in 20 sessions in front of a mosque — and could be fatal for her husband.

* * *

There is very little the outside world can do to change the nature of the Saudi regime, or for that matter the regime in Iran, which is indistinguishable from the Saudi regime in terms of tyranny and the cruelty to which, in both countries, dissidents are subjected.

After Raif Badawi was arrested, Ensaf Haidar and her children found refuge in Quebec, Canada. Across Quebec there has been heartfelt popular support expressed for Raif Badawi, and condemnation of his punishment. Quebec has officially protested Badawi’s sentence, while demanding his release from Saudi Arabia so that he might join his family where they have settled.

In response to a Quebec National Assembly resolution, passed unanimously in February, condemning Badawi’s lashings in Jeddah in January 2015, the Saudi ambassador to Canada wrote a letter to the Quebec politicians. The same letter was also sent to the Canadian government in Ottawa.

The letter, signed by the Saudi ambassador, Naif Bin Bandir Alsudairy, was obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It states, “The Kingdom does not accept at all any attack on it in the name of human rights especially when its constitution is based on Islamic law, which guarantees the rights of humans and preserves his blood, money, honour and dignity.”

The stand taken by the Quebec government apparently rattled the Saudi kingdom sufficiently to have its ambassador write a letter addressed to members of a provincial legislature.

* * *

It is one of the anomalies of our age that when, by a fluke of nature, large deposits of fossil fuels are discovered in a country, as in Saudi Arabia, it is accorded attention and respect by other countries in excess of anything it has done, or achieved, or by the record of its conduct in human affairs.

Apart from the oil reserves of the kingdom, the House of Saud is indistinguishable from the House of Kim ruling North Korea, and it is as deserving of the same contempt.

Oil has not only made the difference for Saudi Arabia, it has also made the West complicit in the evil that Saudi Arabia does at home and perpetrates abroad: spreading its pre-modern and perverted culture as Islam or, more appropriately, Wahhabism; and funding terror as jihadism.

The treatment of Raif Badawi stands out, not merely for its cruelty, but how it has come to symbolize the grotesquely repulsive nature of the Saudi kingdom and what it represents behind the mask of religious austerity.

Saudi Arabia is possessed with the opposite of the “Midas touch”: wherever its money buys influence, there, the natural goodness in society is stained and corroded by its touch.

The tragedy surrounding Raif Badawi is both the savage treatment meted out to a young man by the Saudi regime for simply expressing his thoughts, and of how innocence, when it goes against the culture of Saudi intolerance, is mocked, abused, and strangled.

Raif Badawi is also the face of why “official” Islam — the one portrayed by Saudi Arabia and the other OIC member states, and to which the West routinely defers – is so terribly retarded. Freedom of thought is anathema to “official” Islam and its defenders, as it once was in the former Soviet Union; it is the defining characteristic of a closed, totalitarian society.

Raif Badawi is a young man, and the thoughts he expressed were the unsullied thoughts of the young that are at once universal in expectations and desires, as they are innocent and unburdened by the hardness of life’s experiences.

There was no insult of Islam, of the prophet, or of the Quran, in what Badawi wrote; and truth be told, God, Islam, and the prophet are all beyond insults, and beyond the reach of profanity that occasionally spills forth from the bigoted or tortured minds of individuals.

“Official” Islam is an insult to Muslims and non-Muslims alike — for “official” Islam is politics devoid of any redeeming quality found in faith, which nourishes the spiritual yearning of people and uplifts them in a broken world. Through betrayal and hypocrisy, “official” Islam insults God, Islam, and the prophet, every minute of each day, and has become a torment to Muslims.

It is “official” Islam, and Wahhabism in its most perverted expression among Sunni Muslims, that has turned God — Allah in Arabic — repeatedly invoked in the Quran as the “Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful,” into a vengeful and capricious deity.

The Quran states that on the Day of Reckoning the prophet will speak forth, “O my Lord! Lo! mine own folk make this Qur’an of no account” (25:30). In another verse, the Quran instructs the prophet to tell the wandering Arabs of the desert that they have merely submitted, but they have no belief “for the faith hath not yet entered into your hearts” (49:14). And then there is the verse stating categorically, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).[1]

When religion is reduced to politics then it is the logic of politics, hence power and coercion, that takes precedence. In Albert Camus’s striking formulation, “Politics is not religion, or if it is, then it is nothing but the Inquisition.”[2] In Saudi Arabia, religion is a daily dose of inquisition, and the executioner with his sword is both the reality and the symbol of the vengeful deity that bears little resemblance to the merciful and compassionate God of the Quran.

Raif Badawi’s innocence betrayed him. Age and experience would have taught him the hard reality of his culture, veiled by the mask of “official” Islam. This hard reality of Arab culture has been best understood by Arab poets through the years of Arab and Muslim history. Here is one example of a poet’s disgust with the hard reality of his country’s culture and politics. These are lines from a poem of Nizar Qabbani (1923-98), a much-loved Syrian-Arab poet:

When a helmet becomes God in heaven
and can do what it wishes
with a citizen – crush, mash
kill and resurrect
whatever it wills,
then the state is a whorehouse,
history is a rag,
and thought is lower than boots.

When a breath of air
comes by decree
of the sultan,
when every grain of wheat we eat,
every drop of water we drink
comes only by decree
of the sultan,
when an entire nation turns into
a herd of cattle fed in the sultan’s
shed, embryos will suffocate
in the womb, women will miscarry
and the sun will drop
a black noose over our square.[3]

The Sultan’s power is vainglorious, whimsical, easily insulted, and secured by perpetrating fear, and the realm he rules by decree is by necessity a slaughterhouse.

If Raif Badawi survives the thousand lashes in the slaughterhouse that is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it will be a testimony of how an individual’s courage, born of innocence, might well defy the Sultan’s decree.

Nothing could uplift the universal image of Saudi Arabia or King Salman more than if today he issued a pardon.

World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has so far been silent on the issue, should immediately speak out — as should the media and human rights groups.

________________________

[1] Verses quoted from the Quran are from The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, translated by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (New York: Alfred A. Knopf and Everyman’s Library, 1930, 1992).

[2] A. Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1956), p. 302.

[3] Nizar Qabbani, “From The Actors” in Salma Khadra Jayyusi (editor), Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 378-379.

Categories: Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Iran, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Oil, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Sharia law
Tags: Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Iran, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Oil, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Sharia law

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Israel’s Druze dilemma: To arm imperiled Syrian Druze community or open door to a flood of refugees

June 11, 2015

Israel’s Druze dilemma: To arm imperiled Syrian Druze community or open door to a flood of refugees, DEBKAfile, June 11, 2015

Druze_Militia

Syrian Druze militiaman

Israel has a unique, historic commitment to its Druze citizens and so the dangers besetting more than half a million of their Syrian brethren on Jabal Druze, 88 km from its border, and 38 km from Jordan, confronts the Netanyahu government with a grave dilemma. Israeli Druze leaders are pressing the government to provide Jabal Druze towns and villages with weapons for their defense against the enemies closing in on them: The Syrian-Hizballah army; the Syrian opposition coalition including the Nusra Front – now in control of large parts of southern Syria; and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – ISIS, which has sent a small force up to the eastern approaches to the mountain.

At a reception for the visiting Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey Wednesday, June 10, President Reuven Rivlin said: What is going on just now is intimidation and threat to the very existence of half a million Druze on the Druze Mount, which is very close to the Israeli border.”

Officials in the Pentagon denied that this issue had come up in Gen. Dempsey’s talks during his farewell visit to Israel this week, although Syria had been discussed. One official remarked: “It’s the Druze who are asking everyone to arm them. The Druze in Israel have been raising it with Israel with the US, with Jordan – everyone.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that this dilemma is the hardest Israel has faced since the Syrian conflict began more than four years ago. Sending arms to the Syrian Druze would mean abandoning the consistent policy of abstaining from direct involvement in that war. It would moreover entail setting up new machinery for establishing, training and arming a Druze army of 20,000 to 30,000 fighting men.

But by withholding support, Israel would make itself responsible for whatever befalls the beleaguered Syrian Druze community, including possibly mass executions by Islamic extremists for their unique faith.

Also taken into account is the proposal Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah put before the Druzes this week: to build them an army and provide it with weapons, against a pledge never to raise arms against Syrian President Bashar Assad or his troops.

No other strings were tied to the offer. The Druze army would not be given any tasks other than to defend Jabal Druze and its hundreds of small towns and villages.

Druze acceptance of Tehran’s proposition would have the effect of strengthening Iran’s hold on Damascus and weakening the Syrian opposition forces fighting in the south, with no guarantees about where this equation would end up in terms of new threats to Israeli security.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkott, are being intensely lobbied by the leaders of Israel’s Druze community, some of them high-ranking officers in IDF and Border Police units, to come to the aid of their distressed Syrian brethren. They hold up their valuable contribution to the Jewish state’s national security as deserving of Israel’s reciprocation to step up when their community is in peril.

No one is saying this, but the awareness is there that the many Druzes serving in Israeli combat units may decide to simply cross the Golan border and take up arms in defense of Jabal Druze.

The Syria community’s plight is complicated by the sharp internal division among its leaders: One group urges taking up the Iranian offer; a second would rather join forces with the Syrian rebels; and a third, wants to stick to their long-held neutrality in the Syrian arena.

The Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, once accepted as such by the entire community, urges Jabal Druze inhabitants to throw in their lot with the rebel groups fighting to topple Assad.

Some Druze sources claim that Israel has promised admission to any fleeing Druze reaching the Golan border fence, an assurance also offered by Jordan. This is not confirmed by any official in either government.

However, it is hard to see how Israel can bar its border if thousands of Druze refugees were to stand at the fence and demand shelter – any more than Jordan could. This may still happen – even if Jerusalem and Amman were to decide to supply the Syrian Druzes with weapons.

Categories: Druze militia, Golan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Syria war
Tags: Druze militia, Golan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Syria war

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US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task

June 10, 2015

US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task, Israel Hayom, June 10, 2915

(For Obama, principles are as flexible as words.

Humpty words

— DM)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew | Photo credit: Reuters

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

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

The Obama administration may have to backtrack on its promise that it will suspend only nuclear-related economic sanctions on Iran as part of an emerging nuclear agreement, officials and others involved in the process told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The problem derives from what was once a strong point of the broad U.S. sanctions effort that many credit with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

Administration officials vehemently reject that any backtracking is taking place, but they are lumping sanctions together, differently from the way members of Congress and critics of the negotiations separate them.

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Now the administration is wending its way through that briar patch of interwoven economic sanctions.

The penalties are significant. Sanctioned foreign governments, companies or individuals are generally barred from doing business with U.S. citizens and businesses, or with foreign entities operating in the American financial system. The restrictions are usually accompanied by asset and property freezes as well as visa bans.

Negotiators hope to conclude a final nuclear deal by June 30. According to a framework reached in April, the U.S. will be required to lift sanctions that are related to Iran’s nuclear program but could leave others in place. President Barack Obama can suspend almost all U.S. measures against Iran, though only Congress can revoke them permanently.

“Iran knows that our array of sanctions focused on its efforts to support terrorism and destabilize the region will continue after any nuclear agreement,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told a gathering of American Jews in a weekend speech. U.S. officials will “aggressively target the finances of Iranian-backed terrorist groups and the Iranian entities that support them,” he said, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force.

The Treasury Department’s sanctions point man, Adam Szubin, has been tasked with sorting out the mess, according to U.S. officials, though no clear plan has yet been finalized.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The officials who provided information for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the private discussions.

After years of negotiations, U.S. officials believe a deal is within reach that for a decade would keep Iran at least a year from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

In return, the U.S. would grant billions of dollars in relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. But the whole package risks unraveling if the U.S. cannot provide the relief without scrapping sanctions unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.

Administration officials say they are examining a range of options that include suspending both nuclear and some non-nuclear sanctions, a step that would face substantial opposition in Congress and elsewhere. Under one scenario, the U.S. could end non-nuclear restrictions on some entities, then slap them back on for another reason. But Iran could then plausibly accuse the U.S. of cheating on its commitments.

U.S. President Barack Obama has spoken about Iran potentially recouping up to $150 billion in assets trapped overseas. The process for how that would take place is still being worked through, said officials.

The Iranian Central Bank may prove the most glaring example of the administration’s dilemma, and officials acknowledge there is no way to give Iran the sanctions relief justified by its compliance without significantly easing restrictions on the institution.

The bank underpins Iran’s entire economy, and for years the U.S. avoided hitting it with sanctions, fearing such action would spread financial instability and raise oil prices. By late 2011, with Iran’s nuclear program advancing rapidly, Obama and Congress did order penalties, declaring the bank a “primary money laundering concern” and linking its activity to ballistic missile research, terror financing and support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The effects were far-reaching: Petroleum exports fell by 60%, Iran suffered runaway inflation, cash reserves dried up and industrial output in several sectors plummeted. And Iran agreed to talk about its nuclear program with the United States and five other world powers.

Now that the nuclear agreement is so close, Iran wants these sanctions lifted. The administration officials say all sanctions on the bank are nuclear-related.

Lew told the Jewish conference in New York that a nuclear accord would include the suspension of all “secondary” oil, trade and banking restrictions — those that apply to U.S. and non-U.S. banks, as well as foreign governments.

Many of these measures overlap with American sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program, and that has officials considering new sanctions to keep certain Iranian institutions under pressure.

Eliminating the secondary sanctions across the board could have wide-ranging implications, making it easier for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its police, intelligence services and paramilitary groups to do business.

That possibility has Iran’s rivals in the region, including Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Middle East, gravely worried.

“I share their concern,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said Tuesday in Jerusalem.

“If the deal is reached and results in sanctions relief, which results in more economic power and more purchasing power for the Iranian regime, it’s my expectation that it’s not all going to flow into the economy to improve the lot of the average Iranian citizen,” he said.

“I think they will invest in their surrogates. I think they will invest in additional military capability.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is under U.S. sanctions because of its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But because the U.S. views the corps as so pernicious, the administration is considering new measures to help block it from meddling in the internal conflicts of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Of the 24 Iranian banks currently under U.S. sanctions, only one — Bank Saderat, cited for terrorism links — is subject to clear non-nuclear sanctions. The rest are designated because of nuclear and ballistic missile-related financing, while several are believed to be controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.

Will they be cleared for business with the world? U.S. officials still cannot say one way or another. Congress, too, has not received a list of banks and institutions that would be released from sanctions under the deal.

If the United States cannot deliver on its promises, it could take the blame for a collapse of the years-long negotiations toward a nuclear deal, putting the world — in the words of Obama and other U.S. officials — on a path toward military confrontation. At the same time, an Iran unburdened by sanctions could redouble efforts toward nuclear weapons capacity, while international unity and the global sanctions architecture on Tehran fray.

Categories: Diplomacy, Economy, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress
Tags: Economy, Foreign Policy, human rights, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress

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Op-Ed: Core Synergies in Israel’s Strategic Planning

June 9, 2015

Op-Ed: Core Synergies in Israel’s Strategic Planning, Harvard Law School National Security Journal via Israel National News, Prof. Louis René Beres, June 9, 2016

(Rather “high brow,” but well worth considering seriously. — DM)

Significantly, the most insidious synergy of all could involve a rudimentary failure to understand that belligerent enemy intentions ultimately depend for their efficacy upon confused, partial, or inadequately thoughtful Israeli responses.

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

To best serve Israel, the country’s strategic studies community should favor more conceptual or “molecular” assessments of expected security perils. Going forward therefore, it will not suffice for this community to operate in ways that are roughly comparable to the purely reportorial activities of journalists and pundits, that is, of ordinary observers who focus exclusively on current personalities and events. With this timely warning in mind, the following brief essay explains and argues for a specifically enhanced Israeli consideration of enemy “synergies.”

For the most part, the concept of synergy is already familiar to capable scientists and scholars. It signifies, above all, that the usually binding axioms of geometry can sometimes be overridden by various intersecting phenomena. Applied to Israel, this concept suggests that certain identifiable threats to the Jewish State should no longer be considered as wholly separate or discrete, but instead, as more-or-less interpenetrating and mutually-reinforcing.

The most obvious and portentous example of pertinent synergy for Jerusalem is represented by Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood.[1]

At first, any such talk of “synergy” may sound needlessly pretentious, or at least more contrived, concocted, or complicated than is really the case. In medicine, after all, it would already seem plain that the dangers of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol together must exceed either one behavior without the other. This is because the synergistic effect is presumptively much greater than those consequences ascertained by merely adding these two injurious activities together.

For Israeli planners, the still-widely-unrecognized synergy between Iranian nuclearization and “Palestine” should finally be treated with a more emphatic intellectual regard.[2] Notwithstanding the declared assumptions of virtually all acknowledged national strategists, Iran and Palestine,[3] as “negative force multipliers,”[4] do not represent thoroughly separate or unrelated hazards to Israel. To continue to assess each one independently of the other would be a serious conceptual error. It would be to consciously obscure what is potentially most revealing and most ominous.

Israel’s main security policies must involve carefully nuanced considerations of active defense, as well as of deterrence, preemption, and war-fighting. The country’s multilayered missile defenses are central to national survival. As long as incoming rocket aggressions from Gaza, West Bank, and/or Lebanon (Hezbollah) were to remain “only” conventional, the inevitable leakage could still be tolerable. But once these rockets were fitted with chemical and/or biological materials, such porosity could quickly prove “unacceptable.“[5] This means, among other things, that the projected harms of rocket attacks upon Israel would depend not only upon the inherent dangers posed by a particular weapon system, but also upon the ways in which these individual harms would intersect.[6]

Once facing Iranian nuclear missiles, Israel’s “Arrow” ballistic missile defense system would require a fully 100% reliability of interception. To achieve any such level of reliability, however, would be impossible. Now, assuming that the prime minister has already abandoned any residual hopes for a cost-effective eleventh-hour preemption against pertinent Iranian nuclear assets , this means that Israeli defense planners must prepare instead, and longer-term, for stable deterrence.[7]

Theory is a net. Only those who cast, can catch.[8] Because of the expectedly corrosive interactive effects involving Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood, for example, Israel will need to update and refine its existing theories of deterrence.

Looking ahead, there are various antecedent issues of theoretical concern. For one, Israel’s leaders will have to accept that certain more-or-less identifiable leaders of prospectively overlapping enemies might not necessarily satisfy the complex criteria of rational behavior in world politics. In such partially improbable but still conceivable circumstances, assorted Jihadist adversaries in Palestine, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, or elsewhere might sometime refuse to renounce certain still-contemplated aggressions against Israel.[9]

By definition, these irrational enemies could exhibit such more-or-less plausible refusals even in anticipation of fully devastating Israeli reprisals. But, would they still remain subject to alternative threats or forms of deterrence? And might an entire state sometime exhibit such non-rational orientations, thereby becoming, in essence, a suicide terrorist writ large?

These utterly core questions can no longer be ignored. Sooner rather than later, and facing new and prospectively incalculable synergies from Iranian and Palestinian aggressions, Israel will need to take appropriate steps to assure that: (1) it does not become the object of any non-conventional attacks from these enemies; and (2) it can successfully deter all possible forms of non-conventional conflict. To meet this ambitious but indispensable goal, Jerusalem, inter alia, absolutely must retain its recognizably far-reaching conventional superiority in pertinent weapons and capable manpower, including effective tactical/operational control over the Jordan Valley.

In this connection, a Palestinian state could make Israeli military and civilian targets more opportune for Iranian rockets. It could simultaneously undermine the Jewish State’s critical early-warning systems.

Maintaining a qualitative edge in conventional war-fighting capacity could reduce Israel’s overall likelihood of ever actually having to enter into a chemical, biological, or even nuclear exchange with regional adversaries. Correspondingly, Israel should plan to begin to move incrementally beyond its increasingly perilous posture of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.”[10] By preparing to shift toward prudently selective and partial kinds of “nuclear disclosure” – in other words, by getting ready to take its “bomb” out of the “basement,” but in carefully controlled phases[11] – Israel could best ensure that its relevant enemies will remain sufficiently subject to Israeli nuclear deterrence.

In matters of defense strategy, truth may emerge through paradox. Israeli planners, it follows, may soon have to acknowledge that the efficacy and credibility of their country’s nuclear deterrence posture could sometime vary inversely with enemy perceptions of Israeli nuclear destructiveness. However ironic or counter-intuitive, enemy views of a too-large or too-destructive Israeli nuclear deterrent force, or of an Israeli force that is not sufficiently invulnerable to first-strike attacks,[12] could substantially undermine this deterrence posture.

Here, too, carving “Palestine” out of the still-living body of Israel (whatamounts to the unhidden Palestinian Authority plan for a “one state solution”), could impact the Iranian nuclear threat, and vice-versa. Once again, Israel’s defense planning must account for possible and prospectively prohibitive synergies.

Also critical, of course, is that Israel’s current and future adversaries will always acknowledge the Jewish State’s nuclear retaliatory forces as “penetration capable.” This suggests forces that will seem “assuredly capable” of penetrating any Arab or Iranian aggressor’s active defenses. Naturally, a new state of Palestine would be non-nuclear itself, but it could still present a new “nuclear danger” to Israel by its probable impact upon the prevailing regional “correlation of forces.”[13] Palestine, therefore, could represent an indirect but nonetheless markedly serious nuclear threat to Israel. Here, yet again, is an example of the need for Israeli planners to think synergistically.

More remains to be done. Israel should continue to strengthen its active defenses, but Jerusalem must also do everything possible to improve each critical and interpenetrating component of its nuanced deterrence posture. In this bewilderingly complex and dialectical[14] process of strategic dissuasion, the Israeli task may require more incrementally explicit disclosures of nuclear targeting doctrine, and, accordingly, a steadily expanding role for cyber-defense and cyber-war.

Even before undertaking such delicately important refinements, Israel will need to more systematically differentiate between adversaries that are presumably rational,[15] irrational, or “mad.”[16]

Overall, the success of Israel’s national deterrence strategies will be contingent, inter alia, upon an informed prior awareness of enemy preferences, and of specific enemy hierarchies of preferences. In this connection, altogether new and open-minded attention will need to be focused on the seeming emergence of “Cold War II” between Russia and the United States. Any such emergence, of course, could have meaningful effects upon both Israeli and adversarial military postures.[17]

If, within a pattern of “Cold War II,” a newly-formalized state of Palestine does not find itself in the same ideological orbit as Iran, the net hazard to Decision-makers will then need to explore and acknowledge what amounts, paradoxically, to a geometry of chaos. Israel could still exceed the sum of relevant intersecting threats. While attempting to survive amid growing regional disorder, therefore, Israel’s leaders should learn to understand the profound strategic limits of normal “geometry”—where, quite mundanely, the whole is always expected to equal to the sum of its parts—and to augment an enhanced understanding with certain new geometric orthodoxies. In essence, these decision-makers will then need to explore and acknowledge what amounts, paradoxically, to a geometry of chaos.

Still, even this long-hidden geometry could reveal a discernible sense of symmetry and form, including the precise shape of certain critically interwoven enemy threats. Wherever the belligerent whole might add up to more than the sum of its constituent parts, Israel’s leaders could discover lethal hazards of adversarial synergies. Significantly, the most insidious synergy of all could involve a rudimentary failure to understand that belligerent enemy intentions ultimately depend for their efficacy upon confused, partial, or inadequately thoughtful Israeli responses.

When Pericles delivered his famous Funeral Oration, with its meticulously elaborate praise of Athenian civilization, his geostrategic perspective was applicable to more than the particular struggle at hand. Recorded by Thucydides, Pericles had expressed confidence in a military victory for Athens (a confidence, of course, that turned out to be misplaced), but also grave concern for any self-imposed limitations along the way: “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies,” he had warned, “is our own mistakes.” However unforeseen, there is a vital lesson here for present-day Israel: In observing enemy preparations for war and terror, never forget that the ultimate success of these preparations will depend upon Israel’s selected responses.

There exists an overarching or determinative synergy between certain individual or intersecting enemy preparations and Israel’s own prepared policies and reactions.

In all world politics, but especially in the Middle East, we are present at the gradual unveiling of a “big picture,” but the nucleus of meaning—the essential truth of what is taking place—involves what is left out. For the foreseeable future, Israel’s enemies will continue with their ardent preparations for every form of war and terrorism. Unaffected by any civilizing expectations of international law of comity, these calculated preparations will proceed largely on their own track, culminating, if left suitably unobstructed, in new and ever more serious aggressions against Israel. The Jewish State must remain vigilant of such an emergent “big picture,” but also of every imaginable intersection or pattern of intersections between its component parts.

Always, Israel’s leaders and planners must reflect, core dangers to national security are profoundly synergistic.

Always, Israeli policy must recall, these fundamental dangers are potentially much greater than the additive sum of their respective parts.

Always, Jerusalem must insightfully recognize, even a bewildering geometry of chaos has potentially meaningful sense and form.

Always, it must be Israel’s consuming task, to discover this synergistic truth.

Sources:

[1] There are other still more complex synergies that need to be examined. These concern, especially, the intersecting roles of ISIS and al-Qaeda, including pertinent sub/state-state relationships with Syria, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Also worth exploring, in this connection, is the plausible escalation of “Cold War II,” a broadly transforming context of world politics that could create a “synergy of synergies.” Although all such bewildering hypotheticals may be intimidating or annoying to scholars and policy-makers, there remains no reasonable explanatory alternative to taking them into account.

[2] Rabbi Eleazar quoted Rabbi Hanina, who said: “Scholars build the structure of peace in the world.” See: The Babylonian Talmud, Order Zera’im, Tractate Berakoth, and IX.

[3] Once a Palestinian state were created, it would more likely become subject to destruction by assorted Arab forces, than by Israel. Plausibly, in this connection, ISIS forces fighting their way westward across Jordan could quickly arrive at the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), and make fast work of any now indigenous Hamas/PA national “army.” In such dire circumstances, the citizens of “Palestine” would assuredly rue the day of their recently-declared “independence.”

[4] This is a term that will likely be favored by the generals, over synergy.

[5] See, on this issue: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/Res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “Think Anticipatory Self-Defense,” The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,”Washington Times, June 10, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009; and Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Defending Israel from Iranian Nuclear Attack,” The Jewish Press, March 13, 2013. See also: Louis René Beres and (General/USAF/ret.) John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 9, 2012; Professor Beres and General Chain, “Living With Iran,” BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Israel, May 2014; and Louis René Beres and (Lt.General/USAF/ret.) Thomas McInerney, “Obama’s Inconceivable, Undesirable, Nuclear-Free Dream,” U.S. News & World Report, August 29, 2013.

[6] Here, it warrants mention that Palestinian statehood could represent an enlarged set of risks to Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Already, in 1991 and 2014, this small reactor came under missile and rocket attack from Iraqi and Hamas aggressions respectively. For authoritative assessments of these attacks and related risks, see: Bennett Ramberg, “Should Israel Close Dimona? The Radiological Consequences of a Military Strike on Israel’s Plutonium-Production Reactor,” Arms Control Today, May 2008, pp. 6-13.

[7] With particular reference to nuclear deterrence, the primary function of Israel’s nuclear forces must always be dissuasion ex ante, rather than revenge ex post.

[8] This convenient metaphor is generally attributed to Novalis, the late 18th-century German poet and scholar. See, for example, introductory citation by Karl R. Popper, in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959). Ironically, perhaps, Novalis’ fellow German poet, Goethe, had declared, in his early Faust fragment (Urfaust): “All theory, dear friend, is grey. But the golden tree of life is green.” (Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grűn des Lebens goldner Baum.)

[9] See, on this point: Louis René Beres, “Religious Extremism and International Legal Norms: Perfidy, Preemption, and Irrationality,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 39, No.3., 2007-2008, pp. 709-730.

[10] See: Louis René Beres, “Like Two Scorpions in a Bottle: Could Israel and a Nuclear Iran Coexist in the Middle East,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 1., 2014, pp. 23-32; Louis René Beres, “Facing Myriad Enemies: Core Elements of Israeli Nuclear Deterrence,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XX, Issue 1., Fall/Winter 2013, pp. 17-30; Louis René Beres, “Lessons for Israel from Ancient Chinese Military Thought: Facing Iranian Nuclearization with Sun-Tzu,”Harvard National Security Journal, 2013; Louis René Beres, “Striking Hezbollah-Bound Weapons in Syria: Israel’s Actions Under International Law,” Harvard National Security Journal, 2013; Louis René Beres, “Looking Ahead: Revising Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity in the Middle East,” Herzliya Conference presentation, 2013; March 2013; IDC, Herzliya; Louis René Beres and (General/USAF/ret) John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, 2012.

[11] On identifying alternative nuclear disclosure options, see: Louis René Beres, “Israel’s Strategic Doctrine: Updating Intelligence Community Responsibilities,”International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring, 2015, pp. 89-104.

[12] On Israeli submarine basing measures, see: Louis René Beres and (Admiral/USN/ret.) Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Beres and Admiral Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014.

[13] See: Louis René Beres, “Understanding the Correlation of Forces in the Middle East: Israel’s Urgent Strategic Imperative,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs,Vol. IV, No. 1 (2010).

[14] Dialectic formally originated in the fifth century BCE, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. In the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophical/analytic method. Here, Plato describes the dialectician as one who knows best how to ask and answer questions. This particular knowledge – how to ask, and to answer questions, sequentially – should now be insistently transposed to the organized study of Israeli security issues.

[15] Israelis, like Americans, are inclined to project their own dominant sense of rationality upon adversaries. Acknowledging that western philosophy has always oscillated between Plato and Nietzsche, between rationalism and irrationalism, we have all routinely cast our psychological lot with the Greek thinkers and their inheritors. Significantly, however, Israel is now up against a steadily transforming ordering of the geostrategic universe; now, Israel’s strategists might sometimes be better advised to read Dostoyevsky and Kafka, than to dwell too fixedly on Platonic rationalism.

[16] “Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman,” inquires Luigi Pirandello, “with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, and the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk, construct without logic, or rather, with a logic that flies like a feather.”

[17] On this point, see: Louis René Beres, “Staying Strong: Enhancing Israel’s Essential Strategic Options,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, June 13, 2014.

Categories: Arab nations, Cognitive dissonance, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Insurgents, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Mad Mullahs, Middle East, P5+1, Palestinians, Peace process, Rocket attack, Terrorism
Tags: Arab nations, Cognitive dissonance, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Insurgence, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Mad Mullahs, Middle East, Palestinians, Peace Process, Rocket attacks, Terrorism

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Turkey’s View of Israel

June 9, 2015

Turkey’s View of Israel, The Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, June 9, 2015

The media’s unethical coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict seems to be the number one reason why people in Turkey have remained so misinformed and brainwashed about the issue. It is not just anti-Semitism, but also anti-Zionism, that is racist and hateful.
The houses and apartments Israelis built in their historic homeland are called “illegal settlements.” But there were no “settlements” before 1967. What, then were the Israelis supposedly “occupying” between 1948 and 1967? Why was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even then trying to destroy Israel? What did it think it was “liberating”?
This “occupation” myth seems, instead, to have a lot to do with the “Islamization” of history and geography. Since the creation of the world, it goes, there has been only one religion: Islam. All our religious teachers have taught us that earlier historical figures were prophets — Isa [Jesus], Musa [Moses], Davut [David] and so on — were Muslims and that the original religions they brought were Islamic. These prophets, we are told, preached the teachings of Allah, but their followers, who came later, distorted their messages, changed the writings in their holy books, and fabricated these fake, untrue religions called Judaism and Christianity. Then Islam came as the last, the perfect and the only true and unchanged eternal word of Allah, which led to Muhammad to this world as a “liberator.”
If someone says, “there is a place related to King David and it is a Jewish place,” then a Muslim would say, “Yes, but David was also a Muslim. So this place actually belongs to Muslims.” There is never Islamic invasion; there is only Islamic liberation. If these people truly cared about Palestinian Arabs, they would do their best to stop the incitement and help to achieve a sustainable peace where both Arabs and Jews would be safe.

A large number of the citizens of Turkey, a NATO member, see Israel and the United States as enemies.

A survey conducted recently in Turkey found that nearly half the country’s citizens (42.6%) see Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States (35.5%), and only then Syria (22.1%).

How do they visualize Israel, a country with which they have made several military and trade agreements, as being a security threat? Do they think Israel would ever invade Turkey? Bomb Turkey? Nuke Turkey? This view seems to be based on either religion-induced paranoia caused by Islamic anti-Semitism, or else their understanding of reality has been distorted Nazi-style by Turkish leaders and the media.

The problem is that the false myth of Israel’s being an “occupier” and “troublemaker” has been indoctrinated into the minds of most Turkish children from their early years. Almost all of us — including myself — grew up with an extreme prejudice against Israel. The media’s unethical coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict — including both the Islamist and Kemalist (secular nationalist) media — seems to be the number one reason why people in Turkey have remained so misinformed and brainwashed about the issue.

Only the intensity of the prejudice changes according to what newspaper or TV channel you follow or what family raises you. Islamic anti-Semitism, even if we might not be aware of it, has a lot to do with this kind of upbringing.

A short scanning of Turkish newspapers and TV channels would also clearly show their continual hateful propaganda against Israel.

No other state or organization has been demonized and delegitimized by the Turkish media to this extent.

Unfortunately, even the media that calls itself “progressive” has bought and reproduced the propaganda that Israel is the “invader” and the “oppressor.” One of their most popular slogans is, “We are not anti-Semitic, but just anti-Zionist.”

Zionism defends the concept that Jews — like any other people — have human rights, and are entitled to live their original Biblical homeland. Although forced out of their land many times, as by the Babylonians or the Romans, they never entirely left it.

If the demand of Jews for equality and independence disturbs anyone, it is due to his own racism — in whatever name he is trying to dress it up — and not to anything the Jews might have allegedly done. It is not just anti-Semitism, but also anti-Zionism, that is racist and hateful.

Every person who comes up with the genius idea of “not being anti-Semitic but just being anti-Zionist” should also offer their idea of what kind of a Jewish state they would like to see or whether they would like to see a Jewish state at all. If it is the political system of Israel they oppose, then they should clarify how their own alternative system would be better than the current one, and what they would do to convince Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to achieve peaceful coexistence with Israel.

They should also clarify why they are so obsessed with Israel, which has the most democratic political system in the Middle East, while autocratic, theocratic, despotic regimes abound in the region.

They might also please explain what makes the non-existent, imaginary “democratic Palestine” preferable to already existing, thriving and democratic Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah is essentially no better than Hamas; just sometimes less violent. The Palestinian Authority (PA), as stated in its charter and “phased plans,” says it prefers to displace Israel diplomatically, through the dictator-controlled United Nations and European governments, and economically through boycotts and sanctions, rather than with missiles.

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Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister’s Press Office)

Now that so many Jews are all in one place, the progressives can pretend to themselves that it is “just Israel,” and not “the Jews,” who are the target of their hate. As the former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said, Israel, only slightly bigger than the city of Beijing, is a “one-bomb country.”

The progressive media’s representation of Israel as an “occupier” only caters to the genocidal desires of these anti-humanitarian regimes or groups. They never point to Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, China’s occupation of Tibet, or Pakistan’s occupation of Kashmir — not to mention Russia’s recent flamboyant occupations.

For the past 2000 years, Jews have been exposed to unending persecution accompanied by expulsions, forced conversions, mob attacks, pogroms, property confiscations, massacres, and the 1938-45 Holocaust. Attacks against Jews in Europe continue today.

After Jews were forced from their Biblical home into the Diaspora, their lives were painful for centuries. When they were in exile in Europe, they were disposable. Now that they are back home in Israel, they are “occupiers;” again not wanted.

Under Nazi rule, Jews were “illegal,” slaughtered wholesale, tortured with fake “medical experiments” and not even considered fully human.

To end their history of 2000 years of suffering and to finally be free, Jews have returned to their home, Israel.

They have brought their light back to the land and presented gifts to the Middle Eastern peoples that no other nation there has experienced: democracy, tolerance, freedom of speech, human rights — as well as countless medical and technological innovations. This tiny country has produced some of the most brilliant minds in history, and has become the second most educated nation on earth.

What they have done is to build a truly open and productive society on sand dunes and deserts, where even the Muslim citizens, who make up 20% of Israel’s population, have the freedom to say the most horrendous things about anyone they wish, including the prime minister — and they do. In short, even the Muslims in Israel enjoy privileges that in any other country in the region would get them incarcerated.

Israel’s neighbors, however, have not shown much appreciation for these admirable traits — only more jealousy and hatred.

As thanks for the endless good the Israelis bring the region and the world, they are vilified by the anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, Jew-hating, politically-driven blocs in the Arab countries, Turkey, Europe and the UN, which clearly want to destroy them, on one pretext or another.

The houses and apartments Israelis build in their historic homeland are called “illegal settlements.” But there were no “settlements” before 1967. What, then, were the Israelis supposedly “occupying” between 1948 and 1967? Why was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even then trying to destroy Israel? What did it think it was “liberating”?

This “occupation” myth seems, instead, to have a lot to do with the “Islamization” of history and geography.

According to Islamic ideology, all history is actually Islamic history and most of the major historical figures were actually Muslims. Islam does not recognize other religions as either genuine or original.

Since the creation of the world, it goes, there has been only one religion: Islam. Others are irrelevant, fabricated by those who came later but went astray. All our religion teachers have taught us that the earlier prophets — Issa [Jesus], Musa [Moses], Davut [David] and so on — were Muslims, and that the original religions they brought were Islamic. These prophets, we are told, preached the teachings of Allah, but their followers, who came later, distorted their messages, changed the writings in their holy books, and fabricated those fake, untrue religions called Judaism and Christianity. Then Islam came as the last, the perfect and the only true and unchanged eternal word of Allah, which led to the coming of Muhammad to this world as a “liberator.”

If someone says “there is a place related to King David and it is a Jewish place,” then a Muslim would say “Yes, but David was also a Muslim. So this place actually belongs to Muslims.”

The Islamization of history leads to the Islamization of geography. All those religious figures were Muslims, so the places in which they resided were also Muslim places. So Muslims never call their invasions “invasions.” They consider them all liberations of former Muslim places. There is never Islamic invasion; there is only Islamic liberation.

This view is the view behind the recent call of Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for “Liberating Jerusalem” from the Jews. “Conquest is Mecca,” said Erdogan in a speech in Istanbul on June 1, before millions who were celebrating the 562^nd anniversary of the fall of Constantinople. “Conquest is Saladin,” he said, “It is to hoist the Islamic flag over Jerusalem again; conquest is the heritage of Mehmed II and conquest means forcing Turkey back on its feet.”

Erdogan is calling for an invasion of Jerusalem, which basically means a call for death and destruction. He was doing that just prior to the elections, because he knew that such anti-Semitic outbursts will most likely increase the votes of the AKP party.

The biggest problem is that this statement was made by the head of a NATO member.

Why would a Turk or a Muslim want to “liberate” Jerusalem? To turn it into another Muslim land where discrimination and persecution against minorities and all kinds of human rights violations run wild? Turkey does not even treat its own minorities with respect and discriminates against them daily, for instance by not giving the Kurds even the right to be educated in their native language. For what purpose, or based on what right, should Turkish authorities want to rule over Jerusalem?

Do they want to slaughter the Jews just as they slaughtered Christians in 1915, and still deny it even today? Do they want to ban the Hebrew language just as they ban the Kurdish language in Turkey? Do they want to rape Jewish women as they raped Kurdish and Greek Cypriot women during ethnic cleansing campaigns? Do they want to convert Israel’s synagogues and churches into stables as they did those in Turkey? Or do they want to turn Israel’s prisons into centers of torture just as they did in Turkey’s Kurdistan? What on earth could Turkish authorities give to Jerusalem if they could capture it?

These people need to understand and accept the fact that the Ottoman Empire is dead and that none of its former colonies wants it back.

This is not the first time that anti-Semitism is promoted by a Turkish state authority. Anti-Semitism has a very long history in Turkey. Some of the most horrible crimes committed against Turkey’s Jews happened during the 1934 pogrom, when about 15,000 Jews in Thrace were forcibly driven out of their homes. During the pogrom, Jews were boycotted and attacked, their property was looted and burned down, and Jewish women were raped.

Just prior to the outbreak of the 1934 pogrom, Ibrahim Tali Ongoren, the inspector general of Thrace (the highest state official in the region) made a four-week inspection tour of the province. According to Tali Ongoren’s report, “The Jew of Thrace is so morally corrupt and devoid of character that it strikes one immediately.” The Jew, he wrote, possessed a “fawning, deceitful character that hides its secret intentions, always applauds the powerful, worships gold and knows no love of the homeland.”

“The Jews represent a secret danger and possibly want to establish communist nuclei in our country through the workers’ club and it is therefore an indispensable necessity for Turkish life, the Turkish economy, Turkish security, the Turkish regime and the revolution in Thrace and for Turkish Thrace to be able to recover, to finally solve [the Jewish] problem in the most radical way.” [1]

According to the historian Corry Guttstadt, although the 90-page report Ongoren prepared for the government and for the ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) contained a wide range of topics, he seemed to be, “outright obsessed with the ‘Jewish problem,’ which comes up in nearly every chapter.”

“Tali’s report” Guttstadt wrote, “is laced with the crudest of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This contradicts not only the government’s assertion that anti-Semitism in Turkey was only a fringe phenomenon [Tali was the highest ranking official of the Republic in this region] but must also be considered proof that the expulsion of the Jews from Thrace and from the Dardanelles was in keeping with the state’s objectives, just as foreign diplomats had reported.

“The rights of the non-Muslim minorities were protected by the international Treaty of Lausanne, at least on paper. To circumvent these legal obstacles, The Turkish authorities had apparently opted for the strategy of putting the Jews under such pressure with boycott activities and anonymous threats ‘from the population’ that they would leave the area ‘voluntarily’.

“The period that followed was characterized by further boycott attempts and intimidation in Edirne and even in Istanbul.”[2]

While these crimes against Jews were committed, there was no Jewish state in Israel. But Jew-hatred was clearly rampant.

The main offenders to be held responsible for anti-Semitism in Turkey are the Turkish state authorities. A state that is an EU candidate, as well as a NATO member, is supposed to be a true ally of the West. It is supposed to fight anti-Semitism and promote a peaceful, diverse and pro-Western culture. It is supposed to provide its schoolchildren with a kind of education in which the children will rid themselves off the traditional Jew-hatred and other racism, and embrace at least some humanitarian values that will help them recognize all peoples as equal and worthy of respect.

Sadly, Turkey has done none of that. It has made a record number of military and commercial deals with the state of Israel, but domestically it has systematically propagated anti-Semitism and racism, as well as Turkish-Islamic supremacy, through its institutions and media. As a result of this propaganda, a great number of Turkish people see Israel and the USA as the biggest security threats today.

In Turkey, being Westernized has been restricted to benefiting from the technical and material innovations of the West, but rejecting the social values of the West on grounds that those values would not fit into the Turkish culture. More perplexingly, being politically and socially pro-Western is almost associated with being a “traitor.”

“Israel wants peace. Period,” wrote the journalist Israel Kasnett. “The Jewish people have never held a desire to rule over others and this remains true today. Not only are we ohev shalom [‘lovers of peace’], but we are also rodef shalom [‘active pursuers of peace’].”

Is anyone listening? Are Turks listening? Many, apparently, are not.

Throughout much of the world are bloodbaths and persecution of human beings, but it is only Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, that is targeted and singled out for defending itself, and is accused of “occupation.”

To many of the people here in Turkey, the problem does not seem to be whether Israel wants peace, or whether Israel is a democracy, or whether Palestinian Arabs are really suffering, or why. If these people truly cared about Palestinian Arabs, they would do their best to stop the killings and incitement and to help achieve a sustainable peace where both Arabs and Jews would be safe.

But they do not really care about the Palestinians. They do not want peace. They do not want a “two-state solution.” They want to see Jews dead. And they could not care less about how many Arabs will lose their lives in the meantime.

But there is one thing they do not seem to be aware of: Their genocidal Jew-hatred can never strip Israel off its right to self-defense. It can only empower and further legitimize this right.

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[1] Guttstadt, Corry (2013). Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. More slurs include: “Although (the Jews) underwent natural selection as a result of constant mixing with different blood in the last century and have almost entirely lost the physical characteristics specific to Jewry, they have completely retained the typically Jewish fawning, deceitful character that hides its secret intentions, always applauds the powerful, worships gold, and knows no love of the homeland, and have even developed these harmful traits so much further that they could inflict torment on humanity.

“In the Jewish value system, honor and dignity have no place. The Jews of Thrace owe their rise to the destructive effects of the wars on the Turkish population, that is how [the Jews] have become rich and enchanted their influence.

“The Jews of Thrace are intent on making Thrace the equivalent of Palestine. For the development of Thrace, it is of the utmost necessity that this element [the Jews], whose hands are grabbing for all the treasures of Thrace, not be allowed to continue to suck out the Turks’ blood. In the establishment of new military facilities… we must keep our administrative and military activities entirely secret from this element [the Jews].

“Above all, it is essential that this element [the Jews] be neutralized so completely that they cannot engage in spying…”

[2] Guttstadt, Corry (2013). Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press.

“In the light of this, it hardly seems coincidental that Tali himself had travelled the entire region until a week before the events erupted and then remained in Ankara during the boycott activities and the threats. It seems that the operations then ‘got out of hand’ locally, with the nationalist mob putting itself in charge in some places and committing looting and acts of violence.

“After the reports of the riots reached the international public, the government was forced to condemn both the events and anti-Semitism in general. In the end, however, the episode achieved, for the most part, the intended goal and largely ‘solved’ the ‘Jewish problem’ in Thrace in the way favored by Tali.”

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Terrorism, Turkey
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Terrorism, Turkey

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As ISIS Brutalizes Women, a Pathetic Feminist Silence

June 9, 2015

As ISIS Brutalizes Women, a Pathetic Feminist Silence, The New York Post via Middle East Forum, Phyllis Chester, June 7, 2015

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While the most recent Women’s Studies annual conference did focus on foreign policy, they were only interested in Palestine, a country which has never existed, and support for which is often synonymous with an anti-Israel position. Privately, feminists favor non-intervention, non-violence and the need for multilateral action, and they blame America for practically everything wrong in the world.

Feminists strongly criticize Christianity and Judaism, but they’re strangely reluctant to oppose Islam — as if doing so would be “racist.” They fail to understand that a religion is a belief or an ideology, not a skin color.

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Oh, how the feminist movement has lost its way. And the deafening silence over ISIS’s latest brutal crimes makes that all too clear.

Fifty years ago, American women launched a liberation campaign for freedom and equality. We achieved a revolution in the Western world and created a vision for girls and women everywhere.

Second-wave feminism was an ideologically diverse movement that pioneered society’s understanding of how women were disadvantaged economically, reproductively, politically, physically, psychologically and sexually.

Feminists had one standard of universal human rights — we were not cultural relativists — and we called misogyny by its rightful name no matter where we found it.

As late as 1997, the feminist majority at least took a stand against the Afghan Taliban and the burqa. In 2001, 18,000 people, led by feminist celebrities, cheered ecstatically when Oprah Winfrey removed a woman’s burqa at a feminist event — but she did so safely in Madison Square Garden, not in Kabul or Kandahar.

Six weeks ago, Human Rights Watch documented a “system of organized rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by ISIS forces.” Their victims were mainly Yazidi women and girls as young as 12, whom they bought, sold, gang-raped, beat, tortured and murdered when they tried to escape.

In May, Kurdish media reported, Yazidi girls who escaped or were released said they were kept half-naked together with other girls as young as 9, one of whom was pregnant when she was released. The girls were “smelled,” chosen and examined to make sure they were virgins. ISIS fighters whipped or burned the girls’ thighs if they refused to perform “extreme” pornography-influenced sex acts. In one instance, they cut off the legs of a girl who tried to escape.

These atrocities are war crimes and crimes against humanity — and yet American feminists did not demand President Obama rescue the remaining female hostages nor did they demand military intervention or support on behalf of the millions of terrified Iraqi and Syrian civilian refugees.

An astounding public silence has prevailed.

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The National Organization for Women (NOW) apparently doesn’t think ISIS is a problem.

The upcoming annual conference of the National Organization for Women (NOW) does not list ISIS or Boko Haram on its agenda. While the most recent Women’s Studies annual conference did focus on foreign policy, they were only interested in Palestine, a country which has never existed, and support for which is often synonymous with an anti-Israel position. Privately, feminists favor non-intervention, non-violence and the need for multilateral action, and they blame America for practically everything wrong in the world.

What is going on?

Feminists are, typically, leftists who view “Amerika” and white Christian men as their most dangerous enemies, while remaining silent about Islamist barbarians such as ISIS.

Feminists strongly criticize Christianity and Judaism, but they’re strangely reluctant to oppose Islam — as if doing so would be “racist.” They fail to understand that a religion is a belief or an ideology, not a skin color.

The new pseudo-feminists are more concerned with racism than with sexism, and disproportionately focused on Western imperialism, colonialism and capitalism than on Islam’s long and ongoing history of imperialism, colonialism, anti-black racism, slavery, forced conversion and gender and religious apartheid.

And why? They are terrified of being seen as “politically incorrect” and then demonized and shunned for it.

The Middle East and Western Africa are burning; Iran is raping female civilians and torturing political prisoners; the Pakistani Taliban are shooting young girls in the head for trying to get an education and disfiguring them with acid if their veils are askew — and yet, NOW passed no resolution opposing this.

Twenty-first century feminists need to oppose misogynistic, totalitarian movements. They need to reassess the global threats to liberty, and rekindle our original passion for universal justice and freedom.

Categories: Christians, Feminists, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic war on women, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Middle East, Palestinians, Political correctness, Terrorism
Tags: Christians, Feminists, Freedom, human rights, Ideology, Iran, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic war on women, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Middle East, Palestinians, Political correctness, Terrorism

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Soup Sandwich: Obama and His National Security Team Has no Plan to Combat ISIS

June 9, 2015

Soup Sandwich: Obama and His National Security Team Has no Plan to Combat ISIS, ISIS Study Group, June 9, 2015

(This appeared in an e-mail this morning from Foreign Policy Strategy Report:

Wait, where is everybody? Several hundred U.S. soldiers and Marines at al Asad air base in Iraq are standing by, ready to train some Iraq soldiers. But those Iraqi troops have stopped showing up, leaving the Americans all alone at the sprawling base. FP’s John Hudson, Lara Jakes and Paul McLeary report that across Iraq, there seem to be more U.S. trainers than recruits, with only 2,600 Iraqi soldiers currently receiving training from about 3,000 U.S. military personnel.

While the training has dried up, at the G-7 summit in Germany, President Barack Obama maintained that the United States and its allies must speed up the training of the Iraqi security forces….even, presumably, if they aren’t showing up.

— DM)

President Obama did some talking about the Islamic State (IS) after the G-7. Of note is that he admitted to not having an actual strategy in combatting IS and the threat it poses to the free world. In typical fashion he fails to hold himself accountable for his actions and points the finger at everybody but himself. He’s known about the threat of IS for since 2010 when Baghdadi’s guys initiated the “Breaking the Walls Campaign” in Iraq (which the Long War Journal did a great job of covering btw). This quote from our illustrious President was quite telling:

“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet,”

Obama: No ‘complete strategy’ yet on training Iraqis
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/08/politics/obama-abadi-iraq-germany-g7/

And here’s President Obama’s press conference after the G-7 (we recommend fast-forwarding to the 18:00 mark to get to the good stuff):

The President comes off as well-versed in “saying the right things” when it comes to things like Greece, healthcare or raising minimum wage. However, he starts stumbling the minute someone asks about IS. At around the 19:00 mark of the aforementioned video he said that we’re making “progress” in pushing IS back, but then goes on to say that as we “secure” an area they move into other areas the Iraq Security Forces/Popular Mobilization Committee (ISF/PMC) left. This is the President’s definition of “winning” the fight against IS. We’re sorry if this offends his supporters (not really), but what’s happening on the ground in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen isn’t the US “winning” this fight against IS, Iran or al-Qaida (AQ).

His “solution” to the problem being an acceleration of training up the ISF is smoke and mirrors, really. You can train the ISF up all you want and it won’t make any difference because at its core both the IA and Iraqi Police (IP) have been purged of their most capable commanders and replaced by incompetent officers. The fact that the IA is now 80% Shia further alienates itself from the Sunni Arab and Kurd communities. Even Secretary of Defense Ash Carter stated all the training in the world can’t help the IA due to the cowardice that’s endemic throughout the force. As much as the Iranian regime denied this and pushed back against Carter’s assessment, IRGC-Qods Force commander GEN Suleimani shares many his beliefs in the poor state of the IA – and that’s a big reason why Suleimani has been influencing the establishment of the Iraqi National Guard by working to ensure that the ranks are filled with Shia militia personnel. Oh, and btw, a lot of those “fresh troops” the President was referring to are already being put through the meat grinder in places like Bayji and Ramadi – and the results aren’t pretty.

Iranian Regime, GOI Take Issue With US SECDEF’s Assessment that IA are Cowards
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=6707

ash-carter-300x169

SECDEF Ash Carter is the only guy in the Obama administration who seems to “get it” – too bad the powers that be forced him to walk back his accurate assessment on the cowardice seen throughout the IA
Source: Wall Street Journal

Again, none of this is surprising to our readers who’ve been with us since the beginning of our site. President Obama had a quasi-strategy of sorts that we covered in last summer’s “Obama’s ISIS Strategy: Failed Before it Started” that was followed up by “Another Reason Obama’s ISIS Strategy Has Already Failed.” To the uninitiated, the Obama strategy called for trainers and the arming of so-called “moderates” in Syria while supporting an Iraqi Army (IA) that has taken on sectarian characteristics. He’s banking on doing the bare minimum to basically run out the clock so that he can say he “didn’t deploy combat troops to Iraq.” In other words, he has a plan alrighHe’s been very untruthful because he’s dramatically increased the US military footprint in Iraq since last summer. Their situation is also much more dangerous now than it ever was during the OIF-era thanks to the restrictive ROE he slapped our brethren with prior to authorizing their deployment. Additionally, his term “no boots on the ground” is misleading because those “advisors/trainers” we’ve deployed are all ground troops – many of which are located in bases currently under siege such as al-Asad Airbase or Habbaniyah. If these aren’t American “combat troops,” then what are they, aid workers? Bystanders? The Obama administration may give the “trainer” label on our guys being deployed to Iraq, but the inconvenient truth of the matter is that they all have either “US ARMY” or “US MARINES” tags on their uniforms.

Obama’s ISIS Strategy: Failed Before it Started
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=1730

Another Reason Obama’s ISIS Strategy Has Already Failed
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=1757

US-Backed Syrian Group Disbands – But Were They Ever Truly “Moderate” to Begin With?
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=5286

It was painful to watch President Obama – the alleged “leader” of the free world – have a hard time answering some pretty easy questions asked about US policy to combat IS. President Obama and his national security team had more than a few years to develop a strategy – but didn’t. Why is that? Its because President Obama doesn’t want his domestic agenda to get sidetracked by things like the foreign-policy arena. He just points the finger at everybody else saying “its their fault” while not formulating any real solution. He’s on his 7th year in office and still blames his predecessor for everything. Coming from military backgrounds ourselves, we were taught that a leader doesn’t make excuses. He makes things happen. A leader doesn’t keep rolling with a plan if it clearly isn’t working. A leader will adjust accordingly and inspire his subordinates to press on. That’s what a leader does. We’re not seeing that from this President. As we’ve stated earlier in this article, he’s just trying to “run out the clock” of his second term so that this will become the “next guy’s problem.” Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t work that way. His inaction and arrogance has directly led to the rise of IS, and his current policies have allowed the terror organization to expand into other locales such as Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the North Caucasus region. History won’t look so kindly on him as the current American media. The public will see this manifest itself in the next administration, when our country gets attacked on our home soil – again. Of course there’s the hope that the American people will finally realize this is what a “hope and change” foreign policy is all about before its too late. But we doubt it.

Screen-Shot-2015-06-08-at-2.21.59-PM-300x173

Oh yeah, President Obama knew PM Abadi was next to him and acted as if he wasn’t there – kinda like his approach to foreign policy
Source: CBS News

If you want additional details on the lead up to the rise of IS, then check out the history lesson we put together for President Obama’s counterpart Rand Paul, who is just as naive on foreign policy as he is:

Rand Paul Needs a History Lesson..
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=6782

Links to Other Related Articles:

Defeating The Islamic State
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=1708

Egypt Atmospherics
http://isisstudygroup.com/?p=614

Categories: Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Middle East, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, U.S. airstrikes
Tags: Combat troops, Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Ideology, Iraq military, Islamic State, Middle East, Obama, Obama Administration, Obama's America, U.S. airstrikes

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Syria Asks IAEA for Help Converting Nuclear Reactor

June 8, 2015

Syria Asks IAEA for Help Converting Nuclear Reactor, Jewish Press, Hana Levi Julian, June 8, 2015

The border police run an exercise, while they train for chemical , biological or atomic. warfare. Feb 14 2011. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90. *** Local Caption *** îâá éøåùìéí àéîåï àáë çìéôåú îéâåï àéîåï úéøâåì úøâéì

Israeli’s Border Police training for chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks. Photo Credit: Nati Shohat / Flash 90

IAEA head Yukiya Amano told reporters Monday that Syria has told the agency it would ship the higher-grade uranium abroad.

However, it is not clear where Syria would ship the higher-grade uranium — Iran is Syria’s closest ally – and neither is it clear what grade its uranium currently is.

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

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has asked the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency for help with a nuclear reactor near Damascus, international media agencies reported Tuesday.

The UN agency is studying the Syrian request to help convert the reactor, which currently runs on highly-enriched uranium, into one that uses lower grade nuclear fuel.

IAEA head Yukiya Amano told reporters Monday that Syria has told the agency it would ship the higher-grade uranium abroad.

However, it is not clear where Syria would ship the higher-grade uranium — Iran is Syria’s closest ally – and neither is it clear what grade its uranium currently is.

Low enriched uranium is defined as that which is enriched to less than five percent of fissile purity. Weapons quality uranium is enriched above 20 percent but that which is used to fuel an atomic bomb is enriched to 90 percent.

Amano said the IAEA is studying the request and has yet to make a decision.

Categories: Assad, IAEA, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Middle East, Obama, P5+1, Syria
Tags: Assad, IAEA, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Middle East, Obama, Syria

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Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan

June 8, 2015

Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 8, 2015

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What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power.”

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

Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.

That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.

You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.

Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the atrocities. And the cause of those atrocities is buried inside Directive 11.

With Obama’s typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described as “just finishing its work” when the Arab Spring began.

That is certainly one way of looking at it.

Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.

What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.

According to a New York Times story, Obama’s Directive 11 agenda appeared to resemble Che or Castro as he “pressed his advisers to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not.”

The story also noted that he “is drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, which ousted its longtime leader, Suharto, in 1998.”

The coup against Mubarak with its coordination of liberals, Islamists and the military did strongly resemble what happened in Indonesia. The most ominous similarity may be that the Muslim mobs in Indonesia targeted the Chinese, many of whom are Christians, while the Muslim mobs in Egypt targeted Coptic Christians.

Both were talented groups that were disproportionately successful because they lacked the traditional Islamic hostility to education, integrity and achievement. Islamist demagogues had succeeded in associating them with the regime and promoted attacks on them as part of the anti-regime protests.

Chinese stores were looted and thousands of Chinese women were raped by rampaging Muslims. Just as in Egypt, the protesters and their media allies spread the claim that these atrocities committed by Muslim protesters were the work of the regime’s secret police. That remains the official story today.

Suharto’s fall paved the way for the rise of the Prosperous Justice Party, which was founded a few months after his resignation and has become one of the largest parties in the Indonesian parliament. PJP was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s local arm in Indonesia.

His successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, was more explicitly Islamist than Suharto and his Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) conducted a campaign against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. It helped purge non-Muslims from government while Islamizing the government and Indonesia’s key institutions.

Habibie had been the Chairman of ICMI and ICMI’s Islamists played a key role in moving Suharto out and moving him in. It was obvious why Obama would have considered the Islamization of Indonesia and the purge of Christians under the guise of democratic political change to be a fine example for Egypt.

While we don’t know the full contents of Directive 11 and unless a new administration decides to open the vaults of the old regime, we may never know. But we do know a good deal about the results.

In its own way, PSD-10 tells us something about PSD-11.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power”.

That was why Obama refused to intervene when the Muslim Brotherhood conducted real genocide in Sudan, but did interfere in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood using a phony claim of genocide.

Positioning Samantha Power in the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council was part of the process that made over the NSC from national security to servicing a progressive wish list of Islamist terrorist groups that were to be transformed into national governments.

Power, along with Gayle Smith and Dennis Ross, led the Directive 11 project.

Secret proceedings were used to spawn regime change infrastructure. Some of these tools had official names, such as “The Office of The Special Coordinator For Middle East Transitions” which currently reports directly to former ambassador Anne Patterson who told Coptic Christians not to protest against Morsi. After being driven out of the country by angry mobs over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood tyranny, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

“The Office” is still focused on “outreach to emergent political, economic and social forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya” even though counterrevolutions have pushed out Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, while Libya is in the middle of a bloody civil war in which an alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda controls the nation’s capital.

But even as Morsi’s abuses of power were driving outraged Egyptians into the streets, Gayle Smith, one of the three leaders of Directive 11, reached out to the “International Union of Muslim Scholars”, a Muslim Brotherhood group that supported terrorism against American soldiers in Iraq and which was now looking for American support for its Islamist terrorist brigades in the Syrian Civil War.

The men and women responsible for Directive 11 were making it clear that they had learned nothing.

Directive 11 ended up giving us the Islamic State through its Arab Spring. PSD-11’s twisted claim that regional stability could only be achieved through Islamist regime change tore apart the region and turned it into a playground for terrorists. ISIS is simply the biggest and toughest of the terror groups that were able to thrive in the environment of violent civil wars created by Obama’s Directive 11.

During the Arab Spring protests, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had told Hillary Clinton that his government could not hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood. “My daughter gets to go out at night. And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”

But that was exactly what Hillary Clinton and Obama were after. And they got it. Countless women were raped in Egypt. Beyond Egypt, Hillary and Obama’s policy saw Yazidi women actually sold into slavery.

Directive 11 codified the left’s dirty alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood into our foreign policy. Its support for Islamist takeovers paved the way for riots and civil wars culminating in the violence that birthed ISIS and covered the region in blood.

And it remains secret to this day.

Categories: Christians, Egypt, Foreign policy, Houthi, Human rights, Indonesia, Iran, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Jews, Libya, Middle East, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Secularism, Terrorists, Turkey, Yemen
Tags: Christians, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Houthi, human rights, Indonesia, Iran, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Jews, Libya, Middle East, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Secularism, Terrorists, Turkey, Yemen

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Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers

June 7, 2015

Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers, securefreedom via You Tube, June 5, 2015

Shoshana Bryen, Senior Director, Jewish Policy Center; Former Senior Director for Security Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA):

Categories: Air strikes, Arab nations, Assad, Caliphate, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Islamism, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, P5+1, Peshmerga, Sanctions, Syria war, Turkey
Tags: Air strikes, Arab nations, Assad, Caliphate, Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Islamism, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, Peshmerga, Sanctions, Syria war, Turkey

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