Posted tagged ‘Muslim Brotherhood’

Israel’s need for Jordan’s king diminishing

December 25, 2014

Op-Ed: Israel’s need for Jordan’s king diminishingIn the wake of the Hashemites aligning themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power, promoting anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council, and possessing structural weaknesses in their Air Force, is Jordan a reliable ally for Israel?

Dec 25, 2014, 02:09 PM | Rachel Avraham

via Israel News – Op-Ed: Israel’s need for Jordan’s king diminishing – JerusalemOnline.

 

Yarmoul TV, the official Muslim Brotherhood channel, which is licensed by the Jordanian king and broadcasts to the entire world from Jordan, broadcasted a song titled “Run over that settler” which was an even bigger hit in the Arab world than the PA version.

Many people in Israel falsely believe that supporting the Hashemite Monarchy is critical for Israel’s security needs, as Jordan possesses the longest border with Israel and they believe that the Hashemites are an ally in the war against Islamic State and other Islamist radical groups.     However, in the wake of the Hashemites aligning themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power, promoting anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security, and Islamic State capturing a 24-year-old Jordanian pilot, one should ponder whether the Hashemites are a reliable partner for Israel and if it is a wise policy to continue relying upon Jordan’s king to keep the Islamists out of power in Jordan.

While the international community has been disturbed by the gruesome images emerging of a 24-year-old Jordanian pilot being taken hostage by Islamic State after his F-16 fighter jet was reportedly shot down by the terror group, few have pondered the broader issue of whether Jordan’s king can be a trusted ally in the War against Terrorism. Jordanian Palestinian journalist Mudar Zahran noted: “From a technical point of view, let us examine the capability of the Jordanian Air Force which is involved in the war on IS.”

“The Jordanians have a fleet of F-16s, approximately 60 of which have been delivered by the US over the last 10 years,” he noted. “Those jets are not modern ones. They are basically F-16’s type A and B, which represent the early model of the jet. Nevertheless, they have been upgraded by the Dutch and Belgium Air Force which conducted what is known as mid-life upgrades to the F-16 models, which gave them more stability and made them comparable to later models such as the F-16 C and D. While the Jordanians have received modern jets from the US, they still hold the world’s record on crashed F-16’s. Officially, Jordan has admitted that 9 jets fell during regular training missions. Given that their fleet size is 60; that is a very high number.”

Zahran believes that the reason why so many Jordanian F-16s crash is because the Jordanian Air Force recruits based on who is a political favorite of the monarchy rather than solid qualifications or even physical strength: “For starters, the Jordanian Air Force allows high school graduates who concentrated in literature enter, even though they have less knowledge of math and science, despite the fact that an understanding of aerodynamics is essential. At the same time, the minimum grade point average required to enter the Jordanian training program for pilots is 60%, basically a D average.”

Rhaed Khames, the Shadow Secretary of Defense for the Jordanian Coalition of Opposition who for 20 years was a commander in the Jordanian Army, commented that the quality of Jordanian trainees is not proper. He stressed that “like everything else in Jordan, it is based on whether the king likes your family or not and the hot shots make their children become pilots.” Furthermore, Khames noted that “if you think those operating the Jordanian jets and even managing the Jordanian Air Force are all moderates, think again.” He noted that Captain Majali, a cousin to the king’s security chief and who was formerly in the Jordanian Air Force, defected from his job and joined Islamic State. He died while fighting for Islamic State five months ago. Given this, Zahran questions how useful the Jordanian Air Force can potentially be in the War against Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

However, the problem with Jordan being relied upon as an ally for Israel and the west does not end with the weaknesses of the Jordanian Air Force. CNN confirmed that Jordan is one of the biggest purchasers of IS oil on the black market. One must ponder, does Jordan’s king use the oil it purchases from Islamic State to fuel those F-16 fighter jets? And given that the Hashemites are relying upon the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power and that the Muslim Brotherhood openly supports Islamic State, facts that were previously reported on JerusalemOnline, how can Israel view the Jordanian monarchy as a reliable partner?

It should be noted that Yarmoul TV, the official Muslim Brotherhood channel, which is licensed by the Jordanian king and broadcasts to the entire world from Jordan, broadcasted a song titled “Run over that settler” which was an even bigger hit in the Arab world than the PA version. Zahran noted that the anti-Israel incitement in the Jordanian media is worse than it is in the Palestinian Authority. For example, Khalil Ateyeh, a MP loyal to the Jordanian King, stated specifically, “I hate the Jews.”

Additionally, YNEWS reported that the Jordanian King was the one who proposed to Kerry a peace plan that calls upon Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders, which many have noted are not the “secure and recognized borders” envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution 242 and contradict understandings reached between former US President George Bush and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Hashemites have also supported Palestinian unilateral efforts that violate previous agreements the Palestinians reached with Israel and Jordanian Ambassador to the US Alia Bouran boasted how Jordan is behind the anti-Israel resolution presently at the UN Security Council.

Upon reading these facts, many may wonder, given this, what alternative does Israel have other than to support the Jordanian king? Many fear that the only choices are between the Hashemites on the one hand and Islamic State/Muslim Brotherhood on the other. For these peoples, it is critical to note that Jordan is not Egypt. In Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood supports the king staying in power, preferring to reform the regime rather than topple it. For this reason, Zahran does not believe that IS views toppling the Hashemites to be a priority, as they view time to be on their side.   They merely have to wait until the country radicalizes more by the Muslim Brotherhood before getting rid of the Hashemites.

However, in a recent article published in the Jewish Press, Zahran warned: “At the right time, IS could capitalize on the anger and frustration of Jordanians, including the majority of Palestinian heritage. Under this king, Jordanians of Palestinian origins are denied state jobs, education and healthcare and are forced to pay taxes which others do not pay. They are also under-represented in the parliament and discriminated against on business opportunities. All of this has led to a wide spread frustration.”

“In addition, the Jordanian East Bankers have been particularly disgruntled by the king’s incredibly lavish life style and the way he treats them, for example, confiscating their vast tribal lands and registering those in his name,” Zahran wrote. “In other words, the Jordanian public is a fertile ground of anger that could be easily exploited by IS. While the American establishment-US Department of State in particular- has failed to establish connections to Jordan’s secular /pro-peace opposition, Jordanians are left abandoned with nobody to turn to and desperate for any change. That thrust for “change” might be abused by IS.”

Jordanian East Bank opposition leader Muhammad Mubaideen told the Jewish Press: ”People are so desperate; they are now hoping IS would come and change their conditions. They have nothing to lose and they want to try anyone other than this king.” Emad Tariffi, member of the Jordanian Coalition of Opposition-who is now in jail, reported similar things: “People have lost any hope for change under the king; most of them hope IS could topple the king now.”

In other words, the international community is repeating the same mistake in Jordan that they made in Syria. At the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, there were pro-democracy activists who were fighting against Assad that sought to create a viable democracy within their country. They were not hostile towards the west and would have at the very least kept the status quo with Israel. However, the world was silent and did not support them. As the revolution waged on in Syria, these people were either killed off, forced to flee for their lives or to go underground, as mostly Islamists took over the Syrian Revolution. It got to the point where now, outside of the Kurdish areas, the two strongest groups are Assad backed by Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and other Islamist groups.

Now, the Jordanian opposition is dominated by secular pro-democracy activists that greatly admire General Sisi in Egypt. They want to maintain the peace treaty with Israel and are very much opposed to the Islamists. However, these people are routinely persecuted by the monarchy and without outside assistance, the moment that IS decides to overthrow the Hashemites, the seculars who have faced persecution that the Muslim Brotherhood never experienced within the country will be at a disadvantage, which could lead to the Islamists taking over Jordan. For Israel and the west, remaining silent and not supporting the Jordanian secular opposition has not been a prudent move. Will the Israeli leadership change course before it is too late?

Netanyahu and Jordan's king

Netanyahu and Jordan’s king Photo Credit: Government Press Office

EU Gives Hamas Green Light to Attack Israel

December 22, 2014

EU Gives Hamas Green Light to Attack Israel, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, December 22, 2014

Although the EU court has said that its controversial decision was “technical” and was not a reassessment of Hamas’s classification as a terrorist group, leaders of the Islamist movement believe that the move will eventually earn them legitimacy in the international arena.

The EU court’s decision represents a “severe blow to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt,” according to Palestinian political analyst Raed Abu Dayer.

Any victory for Hamas, albeit a small and symbolic one, is a victory for the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist groups, and causes tremendous damage to those Muslims who are opposed to radical Islam.

Hours before the EU court’s decision was made public, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar announced that his movement would never recognize Israel, and that Hamas seeks to overthrow the Palestinian Authority and seize control of the West Bank.

The EU court’s decision also coincided with a rapprochement between Hamas and Iran. Now, the Iranians and other countries, such as Turkey and Qatar, are likely to interpret the EU court’s decision as a green light to resume financial and military aid, including rockets and missiles, to Hamas — not only to Gaza but to the West Bank as well — to support those Palestinians whose aim it is to eliminate Israel.

Less than 48 hours after a top European Union court ruled that Hamas should be removed from the bloc’s list of terrorist groups, supporters of the Palestinian Islamist movement responded by firing a rocket at Israel. The attack, which did not cause any casualties or damage, did not come as a surprise.

Buoyed by the EU court’s ruling, Hamas leaders and spokesmen see it as a “political and legal achievement” and a “big victory” for the “armed struggle” against Israel.

Musa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas leader, issued a statement thanking the EU court for its decision. He hailed the decision to remove his movement from the terrorist list as a “victory for all those who support the Palestinian right to resistance.”

When Hamas leaders talk about “resistance,” they are referring to terrorist attacks, such as the launching of rockets and suicide bombings against Israel. In other words, Hamas has interpreted the court’s decision as a green light to carry out fresh attacks as part of its ambition to destroy Israel.

The rocket that was fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel only days after the court decision is not likely to be the last.

Although the EU court has said that its controversial decision was “technical” and was not a reassessment of Hamas’s classification as a terrorist group, leaders of the Islamist movement believe that the move will eventually earn them legitimacy in the international arena.

Ironically, the EU court’s decision coincided with Hamas celebrations marking the 27thanniversary of its founding. Once again, Hamas used the celebrations to remind everyone that its real goal is to destroy Israel. And, of course, Hamas used the event to display its arsenal of weapons that include various types of rockets and missiles, as well as drones.

845 (1)Thousands of armed Hamas troops showed off their military hardware at a Dec. 14, 2014 parade in Gaza, marking the organization’s 27th anniversary. (Image source: PressTV video screenshot)

Hours before the EU court decision was made public, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar announced that his movement would never recognize Israel. Zahar also made it clear that Hamas seeks to overthrow the Palestinian Authority [PA] regime and seize control over the West Bank.

The EU court’s decision also coincided with increased efforts to achieve rapprochement between Hamas and Iran. Recently, a senior Hamas leadership delegation visited Tehran as part of efforts to mend fences between the two sides. The main purpose of the visit was to persuade the Iranians to resume military and financial aid to Hamas. The visit, according to senior Hamas officials, appears to have been “successful.”

“There are many signs that our relations are back on the right track,” explained Hamas’s Musa Abu Marzouk. “Hamas and Iran have repaired their relations, which were strong before the Syrian crisis.” Relations between Hamas and Iran deteriorated due to the Islamist movement’s refusal to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Now the Iranians are likely to interpret the EU court decision to remove Hamas from the list of terrorist groups as a green light to resume financial and military aid to the movement.

Iran’s leaders recently announced that they intend to dispatch weapons not only to the Gaza Strip, but to the West Bank as well, as part of Tehran’s effort to support those Palestinians who are fighting to eliminate Israel.

Moreover, the EU court’s move will also embolden other countries that provide Hamas with political and financial aid, first and foremost Qatar and Turkey. Oil-rich Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia will now face pressure from many Arabs and Muslims to join Qatar, Turkey and Iran in extending their support to Hamas.

The biggest losers, meanwhile, are Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Over the past few months, the two men have been doing their utmost to undermine Hamas and end its rule over the Gaza Strip.

Abbas has been fighting Hamas by blocking financial and humanitarian aid and arresting its supporters in the West Bank, while Sisi continues to tighten the blockade on the Gaza Strip and destroy dozens of smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt.

The EU court’s decision represents a “severe blow to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt,” noted Palestinian political analyst Raed Abu Dayer. “As far is Abbas is concerned, the decision grants Hamas political legitimacy and challenges his claim to be the sole legitimate leader [of the Palestinians]. With regards to Egypt, the European court decision calls into question rulings by Egyptian courts that Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

Even if the EU court decision is reversed in the future, there’s no doubt that it has already caused tremendous damage, especially to those Muslims who are opposed to radical Islam.

Any victory for Hamas, albeit a small and symbolic one, is a victory for the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist groups around the world.

The decision has left many Arabs and Muslims with the impression that Hamas, after all, is not a terrorist organization, especially if non-Muslims in Europe say so through one of their top courts. Even worse, the decision poses a real and immediate threat to Israel, as evident from the latest rocket attack.

If the Europeans have reached the conclusion that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, then why don’t their governments openly invite tens of thousands of Hamas members and supporters to move to London, Paris and Rome? And they should not forget to ask the Hamas members to bring along with them their arsenal of weapons.

Sisi is not Mubarak

December 4, 2014

Sisi is not Mubarak, Canada Free Press, Caroline Glick, December 4, 2014

Sisi1

Due to the events that propelled him to power, Sisi has adopted a strategic posture far different from Mubarak’s. As Sisi sees things, Sunni jihadist forces and their Iranian-led Shi’ite allies are existential threats to the Egyptian state even when their primary target is Israel. Sisi accepts that Israel’s fight against them directly impacts Egypt.

He recognized that when Israel is successful in defeating them, Egypt is more secure. When Israel is weak, the threat to Egypt rises.

The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sisi benefits from his actions. 

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The Egyptian court’s decision last Saturday to acquit former president Hosni Mubarak, his sons and associates of all remaining charges against them caused most commentators to proclaim that current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has turned back the clock. Under his leadership, they say, Egypt has restored Mubarak’s authoritarian regime under a new dictator.

While this may be how things appear on the surface, the fact of the matter is that at least as far as Israel is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth.

During his 30-year rule, Mubarak always assessed that threats against Israel were unrelated to threats against Egypt. Due to this view, despite continuous complaints from Jerusalem, Mubarak enabled jihadists to take root in Sinai. He allowed Egypt to be used as the major path for terrorist personnel and armaments to enter Gaza. He took only minor, sporadic action against the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to Sinai.

By 2005, it became apparent that forces from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Qaida were operating in the Sinai and cooperating with one another.

Despite warnings from Israel, Mubarak took no effective action to break up the emerging alliance and convergence of forces.

It was due to Mubarak’s refusal to act that the Palestinians in Gaza were able to begin and massively expand their projectile war of mortars, rockets and missiles against Israel. From the first such attacks, carried out 14 years ago, the Palestinian projectile campaigns could never have happened without Egypt’s effective collaboration.

On countless occasions, Palestinian terrorist commanders were able to escape to Sinai and avoid arrest by Israeli forces, only to return to Gaza from Sinai and continue their operations.

Mubarak believed that Israel was his safety valve.

Mubarak: Facilitating jihadist operations against Israel from Egyptian territory

By facilitating jihadist operations against Israel from Egyptian territory, he assumed that he was securing Egypt from them. As he saw things, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would be so satisfied with his cooperation in their jihad against the Jews that they would leave him alone.

It was only in 2009, when Egypt announced the unraveling of a terrorist ring in Sinai comprised of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives planning attacks against Israel and Egypt, and seeking the overthrow of the regime, that Mubarak began signaling he may have misjudged the situation. But even then, his actions against those forces were sporadic and half-hearted.

Hamas’s continued assaults against Israel in the years that followed, and the build-up of Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida forces in Sinai, were a clear sign that Mubarak was unwilling to contend with the unpleasant reality that the very forces attacking Israel were also seeking to overthrow his regime and destroy the Egyptian state.

In stark contrast, Sisi rose to power as those selfsame forces were poised to destroy the Egyptian state. The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power owed in part to the support it received from Hamas.

Sisi and his generals overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi and UAE support in order to prevent Egypt from dissolving into a Sunni jihadist axis i

During the January 2011 rebellions against Mubarak, Hamas operatives played a key role in storming Egyptian prisons in Sinai and freeing Muslim Brotherhood leaders – including Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi – from prison. In 2012 and 2013, Hamas forces reportedly served as shock troops to quell protests against the Muslim Brotherhood regime. Those protests arose in opposition to Morsi’s moves to seize dictatorial powers Mubarak never dreamed of exercising, and his constitutional machinations aimed at transforming Egypt into an Islamic state and hub of a future global caliphate.

Sisi and his generals overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi and UAE support in order to prevent Egypt from dissolving into a Sunni jihadist axis in which Hamas, al-Qaida and other jihadist movements were key players, and Iran and Hezbollah were allied forces.

Due to the events that propelled him to power, Sisi has adopted a strategic posture far different from Mubarak’s. As Sisi sees things, Sunni jihadist forces and their Iranian-led Shi’ite allies are existential threats to the Egyptian state even when their primary target is Israel. Sisi accepts that Israel’s fight against them directly impacts Egypt.

He recognized that when Israel is successful in defeating them, Egypt is more secure. When Israel is weak, the threat to Egypt rises.

Like Israel, Sisi acknowledges that the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is shared by Hamas, al-Qaida and all other significant Sunni jihadist groups renders all of these groups threats to Egypt. And because of this acknowledgment, Sisi has abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling their war against Israel.

Not only has he abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling them, Sisi has acted in alliance with Israel in combating them. This is nowhere more evident than in his actions against Hamas in Gaza.

After seizing power in July 2013, Sisi immediately ordered the Egyptian military to take action to secure the border between Gaza and Sinai. To this end, for the first time, Egypt took effective, continuous steps to block the smuggling of arms and people between the two areas. These steps had a profound impact on Hamas’s regime. Hamas went to war against Israel this past summer in a bid to force Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza in support of the Hamas regime and its jihadist allies.

Hamas was certain that footage of suffering in Gaza would force Egypt to oppose Israel, and so open its border with Gaza. It would also lead to US-led pressure on Israel that would make Israel succumb to Hamas’s demands.

Against all expectations, and previous precedents of Egyptian behavior under both Mubarak and Morsi, Sisi supported Israel against Hamas. Moreover, he brought both Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the unofficial alliance with Israel. The bloc he formed was powerful enough to surmount US pressure to end the war by bowing to Hamas’s demands and opening Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel.

Since the cease-fire came into force three months ago, Sisi has continued to seal the border. As a consequence, he has denied Hamas the ability to rebuild Gaza’s terror infrastructure. In its reduced state, Hamas is less able to facilitate the operations of its jihadist brethren in Sinai that are primarily involved in waging an insurgency against the Egyptian state.

To be sure, the most significant strategic development in recent years is the US’s strategic realignment under President Barack Obama. Under Obama the US has switched sides, supporting Iran and its allies, satellites and assets, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, against America’s Sunni allies and Israel.

But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE , is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.

Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.

As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.

Sisi became the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.

And this reassessment has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.

From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.

The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sisi benefits from his actions.

Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can

December 2, 2014

Imagine a World Without America?

Obama Can

Did the president watch Dinesh D’Souza’s recent documentary as a how-to guide to weaken the republic?

by David Solway

December 1, 2014 – 10:23 pm

via PJ Media » Imagine a World Without America? Obama Can.

 

In Marked for Death, Geert Wilders argues that Islam has marked not only him but ultimately every freedom-loving individual and so-called “Islamophobe” for death because of the supremacist nature of its doctrines. What outrages Wilders, in addition to the Islamic threat and the demographic inroads the religion of war is carving into the European urban landscape, is the scandalous complicity of Europe’s governing elites, leading to the eventual subversion of the continent. Although Wilders does not address American vulnerability in any detailed way, what must surely strike a disinterested observer is the equal complicity with which the commander in chief of the United States is pursuing a program of American decline. On the domestic, economic, military, and foreign policy fronts, Obama is energetically and probably irretrievably weakening the country he has sworn to defend, with surprisingly little concerted opposition, or even awareness, from many politicians or from the still-infatuated members of his constituency.

To start with Islam, it is mind-boggling to observe an American president vigorously facilitating the Islamic imperial agenda in a number of different but equally effective ways. He could not do better — or worse — if he were a transplanted Qatari sheikh. One notes the infamous Cairo address with its bloat of lies and factoids. The UN speeches, such as “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” The elevation of Muslim Brotherhood operatives into sensitive posts in his administration. Islamic outreach through official institutions such as NASA, once designed for space exploration, now, apparently, for Muslim apologetics. Iftar dinners at the White House. Congratulatory letters to mosques and his designation of terror attacks as “workplace violence,” “man-caused disasters” and “traffic incidents.” His concessionary engaging in a secret correspondence with Iran’s anti-American and anti-Semitic Ayatollah Khamenei. The withdrawing of troops from Iraq, thus opening the way for the establishment of the Islamic State. The purging of FBI training manuals of all reference to jihad. And the interviews in which Obama claims that the U.S. is “one of the biggest Muslim nations.” (In actuality, professing Muslims count for 1.5% of the American people, in comparison, for example, to Muslims amounting to 13% of India’s census.)

But it doesn’t stop there. Obama is not only manifestly pro-Islam; he is demonstrably anti-American. His policies across the board are all of a piece. Domestically, his economic projects have been calamitous. Obama has pied-pipered the nation to the brink of fiscal ruin, “increasing the national debt,” as Conrad Black writes, “from the $10-trillion accumulated in 233 years of American independence prior to 2009 to $18-trillion in six years.” His racial interventions have set race relations back a generation or more — most recently his urging the Ferguson rioters to “stay on course.” His attack on the Constitution is systematically undermining the republican nature of the U.S. Former New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey cites the president for violating the Constitution 24 times with regard to Obamacare alone.

Writing in the Washington Times on Constitution Day of this year, Robert Knight has listed 14 major such violations among an ever-growing number. Obama’s refusal to secure the permeable southwestern border is an open invitation to a veritable invasion of illegals and jihadists. His executive order to issue a temporary reprieve on the grounds of prosecutorial discretion, to delay deportation, and to provide work permits for millions of illegals is certain to create dismay, resentment and confrontation on a national scale: “No president has ever exercised his discretion as broadly as Obama,” said the Washington Post. His mishandling of the Ebola crisis is only another example of anti-colonial politicking, placing American citizens at risk by allowing flights from infected West African countries into the U.S. The list goes on.

In terms of foreign policy, all of Obama’s actions seem dedicated to weakening American strength and resolve in a hostile world. His innumerable blunders — if that is what they are — whether the result of incompetence or, more likely, intention, have been scrupulously and abundantly documented in scores of books and hundreds of articles. (As an audience member at a recent Freedom Center symposium joked, Obama is “the most competent president we’ve ever had” — most competent, that is, as a malevolent and destructive force whose blunders are not accidents.) It might almost seem as if Obama’s “crimes and misdemeanors” are acquiring encyclopedic dimensions. Here we need only mention his clear bias against international allies, in particular Israel, his funding of the terrorist organization Hamas, his inability or unwillingness to deal effectively with ISIS, which he notoriously regarded as a jayvee outfit, and, most worrisomely, his pampering of the Iranian mullocracy in its determined march toward nuclear status.

His campaign against the American military is perhaps the most telling if under-the-radar sign of his animus toward his own country. His aim to reduce the military to pre-WWII levels and his sacking of ranking military personnel are especially troubling instances of a malign agenda. As retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, an original member of Delta Force and currently executive vice president of the Family Research Council, has argued, “our military is being devastated at the same time that all of our enemies, all of our potential adversaries are ramping up.” It is time, he insists on Twitter, that “top military MUST stand up to President + reckless policies.” It is hard to understand how a powerful military establishment could allow itself to be serially gutted, unless it is helmed by hand-picked Obama supporters.

For there is no evident, top-brass pushback against a president who has signaled to the enemy a timetable for withdrawal; who has shackled his forces in Afghanistan with so-called “rules of engagement,” putting their lives in jeopardy; whose concept of military propriety is a latte salute and whose concept of diplomatic propriety is chewing gum in the face of a prestigious welcoming delegation of a formidable power. This is a president under whose watch veterans were neglected and abused; who has exchanged an alleged deserter for five mid-to-high tier Taliban terrorists; and who has blithely abandoned servicemen under fire or held in captivity. The American armed forces find themselves in a position analogous to the Turkish military, once the guarantor of the country’s Kemalist experiment, now decimated under the authoritarian stewardship of Obama’s good friend, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose example Obama appears to be emulating.

As a result of Erdogan’s actions, a secular Muslim state has been transformed into an Islamic theopolitical nightmare. What the future augurs for America under Obama’s cataclysmic leadership is equally distressing. In the conclusion of his seminal book, Geert Wilders warned that the Islamic incursion into the body politic and social matrix of the U.S. is well underway; in the course of time, the nation will have lost itself in the Wilderness. But the gradual emirization of the U.S. is merely one among a host of premonitory indices. The nation’s spirit appears increasingly stagnant. It is drowning in a Noah’s flood of debt, it is coming apart at the racial seams, it is riven by a red/blue ideological conflict that appears unbridgeable, it is no longer the world’s only superpower — indeed, it is moot whether it is still a superpower, and it is considered either a hindrance or an irrelevance on the global proscenium. It is debatable whether the rot has gone too deep to be scoured, or if the recent change in party representation in Congress or a future Republican presidency would amount to anything more than a temporary hiatus. As Conrad Black continues, “there is no reason to believe that cleaning house in Congress and some of the statehouses is going to do wonders for the condition of the country.” For the rot is not only political but has eaten deep into the culture as well, with growing levels of violence, welfare dependence, historical ignorance and general cynicism. In any event, once a nation has forfeited its pre-eminence, history shows it unlikely to reclaim its former position of authority and grandeur.

Many have pointed out, as has Dinesh D’Souza to persuasive effect in America: Imagine a World without Her, that Obama’s main endeavor is to promote national enfeeblement, an enterprise which the American left, via its political, media, intellectual and academic elites, has been advancing for the last fifty years. When the fundraiser-in-chief is pastured out to the golf course or the United Nations and should the Democrats be returned to power, someone else will replace him to carry on his work. Certainly, should Alinsky-friendly Hillary Clinton or populist fraud and gentrified socialist Elizabeth Warren succeed to the presidency, one could write an early finis to the great American adventure in republican governance. The question remains partially open. Can the country slip out from under the withering curse laid upon it by a runaway president, his subversive administration and the radically corrupt Democratic Party? Can the Augean Stables of a decaying political, intellectual and media culture be cleansed and fumigated? Can the Republicans connect with their staunchly conservative base to eventually form a credible, unified and revitalized governing party?

In the meantime, with the help of his compliant accomplices, Obama has, both as effect and cause, probably done more damage to American interests, security and patriotic fervor than any single president before him. Indeed, he has done more than any of his predecessors to ensure that America as we once knew her is marked for death. One can only hope against hope that the American spirit is still at least subliminally resilient.

Increasing cooperation between Muslim Brotherhood and IS

November 17, 2014

Increasing cooperation between Muslim Brotherhood and IS

Obama’s failed policy in Syria has transformed IS into the leader of radical Islamism.

Nov 17, 2014, 02:32 PM | Rachel Avraham

via Israel News – Increasing cooperation between Muslim Brotherhood and IS – JerusalemOnline.

Failed policy is an understatement if you add the obama support for the brotherhood in Egypt.

IS announces execution of American hostage last night

Increasing evidence is emerging that the Muslim Brotherhood and IS have formed an alliance aimed at eliminating all the existing Arab countries, enabling the creation of a Muslim Caliphate stretching from Morocco to Iraq.

Several Arab countries have recently made official announcements on this subject, based on information from their intelligence services.

“No doubt there are connections between IS and the Muslim Brotherhood,” a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments read in Egypt’s Daily News. “They are both waging a war against their homelands with vandalism, destruction and murder—murder on behalf of the enemies of the state who fund them. Their religious leaders are ignorant and unqualified. They use religion to play with the minds of the public. The main commonality between the two groups is their terrorist acts.”

Last week, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Gulf states by banning the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Interestingly, one conservative Arab country that has not banned the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. 81 Muslim Brotherhood affiliates were also outlawed by the United Arab Emirates.

One of the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliates is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). According to a report in the Clarion Project, CAIR was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial due to their financing of Hamas. In a December 2007 federal court filing, prosecutors described CAIR as “having conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorism.” The US government asserted then that CAIR used deception to “conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.” In 2009, a US federal judge established links between CAIR and Hamas.

Additionally, the US Justice Department listed CAIR as a member of the US Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body established to support Hamas. An internal memo calls on the Palestine Committee members to work to “increase the financial and moral support for Hamas to fight surrendering solutions and to publicize the savagery of the Jews.”

Other terror groups banned by the UAE include Islamic State, the Jabhat Al Nusra Front, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar e-Taiba, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Army of Islam in Palestine, Boko Haram, etc. The Muslim American Society and Islamic Relief Worldwide were also banned. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Muslim American Society was secretly created by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Clarion Project reports that Islamic Relief Worldwide has extensive Muslim Brotherhood links, financed Hamas during Operation Protective Edge, and works closely with a Hamas linked group in Turkey.

In an interview that JerusalemOnline conducted with prominent Middle East scholar and former senior intelligence officer Mordechai Kedar, he stressed that IS and the Muslim Brotherhood share the same ideological foundations. Both groups reject Arab nationalism in favor of Islamic nationalism; both ultimately seek to eradicate the alien political map and culture the West imposed on the Middle East after WW1 and return Arab societies to their Islamic roots. The main differences between the two are, according to Kedar, over tactics, not strategy. IS uses extreme violence as a marketing tool, hence its beheadings. The Muslim Brotherhood combines terrorism with community activism and charity, providing communities with services their governments are supposed to provide, but fail to do so due to corruption and incompetence.

Exiled Jordanian-Palestinian journalist Mudar Zahran, a respected commentator on the Arab world, stressed in an interview with JerusalemOnline: “What most people don’t realize is that Islamic State is an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood ideology. It’s not just an agreement of ideology between Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic State is an extension of Al Qaeda. Bin Ladin and Zahrawi are former Muslim Brotherhood members. In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood today does not hide its support for Islamic State. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood’s de facto spokesperson Sheikh Wajdi Ghunaim openly on youtube pledges support for Islamic State. The conclusion is that the Muslim Brotherhood at least supports Islamic State.”

Hana Julian from the Jewish Press cited an interview with Istanbul-based scholar Adnan Oktur, who in an interview on A9TV stressed that the Muslim Brotherhood is at the root of Islamic State: “The Brotherhood in Egypt could soon entirely come under IS control. Hamas may also join IS. Very few groups in the Islamic world will not join. The Brotherhood is at the roots of Al Qaeda and Hamas. The Brotherhood fed them both.”

Already, Reuters reported that Islamic State has recently been training Egyptian Islamist groups such as Ansar Bait Al Maqdis how to implement terror attacks. Jerusalem Post reported that Ansar Bait Al Maqdis also pledged allegiance to Islamic State, a claim which the terror group later denied, stressing they support Islamic State ideologically but maintain their independence. According to Breitbart, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Nabil Naeim confirmed that Ansar Bait Al Maqdis is funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, who also supplies them with weapons smuggled through Libyan and Gazan tunnels. The same report cites Islamist terror expert Sameh Eid as describing Ansar Bait Al Maqdis as the “military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sinai Peninsula.”

Given the Obama administration’s failed Syrian policy, Islamic State has been transformed into the leader for radical Islamists worldwide. This is why other Islamist groups such as Ansar Bait Al Maqdis and the Muslim Brotherhood have been increasingly cooperating with them. They share the same vision and Islamic State has the aura of success, which is a powerful magnet.

The Poison Tree

October 24, 2014

The Poison Tree, Washington Free Beacon, October 24, 2014

(Rather than chopping the tree down, we are watering and fertilizing it. — DM)

APTOPIX Mideast Israel USArab protesters wave Islamic flags in front of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel / AP

Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.

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Last month, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu made a connection between the Islamic State and Hamas. These terrorist entities, Netanyahu said, have a lot in common. Separated by geography, they nonetheless share ideology and tactics and goals: Islamism, terrorism, the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a global caliphate.

And yet, Netanyahu observed, the very nations now campaigning against the Islamic State treated Hamas like a legitimate combatant during last summer’s Israel-Gaza war. “They evidently don’t understand,” he said, “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”

The State Department dismissed Netanyahu’s metaphor. “Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations,” said spokesman Jen Psaki. “But ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States.”

Psaki was wrong, of course. She’s always wrong. And, after the events of the last 48 hours, there ought not to be any doubt as to just how wrong she was. As news broke that a convert to Islam had murdered a soldier and stormed the Canadian parliament, one read of another attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian terrorist ran his car over passengers disembarking from light rail, injuring seven, and killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, who held a U.S. passport.

Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas—these awful people are literally baby killers. And yet they produce a remarkable amount of dissension, confusion, willful ignorance, and moral equivalence on the part of the men and women who conduct U.S. foreign policy. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” President Obama said of the terrorist army imposing sharia law across Syria and Iraq. “Obviously, we’re shaken by it,” President Obama said of the attack in Canada. “We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident,” the State Department said of the murder of a Jewish child.

“Not Islamic,” despite the fact that the Caliphate grounds its barbarous activities in Islamic law. “Shaken,” not stirred to action. “All sides,” not the side that targets civilians again and again and again. The evasions continue. They create space for the poison tree to grow.

The persistent denial of the ideological unity of Islamic terrorism—the studied avoidance of politically incorrect facts that has characterized our response to the Ft. Hood shooting, the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, the march of the caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and the crimes of Hamas—is not random. Behind it is a set of ideas with a long history, and with great purchase among the holders of graduate degrees who staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, Foggy Bottom, and the diplomatic corps. These ideas are why, in the words of John McCain, the terrorists “are winning, and we’re not.”

A report by Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security, “The Bad Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” analyzes the soil from which the poison tree draws strength. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Gorka writes, U.S. policymakers have faced a dilemma: “how to talk about Islam in a way that is instructive in dealing with Muslims who are enemies but not destructive to those who are friends.” For decades, the preferred solution has been to declare America’s friendship with Islam, and to distinguish between jihadists and everyday Muslims.

One of Gorka’s earliest examples of this policy comes from former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian, who said in 1992, “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace.” Similar assurances were uttered by officials in the Clinton administration, by Clinton himself, and by President George W. Bush. The policy was meant to delegitimize terrorism by denying the terrorists’ claim that they are acting according to religious precepts. “Policymakers believed that by tempering their language with regard to Islam, they might forestall further radicalization of moderate Muslims and indeed even potentially win moderates into the American circle of friendship.”

George W. Bush, Gorka notes, combined his rhetorical appeals to moderate Muslims with denunciations of the immorality of terrorism and illiberalism. And yet, for the government at large, downplaying the religious and ideological component to terrorist activities became an end in itself.

The Global War on Terror was renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism.” In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security published a lexicon of terrorism that said, “Our terminology must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.” State Department guidelines issued in 2008 said, “Never use the terms jihadist or mujahedeen to describe a terrorist.”

Then came Obama. As a candidate, he stressed his experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan. He told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that the call of the muezzin is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” In one of his first major addresses as president, he traveled to Cairo to inaugurate a new beginning with the Muslim world. His counterterrorism adviser, now director of the CIA, called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and referred to Jerusalem as “Al Quds.”

The change in the manner in which the government treated Islamism was profound. “Whereas the 9/11 Commission report, published under the presidency of George W. Bush in July 2004 as a bipartisan product, had used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145 times, jihad 126 times, and jihadist 32 times,” Gorka writes, “the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, issued by the Obama administration in August 2009, used the term Islam 0 times, Muslim 0 times, jihad 0 times.” The omission is stunning.

For Bush, terrorism consisted of immoral deeds committed by evil men animated by anti-Western ideology. Obama downplayed such judgmental language. He preferred an interpretation of terrorism as discrete acts of wrongdoing by extremists, driven by resentments and grievances such as the American failure to establish a Palestinian state, American support for secular Arab dictatorships, American forces in the Middle East, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, and, infamously, an anti-Islamic YouTube video. “The logic that follows,” Gorka writes, “is that once those grievances are addressed, the extremism will subside.”

Some logic. Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.

The result? The Islamic State rules Mosul, threatens Baghdad, and has conquered half of Syria as Bashar Assad gasses the other half. Libya has collapsed into tribal warfare. Egypt has gone from military dictatorship to Islamic authoritarianism and back again. An Islamic strongman rules Turkey, Hamas murders with impunity, Al Jazeera broadcasts anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, and the Taliban are biding time in Afghanistan. Not only is al Qaeda not on the run, it governs more territory than at any point since 2001. It is once again the “strong horse,” attracting jihadists to its crusade who inevitably turn their attention to the West.

“Without an ideological catalyst,” Gorka writes, “grievances remain merely grievances. They are dull and banal. They only transform into acts of transcendental violence when ignited by Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It is the narrative of Holy War that gives value to local grievances, not the other way around.” Before we can hope to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State or the al Qaeda movement, we must recognize the poison tree of jihad for what it is. We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.

Guest Column: The Road from Qatar to the Gaza Strip

October 16, 2014

Guest Column: The Road from Qatar to the Gaza Strip, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Reuven Berko, October 15, 2014

1073

Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel.

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In a recent speech, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor mentioned the central role of Qatar in supporting international terrorist organizations. Money flowing from Qatar to Hamas, for example, paid for the terrorist attack tunnels dug from the Gaza Strip under the security fence into Israeli territory, and for the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilian targets in both the distant and recent past. In response, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf rushed to Qatar’s defense, claiming it had an important, positive role in finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Qatar’s funding for Islamist terrorist organizations all over the world is an open secret known to every global intelligence agency, including the CIA. It was exposed by Wikileaks, which clearly showed that funds from Qatar were transferred to al-Qaida. Qatar also funds the terrorist movements opposing the Assad regime in Syria, such as the Al-Nusra Front, encourages anti-Egyptian terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula and within Egypt itself, and is involved in Islamic terrorism in Africa and other locations. It accompanies its involvement in terrorism targeting Israel and Egypt (through the Muslim Brotherhood) with vicious and inflammatory propaganda on its Al-Jazeera TV channel.

Qatar also spends millions of dollars supporting the Islamic Movement in Israel, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. The Islamic Movement is responsible for ongoing acts of provocation on the Temple Mount and in Judea and Samaria, and incites the entire Islamic world against Israel, claiming that the Jews are trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with the Jewish Temple. The incitement continued even as the Islamic Movement’s sister movement, Hamas, fired rockets at Jerusalem and endangered both the mosques on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

As Qatar’s representative, the Islamic Movement, which has not yet been outlawed in Israel, contributed to Hamas what it could during Operation Protective Edge by instigating riots, blocking roads and seeking to foment a third intifada which, according to the plan, would be joined by Israeli Arabs to augment the deaths of thousands of Israelis killed by rockets and the mass murders through the attack tunnels planned for the eve of the Jewish New Year.

In his recent UN speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebutted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ accusations of Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinian people. He reminded his audience of Hamas’ use of Gazan civilians as human shields and of the rockets fired to attack specifically civilian Israeli targets. Unfortunately, he did not mention the Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of all the Jews. The fact that Abbas now heads a national consensus government in which Hamas is a full partner commits him to the slaughter of the Jewish people – a true genocide – and it is to the disgrace of the international community that such an individual was permitted to address the UN instead of being tried for war crimes.

In fact, the similarities between Hamas and ISIS are clearly stated in the Hamas charter, which defines Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamic movement. One of its objectives is to fight “infidel Christian imperialism” and its Zionist emissaries in Israel in order to impose the Sharia, Islamic religious law, on the world. According to the charter’s paragraph 7, Hamas’ intention is to slaughter every Jew, as ordered by Muhammad and those who accept his legacy. That is the basis for the threat issued by ISIS “Caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that under his leadership, Islam will “drown America in blood.”

Throughout its history, Hamas, like ISIS, has been committed to the concept of the global caliphate, which it plans to help construct by creating its own Islamic emirate on the ruins of the State of Israel. Since its founding, Hamas has attacked Israel and murdered thousands of its citizens exactly as ISIS has attacked and murdered “infidels.” They share the same slogans, with “There is no god but Allah” and “Allah, Prophet Muhammad” inscribed on their flags and headbands. Hamas terrorists have blown themselves up in Israel’s coffee shops, hotels, restaurants, buses, malls and markets, wherever there are large concentrations of civilians. The way Hamas executed suspected collaborators during the final days of Operation Protective Edge bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida execution of Daniel Pearl and the ISIS beheading of James Foley and others.

In the decades during which Hamas has carried out a continual series of deadly terrorist attacks against Israel, wearing the same “Allah, Prophet, Muhammad” headbands as ISIS terrorists, the international community rarely voices its support for Israel, or takes into account that by defending itself Israel also defends the West, which has failed to understand that “political Islam” inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood was setting up shop in the free world’s backyard and that the ticking bomb was set to go off sooner than expected. The West has not clearly condemned Qatar for openly supporting Hamas and its terrorist activities against Israel or demanded that it stop.

While Israel responded to Hamas’ rocket attacks on civilian targets to keep thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Israeli civilians from being killed, the international community demanded “proportionality.” That requirement kept Israel from responding as it should have and encouraged Hamas to fire ever more rockets at “military targets” such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When Israel built its security fence to keep Hamas suicide bombers from infiltrating into Israeli territory to blow themselves up in crowds of civilians, the international community opposed it, rushed to embrace the Palestinians’ vocabulary of “racism” and “apartheid,” and willingly played into the hands of Hamas and Abbas. This reaction occurred although Israel is the only truly democratic country in the Middle East, where Jews and Arabs can live in peace without “apartheid.”

Today President Obama says he “underestimated” the threat posed by ISIS, while Israel has been warning the world of extremist military Islam for at least a decade, as Netanyahu warned the world of a nuclear Iran in his UN speech.

The international community has been curiously silent about the genuine apartheid in the Arab states neighboring Israel. There, descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees, by now in their fourth generation, still live in refugee camps, do not have citizenship, and are excluded from jobs and social benefits. Israel, however, absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, many of them destitute, who fled Europe and were expelled from the Arab countries when the state was founded, and were given citizenship and enjoy full rights, as do the Arabs who remained in Israel after the War of Independence.

Israel, which has nothing against the Palestinian people, would like to see the Gaza Strip rebuilt for both humanitarian reasons and to give Hamas something to lose. Radical Islamic elements around the globe, however, including Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaida, the Al-Nusra Front and Hizballah, all financed by Qatar, do not want to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved. They all have the same global agenda, based on fueling the conflict to unite Islam around it, under their leadership.

Therefore, Qatar continues to support global Islamic terrorism. On Sept. 13, Qatar paid the Al-Nusra Front a ransom of $20 million to free abducted UN soldiers from Fiji. The world praised Qatar for its philanthropy, but in effect, it was a brilliant act of manipulation and fraud, both filling the Al-Nusra Front’s coffers and representing itself as the Fijians’ savior. Qatar is using the same underhanded trick in the Gaza Strip. After sending Hamas millions of dollars to fund its anti-Israeli terrorist industry, itpledged $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip during last weekend’s conference in Cairo.

While the world hopes Operation Protective Edge was the last round of Palestinian-Israeli violence, senior Hamas figures reiterate their position of gearing up to fight Israel again. Not one Hamas leader is willing to agree to a full merger with the Palestinian Authority to establish a genuine unified Palestinian leadership. Hamas rejects even the idea of disarming or demilitarization as part of an agreement to rebuild the Gaza Strip and promote the peace process. Unfortunately, no one has suggested it as a pre- condition for any U.S. dollars that will be contributed to the reconstruction of Gaza.

All that is left now is to hope that the billions of dollars poured into the Gaza Strip for its rebuilding will be accompanied by the disarmament of Hamas and the establishment of an honest mechanism for overseeing the money and materials Egypt and Israel allow into the Gaza Strip. It is imperative that they not be diverted to rebuild Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and tunnels, or to bribe UNRWA officials to look the other way, as has happened so often in the past. There is every indication that only Hamas and Qatar know whether there is anything to justify that hope.

Dr. Reuven Berko has a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, is a commentator on Israeli Arabic TV programs, writes for the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel’s top experts on Arab affairs.

Iran says it will strike if Islamic State nears border

September 27, 2014

Iran says it will strike if Islamic State nears border

Military commander warns of attacks ‘deep into Iraqi territory’ unless militants keep their distance, as coalition strikes Syria

By AFP and AP September 27, 2014, 3:17 pm

via Iran says it will strike if Islamic State nears border | The Times of Israel.

 

Iranian soldiers salute from a tank during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of Iran’s war with Iraq
(1980-88) in Tehran, on September 22, 2014 (Photoc credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP)

 

Iran will attack Islamic State group jihadists inside Iraq if they advance near the border, ground forces commander General Ahmad Reza Pourdestana said in comments published on Saturday.

“If the terrorist group (IS) comes near our borders, we will attack deep into Iraqi territory and we will not allow it to approach our border,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Pourdestana as saying.

The Sunni extremists of IS control a large territory north of Baghdad, including in Diyala province, which borders Shiite Iran.

The United States launched air strikes on IS targets in Iraq in August and has since widened them to Syria, where the jihadist group has its headquarters, as part of an international coalition to crush the group.

Iran is a close ally of the Shiite-led government in Iraq and has been unusually accepting of US military action in Iraq against the jihadists.

It has provided support to both the Iraqi government and Iraqi Kurdish forces fighting the jihadists and has dispatched weapons and military advisers.

But Tehran, a close ally of the Damascus government, has criticised air strikes on Syria, saying they would not help restore stability in the region.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said he rejected a US offer to join the international coalition it has been building against the jihadists.

On Saturday activists said the American-led coalition launched airstrikes on IS positions including wheat silos in the Syria’s east.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes targeted compounds for the Islamic State group in the central province of Homs and the northern region of Raqqa.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the Saturday strikes hit the eastern province of Deir el-Zour as well as Raqqa.

The LCC also said the coalition targeted wheat silos west of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour.

The coalition, which began its aerial campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria early Tuesday, aims to roll back and ultimately crush the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border.

SHOCKING: Barack Obama’s Implied Pact With ISIS-Backed Terror Group

September 26, 2014

SHOCKING: Barack Obama’s Implied Pact With ISIS-Backed Terror Group

via SHOCKING: Barack Obama’s Implied Pact With ISIS-Backed Terror Group – UlstermanBooks.com.

 

Will this be given the attention it deserves? Many already know Barack Obama’s allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood, but few likely are aware of a pact signed in 2013 that directly linked the Obama White House, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the ISIS-backed Egyptian terror organization known as Ansar all-Bayt.

Reader, please share this with others you know.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE

The above image is the recent work of  Ansar all-Bayt, an ISIS-backed Egyptian terror group who beheaded four men suspected of spying for Israel.

In December of 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood signed a pact with Ansar all-Bayt, a Sunni fundamentalist terror organization with direct links to al-Qaeda and is also suspected of receiving significant funding from Saudi Arabia.

The above photo was taken inside the White House in April of 2014. It shows Barack Obama meeting with Anas Altikriti, a top Washington D.C. lobbyist for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose father heads the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq. It was shortly after this meeting that ISIS forces began pushing into Iraq.

Just prior to his now infamous 2009 speech in Cairo, whispers generated of senior adviser Valerie Jarrett’s insistence that no fewer than ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood be invited to attend the speech. This demand was largely ignored by most news agencies, but the Atlantic did provide this blurb:

Various Middle Eastern news sources report that the administration insisted that at least 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s chief opposition party, be allowed to attend his speech in Cairo on Thursday.

When then-head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, was brought to power in Egypt shortly after Barack Obama came to power in the United States, the Obama government was quick to push for an expansive arms deal for the Muslim Brotherhood regime.

And then there are these more recent (and shocking) words in praise of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood from Barack Obama himself, where the president states how Muslims have contributed to America’s “national fabric”:

As you listen to the words of praise for the Muslim Brotherhood by Barack Obama, look again at the photo of the decapitated bodies above. Those deaths were carried out by an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.  ISIS itself is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Our own media refused to report the fact that in 2013, Egyptian lawyers  actually charged Barack Obama for crimes against humanity for his support of what they deem a brutal terrorist organization. Those lawyers are correct in their linking of the Obama administration with the current and horrific violence now spreading throughout the Middle East and if the terrorists succeed, to your own backyard as well.

 

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ISIS Crisis: “THE LIE IS BEFORE YOU, AND THE GRAVE IN FRONT OF YOU.”

Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S. :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

September 25, 2014

Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S.

by Ravi Kumar

IPT News  September 16, 2014

via Syrian Brotherhood Stands Nearer to ISIS Than to U.S. :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

While the United States tries to build a coalition of Arab allies to join the fight against the terrorist group ISIS, now known as the Islamic State, one group which stands to benefit directly is coming out against Western intervention and expressing unity with other radical jihadists.

A Syrian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman says attacks on the Islamic State by the United States and its allies are not the answer.

“Our battle with ISIS is an intellectual battle,” Omar Mushaweh said in a statement published Sept. 9 on the Syrian Brotherhood’s official website, “and we wish that some of its members get back to their sanity, we really distinguish between those in ISIS who are lured and brainwashed and they might go back to the path of righteous, and between those who has foreign agendas and try to pervert the way of the [Syrian] revolution.”

Rather, the first target for any Western intervention should be dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Mushaweh asserts, according to a translation of his comments by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Such comments should reinforce Western concerns about the Syrian Brotherhood, whose members are prominent among the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of the supposedly moderate factions in the Syrian civil war which receive U.S. training and weapons. And it shows the challenge of finding truly moderate allies on the ground in Syria. Compared to ISIS, the FSA might be considered moderate. Then again, ISIS was so ruthlessly violent that al-Qaida disavowed the group in February.

In addition, the Syrian Brotherhood openly mourned the death last week of a commander in Ahrar Al Asham, a Syrian faction with ties to al-Qaida.

Mushaweh’s views about the U.S. intervention are shared by other Brotherhood members. Another Brotherhood leader, Zuher Salem, minimized the ISIS threat by comparing current American rhetoric to that which preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion.

“All of these tales that are being told by America about the primitive, terrorist and threatening nature of the Islamic State are similar to the tales that have been told in regard to the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and about the crimes against humanity,” Salem wrote in an article published Sept. 13 by the Arab East Center, a think tank associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. “It is trifling to race with others to condemn terrorism and the killing of the American journalist, because we should be aware the aim of this anti ISIS coalition is to pave the way for an Iranian hegemony over the region.”

Yusuf Al Qaradawi, an influential Brotherhood cleric living in Qatar, joined in criticizing the American military campaign against ISIS. “I totally disagree with [ISIS] ideology and means,” he wrote on Twitter, “but I don’t at all accept that the one to fight it is America, which does not act in the name of Islam but rather in its own interests, even if blood is shed.”

While both are Sunni Muslim movements, each seeking to establish a global Islamic Caliphate, ISIS views the Brotherhood as too passive, while the Brotherhood sees ISIS as being unnecessarily violent in pursuing its aims.

The two have common enemies, however, including the ruling regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, which have worked to cripple the Brotherhood, and which ISIS considers infidel regimes which should be toppled in pursuit of a broader Islamic Caliphate.

In another indication the Syrian Brotherhood is no moderating force, it issued a statement on its website Sept. 10 mourning the killing of Ahrar Al Asham leader Hassan Aboud in a suicide bombing.

“Syria has given a  constellation of the best of its sons, and the bravest leaders of the Islamic front and Ahrar Al Sham,” the head of the Brotherhood’s political bureau, Hassan Al Hashimi, said in the statement translated by the IPT. “We consider them Martyrs.”

Ahrar Al Sham is a radical group co-founded by Abu Khaled al-Suri, who was al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s designated representative in Syria. Al-Suri was killed in February in a suicide bombing believed to be carried out by ISIS.

Aboud made clear his ideological links to al-Qaida clear in a July 2013 Twitter post. “May God have mercy on the Mujahid Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. He was a scholar of Jihad and the morality.” Azzam was considered a mentor to Osama bin Laden, and pushed conspiracy theories involving Jewish and Christian plots against Islam.

The Brotherhood official mourning Aboud, Al Hashimi, has visited the United States a couple of times since the Syrian civil war started.

 

He spoke at the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in northern Virginia on Nov. 17, 2013, as part of a program organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). The SETF has worked closely with Muslim Brotherhood members and some of its officials have expressed anti-Semitic statements and solidarity with Hamas.

Still, the SETF has partnered with the State Department to implement training projects in Syria. Last December, the SETF’s executive director endorsed working with a coalition of Syrian opposition groups called the Islamic Front, even though several entities involved, including Ahrar Al-Sham, had fought with ISIS and the radical Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front. Four Islamic Front affiliates also endorsed a declaration calling for “the rule of sharia and making it the sole source of legislation” in a post-Assad Syria.

The announcement of the event was distributed to the Dar Al Hijrah mailing list, but without mentioning that Al Hashimi is the head of the political bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood.