Past Plots Help Explain New Concerns Over Jewish Targets

by IPT News

Amine El-Khalifi knew he wanted to commit a terrorist act, federal agents, say, but he kept changing his mind about targets. According to an affidavit released after his arrest Feb. 17, Khalifi believed "that the 'war on terrorism' was a 'war on Muslims," and said that the group needed to be ready for war."

Before deciding to attempt a suicide bombing inside the U.S. Capitol, the Moroccan immigrant discussed targeting a series of government offices and places frequented by military officials. In December, the one time he discussed targeting something unrelated to the government or military, Khalifi talked about attacking a synagogue.

A review of court records shows that Jewish targets in America are common among would-be terrorists during the past decade. A review of 42 attempted and thwarted terror plots since 9/11 found 16, or 38 percent, included at least talk of attacking Jewish targets. Of the 16, at least seven cases included charges relating to attacks on Jewish targets.

The numbers are in line with a recent study by the New York Police Department, which finds that more than half the terror plots uncovered in New York City since 1992 have been directed at Jewish citizens or institutions.

This takes on new significance as national security officials express concern that Jewish and Israeli facilities in the United States could be top targets for attack by Iranian agents and their proxies.

The FBI recently held a classified nationwide video teleconference to discuss a retaliatory attack on U.S. soil by Iran, or its proxy Hizballah, in the event of an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, CBS News reports. The 90-minute conference call led by Ralph Boelter, the Bureau's counterterrorism chief, included 56 FBI field offices from around the country.

Special agents in charge shared intelligence from local investigations that could be potentially valuable in thwarting future plots by Iran and Hizballah. Field offices were also advised to work with local police departments to intensify security around government landmarks, Israeli diplomatic targets and Jewish institutions.

Israeli and Jewish institutions in the United States already were placed on high alert following terror strikes last month against Israeli diplomatic targets in Thailand, India, and Georgia.

Thai authorities arrested three Iranian men in connection with the Feb. 14 bombings in Bangkok. The men are reported to be part of an assassination plot targeting Israeli diplomats, including the ambassador. A day earlier, attacks allegedly sponsored by Iran struck Israeli diplomatic targets in India and Georgia. The wife of an Israeli diplomat was seriously injured in the car bombing in New Delhi. The attempted car bombing in Tbilisi was thwarted after the vehicle's driver discovered the explosive device.

These strikes come on the heels of another foiled assassination attempt in January by Iran against the Israeli ambassador in Azerbaijan's capital city Baku.

All the attacks have "the hallmarks of a concerted campaign" that could soon reach American shores, Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, told ABC News.

Fearing potential attacks on Israeli consulates and Jewish cultural and religious buildings, law enforcement has beefed up security in U.S. cities with high Jewish populations and Israeli facilities, including in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

At a press briefing following the attacks, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed anxiety over the rise in worldwide terror attacks perpetrated by Iran.

"We are concerned about use of international terrorism by Iran or by anybody else against Israel or against any other innocents and about a spike in the number of incidents that we've seen," Nuland said.

Although neither Iran nor its protégé Hizballah have claimed responsibility, the attacks coincide with the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of top Hizballah commander Imad Mughniyeh. Israel has not claimed credit for Mughniyeh's killing, but is believed to be responsible. Mughniyeh was behind the murderous attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Argentina in the 1990s and was the alleged "mastermind" of Hizballah's 2006 war against Israel. He was also implicated in the October 1993 bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 240 Americans.

Tehran's recent aggressive acts may also be in retribution for killings of Iranian scientists and officials connected with its controversial nuclear program over the last couple of years. An Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who worked in Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed in a car bomb explosion in Tehran last month. The Iranian leadership blamed Israel for the killing.

"Iran is not only retaliating for the embarrassment of having its nuclear scientists killed in its own capital but it is also sending Israel a message that if Israel bombs Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran can retaliate around the world through its terrorist network," former presidential terrorism adviser Richard Clarke told ABC News.

Warnings from Israeli and top American security officials raise the specter that Iran, or its Lebanese proxy Hizballah, might target Jewish targets here. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a hearing last month that her department held a conference call with Jewish groups to advise them they may be targets.

"The NYPD must assume that New York City could be targeted by Iran or Hezbollah," New York Police intelligence analysis chief Mitchell Silber wrote in the Wall Street Journal Feb. 14. "On Feb. 3, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened that Iran 'had its own tools' to respond to sanctions and threats of military action against it. Indeed, as the West's conflict with Iran over its nuclear program continues to heat up, New York City—especially with its large Jewish population—becomes an increasingly attractive target."

The situation is by no means limited to New York, however. Among the attacks and plots targeting Jews and Israelis in the past decade:

• Plot to Bomb Synagogues in the Bronx: Four men were arrested in May 2009 for plotting to bomb a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and for planning to shoot National Guard planes at a base in Newburgh, N.Y., with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles. An FBI informant secretly recorded the men plotting to destroy the synagogue and other targets. In a recording, the group's leader James Cromitie was heard telling the informant, Shahed Hussain, "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi [Jew]." "With no hesitation, I will kill 10 Yahudis [Jews]" "and then I will have to think 20,000 times before I kill one Muslim." Cromitie also told the informant, "I don't give a f- if a bunch of Jews are in there," "Jews are the most wickedest people that Allah has created," and "These f-ing Jews get me sick."

The men, also known as the "Bronx Four," received 25-year prison sentences after being convicted in October 2010.

• Manhattan Terrorism Plot: Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh were arrested last May for plotting to bomb synagogues and attack Jews. The arrests marked the end of a seven-month sting led by New York police officers. In one of their conversations, Ferhani raised the idea of blowing up synagogues. Mamdouh responded to Ferhani's idea, saying "Hell yeah, I would love to blow that [expletive] up." In a subsequent conversation, Ferhani suggested targeting "the biggest synagogue in Manhattan." He suggested disguising himself as a Jewish worshipper and leaving a bomb in the synagogue while pretending to pray there. In their conversations both men said they hated Jews. According to an affidavit, both men purchased weapons from undercover officers, including a hand grenade, semi-automatic handguns and bullets, to help them carry out their attacks.

• Folsom Prison Plot: Muslim convert Kevin James pled guilty in 2007 to conspiring "to levy a war against the Government of the United States through terrorism." While incarcerated at the high security New Folsom State Prison outside Sacramento, James and several other inmates established a terror cell called Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam-is-Shaheeh ("JIS"). Members of the terror cell plotted "to target for violent attack any enemies of Islam or 'infidels,' including the United States Government and Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel."

• Jewish Federation Shooting: Naveed Haq was sentenced to life in prison for his 2006 shooting rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle that killed one woman and wounded four others. Prosecutors called the attack a "hate crime," and said "the attack on these women was an attack on the Jewish community, not only in Seattle, but throughout our nation and the world."

• Little Rock Shootings: A Muslim convert, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, was sentenced to life in prison for shooting two soldiers outside an Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. Court filings said Abdulhakim plotted to target "different Army recruiting centers and Jewish organizations." He said he chose those two targets "because what they're doing in Palestine or years of killing Muslims." He also attempted to fire bomb a leading Jewish rabbi's home in Tennessee with a Molotov cocktail.

• El Al Terminal Shooting: Egyptian national Hesham Mohamed Hadayet killed two Israelis and injured four others when he started shooting at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2002. FBI investigators later concluded Hadayet, who was shot and killed by a security guard, committed a terrorist attack in hopes of changing U.S. policy and of dying a martyr.

In October 2010, authorities intercepted suspicious UPS packages on board Chicago-bound cargo planes following an intelligence tip. The packages were loaded with explosives and mailed from Yemen to Jewish synagogues in Chicago. The explosives were traced back to the top explosives expert belonging to al-Qaida's affiliate branch in Yemen.

U.S. intelligence officials say the October arrest of a Texas car salesman accused in an alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington shows a growing willingness in Iran to sponsor attacks in the United States.

Suspect Manssor Arbabsiar confessed to authorities that "he was recruited, funded and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran's Qods Force."

The thwarted plot shows "that some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February. "We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against US or allied interests overseas."

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3475/past-plots-help-explain-new-concerns-over-jewish

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

The Real Meaning of Obama’s New Policy: War Is Inevitable

by Barry Rubin

Does President Barack Obama now love Israel? Is he lying to help his reelection bid? Precisely what is the meaning of this or that sentence in his AIPAC speech?

All of this debate misses the point. What is needed here is not a partisan view or one which focusses on Obama himself but rather a strategic analysis.

Here it is:

Whether he realizes it or not, Obama changed history with his AIPAC speech. What he did is to make a war between Israel and Iran almost inevitable, let’s say more than 90 percent probable, most likely some time in late 2013, 2014, or 2015.

What a lot of people are going to miss is not that Israel now thinks Obama is reliable — it doesn’t — but that Israeli leaders know he has now locked publicly into a major commitment. If Israel ever were to attack an Iran on the verge of getting nuclear weapons, how is Obama going to bash Israel for doing so after telling it to do so? In effect, then, Israel has traded patience for freedom of action.

Obama laid out a very clear chain of events. If and when Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, then the U.S. government will support an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear facilities. It might even join in with such an attack.

This is a commitment that cannot be retracted. It will apply whether Obama wins or loses the election. It will apply if he changes his mind. Some will see his action as heroic; others will see it as reckless. But it makes no sense to see it as false or to nitpick about his precise definition of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

Here is Obama’s simple chain of argument:

–The U.S. government officially and publicly recognizes that Israel cannot and should not accept Iran having a nuclear weapon.

–Iran having a nuclear weapon is a tremendous and unacceptable danger to U.S. interests.

–If Iran obtains even one nuclear weapon, that will prove sanctions have failed.

–Consequently, at that time Israel is entitled to use force to prevent Iran from having such weapons or to destroy any that exist.

–Indeed, according to Obama, Israel must attack Iran at that point. After all, if Obama says Israel cannot live with an Iranian nuclear capability, how can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be less concerned about Israeli security than the president? And how can Obama then ignore what he said would be completely unacceptable for U.S. interests by not backing such an attack or even participating in it?

The phrase often quoted from Obama’s speech — that U.S. policy will not take any instrument off the table — is not important. It is the standard U.S. line we have heard for years. Obama has now gone far beyond this. The new U.S. position is that if Iran builds a single atomic bomb, that means force sufficient to destroy its nuclar capacity entirely is the only instrument on the table.

What is important is that Obama’s speech provides a green light for an Israeli attack.

The question is only one of timing. Obama asks Israel to wait in order to give sanctions a chance to work. But we know that sanctions are almost certain not to work, since work is defined as Iran giving up its drive for nuclear weapons. And there is no reason to believe that this will happen.

What might avoid this outcome? I can only think of two alternative developments. Either Iran will stop just short of actually building nuclear weapons even though it has the necessary material and knowledge, or the regime will be overthrown. Both are doubtful outcomes.

Perhaps there is a third possibility: If sabotage of various kinds can forever keep postponing the success of Iran’s program year after year into the future. Possible but not likely.

Otherwise, an armed collision is going to be inevitable. There will be an Israeli attack and thus a war.

For better or worse, Obama’s speech marks the total success of the Israeli campaign — abetted by both its friends and enemies — to heat up the situation. Believing that Israel was about to attack Iran, although I think this wasn’t true, Obama has sought to stall for time in a way that suits his own interests.

Like most politicians, Obama prefers to defer tough decisions to the future when, one can always hope, the worst won’t happen. Yet often, such a strategy makes the future outcome of the decision-making process inevitable. Of course, Obama wants Jewish support for his reelection campaign. But this isn’t all about Israel or the Jews by any means.

Obama needs to portray himself as a strong leader, one who doesn’t fear confrontation or the use of force. Moreover, a high proportion of the American public views Iran as a threat, indeed the number one foreign threat to their country. His action is going to be generally popular at home, especially because it doesn’t have any consequences between now and the November election.

Many will applaud this. I don’t. In my opinion, it would be better to set the bar at Israel’s freedom of action if it ever determined that there was a threat of nuclear attack from Iran. After all, such a framework would make war or a nuclear conflict less likely whereas the principle of attacking at the point where Iran might have weapons at all makes war and a possible nuclear conflict later on far more likely.

Yet Obama has explicitly rejected containment, which in this context makes it clear that there can be no scenario in which Iran has nuclear weapons but their use is deterred by early-warning stations, the threat of American or Israeli attack, and defensive measures.

In addition, Obama escaped past apparent commitments by invoking the national interest as making it preferable for the United States not to do something. But now he has defined destroying Iran’s nuclear capability as a basic U.S. interest. He has left himself no way out.

By the way, has Obama considered Russia’s warning that it will defend Iran in his new policy? With Vladimir Putin back in power, will this contribute to a U.S.-Russia confrontation?

And did Obama consult any U.S. allies or Congress on this policy? What happened to his much-advertised multilateralism? And this is from the man who savaged his predecessor over Iraq, when Bush did have a UN and a congressional resolution basically authorizing the use of force?

Some believe that Obama will back off this commitment. But what’s he going to do if Israel attacks in a year or two? Say that he wanted Israel to wait another week or month to make sure the United States accepted the intelligence that Iran now had nuclear weapons?

And consider this: The Iranian government would now be perfectly justified in regarding any Israeli attack as an attack also by the United States. Obama has thrown away any possibility of distancing the United States from an Israeli operation or any credible deniability of responsibility. The Tehran government would be far more likely to attack American institutions, personnel, and shipping after an Israeli attack.

We are now on the road to war. That’s what is important, not whether Obama gained votes or whether he is sincere or at precisely what second U.S. policymakers decide Iran has met the conditions for getting bombed.

This is huge and it is an unprecedented U.S. position that can be summarized as follows: Iran gets nukes. Boom!

Barry Rubin

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/03/the-real-meaning-of-obama%E2%80%99s-new-policy-war-is-inevitable/

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

U.S. State Department Actively Promoting Islam in Europe

by Soeren Kern

The French government – which has been trying to reverse the pernicious effects of decades of state-sponsored multiculturalism – expressed dismay at what it called "meddling."

The United States ambassador to Spain recently met with a group of Muslim immigrants in one of the most Islamized neighborhoods of Barcelona to apologize for American foreign policymaking in the Middle East.

U.S. Ambassador Alan Solomont told Muslims assembled at the town hall-like meeting in the heart of Barcelona's old city that the United States is not an "enemy of Islam" and that U.S. President Barack Obama wants to improve America's image in the Middle East as quickly as possible by closing the "dark chapters" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

"There are things that the United States has done badly," Solomont said at the February 28 gathering organized by a non-profit organization called the Cultural, Educational and Social Association of Pakistani Women. "But now the Obama government wants to improve relations with Muslims," he promised.

During the one-and-a-half-hour question-and-answer session, Solomont asked those in attendance simple rhetorical questions, including: "Did you know that the United States sends a lot of money to Pakistan?" and "Did you know that the decision to destroy Osama bin Laden's house was made by the United States?"

After responding to queries about the "Talibanization of Pakistan due the war in Afghanistan" and the "demonization of Islam in the West," Solomont said Obama wants to end the long-time American practice of establishing alliances with dictators in the Middle East, a strategy which he said has failed to prevent the rise of "the bearded ones" [radical Islamists], this according to the Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, which also interviewed Solomont on the sidelines of the event.

The Barcelona meeting, which was held in a Muslim ghetto called Raval (a.k.a. Ravalistan because Muslim immigrants now make up 45% of the barrio's total population), is an example of the Obama administration's so-called Muslim Outreach.

The U.S. State Department -- working through American embassies and consulates in Europe -- has been stepping-up its efforts to establish direct contacts with largely unassimilated Muslim immigrant communities in towns and cities across Europe.

Proponents of Obama's approach to public diplomacy -- some elements of which originated with his immediate predecessor -- say it is part of a "counter-radicalization" strategy which aims to prevent radical Muslims with European passports from carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States.

A key component of the strategy is to "empower" Muslims who can help build a "counter-narrative" to that of terrorists. In practice, however, Obama ideologues are crisscrossing Europe on U.S. taxpayer funded trips to "export" failed American approaches to multiculturalism, affirmative action, cultural diversity and special rights for minorities.

Further, American diplomats are repeatedly apologizing to Muslims in Europe for a multitude of real or imagined slights against Islam, and the U.S. State Department is now spending millions of dollars each year actively promoting Islam -- including Islamic Sharia law -- on the continent.

In Ireland, for example, the U.S. Embassy in Dublin recently sponsored a seminar ostensibly designed to help Muslim immigrants increase their influence within the Irish business and financial communities.

The opening speech at the event was delivered by Imam Hussein Halawa of the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland, despite the fact that leaked U.S. State Department cables show that the U.S. government has known for many years that Halawi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and serves as the right-hand man of the radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Halawa, an Egyptian immigrant who has dedicated his life to the cause of introducing Islamic Sharia law in Europe, told those in attendance that the main purpose of the conference was to bring the Irish banking system into conformity with Islamic legal principles. U.S. Ambassador Dan Rooney, a lifelong Republican turned Obama acolyte, said at the same conference that the United States was a "solid partner" behind Halawa's venture.

In Austria, the U.S. Embassy in Vienna sponsored a film contest in February on the theme of "Diversity and Tolerance" aimed at teaching wayward Austrians that they should show respect for Muslim immigrants who refuse to integrate into their society.

Ambassador William Eacho, an Obama campaign fundraiser turned political appointee, awarded the first prize to a group of students in the northern Austrian town of Steyr who produced a one-minute silent film promoting tolerance for Muslim women who wear Islamic face-covering veils such as burkas in public spaces.

Obama and his team may think they know what is best for Europeans, but according to recent polls, more than 70% of Austrians are in favor of a law that would ban the burka.

In Belgium, U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman, another Obama fundraiser turned diplomat, told lawyers attending a conference in Brussels in November 2011 that Israel is to blame for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, Gutman, who is Jewish, showed conference attendees a video of himself receiving a warm welcome at a Muslim school in Brussels, which he said proved that Muslims are not anti-Semitic. Following a barrage of criticism for rationalizing the growing problem of anti-Semitism in Europe, the U.S. Embassy in Belgium removed the evidence by uploading an amended transcript of Gutman's remarks on its website.

In France, the U.S. Embassy in Paris co-sponsored a seminar to teach Muslims in France how they can politically organize themselves. Operatives from the Democratic Party coached 70 Muslim "diversity leaders" from disaffected Muslim-majority suburban slums known as banlieues on how to develop a communications strategy, raise funds and build a political base.

The French government -- which has been trying to reverse the pernicious effects of decades of state-sponsored multiculturalism -- expressed dismay at what it called "meddling."

The Obama administration's Muslim-oriented coaching sessions on community organizing come as the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar is busy peddling the fundamentalist teachings of Wahhabi Islam -- which not only discourages Muslim integration into the West, but actively encourages jihad [holy war] against non-Muslims -- to hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Muslim immigrants in France.

As the Obamans and the Wahhabis compete for influence among Muslim immigrants, forward-looking analysts fret that France may yet end up with politically organized jihadists turning the banlieues into Islamic emirates.

In Norway, where Muslim immigrants already have more rights than native Norwegians, the U.S. Embassy in Oslo organized a "dialogue meeting" designed to "empower" Muslim immigrant women in the country.

According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Obama's special envoy to the Muslim world, Farah Pandith, castigated the Norwegian government's integration policies as being insufficiently fair to Muslim immigrants. She also told Norwegians that Muslims are "more free to practice Islam in the United States than in any other country in the world." Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg said Norway has much to learn from the Americans.

In Britain, U.S. embassy employees in London frequently conduct outreach to help "empower" the Muslims across the country. According to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable, for example, Ambassador Louis Susman "engages with U.K. Muslim communities regularly…he has spoken to Muslim groups in Wales and Scotland, visited the London Central Mosque, and hosted an interfaith breakfast at his residence, among other activities."

Susman has come under fire for visiting another London mosque, namely the East London Mosque, which is one of the most extreme Islamic institutions in Britain. Built with money from Saudi Arabia to propagate Wahhabi Islam, the sprawling facility is home to the London Muslim Center, which the U.S. government has long known is a haven for Islamic extremists. During his visit, Susman spoke of his "great admiration" for the mosque and his enthusiasm for meeting its staff.

According to the leaked cable, "Having the U.S. Ambassador visit and listen respectfully to Muslim points of view has an enormous impact on groups that often feel marginalized and ignored."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2916/state-department-promoting-islam-europe

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

Arabs Are Beginning to Miss the Dictators

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Freedom of speech, instead of growing, has died. "We are not with this Spring of violence, war, destruction and killing." — Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, head of Lebanon's Maronite Church.

On the first anniversary of the "Arab Spring," many Arabs are beginning to wonder whether they would soon start missing the corrupt dictators who ruled them for the past few decades.

The "Arab Spring" was supposed to bring democracy, transparency and reform to the Arab world. It was supposed to end human rights violations and see the birth of a free and independent media.

The "Arab Spring" was supposed to promote the rights of women and minorities in the Arab world and encourage young Arabs and Muslims to abandon extremist views and terrorism.

The "Arab Spring" was supposed to be led by young and charismatic Western-educated activists who would bring moderation and pragmatism to the Arab world.

The "Arab Spring" was supposed to turn the Arab countries into attraction for tourism and investors from all around the world.

But judging from the outcome of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, it is evident that the 'Arab Spring" has failed to achieve any of these goals. As far as many Arabs are concerned, their "spring" has thus far proven to be a total disaster.

Residents in several Arab countries affected by the "Arab Spring" protests said they feel less safe now than they did before the uprisings, according to a study conducted by Abu Dhabi's Gallup Polls.

The four Arab countries where the leaders have been toppled are now in the hands of Muslim fundamentalists, who used the "Arab Spring" as a vehicle to rise to power.

Tunisia's Islamist party, Ennahda, is already demanding an Islamic state. Human rights activists say that with the arrival of the "Arab Spring," freedom of speech in Tunisia, instead of growing, has died.

Nabil Karoui, owner of a Tunisian Tv station, is currently on trial for blasphemy after airing the French-Iranian animated film "Persepolis," which features a cartoon depiction of God. About 150 lawyers filed lawsuits against Karoui for "violating sacred values" and disturbing public order."

Two weeks ago, hundreds of Muslim fundamentalists who follow the radical Wahhabi doctrine of Islam took to the streets of Tunis to demand the implementation of Sharia laws in their country.

The "Arab Spring" has also seen the rise of Islamists to power in Egypt, where the country is jointly controlled by a military dictatorship and Muslim Brotherhood.

The military rulers are responsible for massive abuse of human rights and freedom of expression, while the Muslim Brotherhood and their even more radical rivals, the Salafis, are working hard to turn Egypt into an Islamic state.

Libya and Yemen, the other two countries affected by the "Arab Spring," are on the brink of civil war. Libya has fallen into the hands of dozens of armed ruthless militias, some of which are affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. In Yemen, Arab political analysts say that it is only a matter of time before the country falls into the hands of Al-Qaeda.

In these four Arab countries, women, Christians, journalists, human rights activists and political opponents are being targeted, and in some instances slaughtered, on a daily basis either by the new rulers or militiamen and Muslims fundamentalists.

The "Arab Spring" is anything but a "great revolution." It is a spring of massacres, destruction and violence, as Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, the head of Lebanon's Maronite Church, put it.

"We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing," he told Reuters. "This is turning to winter. We cannot implement reforms by force and arms. How can it be an Arab Spring when people are being killed every day?"

Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2915/arabs-miss-dictators

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

Obama, Iran and the 1939 Syndrome

by P. David Hornik

On Tuesday EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton announced that the group of six global powers—permanent UN Security Council members the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany—were resuming nuclear talks with Iran at an unspecified time and place.

She announced it just as Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in Washington trying to convince the U.S. leadership that neither diplomacy nor sanctions were coming anywhere near stopping Iran’s push to nuclear weapons.

Ashton had earlier—on February 14—received a proposal for talks from Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. On Tuesday she said, “Today I have replied to Dr. Jalili’s letter….” What opportune timing.

And what a further blow to Israel.

Typical headlines have been saying Netanyahu told President Obama on Monday that Israel hasn’t yet taken a decision on attacking Iran. Yet, as described here and here, an “unnamed American intelligence official” has conveyed a different impression to Israel’s Channel 2 news.

Channel 2 reported on Monday night that the official said, “U.S. intelligence services believe that, in principle, Israel has already made the decision to bomb Iran.” According to Channel 2, the official warned that such an attack would entail thousands of casualties and spark a regional war or even World War III—in short, an all-out catastrophe. An official Israeli source dismissed these statements as “scare-mongering and psychological warfare.”

Just as there is a dissonance between the mainstream version—which says Israel hasn’t yet decided—and this apparent desperate attempt to bypass the Israeli leadership and scare its population silly via its most popular news channel, there is a dissonance between Obama’s words this week and what we read elsewhere.

In his AIPAC speech on Sunday: “I firmly believe that an opportunity still remains for diplomacy—backed by pressure—to succeed.”

And in Tuesday night’s news conference: “[Iran] understand[s] that the world community means business. To resolve this issue will require Iran to come to the table and discuss…how to prove to the international community that the intentions of their nuclear program are peaceful.”

Meanwhile IAEA chief Yukiya Amano says Iran has “tripled” its monthly production of 20-percent-enriched uranium since the IAEA’s previous report in November. That was the report that was seen as dramatically confirming Israel’s insistence over the years that Iran had never stopped working on the bomb.

Amano also expressed serious concern about the IAEA being denied, again, access to Parchin—the site where Iran has “built a large containment chamber” to “conduct high-explosives tests” that the IAEA considers “strong indicators” of nuclear-weapons development. That was according to November’s report. What’s going on in the chamber now? No one knows.

No wonder administration officials are so worried Israel will attack and trying to scare the Israeli people out of their wits about what will happen if it does. Seemingly it would make more sense for the administration—and the Western world as a whole—to get seriously scared about Parchin and drop the hang-up with Israel.

On Tuesday it was reported that Iran now says it will let the IAEA into Parchin—at an unspecified date. Even if that transpires, it will obviously be after Iran has had enough time to “clean” the site.

But never fear, as Obama said yet again Tuesday night: “What we’ve been able to do…is mobilize unprecedented crippling sanctions on Iran. Iran is feeling the bite of these sanctions in a substantial way.”

Two problems with that. First, regarding Iran’s nuke program, they’re not having the slightest effect, as the tripling of uranium production since November—among other things—attests.

And second, while there has indeed been some ramping-up of sanctions since November so that ordinary Iranians—not the regime—have been hit by them, both the U.S. administration and the Europeans are leisurely about the pace.

As for the Europeans, their embargo on Iranian oil won’t even kick in until July. And as Bret Stephens noted in the Wall Street Journal, it was Obama who “fought tooth-and-nail against the very sanctions on Iran for which he now seeks to reap political credit.” And it’s Obama who is still delaying the sanctions on Iran’s central bank that the Senate passed 100-0 in December.

Again that dissonance—between the IAEA’s evident alarm and the U.S. and European governments’ ongoing nonchalance.

And if anyone still doubted that it was nonchalance—as well as delusion, cynicism, and denial—today’s decision by the Western powers to return to talks with Iran should put those doubts to rest. The Iran that has transparently been using such talks as delaying tactics for a decade; the Iran that regularly threatens another state with annihilation; the Iran that installs thousands of new, ever-more-sophisticated centrifuges in its underground Fordow facility as the Ashtons and Obamas of this world speak deplorable nonsense.

Israel’s Ynet News reports that Israeli “state officials” were “disappointed” with the Netanyahu-Obama meeting and quotes them saying:

The Iranians are charging at nuclear capabilities at full force and even the IAEA is falling in line with the Israeli intelligence evaluations. That is why the U.S. stance is problematic…. Right now we are certain the [administration] won’t do anything and we need to decide what to do…. The[administration] want[s] oil prices not to go up because it’s bad for their economy…. You have to consider the fate of the Western world…. It’s better to pay more for oil this year than to pay the cost for a nuclear Iran.

While not making a direct comparison, psychologically the current atmosphere in the West is the same as the one in 1939. Westerners who sought peace and coexistence had options but at the moment of truth they chose to sacrifice Czechoslovakia. We’ve been there. While being very careful with this analysis, we have the same psychological phenomenon.

It’s indeed a grim analysis but all too congruent with the facts. Consider:

• Obama and the Europeans do not really believe Iran can now be brought around by talks to cry uncle and give up the nuclear program in which it has invested enormously for decades.
• They do know that by resuming “diplomacy” with Iran, or at least putting it back on the agenda, they further isolate Israel as the lone “hawk” and slap it with a rogue-status—a destroyer of “peace”—if it does decide to act.
• Hence a collusion—tacit or not—of common interests emerges between the West and Iran of creating a pretense of diplomatic activity and thereby curbing Israel’s options.

Which means Netanyahu faces a true test as, once again, the Western world seeks abjectly for the easy way out.

P. David Hornik

Source:

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

Iran’s Final Solution for Israel

by Andrew Bostom

Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Putatively (and perversely), these genocidal pronouncements are a “response” to Israel’s own planned efforts to thwart Iran’s longstanding, repeatedly expressed desire to destroy the Jewish state and “Zionists” (i.e., non-dhimmi Jews) in general. Shiite Iran’s obsessive calls for the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews are driven by a deeply rooted theological Islamic anti-Semitism.

PAST AS PROLOGUE

The Mujtahids (authoritative interpreters of Islamic law) and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.

The Persianophilic scholar E. G. Browne wrote those words in the 1920s about the entire pre-Pahlavi period of Shiite theocratic rule, from the ascension of the first Safavid shah, Ismail I, at the outset of the 16th century through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s installation in 1925, at the end of the Qajar dynasty. These Shiite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also of Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of relations toward non-Muslims. The impact of this najis conception was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of Ismail I. The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512 and 1515) that “Sheikh Ismail . . . never spares the life of any Jew,” while another European travelogue notes “the great hatred (Ismail I) bears against the Jews.”

The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer al-Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Muslims in Shiite Iran. Al-Majlisi (d. 1699) was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. For six years at the end of the 17th century, he functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran, making him the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shia ethos among ordinary persons. In his Persian treatise “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews,” Al-Majlisi describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under sharia, first and foremost the blood-ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29.

He then enumerates six other restrictions relating to worship, housing, dress, transportation, and weapons, before outlining the unique Shiite impurity or najis regulations. It is these latter najis prohibitions which lead anthropology professor Laurence Loeb — who studied and lived within the Jewish community of Southern Iran in the early 1970s — to observe, “Fear of pollution by Jews led to great excesses and peculiar behavior by Muslims.” According to Al-Majlisi:

And, that they should not enter the pool while a Muslim is bathing at the public baths . . . If something can be purified, such as clothes, if they are dry, they can be accepted, they are clean. But if they had come into contact with those cloths in moisture they should be rinsed with water after being obtained. . . . It would also be better if the ruler of the Muslims would establish that all infidels could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or snows because they would make Muslims impure.

The dehumanizing character of these popularized “impurity” regulations fomented recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence, including pogroms and forced conversions throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran Judenrein — free of Jews. For example, the preeminent modern historian of Iranian Jewry, Walter Fischel, provides these observations based on the 19th-century narrative of Rabbi David d’Beth Hillel and additional eyewitness accounts:

Due to the persecution their Moslem neighbors, many once flourishing communities entirely disappeared. Maragha, for example, ceased to be the seat of a Jewish community around 1800, when the Jews were driven out. . . . Similarly, Tabriz, where over 50 Jewish families are supposed to have lived, became Judenrein towards the end of the 18th century through similar circumstances. The peak of the forced elimination of Jewish communities occurred under Shah Mahmud (1834‒48), during whose rule the Jewish population in Meshed, in eastern Persia, was forcibly converted, an event which not only remained unchallenged by Persian authorities, but also remained unknown and unnoticed by European Jews.

THE KHOMEINI "REVIVAL"

The so-called “Khomeini revolution,” which in 1979 deposed the secular, Western-oriented regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was in reality a mere return in full (including najis regulations, etc.) to oppressive Shiite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Iranian governance during four centuries. Conditions for all non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly Jews, rapidly deteriorated. Historian David Littman recounts the Jews’ immediate plight:

In the months preceding the Shah’s departure on 16 January 1979, the religious minorities . . . were already beginning to feel insecure . . . Twenty thousand Jews left the country before the triumphant return of the Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 February . . . On 16 March, the honorary president of the Iranian Jewish community, Habib Elghanian, a wealthy businessman, was arrested and charged by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal with “corruption” and “contacts with Israel and Zionism”; he was shot on 8 May.

Indeed, the demographic decline of Iranian Jewry after the creation of Israel was dramatic even before the revolution — from nearly 120,000 in 1948 to roughly 70,000 in 1978. The current Jewish population is perhaps 10,000, or less.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s views were the most influential in shaping the ideology of the revitalized Shiite theocracy, and his attitudes towards Jews — both before and after he assumed power — were particularly negative. Khomeini’s speeches and writings invoked a panoply of Judenhass motifs, including orthodox interpretations of sacralized Muslim texts, and the Shiite conception of najis. More ominously, Khomeini’s rhetoric blurred the distinction between Jews and Israelis, reiterated paranoid conspiracy theories about Jews (both within Iran and beyond), and endorsed the annihilation of the Jewish state. The pillars of this continuous modern campaign of annihilationist anti-Semitism are the motifs from traditional Islamic Jew-hatred, including Islamic eschatology, grafted seamlessly to jihadism. These deep-seated Islamic theological motifs are further conjoined to Holocaust denial and the development of a nuclear-weapons program intended expressly for ! Israel’s eradication.

The writings and speeches of the most influential religious ideologues of this restored Shiite theocracy — including Khomeini himself — make apparent their seamless connection to the oppressive doctrines of their forebears in the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. For example, consider the “Islamic perspective” on the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in the mid-1960s by Sultanhussein Tabandeh, the Iranian Shiite leader of a prominent Sufi order. According to Professor Eliz Sanasarian’s important study of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic, Tabandeh’s tract became “the core ideological work upon which the (post-revolution) Iranian government . . . based its non-Muslim policy.” Tabandeh begins his discussion by lauding as a champion “of the oppressed” Shah Ismail I, the repressive and bigoted founder of the Safavid dynasty, who, as per contemporary accounts, “bore hatred against! the Jews and ordered their eyes to be gouged out if they happened to be found in his vicinity.” It is critical to understand that Tabandeh’s key views on non-Muslims were implemented “almost verbatim in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In essence, Tabandeh simply reaffirms the sacralized inequality of non-Muslims relative to Muslims under sharia:

Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim . . . then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain . . . the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed. . . .

The conception of najis or ritual uncleanliness of the non-Muslim has also been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly: “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.” Khomeini elaborated his views on najis and non-Muslims, with a specific reference to Jews:

Eleven things are unclean: urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer, perspiration of a camel that eats filth. . . . The whole body of a non-Muslim is unclean, even his hair, his nails, and all the secretions of his body . . . The body, saliva, nasal secretions, and perspiration of a non-Muslim man or woman who converts to Islam automatically become pure. As for the garments, if they were in contact with the sweat of the body before conversion, they will remain unclean. . . . It is not strictly prohibited for a Muslim to work in an establishment run by a Muslim who employs Jews, if the products do not aid Israel in one way or another. However it is shameful to be under the orders of a Jewish departmental head.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1942 speech “Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists” is a modern vision of classical, authoritative formulations on the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad. It states plainly:

Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under (Allah’s law; the Sharia). . . . Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those (who say this) are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by (the unbelievers)? Islam says: Kill them (the non-Muslims), put them to the sword and scatter (their armies). Does this mean sitting back until (non-Muslims) overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender (to the enemy)? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except wit! h the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors! There are hundreds of other (Koranic) psalms and hadiths (sayings of the prophet) urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.

And among non-believers, Iranian Shiite theology reserves a special hatred for Jews. Besides returning the small remnant of the Iranian Jewish community to a state of obsequious dhimmitude through execution and intimidation, Khomeini’s Iran has embraced jihad “as a central pillar of faith and action,” seen most notably in its unending campaign of vilification and proxy violence against the “Zionist entity,” Israel. For current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the destruction of Israel is an openly avowed policy driven by his eschatological beliefs. Mohammad Hassan Rahimian, a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, summarized this annihilationist eschatology, redolent with Koranic Jew-hatred, in 2006:

The Jew is the most obstinate enemy (Koran 5:82) of the devout. And the main war will determine the destiny of mankind. . . . The reappearance of the Twelfth Imam will lead to a war between Israel and the Shia.

As characterized in the canonical hadith (collections of Mohammed’s words and deeds), Sunni and Shiite eschatology highlight the Jews’ purported supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjal, the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist. Other traditions state that the Dajjal is Jewish himself, and that at his appearance, he will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in robes and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjal is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered — even rocks and trees (except for the so-called gharkad tree) will deliver them up. Thus, according to a canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985), if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!” And the notion of jihad “ransom” exten! ds even into Islamic eschatology: On the day of resurrection, the vanquished Jews will be consigned to hellfire, which will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate.

Professor Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shiite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s deep personal attachment to “mahdism.”

Since the late ninth century, the Shiites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shiism as its supreme religion and system of rule. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed. Ahmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi. Shi’ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure; the Shiite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity. However both Shiites and Sunnis share one particular detail about “the coming of the hour” and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent d! eath, to the last one. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985) attributed to Muhammad.

AVERTING THE AYATOLLAH'S FINAL SOLUTION

The much ballyhooed “Green Revolution” demonstrations on the streets of Iran in the summer of 2009 were predominantly a fight between two ugly options — the Rafsanjani/Mousavi faction and their mullahs versus the Ahmadinejad/Khameini faction and their mullahs. Both favor Iranian nukes and the jihad genocide of the Jewish state of Israel. Unless there were a civil war between these two dominant jihadist factions that debilitated each enough for some truly secular and Western faction to emerge from the power vacuum, Iran will remain what it has largely remained since 1502 (barring the period of more secular Western leaning, albeit rather brutal rule, from 1925 to 1979 under the Pahlavis) — an oppressive Shiite theocracy.

Iranians as a whole — let alone the Mousavi versus Ahmadinejad factionalists — are very far removed from honestly addressing the conundrum posed by the Iranian secularist and historian Reza Afshari, a decade ago, regarding whether official Islamic authorities reflect the views of the Iranian people:

Who is more culturally and religiously authentic than the Ayatollahs? Who is more credible to say what relevance Shiite culture has or does not have for the major issues of our time? The issue is not Islam as a private faith of individuals. It is about what state officials claiming Islamic authority might have to say about the state’s treatment of citizens. . . . In Iran, liberal Muslims or any other new interpreters of Islam did not come to power. When and if they do, we will have their record to examine. What we have from liberal Muslims today are only ideological claims punctuated by expressed good intentions.

Given the ad nauseam expressed genocidal intentions of the current ruling Iranian theocracy, Israel — with U.S. assent, if not direct assistance — must destroy Iran’s nuclear arms production facilities by whatever means necessary.

Andrew Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2008), and the forthcoming Sharia Versus Freedom, with a foreword by Andrew C. McCarthy.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290715/iran-s-final-solution-israel-andrew-bostom?pg=1

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

Has Bibi Already Decided to Hit Iran?

by Rick Moran

The scuttlebutt for months has been that Prime Minister Netanyahu is still in the process of making a decision on whether to to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

But Israel's Channel 2, quoting an American government official, says that he has already made up his mind to strike:

Channel 2 in Israel, sourcing a "senior American official", says that the decision has already been made by the Israeli government to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

"All U.S. intelligence officials are confident the Israeli leadership has already decided to attack Iran, unless a significant change happens in the coming weeks or months with the Iranian nuclear program," Channel 2 reports.

The report comes just hours ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to AIPAC in Washington.

AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and is widely considered the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the United States.

"A senior official stressed in a conversation with News 2 there is a dispute between Israel and the United States on the question of 'day after', which means the price of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities," Channel 2′s report says.

This is logical and plays into the notion that it was always unlikely that Netanyahu would not inform his most powerful ally that Israel was going to use force with Iran. Coordination "the day after" is going to be vital as Iran will almost certainly retaliate in some way and the two nations must plan for any eventuality.

Iran has announced a willingness to negotiate. Despite the virtual guarantee that those talks will fail, Netanyahu will probably wait until all peaceful options have been exhausted before striking.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/03/has_bibi_already_decided_to_hit_iran.html

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

Will There Always Be an England?

by Bruce Bawer

It’s always refreshing when mainstream-media bigwigs are actually honest about the prejudices that guide their institutions. So one could only applaud when Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, admitted the other day something that is already obvious to anyone who watches or listens to the Beeb – namely, that the folks who run the shop are as quick to broadcast works that mock Christianity as they are to forbid the mockery of, shall we say, certain other faiths, and that the main reason is, quite simply, fear.

Thompson actually gave three reasons for the BBC’s all-religions-are-not-created-equal policy. First, he said that the BBC treats Christianity differently from other faiths because, as “an established part of our cultural-built landscape,” it is “pretty broad shouldered” – whatever that means. Second, certain other religions have a “very close identity with ethnic minorities” who may feel that an attack on their beliefs is “racism by other means” – whatever that means. Third, and obviously most decisive in determining the Corporation’s policy, Christians and adherents of at least one of those “other” religions have, shall we say, rather divergent ways of reacting to insults to their religion. “Without question,” Thompson said, “’I complain in the strongest possible terms’ is different from ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write.’”

Thompson said that this distinction “definitely raises the stakes.” Yes, and it also separates the men from the boys. When the most powerful media organization in the U.K. is run by someone whose readiness to admit his utter lack of courage would seem, from all the evidence, to reflect the fact that the concept of courage isn’t even on his radar, it doesn’t bode well for the future of British freedom.

Another point that was important to Thompson was that, as he put it, “for a Muslim, a depiction…of the Prophet Mohammed might have the emotional force of a piece of grotesque child pornography.” He added that “secularists” fail “to understand…what blasphemy feels like to someone who is a realist in their religious belief.” I would humbly submit that Thompson himself fails to understand something rather important – namely, that when the head of an outfit like the BBC starts thinking and talking in such terms, he has become nothing more or less than a sharia puppet.

Another thing Thompson apparently fails to understand is this: when it becomes the duty of citizens in a secular democracy to edit what they say or write in order to avoid committing what the adherents of some religion or other might consider blasphemy, then secular democracy, individual liberty, and freedom of expression are, in practice, no more. I wonder if it has occurred to Thompson at all that for more than a few freedom-loving people in his own country and elsewhere, the fact that a man in his position could follow such an outrageously pusillanimous policy might well, to coin a phrase, “have the emotional force of a piece of grotesque child pornography”?

I further wonder what kind of emotional force this story has for a person like Thompson. Here’s what happened: David Jones, creator of a popular children’s character in Britain and, apparently, a perfectly respectable man of sixty-seven, was going through security at Gatwick the other day when, according to the Telegraph, “he spotted a Muslim woman in hijab pass through the area without showing her face” and, in a “light-hearted aside to a security official who had been assisting him,” said: “If I was wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen.”

Kapow! Poor Mr. Jones spent the next hour or so being lectured about what he was and was not allowed to say by an airline official, a police officer, and several security guards, one of whom identified herself as a Muslim and told him she was “deeply distressed” by his comment. Of course it was Jones who was being unjustly harassed and who had every right to feel “deeply distressed,” but, as he later pointed out, “Something like George Orwell’s 1984 now seems to have arrived in Gatwick airport,” so that it is now considered reasonable for individuals in positions of power to claim that they are being caused “distress” by the very people whom they, in an outrageous abuse of power, are in the very process of tormenting. The cop on the scene even instructed Jones “that we now live in a different time and some things are not to be said.”

For a prime example of how the BBC deals with the fact that “we now live in a different time,” by the way, check out this report by the Beeb’s Stacey Dooley. The premise of the piece is that Dooley is visiting her hometown, Luton, to discover if the situation with extreme Islam is really as bad there as some people say. Upon arriving in town, she stumbles upon a Muslim march whose participants are chanting “To hell with the U.K.” and carrying signs calling for sharia law. There are plenty of women in niqab, one of whom tells Dooley to put on some clothes. For a while you think that Dooley is actually going to wake up and smell the coffee. But in the end, ignoring everything she’s witnessed, the little ditz closes with the standard, canned, de rigueur, mainstream-media conclusion – namely, that both sides need to listen to each other with respect, for the only reason for all this intercultural friction is “ignorance.”

Given the deliberate, depressing refusal of so many members of the British media to face up to the advent of sharia in the land of Magna Carta and Winston Churchill, it was at least a bit cheering the other day to see Brendan O’Neill, in the Telegraph, spelling out the dramatic, and telling, difference between the way in which the framers of the U.S. Constitution understood the concept of rights and the way today’s European leaders think about the same subject.

While the makers of the American revolution “emphasized individuals’ capacity to make judgments…free from state interference,” explained O’Neill, Europe today is plagued by a “paternalistic” notion of human rights “in which the individual is treated as an at-risk creature who must be protected from harm and bullying by…human-rights lawyers.” While the U.S. Bill of Rights concisely sets limits on state power, the European Convention on Human Rights “spends thousands of words telling the state what it should be doing…and how it must go about protecting individuals from abuse and mental distress.” And while the U.S. Bill of Rights makes it clear that free speech is sacrosanct, the European document is awash in weasel words, saying that “freedom of expression” is “subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety,” and on and on.

Which is, of course, simply a very long and legalistic way of saying that in Europe today, even (alas) in Britain, freedom of speech is severely endangered – just as Mark Thompson (whether he realizes it or not) has essentially admitted, and as David Jones experienced at Gatwick, and as the BBC’s own Stacey Dooley, despite having seen reality close-up in her hometown of Luton, still refuses to grasp.

Bruce Bawer

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/07/therell-always-be-an-england/

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

Netanyahu Speaks Truth to Power

by Joseph Klein

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met President Barack Obama at the White House on March 5th for a critical meeting focusing on the impending nuclear crisis in Iran. The differences between the two leaders on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were barely mentioned this time.

Prior to their meeting, Obama re-affirmed what he had said the day before to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. “My policy is prevention of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons,” he promised. Obama also reiterated that “the United States will always have Israel’s back.”

Netanyahu pointed to the common bond between Israel and the United States, and the threat the two allies shared in common from Iran:

“Americans know that Israel and the United States share common values, that we defend common interests and that we face common enemies. Iran’s leaders know that too. For them you’re the Great Satan, we’re the Little Satan. For them, we are you and you are us. And you know something, Mr. President? At least on this last point I think they’re right. We are you and you are us. We’re together. … Israel and America stand together.”

The three-hour meeting in the Oval Office was described as “friendly, straightforward, and serious” by an unnamed White House official quoted by the New York Times. The mood during the meeting was said to be somber and business-like, but less icy between the two leaders than during previous meetings. Netanyahu thanked Obama afterwards for the “warm hospitality.”

Netanyahu reportedly told Obama that Israel had not yet made a decision on striking Iran. Nevertheless, while appreciating President Obama’s pledge to prevent the Iranians from building a nuclear bomb rather than rely on a policy of after-the-fact containment, Netanyahu left no doubt that Israel was prepared to act alone if necessary to neutralize the Iranian threat to Israel’s very existence.

Key differences were apparently not resolved during the meeting. Obama still believes there is a window for sanctions and the blacklisting of Iran’s central bank to work in pressuring Tehran back to the bargaining table. He tried to persuade Netanyahu to give these measures and diplomacy more time before deciding whether to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu does not like the odds that such pressure tactics would work. He expressed deep skepticism that diplomacy and sanctions alone would persuade Iran’s leaders to forsake the development of nuclear weapons. He also made Israel’s case that negotiations proposed by Iran should not resume unless Iran agreed first to a verifiable suspension of its uranium enrichment activities. Obama has not appeared willing to make such suspension a pre-condition to re-opening talks with Iran.

A key difference between Obama and Netanyahu on Iran is over timing of a possible military attack. When will it be time to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions, and take military action? The Obama administration is willing to wait until there is clear evidence that Iran is actually in the process of building one or more nuclear bombs. Israel’s leaders believe waiting that long – even if it were possible to detect such bomb-building activity occurring deeply underground – is a gamble that Israel cannot afford to take.

According to the White House official quoted by the New York Times, Netanyahu did not press Obama on this specific timing point during their discussions. Evidently, Netanyahu saw no benefit in precipitating a dispute with the United States at this time over whether or where to set a firm “red line” beyond which military action would be taken. In effect, for the purposes of their March 5th White House meeting at least, Obama and Netanyahu agreed to disagree.

However, whatever pressure the president and Obama administration officials are putting on Israel privately to stand down until the United States gives its go-ahead, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not agree to put the fate of Israel in the hands of the United States to decide.

Instead, he chose to focus on President Obama’s public statement of support for Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions” when it comes to defending its own people, which Obama expressed during his AIPAC speech on Sunday. In his own speech to AIPAC on Monday evening, Netanyahu said that Israel “must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself against any threats. As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation.”

While Obama acknowledges the gravity of the Iranian threat, not only to Israel but to the United States’ vital security interests, he still thinks it is possible to reason with the mad mullahs and the megalomaniac Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Netanyahu is under no such illusions. He takes the mad mullahs and the megalomaniac Ahmadinejad at their word regarding their intentions to annihilate Little Satan, Israel, and then defeat the West, particularly Big Satan, the United States. Their pathological course is driven by their belief in the 12th Imam, the last Islamic “messiah,” and in their religious duty to hasten his return.

Destroying Israel is a necessary but not sufficient step to hasten the 12th Imam’s arrival. The Big Satan – the United States – must also be brought down. Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei believes he is the 12th Imam’s deputy on earth.

Here are a few samples of what these fanatical believers in the 12th Imam have declared:

On October 26, 2005, Ahmadinejad appearing at a conference entitled “A World without Zionism,” said:

They [ask]: “Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?” But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved.

In December 2009, Ahmadinejad accused the United States of doing all it could to prevent the return of the 12th Imam:

We have documented proof that they [U.S. leaders] believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts [the Middle East] and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world. They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the ground for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule.

Ayatollah Khamenei linked Israel and the United States together as the mortal enemies of the 12th Imam and declared through a spokesman in August 2009:

We have to train honest forces that can stop the obstacles that may hinder the coming of the Mahdi like the United States and Israel.

In response to street protests in Iran, Khamenei blamed the United States and Israel. As translated by MEMRI, he told his supporters on February 15, 2011:

We say to the Americans and to the Zionists that we consider them to be the real instigators of the fitna. We will never forget who the main enemy is. We continue to shout passionately: Death to America, death to Israel.

Last month, Khamenei told worshippers that Israel was a “cancerous tumour that should be cut and will be cut.”

Addressing a conference of youths in Tehran on the Arab Spring, Khamenei proclaimed:

In light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated.

Iranian scientists working on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program share these beliefs. For example, the wife of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an important Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated in Tehran, told the Fars News Agency in an interview published last month that “Mostafa’s ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel.”

Whether it is their threats against the United States, Israel, or their own people protesting for individual freedom, Iran’s leaders today are committed to removing all obstacles, by whatever means are necessary, to achieve their ultimate goal of paving the way for the 12th Imam’s return. Crazy as this is, that is what they truly believe. With nuclear weapons in their hands and in the hands of their terrorist surrogates, the world faces a very scary future. If Israel concludes that it must move forward on its own to stop this mortal threat, it will be doing the entire free world a huge favor.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/07/netanyahu-speaks-truth-to-power/

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