Saturday, March 7, 2015

Heroes in Egypt Confront Islamist Ideology - Michael Armanious



by Michael Armanious


What made Egyptian President Sisi's speech remarkable is that he pointed to the problem within and did not blame a Western or Jewish conspiracy for the problems facing Muslims.
The sad fact, which Western leaders and peaceful Muslims do not want to know or publicly acknowledge, is that when Western and other leaders say that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, they are simply flat wrong.
About a month after Sisi said "We must revolutionize our religion," Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian journalist and another hero of the Middle East backed him up, saying, "when the people of ISIS perpetrate slaughter, murder, rape, immolation, and all those barbaric crimes, they say that they are relying on the sharia. They say that this is based on a certain hadith, on a certain Quranic chapter, on a certain saying of Ibn Taymiyyah, or on some historical event. To tell the truth, everything that ISIS says is correct."
Sisi wants to defeat extremism, not use it as a tool of statecraft. He understands the importance of defeating this expansionist ideology, and deserves the full support of America and the international community in this struggle.

For years, intellectuals have called on Cairo's Al-Azhar University to change its pre-medieval mindset of jihadism, without any success. This time might be different.

In December 2014, Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, gave a speech at Al-Azhar and told clerics there that it is time to modernize the Muslim faith, which has put itself at odds with the rest of humanity.

It was the perfect venue for the speech. Al-Azhar is the pinnacle of Sunni Islam's education system. It is influential not just in Egypt, but throughout the world. Al-Azhar has educated many of the leaders of Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi groups.

Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, delivered a historic speech to top Islamic scholars and clergy at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, December 28, 2014. (Image source: MEMRI)

For the first time in the history, a heroic head of state stood before Al-Azhar's scholars, insisting they acknowledge that there is a real problem with Al-Azhar's teachings and asking them to reform the religious ideology, primarily through changing its core domain, education. Sisi had the courage to call for a religious revolution within Al-Azhar. In the house of the religious scholars, he took them on.

What made his speech remarkable is that he pointed to the problem within, and did not blame a Western or Jewish conspiracy for the problems facing Muslims.

About a month after Sisi's heroic speech, in which he said, "We must revolutionize our religion," Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian journalist and another hero of the Middle East, backed him up. Eissa said on Egyptian television, on February 3, that no one in Egypt has had the courage to admit that the ideology and activities of ISIS are based on Islamic sources. Eissa added,
"when the people of ISIS perpetrate slaughter, murder, rape, immolation, and all those barbaric crimes, they say that they are relying on the sharia. They say that this is based on a certain hadith, on a certain Quranic chapter, on a certain saying of Ibn Taymiyyah, or on some historical event. To tell the truth, everything that ISIS says is correct."
On February 11, Eissa named the extremists among the Al-Azhar leadership, and noted that Al-Azhar had become a shelter of an extremist ideology. In addition, Eissa questioned why Al-Azhar refused to denounce ISIS as "Kufar" or "un-Islamic."

President Sisi is not alone in his call for a religious revolution. Professor Dr. Sheikh Ahmad Muhammad al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, made a similar statement, in Saudi holy city of Mecca, no less. There, he spoke of "bad interpretations of the Koran and the sunna [the teachings of Muhammad]."

"There has been a historical accumulation of excessive trends," al-Tayyeb told a Saudi conference, and said that a reform in education was needed.

The major difference between the visionary Sisi and al-Tayyeb is that al-Tayyeb still could not resist blaming others. "We face major international plots targeting Arabs and Muslims, in a way that agrees with the new world colonialism that is allied with world Zionism," he said, relying on the worn-out conspiracy theories that everyone -- especially after the "Arab Spring" -- can see are not true. Such conspiracy theories are merely used to deflect blame from the real source of the problem: the many leaders in the Arab and Muslim world who still practice corrupt and capricious governance.

The real heroes remain Egypt's president, who got the process started, and Ibrahim Eissa, for speaking the truth. Sisi's call for religious revolution encouraged others in Egypt finally to state publicly that Al-Azhar had been hijacked by radicals. Egyptians, for the first time, were also able to state publicly what else everyone knew: that Al-Azhar was producing books promoting hatred and violence. Most Egyptians, however, expect that a great thinker such as al-Tayyeb, who had the courage to come such a long way, will also soon rise to the same stature as President Sisi.

Both Sisi's and al-Tayyeb's statements represent the real "Arab Spring": the beginning of a historic shift in how Sunni Islam will henceforth be interpreted, taught and practiced.

Coinciding with this intellectual assault, a U.S.-led coalition has been bombing the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for the past several months. These attacks have killed an unknown number of the group's members, but at the same time also actually gaining new recruits for the organization, even in the West.

ISIS has been able to attract new followers mainly because of its online presence, through which it promotes its ideology to restless, disaffected young Muslims across the world. ISIS has gained followers by videotaping and airing its barbaric beheadings of a number of victims -- including American hostages and Egyptian Coptic Christians -- as well as the burning of a Jordanian pilot, and reportedly 45 others in the Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi.

Most people are shocked by these actions, but ISIS takes pride in slaughtering and burning its victims, as it seeks to establish a caliphate in its first step toward world domination. As a totalitarian organization, ISIS is more than a threat to the national security of America and its allies; it is a threat, as Sisi was among the first to see, first of all to Muslims, and then to the rest of humanity.

Sadly, the U.S. has failed to enunciate a comprehensive strategy for defeating this rapacious organization. On February 11, the Obama Administration formally asked Congress to authorize military force to "degrade and defeat" ISIS. Clearly, military force is necessary, but President Obama needs to be honest with himself and the public, and admit that ISIS will not be defeated by a military campaign alone. Bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria may kill its members, but it will not defeat its ideology.

Obama, for his legacy, would do well to take a leading role in supporting Sisi in the ideological war against Islamic extremists and their ideology. He is fortunate to have a potential Muslim ally in the Egyptian President, as well in the Muslim Mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, yet another hero who clearly wants his people to have far-reaching opportunities.

Sisi is continuing with his heroic campaign. On January 22, he spoke for the first time of the genius of the late President Sadat's vision of peace in the Middle East. He also spoke of not allowing jihadists to use the Sinai peninsula to attack Egypt's neighbors, referring to Israel.

Sisi also refuses to follow in the footsteps of former President Hosni Mubarak, who used the threat of Islamic extremism to blackmail the West. Sisi wants to defeat extremism, not use it as a tool of statecraft.

Sisi understands the importance of defeating this expansionist ideology, and deserves the full support of America and the international community in this struggle.


Michael Armanious, a U.S.-based news analyst, was born and raised in Egypt.
Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5322/sisi-egypt-islamist-ideology

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

Palestinian Slams Car into Israelis on Purim Holiday, PLO Encourages More Attacks - IPT News



by IPT News


"The Central Council congratulates our people who take part in the heroic intifada [violent uprising in Jerusalem] against the barbarism and brutality of the settlers and the occupation forces… To strengthen the steadfastness of Jerusalem and its heroic intifada, the Central Council calls upon all the political and national authorities in the city to allocate the funds necessary to reinforce the steadfastness of our people…" reads the PLO committee statement.

A Palestinian man rammed a car into a group of Israeli pedestrians injuring five people including four female border police officers during the Jewish holiday of Purim, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Police consider the incident to be a terrorist attack, reporting that the driver swerved onto the sidewalk near a light rail station before emerging from the vehicle with a butcher knife trying to stab other people.

Israeli authorities have identified the suspect as 22-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud Abdel Razek Salaima from the Palestinian neighbourhood Ras al-Amud. Salaima has a criminal record and remains hospitalized in critical condition after a police officer at the scene shot him following the incident.

The alleged attack occurred in an area that has witnessed numerous Palestinian vehicular attacks in the past year that targeted Israeli pedestrians.

The incident takes place in context of a PLO Central Council conference that issued a statement praising previous Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis in Jerusalem and calling for popular resistance, the Middle East Media Research Service (MEMRI) reports.

"The Central Council congratulates our people who take part in the heroic intifada [violent uprising in Jerusalem] against the barbarism and brutality of the settlers and the occupation forces… To strengthen the steadfastness of Jerusalem and its heroic intifada, the Central Council calls upon all the political and national authorities in the city to allocate the funds necessary to reinforce the steadfastness of our people…" reads the PLO committee statement.

The Council also called for a suspension of security coordination with Israel, but the resolution requires the approval of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA and Abbas' Fatah faction systematically glorify Palestinian terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians and continue to encourage future attacks by explicitly inciting violence against Israelis and Jews.

Click here for a comprehensive list compiled by The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) featuring recent terrorist attacks targeting Israelis and examples of Palestinian incitement.


IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4795/palestinian-slams-car-into-israelis-on-purim

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

Hamas in Turkey: "Humanitarian Activity" - Burak Bekdil



by Burak Bekdil


The scope of Hamas's activity in Turkish territory is an open secret. Hamas and Turkish officials claim the nature of that activity is humanitarian. Maybe. But in the real world, kidnapping Israeli teenagers and hitting Israeli cities with rockets might actually be considered a "humanitarian activity" by most Islamists.

In 2012, Abdullah Gul, then President of Turkey, when asked by reporters whether Hamas would open an office in Istanbul, said: "Contacts [with Hamas] continue. Time will tell where the dimension of our cooperation will lead us to."

Gul is a moderate Islamist compared to his successor as President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Guess what time told.

Eight years after the 2006 visit to Turkey of the head of Hamas's political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, the Islamist organization -- deemed a terror group by Egypt, the United States, Australia, Canada, Israel, and Japan -- was coordinating its efforts in the West Bank with logistical support from a command center in Istanbul -- a fact that annoyed even the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In 2014, Turkey was also host to Salah al-Arouri, a Hamas commander whom the PA accuses of planning multiple attacks against Israeli targets.

The newspaper Israel Hayom calls Arouri "an infamous arch-terrorist believed to be responsible for dozens of attacks against Israelis." According to the Israeli media, the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) has evidence that the deadly attacks against Israelis were planned at the Hamas headquarters in Istanbul. In November, the Shin Bet reported the arrest in the West Bank of members of a cell preparing to attack Israeli targets, who had received military training abroad under the leadership of Hamas in Turkey.

Last August, speaking at the World Conference of Islamic Sages in Turkey, Arouri admitted that Hamas was behind the "heroic action carried out by the al-Qassam Brigades, which captured three settlers in Hebron." The three teenage boys were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas operatives, an incident that triggered the spiral of violence that led to the vicious 50-day war in Gaza.

In December, Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon asserted that Hamas operatives in Istanbul were plotting terrorist attacks to be carried out in the West Bank and Gaza. "Hamas," he said, "is trying to build terrorism infrastructure in Judea and Samaria that will carry out attacks in different forms, and we must work aggressively and determinately against this."

Ya'alon also claimed, when he met with then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in Washington, that Hamas moved its bureau from Damascus to Istanbul for the first time in late October 2014. His accusations came a month after Israel filed a complaint with NATO for Turkey's role in supporting terrorism by harboring and supporting Hamas officials. The complaint specifically mentioned Arouri, who has lived in Turkey since 2010.

Also in December, a Hamas leader, speaking to World Net Daily on condition of anonymity, confirmed that his organization was using NATO member Turkey as a base for logistics, training and planning terrorist attacks.

When so much was in the public domain, the U.S. administration shyly felt compelled to act, and appealed to Ankara to prevent Hamas's military activity originating from any base on Turkish soil. After all, Turkey was a NATO ally and most allies viewed Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Turkish diplomats and security officials neither deny nor confirm that Hamas has a logistical hub in Turkey. "Call it a bureau or anything else," said one official privately. Another senior official weighed in: "Hamas' activity in Turkey is limited to coordinating humanitarian aid and media work."

A recent report in Al-Monitor quoted a Turkish diplomat as saying, "Turkey has a dialogue with Hamas but will absolutely not allow any terror organization to operate on its soil."

That line is where verbal "creativity" comes into the picture: "Turkey will not allow any terror organization to operate on its soil." Yes and no.

Yes, because Turkey openly declares that it does not view Hamas as a terrorist organization. And no, because Hamas is in fact a terrorist organization.

In January, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "For us, Hamas is not a terror organization; it has never committed any act of terror."

But that was not Ankara's first sleight-of-hand for an entity that vows to kill every last Jew on earth. President Erdogan has repeatedly described Hamas militants as "freedom fighters."

In December, Davutoglu hosted Mashaal at a high-profile party congress in Konya, Central Turkey. Taking the stage at the event, Mashaal congratulated the Turkish people "for having Erdogan and Davutoglu." Thundering applause, Palestinian flags waving passionately and thousands of AKP fans shouting, "Down with Israel!"

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal addresses the AKP regional party congress in Konya, Turkey, on December 27, 2014.

The scope of Hamas's activity through Turkish territory is an open secret. Hamas and Turkish officials claim the nature of that activity is humanitarian. Maybe. But in the real world, kidnapping Israeli teenagers and hitting Israeli cities with rockets might actually be considered a "humanitarian activity" by most Islamists, whether Palestinian or Turkish.

The choice of Istanbul to host the Hamas bureau is not totally irrelevant: Tens of thousands of people in Istanbul take to the streets in the great metropolis every year to commemorate "Jerusalem Day," in which they customarily burn Israeli and American flags and chant, "Down with Israel, down with America!"


Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5324/hamas-turkey

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

The Impact and Purpose of Net Neutrality - Paul Murphy



by Paul Murphy


That's the net effect of the new regulatory framework now being hidden from view under the Orwellian "network neutrality" label -- because an extra bit of paperwork is utterly meaningless to a national telecom provider with its compliance infrastructure already in place, but almost totally prevents industry disruption through outsider innovation.

In theory, Democrats regulate because they believe that society progresses when the leadership elites make decisions for everyone -- and correspondingly, Republicans oppose regulation because they generally believe that societies progress best when individuals are free to make their own choices.

In practice, Democrats regulate because it feels right and doing so attracts both financial and social support from the very rich, the socially established, and media they own; while Republicans oppose it because most are poor or middle class and recognize that regulation always reduces upward social and economic mobility.

About ten years ago it looked as if there might be a significant opportunity to use existing Hughes satellite technologies to provide high-speed, high-security networking support for western Canadian agribusiness. The numbers looked good: manageable entry costs, little technology risk, strong demand, and no significant competition. What I soon came to believe, however, is that while anyone could spend a couple of hundred bucks filing for the required licenses, for an industry outsider whose grandparents didn't go to upper Canada College to achieve a 50:50 chance of getting and holding those licenses would probably cost in the range of three million in cash, two years of delay, and a couple of hundred thousand a year in compliance management.

That's the net effect of the new regulatory framework now being hidden from view under the Orwellian "network neutrality" label -- because an extra bit of paperwork is utterly meaningless to a national telecom provider with its compliance infrastructure already in place, but almost totally prevents industry disruption through outsider innovation.

Education didn't come under significant federal regulation in the United States until President Carter created the Federal Department of Education in 1979. Between 1979 and 2011 the percentage of high school graduates who grade as functionally illiterate rose from about 4% to about 18%; most nonprofessional certifications offered by colleges and universities lost nearly all value; and, the Department of Education grew to control an estimated $141 billion in expenditures for 2014/15.

The microprocessor industries, ten years old and at the MC6502 (8 bit, 1Mhz) level in 1979, didn't see significant federal oversight until the 2007/8 Pelosi budget took effect and the incoming Obama administration set about expanding the role of agencies like the FCC in the United States while transforming many industry standards and procedures from market-determined and voluntary to government-determined and mandatory through the internationalization of services previously performed by volunteers working within the American business and academic communities. During that period, however, the 1979 48K Apple II became the 8GB smart phone; high-speed internet and cellular services became worldwide phenomena; microprocessors improved by five orders of magnitude on cost and seven on performance; and the first commercial aircraft to be designed, built, and supported almost entirely through American-made hardware and software (the Boeing 757/67) flew a combined distance roughly equivalent to thirty round trips to the Kuiper belt.

So, as we all welcome Obama's new Department of the Internet along with Google's commitment to index only websites whose contents meet their standards for factuality, let's all remember that what the microprocessor industries had in common with the Connecticut Yankee, apart from outrageous success on every widely accepted measure of social and economic contribution to mankind, was the nearly complete absence of regulation. 


Paul Murphy

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/03/the_impact_and_purpose_of_net_neutrality.html

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

Israel will not stand alone - Boaz Bismuth



by Boaz Bismuth

Despite a small minority of Democrats and Israeli reporters seeking to curry favor with Obama, Netanyahu's speech to Congress elicited overwhelming support • Most Americans want to prevent a bad deal with Iran. They want answers from the administration.
 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress this week
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Photo credit: AFP


Boaz Bismuth

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=23957

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

Life Under the US Umbrella - Caroline Glick



by Caroline Glick



Sherman negotiated the US’s nuclear pact with North Korea in the 1990s. The North Koreans used the deal as a smokescreen behind which they developed nuclear weapons while receiving financial assistance from the US which paid off the regime for signing the deal.
Sherman is now the US’s chief negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran.

ObamaOriginally published by the Jerusalem Post

South Korea lives under a US security umbrella. Both on a conventional and nuclear level, South Koreans are dependent on the US to deter North Korea from attacking them and overrunning their country.

Last Friday, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman scolded South Koreans for being too nationalist. In her words, “Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy.”

The South Koreans interpreted her remarks as criticism of their President Park Geun-hye for her refusal to reinstate reunification talks with North Korea due to Pyongyang’s refusal to discuss the dismantlement of its nuclear program.

Sherman negotiated the US’s nuclear pact with North Korea in the 1990s. The North Koreans used the deal as a smokescreen behind which they developed nuclear weapons while receiving financial assistance from the US which paid off the regime for signing the deal.

Once Pyongyang was ready to come out as a nuclear power, it threw out the nuclear inspectors, opened the sealed nuclear sites, vacated its signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began testing nuclear bombs.

Sherman is now the US’s chief negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran.

This week President Park traveled to Saudi Arabia, where she signed a deal to build two nuclear reactors for the oil giant.

The truth is that the North Koreans didn’t need nuclear weapons to deter South Korea from attacking it. Pyongyang possesses one of the largest, most powerful artillery arsenals in the world and it has enough artillery pieces pointed at Seoul to bomb the South Korean capital into the Stone Age.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is not directed primarily against Seoul. It is directed against Washington. And, as the US’s timidity in its defense of South Korea, and its constant attempts to placate Pyongyang indicate, Washington has been deterred.

The day after Saudi King Salman signed his nuclear deal with Park, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Riyadh to meet with him and with the foreign ministers of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

According to news reports, Kerry offered the Arab leaders to place them under the US nuclear umbrella to protect them from Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

There can be no doubt that in his conversations with the South Korean leader, King Salman discussed what life is like under an American security guarantee. And it is hard to see that he considers it a good bargain.

It is not merely that the US is deterred by North Korea, and therefore is willing to humiliate and endanger South Korea to avoid having to contend with Pyongyang. It is that US President Barack Obama has destroyed the credibility of US security guarantees by repeatedly failing to stand by them.

During the Cold War, West Germany and the rest of Western Europe were able to function under the US’s nuclear umbrella because the Soviet Union was deterred from invading Germany by the US’s nuclear threat. Moscow believed the US was serious when it promised to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear warheads if it sent tanks into West Berlin.

Obama wouldn’t even undertake limited air strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad after he crossed Obama’s declared redline and attacked his opponents with chemical weapons.

Obama failed to live up to his own redline because he didn’t want to upset Assad’s protectors in Tehran. To build up the credibility of his intentions to appease Tehran, Obama betrayed the Syrian people and his own pledge to defend them against chemical strikes. So even without nuclear weapons, Tehran is deterring Obama.

Beyond that, just as Pyongyang doesn’t require nuclear weapons to destroy South Korea, Iran doesn’t need to attack Persian Gulf states with nuclear weapons in order to dominate them and cause their collapse.

Iran can subjugate and destroy these regimes simply by using its proxies against them and threatening their economies with its control over both the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Aden. Iran can bring the Saudis to their knees without getting anywhere near a nuclear tripwire.

And like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Arab leaders are convinced that as she did in 1999 with Pyongyang, Sherman and her boss, Kerry, are now paving the way for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

If the Arabs scoff at the US offer of a nuclear umbrella, Israelis don’t even have the luxury of snorting at the offer because there is no reason to believe that even a credible nuclear umbrella would deter Iran from attacking Israel with nuclear weapons.

In Israel’s case there are any number of scenarios under which Iran will see an advantage to attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, either directly or through one of its proxies that now encircle Israel along three borders.

And so we are left with the question of how to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
As Netanyahu explained in his address before the joint houses of Congress on Tuesday, the deal that Obama is now offering Iran “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

By leaving Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact, and pledging to end the limitations on Iran’s nuclear program within a decade, Obama is enabling Iran to acquire nuclear arms both by cheating its way there as the North Koreans did, or by waiting out the deal and emerging immediately after as a nuclear power.

Either way, the deal as presently constituted empowers the regime. It enriches the ayatollahs and legitimizes their regime and their hegemonic actions and aspirations.

The problem with seeking to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is that according to arms control expert Graham Allison from Harvard University, and others, Iran passed the point of no return in terms of nuclear know-how in 2008. It has mastered the technology and the science and therefore has wherewithal to develop nuclear weapons, and rebuild nuclear infrastructures that may be destroyed or damaged in aerial and other attacks.

Given this dismal state of affairs there are three ways to approach the problem.

The first path is similar to Israel’s counterterror strategy of “mowing the lawn.” In counterterror parlance “mowing the lawn” involves destroying as much of the terrorist infrastructure that the terrorist foe possesses in as short a period as possible, and then repeating the process after the terror group reconstitutes its capabilities.

In the case of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a “mowing the lawn” approach would involve using force to destroy as many Iranian nuclear installations as possible in as short a campaign as possible in order to set Iran’s production schedule back for as long as possible, and then repeating the process, when Iran reconstitutes its capabilities.

The second path to block Iran’s nuclear advance is to use coercive diplomacy including harsh economic sanctions and other punitive means to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear installations and couple that coercive diplomacy with an intrusive inspections regime to ensure long term compliance.

The third means of curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions involves overthrowing the regime by providing active support – including organizational support and arms to regime opponents.

When Netanyahu spoke to the joint houses of Congress on Tuesday, he directly advanced the first two paths toward preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and indirectly advanced the third.

Netanyahu provided a sober-minded, carefully constructed argument for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He then demonstrated why Obama’s nuclear negotiating strategy enables Iran to become a nuclear power. In so doing, Netanyahu built sufficient bipartisan Congressional support for an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons to protect Israel from the Obama administration.

Whether Netanyahu will order such a strike, or when such a strike could be most effective, is impossible to judge. But he did secure Congressional support for it.

Netanyahu also created an opening for lawmakers who are frightened by the deal Obama is now negotiating to prevent him from completing it. Whether or when they will use the opportunity is still unclear. Obama has tremendous power and leverage over Democratic lawmakers and he has no compunction about using it to get his way.

On the other hand, buoyed by Netanyahu, Republicans also have power. If they use it judiciously, they will be able to secure 67 votes in favor of legislation that would require Obama to receive Senate approval for his nuclear deal, and would place harsh economic sanctions on Iran if it doesn’t meet the behavioral benchmarks of ending its sponsorship of terrorism, ending its meddling in the internal affairs of other states, and ending its threats to annihilate Israel that Netanyahu laid out.

Beyond that, by making clear that it is pure folly to assume that Iran will magically transform itself into a responsible actor on the international stage after securing the deal, Netanyahu provided the rationale for a strategy of regime change. Whether a future administration will adopt this option or not is unclear, but it is now evident that given the fact that Iran has the technological and scientific capacity to develop nuclear weapons, the only way in the long term to prevent that from happening is to overthrow the regime.

Obama and his advisers argue that there are only two options – their agreement, that enables Iran to build a nuclear arsenal in the coming years, or war. What Netanyahu made clear is that this is a false choice. The US is stronger than Iran. It has more leverage than Iran. All it needs to get a better agreement is a massively diminished desire to conclude one.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/caroline-glick/life-under-the-us-umbrella/

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

Top U.K. University Blacklists Israeli Academic Institutions - Arnold Ahlert



by Arnold Ahlert


Paz also insisted Apartheid Week engendered a feeling of isolation among Jewish students. “We are too scared to go anywhere so we walk in a group to the station,” she revealed. “People come up to me and say I heard you hate Palestinians.”

London-BDS-300x230Last week, in yet another familiarly tiresome portrayal of anti-Semitism parading itself as Palestinian “solidarity,” students and staff at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) voted to initiate a boycott against all Israeli academic institutions. The vote at one of the United Kingdom’s top universities was conducted over the course of a week, and after the announcement late Friday afternoon, partying broke out on the central London campus — along with a request for university authorities to cut their ties to Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Unsurprisingly, the vote was part of Israeli Apartheid Week, an event taking place from Feb. 23-28 on campuses all over the UK. According to its organizers, this effort will be reprised in the United States, Europe, Palestine, South Africa Ireland, Canada and South America in order to “raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.”

Voters included students, academics and any non-teaching staff, such as campus cleaning and security workers, who wished to participate. Results in all three groups were lopsided in favor of the boycott. Among students it was 1283 in favor, 425 against, for a 75 percent margin. Among the 300 academics who voted, the measure passed 60 percent to 40 percent. And the university’s 40 support staffers who voted overwhelmingly supported the measure by a margin of 91 percent. When all three groups are combined, 73 percent supported the measure, and 27 percent did not.

The figures are somewhat misleading because a substantial majority of SOAS students did not participate in the vote at all, including 74 percent of on-campus students, a number that rises to 86 percent if the students studying abroad are included. SOAS’s total student population is greater than 8,500 students and there are more than 330 members of the teaching staff.

The measure asked voters whether they think SOAS should join the BDS campaign, as well as implement guidelines created by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Those guidelines outline an “overriding rule” whereby, “all Israeli academic institutions, unless proven otherwise, are subject to boycott because of their decades-old, deep and conscious complicity in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence, actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel’s violations of international law and human rights, or indeed through their direct collaboration with state agencies in the planning and implementation of projects that contravene international law and Palestinian rights.”

The guide further describes a dozen different categories of events, activities, or situations in which one’s participation would constitute a “violation” of that boycott.  They include academic events, research and development activities, lobby groups receiving funding from Israel, addresses and other talks by Israeli officials or Israeli representatives of academic institutions, study abroad schemes in Israel, Israeli recognition events, Normalization Projects, etc.

Student Union members and faculty were joined by a host of groups that included the Justice For Cleaners, who are members of the SOAS cleaning staff, the LGBTQIA+ Society, the Kashmir Solidarity Movement and the Tamil Society.

The Open Democracy website insists the vote is emblematic of the academic freedom necessary to penetrate the “smokescreen behind which settler-colonialism is fed both discourse and weaponry.” Israeli universities, “inseparable from the Israeli state,” are taken to task for their “knowledge-production apparatuses that are necessary for the violent development of its colonial army and accompanying imperial expansion of the state.” Hebrew University is singled out for its participation in last summer’s war during which “the Israeli colonial machine murdered over 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza.”

Last October, the Student Union voted to “escalate their support,” of such an agenda, precipitating the non-binding “referendum” that ensued. The Union’s position on the referendum was clarified in January when it insisted “the Union was the instigator of the campaign through that initial UGM (University General Meeting) motion that both reaffirmed support to BDS whist [sic] also calling for the referendum.” There was token resistance against it, but that resistance amounted to between 5 and 10 students. One of them, 21-year-old Moselle Paz, president of the university’s Jewish Society, told Haaretz she expected to lose the vote, but insisted their presence was import an nonetheless. “If we hadn’t made a stand, this whole thing would have gone through without the other side being represented,” she explained.

Paz characterized the vote as “divisive” and “discriminatory,” further warning it would lead to a deterioration of relations between Israeli and Jewish students and other campus groups. She said they will voice their concerns to SOAS Director Paul Webley. “He has a duty of care to foster good relations between different religious and ethnic groups – this referendum does the opposite,” she insisted.

Paz also insisted Apartheid Week engendered a feeling of isolation among Jewish students. “We are too scared to go anywhere so we walk in a group to the station,” she revealed. “People come up to me and say I heard you hate Palestinians.”

Far more telling assessments were offered by other students who told Haaretz the wise course of action was not to speak out for Israel or against BDS, lest they be shunned by their peers. “People would stop talking to me,” said one post-graduate student who wished to remain anonymous. Economics student Avrahum Sanger, 21, said pro-Israeli students did not want to set up a stall in a common room at the university because “it’s too hostile.”

The SOAS Student Union had a different take, with a post-vote press release maintaining the referendum “was conducted in an open, fair and transparent environment” and that “both the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigners were given equal platforms to hold panel discussions and debates.”

SOAS’s Head of Communications Katie Price called the vote more of an opinion poll because there is no mechanism currently in place at the university for a formal referendum. She labeled the union’s stance “problematic,” and noted SOAS has “constantly brought this up as an issue to the union.” But she admitted the university can only respond to formal complaints of bullying and/or intimidation. Paz and Sanger have complained to the union, but they haven’t met with school officials. They plan to do so next week.

Prior to the vote, the Student Union insisted it does all it can to maintain neutrality. However a statement posted on their website in January “clarifies” their genuine position. “In the last days we have received some constructive criticism from members of the SOAS community that have rightly believed that the Union has a bias when it comes to the referendum,” it states. “This is correct. Any claim of ‘neutrality’ would now be not only against union policy, but dishonest and false, since the Union was the instigator of the campaign through that initial UGM (Union General Meeting) motion that both reaffirmed support to BDS whist (sic) also calling for the referendum.”

According to 63-year-old student Richard Galber, even SOAS’s Israel Society was pro-boycott. He claims he was thrown out of a meeting for speaking out against the effort to impose sanctions on Israel. “I have never felt so un-belonging as at that meeting,” he said. “It was a very unpleasant sensation. I assumed an Israel Society would be welcoming to Israelis.”

The relentlessness of these ongoing anti-Israel campaigns is having its intended effect. Britain experienced a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in 2014, double the number that occurred in 2013, according to the Community Security Trust, which provides security advice to Britain’s Jews. And while they blamed the majority of those incidents on last summer’s fighting in Gaza, they note incidents had been on the rise regardless.

The Annual Antisemitism Barometer, a report published in January by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA), paints an even starker picture, insisting the UK is at a “tipping point” in a nation where 1 in 4 believe “Jews chase money more than other British people,” 1 in 5 believe “Jews’ loyalty to Israel makes them less loyal to Britain than other British people,” 1 in 6 believe “Jews believe they are better than other people” and “Jews have too much power in the media,” and 13 percent believe “Jews talk about the Holocaust too much in order to get sympathy.”

“The results of our survey are a shocking wake-up call straight after the atrocities in Paris,” said CAA chairman Gideon Falter.

No, they are not. They are results being reinforced on college campuses, where rank anti-Semitism, as one SOAS official put it, is part of the “atmosphere of open inquiry, mutual tolerance and intellectual freedom.” Such vapid nonsense is nothing more than an endorsement of the bankrupt notion that all ideas, no matter how despicable, are equally valid. Ideas that would abet the elimination of Israel first—with the rest of Western society following behind in short order.


Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/arnold-ahlert/top-u-k-university-blacklists-israeli-academic-institutions/

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

The Nuke Horse is out of the Barn - James Lewis



by James Lewis


Obama is not admitting that nukes are out of the barn to protect his precious front. Democratic presidents since Carter have wanted to look good rather than act to prevent nuclear proliferation. All they wanted was somebody else to blame.

Obama is on another one of his noisy campaigns to build his ‘legacy’ -- but his legacy is a mountain of phony three-dollar bills. The fact is that the nuclear horse is out of the barn, ready to ride with the other four horses of the Apocalypse. Iran and North Korea have effectively crossed the threshold of weapons of mass destruction. Obama’s boasted “agreement with Iran” is just a way to cover up that fundamental fact, because Obama can’t tolerate being blamed for endangering the world.

From now on, nations trying to cope with Iran’s aggression will have to assume that the enemy has the equivalent of nukes, which means that Iran itself is nearly immune to retaliation. Six years ago there was still a window of opportunity to shut down their nuclear program, the way we did with Saddam’s. Obama must have been told that, since our military successfully suppressed Saddam’s WMD programs with a no-fly zone over Iraq, combined with a trade embargo.  It worked so well that the New York Times and the leftist media could claim that Saddam never had WMDs.

A few weeks ago the NYT confessed that yes, Saddam had uranium yellowcake and poison gas. But by that time George W. Bush’s reputation had been tarred forever with endless, malicious lies. If you don’t think yellowcake can make a WMD, consider a dirty bomb designed to spread radioactive fallout. All it takes is a suicide truck filled with yellowcake and a conventional explosive. You could build one in your backyard.

The fact is that the civilized world has been defeated in a half century of efforts to prevent nuke proliferation.

North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs are disasters for world stability -- two rogue regimes with nukes, or so close that nobody can know the threshold moment. The answer right now is: “Any time they pull the cord. “

Obama is not admitting that nukes are out of the barn to protect his precious front. Democratic presidents since Carter have wanted to look good rather than act to prevent nuclear proliferation. All they wanted was somebody else to blame.

Nuclear weapons and ICBMs allow for perhaps 15 minutes of warning time, which is why the arms race has now shifted to electronic warfare. The public has been told nothing about our capacities in e-war. What we know is that the warning time is now seconds or even milliseconds rather than fifteen minutes. If electromagnetic pulse weapons can act faster than missiles, they will drive the arms race. If electronic viruses or worms can be planted years ahead, even the enemy’s intentions might be predicted. But that is assuming a vast superiority of e-capabilities, and at this time nobody can claim that.

E-war is an open invitation to asymmetrical warfare, so that small groups could gain overwhelming superiority, as some of them have apparently done by hacking sophisticated banks, corporations, and government agencies.

To make things even more unstable, a WMD could beat an e-war power to the punch, just as e-war could beat WMDs and missiles to the punch. Among rational players that could lead to a stable balance of terror, as it did for six decades between the U.S. and the USSR. But in a world where a Jonestown or Scientology cult could run a hacker group, the number of war players can become very large, while their sanity cannot be assured.
Talk about a Brave New World.

Today we are back to the 50s and 60s, when nuclear weapons were new and unpredictable, leading to two reactions: paranoid suspicion, as in the case of Stalin, and utter denial. In the long term, the balance of nuclear terror led to greater stability between the Soviet Union and the United States, once policymakers on both sides realized that there was nothing to gain from war. Nuclear weapons reduced the likelihood of conventional conflict, except in proxy conflicts like Vietnam. The result was six decades of a cold, but very real peace.

Today those realities are shifting, as we see Iran and North Korea, two threshold powers that behave in irrational ways -- perhaps to intimidate, or perhaps because they are truly willing to face nuclear martyrdom. So far they have been winning immense concessions with their blackmail tactics. But now we are faced with the high chance of irrational cults with a lot of web savvy, notably the Five Star cultists in Italy who now control a quarter of the parliament in Rome, exactly Mussolini’s number before he staged a coup. Or maybe the Shi’ite Twelver Cult in Tehran, waiting for their Mahdi to return after Armageddon.

The United States now has an Obama-Jarrett foreign policy, predicated on the unproven guess that Iran’s daily threats are mere bluff. Obama is so mentally rigid that he simply will not consider any other possibility. But others, including the Saudis, the thousand-year enemies of Shi’ite Iran, are preparing for the possibility that Obama is wrong.

The United States must come back to strategic sanity as soon as possible.

On the plus side of the ledger, the plunging price of oil, due to the spread of shale exploitation, will weaken the blackmail power of the Gulf nations, including Iran. There is a quiet emerging alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, which may stem the Iranian tide.

But a saner administration must return the United States to its traditional foreign policy, one that has always been sensitive to moral consequences. Obama’s willingness to support jihadist butchers in the Middle East runs against all our moral judgments; it is time to retake the high ground. The United States must stand for civilization against barbarism, and our former allies, Egypt, Israel, and the Saudis, are ready for us to go back to a strategy that worked. 


James Lewis

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/03/the_nuke_horse_is_out_of_the_barn.html

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

I Was There, the [Israeli] Media is Lying - Uzi Baruch



by Uzi Baruch

Arutz Sheva's Editor-in-Chief reveals disparity between what the Israeli media calls 'reality' and facts on the ground in the US.

Sometimes you just have to be there to understand how much we do not understand. Sometimes to open your eyes, you need to look from the outside, in. Sometimes you need distance to discover simple truths. 

I stayed for a week in Washington D.C., next to leaders of public opinion and senior members of the US Congress. I spoke to many of them. Some of them even visited the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference. Some attended Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's address to the US Congress. Others were not present, but I listened to them anyway. Mostly, I just listened. 

They like Netanyahu. They believe him. They see him as the ultimate leader of the Jewish people. They believe that headlines coming out of Israel about Netanyahu's speech are blown out of proportion. 

One of them even said the following statement: "I read the headlines in Israel in disbelief. They have just gone crazy. These are petty politics to bring down Netanyahu's campaign and the price is escalating tensions between Jerusalem and the White House to monstrous proportions."

The Israeli media describes the situation as an inevitable rift between the US and Israel, describing recent exchanges as an all-time diplomatic low. Some very specific media outlets take the Prime Minister of Israel during the time most critical to the security of the state - at the peak of talks between the United States and other world powers and Iran - and make him an irresponsible person in the public's eyes. Further, they have planted anti-Netanyahu sentiments into the mouths of leftist leaders, who excel in parrotry. 

Do not let anyone tell you stories. I was there. The Israeli media is simply lying; I have no other way to say it. In terms of most of the public in the United States, Binyamin Netanyahu was - and remains -  the ultimate leader of the Jewish state. Any other definition of him is fudging the truth.

Netanyahu blames news mogul Noni Mozes for undermining his efforts to achieve stability. This could be correct; I have no idea who is pulling the strings or what his motivation could be.

But there is one truth, and that is in the United States. In Israel, there is a differently [sic] reality - for now. Maybe, in two weeks, when Netanyahu wins again, the Israeli media's tone will return to sanity. 

One final comment, to [Labor leader] Yitzhak Herzog. Yitzhak, you hurried after Netanyahu's speech to give your own speech in a Western Negev community, bringing the media with you. But unlike Netanyahu's speech, this was a simple and "classic" pre-elections speech. It was pure propaganda. 

Instead of helping you, your address may have hurt you. Israel has a popular saying: "you don't speak after Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau or sing after Dudu Fisher." Those who understand [the comparison], understand .


Uzi Baruch

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192235#.VPsvDS6zchR

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