High-Stakes Game over Syria As Khamenei-Putin Axis Advances - P. David Hornik

by P. David Hornik

How long can Israel defend itself as the Khamenei-Putin axis advances?

The news out of Syria this week is, as usual, complex—and seemingly contradictory.

On the one hand, the Russian-Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah alliance appeared to have overcome rebel resistance in Aleppo—a major turning point that would shift the war’s momentum in the alliance’s favor.

On the other hand, Arab and other media reported that on Wednesday the Israeli air force struck a Syrian weapons depot west of Damascus and a weapons convoy headed for Hizballah in Lebanon.

As of Thursday evening there had been no retaliation against Israel, and Israeli analysts generally saw a retaliation as unlikely.

Media outside of Israel have, of course, often reported in the past on Israeli airstrikes—usually against Hizballah-bound weaponry—in Syria.

Israel’s policy has been to keep mum, neither denying nor confirming the reports. Last April, though, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel had carried out “dozens” of strikes in Syria against “game-changing weaponry” for Hizballah.

It’s no secret that, since the 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon, Hizballah has massively rearmed and now harbors tens of thousands of missiles. But Israel regards some kinds of weapons—precision rockets, advanced antiship and antiaircraft systems—as out of bounds for the terror group.

What has changed in the Syrian arena, though, is that late last year Russia deployed its powerful S-400 radar and antiaircraft system there. It covers Syria, Lebanon, and much of Israel and can track Israel’s northern airspace.

Since then there have been far fewer reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria. In one of them, last September, the outcome seemed ominous when Syria—not a military match for Israel by itself, but backed by Russia and Iran—fired missiles at two Israeli aircraft.

Why, then, the Israeli strike this week? Why no military response this time?

One conjecture: the weapons Israel struck in the Syrian depot and in the convoy would have been particularly unacceptable weapons in Hizballah’s hands.

Another conjecture: the much-touted Israeli-Russian coordination, whereby Netanyahu and Russian president Vladimir Putin are said to have worked out arrangements to avoid clashes, is still operative.

Other possible mitigating factors are that Israel reportedly hit the targets from Lebanese, not Syrian, airspace, and that no Syrian or Hizballah fighters appear to have been killed.

The larger question: what happens if Syria’s Assad and his backers have indeed turned the tide and will be looking to keep extending their control over Syrian territory?

Of interest here are remarks to the Algemeiner website by Yossi Kuperwasser, who has held major positions in Israel’s Military Intelligence.

Kuperwasser, as the site paraphrases it, says that

Iran is stepping up the speed at which it is arming its proxies in the region due to its fear that after Donald Trump assumes the US presidency in January, its room to maneuver in Syria will be greatly hampered….

And regarding Israel and Russia, in Kuperwasser’s own words:

There is a mutual understanding of each other’s interests. Though Russia and Iran are backing Hezbollah combat rebel forces fighting against the Assad regime, Russia understands that Israel cannot allow weapons from Hezbollah in Syria to be moved to Lebanon, where they will be aimed at the Jewish state.

How long can this relatively tolerable—for Israel—situation continue?

Indications are that its days may be numbered. Even if Putin’s strategic goals are not identical to those of his allies—he is clearly not a Shiite ideologue like the Iranians and Hizballah or a Shiite-aligned Arab like Assad—his steps have been increasingly brazen.

Along with the transfer of major weapon systems to Syria, and an aircraft carrier to its coast, they include major weapons sales to Iran, joint provision with Iran of weapons to Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen, and reports of Russian aid to Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq.

As Kuperwasser puts it, Israel’s most serious concern is “Iran’s increasing territorial contiguity—crossing Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.”

For the incoming Trump administration, stemming this tide should be an urgent priority. Whatever Putin’s real motive, he is helping create a situation of unacceptable danger to Israel and a Middle East bifurcated between Shiite and Sunni blocs—a recipe for ongoing war and explosive instability.

P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Beersheva and author of the book Choosing Life in Israel. His memoir, Destination Israel: Coming of Age and Finding Peace in the Middle East, is forthcoming from Liberty Island later this year.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265016/high-stakes-game-over-syria-khamenei-putin-axis-p-david-hornik

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Decades-old appeasement policy vis-à-vis Iran must end - Heshmat Alavi

by Heshmat Alavi

The solution to the Syria crisis, and that of the entire region, lies in the West, and especially Washington, adopting a responsible policy of standing firm against Tehran’s meddling.

The West, specifically the United States, must close the book on over three decades of appeasement with Iran, said Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi at a conference in Paris on Saturday, November 26. If the international community is serious about bringing an end to Daesh (ISIS/ISIL), it must first end Iran’s role in Syria. The nations of Iran and Syria are brothers, standing shoulder to shoulder, deploring the devastating war raging for nearly six years now in the Levant.

The conference, titled “Call for Justice: Ending Impunity for Perpetrators of Crimes Against Humanity in Iran and Syria,” hosted an impressive slate of distinguished political personalities and jurists from across Europe, others representing Middle East countries, alongside a delegate of Syrian opposition officials.

The Iranian people and nations of the region have suffered from a disastrous U.S. policy, and the entire Middle East in the past 16 years has witnessed the mullahs in Iran profiting the most, Rajavi explained.

The entire region, especially the Iranian people and their organized opposition movement, led by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), expect the new White House to significantly revise this utterly botched policy. One such result is the nearly half a million and counting innocent Syrians killed, with more than half the country displaced from their homes.

With the Iranian regime encouraged by the West’s weak approach, nearly 3,000 people have been executed during the tenure of “moderate” Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon have suffered havoc as a result of Iran’s meddling. The people of Iran truly detest the filthy war fueled by Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei as he sends more troops and militia forces to absurdly “defend the Holy Shrines” in Syria and Iraq. Under the banner of fighting Daesh, Iran has been specifically targeting the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria in lethal sectarian massacres.

The solution to the Syria crisis, and that of the entire region, lies in the West, and especially Washington, adopting a responsible policy of standing firm against Tehran’s meddling. This will render a realistic platform to also take on Daesh, without the Iranian regime having any role in such a campaign, as sometimes weighed during the tenure of President Barack Obama.

The conference also called for a firm stance regarding Iranian nuclear policy, and for the new administration in Washington to not allow Tehran take any advantage. It is high time to bring an end to the unjustified concessions provided to Tehran in light of the atrocious human rights violations inside the country and further meddling across the region.

Internal disputes are currently flaring among the regime’s own factions. A few months ago, Iran and the world were shocked when a sound bite related to the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, successor to Iranian regime mullah Ruhollah Khomeini, was made public. This revelation shed light on how the Iranian regime ordered and carried out the summer 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners, mostly related to Iran’s main opposition, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

In response, Tehran’s so-called judiciary has sentenced Ahmad Montazeri, the son of Ayatollah Montazeri, to 21 years behind bars. This signals a major turning point in Iran’s domestic politics, ultimately resulting in a serious decrease in Khaemenei’s powers as the regime’s senior leader.

A colorful array of prominent dignitaries put their weight behind this conference, including the likes of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt; former International Criminal Court judge Fatoumata Diarra; Irish senator David Norris; former Warsaw mayor Marcin Swiecicki; and Sir Geoffery Robertson, president of the U.N. Court for Sierra Leone, joined by a significant delegation from Arab countries and especially Syria.

A warmly welcome segment of the event featured former political prisoners and young MEK supporters who managed to flee Iran in the past few months. They provided shocking tales about their experiences and observations in Iran under the mullahs’ regime. They also shed light on the support the MEK enjoys inside the country.

The international community should respect the thirst for freedom seen in all the nations of the Middle East. The new White House can begin by setting aside the failed appeasement policy and stand alongside those striving for democracy in this region.

Heshmat Alavi

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/12/decades_old_appeasement_policy_visvis_iran_must_end.html

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Women Form A Growing Threat To West In New ISIS Strategy - Abigail R. Esman

by Abigail R. Esman

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

Recent events add support to the prosecutor's suspicions. Numerous reports point to the possibility that Islamic State leaders will lean increasingly on women and even children to join in their now-faltering ambitions

 

This is Laura Hansen's story.
It may also be the story of the future of Islamic terrorists in the West.

Born and raised in the quiet Dutch city of The Hague, Laura Angela Hansen was 17 when she converted to Islam in 2012. She married a Dutch-Palestinian man seven years her senior whom she met through a dating site for Muslims and quickly became pregnant. She also became the victim of his abuse; neighbors repeatedly called police to their home, fearing not only for Hansen but for her four-year-old daughter, evidently from a previous relationship.

But life improved once her son Abdullah was born, Hansen later explained in an interview with Kurdistan24. In September 2015, her husband suggested they take a family vacation to Turkey, where they might also give money to Syrian refugees.

It didn't turn out quite that way. Instead of going to the refugee camps, Hansen told Kurdistan24, her husband led her into Syria, where she was brought into a house guarded by "men with beards and guns." From there, she and her husband were transferred to Mosul, where, she said, she tried many times to "flee from the hell in which I was living."

She succeeded in July, escaping both her husband and the Islamic State and finding sanctuary with her children among the Peshmerga forces. Through them, she was able to return in early August to the Netherlands, where she was immediately taken into custody.

That, anyway, is Laura Hansen's story as Laura Hansen has told it, both to her lawyers and to the press. But like all stories, Hansen's has another side: the public prosecutor's.

Based on Hansen's own previous statements on social media and some of her activities shortly before she and her family departed for their Turkish "holiday," prosecutors say the now-21-year-old knew exactly where she was going and indeed was happy to make the trip. They cite her response to a beheading video sent her by her father, presumably to dissuade her from joining the Islamic State. Chatting with him on Facebook, she insisted, "these people have to be removed. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth."

Moreover, despite telling Kurdish television that she suffered in the "hell" of the Islamic State, she has neither said anything about her experiences, nor has she outright condemned ISIS, since her return. While she no longer wears a hijab and allegedly now eats pork, appearing to have turned her back on Islam, no threats have been made against her on Islamic State social media sites. And she has not been accused by others of being an infidel – a situation some prosecutors find perplexing, if not suspicious.

Faced with her ongoing silence, the public prosecutor's office questioned her current motives during a recent hearing. Either she is a naïve woman who is genuinely renouncing her jihadist past, they said, or she's been sent back to execute an attack, and the "reformed" Laura is a ruse to throw off investigators.

Hansen did not respond.

"Only she really knows," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office said when reached by phone. "We can't answer either way at this point."

For the moment, then, Hansen is being held on charges of participating in terror activity and support of a terrorist organization, though prosecutors have said that "so long as Laura explains nothing, we will assume the worst-case scenario."

Recent events add support to the prosecutor's suspicions. Numerous reports point to the possibility that Islamic State leaders will lean increasingly on women and even children to join in their now-faltering ambitions – including allowing women to join a battlefield that was previously off-limits to them. And the Islamic State "is using increasing numbers of women to evade security measures and spearhead a wave of attacks across Europe and the Islamic world as it loses territory in the Middle East," the Guardian reported last month.

;
Such efforts also seem to include a renewed focus on attracting women to the cause. In Amsterdam, for instance, police recently arrested a so-called "loverboy" for seducing girls he then recruited for jihad.

The endeavors have already paid off. In Morocco, 10 young women, all in their teens, were arrested in October and charged with planning suicide attacks. All had allegedly sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.

"This is the first time we have found a terrorist cell that was entirely composed of women," Abdelhak Khiame of Morocco's Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations told the Guardian.

In Paris, French police arrested four women in September for allegedly planning to bomb the Gare de Lyon. At least two of those women were, like Laura, converts to Islam.

In San Bernardino, Tashfeen Malik played the central role in the jihadist killing of 14 last December. She allegedly fired the first shots in the attack, and possibly helped radicalize her husband, U.S.-born Rizwan Farook.

And according to Dutch journalist Brenda Stoter, who has reported extensively from Syria and Iraq, two new training camps for women have opened near Raqqa in the past year.

Moreover, as European law enforcement cracks down on those they suspect of planning to leave for Syria, Stoter reports, some – including young women – are likely "to seek out alternatives to supporting IS."

"The repeated calls of IS leaders to execute attacks in their own countries don't only reach male sympathizers," she notes.

Indeed, Matthieu Suc, author of Femmes de Djihadistes (Wives of Jihadists), told Newsweek's Jack Moore, "In different jihadist records, you can see, you can hear, women – often young – regretting not to be able to commit terrorist acts."

For law enforcers, the situation poses any number of risks. On the one hand, there is the obvious danger in letting a returnee go free, but there is also the concern that, by imprisoning someone who claims she wants to rejoin Western culture, they inadvertently reignite her resentment and anger, turning her against us once again.

All of this makes Laura Hansen's story more urgent. Dutch prosecutors say they want to make her "an example." But if she has genuinely apostatized, or if her experiences in the Islamic State have led her to renounce radical Islam and violent jihad, she would be just the example Western Muslim women need right now.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.


Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/5711/women-form-a-growing-threat-to-west-in-new-isis

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The global fight against terrorism - Nitsana Darshan Leitner

by Nitsana Darshan Leitner

At Shurat HaDin, we will continue to fight to ensure that terrorism is not tolerated in any forum, and that terrorists are deprived of support in any form.

MASKED FRENCH special unit policemen arrive at Perignon barracks after tracking down a terrorist in 2012.. (photo credit:REUTERS) 

For Israelis, terrorism is an issue that hits close to home – literally.

Israelis living in Israel have endured shooting attacks, bus bombings, suicide attacks, rockets, knife attacks and arson, all aimed to kill and terrorize as many citizens in Israel as possible. Terrorism is an ongoing domestic issue that Israel continues to face, perpetrated by local groups as the PLO, the PFLP, the DFLP, PIJ, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yet, Israel’s struggle with terrorism involves many international aspects as well: some of these same terrorist groups have carried out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad; other countries, such as Iran and Syria, have provided safe havens, weapons and funds to terrorist groups targeting Israel; Palestinian terrorist groups and their supporters have sought to use terrorism to draw attention to their claims, and to bring international pressure to bear on Israel; and Israel has worked with other countries and the international community to cut off resources to these terrorist organizations and sanction state sponsors of terrorism.

With the rise of al-Qaida, Islamic State (ISIS) and other jihadist groups that seek to carry out a more global program of terrorism, there is a temptation for Israelis to view these groups’ attacks against non-Israeli and non-Jewish targets as somewhat of a break from the terrorism “we” face. Having faced criticism for defending ourselves from terrorism “too aggressively,” we may wonder whether our critics may finally come to understand what Israel faces, now that their citizens are being targeted too. We may be tempted to stand back and see how countries that have been critical of Israel will respond when facing their own problem of terrorism.

However, Israelis must not be deceived into believing that the global variety of terrorism is not our problem as well. We must also be engaged in the global fight against terrorism, even when it may seem that we are not the primary target.

First, while ISIS and its ilk do not limit their terrorist attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets, they have demonstrated that targeting Jews and Israelis remains among their priorities.

For example: Over the course of nine days in March 2012 in France, Mohammed Merah, who claimed to act for al-Qaida, first killed a French paratrooper, next killed two French police officers and wounded a third, and in a third attack murdered a rabbi and three children aged three, six and eight, and seriously wounded a teenager at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse.

In an attack in Brussels, Belgium in May 2014, ISIS shooter Mehdi Nemmouche murdered four people at a Jewish museum.

In January 2015, the infamous attack by Islamic terrorists on the Charlie Hebdo Paris headquarters that killed 12 people and wounded 11, was followed two days later by the murder of four and kidnapping of 15 others at the Hypercasher kosher supermarket in Paris by ISIS operative Amedy Coulibaly.

In March 2016, three Israelis were among those killed when an ISIS terrorist carried out a suicide bombing in Istanbul, Turkey.

On November 16, 2016, police in Kosovo announced that they had arrested 19 people suspected of planning ISIS terrorist attacks, including a planned attack against the Israeli football team in an upcoming match.

Second, Israelis have much to offer in the global fight against terrorism.

Unfortunately, the phenomenon of terrorism is not new to us. Yet because of that fact, we have valuable experience and knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work in confronting terrorist threats. We have developed plans, protocols and technologies that can be adapted to the threats faced by other countries.

We have devised advanced methods and systems for gathering and analyzing intelligence that can make Israelis essential partners and allies in the fight against terrorism. And we have been at the forefront in using laws and legal processes to deprive terrorists of resources and obtain justice for victims of terrorism.

Third, it is the right thing to do. Terrorism is the enemy of all of humanity.

As a people who has known what it means to be the victim of terrorism, we must stand up for other victims of terrorism. As a nation that has had to fight and overcome terrorism at home, we must also join with others to fight and overcome terrorism abroad.

At Shurat HaDin, we will continue to fight to ensure that terrorism is not tolerated in any forum, and that terrorists are deprived of support in any form.


Nitsana Darshan Leitner is president of Shurat HaDin.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-global-fight-against-terrorism-474343

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Israel’s Constitutional Identity Crisis - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

A fight over the regulation of settlements becomes a fight over the character of Israel.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 


Israel’s coalition crisis over the settlements regulation bill is not a normal power struggle between overweening politicians. It is not popularity contest between Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu Party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his Bayit Yehudi Party.


It is also not about contenders for the helm challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political primacy.

The settlement regulation bill proposes to extend the authority of the Military Government in Judea and Samaria to seize privately owned land. That authority is now limited to seizure for military purposes. The bill would allow the Military Government to seize land for the purpose of private construction as well.


The political fight over the bill is not merely a fight over the community of Amona, which will be destroyed by order of the High Court if the law isn’t passed before December 25.


The fight over the law is a fight about the character of Israel.


Opponents of the bill argue that the law undermines the power of the Supreme Court and endangers Israel’s international standing. Proponents of the bill argue that Israel needs to ensure the primacy of the Knesset. They further argue that there is no point in bowing to the will of an international community that is constitutionally incapable of ever standing with Israel.


In case you were wondering, proponents of the bill have it right.


The settlement regulation bill is not a radical bill. It is a liberal reform of a legal regime that harms the civil rights of both Palestinians and Israelis.


Palestinians today are denied their full property rights. Shortly after its establishment in 2004, the Palestinian Authority made selling land to Jews and Christians a capital offense. Dozens of Palestinians have been murdered over the past two decades in extrajudicial executions by both Palestinian security forces and by terrorist militias working hand in glove with Palestinian security forces for the “crime” of selling their land to Jews.


Earlier this year, the Israeli group Ad Kan documented employees of the European-financed far-left groups Ta’ayush and B’Tselem conspiring to hand over to Palestinian forces a Palestinian landowner who expressed interest in selling his land to Jews. During surreptitiously recorded exchanges, they acknowledged that the PA would likely execute him.


The settlement regulation bill empowers the military commander to seize privately owned land and compensate the owners. In other words, it provides a means for willing Palestinian sellers to sell their property to willing Jewish purchasers without risking the lives of the owners.


As I noted in a column on the subject of the bill last week, the legal opinion published by Attorney- General Avichai Mandelblit opposing the settlement regulation bill included four arguments.


Prof. Avi Bell from the Bar-Ilan University School of Law rebutted all of Mandelblit’s claims in an article published two weeks ago in Yisrael Hayom.


As Bell showed, Mandelblit’s claim that the proposed law breaches international law is both irrelevant – since Knesset laws supersede international law, and at best arguable.


Mandelblit further argued that the Knesset has no right to pass laws that supersede international laws pertaining to the belligerent occupation of land seized in war. But Bell demonstrated that the opposite is true. For instance, Israel’s Golan Heights Law from 1981 canceled the military government on the Golan Heights and applied Israeli law to the area.


Mandelblit claimed that eminent domain cannot be used to seize land for private construction projects. But as Bell showed, there are dozens of decisions by US courts permitting eminent domain to be used in just such cases.


Finally, Mandelblit argued that the Knesset doesn’t have the authority to pass laws that contradict High Court decisions. Here too, Bell showed that the opposite is the case.


Israel’s constitutional order is based on its Basic Laws. Basic Law: Knesset defines the Knesset as the highest legislative authority. In line with this, the Knesset has passed numerous laws over the years that have overturned High Court decisions.


On the basis of Mandelblit’s last argument, on Monday, Kahlon announced that Kulanu would not support the settlement regulation law.


Kahlon insisted that his party would not support any law that undermines the court’s authority and since the court ruled that Amona must be destroyed and its residents rendered homeless by December 25, Kahlon will take no action to save the community.


Kahlon insists that he is motivated by a desire to protect the court’s prerogatives. But when assessed in the context of actual laws, it is clear that his position doesn’t primarily defend the court. Rather it undermines the Knesset, and through it, Israeli democracy.


If the Knesset doesn’t have the right to pass laws that run counter to Supreme Court decisions, then the public that elected the Knesset is effectively disenfranchised. Far from securing Israel’s democracy and constitutional order, opposition to the settlement regulation bill undermines both.


Then there is the issue of Israel’s international standing.


On Monday the security cabinet convened to discuss the settlement regulation bill. According to leaked accounts of the six-hour meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Bennett that passage of the bill is liable to cause the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to indict Netanyahu as a war criminal.


He also warned that passage of the bill is liable to induce US President Barack Obama to enable an anti-Israel resolution to be adopted by the UN Security Council.

Netanyahu’s claims are deeply problematic.


Insofar as the ICC is concerned, three points counter Netanyahu’s argument. First, Bensouda is already conducting an investigation of Israel.


She opened her investigation shortly after she wrongly admitted “Palestine” as a state member of the ICC.


The ICC will continue to investigate Israel whether or not the Knesset passes the settlement regulation law. And the merits of the bill will have no impact on the ICC’s decision to prosecute or close the investigation.


The second problem with Netanyahu’s claim is that just by making it – and leaking it to the media – he empowered the ICC.


The ICC is becoming weaker by the day. Angry over the political nature of its prosecutions, African states are abandoning it. Russia also has announced it is walking away.


Israel should welcome this development.


The Treaty of Rome which established the ICC made clear that one of the court’s purposes is to criminalize Israel.


By arguing that the ICC will respond to the passage of the regulation bill by indicting Israel, Netanyahu is lending credence to the false claims that there is something unlawful about the bill on the one hand, and that the ICC’s politically motivated investigation of Israel is legally defensible on the other hand. Indeed, by claiming wrongly that passing the bill will expose Israel to ICC investigation, Netanyahu is effectively inviting the ICC to persecute him.


The ICC, like its comrades in the lawfare campaigns worldwide, always target those perceived as vulnerable to pressure. This is why leftists like former justice minister Tzipi Livni are targeted for war crimes complaints while current Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is left alone.


The most extraordinary example of this sort of political targeting came on Monday. The same day Netanyahu was making the case for the ICC and Obama in the cabinet, word came that Palestinian immigrants in Chile have filed a war crimes claim against three High Court justices. Former Palestinians from Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem, filed war crimes charges against retired Supreme Court president Asher Grunis and sitting justices Uzi Vogelman and Neal Hendel, all being accused of committing war crimes for their decision last year regarding the route of the security barrier around Jerusalem.


There is no governing institution in Israel more sensitive to war crimes accusations than the Supreme Court. To avoid just such charges, justices routinely second-guess military commanders and the government and deny them the right to use their best professional judgment to defend the country.


In the decision for which they are accused of war crimes, the three justices gave qualified approval to the IDF to complete the security barrier around Jerusalem on land owned by the petitioners in Beit Jala. In their ruling, the justices actually sided with the petitioners’ claim that the proposed routes harmed their rights and insisted that the IDF prove that it had no means of defending the capital without building the barrier along the proposed routes.


And for their efforts, the justices are now being accused of war crimes.


The same flawed premise at the heart of Netanyahu’s claim that approving the bill will cause Israel to be prosecuted for war crimes stands at the heart of his claim that passing the law will increase the possibility that Obama will allow an anti-Israel resolution to pass in the UN Security Council.


The problem with this argument is that it ignores the basic fact that Obama’s desire to stick it to Israel at the UN Security Council has been a consistent feature of his presidency for eight years. Obama has wielded this threat against Israel without regard for its actual policies. He has threatened us when the government froze Jewish building rights. He has threatened us when the government respected Jewish building rights. If Obama decides to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass through the UN Security Council during his remaining seven weeks in office, he will do so regardless of whether the Knesset passes or scuppers the settlement regulation bill.



The only thing likely to prevent Obama from harming Israel at the Security Council at this point is a clear message to the UN from the incoming Trump administration.


For instance, if President-elect Donald Trump announces directly or through an intermediary that Security Council action against Israel over the next seven weeks will induce the Trump administration to withhold US funding from the UN, UN officials will likely stuff draft resolutions to this effect into a drawer.


Netanyahu’s actions do more to harm his future relations with Trump than advance his current relations with Obama. If Netanyahu blocks passage of the settlement regulation bill, he is likely to enter the Trump era as the head of a government on the verge of collapse. Rather than be in a position to reshape and rebuild Israel’s alliance with the US after eight years of Obama’s hostility, Netanyahu may limp to his first meeting with the new president, the head of dysfunctional government beyond his control, and at the mercy of a legal fraternity and an international judicial lynch mob that he will have just empowered.

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/265022/israels-constitutional-identity-crisis-caroline-glick

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Fire Jihad in Israel - Mordechai Nisan

by Mordechai Nisan

A reflection on what citizenship demands.

The fire of Islam struck Israel beginning on November 22. It is not likely that the dry season and the easterly winds ignited four separate fire sites in Haifa, also in Zichron Yaakov, Gilon and Mitzpe Harashim in the Galilee, Nataf and Beit Meir in the Judean hills, Dolev and Talmon north of Jerusalem, and Neve Tsuf/Halamish in Samaria.

As in years past, Arab arsonists are primary suspects for this crime of wanton destruction. While police investigations continue, and the left-leaning reality-denying media outlets predictably exonerate the Arabs and blame meteorology and negligence, the experienced and intelligent Israeli public is not fooled. 'Not all Arabs are terrorists and arsonists' becomes the inane thought-control conclusion.

After six days, public authorities reported basic statistics: a quarter of Haifa's population, some 75,000 residents, were evacuated from their homes, while 1,700 dwellings were damaged and over 100 people hospitalized for smoke inhalation; 32,000 acres of land were burned in over 200 fires around the country. Some 10 countries provided Israel with firefighting planes, including the United States and Russia, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Italy, the Ukraine, Azerbaijan   and Croatia. Thirty Arabs (i.e. Muslims), of which 22 were Israeli citizens, and  others from the Palestinian Authority area in the West Bank, had been arrested and interrogated on suspicion of arson.

Insight into Muslim warfare methods can be gleaned from   Muhammad the prophet of Islam, who set fire to the palm groves of the Jewish tribe Banu el-Nadr in Medina, despite the fact that the next day, with the imminent banishment of the Jews, the groves would revert to the Muslims. Heaping destruction and humiliation upon the enemy was more satisfying than benefiting from his property. Islam, according to the Muslim scholar Ibn Hazm (994-1064), is permitted to burn the produce of the land and its trees as part of the jihad against infidels.

---

The wildfires in Israel lead us to address the place of the Arabs in Israel, incorrectly referred to as 'Israeli Arabs'. Their identity as Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims - excepting Christians and others who are not - transcends their nominal Israeli citizen status.

The Joint Arab List (JAL) of 13 Knesset members relentlessly conducts a political and ideological assault upon the State of Israel and its Jewish Zionist ethos. They are authentic representatives of the Arab voting public, of whom more than 90% cast their ballots for the JAL in the general elections of 2015.

At the head of the Israel-bashing Arab political class and parliamentary caucus is MK Ayman Odeh, himself a resident of Haifa. He is the visible and vocal spokesman of an embittered and angry minority group, demanding national status on the path to redefining Israel as a bi-national Jewish-Arab state. The formula of 'a state of all its citizens', with its democratic egalitarian melody, is designed to de-Zionize and destroy the renewed Jewish state. The state that is in fact for all its citizens is essentially and firstly the state of the Jewish people.  

Ayman Odeh, who recently memorialized Yasir Arafat at a commemoration ceremony in Ramallah, refused to attend the state funeral for Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. Politically active before entering the Knesset, Odeh aggressively campaigned against the proposal for Arab national service – Arabs are exempt from army service - because it would be in his view an act of 'collaboration' with the state.

During late 2015 and early 2016, Odeh visited New York and two incidents were noteworthy: he wrote the UN Secretary-General via the Palestinian delegation to the world forum and requested that an international investigation be conducted on the status of Arabs in Israel; and he refused to address the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations because they shared office space with the Jewish Agency where the Israeli flag is proudly displayed. Odeh's provocative political behavior included publicly supporting the BDS anti-Israel movement. For him, a Jewish majority and a Jewish state add up to Zionist racism.  

Ayman Odeh, leading the Joint Arab List, assumes a transparent theatrical pose parallel to the Arab incendiary struggle in Israel. His emotional bombast is pure drama. He oozed sentimentally during a TV interview in the days of the blazing fires: 'We [the Arabs] value nature and especially nature around Haifa where we have lived for centuries'. This fraudulent politician, having earlier visited Palestinian arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti serving five life-sentences in prison, now urged Jews and Arabs – as the fire burned Israel - to live together in our [Palestine] homeland.

Odeh makes one recall the Arab story, so entertaining in its culture-code idiom, of the specious mourner who joins in the funeral procession for the man he murdered.

---

Arab youth in Israel have been exposed to the anti-Zionist anti-Israel disparagement and condemnation of the state in which they live. The road is not long from sentiments to sallying forth to attack.  

Some of the arson sabateurs in this nationalist/Islamic jihad live under the brainwashing indoctrination of the Palestinian Authority's media and educational outlets. Yet it is the Arab citizens within the Green Line pre-1967 lines, in Sakhnin, Umm el-Fahm, and Jaffa, who studied in the state educational system and live in proximity to Israel's Jews, who highlight the striking anomaly of anti-Israeli Arabs enjoying citizenship in the Jewish state of Israel.  

Citizenship demands a moral and civic balance between rights and duties. Political philosophers over the ages, from Plato to Rousseau and Mill, understood that the grant of citizenship and liberty comes with a price and obligation. Should only the Jews in Israel carry the burden for the defense of the country while others defame, deride, and ridicule the country, absolving themselves from any ounce of solidarity and loyalty by word or deed?

A little less than a year ago, the Netanyahu government decided to budget 15 billion Israeli shekels ($3.5 billion) for the development of the Arab sector. Israel's unrequited generosity is not the way to educate and generate good citizenship in the Arabs. Certainly the hollowness of Odeh's call for Jewish-Arab coexistence is no more than verbal theatrics and throwing proverbial sand in the eyes of the Israeli Jews, and the world.  

Dr. Mordechai Nisan is the author of Only Israel West of the River: The Jewish State and the Palestinian Question.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265004/fire-jihad-israel-mordechai-nisan

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Self-Censorship: Free Society vs. Fear Society - Giulio Meotti

by Giulio Meotti

Is democracy lost?

• "The drama and the tragedy is that the only ones to win are the jihadists." — Flemming Rose, who published the Mohammed cartoons in 2005, as cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
• "Why the f*ck did you say yes to appear on stage with this terrorist target, are you stupid? Do you have a secret death wish? You have grandchildren now. Are you completely out of your mind? It's okay if you want to die yourself, but why are you taking the company though all this?" — The managers of Jyllands-Posten, to Flemming Rose.
• "We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation." — Editorial, Jyllands-Posten.
• "I do not blame them that they care about the safety of employees. I have bodyguards 24 hours a day. However, I believe that we must stand firm. If Flemming shuts his mouth, democracy will be lost." — Naser Khader, a liberal Muslim of Syrian origin who lives in Denmark.

In the summer of 2005, the Danish artist Kåre Bluitgen, when he met a journalist from the Ritzaus Bureau news agency, said he was unable to find anyone willing to illustrate his book on Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. Three illustrators he contacted, Bluitgen said, were too scared. A few months later, Bluitgen reported that he had found someone willing to illustrate his book, but only on the condition of anonymity.

Like most Danish newspapers, Jyllands-Posten decided to publish an article about Bluitgen's case. To test the state of freedom of expression, Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten's cultural editor at the time, called twelve cartoonists, and offered them $160 each to draw a caricature of Mohammed. What then happened is a well-known, chilling story.

In the wave of Islamist violence against the cartoons, at least two hundred people were killed. Danish products vanished from shelves in Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, the UAE and Lebanon. Masked gunmen stormed the offices of the European Union in Gaza and warned Danes and Norwegians to leave within 48 hours. In the Libyan city of Benghazi, protesters set fire to the Italian consulate. Political Islam understood what was being achieved and raised the stakes; the West did not.

An Islamic fatwa also forever changed Flemming Rose's life. In an Islamic caricature, his head was put on a pike. The Taliban offered a bounty to anyone who would kill him. Rose's office at the newspaper was repeatedly evacuated for bomb threats. And Rose's name and face entered ISIS's blacklist, along with that of the murdered editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier.

Less known is the "white fatwa" that the journalistic class imposed on Rose. This brave Danish journalist reveals it in a recently published book, "De Besatte" ("The Obsessed"). "It is the story of how fear devours souls, friendships and the professional community," says Rose. The book reveals how his own newspaper forced Rose to surrender.

"The drama and the tragedy is that the only ones to win are the jihadists," Flemming Rose told the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen.

The CEO of Jyllands-Posten, Jørgen Ejbøl, summoned Rose to his office, and asked, "You have grandchildren, do not you think about them?"

The company that publishes his newspaper, JP/Politikens Hus, said: "It's not about Rose, but the safety of two thousand employees."

Jorn Mikkelsen, Rose's former director, and the newspaper's business heads, obliged him to sign a nine-point diktat, in which the Danish journalist accepted, among other demands, "not participating in radio and television programs", "not attending conferences", "not commenting on religious issues", "not writing about the Organization of the Islamic Conference" and "not commenting on the cartoons".

Rose signed this letter of surrender during the harshest time for the newspaper, when, in 2010-2011, there were countless attempts on his life by terrorists, and also attempts on the life of Kurt Westergaard, illustrator of a cartoon (Mohammed with a bomb in his turban) that was burned in public squares across the Arab world. Westergaard was then placed on "indefinite leave" by Jyllands-Posten "for security reasons."

Is democracy lost? Eleven years after Jyllands-Posten published the Mohammed cartoons, the newspaper has a barbed-wire fence two meters high and one kilometer long. Kurt Westergaard, the illustrator who drew one of the cartoons (left), lives in hiding in a fortress, and Flemming Rose (right), the editor who commissioned the cartoons, has fled to the United States.

In his book, Rose also reveals that two articles were censored by his newspaper, along with an outburst from the CEO of the company, Lars Munch: "You have to stop, you're obsessed, on the fourth floor there are people who ask 'can't he stop?'".

Rose then drew more wrath from his managers when he agreed to participate in a conference with the equally targeted Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, who at this moment is on trial in the Netherlands for "hate speech." Rose writes:

He starts yelling at me, "Why the f*ck did you say yes to appear on stage with this terrorist target, are you stupid? Do you have a secret death wish? You have grandchildren now. Are you completely out of your mind? It's okay if you want to die yourself, but why are you taking the company though all this?"

Jyllands-Posten also pressured Rose when he decided to write a book about the cartoons, "Hymne til Friheden" ("Hymn to Freedom"). His editor told him that the newspaper would "curb the harmful effects" of the book by keeping its publication as low-key as possible. Rose was then threatened with dismissal if he did not cancel two debates for the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons (Rose, in fact, did not show up that day at a conference in Copenhagen).

After the 2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo, Rose, no longer willing to abide by the "diktat" he was ordered to sign, resigned as the head of the foreign desk of Jyllands-Posten, and now works in the U.S. for the Cato Institute think-tank. The former editor of Jyllands-Posten, Carsten Juste, who was also blacklisted by ISIS, confirmed Rose's allegations.

Rose writes in the conclusion of his book: "I'm not obsessed with anything. The fanatics are those who want to attack us, and the possessed are my former bosses at Jyllands-Posten."

Rose's revelations confirm another familiar story: Jyllands-Posten's surrender to fear. Since 2006, each time its editors and publishers were asked if they still would have published the drawings of Mohammed, the answer has always been "no." This response means that the editors had effectively tasked Rose with writing the newspaper for fanatics and terrorists thousands of kilometers away. Even after the January 7, 2015 massacre at the weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, targeted precisely because it had republished the Danish cartoons, Jyllands-Posten announced that, out of fear, it would not republish the cartoons:

"We have lived with the fear of a terrorist attack for nine years, and yes, that is the explanation why we do not reprint the cartoons, whether it be our own or Charlie Hebdo's. We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation."

A Danish comedian, Anders Matthesen, said that the newspaper and the cartoons were to blame for the Islamist violence -- the same official position as the entire European political and journalistic mainstream.

A year ago, for the 10th anniversary of the affair, instead of the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten came out with twelve white spaces. These white spaces represent what Rose, in his previous book, called "Tavshedens tiranni" ("The Tyranny of Silence"). Naser Khader, a liberal Muslim of Syrian origin who lives in Denmark, wrote:

"I do not blame them that they care about the safety of employees. I have bodyguards 24 hours a day. However, I believe that we must stand firm. If Flemming shuts his mouth, democracy will be lost."

Is democracy lost? The headquarters of Jyllands-Posten today has a barbed-wire fence two meters high and one kilometer long, a door with double lock (as in banks), and employees can only enter one at a time by typing in a personal code (a measure that did not protect Charlie Hebdo). Meanwhile, the former editor, Carsten Juste, has withdrawn from journalism; Kurt Westergaard lives in hiding in a fortress, and Flemming Rose, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled to the United States.

Much, certainly, looks lost. "We are not living in a 'free society' anymore, but in a 'fear society'", Rose has said.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9459/self-censorship

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"Nothing to do with Islam"? - Judith Bergman

by Judith Bergman

The jihadists who carry out terrorist attacks in the service of ISIS, for example, are merely following the commands in the Quran

• "Until religious leaders stand up and take responsibility for the actions of those who do things in the name of their religion, we will see no resolution." — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
• "The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar's programs... Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches... Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?" — Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and graduate of Egypt's Al Azhar University.
• The jihadists who carry out terrorist attacks in the service of ISIS, for example, are merely following the commands in the Quran, both 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them..." and Quran 8:39, "So fight them until there is no more fitna [strife] and all submit to the religion of Allah."
• Archbishop Welby -- and Egypt's extraordinary President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi -- has finally had the courage to say in public that if one insists on remaining "religiously illiterate," it is impossible to solve the problem of religiously motivated violence.

For the first time, a European establishment figure from the Church has spoken out against an argument exonerating ISIS and frequently peddled by Western political and cultural elites. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, speaking in France on November 17, said that dealing with the religiously-motivated violence in Europe

"requires a move away from the argument that has become increasingly popular, which is to say that ISIS is 'nothing to do with Islam'... Until religious leaders stand up and take responsibility for the actions of those who do things in the name of their religion, we will see no resolution."

Archbishop Welby also said that, "It's very difficult to understand the things that impel people to some of the dreadful actions that we have seen over the last few years unless you have some sense of religious literacy".

"Religious literacy" has indeed been in short supply, especially on the European continent. Nevertheless, all over the West, people with little-to-no knowledge of Islam, including political leaders, journalists and opinion makers, have all suddenly become "experts" on Islam and the Quran, assuring everybody that ISIS and other similarly genocidal terrorist groups have nothing to do with the purported "religion of peace," Islam.

It is therefore striking finally to hear a voice from the establishment, especially a man of the Church, oppose, however cautiously, this curiously uniform (and stupefyingly uninformed) view of Islam. Until now, establishment Churches, despite the atrocities committed against Christians by Muslims, have been exceedingly busy only with so-called "inter-faith dialogue." Pope Francis has even castigated Europeans for not being even more accommodating towards the migrants who have overwhelmed the continent, asking Europeans:

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?... the mother of great men and women who upheld, and even sacrificed their lives for, the dignity of their brothers and sisters?"

(Perhaps the Pope, before rhetorically asking Europeans to sacrifice their lives for their migrant "brothers and sisters" should ask himself whether many of the Muslim migrants in Europe consider Europeans their "brothers and sisters"?)

A statement on Islam is especially significant coming from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior bishop and principal leader of the Anglican Church and the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, which stands at around 85 million members worldwide, the third-largest communion in the world.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby (left), recently said that dealing with the religiously-motivated violence in Europe "requires a move away from the argument that has become increasingly popular, which is to say that ISIS is 'nothing to do with Islam'... Until religious leaders stand up and take responsibility for the actions of those who do things in the name of their religion, we will see no resolution." (Image source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

Only a year ago, commenting on the Paris massacres, the Archbishop followed conventional politically correct orthodoxy, pontificating that, "The perversion of faith is one of the most desperate aspects of our world today." He explained that Islamic State terrorists have distorted their faith to the extent that they believe they are glorifying their God. Since then, he has clearly changed his mind.

Can one expect other Church leaders and political figures to heed Archbishop Welby's words, or will they be conveniently overlooked? Western leaders have noticeably practiced selective hearing for many years and ignored truths that did not fit the "narrative" politicians apparently wished to imagine, especially when spoken by actual experts on Islam. When, in November 2015, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and graduate of Egypt's Al Azhar University, explained why the prestigious institution, which educates mainstream Islamic scholars, refused to denounce ISIS as un-Islamic, none of them was listening:

"The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar's programs. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc. Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya [extracting tribute from non-Muslims]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?"

Nor did Western leaders listen when The Atlantic, hardly an anti-establishment periodical, published a study by Graeme Wood, who researched the Islamic State and its ideology in depth. He spoke to members of the Islamic State and Islamic State recruiters and concluded:

"The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam".

In the United States, another establishment figure, Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump's incoming White House Chief of Staff, recently made statements to the same effect as the Archbishop of Canterbury. "Clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic and we know them; we've seen it," Priebus said when asked to comment on incoming National Security Adviser former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's view that Islam is a political ideology that hides behind being a religion.
In much of American society, Flynn's view that Islam is a political ideology is considered controversial, despite the fact that the political and military doctrines of Islam, succinctly summarized in the concept of jihad, are codified in Islamic law, sharia, as found in the Quran and the hadiths. The jihadists who carry out terrorist attacks in the service of ISIS, for example, are merely following the commands in the Quran, both 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them..." and Quran 8:39, "So fight them until there is no more fitna [strife] and all submit to the religion of Allah."

The question becomes, then, whether other establishment figures will also acknowledge what someone like Archbishop Welby -- and Egypt's extraordinary President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi -- has finally had the courage to say in public: that if one insists on remaining "religiously illiterate," it is impossible to solve the problem of religiously motivated violence.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9444/nothing-to-do-with-islam

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