Pakistan's Christian 'Sex-Slaves': A Case Study

by Raymond Ibrahim

Earlier we saw Egyptian preacher Huwaini and Kuwaiti political activist Mutairi call for the reinstitution of sex-slavery. Before dismissing their position as aberrant, that is "radical," for the record, here are respected Muslim scholar Majid Khadduri's thoughts on the matter:

The term spoil (ghanima) is applied specifically to property acquired by force from non-Muslims. It includes, however, not only property (movable and immovable) but also persons, whether in the capacity of asra (prisoners of war) or sabi (women and children). … If the slave were a woman, the master was permitted to have sexual connection with her as a concubine.

Still, some may seek to dismiss the notion of sex-slavery in Islam as theory, not actual practice, arguing that even if Sharia permits the sexual enslavement of infidel women, neither Egypt nor Kuwait formally permits it.

Let us therefore make an important distinction: While few Muslim governments would formally institute sex-slavery—thereby egregiously undermining their ongoing and very successful efforts at duping the West—the sort of supremacist culture Sharia breeds, wherein seizing anything from the infidel, including his women and children, is an everyday fact of life.

Thus in Huwaini's Egypt, the increasingly Islamist-leaning government does not have an institution to buy and sell infidel women; yet Egypt's Christian girls are constantly being abducted and, as one recent report puts it, "kept as virtual slaves." Likewise, in Gulf countries: while sex-slavery may not be formally recognized, the dirty little secret there is that impoverished and desperate women from places like the Philippines are often hired as "servants," effectively performing the functions of sex-slaves.

To better demonstrate that this Sharia-induced worldview permeates the Muslim world—that infidel women are seen as little better than sex-objects for Muslim men—let us briefly focus on one Muslim nation: distant Pakistan, where Christians make a tiny minority of less than 2%, and where at least 700 Christian girls are abducted annually.

Consider the following stories that never make it to the MSM—a sampling limited to just last month's grab-bag of atrocities committed against Pakistan's Christians (since anymore than that would be too immense to list):

• A 9-year-old Christian girl was abducted, gang-raped, and murdered by repeated blows to her head, and then dumped into a canal.
• A 24-year-old Christian woman who was kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, and forced to marry a Muslim, is now reportedly on the verge of being "sold abroad."
• At the same time that Muslims were desecrating a Christian cemetery, a Christian mother was abducted, drugged, and gang-raped all night long.
• After brutally attacking a priest and his family, another young Christian woman was abducted and raped over several days by a man claiming to be a police officer.
• Yet another Christian girl was raped by a Pakistani army major at gunpoint and then dumped off.
• A powerful Muslim businessman had two Christian sisters kidnapped, forced them to convert to Islam, and marry him.

One may argue that rape is a phenomenon that affects every society, yet the fact that most women raped in Pakistan come from the mere 2% Christian minority speaks for itself.

Moreover, if you go to the links of these anecdotes, you will find that in every single case the Pakistani police either did nothing to apprehend the culprits or, more often, actually helped them while turning against the victims.

After all, even though Pakistan is not a full-blown Sharia state—you know, to save face in front of the international infidel—Sharia has nonetheless conditioned even the police to see infidel Christian women as little better than violable objects of pleasure, and to always side with fellow Muslims, according to the doctrine of wala wa bara, which commands Muslims to always be loyal to fellow Muslims against non-Muslims.

Nor are such atrocities confined to Pakistan; even in Europe, a Pakistani man recently raped a Norwegian woman, informing her that "he had the right to do exactly as he wanted to a woman."

Focusing on Pakistan has the added bonus of demonstrating one more thing: that Pakistan is a non-Arab country dispels the notion that seeing women as sex-objects is an "Arab" phenomenon; that Pakistanis do not know Arabic dispels the notion that they are being "radicalized" by the likes of Huwaini or Mutairi.

What, then, does Pakistan share with these other Arab nations that advocate the institution of sex-slavery and are in the habit of abducting and raping Christian women? Islam.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/2979/pakistan-christian-sex-slaves

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Wash. Post's Weekly Israel-Bashing Pieces --

by Leo Rennert

In his latest weekly Israel-bashing installment, Washington Post Jerusalem correspondent Joel Greenberg turns his attention to Israel's demolition of makeshift Bedouin shelters put up on public lands or in military zones in the Jordan Valley ("Razings leave mark in Jordan Valley -- Israel underlines claim in area with demolition of Palestinian homes" page A5, July 6)

Greenberg's article is illustrated copiously with two color photographs -- a huge, four-column one showing a family amid the wreckage of their home and the other depicting Bedouins leading away sheep as Israeli troops prepare to raze some shacks, plus a map pointing to the Jordan Valley.

The entire spread is unmistakably intended to depict Israel as callous in its treatment of Palestinians, while Palestinians are presented as Israel's victims. This kind of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, two-hankies reporting by Greenberg has become a predictable weekly presence in the Post. With such regularity that you can set your calendar by it.

Even if Greenberg has to bend the truth to meet his weekly Israel-bashing quota.

For example, in his latest piece, Greenberg waits until the 13th paragraph to cite Israeli officials who point out that similar demolition measures are also taken against wildcat building on state lands or military zones by Jewish settlers.

But how many Post readers get past the 12th paragraph? The headline, the pictures, the first dozen paragraphs convey a totally erroneous impression that only Bedouins and Palestinians get their unauthorized shelters razed by Israel.

So Greenberg has it both ways. He can deliver one of his trade-mark weekly Israel-bashing pieces, but still claim objectivity by hedging his bets far down in his articles, pretending to present both sides of the story.

He similarly buries -- in the 14th paragraph -- Israeli plans for more home construction in existing Palestinian villages in areas until total Israeli control along with Israeli plans to provide water and power hookups for Bedouin encampments there. But how many Post readers, having had their weekly dose of Israel-bashing in the Post, get as far as the 14th paragraph of a Greenberg story?

And for those readers who plow through his entire article, Greenberg leaves them with a final, concluding and conclusive slap at Israel with this emotional tug: "We need a solution," said Abed Yassin, standing near the wreckage of his shelter. "We need a place to live."

Greenberg could claim some credibility if for every one of his Palestinian-pain pieces, he did a similar number of Israeli-pain articles.

For example, a real reporter -- not a propagandist like Greenberg -- might also report on how hundreds of thousands of Israeli residents in towns and communities near the Gaza border still shudder and run to shelters when rockets are fired in their direction. There are plenty of Israeli children in Sderot, who bear the psychological scars of years of such terrorization by Hamas who also might warrant some in-depth coverage.

A real reporter -- not a propagandist like Greenberg -- might also report that Mahmoud Abbas continues to name Palestinian public places and institutions after Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who led an attack that killed 37 Israelis, including 12 children -- the most lethal terrorist attack in Israel's history. Abbas exols Mughrabi as a model for Palestinian children. In his latest glorification of Mughrabi, he named a summer camp for children and girls' college after her. A real reporter might want to let Post readers know about the real -- not the phony "moderate" -- Abbas. But not Greenberg.

A real reporter would have an equal-opportunity agenda -- covering both Israel and the Palestinian with the same critical lens, focusng on both Palestinian and Israeli pain.

But Greenberg is not that kind of reporter.

Leo Rennert

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/wash_posts_weekly_israel-bashing_pieces_--.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Muslim Brotherhood: We must Implement Sharia in Stages

by Robert Spencer

I tried to tell you. "Article on Muslim Brotherhood Website: Implement Shari'a in Phases," from MEMRI, July 5:

In a June 11, 2011 article on the website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, veteran movement member Sheikh Ahmad Gad argued that the implementation of shari'a in Egypt must be achieved gradually, by preparing the peoples' hearts and minds for it and introducing it in stages. He proposed learning from the methods of the early Muslim Brotherhood, which worked in a step-by-step fashion, and called on Al-Azhar to focus on promoting the implementation of shari'a.

The following are excerpts from the article:[1]

"There Is No Hope for Reform Without a Return to Divine Rule"

"Following the blessed popular revolution on January 25, 2011, there was a debate between the majority, which hopes and yearns for the implementation of Allah's shari'a, and the minority, which uses Islam as a tool of intimidation and fears the Islamists and a return to the Middle Ages.

"This minority, which denies the results of the referendum while calling for democracy,[2] is made up of those who oppose a religious state or a caliphate state, and advocate a return to the tyrannical secular regime that corrupted the land and the people – a minority [that receives] prominent media coverage...

"Islamic shari'a ruled for centuries, but became distant and absent for centuries more. The various forms of imperialism were a burden on the [Muslim] nation in various ways, and caused people to change... In that dark period, the state alternately mimicked Eastern and Western regimes. Corruption developed, grew, and accumulated... [Nowadays], there is no hope for reform without a return to divine rule, which the Creator chose for man. This nation will have no chance of success, [except] by that which caused it to succeed in its beginning.

"[However,] we must not impose Islamic shari'a, forcing the people to adopt something about which they are ignorant and with which they are unfamiliar... If we do this, [various] ploys will be used to circumvent it, and there will be hypocrisy. [People] will exhibit Islamic [behavior] only outwardly... [...]

"There is no other way but gradual action, preparing the [people's] souls and setting an example, so that faith will enter their hearts... Gradual action does not impose Islam at once, but rather step by step, in order to facilitate understanding, studying, acceptance, and submission. [...]

"The Prophet, peace be upon him, acted in a gradual manner, by first preparing the people, and then [preparing] family, society, state, and finally the caliphate... This gradual method is also employed in the Koran [itself] with respect to the prohibition on [drinking] wine...[3] It was also employed in presenting the duties of Islam... First, there were two prayers – at noon and in the evening – and after people grew accustomed to them, Allah ordered five prayers during the day and night...

"At the [Muslim Brotherhood's] fifth conference, [the movement's founder,] Imam [Hassan] Al-Banna, spoke about gradual action and reliance on education, and clarified the stages [of implementing the shari'a]. They [i.e., the movement's founding members] believed that da'wa must come in phases: The phase of reading, learning the idea, and delivering it to the public; the phase of forming [the idea]; and the phase of implementation, work and results. At that same conference, Al-Banna said, addressing the hasty: 'Listen to what I say in a loud, resounding voice: This way of yours, whose phases are written and whose boundaries are defined, is long, but there is no alternative [way]. I am not with those who want to pick the fruit before it has ripened. Those who wait patiently for the seed to sprout, the tree to grow, the fruit to ripen, and the harvest to arrive – their reward will be with Allah... May that be the payment of those who do good.'"

The Islamic Streams Should Unite to "Restore the Caliphate"

"I ask the honorable Al-Azhar to rally the Islamic streams in order to unite the Muslim word and effort, restore the caliphate, and prepare a practical plan to implement the law of Allah the Exalted. This is the goal of the honorable Al-Azhar and of all Islamic streams. And Allah will help.

"O Allah, guide us, open our hearts to faith, and restore this [Muslim] nation to its previous self – one united nation worshipping You and You alone."

Robert Spencer

Source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/07/muslim-brotherhood-we-must-implement-sharia-in-stages.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Near Lynching of Prof. Benny Morris

by Steven Plaut

In the old novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, there is a bizarre character in the story, a man who had been a Nazi war criminal, but after the War trained as a medical doctor and came to the Caribbean in order to save sick impoverished island people. He saves about a dozen people a week and he figure it will only take about 600 years to save more people than he had killed as a war criminal during the War.

I am reminded of that story whenever I examine the peculiar career of Prof. Benny Morris. Now don’t take this the wrong way, ­ Morris was never any murderer or war criminal and I do not mean to imply that he was as evil as a Nazi. But he did have to spend the second half of his career undoing the damage from the first half.

Benny Morris was one of the original, and in some ways the most destructive, of Israel’s “New Historians.” The “New Historians” are actually pseudo-historians, who seek to revise history to make it jive with Arab propaganda. Those who denounce the “New Historians” as charlatans are sometimes called the “New New Historians.” The far leftists call them McCarthyists and fascists.

For many years Morris was the leading “New Historian” revisionist. Born on an Israeli socialist kibbutz and son of a diplomat, Morris did his PhD on Anglo-German relations at Cambridge. He seemed to think that this qualified him to be a Middle East historian and Orientalist. The academic world disagreed. He returned to Israel from Cambridge and mainly worked as a newspaper journalist at the Jerusalem Post.

Morris’ main venture into historic revisionism came with the publication of his book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, published by Cambridge University Press in 1988. It was by and large a retelling of the “Arab narrative” about the creation of Palestinian “refugees.” The alternative narrative, also knows as the truth, was that any Palestinians who became refugees resembled the ethnic German refugees at the end of World War II who became refugees. Both sets were people who had supported the losing side of a genocidal war of aggression or who had fled the battle zones of the victorious armies in the war they had started.

In those days Morris was essentially a pseudo-historian, inventing historic “narratives” to reflect Arab propaganda and to dabbling in the demonization of Israel. And he was good at it. He collaborated with academic haters of Israel like British (Israeli expatriates) Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim. Because he was so viciously anti-Israel and because so much of his “scholarly” work consisted of nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda, Morris at first had trouble finding an academic position in Israel. He was eventually hired by Ben Gurion University, which cannot get enough of leftist anti-Israel propagandists serving as its faculty members. Rumor has it that the president of the university at that time, leftist Avishai Braverman (today a politician in Israel’s Labor Party), personally intervened so that Morris could get hired. While far less vulgar and infantile than the “books” of Norman Finkelstein, Morris turned out Bash-Israel and Bash-Zionism treatises, a lot about the 1948-9 Israeli war for independence.

All this made Morris the darling of the radical campus Left in Europe and the US. They loved citing Morris to prove how evil Israel is and was. About 12 years ago Morris would have been one of the most obvious targets for righteous Zionist rage and for being exposed, attacked and denounced as a pseudo-scholar and a charlatan, something like a Neve Gordon or Ilan Pappe.

But then something happened.

Morris suddenly appeared to have second thoughts. He repented. He largely repudiated his earlier anti-Israel radicalism and started espousing pro-Israel and pro-Zionist opinion, especially regarding the 1948-9 Israeli war of independence. Not everyone is convinced that Morris has really wised up, and Efraim Karsh from the University of London is the leading proponent of the view that Morris has not and is simply engaged in pragmatic maneuvering and cynical posturing. (See this and this, as well as several Karsh articles in the NY Times and Commentary Magazine). Karsh is particularly critical of the fact that Morris has not outright renounced in total his earlier “histories” of the “Palestinian refugees.”

I was skeptical of Morris’ “conversion” at first, but over time it seems to me to be genuine. I think his very first public break with the Bash-Israel Left took place in Berkeley in the late 90s, when I happened to be in town. Invited to speak in a church, the place was packed with the usual Berkeley jihadists and Hitlerjugend expecting from Morris a blistering demonization of Israel. Instead, Morris spent the entire talk explaining that the Middle East conflict is the fault of the Arabs, including any “refugee” problem. You can imagine the hysterical reactions in the local Berkeley drug-infested media. These days the Bay Area has its own specialized anti-Morris hate organizations, such as this one, devoted to demonizing Morris. This is all so amusing. The jihadists love citing from the old writings of Benny Morris about how Israel was somehow to blame for “Palestinian sufferings,” but refuse to listen when Morris himself repudiates those claims.

Later Morris would give interviews and make statements that not only were unabashedly Zionist, but he went so far as to argue that any expulsions by Israel of any Arabs that took place in 1948 were entirely justified. He largely apologized for and repudiated his early claims about Palestinian “refugees,” pleading that he had not had access to the right documents when he wrote his early book. Today he is opposed to the so-called “Two State Solution,” which would create a Palestinian state, arguing that it is not viable.

As a result of all this, in recent years Morris is the Israeli historian that the moonbats and the anti-Semites most love to hate. They have special contempt for him because, after all, he used to be one of them and “betrayed” them.

Morris is frequently singled out for the venom of the barbarians. When invited a few months back to speak at Cambridge, the local anti-Semites made a fuss and insisted that Morris be dis-invited because he is a “racist.” After all, anyone thinking Israel has the right to defend itself is considered a “racist” in such circles. His talk was canceled. This is academic freedom in Britain.

This past week, Morris was invited to speak at the London School of Economics, which ­- despite its name – ­ is an institutions crawling with leftist varmints. On the way to the talk he was almost lynched by a mob of leftists and jihadists.

That full story was published in Israel’s Makor Rishon, June 24, 2011. It describes the attack on Morris as a virtual attempt at lynching. It describes how Morris was accosted on his way to the building in which the lecture was to be held by a mob of anti-Israel “activists” from the local BDS movement of economic aggression against Israel (BDS stands for “boycott, divest and sanctions”) and by local radical Islamists. They pushed and cursed him. They had gathered in the area around the building earlier and were handing out fliers accusing Morris of being an “old racist.” The paper cites Morris: “As soon as they saw me I was surrounded by a mob of Moslem hooligans, screaming and cursing at me as I advanced toward the building.” Morris added,

“I had the feeling that I was surrounded by Nazis, except that instead of black shirts these were wearing Arab scarves on their heads. They were unambiguously Islamofascists. Some of them screamed in their broken foreign English that the UK should never have allowed me into the country. I am no racist, but that term could be correctly applied to the inciters and critics I ran across at LSE.”

Once he reached the hall, the lecture proceeded, under heavy security and with police guards. Morris managed to escape and under heavy security presence he did give a talk to 300-400 students at LSE. A gay conservative blogger describes the harassment of Morris by the pro-terrorists and leftists thus:

As I walked down Kingsway, a major London thoroughfare, a small mob—I don’t think any other word is appropriate—of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters, both men and women, surrounded me and, walking alongside me for several hundred yards as I advanced towards the building where the lecture was to take place, raucously harangued and bated me with cries of “fascist,” “racist,” “England should never have allowed you in,” “you shouldn’t be allowed to speak.” Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English. Violence was thick in the air though none was actually used. Passersby looked on in astonishment, and perhaps shame, but it seemed the sight of angry bearded, caftaned Muslims was sufficient to deter any intervention. To me, it felt like Brownshirts in a street scene in 1920s Berlin—though on Kingsway no one, to the best of my recall, screamed the word “Jew.”

The Jewish Chronicle, the main Jewish weekly in the UK, described how anti-Zionists in LSE kept attacking Morris as a “racist”, “theologian” and a “social darwinist.” It describes how Morris held his own and made monkeys of those attempting to discredit him during the lecture. In particular, he silenced the trolls by documenting the fact that there was no Israeli policy at all in 1948-9 to expel “Palestinians.” His full lecture and performance can be viewed here.

What does the one-time Post-Zionist and one-time “New Historian” Morris make of almost being lynched for being a Zionist?

I do not know, but I would like to think that the odds are good that he is rededicating himself to expunging his old propaganda and doing real research that promotes the truth, or what some pseudo-academics prefer to call the “Zionist narrative.”

Steven Plaut

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/06/the-near-lynching-of-prof-benny-morris/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Radical Islamist Group Tries to Branch Out

by IPT News

One of America's most radical homegrown Islamist groups has opened two new centers focused on the "Zionist American" threat, a thinly-veiled reference to the group's anti-Semitic and anti-American message. Under the leadership of extremist Abdul Alim Musa, the Sabiqun organization has tried to blur the line between attacking Jews and criticizing Israel, as well as striking out against America.

"For 30 years, Masjid Al-Islam [Sabiqun's mosque] has been carrying on a direct, face-to-face struggle against the monolithic Zionist American regime," Abdul Alim Musa said in an "Urgent Appeal" to support the new "Islamic Institute of Counter Zionist American Psychological Warfare (IICZAPW)."

"We are an anti-Zionist American psycho-guerrilla warfare movement, the appeal said. "We use all available tools found in our environment in exposing the anti-Islamic, anti-human policies of this Zionist American system."

Other flyers explain that the IICZAPW's primary goal is "to counter the concerted efforts of the enemies of Islam to sustain a false characterization of Islam and Muslims as a dangerous threat to global stability and tranquility." That mission has already led Sabiqun to deny the involvement of Islamist terrorists in 9/11 and to characterize the acts of Hamas and Hizballah as a justified war on Jews. The Institute is the group's primary project to keep its movement going, after the loss of several branches in California.

As part of its ideology, Sabiqun and the IICZAPW are also actively preparing for the death of the United States. Sabiqun, which currently runs two active mosques in D.C. and Oakland, espouses a self-reliant and anti-assimilation ideology that appeals to its community of poor African-American converts.

"It seems that the once all-powerful USA could suffer a global stroke sometime during the 2020s or even sooner," said a flyer promoting an IICZAPW event called "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire" Sunday in Washington.

"We view America's decline as a global power as a present reality," it reads. "Should we not prepare for its fall?"

The flyer shows much of Sabiqun's core ideology. The beginning of America's fall didn't start with George Bush, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, or the 2003 war in Iraq. Rather, the group believes the rise of Iran in the 1979 revolution illustrates the ability of a dedicated group of "Islamic workers" to collapse non-Muslim governments.

The new centers in Washington and Oakland are designed to raise the group's profile and counter its decline. The goal is to train a new generation of the movement's ideologues and expand the group's presence, "to analyze the Zionist grip on humanity established via the media and economics."

The IICZAPW also features a new "College in Islamic Movement Studies," which focuses on spreading its leader's jumbled philosophy. Musa's unique take on Islamism mixes elements from a variety of ideologues, including: Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of an extremist South Asian group, Jamaat-e-Islami; Uthman dan Fodio, who founded a caliphate in north Nigeria that continues to inspire African Islamists; Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; Sayyid Qutb, the inspiration of al-Qaida ideologues Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki; Kalim Siddiqui, a South Asian extremist who advocated for an Islamic world order to overthrow the West; and Imam Ali Khomeini, who led Iran's 1979 Islamist Revolution.

The college will also feature a course on "Strategic Management under Conditions of Repression," recounting the experiences of Musa and his 30 years of struggle against the "Zionist American cabal." It will focus on the group's enemies, such as the FBI, Zionist groups, the Anti-Defamation League, Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson, and others, "who have sought to isolate us from mainstream Muslims and derail and destroy the progress of our schools, places of worship, and businesses."

The IICZAPW extends Sabiqun's long tradition of violent anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric, which is part and parcel of the group's educational curriculum, reading materials, and speeches.

Musa also often uses the terms 'Jews' and 'Zionist' interchangeably, highlighting his belief that the Jews and Zionists are the same.

"The world now sees the Jews for what they are: not the victims but the victimizers," Musa said in a 2006 speech called "Basheera," which Sabiqun's website describes as a "message of hope" about Hizballah's "ultimate victory" over Israel. "The Jews are using the dirtiest criminal tactics on a people that you have ever seen in your life, worse than the Nazis… The Jews may have been oppressed by the Nazis, but they adopted 100% the practice[s] of the Nazis. "

"The Yahud [Jews], the criminal Zionist entity known as Israel, which has no right whatsoever in the Middle East. The biggest mistake that the United Nations ever made, in 1947, was allowing the Jews to reestablish a homeland on the land that people already owned," he added, noting that Allah had given permission to the Palestinian to fight for their land. "The rest of the world now sees the Jews for what they are: vulnerable. The Palestinians proved it and now [the same] with the Hizballah."

His Zionist American conspiracies are staples of Sabiqun's philosophy.

"Who's monitoring the Zionist, right? Who's standing up to the people who are killing the Muslims all over the world? Nobody, nowhere – only one masjid [mosque] in the United States. Tell the truth, you don't hear nobody else openin' they [sic] mouth, do you? That mean [sic] we special," Musa told followers in a speech hosted on the group's website.

"The American government and the Israelis are finished. It is our duty to point these issues out for the people; that's our duty and that's our responsibility. Right? That's your duty that's your responsibility," he added. "The United States government is your responsibility. The Hindu-stani government is the Kashmiri's responsibility. The Israelis is the responsibilty of the Palestinians, it's what Allah gave 'em. And it is our duty to help them. But the monster, the global monster that is now in the decline, is our job."

Sabiqun's most violent "anti-Zionist" materials support terrorism. "When they go out and strike at the heart of Zionism, they are not suicide bombers, they are heroes, they are she-roes. Isn't that right? That's a part of our Deen, that's a part of our religion. Let's not become weak-boned and apologetic…" Musa said in a June 2002 speech about Palestinian suicide bombers.

Educational materials from the group reinforce anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiments, particularly the Crescent International magazine, which the group calls "regular reading" for Sabiqun members.

"Given the craven attitude of US politicians that cringe at the thought of offending the American Jewish lobby or standing up to the Zionist bully, more billions will be siphoned off to the Zionist settler entity to oppress, displace and murder Palestinians in their own land rather than force it to agree to some internationally accepted behavior," an article by Zafar Bangash says in the June 2010 issue.

"Zionism cloaked in Judaism has occupied the religious territories of Europe and America. Nothing much can be expected from an ailing America and an expiring Europe who have for centuries now been in a progressive chock-hold by the Zionist political class," a guest editorial article said in the June 2010 issue. "The issue of Israel hence is a Zionist/"Jewish"-Islamic issue par excellence; Christianity has been effectively domesticated by evangelical Christians and secular politicians who report to their Zionist spiritual and financial bosses respectively."

The institute plans to continue the hateful and violent rhetoric that has become essential to Sabiqun's ideology, whether reinforced through speeches or educational material. As the flyer for Sunday's event notes, the movement "must consciously subject itself to an evolutionary process… to propel us to emerge out of the gravity of self-imposed stagnation." Building on its young base, Sabiqun plans to implant anti-Zionist and anti-American ideas into another generation, which it hopes will sustain the legacy of Imam Musa.

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3025/radical-islamist-group-tries-to-branch-out

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Does Europe Want the Destruction of Israel?

by Guy Millière

Israelis to whom I spoke during a recent visit there all said the same thing: the Muslim world is a proven enemy, but they are now facing a second enemy that shows more and more its true face: the European Union and its main members.

The European Union, France, the UK, and some other European countries -- Spain for example -- are not only the scene of rising anti-Semitism; they also behave as if one of their primary objectives now is the demonization and destruction of Israel.

European boats will apparently join the pro-Hamas flotilla, should it sail. Boycotts against Israeli products -- most recently and conspicuously in Scotland -- Israeli scientists, Israeli books and Israeli movies are being organized over the continent.

A report released in 2010 by the British Coalition against Hate Education shows that the EU and countries such as France and the United Kingdom still fund «Palestinian» textbooks promoting hate and violence against Israeli Jews.

Recently, the EU announced the transfer of 45 million euros to the Palestinian Authority to «enable payment of salaries,» despite the fact that shortly before this payment was authorized, the PA had enacted a law granting a « monthly salary» to «all Palestinians imprisoned in Israel » for terror crimes."

The EU, France and the United Kingdom are also funding non-governmental associations that work inside Israel to undermine and delegitimize the country; a parliamentary panel of inquiry into NGO funding by foreign governments was formed in Jerusalem a few month ago. Later, the Knesset passed a law requiring NGO funding transparency. European Union High Representative, Catherine Ashton, said she «regretted » the decision."

A German writer stated two decades ago that «Europeans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz»: it is clear that Europeans intend to get rid of all traces of guilt for the crime Europeans committed against Jews seven decades ago. Demonizing Israel and contributing to its destruction helps them move in that direction.

Europe also has created economic and financial ties with the Muslim world and is now prisoner of these ties. Many Europeans want to demonstrate their willingness to atone for the colonial past of Europe and are ready to use Israel as a scapegoat.

Europe is steeped in moral relativism and in contempt for what made the greatness of Western civilization. As it lies down and submits, it can only hate a country that stands up and is ready to fight to stay free.

It is also now clear to Israeli authorities that a new tactic was born: the invasion of the country by « peaceful » people who will cross the borders en masse, and push Israeli soldiers to shoot at them. This tactic was already been used by « humanitarian flotillas » last year, and a new flotilla will possibly still sail towards Gaza later this month. Those aboard are hoping to get mugged or shot by Israelis. If they are, it will be a success for them: they will have shown how the Israelis are « barbaric » and « cruel. » If they are not mugged or shot, it will also be a success for them: Israel will look defeated.

When Israel recently celebrated its 63rd anniversary, it was a day when the Israelis and friends of Israel had reasons to feel proud: despite wars, hatred, terrorism, the Israelis have built a free, strong and democratic society. They have also built a modern economy, one of the first worldwide in the high technology sector.

It was also a day when the Israelis had reason to feel concerned: most of them, according to polling, think that the present occupant of the White House is the most anti-Israeli President of the United States since the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948. The recent speeches of Barack Obama about the « 1967 borders » did not persuade them to change their mind.

Most of them also see the entire Middle East sliding towards the predominance of radical Islam.

The potential closeness of the Palestinian Authority with Hamas indicates a reorientation of Palestinians toward a much harder line. The «Nakba Day» (Catastrophe Day), that Palestinian movements have organized since 1998 and that is supposed to «commemorate» the «catastrophe» -- the Arabs' failure to annihilate Israel in 1948 --was particularly rough this year, and accompanied by attempts to invade Israeli territory from Lebanon and Syria. On «Naksa Day» (Day of the Setback), that was supposed to «commemorate» the defeat of Arab countries by Israel in 1967, hundreds of people tried again to invade Israel, only this time just from Syria.

Israeli authorities said they know that even if flotillas do not create any major incident, the Palestinian Authority might decide unilaterally to create a Palestinian State, if the General Assembly of the United Nations votes to support its creation, and if the Palestinian Authority is not overly concerned about forfeiting US funding.

Israeli authorities also said they are preparing for all eventualities; they know anything can happen, and that journalists from the rest of the world are hungry for images that would allow them to drag Israel into the mud.

Even if the United States vetoes the resolution at the Security Council, many countries have already said they would give full recognition to the new State. Several European countries seem ready to go in this direction and to step up their pressure on the Israeli government.

Political philosophers used to say that two sets of values are in competition in human societies: resentment and achievement. Israel is fundamentally a society of achievers. Resentment is ubiquitous in the Muslim world today -- and oozing through Europe as well.

Guy Millière

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2241/europe-destruction-of-israel

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Flip-Flop

by Gavriel Queenann

President Barack Obama has offered to leave 10,000 troops in Iraq next year despite his pledge that all US forces would be withdrawn by the end of 2011.

Any extension of US military presence in Iraq depends on receiving a formal request from Baghdad, which must weigh the questionable readiness of Iraqi security forces against fears of increased terror attacks and unrest if US soldiers remain in 2012.

Baghdad is not expected to decide until September at the earliest when the 46,000 US troopes who remain in the country will start heading home, but senior White House officials say they have worked out options to keep 8,500-10,000 active duty troops in-country to continue traiing Iraqi security forces in 2012.

The figures also were noted by foreign diplomats in Baghdad briefed on the issue. All spoke on condition of anonymity to frankly discuss the sensitive matter during interviews over the past two weeks.

Political Confrontations Expected
Any change in the US military withdrawal timetable in Iraq - after more than eight years and more than 4,450 US military deaths - may spark difficult political confrontations for Obama as pressure builds to close out the Iraq mission and stick to pledges to draw down troops in Afghanistan as well.

Senator Harry Reid, the top senate democrat and majority leader, told reporters the cost of keeping US troops in Iraq, given a mounting US debt crisis and Iraq's fledgling security gains, is no longer necessary.

"As Iraq becomes increasingly capable, it is time for our own troops to return home by the end of the year and for these precious resources to be directed elsewhere," Reid said in the statement.

"There is no question that the United States must continue to provide support for the Iraqis as they progress, but now is the time for our military mission to come to a close."

Reid estimated nearly $1 trillion has been spent in Iraq since the US invaded in 2003, including $50 billion this year alone.

Election Worries
Reid's is the first statement by a top democrat to oppose Obama's policy in Iraq, and may signal splintering Democratic support over his war planning just as he ramps up his 2012 re-election campaign.

Iraq has flown under Washington's political radar for much of the past year, and democratic politicians and fund raisers who want Obama to end the war on-schedule are vowing to exert more pressure on the White House.

"With a false declaration that combat operations are over in Iraq, what is now Operation New Dawn has ironically become a forgotten war," said Ashwin Madia, a former Marine who served in Iraq in 2005-06 and is now interim chairman of VoteVets.org. "That is about to change."

The group has raised millions of dollars for Democratic Party candidates.

Gavriel Queenann

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145487

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Report on Muslim Temple Mount Digs to Be Declassified?

by Gil Ronen

A special Knesset subcommittee convened Wednesday afternoon to discuss declassifying a report by the State Comptroller on illegal excavation by Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount.

The Chairman of the Knesset’s State Control Committee, MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima), toured the Temple Mount Wednesday after he received the full and detailed report by the Comptroller regarding unauthorized Waqf digs on the Mount.

A partial version of the Comptroller’s report made public a few months ago – and a secret portion of the report – found that Muslim officials carried out excavations on the Mount without authorization and without coordinating with state authorities.

The Comptroller castigated the Israel Police, Antiquities Authority, and the Jerusalem Municipality for not taking any action vis-à-vis the infractions and also failing to notify the Comptroller’s Office of the problem.

Hasson toured the Mount and convened the State Control Committee’s Subcommittee on Security, Foreign Relations and International Trade Ties to discuss the possibility of holding a vote in the State Control Committee on declassifying the entire report.

Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount have taken advantage of the relative confusion and demoralization in Israel in the years since the launch of the 2000 "Oslo War" to conduct illicit excavations at Judaism's holiest site, bring in generators and carry out other provocations.

The censoring of the Comptroller's report on the Muslim abuse of the Temple Mount has been sharply criticized by the Committee to Prevent Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities.

Gil Ronen

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145492

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Terrorists in Drag: Bombs Beneath the Burqa

by Phyllis Chesler

There they all stand, guilty as sin, Afghan Taliban terrorists disguised in women’s burqas—but exposed when they were captured by the Afghan Border Police. Their photo (or rather photos) were taken by an Afghan photographer somewhere near Jalalabad and have just been seen worldwide.

One of these charmers was wearing an explosive vest; six had AK-47s. Clearly they were up to no good. One wonders how long they will remain in jail and what they will do when they emerge.

These photographs conclusively validate the concern that Dr. Daniel Pipes has had about the security risk that burqas represent. For the last six years, Dr. Pipes has been detailing the number of common criminals and Islamist terrorists who have robbed jewelry stories and peeped into women’s bathrooms while wearing burqas, or who have blown themselves and others up from under the protective cover of a mere woman’s shroud.

In December, 2009, a suicide bomber dressed in a full veil and abaya gained access to a ceremony attended by Somali government officials in Mogadishu and killed 19 people, including three cabinet ministers. In February, 2010, a female suicide bomber killed 54 Shia pilgrims in Baghdad. She was dressed in an abaya, which police said allowed her to hide an explosive device. In December, 2010 in Pakistan, a woman wearing a burqa threw a grenade and detonated an explosive vest at a U.N. security checkpoint, killing 41 people.

This is not just happening in Muslim-majority countries or in war zones.

In August, 2010, a man wearing a burqa robbed a bank in Silver Spring, Maryland. In January, 2011, a man wearing niqab (a face veil) attempted to rob a bank in Philadelphia. Three years earlier, also in Philadelphia, three men dressed as Muslim women stuck up a Bank of America branch. One of the men shot and killed a police officer during their getaway.

Why are burqas allowed in public? Or rather, why don’t we view them as potentially suspicious as opposed to a religious custom which we infidels are obligated to honor and revere?

For reasons of safety, the West, and for that matter the entire Muslim world, should immediately ban the burqa as a security risk.

However, I have also gone on record calling for a ban on the burqa, at least in the West, on the grounds that it violates a woman’s human rights.

A burqa wearer may feel that she cannot breathe, that she might slowly be suffocating. She may feel buried alive and may become anxious or claustrophobic. She is trapped in a sensory deprivation isolation chamber. It is a form of permanent torture. Just imagine the consequences of getting used to this as a way of life. But perhaps one never gets used to it. They merely continue to suffer. For example, an unnamed Saudi princess described her experience of the Saudi abaya (to Jean Sasson) as follows:

When we walked out of the cool souq area into the blazing hot sun, I gasped for breath and sucked furiously through the sheer black fabric. The air tasted stale and dry as it filtered through the thin gauzy cloth. I had purchased the sheerest veil available, yet I felt I was seeing life through a thick screen. How could women see through veils made of a thicker fabric? The sky was no longer blue, the glow of the sun had dimmed; my heart plunged to my stomach when I realized that from that moment, outside my own home I would not experience life as it really is in all its color. The world suddenly seemed a dull place. And dangerous, too! I groped and stumbled along the pitted, cracked sidewalk, fearful of breaking an ankle or leg.

Qanta Ahmed, a Pakistani-British-American religious Muslim physician worked in Saudi Arabia for a few years. Board certified in four areas, immediately upon arrival, she nevertheless became invisible, demeaned, shrouded, akin to chattel property in the airport where no man and no porter helped her (or other women) with their luggage. She writes:

The veiling was anathema to me. Even with a deep understanding of Islam, I could not imagine mummification is what an enlightened, merciful God would ever have wished for half of all His creation. These shrouded, gagged silences rise into a shrieking register of muted laments for stillborn freedoms. Such enforced incarceration of womanhood is a form of female infanticide.

I must repeat, as I always do, that I am not opposed to the hijab (the headscarf). I am only addressing the face-obscuring garments that are cumbersome, dangerous, and exclude a woman from normal social interaction.

And, as I have said before, wherever burqas, chadris or the extreme Saudi or Iranian versions of female head, face, and body covering exist, you will probably find fundamentalist Islam and potentially infidel-hating, Jew-hating terrorists. Burqas and jihad go hand-in-hand.

There is another reason to ban the burqa in the West. Muslim girls and women are being beaten and even honor killed for refusing to wear this costume of utter subordination. Many (certainly not all) Muslim girls must toe the line in terms of how they dress or they will be threatened, beaten, acid-attacked, or even honor killed. If their families or roving self-appointed Vice and Virtue squads decide that they are looking too “Western,” or dressing in too modern a fashion, they will be punished.

Young, including educated, Muslim women in the West are increasingly wearing oppressive Muslim garb in a show of resistance to infidel culture. Just yesterday in New York City, I saw, in ninety-degree heat, a casually dressed man followed by a woman in a severe and heavy hijab.

I have found that Muslim girls and women are at risk in the West when they attempt to assimilate. When they begin to want “Western” things, beginning with casual clothing, makeup, an education, non-Muslim friends, perhaps a non-Muslim boyfriend, perhaps a divorce from an illiterate and violent first cousin—that is when their fundamentalist families view them as “prostitutes” and kill them.

We in the West must strategize ways to protect those Muslims and ex-Muslims who choose to assimilate and to prosecute those who are violent towards them.

Phyllis Chesler

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/06/terrorists-in-drag-bombs-beneath-the-burqa/2/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Middle East Studies in Upheaval

by Daniel Pipes

The troubled academic study of the Middle East and Islam by Americans is changing in fundamental ways. I offer some thoughts based on 42 years of personal observation:

From Western offence to Islamic offence: Muslim relations with Christians divide into four long periods: from Muhammad's hijra to the First Crusade, 622-1099, during which time Muslims expanded at Christian expense; to the 2^nd siege of Vienna, 1099-1683, which saw a mix of Muslim advances (e.g., Anatolia) and retreats (Iberia); to the Arab oil boycott, 1683-1973, with Christians on the offense; and since 1973, with Muslims on the offense.

One of many books on the "Arab world."

When I entered the Middle East and Islam field in 1969, Americans looked almost exclusively at the Western impact on modern Muslims; today, the Muslim impact on the West features almost as prominently, from American slavery to the problems of Malmö, Sweden.

From Arab to Muslim: Books on "The Arabs," "the Arab world," "Arab politics," "Arab nationalism," and "Arab socialism" flew off the press during my student years. With time, however, the hollowness of this modern concept of Arabs became evident. I was one of those who argued for Islam as the real defining factor, devoting myself thirty years ago to proving that "Islam profoundly shapes the political attitudes of Muslims." Met with skepticism back then, this understanding has now become so blindingly self-evident that Amazon.com lists no fewer than 3,077 items in English on jihad.

From critical to apologetic writing: Little did I know, but by taking up Islamic history when I did meant slipping in before the deluge of revisionism. Back in 1969, scholars respected Islamic civilization while usually (but not always) maintaining a proudly Western outlook. Symbolic of old-fashioned learning, my first Middle East history professor assigned us Julius Wellhausen's study, Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (in English translation to be sure), published in 1902.

Then came the revolution. Martin Kramer ascribes the changes in Middle East studies to the publication of Orientalism by Edward Said in 1978; I see it more resulting from the sharp leftward turn of universities. Whatever the cause, the field descended into revisionist, apologetic, jargon-laden, error-prone Third-Worldism.

The old guard: Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), author of my assigned reading on the Umayyad Dynasty.

The old masters dropped out of syllabi. The Hartford Seminary rapidly "turned from being the premier Protestant seminary for missions to the Muslim world into an institution promoting Islamization." The academic understanding of jihad epitomizes this transformation: in a single generation, jihad went from being interpreted as aggressive warfare to moral self-improvement. Academics took their biased and shoddy work into government.

Academic work has sometimes become a near-parody of itself, with specialists proving such absurdities as: ancient Israeli history is a creation of modern Zionist propaganda, the Islamist movement already failed by 1992, water imperatives drive the Arab-Israeli conflict, and homosexuals do not exist in the Middle East. As maudlin obituaries to Said suggest, many specialists remain in his malign thrall.

From public indifference to engagement: The Middle East was politically prominent well before 2001 thanks to cold war tensions, oil exports, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iranian revolution. But American popular interest in the region remained modest until 9/11 and the subsequent Afghan and Iraqi wars. That surge of interest led to a wide awareness about the inadequacy of academic work. With the help of sophisticated critiques like Kramer's, plus organizations like Campus Watch, the public has become actively involved in opposing radical Middle East specialists, for example through activism to deny them tenure. One finds no parallel in other fields.

Martin Kramer subjected Middle East studies to its first sustained critique in 2001.

From trendy to retro: Another response to this failure consists of authors – often from outside the academy – harking back to pre-1980 scholarship to understand the region. Ibn Warraq, a pseudonymous ex-Muslim, published a sequence of books on the life of Muhammad, the origins of the Koran, its variants, and meaning, all of them premised on generations-old writings. Andrew Bostom, a medical researcher, anthologized significant portions of pre-1980 scholarship on jihad and antisemitism. Historian Efraim Karsh wrote Islamic Imperialism, which argues that Islam's expansionist tendencies have driven the religion since Muhammad's wars.

These old-fashioned books are yet few in number compared to the cascade of revisionism, but they mark a revival of ideas and themes that once appeared moribund. Their appearance, along with public engagement and the emerging presence of promising new scholars, signals that – almost uniquely in the humanities – a sound understanding of the Middle East and Islam may rebound.

Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Source: https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/130f98cd60c63c38

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel’s Palace Coup Plotters

by Caroline B. Glick


On Monday, saboteurs bombed the Egyptian gas pipeline to Israel for the third time since former president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February. The move was just another reminder that Israel today faces the most daunting and complex threat spectrum it has ever seen.

From Egypt to Turkey to Iran to the international Left to the Obama administration, Israel faces a mix of military and political challenges that threaten its very existence on multiple levels. To meet these challenges, it is vital for the government and people of Israel to stand strong, unified and determined. The approaching storm will test our resilience as we have never been tested before.

Unfortunately, even if the government is competent, and even if the nation stands strong, there is reason to fear that Israel will fail to successfully withstand the dangers gathering against it. Unelected, unrepresentative and irresponsible senior government officials are liable to take actions that undermine the government’s ability to protect the country and weaken the public’s morale and unity of purpose.

Over the past week, we received two reminders of how dire the situation is. The first reminder relates to institutional impediments to the government’s freedom of action in preventing Iran from fielding a nuclear arsenal.

Since the beginning of his first term as prime minister 15 years ago, Binyamin Netanyahu has consistently warned that the greatest dangers Israel faces stem from the forces of global jihad generally and the Iranian regime and its nuclear program specifically. After taking office for the second time in 2009, Netanyahu made blocking Iran’s rise to nuclear power his top priority. He ordered the heads of the Mossad and the IDF to prepare plans to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Last Friday, Haaretz reported that former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi refused to obey his order. Rather than prepare strike plans, Dagan and Ashkenazi warned that such a strike would foment a regional war. That is, rather than do their jobs, they made excuses for failing to fulfill their duty to obey Israel’s elected leadership.

Not wanting to take them on directly, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to wait them out. Dagan and Ashkenazi were both set to finish their terms at the beginning of the year, and Netanyahu and Barak figured they could replace them with commanders who would abide by the government’s wishes. Specifically, Barak and Netanyahu believed that by replacing Ashkenazi with his deputy Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant, they would have a military leader willing and able to take on the central challenge of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Barak announced last August that Galant would replace Ashkenazi as IDF chief in January. Galant’s appointment was approved by the government and by the Senior Appointments Commission. But in late January, the government was forced to cancel it. And this week we received new indications that Galant’s appointment fell victim to what has been likened to a palace coup. That is, the government was denied its right to choose its military leader by a group of senior officials who deliberately usurped that power from the government.

In January, we learned that Ashkenazi’s close associate Lt.-Col. (ret.) Boaz Harpaz had forged a document that was transferred by Ashkenazi’s office to Channel 2. The forgery purported to be a memo written for Galant by the public relations firm owned by Eyal Arad – Kadima’s public relations guru. The forged memo detailed a public relations campaign that would discredit Galant’s rivals and Ashkenazi, and so pave the way for Galant’s appointment as chief of General Staff. Channel 2’s broadcast of the memo seriously harmed Galant’s public image.

The police opened an investigation, and Harpaz admitted to forging the document. Despite revelations that Harpaz was in intensive, continuous contact with Ashkenazi’s wife Ronit and had a longstanding close friendship with Ashkenazi himself, the Military Advocate- General decided not to investigate Ashkenazi or any other officer about their ties to Harpaz and his forged document.

Over the weekend, Yediot Aharonot reported that last week Harpaz underwent two lengthy interrogations by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss. Harpaz is reportedly divulging information about his connections to Ashkenazi.

Despite Harpaz’s own admission that he forged the document, Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein has abstained, to date, from indicting him. Although jarring, Weinstein’s actions are not surprising. It was Weinstein who personally overturned Galant’s appointment in January.

Harpaz’s defamatory memo wasn’t the only thing working against Galant’s appointment. A previously unknown environmental group called the Green Movement filed a petition with the Supreme Court calling for the cancellation of Galant’s appointment because in the past he had used the state lands around his family homestead in Moshav Amikam without permission. Since his actions were administrative infractions rather than criminal acts, the Senior Appointments Commission concluded that he was fit to serve as chief of staff.

Weinstein felt differently. Claiming that he had ethical problems with Galant’s behavior, Weinstein refused to defend the appointment to the Supreme Court. Weinstein’s announcement forced the government to cancel Galant’s appointment.

Ashkenazi’s chosen successor,Maj.-Gen. Benny Gantz, whom Barak had previously eliminated from the running, was appointed instead.

Perhaps due to fear that Gantz might not stand up to Netanyahu and Barak as he and Ashkenazi did, Dagan shocked the country last month by launching an unprecedented public attack against Netanyahu and Barak. His clear aim was to discredit the option of an Israeli military strike against Iran.

According to Haaretz, Dagan was motivated by his desire to cover up his failure to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Also according to Haaretz, Ashkenazi, together with recently retired IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, supported Dagan’s attacks through off-record briefings.

It is impossible for the public to know what is going on behind closed doors. We cannot know whether a worthy general’s rivals’ successful campaign to discredit him has doomed the country to another three years of defeatist, incompetent stewardship of the IDF – and what’s worse, to a nuclear-armed Iran. What we do know is that a handful of unelected civil servants took it upon themselves to undermine the government’s ability to lead the country.

The government is not the only target on the runaway clerks’ target list. Members of the nationalist camp are also subject to systematic campaigns of criminalization and demoralization.

This week we were witness to the troubling spectacle of senior rabbis being dragged into police stations for questioning. Their purported crime involves writing blurbs praising a religious book written by another rabbi.

The book in question is reportedly a highly controversial tome that sets out the religious precepts governing the killing of enemies of Israel in times of war and peace. It was authored by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira from Yitzhar.

Several leftist organizations filed a complaint against the book, claiming that it incites murder of non-Jews. Shapira was arrested and brought before the district court for arraignment in leg shackles and handcuffs last year.

And over the past several days, Rabbis Dov Lior and Ya’acov Yosef have been arrested and questioned by police for the blurbs they authored that were published in the book.

It is hard to know the basis for the complaint. Generally Israeli law stipulates that there has to be a tangible connection between incendiary words and the likely commission of the crime they incite. No such connection seems to exist in the case of Shapira’s book.

In the wake of Lior’s arrest, his students staged raucous, enraged protests against the State Attorney’s Office and the Supreme Court. For their part, senior prosecutors announced that no one in Israel is above the law. And this is true enough.

Unfortunately they do not practice what they preach. In arresting the rabbis, the police were acting in accordance with their instructions from Assistant Attorney-General for Special Projects Shai Nitzan.

The bulk of Nitzan’s duties revolve around applying the law in a discriminatory manner against the Israeli Right.

Following Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, then-attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair established Nitzan’s position. The position was specifically geared toward criminalizing Israelis who live beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

Among other things, the assistant attorneygeneral for special projects oversees the operation of an inter-agency group called the Task Force for Law Enforcement against Israelis in Judea and Samaria.

The task force was officially canceled in 1998 by the government, acting on the advice of then-attorney-general Elyakim Rubenstein. Rubenstein argued that the task force’s mission of enforcing specific laws against a specific population group was inherently discriminatory.

In breach of the government decision, the task force has continued to meet regularly. Nitzan has overseen its activities since he was promoted to his position in 2005.

In 2009, MK Ze’ev Elkin convened a special Knesset hearing on the activities of Nitzan’s task force. According to an Arutz 7 report of the proceedings, he subpoenaed protocols from the meetings and found that its activities were deeply prejudicial and politically motivated. Among other things, the protocols disclosed that the task force members were required to file a minimum monthly quota of five criminal complaints against Israelis in Judea and Samaria suspected of building violations.

The quota system is doubly prejudicial. First, by making investigations an institutional requirement rather than a function of the suspected commission of specific illegal acts, it is an invitation for frivolous prosecutions and official harassment.

Second, inside the 1949 armistice lines, the general practice is to treat building violations as administrative rather than criminal offenses. By using a different practice for Israelis living outside the armistice lines, Nitzan and his team members enacted a separate legal regime for a select group of citizens, thus undermining the foundations of the rule of law.

Elkin’s 2009 hearing made no difference. And after Lior’s arrest last week, Elkin again demanded its disbanding in accordance with the government decision and the rule of law. And no doubt, the legal fraternity will continue to ignore his calls.

Through their behavior, the legal fraternity is not merely making a mockery of the rule of law. They are undermining the social fabric of the country.

As for the government, the senior civil service’s erosion of the governing authority of the political leadership has risen to critical levels. As Galant’s scuttled appointment and Dagan’s and Ashkenazi’s behavior regarding Iran’s nuclear program make clear, we have reached the point where due to the subversion of senior officials, our elected leaders are denied the ability to perform their primary function of defending the country.

This state of affairs has simply got to end. The government and the Knesset need to put a stop to it. At the end of the day, the ayatollahs, the sheikhs, the UN and the anarchists are not our greatest challenge. Our leaders and our people can stand up to them. Our greatest challenge is to stand up to unelected officials who have taken it upon themselves to discredit the cause of victory, embrace weakness, and destroy our sense of national purpose.

Caroline B. Glick

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=227931

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Nuclear Axis of Evil Advances

by Ryan Mauro

The United Kingdom is accusing Iran of testing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Resolution 1929. At the same time, North Korea is moving full speed ahead with its weapons programs. It is well-known that the two collaborate on their WMD efforts, and it must be assumed that any progress will be shared. Recent advances by the two members of the Axis of Evil show that the West’s strategy against them is failing to stop their pursuit of the world’s deadliest weapons.

Iran launched its second satellite into orbit this month, which “demonstrated Iranian engineers’ growing skill and contrasted with the repeated failures endured by North Korea in trying to place payloads into orbit.” The New York Times said the rocket did not resemble an intercontinental ballistic missile, but the technology is still related enough to raise concern that the space program has a hidden purpose. Iran has also announced that it is installing new, more advanced centrifuges to triple its production of enriched uranium.

The Iranians have made “dramatic progress” in their ballistic missile programs in the past year, carrying out three tests of nuclear-capable missiles in defiance of the United Nations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that it possesses evidence that Iran has worked on developing a miniaturized nuclear warhead. It has also tested advanced short-range missiles that have been called a “game-changer” because of the threat they pose to aircraft carriers. Reza Kahlili, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, reports that two nuclear-capable warheads with a range of 2,000 miles are now in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards. He said eight more are to be delivered within the next nine months.

Kahlili’s report does not necessarily mean that Iran has manufactured the actual nuclear warhead. However, the South Korean defense minister says North Korea may have successfully made a miniaturized nuclear warhead. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency likewise says that North Korea may have several plutonium-based warheads. To make matters worse, Larry Niksch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says that North Korea could have ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S. in 2012. If North Korea has overcome the obstacles to warhead creation, then that means it is in a position to help Iran do the same for a price.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, president of EMPact America, says that Western analysts erred in describing North Korea’s last nuclear test in May 2009 as a failure. He says that the U.S. expected North Korea to detonate an implosion device with the power of 10 to 20 kilotons. The explosion was only three kilotons strong, giving the impression that the device was defective. In reality, Dr. Pry says, North Korea was likely testing a “super-EMP” weapon, referring to an Electro-Magnetic Pulse that destroys electronic components for potentially hundreds of miles.

Pry says that when he served on the congressional EMP Commission, which concluded that such an attack could collapse the infrastructure of the U.S., he was told that a group of Russian scientists had gone to North Korea to work on a “super-EMP” weapon. Notably, the Iranian regime has conducted exercises consistent with an EMP attack. If Pry’s analysis is right, then the Iranians and North Koreans could be sharing the technology necessary to carry out an attack more horrific than a traditional nuclear explosion.

The Iranians and North Koreans cannot be expected to keep their technologies to themselves. Ayatollah Khamenei spoke of sharing nuclear technology with Islamic countries during a stop in Khartoum, Sudan in 2006. More recently, the speaker of the Iranian parliament said that Iran would use its missiles to protect Muslim allies. “Israel and the U.S. should know that if they want to act violently towards Muslims, we will stand in their way,” Ali Larijani said.

The IAEA believes that a site in Syria bombed by Israel in 2007 was a secret nuclear reactor, believed to have been built by the North Koreans. A high-level defector says the construction was financed by Iran. In May 2004, a train in North Korea delivering missiles to Syria crashed, killing about a dozen Syrians. In July 2007, an accidental explosion happened in Syria that reportedly killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians. It is believed that technicians were trying to mount a warhead filled with mustard gas onto a missile. In August 2009, three short-range Scud missiles developed with help from Iran and North Korea were tested in Syria, with one falling into Turkey. It is certain that Syria will benefit from Iran and North Korea’s latest advances.

The U.S. recently intercepted a shipment of North Korean missile components to Burma, where North Korea is intimately involved in the junta’s secret nuclear weapons program. The Iranians are now very active in Venezuela, adding another partner to their nuclear schemes.

An advance by North Korea must also be considered an advance by Iran, and vice versa. In order to stop one, the West must stop the other. And the West is failing.

Ryan Mauro

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/05/the-nuclear-axis-of-evil-advances/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Flotilla, Gilad Shalit and the Friends of Genocide

by David Meir-Levi

Many media, academic and political responses to Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010 were characterized by inaccurate language and factual errors that misrepresented the “Freedom Flotilla” confrontation and supported an unwarranted delegitimization of Israel.

Despite overwhelming video and documentary evidence of the flotilla activists’ radical agenda and their affinity for violence, all too many commentators asserted that the flotilla of Gaza-bound vessels sailed on a purely “humanitarian” mission, and Israel’s interception on the high seas was in violation of international law and the maritime laws of war. Bona fide scholars of international law supported Israel’s actions and debunked the anti-Israel accusations.

The basis for the legality of Israel’s interception of the blockade runners was the fact that Hamas, the ruling force in the Gaza Strip and an organization condemned as an illegal enemy terrorist entity by the US Department of State and the European Union, was in an active state of war with Israel. In wartime, blockades are legal according to international law.

Hamas officials have repeatedly declared publicly that the goal of their terrorism is the obliteration of Israel. Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and since its very inception, Hamas has declared war on Israel and has mercilessly attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians. When Israel unilaterally and unconditionally evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas declared a victory for terrorism and a commitment to maintaining the terror war against Israel. Hamas matched its words with suicide bombers, sniper attacks, RPG attacks, kidnappings and thousands of Qassam rockets. Given Hamas’ commitment to Israel’s destruction, and its relentless terrorist attacks, one must conclude that Hamas is at war with Israel.

Some have argued that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority are yet “state actors” and the maritime laws of war apply only to “state actors.” Thus, Israel’s blockade, being against non-state actors, is in violation of maritime laws of war. But this is a deeply flawed argument, comparable to declaring that since terrorists do not wear uniforms, they must be treated as civilians rather than combatants.

In response to Hamas’ endless and relentless terrorist war, Israel’s blockade is a legitimate restrained and defensive military action; and thus Israel’s interdiction of the Mavi Marmara in May, 2010, was rational, legal, and moral. International law acknowledges that all sovereign nations have the right to defend against aggressors, and Israel has a moral duty to protect its citizens.

Now, just a bit more than a year later, we are witness to a rerun of this same anti-Israel endeavor. Originally planned for departure in August, 2010, this retread of the “Freedom Flotilla” promises to be bigger and better and more impactful. As though no one learned anything from the first flotilla fiasco, this next generation of “human rights activists,” including a host of American participants on a boat bearing a resonant American name, has launched a new and improved Gaza flotilla 2. As did their predecessors, today’s blockade runners position themselves as “peace activists” bent on rescuing the oppressed Arabs of the Gaza Strip by breaking Israel’s “illegal” blockade, averting a looming humanitarian crisis with desperately-needed medical and food supplies, and helping to end Israel’s “illegal occupation” – all pure fiction.

Thanks to the persistence, courage, and sagacity of one lone law firm, the legality of Israel’s blockade and of its defensive actions against blockade runners are now so well established that Greece, Turkey, and international insurance companies are having second thoughts about support for, and maritime insurance of, this new Gaza flotilla. Even the first flotilla’s most ardent supporter, the Turkish terrorist organization IHH, has withdrawn support, perhaps under Turkish government pressure due to the events in Syria. It seems that flotilla 2 may also be in violation of U.S. law, thus rendering participants and material supporters vulnerable to legal action. Ms. Darshan-Leitner’s legal arguments have found agreement and support in other quarters. Secretary Clinton and the U.S. Department of State have issued a stern warning to the flotilla participants, indicating that they may face arrest, prosecution and deportation by Israel. Two members of Congress asserted that American flotilla members could face prosecution in the USA.

As a result, at least one third of the original participating ships have withdrawn from the flotilla and will not try to breach Israel’s blockade.

But what about the flotilla’s putative mission to avert a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip? Poverty does exist in the Gaza Strip. There is no perceptible economic development, no industry other than smuggling and the manufacturing of rockets, and there is little opportunity. But the deprivation that Gazans suffer is by no means a humanitarian crisis. Socio-economic data show that Gazans enjoy a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the world average.

On April 20, 2011, well in advance of flotilla 2’s departure, the International Red Cross agreed. Ample photos show shops filled with food and bazaars over-flowing with fruits, vegetable and meats. Some of these photos are published in Arab news sources as well as in American ones.

Recent reports indicate that two new luxury hotels are set to open on the Gaza beach, thousands of new cars ply the roads, there are two new shopping malls, hundreds of new homes are under construction, and the hot-houses left intact by Israel when it evacuated all Israelis from the Gaza Strip in 2005 are now run by Hamas and produce enough fruits and vegetables that Israeli imports are tapering off. Even Palestinian Authority officials have exposed Hamas’ ruse, acknowledging that 56% of the PA budget goes to Gaza, and branding the “humanitarian crisis” as a fabrication of Hamas propaganda to provide an excuse for smuggling war materials into the strip.[i]

Moreover, established and efficient mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip. The border between Egypt and Gaza is now open, so cargo could be off-loaded at the Egyptian port of el-Arish, just west of the Gaza Strip. Assistance can also be delivered at the Israeli port of Ashdod, where cargo can be off-loaded and inspected, and then delivered to Gaza. Far from prohibiting the entry of food, water, medicine and humanitarian supplies, Israel facilitates the daily transfer of thousands of tons of aid that residents of Gaza should receive for free, except that Hamas officials confiscate and sell them for money that they then use to buy weapons for their terrorist activities. Hamas’ aid theft became so blatant that even the UN had to step in on behalf of the deprived and impoverished Gazans.

In sum, Israel’s blockade is legal. Breaching that blockade is a violation of international maritime law and an act of war entailing considerable risk of physical harm and legal prosecution. There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and the poverty and privation there is in large part due to the depredations of the Hamas terrorist government against its own people. So if the aim of the flotilla were to help the residents of the Gaza Strip, they could do so by docking at el-Arish or Ashdod, without perpetrating an act of war against Israel by breaching its legal blockade of the Gaza Strip. And if these “human rights activists” were really concerned about privation and suffering, why are they not aiming their flotilla at Syria where thousands have died in the past few months as president-for-life Bashar el-Assad drowns his “Arab Spring” in the blood of unarmed Syrian protesters, or at Sudan or Iran or Iraq or Arabia where human rights violations are galactic in scope and severity?

So what is the real goal of these “human rights activists”? Here an old adage can come to our aid: “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.” Let’s see with whom these so-called activists are sailing.

The key organizer of flotilla 2, Mohammed Sawalha, has ties with Hamas. Two other members of the flotilla’s “peace activists,” Amin Abu Rashad and Mohammad Hannoun, are known Hamas members. The IHH, the primary organization supporting the flotilla before it disassociated itself from the endeavor, is a known Muslim terrorist organization, and its leader, Bulent Yildirim, has well-known terrorist affiliations. Another leading organizer of flotilla 2 is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which supports, aids and abets Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. The Free Palestine Movement, founded by ISM activists, supports the 2011 flotilla, promoting the claim that the flotilla is a non-violent effort with humanitarian goals. Greta Berlin, one of the flotilla participants, is a cheerful-looking 68-year-old American who is a member of the ISM and an energetic, vocal supporter of Hamas. Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, long-time pro-Palestinian activists who support Arab terrorism against Israel, are also among the organizers of the flotilla.

We need to recall that Hamas is a self-declared terrorist organization whose founding document unabashedly avows that its ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel and the genocide of all Jews worldwide. So it is clear that the leaders and members and armed terrorists who carry out Hamas’ attacks, those who offer financial support, those who offer political and moral justification, and those who misrepresent Hamas as a humanitarian organization struggling courageously against an oppressive occupation, are all active participants in Hamas’ heinous endeavor. They want to engage in war against Israel.

And the same is true of flotilla 2’s “human rights activists:” Based on the company they keep, it is clear that they are passive participants, but participants nonetheless. By joining the terrorists and terrorist supporters in the flotilla, they are engaging both in an act of war against Israel and in political street theatre at its worst. By striking a political and PR blow against Israel, they are aiding and abetting one of our century’s most vicious and ruthless terrorist organizations. By setting sail with those who support mass murder and genocide, they have wittingly or unwittingly joined the ranks of the 21^st century’s avatar of Hitler’s little helpers.

And speaking of active participation, it is important to note that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stood staunchly on the side of Hamas for decades, until this year. The ICRC has a long history of whitewashing Hamas terrorism and condemning Israel for its restrained defensive actions against terror attacks. In 2010 the ICRC supported flotilla 1, condemning Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip because, they asserted, it choked off economic development, caused unemployment, poverty and warfare, and punished the entire civilian population for acts for which they bear no responsibility. In the ICRC’s judgment, Israel’s blockade constituted collective punishment in clear violation of international humanitarian law, and its illegal closure of the Gaza Strip should be ended.

For more than two decades the world’s paragon of human rights shamelessly underwrote a sizable portion of the Gaza Strip’s economy with humanitarian aid, passively complicit as Hamas operatives confiscated much of that aid and sold it to the impoverished population that should have received it at no cost. As noted above, only in 2009 did the ICRC finally go public with the scandal of its complicity in humanitarian aid used to fund genocidal terrorism. The ICRC’s support for Hamas constitutes perhaps one of the world’s most galactic cases of hypocrisy.

For five years, the ICRC stood silently by as the Hamas captors of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit held him in isolation, contrary to international law. For the last two years, there has not even been any sign that Shalit is still alive. When the ICRC finally issued a statement on June 23, 2011, requesting that Hamas enable Shalit to contact his family, scores of Gazan Arabs assaulted the Red Cross offices in Gaza City, pelting the building with eggs, destroying a security guard cabin, and smashing the windows with stones. Hamas made no reply to the Red Cross request. A similarly violent demonstration, replete with eggs, rocks and shoes, occurred six months earlier when the French foreign minister made the mistake of expressing sympathy for Shalit, an Israeli-French dual national, during her visit to the Gaza Strip; and this despite the fact that she had made an impassioned plea for Israel to end its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory. The foreign minister, although under heavy guard, was almost hit by a shoe.

So one might ask the question, why does Israel enable the ICRC to do its “humanitarian work” in the Gaza Strip, knowing full well that not only does much of this work actually aid and abet and support Hamas in its genocidal goals, but also that the ICRC for years did nothing about its other humanitarian obligation in the Gaza Strip, namely, ensuring humane treatment for the one lone Israeli POW. And after the ICRC finally made one flaccid belated attempt on behalf of Shalit, it quietly accepted Hamas’ rebuff?

Perhaps it is not in Israel’s best interest to allow the Red Cross into the Gaza Strip; or perhaps the ICRC should consider some action to protest Hamas’ refusal to abide by international laws regarding POWs, not to mention attacking Red Cross offices with stones and eggs.

*

[i] No humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip:

The evidence for the absence of crisis in the Gaza Strip is overwhelming. UN observers have stated bluntly that there is no lack of food, medicine or other humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip, although some building materials are in short supply. The Palestinian Authority agrees. This reality is gradually making its way into mainstream media (see here, here, here), as some journalists discover Olympic-sized swimming pools and gourmet restaurants, as well as grocery stores proffering Israeli yogurt and Cocoa Puffs and well-stocked pharmacies in the impoverished Gaza Strip.

The most comprehensive statistics come from a recent JCPA summary, with documented supplies entering the Gaza Strip from Israel:

Health: 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicines entered Gaza in 2009 in coordination with the Palestinian Authority and international agencies:

Electricity: Israel continued to supply electricity to Gaza from its power plant in Ashkelon. In addition, 41 truckloads of equipment were transferred for the maintenance of the electrical system in Gaza. Between April and October 2009, Siemens carried out maintenance work on the power system in Gaza, to which more than 100 million liters of diesel fuel were delivered for its operation.

Communications: 45 truckloads of communication equipment were sent to Gaza at the request of the Palestinian Authority.

Water and sewage: 95 truckloads of equipment for water and sewage systems, as well as 3,720 tons of chloride for water purification, were transferred during 2009.

The private sector: 77 percent of the contents of trucks sent into Gaza in 2009 were for the private sector. 257 Palestinian businessmen exited Gaza to Israel, the West Bank, and abroad. 10,871 head of cattle were transferred to Gaza, mainly for the Ramadan and Eid al-Adha holidays. In preparation for winter, 3,607 tons of glass for windows was transferred to Gaza.

Money: Over NIS 1.1 billion (approximately $300 million) was transferred to Gaza in 2009 to fund salaries and the activities of international organizations. In addition, NIS 40 million (approximately $10 million) in worn banknotes were replaced.

Humanitarian aid: 141,390 tons of humanitarian aid were transferred by the international community through Israel, including 115,043 tons of food and 2,990 tons of medicines and medical equipment.

UNRWA: 3,282,000 liters of fuel and diesel were transferred for use by UNRWA. In addition, special equipment for summer camps, including swimming pools, ice cream machines, musical instruments, and sports equipment were transferred to UNRWA.

Agricultural export: The export of flowers and strawberries was approved as part of a joint project with the government of the Netherlands. Since the beginning of the project, more than 7 million flowers and 54 tons of strawberries were exported.

There are also ample videos, some from Arab news sources, showing shops well stocked and goods entering the Gaza Strip by the truck load (see here, here, here and here).

David Meir-Levi

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/05/the-flotilla-gilad-shalit-and-the-friends-of-genocide/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.