The Palestinian Jihad: Lies, Lies and More Lies - Bassam Tawil

by Bassam Tawil

• First, we are not seeing anything "popular." We are not seeing, as before, thousands of Palestinians participating in the violence or protests.
• It is just another wave of terrorism: targeting Jews for being Jews. The terrorists and their apologists do not distinguish between a Jew living in the city of Beersheba, and a Jew from a West Bank settlement. For the Palestinian leaders and media, these Jews are all "settlers" living in "occupied territories."
• The appropriate term for the current wave of terrorism is "jihad". The attacks on Jews in Israel and the West Bank are part of the global jihad that has been waged for many years against Jews in particular, non-Muslims in general, and even against other Muslims who might not agree with a differing version of Islam.
• This jihad is not aimed at "ending occupation" or protesting against misery and checkpoints. The terrorists do not see a difference between a "left wing Jew" and a "right wing Jew." They do not ask their victims about their political affiliation before knifing them.
• In a grotesque rewrite of history, UNESCO declared that two Jewish holy sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, were Muslim holy sites.
• This is a wave of terrorism based on lies. Palestinian leaders, including Abbas his officials in the Palestinian Authority and his Fatah faction, have been lying to us for months. They told Palestinians that the Jews are "invading" and "desecrating" Islamic holy sites with the purpose of destroying them. Abbas and his officials are urging Muslims to join the jihad against the Jews.
• The leaders are now telling us that most of the terrorists were, in fact, innocent civilians who were shot dead by Israelis while on their way to buy food or going to work. Lying has become an integral part of the jihad against Jews. The campaign of lies, distortion and fabrications is not less serious than the terror attacks.
• This is yet another phase of the worldwide jihad against all the "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." Those who are murdering Jews today do not hesitate to murder other non-Muslims tomorrow, especially those who are seen as Israel's friends, such as the U.S.

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are calling it a "peaceful popular resistance." They are referring, of course, to the latest wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks against the Jews in Israel.

In the view of our leaders -- and, unfortunately, many in the international community -- this is a "peaceful popular resistance," an uprising, or an "intifada," like two previous uprisings we had in 1987 and 2000.

What is happening these days in the Palestinian territories and Israel, however, is anything but a "peaceful popular resistance." First, we are not seeing anything "popular." We are not seeing, as before, thousands of Palestinians participating in the violence or protests. These attacks are not protests launched by villagers, residents of refugee camps and members of professional unions in the Palestinian territories.

What we are seeing are pure terrorist attacks carried out mostly by impressionable young men and women whose hearts and minds have been poisoned by the inflammatory rhetoric and incitement of Palestinian leaders, mosques, the media, Facebook and other social media. The terrorists who carry knives or firearms to murder Jews are usually, it seems, disturbed youngsters, who have been fired up by the pervasive atmosphere of hate poured over them daily by their leaders and these leaders' media outlets. The current terrorists are not part of an armed group such as the Tanzim or the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, nor a "popular resistance," a street gang, or any organized movement.

Contrary to what Palestinian leaders have been telling us, not to mention the rest of the world, these terrorists do not believe in any form of "peaceful and popular resistance" against Israel. After all, there is nothing peaceful or popular about stabbing or shooting Jews waiting at a bus stop or driving their cars on their way to work or back home. Surely, there is nothing peaceful about murdering a Jewish couple in front of their four children, or stabbing and seriously wounding a 13-year-old boy riding his bicycle on the streets of Jerusalem.

This is, bluntly, just another wave of terrorism: targeting Jews for being Jews. The terrorists and their apologists do not distinguish between a Jew living in the city of Beersheba, and a Jew from a settlement in the West Bank. In the eyes of the Palestinian leaders and media, these Jews are all "settlers" living in "occupied territories." To many of them, and as they repeatedly tell us, all of Israel is "occupied territory."

Official Palestinian maps continue to present Palestine as occupying all of Israel. And there are continual attempts erase history Jewish presence. Last July, Rachel's Tomb, the burial site of a Jewish Matriarch was attacked by explosives launched from slingshots. And just last week Joseph's Tomb, the burial site of a Jewish Patriarch, was torched. These are the same methods al-Qaeda and Da'esh (ISIS) have been using in Bamiyan and Palmyra to try to obliterate any evidence of a pre-Islamic presence other ancient sites. These attack were accompanied by requests from six Arab states — Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco ad the United Arab Emirates — to have UNESCO declare the Rachel's Tomb, and Western Wall -- a retaining wall and all that is left of the Jews' Second Temple that the Romans destroyed in 70 CE — part of the Muslim Temple Mount under Palestinian control. The last request was removed before the vote, but in a grotesque rewrite of history, UNESCO did declare that two other Jewish holy sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, were Muslim holy sites.

In addition, the official media of the Western-funded Palestinian Authority have been referring to the Jewish victims of the current wave of terrorism as "settlers." A 73-year-old woman who lives in the Western part of the city and who was stabbed at Jerusalem's central bus station two weeks ago was described as a "settler." Similarly, two Jews who were stabbed and wounded in the city of Ra'anana, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, were also described by Abbas's media outlets as "settlers." Their city, Ra'anana, well within the "1967 line," has also been described by most Palestinian media outlets and journalists as a "settlement."

What does all this show? The answer is very simple: Most Palestinians continue to see Israel as one big settlement that needs to be uprooted and destroyed. It also shows that these Palestinians do not draw a distinction between a Jew living a West Bank settlement and a Jew living in an Israeli city inside Israel. The Jewish victims of this wave of terrorism are all "settlers" and "colonialists" who deserved what happened to them because they are "living on stolen land." This is the message that the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other Palestinian groups are sending to the Palestinians and the rest of the world: that "settlers" are "legitimate" targets that deserve to be slaughtered and shot dead by a people fighting for "independence and freedom."

The appropriate term for the current wave of terrorism is "jihad" (holy war). The attacks on Jews in Israel and the West Bank are part of the global jihad that has been waging for many years against Jews in particular, non-Muslims in general and even against other Muslims who might not agree with a differing version of Islam.

Almost all the terrorists involved in these recent attacks are affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two jihadi groups whose main goal is to destroy Israel by murdering and intimidating Jews. Like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, the two Palestinian groups are also seeking to create an Islamic caliphate governed by Islamic sharia law.

This jihad is not aimed at "ending occupation" or protesting against misery and checkpoints. Rather, it is a jihad designed to drive the Jews out of the region. Period. The terrorists and their sponsors do not see a difference between an Israeli soldier and an Israeli baby. They do not see a difference between a "left wing Jew" and a "right wing Jew." The terrorists do not ask their victims about their political affiliation before sticking a knife into them.

This is a wave of terrorism based on lies, lies and more lies. Palestinian leaders, including Abbas and his Fatah faction, have been lying to us for months about the nature of the visits of Jews to the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount. They told Palestinians that the Jews are "invading" and "desecrating" Islamic holy sites with the purpose of destroying them. By doing so, Abbas and his officials in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have actually been urging Muslims to join the jihad against the Jews.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (right) ignited competition among radical groups as to which faction could incite the most violence. Left: official PA media incite Palestinians, from a young age, to murder Jews.

After the wave of terrorism began, the Palestinian leaders continued to lie about the circumstances surrounding the death of the terrorists. The leaders are now telling us that most of the terrorists were, in fact, innocent civilians who were shot dead by Israel while they were on their way to buy food for their families or going to work. The Palestinian leaders are lying when they tell us that the terrorists were killed as part of a new Israeli policy of "field executions" against young Palestinian men and women. Lying and distorting the truth has become an integral part of the jihad against Jews. The campaign of lies, distortion and fabrications is not less serious than the terror attacks. There is no difference between a Palestinian leader who incites and lies, and a terrorist who grabs a knife and takes to the street to murder a Jew.

It is time for us to open our eyes and see the reality as it is: this is yet another phase of the worldwide jihad against all the "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." Those who are murdering Jews today do not hesitate to murder other non-Muslims tomorrow, especially those who are seen as Israel's friends such as the U.S. and most nations in the West. So let us put things in context and start calling the wave of terrorism by its real name, not an "intifada" or a "peaceful popular resistance." It is a jihad.

Bassam Tawil

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6754/palestinian-jihad-lies

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

Hillary’s Libyan Lies: Muslim Brotherhood, Terror and Dirty Money - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

Hillary Clinton is still lying about her illegal war.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Hillary Clinton has only one accomplishment; the Libyan War. Bombing Libya in support of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover was Hillary’s pet project.

Obama unenthusiastically signed off on a war that he had told members of Congress “is all Secretary Clinton’s matter.”

The Pentagon fought Hillary’s illegal war every step of the way. Both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs opposed Hillary’s plan to bomb Libya. One of the Chairman’s top aides said that he did not trust the reports coming out of the State Department and the CIA, then controlled by Clinton loyalist Leon Panetta. When it was clear that the Clintonites had gotten their war on, an irritated Secretary of Defense Gates resigned after failing to stop Hillary’s war and was replaced by Panetta.  

As the State Department set the military agenda, the Pentagon retaliated by taking over the diplomatic agenda attempting to arrange a ceasefire with the Gaddafi regime over Hillary’s objections.

 Hillary was using the State Department to start a war while the military was trying to use diplomacy to stop a war. The Pentagon lost the power struggle and one of her minions took over the military to make sure that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jihadists would be able to overrun another country.

Huma Abedin had beaten the Secretary of Defense.

Panetta, unlike Gates, shared Hillary’s Arab Spring agenda. After the war, he paid a visit to Tripoli and claimed that similar “uprisings” would be taking place around the Middle East, including in Syria.

Military people never stopped loathing Hillary Clinton for her war and its consequences, the usurpation of a defense matter, the Al Qaeda training camps and the abandonment of Americans in Benghazi. That came to the surface during the Democratic debate when Senator Webb challenged Clinton on Libya.

Hillary Clinton smugly recited the same old lies about Gaddafi “threatening to massacre large numbers of the Libyan people” and European allies begging her to stop a “mass genocide.”

In reality, Hillary Clinton was the source of the claim that Gaddafi was about to commit genocide. This claim had no basis in reality and defense officials quickly shot it down. But that didn’t stop Obama from claiming during his war speech that he had bombed Libya to save Benghazi from a massacre. There was no massacre in Benghazi. At least not until Obama helped make a massacre of four Americans happen.

By September, the New York Times was asking where all the dead were. Morgue records showed that the dead on both sides actually numbered in the hundreds. The International Red Cross put the number of missing persons at around a thousand. The largest mass grave found had 34 bodies.

Obama claimed that he had seen Gaddafi “kill over a thousand people in a single day.” That never happened. It never happened when Gaddafi had actually captured a rebel city before.

“Imagine we were sitting here and Benghazi had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered,” Hillary Clinton had said. That would be more than the entire number of people, combatants and civilians, who had died in the Libyan Civil War.

Gaddafi was an insane dictator, but he had never done anything on that scale, nor were his forces, which had been beaten by Chad in the Toyota War (Chad militias had fought using Toyota pickups), remotely capable of pulling off Saddam level of atrocities or he might have won the war.

 Hillary Clinton claimed at the debate, “We had the Arabs standing by our side saying, ‘We want you to help us deal with Gadhafi.’” But by the second night of bombing, the Secretary-General of the Arab League had already condemned the “bombardment of civilians.”

“We did not put one single American soldier on the ground in Libya,” Hillary Clinton said. That’s technically true and also a lie. It was Panetta’s CIA people who were on the ground.

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, two of the Americans murdered in Benghazi, were former Navy SEAL commandos who were working as contractors for the CIA. American soldiers still died in Libya. They were just officially contractors, more of the CIA’s “Sneakers on the Ground” approach that let hacks like Hillary and Obama claim that there were no American soldiers on the ground.

"The Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951," Hillary Clinton said. "And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy."

When Hillary says “moderate”, she means Islamist. The election was fake. It was rigged between the “moderate Islamist” Muslim Brotherhood and the “moderate Islamist” National Forces Alliance. While the media was repeating talking points about the fake election, fighting in Benghazi continued. But even though Hillary and Obama had used Benghazi as the basis for the war, no one was paying attention.

That would change soon enough. And before long every American would know the name Benghazi. But Benghazi was only an early warning. Before long entire Libyan cities would fall to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Hillary closed by insisting, “Unless you believe the United States should not send diplomats to any place that is dangerous, which I do not, then when we send them forth, there is always the potential for danger and risk.”

Sending diplomats to dangerous places means providing them with adequate security.

Hillary’s State Department failed to do that. Even the whitewashed report of her cronies admitted that much. Benghazi’s compound was being protected by “moderate Islamist” terrorists who overlapped with the other “moderate Islamist” terrorists who attacked the diplomatic compound.

While Hillary’s State Department was spending fortunes on bad art, the Benghazi compound didn’t meet security standards in a city that had more terrorists than police officers.

And, best of all, the Muslim Brotherhood Martyrs of the Feb. 17 Revolution Brigade terrorists Hillary was paying to protect the ambassador, hadn’t even been paid.

Benghazi was a city that was effectively under the control of Jihadists, some of them blatantly identifying with Al Qaeda. Hillary Clinton might as well have sent Ambassador Stevens into an Al Qaeda training camp with terrorists providing his security. And that’s effectively what she did.

Her dismissive line about sending diplomats to dangerous places whitewashes what happened.

Now that we’ve cleared away Hillary’s lies, let’s get to the truth. The Libyan War, like the rest of the Arab Spring, was about empowering the Muslim Brotherhood.

And there were cruder motives in the mix.

Hillary Clinton hid emails discussing the exploitation of Libya’s oil fields. The Clintons had made an art out of merging their political and financial agendas. They had extensive ties with figures in the energy industry and the companies that dug into Libya’s energy sector, Royal Dutch Shell and BP, were Clinton Foundation donors.  

Some of the deleted emails discussed this with Clinton Foundation employee Sidney Blumenthal, who was also providing Hillary Clinton with supposed intel from business interests while promising that the Libyan War would be an easy matter. Blumenthal encouraged “shock and awe” bombing in Libya.

According to Congressman Gowdy, who has been investigating the events in Benghazi, “Blumenthal pushed hard for a no-fly zone in Libya before the idea was being discussed internally by senior U.S. government officials.” He blasted Obama for being “unenthusiastic about regime change in Libya.”

Blumenthal called for providing the Jihadists with “armor piercing weapons” and called Secretary of Defense Gates a “mean, vicious little prick” who is “losing” the debate. Blumenthal also offered the very specific “national interest” argument that Obama would later echo, suggesting that he was unknowingly repeating the talking points of a man he loathed which had been handed to him by Hillary Clinton.

He also told Hillary Clinton that the war had to be ramped up or Obama would lose the election.

Having dragged Obama into Hillary’s war, Blumenthal was now pushing Hillary to blackmail him with the threat of losing the election if he didn’t escalate the conflict. Meanwhile he was pursuing his interest in getting the Libyans to pay for military training from a private military company he was linked to.

The entire nightmarish mess of Democratic conspiracy theories about Iraq, Blood for Oil, politicians fighting wars to win elections, corporate conflicts of interest and even private military companies are all here and no one will touch it. A roster of Democratic candidates still running against the Iraq War won’t talk about an illegal dirty regime change war that took place with their backing and support.

Bernie Sanders, who sputters incoherently about the Iraq War, co-sponsored the Senate resolution supporting a No Fly Zone in Libya. This was the Senate resolution that Obama exploited as a fig leaf of Senate approval for his illegal war.

Senator Sanders can’t criticize Hillary’s illegal war because he helped make it happen.

Hillary’s war has been an unmitigated disaster. Her lies about the war have been disproven. But not even the Democrats running against her are ready to hold her accountable for it.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260496/hillarys-libyan-lies-muslim-brotherhood-terror-and-daniel-greenfield

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

Crazy Like a Fox - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

What Netanyahu's "gaffe" about the Mufti and the Holocaust accomplished.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is crazy like a fox.
Netanyahu’s assertion on Tuesday before the World Zionist Congress that the founder of the Palestinian people, Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Adolf Hitler to eradicate rather than expel the Jews of Europe was an overstatement of Husseini’s role.
No, the Holocaust was not Husseini’s idea.
But he was a partner in perpetrating and promoting it. He also made it inevitable.
As I detailed in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, during the course of Husseini’s meeting with Hitler in Berlin in November 1941, Hitler told the Arab leader of his plan to eradicate European Jewry.
Husseini told Hitler that he would support the Nazis, and rally the Arab world to their side, if Hitler agreed to two conditions: that Hitler support his bid to rule over a postwar Arab state comprised of present-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel; and that Hitler support the genocide of Middle Eastern Jewry.
As both the official Nazi record and Husseini’s summary of the meeting in his diary report, Hitler accepted Husseini’s demands.
And it makes sense that he did.
Husseini proved his loyalty to the Nazis long before he arrived in Berlin. His romance with them began with Hitler’s election victory in 1933. From then on, Husseini’s followers in Mandatory Palestine greeted one another with the Nazi salute. Swastikas festooned their towns. The Nazis began directly funding Husseini’s terror war against the Jews of Israel and British Mandatory officials in 1937.
In 1937, the British forced Husseini to flee the country. In 1941, he organized and incited a pro-Nazi military coup in Iraq. The British were forced to invade Iraq in response to the coup.
Husseini then fled to Rome where he met with Mussolini and went on the Berlin, where he remained for the duration of the war.
As the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini invented and shaped the Palestinian national ethos in a manner that aligned with his pathological hatred of the Jews. Rather than providing the Palestinian Arabs with a positive vision of a future state that would safeguard and cultivate them as a distinct Arab nation, he shaped Palestinian society as a wholly negative phenomenon. It was seeded in a hybrid hatred of Jews that fused Koranic hostility to Jews with racism-based annihilationist European anti-Semitism rooted in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Husseini translated and published in Arabic.
The goal of Husseini’s nationalist drive was not to form a Palestinian Arab state, but to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state and to annihilate all aspects of the Jewish national liberation movement through a campaign a terror and political warfare.
Husseini’s goal of leading an Arab state that encompassed Iraq and the entire Levant shows that the founding father of the Palestinian national project did not view “Palestine” as a distinct territorial entity.
After Hitler agreed to both of Husseini’s conditions, Husseini began his active collaboration in the Nazi war effort. He participated in the Holocaust directly. In 1943, he formed the SS Handschar Division comprised of Bosnian Muslims. His troops exterminated 90 percent of Bosnia’s 14,000-member Jewish community.
Husseini used his position as well to scuttle British attempts to trade German prisoners of war for Jews. In one such documented episode, in 1943 Husseini appealed to SS commander Heinrich Himmler to cancel a deal to exchange 4,500 Jewish children and 500 Jewish adults from Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria to cancel the deal and send the Jews to Auschwitz.
Himmler bowed to his appeal. The Jews were sent to the gas chambers.
Husseini contributed to the Holocaust indirectly.
Beginning shortly after his meeting with Hitler and extending through the end of the war, Husseini broadcast regular programs to the Arab world on Nazi short wave radio in Arabic. In those broadcasts he engendered support for the Nazis and the extermination of world Jewry. Using the mix of Islamic Jew-hatred and European annihilationist anti-Semitism he had developed in Jerusalem, Husseini cultivated a culture of support for the annihilation of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish (then nascent) state in the Land of Israel. That culture, bred through those broadcasts heard regularly by millions throughout the entire Arab world, still holds today.
Husseini was indicted as a war criminal in Nuremberg. Rather than try him, the allies allowed him to flee to Egypt in 1946. There he was greeted as a war hero by King Farouk.
It is true that Hitler didn’t need Husseini to convince him to annihilate European Jewry. By the time Husseini arrived in Germany, the Nazis had already murdered a million Jews.
But Netanyahu’s claim that Husseini made it impossible for Hitler to suffice with expelling the Jews from Europe is true. The only place that wanted the Jews of Europe was the nascent Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
Through his terror war against the Jews and the British Mandatory authorities, and through his incitement of pro-Nazi sentiment in Egypt, Iraq and the Levant, Husseini convinced the British to betray their legal obligation to allow free Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel and so closed off the Jews’ last avenue of escape from Nazi-dominated Europe.
As Netanyahu said, Husseini is revered and glorified by the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat claimed that he was Husseini’s political heir and blood relative as a means of legitimizing his claim to leadership over the Palestinians.
Hamas as well has invoked Husseini as its ideological founding father.
History in hand, it is time to return to Netanyahu, and his overstatement of Husseini’s role in the Holocaust.
From the time of Husseini till today, propaganda and terror have been the Palestinians’ weapons of choice in their war against the Jews. Internally lies are spread of nonexistent Jewish plots and imaginary acts of aggression, to incite and solicit the murder of Jews. Propaganda and lies are then used to glorify the murderers as heroes and martyrs.
Externally, the Palestinians spread lies about Palestinian victimhood at the hands of bloodthirsty Jewish settlers and security forces who seek to drive the Arabs from their homes. By casting themselves as victims to the outside world, the Palestinians ensure that Israeli responses to their acts of aggression are perceived as acts of aggression, which they are fully justified in attempting to defy through murderous rampages against Jews.
The Palestinians recognize that for their terror to be acceptable to the West, they must portray themselves as guileless victims. Hence, they repeatedly insist the absurd claim that terrorists who deliberately kill Jews by running them over, are really merely victims involved in traffic accidents. The Palestinian teenage girl who this week sought to infiltrate the community of Yitzhar with a carving knife, suffers from “sleepwalking.”
These ridiculous lies are only credible in a world devoid of any historical knowledge of the Palestinians’ 95-year history of aggression against the Jews. And so the Palestinians have invented a false history of their war against Israel in which thousands of years of Jewish history is blotted out, and thousands of years of Palestinian history have been invented out of whole cloth.
In this revised version of events, Husseini has been erased from history. His role in the Holocaust has been deleted. The fact that the goal of the Palestinian national movement from its inception has been to annihilate the Jewish state and that the annihilation of Israel remains its goal still today has similarly been washed out of the history books and the news pages.
To maintain this fictional account of current and historical events, the Palestinians depend on the collaboration of the Western media.
And with each passing year, that collaboration has grown more open, expansive and shameless.
Western reporting on the events of the day now are almost entirely devoid of any relationship to reality.
Consider just a few recent examples. CNN’s report of the Palestinian arson assault on Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus on October 16 contained no mention of the fact that the fire at the holy Jewish site was set by Palestinians. In the same report, the network stated, “In the past month, eight Israelis died in 30 attacks involving knives and other weapons.”
As if fires set themselves and angry knives wander the streets.
MSNBC’s reporter Ayman Mohyeldin was caught lying two weeks ago as he claimed that the knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist in the Old City of Jerusalem who was lunging toward security personnel as they killed him, was an unarmed, innocent bystander. As Mohyeldin spewed his lies, the video of the assault that clearly showed the terrorist wielding a knife was being broadcast to his viewers.
That embarrassment didn’t stop MSNBC from maintaining the myth of Israeli aggression, however.
The next week, the network posted a graphic of British Mandatory Palestine from 1946 which it claimed was the State of Palestine in 1946. The graphic them purported to show how the Jews stole ever more Palestinian land in the years that followed. Although the network was forced to broadcast a retraction, the lie that Palestine once existed had already been told.
Then of course there was The New York Times with its stunning “background” piece purporting to provide its readers with historical context regarding the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims regarding the Temple Mount. The Times reported as fact the false claim that there is a debate among respected academics regarding whether the Jewish temples were actually located on the Temple Mount.
In other words, the Times unabashedly participated in the Palestinian project of rewriting history in a manner that erases Jewish history from the Jewish homeland.
Netanyahu recognizes that the media have sided with the Palestinians in their war to destroy Israel through a mix of terror and propaganda.
He knows that the only stories they will report on are stories with an anti-Israel angle. It is reasonable then to assume that he decided to use their embrace of every possible angle of attack as a means to get the truth out about the nature of the war.
By exaggerating Husseini’s importance in the Holocaust, Netanyahu gave the media a means of attacking him. But by doing so, he forced the Times to report on the Palestinians’ founding father’s role in destroying European Jewry and his desire to carry out the Final Solution in the Middle East. They would have ignored the issue if Netanyahu had not exaggerated his actual role.
Due to his “gaffe,” every Western media outlet reported on Husseini’s actions. Some even mentioned that in his PhD dissertation, current Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the Holocaust was both a myth and a joint Zionist-Nazi project. For most Westerners, this is the first they’ve heard of the fact that the Palestinian’s George Washington was a Nazi war criminal.
Like I said, crazy as a fox.


Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260546/crazy-fox-caroline-glick

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

American Jews send millions to organization Israeli justice minister says is anti-Israel - Hank Sheinkopf, George Birnbaum

by Hank Sheinkopf, George Birnbaum

Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO founded with the purpose of criticizing Israeli policy, pushes “war crimes allegations, lobbying the EU and UN.”

Ayelet Shaked. (photo credit:NOAM MOSKOVICH) 

For those still unsure whether the New Israel Fund is aligned with factions devoted almost exclusively to seeing Israel weakened, and worse, eliminated from the world stage, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked recently made the point even clearer.

Shaked noted in an interview that prior to meeting foreign elected leaders, she reviews their government’s contributions to NGOs, and when she meets them, she urges them to stop supporting anti-Israel NGOs – among them three grantees of the New Israel Fund: Bimkom, Breaking the Silence and Hamoked.

Shockingly, these groups are among the many funded by NIF to the tune of $30 million annually by American Jews, including the president of UJA-Federation, Alisa Doctoroff, and the president of the Jewish Communal Fund, Karen R. Adler. Israel fights terrorism, the minister of justice asks foreign nations to stop giving to anti-Israel organizations, yet extremist American Jews help Israel’s enemies. Shameful.

Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights, an Israeli NGO, actively pushes the “apartheid rhetoric” against Israel, and ties it into the BDS effort – as if to make the comparison to the former anti-apartheid boycott campaigns against South Africa.

Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO founded with the purpose of criticizing Israeli policy, pushes “war crimes allegations, lobbying the EU and UN.” Its goal is to see Israeli soldiers and officials brought before war crimes tribunals and arrested if they should travel abroad.

Then Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, an Israeli human rights organization with a main focus assisting Palestinians of the “occupied territories” whose rights they believe are violated by Israel, also pushes the apartheid rhetoric and legal actions against Israel – which brings it back to promoting BDS.

Shaked is confronting world leaders who may be giving without knowing that some groups harm Israel, but believe they are giving to a “human rights organization.”

As she clarified, these are anti-Israel groups. While the European ministers she speaks with may not know the intricacies of the harm being caused by these groups, the same cannot be said of the New Israel Fund, its leadership and its donors.

The NIF has consistently put its support behind each of these groups, in addition to many others not mentioned here, and has gone to bat for them publicly to explain how the anti-Israel work that they do is a supposed positive step for Israel.

When Breaking the Silence issued a one-sided, biased and inaccurate report about alleged war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza, NIF promoted the report and went on a fund-raising tour.

Hamoked also issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes in 2014, and the New Israel Fund promoted it when appealing for additional support, and Bimkom’s executive director Hedva Radovanitz formerly served as NIF Israel’s associate director – and was quoted in a WikiLeaks document telling an American diplomatic officer that “... she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”

Radovanitz went on to say that “the NIF was currently reevaluating its strategy and was hoping to create a movement rather than just a lot of NGOs.”

When Israel’s justice minister makes a point of asking foreign counterparts to stop giving to these NGOs – foreign leaders who undoubtedly have countless concerns on their minds – is it such a reach to expect that a group devoted entirely to Israel issues stop funding these NGOS as well? Still, the NIF continues.

While these facts have been written about many times, NIF donors such as the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lopatin Family Foundation, Barbara and Eric Dobkin, William and Serra Goldman, and Carole and Saul Zabar choose to ignore them, and continue sending money to the major funder of organizations seeking to undermine Israel. If the highest levels of diplomatic communications are not enough to bring proper attention to the matter, what will it take? 


Hank Sheinkopf, CEO of Sheinkopf Communications, is a leading political strategist who has worked on campaigns in four continents. His clients have included former president Bill Clinton.

George Birnbaum is a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/American-Jews-send-millions-to-organization-Israeli-justice-minister-says-is-anti-Israel-429847

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

Muslim Invasion of Europe - Guy Millière

by Guy Millière

• The Syrian government sells passports and birth certificates at affordable prices. Many migrants have no passport, no ID, and refuse to give fingerprints.
• Because Islam is the heart of the culture of people formerly colonized, Europeans rejected criticism of Islam, saying it would blend smoothly into a multicultural Europe. They did not demand the assimilation of the Muslims who came to live in Europe. Much of the time, Muslims are not assimilated -- and often show signs of not wanting to assimilate.
• Any criticism of Islam in Europe is treated as a form of racism, and "Islamophobia" is considered a crime or a sign of mental illness.
• European people still have the right to vote, but are deprived of most of their power: all important political decisions in Europe are made behind closed doors by technocrats and professional politicians in Brussels or Strasbourg.
• Europe has renounced force, so to many, it appears weak, vulnerable and easily able to be overpowered.
• The sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands more Muslims most likely prompts Europeans to think that the nightmare will get worse; they see, powerlessly, that their leaders speak and act as if they have no awareness of what is happening.
• Central European leaders and people, who have already lived under authoritarian rule, seem to be thinking that entering the European Union was a huge mistake. They came to what was then called the "free world." They do not seem willing to be subjected again to coercive decisions made by outsiders.
• Illegal Muslim migrants will live on social benefits until the bankruptcy of welfare states.
• In all 28 countries of the European Union, birth rates are low and the population is aging. People under thirty account for only 16% of the population, or 80 million people. In the 22 Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran, people under thirty account for 70% of the population, or 350 million people.

The flow of illegal migrants does not stop. They land on the Greek islands along the Turkish coast. They still try to get into Hungary, despite a razor wire fence and mobilized army. Their destination is Germany or Scandinavia, sometimes France or the UK. Some of them still arrive from Libya. Since the beginning of January, more than 620,000 have arrived by sea alone. There will undoubtedly be many more: a leaked secret document estimates that by the end of December, there might be 1.5 million.

Journalists in Western Europe continue to depict them as "refugees" fleeing war in Syria. The description is false. According to statistics released by the European Union, only twenty-five percent of them come from Syria; the true number is probably lower. The Syrian government sells passports and birth certificates at affordable prices. The vast majority of migrants come from other countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Nigeria.

Many do not seem to have left in a hurry. Many bring new high-end smartphones and large sums of cash, ten or twenty thousand euros, sometimes more. Many have no passports, no ID, and refuse to give fingerprints.

Whenever people flee to survive, the men come with whole families: women, children, elders. Here, instead, more than 75% of those who arrive are men under 50; few are women, children or elders.

As Christians are now the main targets of Islamists (the Jews fled or were forced out decades ago), the people escaping the war in Syria should be largely composed of Christians. But Christians are a small minority among those who arrive, and they often hide that they are Christians.

Those who enter Europe are almost all Muslims, and behave as some Muslims often do in the Muslim world: they harass Christians and attack women. In reception centers, harassing Christians and attacking women are workaday incidents. European women and girls who live near reception centers are advised to take care and cover up. Rapes, assaults, stabbings and other crimes are on the rise.

Western European political leaders could tell the truth and act accordingly. They do not. They talk of "solidarity," "humanitarian duty," "compassion." From the beginning, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that illegal migrants were welcome: she seemed to change her mind for a moment, but quickly slid back. In France, President François Hollande says the same things as Angela Merkel.

After the heartbreaking image of a dead child being carried on a Turkish beach was published, thousands of Germans and French initially spoke the same way as their leaders. Their enthusiasm seems to have faded fast.

The people of Central Europe were not enthusiastic from the beginning. Their leaders seem to share the feelings of their populations. None spoke as explicitly as Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. He said out loud what many of his countrymen seemed to think. He spoke of "invasion" and asked if there were another word to describe the massive and often brutal entry into a country of people who have not been invited to do so. He added that a country has the right to decide who is allowed to enter its territory and to guard its borders. He stressed that those who enter Europe are from a "different culture," and suggested that Islam might not be compatible with European Judeo-Christian values.

Western European political leaders harshly condemned his remarks and the attitude of Central Europe in general. They decided to take a hard line approach, including: forcing recalcitrant countries to welcome immigrants, setting up mandatory quotas that define how many immigrants each EU country must receive, and threatening those countries that declined to obey. Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, said that Europe was built in a spirit of "burden sharing," and that EU breakup was a risk that could not be excluded.

An acute division, in fact, is emerging between the leaders of Western Europe and the leaders of Central Europe. Another division is growing between the populations of Western Europe and their leaders.

Those who rebuilt Europe after World War II thought that an enlightened elite (themselves) could make a clean sweep of the past and build a dream society where peace and perpetual harmony would reign.

Because they thought democracy had brought Hitler to power, they decided to restrict democracy.[1] Because they thought nationalism was the cause of the war, they decreed that nationalism was harmful and that the cultural identities in Europe had to disappear and be replaced by a new "European identity" that they would shape.[2]

Because Europe had a colonialist past and Europeans had believed in the superiority of their cultures, they claimed that Europe should redeem its guilt and affirm that all cultures were equal. And because Islam was at the heart of the culture of people formerly colonized, the Europeans rejected all criticism of Islam, and said that it would blend smoothly into a multicultural Europe. They did not demand the assimilation of Muslims who came to live in Europe in increasing number.

Because the Europeans thought poverty had led to the rise of Nazism, they built welfare states that were supposed to eliminate poverty forever.

Because two world wars had started in Europe, the Europeans decreed that from now on, Europe would renounce the use of force, and solve all conflicts through diplomacy and appeasement.[3]

We now see the results.

European people still have the right to vote, but are deprived of most of their power: all important political decisions in Europe are made behind closed doors, by technocrats and professional politicians, in Brussels or Strasbourg.

Cultural identities in Europe have been eroded to such a point that saying that Europe is based on Judeo-Christian values has become controversial.

Any criticism of Islam in Europe is treated as a form of racism, and "Islamophobia" is considered a crime or a sign of mental illness.

Islam has not melted into a smooth multiculturalism; it is creating increasingly distressing problems that are almost never brought to light.

Muslim criminality across Europe is high. Consequently, the percentage of Muslims in prisons in Europe is high. In France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, the prison population is 70% Muslim. Many European prisons have become recruitment centers for future jihadis.
Muslim riots may occur for any reason : police upholding the law, a Soccer League celebration or in support of a cause.

Welfare states have created a government-dependent class in Europe of many people who live permanently on social benefits. These people are often Muslim. Much of the time, they are not assimilated – and often show signs of not wanting to assimilate. Many reside in virtually autonomous, so-called no-go zones (e.g. France, the UK, and Germany).

Europe has renounced force; to many, it therefore appears weak, vulnerable and easily able to be overpowered.

Populations of Western Europe increasingly think that the dream society that had been promised has turned into a nightmare. The sudden and often brutal arrival of hundreds of thousands more Muslims most likely prompts Europeans to think the nightmare will get worse. They see, powerlessly, that their leaders speak and act as if they have no awareness of what is happening.

Central European leaders and their people, who have directly experienced authoritarian rule, seem to be thinking that entering the European Union was a huge mistake. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they became members of the EU to join what was called then the "free world." They do not seem willing to be subjected again to coercive decisions made by outsiders.

After living under the Soviet yoke, they preserved their desire for freedom and self-government, and evidently will not now agree to give them up. They know what submission to Islam could mean. Bulgaria and Romania were occupied by the Ottoman Empire until 1878. Hungary was under the boot of Ottoman rule for more than a hundred and fifty years (1541-1699).

Polls show that a majority of Muslims living in Europe want the application of sharia law and clearly reject any idea of assimilation.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in Europe have joined fundamentalist Islamic organizations. Thousands have joined jihadist movements and are now fighting in Syria or Yemen. Many have returned and are ready to act against Europe.

Illegal Muslim migrants are likely to join the Muslims already living in Europe; and they will remain Muslim. They will live on social benefits until the bankruptcy of welfare states. They will reside in the "no-go zones," and the "no-go zones" will continue to grow. Their occupants come from countries where Christians and women are mistreated; in Europe, they are already mistreating Christians and women.

They come from countries where Western civilization is despised and where hatred of Jews is inescapable -- and this remains so among Muslims already living in Europe. For more than two decades, almost all assaults against Jews in Europe were committed by Muslims.

Many of those who arrive, according to European intelligence sources, are already radicalized.

A project to overwhelm Europe by a huge wave of migration was already described by the Islamic State in documents discovered this February. It is hard to rule out that the Islamic State plays a role in what is happening. Turkish authorities are ignoring the massive departures taking place from their coast. If they really wanted the current process to stop, they could stop it. That is clearly not what they do. The Islamic State could not survive without Turkish help. Daily flights on Turkish Airlines bring illegal migrants to Istanbul; they continue unhindered to Europe. The Russians, in their military intervention in Syria, similarly does not seem interested in stopping what is occurring.

Angela Merkel said in Strasbourg, on October 7, that migrants entering Europe today are attracted to Europe, for the reasons Europeans migrants who arrived in America a century ago were attracted to America: to "realize a dream," presumably of opportunity.

In all 28 countries of the European Union, birth rates are low and the population is aging. People under thirty account for only 16% of the population, or 80 million people. In the 22 Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran, people under thirty account for 70% of the population, or 350 million people.

Jews are fleeing Europe in increasing numbers. "Native" Europeans are starting to flee as well.

In 1972, in his book "The Camp of the Saints," French writer Jean Raspail described flooding Europe with Muslim migrants crossing the Mediterranean. At the time, the book was a work of fiction. Today, it is reality.

Out with the old, in with the new... European officials estimate that 1.5 million migrants, mostly Muslims, will arrive in the European Union this year. Jews are fleeing Europe in increasing numbers. "Native" Europeans are starting to flee as well.

---

[1] Christopher Booker, Richard North, The Great Deception, The Secret History of the European Union, Bloomsbury Academic, 2005.
[2] Neil Fligstein, Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe, Oxford University Press, 2009.
[3] Wolfram Kaiser, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Guy Millière

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6721/muslim-invasion-europe

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

Blood in the Headlines - Celeste Marcus

by Celeste Marcus

If the media were only guilty of silence, that would be a gross dereliction of journalistic responsibility. It would be cowardly. But they are not only guilty of silence, they are guilty of participation. They are complicit.

Arabs are stabbing Jews again. This is another in a series of tactics utilized by the Arabs to push the Jews out of the region. Since Israel’s founding Arabs have been attempting to wipe the Jews out of the Middle East. The stabbings now taking place are a strategy employed to both demoralize Israel on the ground, and delegitmize Israel on the world stage. The Western Media is a coconspirator in this delegitimization effort.

Scenario: a teenager stabs a thirteen-year old on a bicycle in front of you. If you don’t try to defend the victim, you are a bystander. But if you actively, loudly, publicly condemn the police for shooting the attacker you are no longer a bystander. You are now a participant. The mainstream media has consistently misrepresented the situation in the Middle East. These journalists are not mere bystanders; they are key participants in a war.

Israel has undergone a transformation over the past few weeks. On October 1st, four children watched from the backseat of a car as their parents were shot dead. That was the first in a series of similar horrors. The Israeli Defense Force website provides this accounting:

• October 1: Eitam and Naama Henkin killed in front of their four children in shooting attack near Nablus. Assailants apprehended
• October 3: 2 Israelis killed, 2 injured in stabbing attack in Jerusalem
• October 4: Israeli teenager stabbed in Jerusalem. Assailant shot on site.
• October 7:  Israeli civilian stabbed in Jerusalem. IDF soldier stabbed in Kiryat    Gat.  Israeli civilian stabbed in Petah Tikva. Attempted car ramming in Jerusalem.
• October 8: 4 Israelis injured in screwdriver stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.Israeli stabbed in Kiryat Arba. Israeli stabbed in Afula.
• October 9: 6 Israelis stabbed 5 Israelis injured.
• October 10: 7 Israelis injured
• October 11: 7 Israelis injured in various attacks
• October 12: 2Attempted stabbings. 4 succesful stabbings.
• ·October 13: 3 Israelis killed 13 injured
• October 15: 1Israeli Injured. Joseph’s tomb burnt.
• October 17:  3 Israelis stabbed
• October 18·: 1 soldier killed, 10 Israelis attacked

If you’re a typical American teenager you did not know about these attacks. If you don’t have family in Israel you did not spend the study breaks of the last two weeks scanning Israeli media’s reports of victims for the names of your friends. News updates from the mainstream media may have alerted you to the fact that something out of the ordinary was going on in Israel. You don’t know that Israeli children are afraid to go to school. You don’t know that mothers and fathers sleep with guns next to their beds, just in case.

A slim collection of journalists with a sweet spot for honest reporting have begun rebuking the mainstream media for failing to bear witness to this spillage of Jewish blood. This rebuke, though apt, is incomplete. It casts the media as mere bystanders rather than active participants. It ignores the culpability of the journalists and reporters providing their readers with a biased anti-Israel conception of the streets in which Israeli children are being stabbed. Here is an example of such condemnable reporting:  “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two” – BBC News, 
October 3rd

This headline fails to identify the Palestinian as the attacker. Odd.

This is not silence. This is not unbiased journalism. This is vilification; specifically the vilification of a country for defending its citizens from lethal harm. It is also precisely what the attackers are hoping for. That teenagers were killed is a tragedy, but that the media blames those who were defending themselves rather than those who were instructing mere children to stab Jews is not an example of silence. It is a dangerous, shameful trend.
The following headlines, to pick a few from countless examples, are further examples of this same failing:

 “Two Palestinian Teenagers Killed, Two Injured by Israeli Police” – The Wall Street Journal, October 12th

“Two Palestinians aged 12 and 15 have been shot dead and two knife attacks have left five Israelis wounded” – The Guardian, October 10th  

“6 Palestinian teens die amid Mideast unrest” – Los Angeles Times, October 11th

These consistent misrepresentations are not accidental. The chasmic difference between the blood on the street and the blood in the headlines is far too great and far too uniform to be unintentional. The media has consciously sided with the wrong side, and they are therefore guilty of contributing directly to the problem. They are guilty of legitimizing a regime that systematically incites its citizens to terror. That is what portraying terrorist as victim accomplishes.

This legitimization has consequences beyond the trajectory of dinner time conversation. In a free country people read the newspaper, and people also vote in elections. Two weeks before the first attack in October, Mahmoud Abbas, acting leader of the Palestinian Authority, stated, “we bless every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem.” This is one of countless examples of the catalysis of violence by Abbas against Jews. Don’t look for that quote in the BBC or the NY Times -- you won’t find it. What you will find is reports that Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Abbas to discuss peace negotiations.

Abbas wrote his PhD dissertation arguing against the historicity of the Holocaust. He was part of the leadership that engineered the Munich Massacre, the Coastal Road Massacre, the murder of diplomats in the Sudan. His resume is riddled with American and Jewish corpses. That he is constantly portrayed by the media, and consequently by our government, as a legitimate partner in the pursuit of peace in the Middle East is absurd. That U.S. aid money is given as payment to the family members of those martyred at the behest of their government, while murdering Israelis is absurd. That the United Nations has issued more condemnations of Israel than any other country in the world, including Syria and Iran and North Korea, is absurd. These absurdities are linked; they are the manifestations of a febrile virus with which the mainstream media is infecting its readers.

This is not silence. This is not passive communication. This is legitimizing terror. This noxious reporting is equally responsible for the blood of the Palestinian teenagers as it is the Israeli victims.

If the media were only guilty of silence, that would be a gross dereliction of journalistic responsibility. It would be cowardly. But they are not only guilty of silence, they are guilty of participation. They are complicit.

Celeste Marcus

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/blood_in_the_headlines.html

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

“If Israel gives up Assad, he’s finished” - Boaz Bismuth

by Boaz Bismuth

In an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom in Paris, a key figure in the Free Syrian Army says, "If Israel decides to abandon Assad, he is finished. The Syrian people would not forget this gesture."

 

Kamal says Syria’s rebels “can’t win alone – we need the international community’s help.” Photo credit: AFP

PARIS – “Beware the Ides of March,” the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s famous play. The Roman emperor was killed on March 15, 44 years before the Common Era. The soothsayer was right. It is unclear if somebody warned Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian ruler, of the same date, for the bloody riots in the town of Daraa began 2,055 years after the death of Caesar. The goal was – and remains – to oust Assad from the seat of power. In the meantime, unlike Caesar, Bashar still lives, and he is butchering his people. 

The many army officers that have deserted to neighboring Turkey have no intention of halting their struggle even if a military confrontation serves Assad’s interests. Assad, for his part, wants a head-to-head clash with what he deems “a gang of terrorists.” But if you ask the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which comprises army defectors and rebels, Assad is a spent force. This newly formed, thin military outfit cannot succeed by itself, but if international aid does arrive, even from the enemy Israel, the balance of power will change. 

At a Parisian cafe, I meet a man who goes by the alias Kamal. He is a key figure in the FSA, who was willing to sit down with an Israeli journalist on condition that his identity is not revealed. “Any detail that reveals my identity would endanger my life,” he said.

So why are you meeting with me?

“Because Syria is dear to me, and Assad is murdering my people. We, the Free Syrian Army, cannot win this battle alone. You, the Israelis, have the right connections, and you should also have an interest for Assad to disappear. The Syrian people and the Israeli people only stand to benefit from this. And, of course, peace will also benefit. If Israel decides to abandon Assad, he is finished.”

Is it that cut-and-dried?

“I believe Assad is still in power because Western powers are not convinced that Israel really wants to see a Syria without Assad. You are afraid of what will be the day after Assad falls. Don’t be afraid. Let him go, cut him loose. Assad’s fall will eliminate the link in the chain that ties Iran with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only would you be rid of an enemy, but you would also weaken two others.”

But if Israel aids the opposition without the Syrian people knowing about it, how would this advance peace?

“Eventually, everything comes to light, and the Syrian people would not forget this gesture,” Kamal said.

“We need equipment and manpower”

The Free Syrian Army was formed on July 29, 2011. It started when a group of uniformed army officers who had deserted Assad’s military forces posted a video on YouTube. It was during that time that the army began massacring its citizens, per Assad’s orders. This set off a chain reaction of desertions and an escalation of anti-government demonstrations.

Colonel Riad al-Asaad emerged as the supreme commander of the FSA. He declared that the former army officers stood by the Syrian people in their efforts to remove the regime and that any force that threatened or harmed innocent civilians would immediately become a legitimate target.

Two months later, the new military force made common cause with the “Free Officers Movement,” an organization that was also active in Syrian towns and cities. At a moment’s notice, these two organizations formed the most significant armed entity in the Syrian opposition’s battle against the Assad regime. Operations against the government security forces, including attacks against military targets, proliferated, and what began as anti-Assad demonstrations had ballooned into a full-fledged war. By mid-January of this year, the FSA boasted a force of 40,000 deserters, although it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of this assessment. 

Do you really have 40,000 people?

“This is the figure that we announced, but the number is actually smaller.”

And is this supposed to suffice against Assad’s vast, armed Syrian army?

“Yes, because the people are on our side. I admit that we are still at a distinct numerical disadvantage, both in manpower and equipment. That is why we are appealing to the international community for help. We cannot handle this alone.”

The Free Syrian Army is active in six of the country’s 14 provinces, including the suburbs of Damascus. Thus far, it has managed to inflict a large number of casualties on the Syrian Army. Deserters join its ranks in fits and spurts. Usually, groups of between five and 20 come on board. The FSA’s weapons, most of which are light armaments, are obtained from deserters or from caches that were stolen from the Syrian army. 

The FSA’s main areas of activity are Damascus, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Hama, and, of course, the main flashpoint of the conflict, Homs. The rebels tend to focus their attacks on military checkpoints manned by the Syrian Army. They also conduct ambushes against patrols. In a head-on collision, the FSA has little chance against the Syrian military. FSA rebels usually flee when faced with the prospect of staring down army forces. As of now, the results on the ground remain inconclusive. It is also unclear to what extent the FSA’s headquarters in Turkey exercises a free hand and receives support from the government in Ankara. 

The sandwich as a metaphor

Kamal was born in Homs in the early 1960s. His father was never enamored with the Ba’ath regime, and he would often take trips abroad with his son. The family eventually picked up and moved to Brussels, where it lived for some time. While Kamal did not serve in the Syrian Army, the numerous connections he had amassed during his time in Europe compelled FSA commanders to enlist him as one of the organization’s most senior representatives on the continent. 

In 2010, one year before the outbreak of riots in Syria, Kamal visited relatives in Homs. It was at this time that he began to detect hints of what was to unfold in his country within just a few months. 

“I saw an old man,” he said. “At first, I couldn’t understand why he was looking at me. Then I realized that he was looking at the sandwich that I was holding in my hands. This old man was hungry. He was poor and hungry. Obviously I offered him my sandwich, but I could see that he wanted much more. He wanted to restore his dignity that had been trampled.”

So it was on that day that you understood what was going to happen in Syria?

“You have to understand, Syria is my homeland, my home. All of a sudden, I had a hard time recognizing it. It became poorer. People have had enough of living in poverty while those in the regime have an abundance of everything. This is a revolution for freedom, but it also erupted due to economic reasons. It is inconceivable for a small group of people to rule over the state coffers and control the media.”

Kamal said he never really believed Assad, and he remembers well the day he entered the presidential palace in 2000. 

“It was remarkable how they changed the constitution within 15 minutes,” he said. “Bashar had not reached the age of 40, and the constitution stipulated that this was the minimum age one needed to be to serve as president. I remember how during the television broadcast of the ceremony in which he was sworn into office, my wife began crying bitterly. She told me that she could not believe that after so many years of Hafez Assad, we are in store for more of the same with his son. Back then, I laughed at all the people who said that Bashar would bring the younger generation closer to modernity. Indeed – only five percent of Syrians have access to the Internet.”

If that is the case, then we are not talking about a Facebook revolution like the ones we saw in Tunisia and Egypt.

“What’s happening in Syria is nothing like what took place in Tunisia and Egypt. In Syria, we are talking about a real, popular revolution. In contrast, what happened in Egypt and Tunisia were coups. Does it seem normal to you that dictatorships that have been in place for years, like those in Tunisia and Egypt, would fall so quickly when they had enormous foreign support? If it weren’t for Western backing and support from the major powers, some of those Arab tyrants would have been long gone.

“When I heard Obama’s speech in Cairo [in June 2009] and I heard him quoting passages from the Quran, I guessed that something was about to happen and that something had motivated his words. The rulers of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt were abandoned right then and there. It was part of a plan. In Syria, on the other hand, the revolution erupted without being planned by the great powers.”

Why wasn’t Syria part of the plan?

“Nothing was planned for Syria. The people took their fate in their own hands. The stability of Syria is strategically crucial to the West. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon, and even Israel learned to live with the Syrian regime, which balances the region, for better and worse. The Assad family has longstanding agreements with Israel. Israel’s deal with Assad is ‘no peace, no war.’ Assad knows how to play everybody. In international relations, there is no black and white. Assad plays this game nicely.”

What will happen the day after Assad falls? How can you be sure that Syria will not fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood like Egypt and Tunisia?

“Look at me. Do I look religious to you? You visited Syria more than once. Did you see a religious country or a secular one? We are people who respect Islam, but we don’t want a country subject to religious law. Syria’s secular civic society is more fearful of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis than it is of Israel. If there is one person in the region who would like to see a religious Syria, it is [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan.”

But Erdogan has given you, the Free Syrian Army, asylum.

“He has placed restrictions on us, with the camps that he has built for us. How much freedom do you think the Syrians have in their refugee camps in Turkey? Erdogan yearns for the Ottoman Empire of yesteryear. He dreams of reviving it. We in Syria don’t miss that empire. That is the difference. I’m not certain that we and Turkey have the same interests in mind for a post-Assad Syria.”

It sounds as if ties with Israel are more enticing to you than ties with Turkey.

“Israel is not just the country that we see beyond the border. Israel is the West. Israel is the U.S. Israel is a significant, global political power. I fully understand the moral responsibility that the West has toward Israel after the Holocaust, this is clear. But it is your tragedy that obligates you to act nobly toward us. In the future, we will have to normalize relations between Israel and Syria. With all due respect to the Palestinians, peace in the Middle East begins with peace between Israel and Syria.”

Why do you refuse to reveal yourself?

“Because there are those in Syria who do not want peace, and for them any connection with Israelis is tantamount to treason. By revealing myself in an interview, I endanger my life, and an interview with an Israeli newspaper could lead to my death. Syrian public opinion is still not ready for links with Israel. It takes time. Normalizing relations is not something that happens overnight. We will have to rebuild our country, and Israel, as our neighbor, can help us with this.”

So how many years will this take to happen?

“Between 20 and 30 years.”

Will the Golan still be on the agenda at that time?

“It may be that in another 20 to 30 years, without the Ba’ath regime, and with other people in power who will look at ties with Israel differently, the whole issue of the Golan will look totally different.”

Will the Syrian people be ready to give up the Golan?

“Perhaps the people in Israel will be ready to concede. If by that time there won’t be any flare-ups and the dialogue changes, then all of the disagreements revolving around the Golan will reach a turning point.”

During the January 2000 peace talks at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, between Ehud Barak and Farouq al-Sharaa, I visited Damascus twice and I even noticed efforts to prepare public opinion for peace.

“No, we knew that wouldn’t work. Assad the father, just like the son, was not interested in peace with Israel. It contradicts their interest to survive and remain in power. They both wanted to lead a nation that has been instilled with a fear of the enemy and has been programmed to hate. That is why the Middle East must be rid of the Assad regime.”

What is it exactly that you expect of Israel?

“Israel needs to be the neighbor that lends a helping hand and opens its borders to help refugees. Israel needs to assist the democratization process in Syria. That way, two democracies can live side by side.”

In concrete terms, what are the aspirations of the FSA?

“We need help with rearmament, and we need to operate from a free zone that is recognized by the international community. We want Syrian air space to be declared a no-fly zone by NATO, and, if the need arises, for NATO to strike Syrian forces that are massacring civilians, just like it did in Kosovo.”

“No to a religious state”

Two days after my sit-down with Kamal in Paris, a “Friends of Syria” conference was held in Tunisia. It was attended by representatives from 60 countries, among them 50 foreign ministers. Most conspicuous in their absence, however, were emissaries from Russia and China, two governments that have squashed all operative resolutions put forth by the Security Council. More surprisingly, however, FSA representatives were also absent from the conference.

How could this be?

“We weren’t there because we weren’t invited,” Kamal said. “That is the most frustrating aspect of this story – the degree to which we are divided. We were supposed to be the first ones there because we are part of the nation that is fighting and sacrificing its life.”

I’m having a hard time understanding where the disagreements lie between the FSA and the Syrian National Council.

“The Syrian National Council is a tool in the hands of Turkey. It has opposed every military operation against the Syrian regime. It took time until it understood that its pacifist approach against the regime would not produce anything. It is also opposed to all foreign intervention in Syria, and it claims that whoever supports such intervention is guilty of treason. We are completely at odds with them as to how to go forward.”

That is one of the reasons that the U.S., other Western countries, and Jerusalem are concerned over the role that the Syrian Islamists will play in a post-Assad government. You do understand Israel’s concerns about an Islamic Syria?

“I’m going to repeat what I said to you earlier. Syrian society is not religious. It is an extremely diverse population. We not only have Sunnis and Shiites, but we also have Christians, Armenians, Ashuris, and Druze. All of these groups do not want a religious state. There may be countries in the region who are interested in seeing Syria split into different parts. There may even be those who see Syria’s dismemberment as a solution to the Kurdish problem. But we are adamantly opposed to this. We want neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Salafis. Syria is not Egypt. I believe that no more than 10 percent of the population would vote for the Muslim Brotherhood if there were elections. From my vantage point, replacing the Assad regime with an Islamic regime would be going backwards. Is this why tens of thousands of people have been massacred?”

Boaz Bismuth

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3338

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