Reaping What Obama’s Sown in Egypt

by Matthew Vadum




President Obama continues to offer his blessings to the theocratic totalitarians of the Muslim Brotherhood as they spill blood on Egyptian streets in an effort to restore Mohamed Morsi to power.


Our terrorist-supporting president has the gall to scold the military, the most stable, trusted institution in Egypt, while his Islamofascist allies burn scores of Coptic churches in the region where Christianity began more than six centuries before the birth of Mohammed. The military has been struggling mightily to shut down Morsi supporters’ camps that Islamists use to launch attacks.

Yesterday an angry-sounding Obama took time out from his busy golf schedule while vacationing in a $7 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. Ignoring the violent provocations of his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood, he declared that the interim government and security forces in Egypt were out of control.

The Egyptian government has embarked on “a more dangerous path taken through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s associations and supporters, and now tragically the violence that’s taken the lives of hundreds of people and wounded thousands more.” Obama left out the fact that Morsi is a Holocaust denier who calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs” and who has vowed to wage war against Israel.

Without mentioning the weeks of murderous Morsi-supported attacks on innocents, Obama pontificated:

We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom, or that might makes right. And today the United States extends its condolences to the families of those who were killed and those who were wounded.

Just as he pretends not to be author of growing chaos stateside, Obama spoke as if a bystander, as if he himself were not the author of the events in Egypt. Obama, of course, backed the removal of Hosni Mubarak, a longtime U.S. ally who kept Morsi’s barbaric followers under control and respected Israel’s borders. Mubarak was forced out as Egyptian president on Feb. 11, 2011, after weeks of massive, violent, Obama-supported protests against his government.

What is happening in Egypt now is Obama’s will.

In his tee time chat off the coast of Cape Cod, Obama also air-brushed over Islamists’ ongoing Kristallnacht against Egypt’s Christians, referring to killed and injured Muslim Brotherhood supporters as “civilians” who “are being killed in the streets” as “rights are being rolled back.”

As John Rossomando reports at the Investigative Project on Terrorism website, last week a 10-year-old Coptic Christian girl was shot dead by Islamic militants while heading home after Bible school. “Muslim extremists tossed firebombs through the windows of four Christian homes and a local church last Sunday to stop a Christian neighbor from building a speed bump in front of her home,” according to Rossomando. “The clash left 15 people wounded.”

Coptic priests and laymen have been murdered by Islamists who have also burned and defaced Christian churches with anti-Christian graffiti over the past month.

“These guys have been blowing places up and killing people in Sinai. They’ve been attacking churches all over Egypt – putting al-Qaida flags and Morsi’s pictures on churches, so there is no question that the Brotherhood are the new terrorists,” Michael Meunier, president of Egypt’s Al-Haya Party and a Coptic Christian, reportedly said about the orgy of violence that has erupted against Christians since Morsi’s overthrow.

In his vacation press conference, the worst thing America’s pro-Islamist leader could say about the ousted Morsi’s brutal, bloodthirsty government was that it was “not inclusive and did not respect the views of all Egyptians,” as if he were still a part-time university lecturer holding forth on civics and the supposed virtues of multiculturalism.

Obama portrays the Muslim Brotherhood as possessing the moral high ground, when in reality its members are the bad guys and their camps are centers of Islamist warfare, torture, rape, and mass murder. The truth is that Egypt is divided and on one side is an enormous, breathtakingly violent, authoritarian movement within the country — the progenitor of al-Qaeda and Hamas. It’s no surprise that the conflict has escalated in this way, and will probably continue.

As Raymond Ibrahim writes, the pro-Morsi camps to which Obama refers are terrorist bases that the mainstream media portray as filled with “innocent victims merely ‘holding vigil’ only to be slaughtered, while calling for the prosecution of the military for ‘human rights abuses.’” The media “essentially follow the pro-Brotherhood Al Jazeera’s lead of portraying these bases in Rab‘a al-Adawiya and elsewhere as peaceful ‘sit ins.’”

Dupes working for international news agencies are doing propaganda duty for the Brotherhood. Instead of blaming Islamists for violent provocations, a Reuters report, for example, referred to the clearing of two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo in which “[a]t least 623 people died and thousands were wounded on Wednesday,” baldly as “the third mass killing of [Morsi] supporters since his ousting.” The report fails to note that innocent, nonviolent Morsi backers are increasingly hard to find.

On Capitol Hill, dupes have been busy in Congress promoting the restoration of the Morsi dictatorship. The perpetually wrong Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticized Obama for not doing enough to help the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama’s decision yesterday to cancel scheduled joint military exercises with Egypt isn’t enough to show American governmental displeasure with the Egyptian military’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, McCain said. “[Sen. Graham’s and my] message was ‘release these people from jail, have a constitutional change, set up a national dialogue and move forward with elections,’” he said.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood called on its supporters to march in towns and villages across Egypt today in what it bills as “a Friday of Anger.”

After a little golf and playing with Bo, his Portuguese Water Dog he had specially airlifted into Martha’s Vineyard separately, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize winner will grab some salt water taffy and watch the chaos in Egypt unfold on TV.


Matthew Vadum

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/reaping-what-obamas-sown-in-egypt/

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

September 11, 2012: A Day that will Live in Infamy

by James Lewis


September 11 of 2012, just eleven months ago, was the eleventh anniversary of the Declaration of Holy War signaled by three simultaneous attacks on America by nineteen Saudi Arabian suiciders, killing 3,000 innocent people in Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in the air over Pennsylvania.


That Declaration of War came from the brutal desert theocracy of Saudi Arabia, run by its Wahhabi priesthood.  Wahhabism follows ancient Muslim war theology against all non-Muslims and against Muslims heretics like the Iranians.  Wahhabism runs a worldwide oil-funded missionary campaign, and mosques built by Arabian oil billionaires are often staffed by Wahhabi imams, who preach holy war against the rest of humanity.


"Islam" means surrender or else.


Since 2001, the Saudis and other brutal tribal cultures have continued to finance, agitate, indoctrinate, infiltrate, plot, threaten, manipulate, propagandize, commit mass murder, and sabotage their First-World benefactors.  The dead silence of the Western political and media elites about the Global Jihad means that billions of oil dollars have bought a lot of Democrats and Crony Media.


Across the Gulf, the other war branch of Islam keeps waging its own brand of murder and tyranny.  Sunnis and Shiites are at war with each other in Syria, but they also attack the First World at every opportunity -- politically, psychologically and by acts of terror.


Eleven months ago, on September 11 of 2012,  international news headlines showed two photos of simultaneous al-Qaeda terror attacks on American sovereign assets.  Benghazi was the most famous assault, killing our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.  But al-Qaeda always commits mass murders twice on the same day.  That is its signature.


A second jihadist attack was therefore headlined on the same day.  It was on our Cairo Embassy, where Qaedists briefly flew their black flag over a burned-out part of the Embassy, long enough for their tame news photographers to send their message around the world.


Every Muslim in the world instantly understood the meaning of that double-terror attack, the war signature of al-Qaeda.  But ordinary people in the West were blinded and deceived by our treacherous mass media, controlled by vast amounts of oil money.


The al-Qaeda message on September 11, 2012 was instantly understood in the White House, where Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama, and John Brennan are intimately familiar with the war theology of Islam.  They constantly find ways to enable it.


The flood of lies about Benghazi was engineered by our media and Democrat Party Machine, to cover up al-Qaeda's obvious message to the world.  Hillary Clinton and her husband were of course complicit in that massive cover-up.  Oil money may be buying the Hillary run for president of the United States. 


Today our media-political class is still trying to make you forget September 11, 2012.


If the media had told you the truth, Obama would have lost the election.


Whether you like Mitt Romney or not, the world would be much, much safer today if Obama had been defeated.


That is why September 11, 2012 is a day that will live in infamy.


It was a huge triumph of our deadly enemies against an administration and a political class that lives by denying the very existence of our deadly enemies.


We now know that Obama won re-election by organized fraud and abuse of his constitutional authority over the IRS, the FBI, and the national security apparatus.  The Corporate Media colluded in Obama's anti-constitutional actions, revealing the extent of their knowledge only after the election.


We know that Obama is a scofflaw, laughing when he gets away with screwing the American people and our Constitution.  Today he is clowning it up for the hopelessly corrupt media on the golf course in Martha's Vineyard, and like everything else in this administration, there are no accidental signals.  This is the fundamental nature of our One Party Machine today.


This column has previously described Obama's malignant narcissism and oppositional defiant disorder.  His day-to-day behavior continues to add to a mountain of evidence.  Every government and intelligence agency in the world knows all about Obama, and so does the Democratic Party Machine.


Still, the American people are kept in the dark.  We are a laughingstock around the world, and frankly, we will deserve the contempt of the world until we learn to face reality.

Here is a partial breakdown of 9/11/12 malfeasance.


1. Within minutes of the attack in Benghazi, President Obama, directly or indirectly, ordered the U.S. military not to protect Ambassador Stevens and the 30 or so CIA personnel who were under assault. 


This week, USAF Colonel (ret.) Phil Handley publicly explained the nature of that betrayal.

The combat code of the US Military is that we don't abandon our dead or wounded on the battlefield. In US Air Force lingo, fighter pilots don't run off and leave their wingmen. If one of our own is shot down, still alive and not yet in enemy captivity, we will either come to get him or die trying.
Among America's fighting forces, the calm, sure knowledge that such an irrevocable bond exists is priceless. Along with individual faith and personal grit, it is a sacred trust that has often sustained hope in the face of terribly long odds.
The disgraceful abandonment of our Ambassador and those brave ex‐SEALs who fought to their deaths to save others in that compound is nothing short of dereliction‐of‐duty. Additionally, the patently absurd cover‐up scenario that was fabricated in the aftermath was an outright lie in an attempt to shield the President and the Secretary of State from responsibility.

Please note that everyone in the world who knows the U.S. military understands these facts very well.  The "secret" of Obama's betrayal is therefore only a secret to the "LoFo voters" in America.


2. In Cairo, where we had just helped Islamic radical Mohammed Morsi rise to power, an al-Qaeda mob overran parts of the U.S. Embassy.  In a state dominated by police, military, and internal espionage, such mob attacks do not occur accidentally.  Morsi was put into power by Barack H. Obama, who told Morsi's pro-American predecessor, President Hosni Mubarak, to resign after thirty years of protecting the peace in the Middle East.


In the five years since Obama became president, both branches of the Muslim war theology have made major conquests.  Syria is now torn between the jihadists of Iran and the jihadists of the Arabian desert.  Whichever group wins, the civilized world will be the losers.


United States Embassies are legally American territory, and every diplomat knows the meaning of a mob attack on an embassy.  It means that by failing to provide police protection in obedience to international law, the host government is declaring a legal casus belli, a cause for war.


Notice that this is exactly what the first jihadist regime in the world did to Jimmy Carter in 1979 by kidnapping our diplomats in Tehran.  That international slap in the face ended up defeating  Jimmy Carter in the election of 1980, and bringing Ronald Reagan to the presidency.


It was Reagan who vigorously defended America and brought the Evil Empire to a well-deserved end.


Eleven months ago, the Obama administration and our Democrat National Machine plotted to cover up the two 9/11/12 attacks, to avoid a repetition of the Carter debacle and the rise of a conservative Republican administration.


That is why our deeply corrupted IRS targeted the Reaganesque Tea Party, and tried to destroy the most charismatic and well-qualified conservative on the national scene today, Governor Sarah Palin.


Our political class fears the rise of another Ronald Reagan.


Obama and the Democrat Machine acted brutally and illegally to prevent another Reaganite presidency.  They are still doing it every day.


3. Long before 9/11 of last year, the Obama administration was deeply penetrated by Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators, who have been widely exposed in the web-based media.


As Col. Allen West (ret.) just wrote,

... yes, we do have Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups and individuals infiltrated into this current Obama administration. This is serious.

Beginning in the 1970s, radical Muslims bought political power in the Black Nationalist movement.  Barack Hussein Obama has told the world in two autobiographies that he modeled his own life after Malcolm X, the Black Nationalist.  Today, the radical left in the black community claims to stand for all Americans of African descent.  That is of course another Big Lie.  The radical left constantly attempts to threaten and intimidate those who disagree with it, including courageous black people tired of seeing toxic demagogues destroying unnumbered lives in our inner cities.


The radical left-Muslim jihadist alliance began in the 1970s.  The evidence for that alliance is all over the international media today, including the Egyptian and Arabic media, which are expressing shock to see the extent to which America has been corrupted by its internal enemies.  The anti-Morsi coup in Egypt was conducted by nationalist and modernist political groups that did not want to be tyrannized by the medieval Muslim Brotherhood.  Jihadists  are our enemies -- they tell us so every day -- and modernist Egyptians cannot understand why Barack H. Obama is constantly supporting those who want to destroy us.


4. We have just learned that Benghazi culminated in jihadist terror groups stealing 400 ground-to-air missiles, which may threaten our civilian aircraft for years to come.


The damage in Benghazi was not just to American lives, reputation, national pride, international standing, and prestige.  It was material damage, threatening our national security in a clear and present way.  The 400 sophisticated ground-to-air missiles now controlled by jihadists are bound to be used against us.  In the last few weeks, massive coordinated jailbreaks took place in Yemen, Iraq, and Egypt, liberating thousands of terrorist killers who are now on the loose.


The United States has just forced Israel to release more than 100 convicted terrorist killers, who may soon join the others -- in Syria, where al-Qaeda rebels are making military gains against the relatively rational regime of Bashar Assad.  Or in Afghanistan, where the Obama regime is negotiating with the barbaric Taliban to surrender that country to their tender mercies.  Safe-haven countries for Muslim terrorists now include Iran, the Sudan, Arabia, Libya, and Pakistan.


Bin Laden had to run from country to country to finally find safe haven with...the Taliban.  That allowed al-Qaeda to plot the terror attacks on America on the first 9/11.


We will hear from them before this administration is finished.


5. Obama has been actively and knowingly complicit in empowering jihadist forces from the beginning of this administration. He has made no secret of his real sympathies.  Will choose the Muslim side.  No slander of the Prophet of Islam.


Imagine FDR responding to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by lying about Imperial Japan.


That is what Obama and the Democrat Machine have done to us.


In Europe, the identical class of radical leftists are running their economy into the ground.  The European left has also smuggled in hundreds of thousands of easily radicalized Muslims from Pakistan, Africa, and Arabia.  Europe is committing suicide in front of our eyes.  If the left-jihadist political alliance is allowed to stay in power, it will destroy our country also.


We have real enemies, foreign and domestic.  About 100 million Americans know exactly who they are.  Our job as citizens is to guide our nation to safety against the malignant and corrupt network of enemies.


We must do so by peaceful persuasion if we can.


The alternative does not bear thinking about.


James Lewis

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/september_11_2012_a_day_that_will_live_in_infamy.html

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

As Egypt Nears Civil War, Israel on High Alert

by Yaakov Lappin

Near the Sinai peninsula, the Israeli Defense Forces continue on high alert, watching every suspicious movement in the sands near the Egyptian border for signs of the next attack.

The dramatic escalation in Egypt's domestic conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military is being accompanied by an upsurge in the activities of jihadi organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.

Since Morsi's ouster, extremist Salafi and jihadi organizations have launched waves of attacks on Egyptian security forces, and provoked this week's extensive counter-terrorism operation by the Egyptian army.

These Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces are also seeking to strike Israel -- both to satisfy their ideological demand for jihad against Israelis, and to try and force Israel and Egypt into a confrontation, thereby undermining the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

The Israel Defense Forces are therefore on high alert in the event of further attacks by terrorists in Egypt, while also facing the dilemma of how to safeguard its own national security without infringing on Egyptian sovereignty at this most sensitive time.

Two unprecedented incidents on the southern border in just the last few days, however, served as markers for the rapidly changing situation.

First, according to international media reports, an Israeli drone struck an Al-Qaeda-affiliated organization in Sinai, as it was making final preparations to fire rockets at Israel.

While Israeli defense officials have not confirmed or denied the reports, if true, they represent the first preemptive counter-terrorism strike on Egyptian soil.

If Israeli intelligence receives word of an imminent attack taking shape in Sinai, with little time to coordinate a response with Egyptian military forces, such action might be expected.

Islamists across Egypt were quick to seize on the incident to accuse the Egyptian military of being complicit in an Israeli breach of Egyptian sovereignty.

Although this incident was quickly forgotten by Egyptians as both Egypt proper and Sinai descended into turmoil, there is evidence that further attacks by Sinai terrorists against both Egyptian security forces and Israel are being planned.

An additional signal of the deteriorating security situation in Sinai was the rocket fired by a terrorist organization at the Red Sea tourist resort city of Eilat over the weekend.

Anticipating the attack, the IDF stationed an Iron Dome anti-rocket battery in the city. The prior preparation paid off: the system fired an interceptor that successfully stopped the rocket from hitting the city.

The rocket failed to hurt anyone, but it did trigger an air-raid siren and frighten tourists, sending them scatting for cover. Unlike the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, which are used to Palestinian rocket terrorism, Eilat, a resort town, is not used to living under rocket fire.

Today, a shadow of uncertainty hangs over the future of the city's tourist industry. For now, Israeli visitors to the city are displaying trademark resilience, and are continuing to pack the city's hotels and beaches.

Nearby, however, the IDF continues on high alert, watching every suspicious movement in the desert sands near the Egyptian border for signs of the next attack.


Yaakov Lappin

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3938/egypt-civil-war-israel

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

Lebanese President: Beirut Bombing 'bore Fingerprints of Israel'

by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Powerful car bomb rips through Hezbollah stronghold, killing 22 • Sunni group claims responsibility and threatens Nasrallah directly, calling him an "agent of Israel" • Ya'alon shows U.N. chief map of Hezbollah arms caches in south Lebanese villages.

The site of the car bomb explosion in the Dahiya neighborhood of southern Beirut, Thursday Photo credit: AP

 

The Dahiya neighborhood after the explosion on Thursday
Photo credit: AP

A powerful car bomb tore through a bustling Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut on Thursday, killing 22 people and trapping dozens of others in an inferno of burning cars and buildings in the bloodiest attack yet on Lebanese civilians linked to Syria's civil war.

Many Lebanese officials, including President Michel Suleiman, pointed accusatory fingers at Israel following the attack. 

As of press time, Lebanese Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said hospitals across the capital had taken in 16 bodies and 226 wounded people. Hezbollah's Al Manar TV and Red Cross official George Kattaneh said the death toll was at least 18, and more than 280 had been wounded.

The blast is the second in just over a month to hit one of the Shiite terrorist group's bastions of support, and the deadliest in decades. It raises the specter of a sharply divided Lebanon being pulled further into the conflict next door, which is being fought on increasingly sectarian lines pitting Sunnis against Shiites.

Syria-based Sunni rebels and militant Islamist groups fighting to topple Syria's President Bashar Assad have threatened to target Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in retaliation for intervening on behalf of his regime in the conflict.

Thursday's explosion ripped through a crowded, overwhelmingly Shiite area tightly controlled by Hezbollah, turning streets lined with vegetable markets, bakeries and shops into a scene of destruction.

Dozens of ambulances rushed to the site of the explosion and firefighters used cranes and ladders to try to evacuate terrified residents from burning buildings. Some fled to the rooftops of buildings and civil defense workers were still struggling to bring them down to safety several hours after the explosion.

The blast appeared to be an attempt to sow fear among the group's civilian supporters and did not target any known Hezbollah facility or figure.

The army, in a statement, said the explosion had been caused by a car bomb. It called on residents to cooperate with security forces trying to evacuate people trapped in their homes.

A previously unknown group calling itself Aisha -- the Mother of Believers Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack in a video posted on YouTube, saying it was the second "message" it had sent since a blast in the area last month. The authenticity of the claim could not be independently verified.

"Our second message was strong and astounding," a masked man, flanked by two other armed and masked men, read from a prepared statement in the video. He called on civilians to stay away from Hezbollah strongholds in the future, saying the terrorist group was "an agent for Iran and Israel."

"This is the second time that we decide the time and place of the battle ... and you will see more, God willing," the statement said.

Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Ammar called the blast a "terrorist" attack and called for restraint among the group's supporters. He suggested the group's political rivals in Lebanon were responsible for creating an atmosphere that encourages such attacks.

But many still blamed Israel. 

"The explosion was carefully prepared and one of the theories is that it could have been an Israeli retaliation for the Labouneh operation," Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said, referring to an incident last week in which four Israeli soldiers were wounded in southern Lebanon.

Suleiman said the attack "bore the fingerprints of terrorism and Israel, intended to undermine the stability of the strong Lebanese people."

Following a meeting with visiting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem on Friday, President Shimon Peres commented on Suleiman's allegations, saying that "it surprised me that the president of Lebanon is accusing Israel." 

"Why blame Israel?" Peres said. "It is Hezbollah that is amassing bombs and killing people in Syria without the permission of the Lebanese government." 

 
 

In an interview on Army Radio on Friday morning, former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said, "We've gotten used to accusations of this kind. They should be ignored. There is almost no act in the Middle East that Israel's opponents don't attribute to it. But these are internal matters for these countries. We have enough problems of our own, so it wouldn't be wise to get involved."

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon also met with Ban on Friday, and presented him with a map of south Lebanese villages where Hezbollah stores weapons in civilian residences and from where it launches rockets and assumes battlefield positions. The map marked specific homes used by Hezbollah from where rockets will be launched at Israel in the event of another armed conflict.

"Hezbollah is Iran's primary weapon against Israel if a war breaks out. It is an organization that is a state within a state," Ya'alon told Ban.

"We greatly appreciate the willingness of the U.N. forces on the border with Syria and southern Lebanon. The Middle East is in the midst of a strategic earthquake, and there will be instability in the region for a long time to come. The only stable thing in the Middle East is its lack of stability.

"In Syria we must be ready for a civil war that will last for years. In Lebanon as well there is a struggle developing between Hezbollah and Sunni elements. We see Hezbollah activity near the border with Israel, despite U.N. Resolution 1701 stipulating that Hezbollah cannot be or operate there.

"Hezbollah must not be allowed to be there," Ya'alon said, showing Ban the map. "Hezbollah is Iran's strategic arm in Lebanon ... it must be treated like an enemy."

Syria's conflict has spilled across the border into Lebanon on multiple occasions over the past two years. Fire from Syria has hit border villages, while clashes between Lebanese factions backing different sides have left scores dead.

But direct attacks against civilian targets were rare until Hezbollah stepped up its role in Syria. Since then, the organization's support bases in southern Beirut have been targeted. Since May, rockets have been fired at suburbs controlled by the group on two occasions, wounding four people. On July 9, a car bomb exploded in the nearby Beir al-Abed district, wounding more than 50 people.

Thursday's explosion, however, was much deadlier than the previous attacks, and was the bloodiest single attack in south Beirut since a 1985 truck bomb assassination attempt targeting top Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beir al-Abed killed 80 people.

It came despite rigorous security measure taken over the past few weeks by Hezbollah around its strongholds, setting up checkpoints, searching cars and sometimes using sniffer dogs to search for bombs. It also came a day before Hezbollah's leader was scheduled to give a major speech marking the end of the month-long 2006 war with Israel.

The explosion occurred on a central commercial and residential street in the Rweiss district, about 100 meters (330 feet) away from the Sayyed al-Shuhada complex where Hezbollah usually holds rallies.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who has been in hiding since his group's 2006 month-long war with Israel, made a rare public appearance at the complex on Aug. 2, where he addressed hundreds of supporters. He was to speak again on Friday from a location in southern Lebanon, but his speeches by satellite are often transmitted to followers at the complex.

Panicked Hezbollah fighters fired in the air to clear the area and roughed up photographers, smashing and confiscating some of their cameras following the explosion.

Sunni-Shiite tensions have risen sharply in Lebanon, particularly since Hezbollah raised its profile by openly fighting alongside Assad's forces. Lebanese Sunnis support the rebels fighting to topple Assad, a member of a Shiite offshoot sect.

The group's fighters played a key role in a recent regime victory in the town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, and Syrian activists say they are now aiding a regime offensive in the besieged city of Homs.

Politicians within Lebanon's Western-backed coalition have slammed the group for its involvement in Syria and called for its disarmament.

The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the terrorist attack, calling it a "heinous act." Council members stressed that terrorism "constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable."

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly also strongly condemned the bombing. In comments posted on the embassy's Facebook page, Connelly called for all parties to exercise calm and restraint.

The British Foreign Office official in charge of Middle East policy, Alistair Burt, also condemned the attack.

"Terrorism and extremism have no place in Lebanon. I call for the Lebanese state to investigate this urgently and bring the perpetrators to justice," he said in a statement.

Outgoing Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati declared Friday a day of mourning for the victims of the attack. 

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff Source: http://www.israelhayom.com /site/newsletter_article.php?id=11393  

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

What should Israel do about Europe?

by Dore Gold

Last Friday morning, on Israel's popular morning radio station, Reshet Bet, broadcaster Aryeh Golan interviewed Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin about the latest demands by the European Union that its research and development grants not be applied to territories beyond the 1967 lines. 

Since mid-July, there have been reports of new EU guidelines that are expected to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, and are to apply to grants, prizes, and other financial instruments to Israeli bodies. Reflecting some of the growing rage in Israel at the latest EU initiative, Golan asked Elkin whether Israel could find alternative economic partnerships in India and China. Apparently, the idea of turning away from Europe to new Asian partners was raised in certain governmental circles as well. 

True, this was not a proposal for a European boycott of Israel, though the headlines in the Israeli press gave readers that impression. Part of the concern in Israel is where this new policy will lead. For example, the EU guidelines could become the basis for formulating a territorial clause in future Israeli-EU agreements which would be used to force Israel to accept that any territories beyond the pre-1967 line are not part of Israel, including east Jerusalem and the Old City. 

The EU went ahead and issued this new policy just as Israel was making tough concessions, including the release of convicted Palestinian prisoners, to set the stage for new peace talks. Both the substance and the timing of what the Europeans were doing drew bitter criticism across much of the Israeli political spectrum, and the move is likely to have a long-term impact on Israeli-European relations.

For specialists in European trade policy, the new trend in Israeli-European relations is particularly outrageous because it is built on the establishment of a clear double standard. Take EU policy on Morocco. In 2005, the EU and Morocco signed an international agreement allowing European fishermen to operate in Moroccan waters. Did the agreement apply to the territorial waters of Western Sahara, which was claimed by Morocco, but not recognized as Moroccan territory by the international community, including the states of the EU? In 1975, the International Court of Justice in The Hague determined that Morocco did not have sovereignty over Western Sahara. 

Yet, in the EU-Moroccan fishing agreement, there is a provision allowing European fishermen to operate in the waters of Western Sahara. Fishing is a lucrative business. Morocco stands to gain at least 40 million euros in annual fishing fees. All funds derived from European fishermen have been going to Morocco. 

Hans Correll, the former legal adviser to the U.N., attacked EU officials for allowing such an agreement. What makes the Moroccan case glaring is the fact that the latest EU guidelines on Israel explicitly state that "their aim is to ensure respect of EU positions and commitments in conformity with international law on the non-recognition by the EU of Israel's sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967." 

But in the case of Morocco, the EU is not applying this standard, but is going ahead with an agreement, regardless of how it views the question of sovereignty in Western Sahara. And while the EU strenuously objects to supporting any Israeli presence in the West Bank, because of its legal status, it nonetheless allows European citizens to purchase beachfront vacation homes in the territory of Northern Cyprus that was occupied by Turkey in 1974. No punitive measures have been contemplated against Turkey, because of the ongoing conflict over the future status of this disputed territory. Europe supports a resolution of the Cyprus problem, without using the same economic levers of power it is employing in the Israeli case.

An analysis of the European Union's negotiations with India over a Free Trade Agreement also shows that there is no demand to say that it will only apply to territories in which India's sovereignty is not disputed. The EU has encouraged India and Pakistan to resolve their dispute over Kashmir. A study by a Pakistani legal scholar of the EU-Indian trade negotiations points out that previously concluded free trade agreements with other countries "do not impose binding conditions in respect of particular geopolitical disputes". True, the EU has employed economic sanctions against rogue states like Iran and North Korea. But it does not use economic leverage against friendly countries engaged in territorial disputes.

Looking at how the EU treats other territorial disputes, Israel has good reasons to be enraged with EU policy. Nevertheless, it will have to use its creative energies to bridge the gap with Europe and put its relations on a stronger footing. 

Israel does have something to work with. A German adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel told The Jerusalem Post last month that European cooperation with Israel in research and development in the EU's Horizon 2020 program is a European interest and not just an Israeli interest.

The background to the EU's program with Israel is the need for Europe to improve its global competitiveness and increase jobs and economic growth on the continent after years of sluggish growth. The Horizon 2020 program is not a European handout to Israel, but a joint initiative by which Israel puts up funds by itself and receives 1.6 euros for joint research and development for every euro it puts in. 

Because of its scientific prowess, Israel is the only non-European country to have been invited to take part in this program. The Europeans knew what they were doing by inviting Israel, which is no longer viewed as a country known only for its Jaffa oranges, as it was in the 1950s. Clearly, both sides benefit from this cooperation and both have much to lose by its politicization by EU bureaucrats in Brussels.

So what were the Europeans thinking when they got Israel involved in the first place? Economists have long recognized that knowledge-based industries are the fastest-growing portion of the global economy, and serve as engines for economic growth. These are precisely the technological fields in which Israel leads and which Europe needs. 

In their book "Start-Up Nation," Dan Senor and Saul Singer quote an American high-tech executive who admits that for companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel, "the best-kept secret is that we all live and die by the work of our Israeli teams." 

Why should Europe jeopardize its cooperation with Israel, which has served as such an important partner for the U.S. companies? To go down the path of limiting its scientific cooperation with Israel seems to be, ultimately, a self-defeating policy for Europe itself.

Then there is the issue of Israel's offshore gas fields. Europe presently imports most of its gas from Russia and from North Africa. David Wurmser used to serve as a Middle East expert for the U.S. vice president's office and later advised Noble Energy, which is involved in Israeli gas exploration. He points out in a paper for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that there are today five existing or planned pipelines connecting Europe with the gas of North Africa. Four of the pipelines come through Algeria, which is facing growing threats from al-Qaida affiliates. Elsewhere in the Middle East, as in Sinai, they have shown their readiness to sabotage such pipelines. Having another source of gas from Israel could be critical for Europe if some of its current energy sources do not come available.

Wurmser concludes that Israel make Asia its preferred export destination and not Europe. This is a decision Israel will have to make as it influences how it builds its energy infrastructure. If Europe begins to present itself as an unreliable trading partner, then there will be many more Israeli voices who adopt the idea of making Asia into Israel's preferred market for its gas exports. 

Israel and the EU need to get past this problematic period in their relationship. A great deal is at stake for both sides. It should not be overlooked that a revival of bilateral ties between Europe and Israel will require rebuilding the good will that has existed between both parties in the past, but has been damaged by the recent tensions between them.

Dore Gold

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5377

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

Denmark Bans Meatballs to Accommodate Muslims

by Soeren Kern

"The next thing could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women in order to please Muslim patients." — Martin Henriksen, Spokesman, Danish People's Party [DF]

One of the largest hospitals in Denmark has admitted to serving only halal beef -- meat that is slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic guidelines -- to all of its patients regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.

The revelation that Danes are being forced to eat Islamically slaughtered meat at public institutions has triggered a spirited nationwide debate about how far Denmark should go to accommodate the estimated 250,000 Muslim immigrants now living in the country.

The halal food row erupted in July when the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet reported that Hvidovre Hospital near Copenhagen has been secretly serving only halal-slaughtered meat for the sake of its Muslim patients, for the past ten years. The hospital serves more than 40,000 patients annually, many (if not most) of whom presumably are non-Muslim.

Halal -- which in Arabic means lawful or legal -- is a term designating any object or action that is permissible according to Islamic Sharia law. In the context of food, halal meat is derived from animals slaughtered by hand according to methods stipulated in Islamic religious texts.

One such halal method, called dhabihah, consists of making a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck that cuts the jugular vein, leaving the animal to bleed to death. Much of the controversy involving halal stems from the fact that Sharia law bans the practice of stunning the animals before they are slaughtered. Pre-slaughter stunning renders the animals unconscious and is said to lessen their pain.

Amid a surge of public outrage over the decision to serve only halal beef, Hvidovre Hospital's vice president, Torben Mogensen, has been unapologetic. "We have many patients from different ethnic backgrounds, which we must take into account, and it is impossible to have both the one and the other kind of beef," he says.

"First," Mogensen adds, "I do not think that a slaughter method as such has anything to do with faith. Second is, of course, that all chickens in Denmark are halal slaughtered, and it has to my knowledge not caused anyone to stop eating chicken."

Mogensen also says the hospital is not trying to "push the Islamic faith down the throats of non-Muslim patients"

In a press release, Hvidovre Hospital states, "We introduced halal meat both for practical and economic reasons. It would be both more difficult and more expensive to have to make both a halal version and a non-halal version of the dishes. Then we have two production lines. It requires more people, more equipment and more money."

The hospital advises non-Muslims to take it or leave it: "We always have alternatives to halal meat such as pork, fish or vegetarian dishes. It is a question of attitude."

According to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, there is no comprehensive inventory of the number of hospitals in Denmark have halal meat on the menu. But officials at the University Hospital in Aarhus, the second-largest urban area in Denmark after Copenhagen, say the decision by Hvidovre Hospital to serve only halal is an example of political correctness run amok.

In an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Ole Hoffmann, the head chef of Aarhus University Hospital says: "We have never had a patient ask for halal meat, and therefore it is an issue that we have never discussed. I think it is a strange decision. If there was a desire to serve halal meat, then we would of course consider it, but we would never completely eliminate non-halal meat."

Pork today, gone tomorrow? Aarhus University Hospital, in Denmark, where non-Halal food continues to be served. (Photo credit: Carina T./WikiMedia Commons)

Hoffmann also disputes the idea that it is difficult to offer two different kinds of beef. "I do not know why it should be more difficult. After all, our job is to serve patients."

In a separate but related story, Ekstra Bladet reported that at least 30 nurseries, preschools and daycare centers in Denmark have banned the Danish national dish -- pan-fried meatballs known as frikadeller -- because they include pork and are offensive to Muslim children.

Ishøj Municipality -- a town on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark where most of the population is of African, Arab, Pakistani or Turkish origin -- has introduced, to accommodate Muslim children, a blanket policy of not serving pork, including frikadeller, sausages or liver pâté, at any of its daycares or nurseries.

The newspaper also reports that in parts of Copenhagen, the dietary ban has gone beyond pork and some schools are now serving only halal meat because the schools' leadership say they do not want to offend Muslims.

In Nørrebro, for example, a district in Copenhagen where up to 40% of the children are Muslim, schools have banned not only pork but are serving only halal meat.

According to Danish Sociologist Jon Fuglsang of the Metropolitan University College, banning pork is the wrong way to go. "Pork is an important part of Danish food culture that brings much national pride," he says. "It must be possible to serve differentiated menus for children. We should not banish certain foods in order to show respect. It is not the right way to do it. Children must learn how to think about these issues," he adds.

Danish nutrition expert Professor Arne Astrup sums it up this way: "It's a question of food culture, the banning of traditional Danish food just because it includes pork. I would find it difficult to understand if my child suddenly could not get healthy Danish dishes like pâté and sausage made from pork, just because there are some Muslim children in the same institution."

According to the Danish People's Party (DF), which is pushing for limiting immigration and promoting cultural assimilation of admitted immigrants, the government should intervene in the halal dispute by passing a law that would prohibit public institutions from discriminating against Danish culture.

In an interview with Jyllands-Posten, DF party spokesman Martin Henriksen says, "It is disconcerting that our public institutions are educating Danish children to give exaggerated deference to Muslims. Those practices are illegal because they unceremoniously discriminate against those who value Danish food culture."

Henriksen adds, "The next thing one would imagine could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women, in order to please Muslim patients."

The center-right Conservative Party agrees. According to party spokesman Tom Behnke, "The limit is where we as Danes are forced to live in a completely different way than we have done until now. I will not accept this. It is fine to take into account that some people have religious beliefs. But ordering me and my children to follow it, I am opposed to that."

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a Social Democrat who has relaxed restrictions on immigrants and asylum seekers, has sought to defuse the politically inconvenient halal imbroglio by trying to find a middle ground. She says that Danes should be accommodating to all faiths and cultures, while maintaining their own values and traditions and keeping meatballs in hospitals and kindergartens.

In an interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (video here), Thorning-Schmidt said butchers and slaughterhouses should add labels to their packaging to indicate whether or not meat has been slaughtered under halal practices. "I think it is natural that consumers want to know if they are eating halal meat or not. I urge all companies to clearly indicate it on their packaging," she says.
Thorning-Schmidt also says that kindergartens and hospitals should continue to serve pork roasts and meatballs: "They are part of the Danish culinary tradition. We need to remember that in our zeal to welcome new citizens we do not to lose sight of our own culture. We have to stick with the way we eat and what we do in Denmark. There should be room for frikadeller."


Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs

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

How Textbooks Push Children to the Left

by Jeff Ludwig


 

Are you surprised that leftist ideas have penetrated the minds of the people?  Chalk up this reality to the leftist teachers and, especially, to the left-oriented textbooks now in use in our secondary schools.  One book in particular that has been gaining traction in New York City in recent years is “The Americans.”

Although even the leftist teachers claim not to like this textbook used in U.S. history (a one-year course required in NYC for all juniors) because it is so skimpy on facts and is written in an opaque style, any informed reader would have to agree that it is one of the most politically correct textbooks one could imagine. Reading this book, one gets the message that the history of America is a theme of victimization. The list of victims is well known: Native Americans, women, labor, immigrants, blacks, farmers, urban dwellers, the mentally ill, migrant workers, unions, etc. “The Americans” is a somewhat diluted version of Howard Zinn’s openly communist college textbook, “A People’s History of the United States.” It is also worth adding that this reference to Zinn’s “communism” is not putting labels on anyone, and is not a McCarthy-like type of red-baiting of an innocent individual; Zinn openly announced his communism decades ago when he taught at Boston University.

This author surveyed the index of “The Americans,” and found that in the 1,045 pages of text, there were only two references to Christianity, no references to Protestants, and five references to Roman Catholicism. There were zero references to God, zero references to Jesus Christ, and only one reference to evangelicals. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are described as “minor activists,” not as traitors who sold out their country for $10,000. Their being traitors is no longer supposition or in any way debatable, but has been revealed conclusively by Harvey Klehr et al. in their monumental study The Secret World of American Communism based on documents made available after the collapse of the USSR. Prof. Klehr is a professor at Emory University and the book was published by Yale University Press, hardly right-wing organizations.

The same textbook has no index reference to John Calvin and the powerful Reformation currents that were alive and well in the 17^th and into the 18^thcenturies. And in the textbook’s sections on the “Pilgrims and the Puritans,” the focus goes from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson (essentially depicted as the first feminist victim of an uptight male patriarchy) to King Philip’s War between the Puritans and Wampanoag Indians in 1675. Although it’s not said outright, the book means to suggest that there was a certain bloodthirsty aspect to the Puritan culture. They were encroaching and exploitative, so the Indians had to fight back. The textbook fails to mention anything about the fifty-year peace treaty between the Wampanoags and the Puritans, which held up beautifully until Chief Massasoit and the Puritan leader John Winthrop died.

It fails to mention Thomas Hooker who founded Connecticut and, with his co-founders, wrote the first state constitution – “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” – that was a model for representative government in the colonies. The book does not mention that Anne Hutchinson, though she was a woman, was permitted to lead Bible discussions at her home in Massachusetts. Only when she began teaching antinomian doctrine (i.e., that it was not necessary for a Christian to follow moral law) was she reprimanded, and banished when she failed to submit to the teachings of the colonial leaders. Moreover, the book fails to highlight the incredible faith of the Puritans as they actually succeeded, despite some flaws, on building that “city on the hill” out of the wilderness, and the debt of gratitude we owe to the righteous and faithful Puritans, people who walked the walk of faith wearing the whole armor of God.

Further, under their original charter, the Puritans set up a kind of primitive communism where everybody shared equally in the town of Plymouth, but they soon perceived that this did not work, and divided the land into portions for each family, where the efforts of each person would decide his well-being up to a point (they never stopped being good neighbors and helping each other). All of this information is not noted in any form in the textbook and, although it is not said outright, an inexperienced young reader will come away with the impression that the Puritans and Pilgrims were a narrow-minded and racist group, and besides that they were Christian fanatics (like those terrible evangelicals of our own era).

Would not an even-handed approach to colonial U.S. history discuss William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania?  In that colony, there were no armed conflicts with the Native Americans during the colonial period. Pennsylvania had no army until the French and Indian War in the 1750s.  William Penn was an incredibly righteous and informed Quaker.  He wrote many books, including the marvelous book “No Cross, No Crown,” as well as others about politics, Christianity, and history.  His moral excellence and writing gifts are not even alluded to, nor are those of Thomas Hooker of Connecticut or Increase and Cotton Mather of Massachusetts (more than 500 works between them on a variety of topics).  Is there any governor among our fifty states who could write a theology book today?  Or any other book of clear intellectual merit for that matter?

The skewed and distorted information and disinformation in “The Americans” is too extensive in over 1,000 pages to catalogue completely in this article.  However, it reflects a mindset that is not unique to this volume.  This textbook represents a besetting ignorance as well as congeries of biases that are epidemic in our country and disrupting the minds of the people.


Jeff Ludwig

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jeff-ludwig/how-textbooks-push-children-to-the-left/

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