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United Nations: ISIS Has 34 Affiliates Worldwide

February 7, 2016

United Nations: ISIS Has 34 Affiliates Worldwide, Clarion Project, February 7, 2016

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By the end of last year, 34 organizations had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said February 5. That number will continue to rise in 2016, he warned.

“The recent expansion of the [Daesh] sphere of influence across west and north Africa, the Middle East and south and southeast Asia demonstrates the speed and scale at which the gravity of the threat has evolved in just 18 months,” he said.

The secretary general added ISIS is the wealthiest terrorist organization, with revenues of up to $500 million in 2015.

The private counter-terrorism company IntelCenter puts the number of affiliates and supporters at 43:

1.       al-I’tisam of the Koran and Sunnah [Sudan] – 1 Aug. 2014 – Support

2.       Abu Sayyaf Group [Philippines] – 25 Jun. 2014 – Support

3.       Ansar al-Khilafah [Philippines] – 14 Aug. 2014 – Allegiance

4.       Ansar al-Tawhid in India [India] – 4 Oct. 2014 – Allegiance

5.       Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) [Phillippines] – 13 Aug. 2014 – Support

6.       Bangsmoro Justice Movement (BJM) [Phillippines] – 11 Sep. 2014 – Support

7.       Jemaah Islamiyah [Philippines] 27 Apr. 2015 – Allegiance

8.       al-Huda Battalion in Maghreb of Islam [Algeria] – 30 Jun. 2014 – Allegiance

9.       The Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria [Algeria] – 30 Sep. 2014 – Allegiance

10.   al-Ghurabaa [Algeria] – 7 Jul. 2015 – Allegiance

11.   Djamaat Houmat ad-Da’wa as-Salafiya (DHDS) [Algeria] 19 Sep. 2015 – Allegiance

12.   al-Ansar Battalion [Algeria] 4 Sep. 2015 – Allegiance

13.   Jundullah [Pakistan] – 17 Nov. 2014 – Support

14.   Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) [Pakistan/Uzbekistan] Video – 31 Jul. 2015 – Allegiance

15.   Tehreek-e-Khilafat [Pakistan] – 9 Jul. 2014 – Allegiance

16.   Leaders of the Mujahid in Khorasan (ten former TTP commanders) [Pakistan] – 10 Jan. 2015 – Allegiance

17.   Islamic Youth Shura Council [Libya] – 22 Jun. 2014 – Support

18.   Jaish al-Sahabah in the Levant [Syria] – 1 Jul. 2014 – Allegiance

19.   Martyrs of al-Yarmouk Brigade [Syria] – Dec. 2014 – Part of IS – Allegiance

20.   Faction of Katibat al-Imam Bukhari [Syria] – 29 Oct. 2014 – Allegiance

21.   Jamaat Ansar Bait al-Maqdis [Egypt] – 30 Jun. 2014 – Allegiance

22.   Jund al-Khilafah in Egypt [Egypt] – 23 Sep. 2014 – Allegiance

23.   Liwa Ahrar al-Sunna in Baalbek [Lebanon] – 30 Jun. 2014 – Allegiance

24.   Islamic State Libya (Darnah) [Libya] – 9 Nov. 2014 – Allegiance

25.   Lions of Libya [Libya] (Unconfirmed) – 24 Sep. 2014 – [Support/Allegiance]

26.   Shura Council of Shabab al-Islam Darnah [Libya] – 6 Oct. 2014 – Allegiance

27.   Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT) [Indonesia] – Aug. 2014 – Allegiance

28.   Mujahideen Indonesia Timor (MIT) [Indonesia] – 1 Jul. 2014 – Allegiance

29.   Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem (MSCJ) [Egypt] – 1 Oct. 2014 – Support

30.   Okba Ibn Nafaa Battalion [Tunisia] – 20 Sep. 2014 – Support

31.   Jund al-Khilafah in Tunisia [Tunisia] – 31 Mar. 2015 – Allegiance

32.   Central Sector of Kabardino-Balakria of the Caucasus Emirate (CE) [Russia] – 26 Apr. 2015 – Allegiance

33.   Mujahideen of Tunisia of Kairouan [Tunisia] 18 May 2015 – Allegiance

34.   Mujahideen of Yemen [Yemen] – 10 Nov. 2014 – Allegiance

35.   Supporters for the Islamic State in Yemen [Yemen] – 4 Sep. 2014 – Allegiance

36.   al-Tawheed Brigade in Khorasan [Afghanistan] – 23 Sep. 2014 – Allegiance

37.   Heroes of Islam Brigade in Khorasan [Afghanistan] – 30 Sep. 2014 – Allegiance

38.   Supporters of the Islamic State in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia] – 2 Dec. 2014 – Support

39.   Ansar al-Islam [Iraq] – 8 Jan. 2015 – Allegiance

40.   Boko Haram [Nigeria] – 7 Mar. 2015 – Allegiance

41.   The Nokhchico Wilayat of the Caucasus Emirate (CE) [Russia] – 15 Jun. 2015 – Allegiance

42.   al-Ansar Battalion [Algeria] – 4 Sep. 2015 – Allegiance

43.   al-Shabaab Jubba Region Cell Bashir Abu Numan [Somalia]- 7 Dec. 2015 – Allegiance

Here Ban Ki-moon summarizes the U.N.’s position on ISIS:

 

Categories: Ban Ki-Moon, Islamic State - what's next, United Nations
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The Really Insane Thing About Ban Ki-Moon’s Speech

January 28, 2016

The Really Insane Thing About Ban Ki-Moon’s Speech, Algemeiner, Elder of Ziyon, January 27, 2016

(H/t The Jewish Press

Ban-Ki-Moon-two-state-solution

— DM)

Ban-Ki-Moon-270x300United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, pictured, this week addressed the Security Council “on the situation in the Middle East.” Photo: World Economic Forum.

Yes, it is outrageous that Ban Ki Moon essentially called terror attacks a natural result of “occupation,” and Netanyahu was right in slamming him for it.

But that wasn’t the strangest part of the speech.

The title of Ban Ki-Moon’s talk was “Secretary-General’s remarks to the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East.”

There were 52 paragraphs in the speech according to the official UN record.

Of those 52, three were about Lebanon. Two referred to Syria – one about refugees and one about the Golan.

The entire rest of the speech was about Israel and the Palestinians.

The Secretary General of the UN gives an overview of the Middle East without mentioning Syrian atrocities, without mentioning Iraqi instability, without even mentioning ISIS.

Nothing about Iran. Nothing about Saudi Arabia, which is killing more civilians in Yemen than Israel did in Gaza. Nothing about Egypt or Libya. Not a word about Kurds.

On the contrary – Ban Ki Moon implied that if only Israel would just give some more concessions, then the rest of the region would be inspired to make peace. “As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty.”

The word “obsession” hardly does justice to the single-minded Israel fetish at the UN.

But, yes, we must also be angry at the Secretary General’s justification for terror.

Categories: Ban Ki-Moon, Israel, Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, United Nations
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UN Plan to Prevent “Violent Extremism” Ignores its Primary Cause

January 19, 2016

UN Plan to Prevent “Violent Extremism” Ignores its Primary Cause, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, January 19, 2016

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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is operating from the same playbook as President Obama when it comes to addressing the threat of global jihad. They both deny that such a religiously-based threat exists. Just like Obama, Ban Ki-moon uses the euphemism “violent extremism,” without linking it to its primary ideological source – Islam.

The global terrorist scourge is driven by Islamic supremacy and the jihadist war against the “infidels” that are embedded in sharia law. That is not to say that the jihadists are the only terrorists in the world. However, to diffuse responsibility by contending that violent extremism is found in all faiths ignores the fact that the only global terrorist network threatening our way of life today is bound together by the teachings of Islam.

In the Secretary General’s remarks to the UN General Assembly on January 15th introducing his “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism,” he said that “the vast majority of victims worldwide are Muslims.” Obama said essentially the same thing last February at his Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, lamenting that it is “especially Muslims, who are the ones most likely to be killed.”

Both Ban Ki-moon and President Obama omitted to say that the killers are also primarily Muslims. Moreover, they left out entirely any mention of the ongoing genocide being conducted by Muslims in the name of Allah against Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East.

When I asked the spokesperson for the Secretary General why the Secretary General did not acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of global terrorists today are Islamists, the spokesperson responded that “the Secretary‑General’s focus is not on targeting or pointing finger at one ethnic group, one religious group, or people who claim to act in the name of a particular religion.”

This begs the question as to why the Secretary General took pains to assert that Muslims constitute the majority of terrorists’ victims but refused to acknowledge that the vast majority of perpetrators are also Muslims.

The Secretary General’s Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism describes what it calls the “drivers of violent extremism.”  These drivers include, according to the UN document, lack of socioeconomic opportunities, marginalization and discrimination, poor governance and violations of human rights, prolonged and unresolved conflicts, radicalization in prisons, collective grievances, and exploitation of social media.

Obama offered essentially the same explanation for the growth of violent extremism put forth by Ban Ki-moon. A key problem, he said, was lack of economic opportunity that trapped people –especially young people – “in impoverished communities.”

Obama added: “When people are oppressed, and human rights are denied — particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines — when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism.”

Ban Ki-moon and President Obama both have argued that Islam itself is blameless. It is, in Ban Ki-moon’s words, the “distortion and misuse of beliefs” that are to blame. At his February 2015 Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, President Obama called out what he described as “the warped ideologies espoused by terrorists like al Qaeda and ISIL, especially their attempt to use Islam to justify their violence.”

However, the truth is that Islam itself contains the seeds for the violence that is such a prominent part of jihad. Jihadists using violence as a tactic to impose Islam as the world’s only “legitimate” belief system are following the path laid down by Prophet Muhammed himself and his early followers, according to their literal words and acts.

The proposed actions to address the problem of “violent extremism,” both Ban Ki-moon and Obama agree, include better education, more opportunities for women, better governance, and respect for human rights including freedom of expression and freedom of religious belief.  The UN Secretary General and President Obama base their common strategy on their shared utopian belief that peoples from every country and culture embrace a common set of “universal” human rights, as expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration’s preamble states:  “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite its enlightened vision of the inherent dignity and fundamental rights of all human beings, is far from being a truly universally accepted creed. Muslims reject it to the extent that it conflicts with sharia law.

While Muslim member states of the United Nations, with the notable exception of Saudi Arabia, signed the Universal Declaration, they disavow its Western, secular-based principles. Islamists refuse to be ruled by any human rights document that deviates from what they regard as the divinely-inspired sharia law.

As the Islamic response to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation foreign ministers adopted The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam in 1990. After reciting a litany of human rights that it pledges to protect, the Cairo Declaration subjects all of its protections to the requirements of sharia law. “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.” (Article 25)

By making Islamic law the sole authority for defining the scope of human rights, the Muslims’ Cairo Declaration sanctions limits on freedom of expression, discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and a prohibition against a Muslim’s conversion from Islam. Such restrictions on freedoms directly contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, the leading Muslim majority countries today representing the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam respectively, may be at odds with one another regarding certain sectarian and geopolitical issues. However, they both purport to govern according to sharia law, which is used to justify their religious intolerance, brutal suppression of dissent, misogyny and capital punishment for blasphemy, apostasy, adultery and homosexuality. It is Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism which has helped fuel the jihadists inside and outside of Saudi Arabia seeking to forcibly purify Islam from the influence of “infidels.” And Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, as it seeks to fulfill the vision of Ayatollah Khomeini, the late founder of the Iranian Islamic revolution, to kill the infidels and ensure “that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.”

Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which he claims is reflective of a “culture of dominance.” Instead, he said “the answer is return to Islam, and recourse to Divine revelation.” He called for the use of “Islamic sources (the Quran and the Sunnah) in legal matters.” Presumably, what the Supreme Leader described as the “Islamic mode of thinking in society” would explain the Islamic Republic of Iran’s arbitrary imprisonment, torture and the killing of political dissidents and members of minority groups. The “Islamic sources in legal matters” evidently serve as the basis for the regime’s discriminatory laws against women, among other repressive laws.

In 2013, Iran was rewarded by the UN for its vows of global conquest with a seat on the General Assembly’s disarmament committee. Last year Iran was rewarded for its horrendous record of abuses against women with membership on the executive board of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. And as of January 16, 2016, Iran has been welcomed back into the international community with the lifting of sanctions and the unfreezing of assets worth approximately $150 billion.

The Saudi Sheikh Saleh Al-Lehadan, head of the Supreme Judiciary Council, expressed back in 2008 the religious intolerance that lies at the heart of the leading Sunni country’s practice of Islam: “After getting rid of the Jews in our Arab land, we must turn to the Christians. They have three options: either they convert to Islam, or leave, or pay Jizia (protection taxes).” With the help of the Islamic State and al Qaeda that receive funding from Saudi Arabia, this ambition is on its way to being realized, and even expanded to reach throughout the Middle East and beyond.

The same Saudi sheikh and head of the Supreme Judiciary Council also said: “Women who are raped by men are themselves to blame. They provoke men by the way they dress or walk.”

Last year Saudi Arabia was rewarded for its horrendous human rights record with a seat and leadership position on the UN Human Rights Council.

Coddling the leading jihad exporting countries and pretending that sharia law can ever be reconciled with so-called “universal” human rights values will render all plans of action to prevent “violent extremism” an utter failure.

Categories: Iran - human rights, Islam and human rights, Islamic terrorism, Obama and Islam, Saudi Arabia - Human rights, United Nations, Violent extremism
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North Korea and Iran: The Nuclear Duo

January 8, 2016

North Korea and Iran: The Nuclear Duo, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, January 8, 2016

(With the Iran Scam’s sanctions relief, Iran will soon have lots more money to outsource development of nuclear weapons to North Korea. North Korea desperately needs foreign currency and will be delighted to help, as it has done in the past and, apparently, continues to do. — DM)

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There is no reason to believe that, as a result of the deal Iran is already sidestepping, Iran will suddenly stop all dealings with North Korea with regard to both countries’ nuclear programs. The Obama administration and the United Nations upon which it relies ignore the close relationship between the two rogue nations at the world’s peril.

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North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6th, which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. Despite some skepticism as to North Korea’s claim that it had actually tested a hydrogen bomb, the Obama administration acknowledged that North Korea had indeed tested some sort of nuclear device. The administration condemned North Korea’s latest testing as a violation of a series of past United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear armed state, and actions such as this latest test only strengthen our resolve,” declared Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mr. Kerry is a bit late with his declaration. North Korea has had an active nuclear arms program for nearly a decade and has conducted three of its four nuclear tests during President Obama’s time in office. None of the sanctions contained in the Security Council resolutions have stopped North Korea from thumbing its nose at the so-called “international community” and conducting as many nuclear and missile tests as it wishes. Kerry’s declaration begs the question – “resolve” to do what? Pass yet another Security Council resolution with a few more symbolic sanctions and some additional travel restrictions on senior North Korean officials?

The Obama administration’s claim of “resolve” in dealing effectively with nuclear threats rings hollow. Its idea of what “resolve” means was demonstrated by the loophole-ridden nuclear deal with Iran, which contains no safeguards against Iran’s cooperation with North Korea on nuclear technology and development. No doubt the administration would offer North Korea a similar deal if its leader Kim Jong-un were as crafty as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in lulling President Obama and Kerry into a false sense of security.

Moreover, rather than work closely with China to maximize its leverage in defusing North Korea’s nuclear threat, the administration chose to prioritize climate change in its relationship with China above all other issues.

The administration’s solution to the North Korea problem is to double down on its failed strategy of relying principally on the UN for concerted “international” action. It joined Japan, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, in calling for the December 6th emergency session. After about two hours of closed door consultations, the Security Council issued a press statement condemning the test and vowing further unspecified measures in response:

“The members of the Security Council strongly condemned this test, which is a clear violation of Security Council resolutions1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), and 2094 (2013) and of the non-proliferation regime, and therefore a clear threat to international peace and security continues to exist. The members of the Security Council also recalled that they have previously expressed their determination to take ‘further significant measures’ in the event of another DPRK nuclear test, and in line with this commitment and the gravity of this violation, the members of the Security Council will begin to work immediately on such measures in a new Security Council resolution.”

Even if Russia and China were to come around and support another resolution under the enforcement provisions of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, it is hard to believe that it will make any difference. Before the emergency Security Council meeting even began, Russian UN Ambassador Churkin was already lowering expectations, saying softly to reporters: “Cool heads, cool heads” and “proportionate response.”

North Korea regards the UN Security Council, and the Obama administration for that matter, with about as much contempt as Iran does. Indeed, all North Korea’s leaders have had to do is look at how Iran has been treated when it behaves badly. Iran was rewarded with a deal that merely postpones its nuclear arms program in return for the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of many billions of dollars. Moreover, Iran suffered no consequences to speak of from its recent violations of the Security Council resolutions prohibiting it from developing or testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The Security Council held meetings but did nothing. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last December, “Beyond having Security Council discussions on the matter there’s been no follow-on action. Discussions are a form of U.N. action.”

For its part, the Obama administration put off the imposition of any separate U.S. sanctions it had been considering in response to Iran’s missile launchings as soon as the Iranians claimed that any such sanctions would violate President Obama’s “holy grail” nuclear deal.

The United Nations Security Council, as well as the Obama administration, tend to compartmentalize flashpoints erupting in different regions of the world. They refuse to acknowledge that Iran and North Korea have long been joined at the hip when it comes to the development of nuclear material for bombs and ballistic missiles capable of delivering them.

The Security Council holds separate meetings on Iran and North Korea, as if their respective nuclear activities have been completely unrelated to each other. And, as demonstrated by the following exchange between a correspondent and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest at the January 6th daily press briefing, the Obama administration is turning a blind eye to the dangerous risk of continuing cooperation between Iran and North Korea:

“Q: You mentioned Iran earlier, and I’m wondering if there’s a bit of sleight of hand there from the Iranians’ perspective — meaning they’re trying to, on the one hand, work with the international community to have sanctions relief, but on the other hand, it’s been widely reported that they’ve been working with the North Koreans, perhaps even using them as a proxy to continue development of their own nuclear ambition. Does the White House understand that view?

MR. EARNEST:  I can’t speak to the veracity of those claims.

Iran and North Korea have been cooperating for decades on nuclear technology. As Ilan Berman, a leading expert on the Middle East and Iran, wrote last August in the National Journal, “over the past three decades, Iran and the Stalinist regime of the Kim dynasty in North Korea have erected a formidable alliance—the centerpiece of which is cooperation on nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated during an April 2015 interview that North Korea and Iran could still be cooperating to develop a nuclear weapon. Moreover, according to an assessment of “Iran-North Korea-Syria Ballistic Missile and Nuclear Cooperation” published by the Congressional Research Service last May, “U.S. intelligence officials have expressed concern that North Korea might export its nuclear technology or fissile material.”

Iran “may still rely on Pyongyang for certain materials for producing Iranian ballistic missiles, Iran’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding,” the Congressional Research Service report added.

North Korea has also conducted several tests involving nuclear explosive devices, a technology in which Iran has reportedly shown interest and would be in a position to procure from North Korea.

In short, rebutting the claims by the Obama administration that its nuclear deal with Iran cuts off all its pathways to the achievement of a nuclear weapon capability, the title of Mr. Berman’s National Journal article says it all – “North Korea: Iran’s Pathway to a Nuclear Weapon.”

There is no reason to believe that, as a result of the deal Iran is already sidestepping, Iran will suddenly stop all dealings with North Korea with regard to both countries’ nuclear programs. The Obama administration and the United Nations upon which it relies ignore the close relationship between the two rogue nations at the world’s peril.

Categories: Iran - North Korea, Iran scam, North Korean nukes, Obama and Iran, United Nations
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Iran Executes Three Iranians Every Day; The West Rewards It.

December 30, 2015

Iran Executes Three Iranians Every Day; The West Rewards It. Gatestone Institute, Judith Bergman, December 30, 2015

♦ “Death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality. They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or for acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation” — From a July 2015 Amnesty International report.

♦ How ironic that Europeans have no problem stuffing themselves with syrupy Iranian dates exported by this regime, knowing full well that there are thousands of prisoners are being tortured in Iran while awaiting their executions.

♦ Amnesty International reports that in the fall of 2015, cartoonist Atena Farghadani was forced to undergo a “virginity and pregnancy test” prior to her trial. The charge? “Illegitimate sexual relations,” for having shaken hands with her lawyer.

♦ Iran nevertheless won a top seat on the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women in April 2014. Not a single UN member, not even the US, objected.

On the UN’s Human Rights Day, observed December 10, an Iranian woman was sentenced to death by stoning in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran is believed to have imposed death by stoning on at least 150 people, according to the International Committees against Execution and Stoning.

“Stoning,” Iranian human rights activist Shabnam Assadollahi said, “is an act of torture. There are 15 countries in which stoning is either practiced and authorized by law or tolerated. One of those 15 countries is Iran. The last known execution by stoning was in 2009. In Iran under the Islamic law, stonings, hangings, and executions are legal torture.

“In Islam under Sharia law, the stoning (Rajm) is commonly used as a form of capital punishment, called Hudud,” Assadollahi explained.

“Under the Islamic Law, it is the ordained penalty in cases of adultery committed by a married man or married woman with others who are not her/his legal partner. Stoning is carried out by a crowd of Muslims who follow the Sharia law by throwing stones (small and large) at a convicted person until she or he is killed. The international community must pressure Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and other countries where stoning is legally carried or tolerated. Why cannot the public loudly cry out and advocate for women oppressed by those regimes?”

Instead of cries of outrage, the West, in the wake of the nuclear “deal” Iran has not even signed, has been scrambling to ingratiate itself with the Iranian regime. Countries such as France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have barely been able to contain themselves at the prospect of doing business with them. It has been years since the Europeans could legally engage in trade with the murderous regime of the mullahs, who still cry, “Death to Israel, Death to America” — the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan’ — and they have not been wasting time.

In fact, the P5+1 negotiators (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) had just finished signing the “deal” with themselves, when Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, hurried himself and a group of representatives from German companies and industry groups onto a plane for a visit to Iran.

The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, who usually knows better, likewise, found it “… completely normal that after this historic deal was signed, France and Iran should restart normal relations.”

1407French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that it is “completely normal that after this historic [nuclear] deal was signed, France and Iran should restart normal relations.” Left, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif hugs Fabius at the close of nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 23, 2014. Right: A public execution in Iran.

Before the sanctions took effect in 2011, French companies such as Renault and Peugeot were making billions of euros from their involvement with Iran’s auto industry. Similarly, the French company Total was heavily involved in the oil sector. France was evidently not going to miss a beat in bringing this lucrative trade back to la République.

How ironic that the country of “liberté, egalité and fraternité” finds it “completely normal” to have normal diplomatic and trade relations with a country that treats its own citizens, especially women, worse than the mud under the mullah’s feet; that executes whoever disagrees with the regime, and that hangs homosexuals from cranes. How ironic that Europeans have no problem stuffing themselves with syrupy Iranian dates exported by this smiling regime, knowing full well that there are thousands of Iranian prisoners being tortured in Iranian prisons while awaiting their execution day.

Iranian authorities are believed to have executed 694 people between January 1 and July 15, 2015 — an average of three executions a day. Since the election of the “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, the number of executions has markedly gone up. According to a July 2015 Amnesty International report:

“Death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality. They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or for acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation.”

The report goes on to state that the majority of those put to death in 2015 were people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who were convicted on drug charges. “This is in direct breach of international law, which restricts the use of the death penalty to only the ‘most serious crimes’ – those involving intentional killing. Drug-related offences do not meet this threshold.”

Among those executed in Iran this year are members of ethnic and religious minorities convicted of “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth.” These include Kurdish political prisoners and Sunni Muslims. On August 26, 2015, Behrouz Alkhani, a 30-year-old man from Iran’s Kurdish minority, was executed despite awaiting the outcome of a Supreme Court appeal.

Iran is the second most prolific executioner in the world after China, according to Amnesty International’s latest global death penalty report.

Iran also tops the global list statistically for executioners of juvenile offenders, even though it is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which prohibit the imposition of the death penalty against persons who were below 18 years of age at the time of the crime, without exception. (Of course Iran was also a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it also violated repeatedly.) Iran continues to impose the death penalty against juvenile offenders, frequently deferring the execution until after they pass the age of 18. In 2015, at least four juvenile offenders are believed to have been executed: Javad Saberi, Vazir Amroddin, Samad Zahabi and Fatemeh Salbehi.

Iran is scheduled to be reviewed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child on January 11-12, 2016. The Committee has already expressed deep concerns about the use of death penalty against juvenile offenders and asked Iran to provide information on the progress and outcome of the cases of juvenile offenders undergoing re-trial.

Despite all the atrocities that Iran commits towards its citizens, women hold a special place of denigration and humiliation in Iranian society. Young women are reported brutally arrested by the thousand every week for not wearing a “proper hijab.” A woman in Iran is de facto first her father’s property, then after marriage, her husband’s property. According to the UN Secretary General’s February 2015 Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, child marriage is prevalent. The legal age of marriage for girls is 13; some as young as 9 may be married by permission of the court. In 2011, about 48,580 girls between the age of 10 and 14 were married; in 2012, there were at least 1,537 girls under the age of 10 who were reportedly married. Pedophilia is thereby widespread and legal.

Married women may not work, attend sporting events or leave the country without their husband’s permission. When arrested, they suffer unspeakable torture in prison. Rape is commonly used as torture in prison against both women and men.

Forced “virginity testing” is also commonly used in prison, a serious violation of international law. It violates women’s and girls’ human rights to physical integrity, dignity, privacy and right to be free from torture and cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. According to Amnesty International, satirical cartoonist Atena Farghadani, held in prison since January 2015, was sentenced in June 2015 to twelve years and nine months in prison for her peaceful activism, including meeting with families of political prisoners, and for drawing a satirical cartoon depicting legislators as monkeys, cows, and other animals. The cartoon was to protest a bill that sought to criminalize voluntary sterilization and restrict access to contraception and family planning services.

In December 2014, when Farghadani was out on bail, she released a video message on YouTube, detailing how female prison guards at Evin prison had beaten her, verbally abused her and forced her to strip naked for body searches. She was rearrested in January 2015, and in the fall of 2015 she was forced to undergo a “virginity and pregnancy test” prior to her trial. The charge? “Illegitimate sexual relations” for having shaken hands with her lawyer.

Iran nevertheless won a top seat on the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women in April 2014. Not a single UN member, not even the US, objected, to that election.

An exhaustive account of the atrocities that the Iranian regime continues to commit against its own people would require volumes. Nevertheless, the West, seems to remain unfazed in furthering its lucrative relations with the murderous regime.

Those politicians and executives scrambling to do business with the mullahs should realize that Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missiles can tomorrow be aimed at them. Those who comfort themselves with the thought that Iran only wants to annihilate Israel might do well to think again. Iran has tested a two-stage solid-fuel missile, the Sejjil-2, with a range of more than 2,000 km, allowing it to target southeastern Europe. In addition, Iran recently unveiled the Soumar cruise missile, reportedly a reverse-engineered version of the Russia’s Raduga Kh-55 — which was designed as a nuclear delivery system. It has a claimed range of 2,500-3,000 km.

Nevertheless, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has acceded to Iran’s demands toclose its 12-year investigation into whether Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program. The IAEA produced a report earlier this month that strongly suggested Iran did have a nuclear weapons program for the years up until 2003.

The West clearly not only fails to care about the plight of the Iranians — it does not even care about its own populations being within Iranian missile range.

Categories: Europe, France, Iran - human rights, Iran - sanctions relief, Iranian economy, Iranian nukes, Iranian prisons, United Nations
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Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims.

December 23, 2015

Islamic activists say 9/11 and San Bernardino were terrible — because of their effects on Muslims. National Review, Anne Bayefsky, December 22, 2015

Over at the United Nations, they are laying the groundwork for the 2016 American presidential election — on behalf of the Democratic party. The perceived golden ticket? Playing the victim card. Wild and repeated accusations are being hurled against the GOP of systematic racism, xenophobia, and, in particular, “Islamophobia.”

On December 18, 2015, the U.N. hosted two panels under the title “The Changing Dynamics of Islamophobia and Its Implications on Peaceful and Inclusive Societies.”

The predominant theme was victimhood. There were frequent mentions of 9/11, but not of the 2,977 who died, or their families. The alleged victims of 9/11 of interest to the U.N. gathering were the entirety of American Muslims. MuslimGirl.net editor Amani Al-Khatahtbeh told the U.N. audience: “I was in fourth grade when 9/11 happened. So I had to endure the height of Islamophobia during my formative years.” Wajahat Ali of Al Jazeera America said that 9/11 was “a baptism by fire. . . . As a result of that pain and trauma of 9/11, for my generation there is always a pre- and post-9/11.”

Each instance of radical Islamist terror was flipped the same way. Co-host Ufuk Gokcen, the U.N. representative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, had a long list of incidents bracketed by events in America: “9/11 terrorist attacks . . . and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The level that Islamophobia has reached, and its mainstreaming into media and political discourse, is terrifying us.”

Terrifying who?

The idea was repeated in another form by his co-host, Sally Kader, head of the U.S. Federation for Middle East Peace, an NGO. She told the receptive crowd: “The FBI census on all the hate crime has always been against Jews, and, of course, blacks, and now we top everything. It’s about Muslims.”

Actually, the FBI census for 2014, released November 16, 2015, still found that 57 percent of anti-religious hate crimes were motivated by “anti-Jewish bias” and that 16 percent of victims were the object of “anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.”

Then came the excuses. According to Joyce Dubensky, head of the Tanenbaum Center, “people talk about violent extremists and extremists as crazy. . . . I think that that’s an error. I think that’s a stereotype as well. They are also complex human beings, which is why we want to try to talk with them as well.”

One shudders to think of a meeting between Ms. Dubensky and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Scratch the surface of this latest batch of U.N. talking heads and the promotion of terrorism and anti-Semitism isn’t hard to find. The Muslimgirl.net site of Palestinian Al-Katahtbeh includes justifications of the “martyrdom” of Palestinian mothers and a drawing of the fashionable woman with a purse filled with knives, rocks, and a petrol bomb. Another speaker, journalist Haroon Moghul, wrote in the Huffington Post in January 2015 that he advocates terminating a Jewish state altogether: “A one-state solution . . . is the only option.”

Throughout the proceedings, one could have mistaken “impartial” U.N. New York headquarters for a Democratic political rally. Moghul was applauded for his political take on the GOP debate of December 15: “The Republican debate . . . was kind of terrifying and traumatizing,” and the GOP was “a political party that is increasingly indulging in open racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.”

Another crowd pleaser from the Al Jazeera America journalist was this: “If certain people with wavy hair became president . . . we might end up in concentration camps. We can brand it and call it Trump centers.”

So how did all this go down for the diplomat who represented the United States?

Here is Laurie Shestack Phipps when she took the microphone from the floor:

I’m from the U.S. Mission to the U.N., and I wanted to assure the audience and all the speakers that the U.S. government shares many of the concerns that you’ve expressed about the growing anti-Muslim discrimination in this country and around the world. . . . I did want to emphasize the position of the U.S. government very much in line with the focus of these two panels.

Remarkably, when this American diplomat could not manage to defend her country following hours of America-bashing — because her bosses don’t know the difference between humility and submission, or decorum and capitulation — she was put to shame by an Irish diplomat who could.

Speaking also from the floor, Michael Sanfey said:

Concerns were expressed for the state of American religious pluralism, but isn’t it still incredibly more pluralistic? Where is the religious pluralism in some of the Muslim-majority lands? It just seems to me there is no pluralism whatever. Couldn’t it help to combat Islamophobia if greater diversity was promoted in those lands where the churches [a]re absolutely forbidden?

The profoundly embarrassing spectacle makes the punch line perhaps less surprising.

Moderator Kader revealed to American taxpayers what happened to some of their half billion dollars that were used to renovate the U.N. in Turtle Bay. The event wrapped up on early Friday afternoon by announcing Friday prayers. It turns out that a part of the U.N. building has been taken over, in Kader’s words, for “Muslims to pray.”

No women allowed. Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Hillary and the U.N. A hell of a plan for 2016.

Categories: Democrats, Islam, Islam and women, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama's America, Republicans, United Nations
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The battles in N. Syria will determine the fate of the peace process

December 21, 2015

The battles in N. Syria will determine the fate of the peace process, DEBKAfile, December 21, 2015

Syria_Iraq_Kurdsweekly

The US-Russian plan, approved by the UN Security Council as the lever for activating a political process towards ending the five-year Syrian war, can only go so far towards its objectives. The process is not capable of halting the fighting or removing Bashar Assad from power; just the reverse: progress in the talks is heavily dependent on the state of play on the battlefields of the north while the Syrian dictator’s ouster is a fading issue.

The limitations and obstacles facing the UN-endorsed US-Russian plan are summed up here by DEBKAfile’s analysts:

1. The understanding reached by the Obama administration and the Kremlin in the past month was first conceived as a stopgap measure. It was never intended to bring the calamitous Syrian war to an end or remove Assad, but rather to provide a pretext to account for the expansion of Russia’s ground operation and gloss over America’s military deficiencies in the Syrian conflict. Taking it as carte blanche from Washington, President Vladimir Putin felt able to announce Saturday, Dec. 19, that “the Russian armed forces have not employed all of their capability in Syria and may use more military means there if necessary.”

2. President Barack Obama has stopped calling for Assad’s removal as the condition for ending the war and is silent on the expanding Russian military intervention. Obama and Putin have in fact developed a working arrangement whereby Putin goes ahead with military operations and Obama backs him up..

3. Almost unnoticed, on Dec. 17, the day before the Security Council passed its resolution for Syria, all the 12 US warplanes that were deployed a month earlier at the Turkish air base of Incirlik for air strikes in Syria were evacuated. This happened at around the same time as Russia deployed to Syria its Buk-M2-SA-17 Grizzly antiaircraft missile systems. The presence of this system would have endangered American pilots had US air strikes over Syria not been halted. The upshot of the two evidently coordinated moves was the US withdrawal of most of its military resources for striking the Islamic State forces in Syria and the handover of the arena to the Russian army and air force.

4. In another related development, Friday, Dec. 18 the German intelligence service, BDN, leaked news that it had renewed its contacts with the Assad regime’s intelligence services and German agents were now visiting Damascus regularly. The import of this change is that Berlin no longer relies on US intelligence briefings from Syria and, rather than turn to Moscow, it prefers to tap its own sources in the Syrian capital.

5. Washington and Moscow are still far apart on the shape of the transitional government mandated by the Security Council resolution

The Obama administration wants Assad to hand presidential powers over the military and of all security-related and intelligence bodies to the transitional government, which is to be charged with calling general and presidential elections from which Assad will be barred.

Putin won’t hear of this process. He insists on a transitional government being put in place and proving it can function before embarking on any discussion of its powers and areas of authority.

The two presidents agree that the transition will need at least two years, overlapping the Obama presidency by about a year and dropping the issue in the lap of his successor in the White House.

6. The US and Russia don’t see to eye to eye either on which Syrian opposition organizations should be represented in the transitional government and which portfolios to assign them. On this question, both Washington and Moscow are at odds with the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, which back some of the organizations labeled as terrorist by Moscow.

7. But it is abundantly clear that the Obama administration is ready to wash its hands of the Syrian rebel movement and most of all, abandon Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to give the Russians an open remit.

On Saturday, Dec. 19, Putin turned the screw again on Erdogan when he said he had no problem with the Turkish people, adding, “As for the current Turkish leadership, nothing is eternal.”

In support of Moscow, Obama meanwhile leaned hard on the Turkish president in a telephone conversation, to remove Turkish forces from northern Iraq. Ankara responded that Putin’s comment was not worth a response and denied hearing of any such US request.

Ankara may be feigning ignorance but it must realize by now that Moscow and Washington have joined forces to pus the Turkish military out of any involvement in northern Syria and Iraq.

8. This US-Russia collaboration against Turkey is having a dramatic effect on the war in northern Syria along the Turkish border. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report it opened the door to the secret deal between Washington and Moscow to divide the areas of influence in northern Syria between them – essentially assigning the Kurdish enclaves north of the Euphrates river and bordering on Iraq to American influence (see map), and the areas west of the Euphrates up to the Mediterranean to Russian control. This deal (first revealed by DEBKA Weekly 688 on Dec. 4) effectively squeezes Turkey out of any role in the Syrian conflict.

9. The ongoing battles in northern Syria near the Turkish border will have a greater impact in shaping the future of Syria and its unending conflict than any UN resolution. Participating in the fighting at present is a very big mixed cast: Russia, the Kurdish YPG militia, most of the important rebel groups, including radical Sunni organizations tied to Al Qaeda, such as the Nusra Front and Ahram al-Sham, Iran and Shiite Hizballah, and the Islamic State.

It is only when one of these forces gains the upper hand in this free-for-all, that there will be progress toward a political solution on ending the war.

Categories: Kurds, Obama and Russia, Obama and Turkey, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Turkey, United Nations
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The Holocaust is OVER

October 25, 2015

The Holocaust is OVER, The Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, October 25, 2015

  • This minute, the UN is labeling one of the oldest existing symbols of Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel — the Tomb of Rachel, wife of the biblical patriarch Jacob — as a Muslim holy site.
  • The UN had not a word, however, about the Muslims who burned the Jewish holy site at Joseph’s Tomb last week. This omission raises a different question: the same Joseph is also a prophet in Islam; why are they firebombing his tomb?
  • Abbas has been lying about threats to the status quo on the Temple Mount, and proposing his own change: The Jews, he said, have no right to “desecrate” the mosque with their “filthy feet.”
  • Watch a beautiful little girl with a large knife tell her approving father, “I want to stab a Jew.”
  • In 2000, the New York Times wrote about Arafat’s summer “war-game camps” in Gaza, teaching Palestinian children how to prepare for battle. That is fifteen years of learning to kill Jews and creating child soldiers: a violation of the UN Convention on Child Soldiers, and one reason so many young Palestinians are primed for violence.
  • In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of teenagers in Gaza participated in these “summer camps” to learn from their Hamas teachers to kill Jews.
  • If what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, however, is allowed to turn our attention from the current threats to the Jewish State, we will have granted Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem a belated victory they do not deserve.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, set off a firestorm on October 21 by saying that the Mufti of Jerusalem had actually planted the idea of exterminating the Jews in Hitler’s mind; that Hitler would have simply ousted them from Europe.

Scholars, academicians, politicians, friends and enemies of Jews, Israel, and Netanyahu leapt to the barricades. The Washington Post had the story on the front page. Twitter and blogs have overflowed with it. The Chancellor of Germany found it oddly necessary to say, “Germany is responsible for the Holocaust.”

But enough about who, between two long-dead anti-Semites, was the worst. It is a distraction and provides cover for today’s racists and those who would destroy Israel.

Palestinian agitator Saeb Erekat used the tumult to weigh in. In the latest Palestinian effort to rewrite history, he said, “Palestine’s efforts against Nazis, are deep-rooted part of our history.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) strongman Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier at least since his PhD days (and now in the 10th year of his four-year term, so he cannot be called “President”) did not say anything on that subject. He does, however continue to incite Palestinians to kill Jews. Right now, today, this minute.

Abbas has been lying about threats to the status quo on the Temple Mount, and proposing his own change: The Jews, he said, have no right to “desecrate” the mosque with their “filthy feet.” He then assures those Palestinians who go out to kill Jews — because they understood the recommendation to be officially sanctioned — that, “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.”

Also, right now, today, this minute, the United Nations is labeling one of the oldest existing symbols of Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel — the Tomb of Rachel, wife of the biblical patriarch Jacob — as a Muslim holy site. The U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Estonia voted against this surreal piracy. But 26 other countries voted in favor of a resolution, totally fraudulent, that condemned Israel for aggression and illegal measures taken against the “freedom of worship and access” of Muslims to Al-Aqsa mosque and Israel’s “attempts to break the status quo since 1967.”

The UN had not a word, however, about the Muslims who burned the Jewish holy site at Joseph’s Tomb last week. This omission raises a different question: the same Joseph is also a prophet in Islam; what are they doing firebombing his tomb?

In addition, right now, today, this minute, the State of Israel is under physical and political attack, and its best ally, the United States, is largely absent. Secretary of State John Kerry admonished, “We continue to urge everybody to exercise restraint and restrain [sic] from any kind of self-help in terms of the violence, and Israel has every right in the world to protect its citizens, as it has been, from random acts of violence.”

No self-help? Kerry specifically said it; he meant that if the government shows up and kills the terrorist before he kills, fine, but he does not want Israelis to take their defense into their own hands. That is not the way defense is done in America, and it is not the way it is done in Israel. The United States is abandoning a core American value in pursuit of the chimera of Israeli-Palestinian “peace.”

Right now, this minute, young Palestinian children are being marinated in Jew-hatred by their parents and by their society. Watch a beautiful little girl with a large knife tell her approving father, “I want to stab a Jew.” Watch a Palestinian children’s TV program in which a girl of about 10, her hair covered, draped in a Palestinian shawl, tell other children that the “martyrs” are “grown up kids.” She compares their number to the number of dead Israelis. “It’s almost like a game,” she says.

1313(Image source: MEMRI)

In 2000, before the so-called “second intifada,” the New York Times wrote about Yasser Arafat’s summer “war-game camps” in Gaza, teaching young Palestinian children how to prepare for the battle they would fight. That is fifteen years of learning to kill Jews — and fifteen years of creating child soldiers: a violation of the UN Convention on Child Soldiers, and one reason so many young Palestinians are primed for violence. Any Palestinian now under the age of, say, 23 could have had that “training.” In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of teenagers in Gaza participated in these “summer camps” to learn from their Hamas teachers to kill Jews.

Even before that — since the Palestinians created their own school curriculum 21 years ago, in 1994, under the Oslo Accords — Palestinian children have been exposed to lies, incitement to violence and raw anti-Semitism, in the schools of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. Palestinians under the age of 30 spend most of their formative years in schools that deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel and that deny any connection of the Jews to the land.

We are currently seeing the results of the long-term abuse of Palestinian children by their parents and teachers — abetted by the United Nations.

There have been many calls for the U.S. to defund the Palestinian Authority, either completely or in part. This week Congress, in rare bipartisan agreement, took up part of the challenge, stripping $80 million from $370 million of U.S. economic aid to the Palestinian Authority.

History provides a framework for understanding today’s politics. The Mufti of Jerusalem was not only a kindred spirit of Hitler; he spent much of the war in Berlin as the guest of like-minded practitioners of Jew-hatred. If what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, however, is allowed to turn our attention from the current threats to the Jewish State, we will have granted them a belated victory they do not deserve.

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Death to Israel, Fatah, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hamas, Holy places, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians and Jews, United Nations
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Diplomacy: Looking for ways to douse the spark

October 23, 2015

Diplomacy: Looking for ways to douse the spark, Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon, October 23, 2015

(They “dance around in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows,” with apologies to Robert Frost. — DM)

ShowImage (15)Netanyahu and Kerry meeting in Berlin. (photo credit:AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)

And now the diplomatic dance begins, again.

After three weeks of runaway terrorism on the streets, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived for a quick visit midweek; US Secretary of State John Kerry – after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in Berlin – is expected to meet on Saturday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, along with Jordan’s King Hussein; EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is doing the same; and the French are floating various proposals to take to the UN Security Council.

All predictable, all the traditional steps taken in a time of Mideast crisis.

Ban did what Ban does in these situations – he comes, meets with both sides, issues platitudes about the need for both sides to show restraint, and declares how important it is to keep that light of hope burning.

The UN secretary-general dutifully fulfilled his role in the script. Netanyahu obliged by meeting politely with Ban, who then went on to meet politely with Abbas, to what appears to be absolutely no effect. It’s a dance whose steps – and way of ending – are known far in advance.

Jerusalem does not take Ban’s efforts overseriously, as the organization that he heads is seen as a big part of the problem rather than the solution.

Witness Wednesday’s one-sided resolution adopted by UNESCO, the UN’s cultural heritage agency, condemning “Israeli aggression” on the Temple Mount and declaring that the Jewish holy sites of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are an “integral part of Palestine.”

Similar disdain, to a certain extent, characterizes Israel’s view of the EU’s efforts. Netanyahu will listen to Mogherini, and lament both Abbas’s incitement and the EU’s acceptance of it, but will place little stock in the EU’s ability to play a constructive role in calming down the situation.

Brussels is not seen in Jerusalem as a particularly honest broker on all things Palestinian but, rather, as the institution that nurtures – perhaps more than any other – the hope among the Palestinians that if they press long enough and hard enough, the international community will deliver to them what they publicly say they want: a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital, and some kind of “fair and just” accommodation for the refugees.

The very skeptical Israeli view of the EU in any diplomatic process is reinforced by steps taken by France, which this week considered bringing a resolution to the UN Security Council to place international observers on the Temple Mount.

This idea, which Israel would never accept, and which even Jordan and the Palestinians have apparently rejected, is born of a burning French diplomatic desire to always do something, anything, in the Mideast – especially when there seems to be a stalemate or vacuum.

It is also the product of sour relations currently prevailing between Paris and Jerusalem, as well as a lingering French hope for the internationalization of Jerusalem – for the establishment of a corpus separatum in Jerusalem under a special international regime – which France hopes to be a part of.

So with the UN out, the EU out, and France out, that leaves the US.

But it is not as if Jerusalem is harboring any hopes that Kerry will be able to ride in and save the day.

From Jerusalem’s perspective the US track record in the region is not sterling, and though it appreciates Washington’s desire to help, there is little illusion that high-profile, high-level meetings will have any immediate effect on the ground.

And while Jerusalem is not waiting for Kerry with baited breath, it was clear from the beginning that he would get involved. An uptick in terrorism and violence leads to a well-worn pattern in Washington: condemnations of the terrorism, then statements that anger Israel about proportionality or settlements, followed by calls for restraint on both sides, and then meetings with the leaders.

But this current spurt of terrorism and violence is different from previous rounds, in that there is no identifiable organization – such as Hamas and Fatah’s Tanzim militia – to hold directly responsible for the bloodshed. This time it is more amorphous, individual terrorists incited by calls for Jewish blood on Facebook and from various leaders, going out to kill Jews.

The lack of a clear organizational structure behind the terrorism makes it more difficult for the security services to stop, because it is much more difficult to gather intelligence on an individual who grabs a knife and goes out to kill than on attacks directed by an organization.

Also, there is not one person seemingly in control who may be pressured to cease the violence.

It is not as if Kerry can talk to Abbas and convince him to issue a call to his people to “hold your horses,” and the horses will obediently be held. Abbas does not have anything near that type of control – many of the horses simply do not heed him.

This time around, thankfully, neither the State Department nor Kerry are inflating expectations; they are not talking about Kerry’s separate meeting with the leaders as a potential breakthrough for restarting the diplomatic talks and bringing a peace deal in a number of months.

Washington, it should be remembered, is still engaged in its own Mideast policy reassessment, a policy reassessment brought about after the breakdown of the Kerry-led peace talks in April 2014, and re-announced after Netanyahu’s preelection statement – which he later retracted – of less than full fealty to the notion of a two-state solution.

Rather, this time the bar has been set low, with the goals very limited.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday that the meetings would deal with “practical ways in which political breathing space can be had to help end the violence.”

No overreaching there, just looking for breathing space. The breathing space that Kirby mentioned but did not elaborate upon is likely to be an attempt – in discussions with Netanyahu, Abbas and especially Jordan’s King Abdullah – to come up with a clear set of procedures for governing the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount has – like so many times over the last century – been the spark to violence against Jews. To douse the fire, there will be some need to deal with the spark, but this has to be done in a way where both Israel and the Palestinians can say that they have not given in.

In recent days Kerry has spoken about the need for clarity. Everyone talks about the status quo on the Temple Mount, but there is little understanding of what that entails.

“Israel understands the importance of the status quo and… our objective is to make sure that everyone understands what that means,” Kerry said at press conference on Monday in Madrid, adding that “we are not seeking a new change or outsiders to come in; I don’t think Israel or Jordan wants that, and we’re not proposing it. What we need is clarity.”

The new “clarity” is expected to involve enhanced coordination and cooperation with Jordan, possibly even more Jordanian representatives on the site, in such a way as to undercut the spurious charge that Israel is somehow threatening al-Aksa Mosque.

Former National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror said in an Israel Radio interview this week that he had little expectation regarding Kerry’s meeting with Netanyahu or Abbas, because the US has little impact on the Palestinians – which is true.

But the US does have leverage on Jordan, and this leverage may now be needed to get Abdullah to take a greater role in day-to- day administration and involvement at the site – if only as a way to suck the oxygen out of the lie propelling the current round of terrorism: that Israel is endangering al-Aksa.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ban Ki-Moon, Denial, Diplomacy, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Hamas, Islam's war on Jews, Israel, Jordan, Kerry, Netanyahu, Palestinians, United Nations
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Israel must leave the UN

October 22, 2015

Israel must leave the UN, Israel Hayom, Judith Bergman, October 22, 2015

The U.N. is abusive. Just like an abused spouse who is unable to ‎fight back because the abuser is so much bigger, stronger, or simply vicious and uninterested in ‎fostering anything positive in the relationship, Israel needs to face that facts and leave the U.N.‎

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

UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization — stated in a ‎resolution on Tuesday that it condemned Israel for what it called the “aggression and illegal ‎measures taken against the freedom of worship and access of Muslims to Al-Aqsa mosque and ‎Israel’s attempts to break the status quo since 1967.” It also “deeply deplores the recent ‎repression in East Jerusalem, and the failure of Israel, the Occupying Power, to cease the ‎persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City.” It ‎also called for “prompt reconstruction of schools, universities, cultural heritage sites, cultural ‎institutions, media centers and places of worship that have been destroyed or damaged by the ‎consecutive Israeli wars on Gaza.” Finally, UNESCO now considers the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to be Muslim sites.‎

Initially, the resolution had been drafted to include the Western Wall as an Islamic ‎site also, or rather as an extension of Al-Aqsa mosque, but this was dropped after ‎widespread condemnation. Only six countries voted against the resolution — the United States, ‎Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Estonia.‎

One can hardly exaggerate the extent to which UNESCO has lost its way. The organization and most of its member states have been ravaged by utter derangement. For the ‎U.N. to so unequivocally and unabashedly aid the ongoing Arab effort to delegitimize the Jewish ‎connections to Judaism’s holiest sites in Israel is an act of supreme perfidy. ‎

Although it is far from the first time that UNESCO commits this kind of blatant Israel-bashing, ‎the timing of this particular resolution, its duplicitous and smearing content, at a time when ‎Arabs in Israel are stabbing, shooting and car-ramming Jews for sport and celebrating with ‎candies afterward, is beyond anything that civil discourse can properly convey. The resolution ‎amounts to a match being thrown on an already raging fire, further augmenting the incitement ‎and the lies of the Palestinians regarding the Temple Mount.

However, who is truly surprised by this? UNESCO has worked consistently against Israel for over ‎‎40 years and even the current decision to designate Rachel’s Tomb a Muslim site has a very ‎recent precursor. Five years ago, in 2010, UNESCO categorized Rachel’s Tomb as a “Muslim ‎mosque” and criticized Israel’s decision to include both it and the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron on its list of national heritage sites. UNESCO furthermore made it clear that it views ‎both sites as Palestinian. Rachel’s Tomb is the third holiest place in Judaism and a Jewish ‎pilgrimage site. It meant nothing to UNESCO that Rachel’s Tomb had never been a mosque. At ‎the time, only the U.S. voted against this absurd decision.‎

What the above means is that the decision to designate the Western Wall as a Muslim site may have ‎been put on ice for now, but that efforts to have it designated as such will certainly be resumed at a more opportune time. ‎

At universities across the world, students are taught that the U.N. is an instrument of world ‎order, a respectable international body of member states who have it as their ultimate goal to ‎follow the precepts of international law. The U.N. Charter is studied diligently by law students ‎everywhere, as if what it says has any meaning at this point in time. Member states prolong the ‎life of this disgrace of an institution by continuing to support it with their citizens’ tax money ‎and diplomats — the more-than-willing executioners of all these shameful policies — give it ‎credibility by treating it as an honorable institution. ‎

The U.N. is an instrument of world disorder and it lost credibility decades ago when it voted to ‎equate Zionism with racism. That vote was instrumental in legitimizing and stoking the anti-‎Semitic hatred that is now sweeping away sanity and decency everywhere, where the latter ‎should rather be the governing norm. ‎

The denigration and dehumanization of Israel and the Jewish people is ongoing and met with ‎general silence or worse — with tacit or explicit approval. The pernicious, perfidious mainstream ‎media reporting of the current terror onslaught and the demonstrations of “solidarity” with the ‎murders of Jews in Israel in Sweden and Denmark recently, as well as on select U.S. university ‎campuses, are ugly and openly skewed and derisive of Israel at a time when anti-Semitic ‎hatred has finally become socially acceptable, even trendy in certain circles.‎

Israel has no need for the U.N. It is the U.N. that needs Israel. If there were no Jewish people, ‎no Israel, the U.N. would have to invent it. Israel needs to turn its back on the U.N. and simply ‎walk away. There can be no “dialogue” with an organization that so openly allies itself with ‎our enemies. ‎

The U.N. is abusive. Just like an abused spouse who is unable to ‎fight back because the abuser is so much bigger, stronger, or simply vicious and uninterested in ‎fostering anything positive in the relationship, Israel needs to face that facts and leave the U.N.‎

Categories: Death to Israel, Foreign policy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Palestinians and Jews, Religious sites, UNESCO, United Nations
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