The Danger to Jordan of a Palestinian State - Abe Haak

by Abe Haak

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan stands to lose more than any other party from the establishment of a State of Palestine.

Egyptian President Gamal Nasser brokering ceasefire ending Black September with PLO Chairman Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan, 1970, photo via Wikimedia Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 852, June 1, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan stands to lose more than any other party from the establishment of a State of Palestine. While the potential dangers and complications for Israel of such a state could be significant, Jordan would face threats to both its social stability and its foundational idea: that it governs the Arab population on both banks of its eponymous river. In addition to the substantial political and security difficulties such a state would create for Jordan, it could also jeopardize its continued viability by shifting the locus of political leadership for a majority of Jordanians away from Amman and towards Ramallah. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that Palestinian statehood is a moribund idea. Despite official pronouncements, none of the principal parties seem very keen on achieving it, least of all the PA.

However, if, through some unilateral action, a State of Palestine were to be declared in the territory comprising Areas A & B, the repercussions (mostly negative) would affect the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan more than any other party, including Israel.

The dangers to the Kingdom would manifest themselves on three levels: the political threat, the security threat, and the existential threat.

The Political Threat

With the establishment (or announcement) of a state of Palestine, the tensions that have characterized the relationship between the Palestinian organizations and the Hashemite Kingdom since the 1960s would take on an institutional concreteness, and would become a fixed feature of the new post-statehood scene. The recent tension over access and security management of the Temple Mount area provides a foretaste of the public embarrassments and diplomatic paralysis that would afflict the crucial Israel-Jordan relationship as a result.

Israel and Jordan are developing very close institutional relationships – perhaps the strongest in the region. Economic integration is moving apace, with significant portions of Jordan’s energy and water consumption to be provided by Israel. This provision is on track to reach such a level in the foreseeable future as to increase the likelihood that a sudden interruption would have catastrophic results for the Kingdom.

Cooperation and integration in the security sphere are arguably just as important. For decades, Jordan’s enemies, both internal and external, have had to reckon with a powerful pair of disincentives when contemplating violent action against the government: a first line of defense consisting of a tenaciously loyal Jordanian army, and a second in the form of an overwhelmingly powerful IDF.

Even with this background of increasing integration, the Jordan-Israel relationship is chronically strained by the adventurism and rejectionism of the PA leadership. That strain would worsen dramatically if the Palestinian leadership had full statehood rights at Arab and international fora.

The Security Threat

For a preview of the relationship Jordan would have with a State of Palestine across the river, one can look to Egypt’s current relationship with Hamas. The main difference is that Jordan’s troubles would be many times greater than those from which Egypt suffers today. The reasons are many:

1. Jordan’s border with the West Bank is longer and more porous than the one between Gaza and the Sinai.
2. The presence of Palestinian political forces, especially those supporting Hamas, are greater and more entrenched in Jordan’s political life than they are in Egypt’s.
3. Jordan’s south is both more populous and in some towns (notably Maan) more radicalized than the Sinai tribes who, under the banner of ISIS, have at times wrested control of parts of the peninsula from Egypt.
4. Perhaps most importantly, on cultural, linguistic, and ethnic grounds, the distinction between Egyptians and Gazans is much clearer than that between the Arabs living on either side of the Jordan River. As a result, cracking down on organized subversion or even a low-intensity insurgency in Jordan would feel more like a civil war. It would test the loyalty of the Jordanian armed forces, especially if Israel is seen as the Jordanian government’s partner in such an effort.
5. Last but not least, Jordan would have to contend with a security nightmare-scenario that would likely develop soon after a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Such a declaration would probably precipitate an Israeli decision to pull the plug on a corrupt and ineffectual PA, a move that would almost certainly bring about its collapse. This would then be followed by a bloody struggle for supremacy between nationalists and Islamists, as occurred in Gaza. Because of the lack of contiguity between many towns in Areas A and B, the outcome will not be a speedy Hamas victory as occurred in Gaza in 2006, but a prolonged, low-intensity civil war with assassinations and sporadic outbreaks of mass violence. Israel would probably limit itself to containing and preventing the violence from spilling into Area C and beyond.

Regardless who gains the upper hand, West Bank Arabs able to escape this bloody mess will do so in a hurry, and will head in the only direction open to them: eastwards, to Jordan. The Kingdom will then be faced with two unhappy choices: either to absorb yet another large wave of restive refugees into a system already bursting at the seams, or to reassert, with likely Israeli acquiescence, limited administrative and security prerogatives over the afflicted areas in the West Bank in order to forestall a greater humanitarian catastrophe and the mass exodus such a catastrophe would precipitate.

The Existential Threat

It is arguable that these threat scenarios could be handled by a Jordanian leadership and army that have repeatedly demonstrated resilience in crises of greater duration and severity. However, setting aside all the situational challenges that a declaration of Palestinian statehood would engender for Jordan, a qualitatively greater long-term strategic threat will inevitably develop for the Kingdom from the realization of Palestinian statehood.

It is a fact that most Palestinians are Jordanian and most Jordanians are Palestinian. More precisely stated: a majority of those who self-identify as Palestinians inside and outside Jordan carry a Jordanian passport (including Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mash’al); and a majority of Jordan’s resident population self-identify as Palestinians. This has been Jordan’s chronic conundrum since the late 1950s, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser began actively incubating a separatist Palestinian nationalism in direct challenge to Jordan’s formal custody of West Bank Arabs. Simply put, the putative Palestinian national identity was the result of an Egyptian anti-Hashemite campaign begun in the late 1950s and institutionalized with the creation of the PLO at the Cairo Arab Summit of 1964.

This anti-Hashemite campaign was at the core of Jordan’s most dangerous cascade of crises in 1959, 1967, 1970-71, 1986, and 1988. A formal declaration of Palestinian statehood would take it to a much more dangerous level for the simple reason that a state cannot long survive when a majority of its citizens claim the national identity of a neighboring (and likely adversarial) state.

This concept is easily grasped. If, for example, a majority of Guatemala’s citizens self-identified as Mexican, Guatemala would simply turn into a cultural and political vassal of Mexico.

Similarly, the national identity of Jordan and its political viability will be difficult to sustain if a majority of its citizens owe political allegiance to a foreign, neighboring, albeit Arab state. Such a state would be able to indirectly steer the affairs of Jordan by mobilizing a sizable part of the citizenry to do its bidding if its interests conflict with those of the Jordanian government.

Setting aside the official Jordanian posture towards the conflict, the political class in the Kingdom must be aware of these threats from a future Palestinian state, especially the first two. But it also needs to be aware that the entire edifice of the Palestinian national movement is a political construct of Jordan’s Arab enemies that was meant to make the country ungovernable by the late King Hussein. In their origins and practice, Palestinian nationalist organizations, regardless of their rhetoric, have been more anti-Hashemite than anti-Zionist. These organizations have always claimed to represent a majority of Jordan’s citizens, a dangerous claim for any country. For Jordan, such a claim becomes intolerable when concretized in an adjacent state whose leadership has a history of serially attempting to sabotage Hashemite rule.

In the view of many Jordanians, the disengagement announcement of 1988, which formally recognized the PLO as sole representative of the “Palestinians” (a majority of Jordan’s citizens), was a mistake that sundered the national demographic unity of the country in response to Arab political pressures. The conditions that generated those pressures are now gone – indeed, they are reversed. Consequently, Jordan should consider reversing the announcement (which, constitutionally speaking, remains invalid to this day because it was never ratified by Jordan’s parliament). This would be in the best interest of Jordan’s citizens on both banks, and in the best interests of peace and stability in the region.

View PDF

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Abe Haak is a Jordan-born, ATA-certified translator and educator. He worked as a research assistant in the Faculty Research Service at the Harvard Law School, and as an Assistant Professor at Senzoku University in Japan. Abe teaches in the German and Arabic Translation programs at New York University.

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/danger-jordan-palestinian-state/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

EU demands Israel nix demolition of illegal Arab town - David Rosenberg

by David Rosenberg

European Union rips Israel over plans to remove illegal Bedouin settlement near Jerusalem, expand town of Maaleh Adumim.

The European Union demanded that Israel cancel plans to evict Bedouin squatters from illegally-erected structures just east of Jerusalem, and condemned a planned housing project in the area for the Israeli town of Maaleh Adumim.

Israeli authorities recently announced plans to demolish the Bedouin encampment known as Khan al-Ahmar.

The illegal community, which lies entirely in Area C under full Israeli control, was established without any building permits. The encampment is located in the strategically important E-1 area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, one of the largest Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

Israel also recently approved housing permits for 92 new units in Maaleh Adumim on the edge of E-1.

In a statement Thursday, the 28-member European body claimed the demolition of the unauthorized Bedouin encampment was “illegal”, and constituted a “forced transfer”.

“In line with our long-standing position on Israel’s settlement policy, illegal under international law, and actions taken in that context, such as forced transfers, evictions, demolitions and confiscations of homes, the EU expects the Israeli authorities to reconsider and reverse these decisions,” the statement read in part.

“These developments, alongside a number of other related actions taken in recent months, seriously undermine the viability of a negotiated two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace.”

“Building new settlements for Israelis while demolishing Palestinian homes in the same area will only further entrench a one-state reality of unequal rights, perpetual occupation and conflict.”

The European Union has in the past financed the construction of illegal Arab encampments in Judea and Samaria, and condemned Israel for the demolition of EU-backed illegal structures.


David Rosenberg

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/246792

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

Secret Courts Guarantee Abuse - Michael Ledeen

by Michael Ledeen

And boy, do we have abuse.

I testified against the Patriot Act because I feared the abuse of secret tribunals.  I’m usually far off in my predictions, but it was obvious from the get-go that the FISA courts would be abused by the Intelligence Community, and indeed those secret courts have almost always done what the FBI and CIA asked, even when—as in the case of General Michael Flynn—the IC had to ask several times, and even when the “evidence” consisted of an unverified “dossier” produced by a political campaign.

The Intelligence Community has long considered itself a state within the American state, dating from its creation just after World War II.  Most of the time, the IC has used its power to support presidential policies—the CIA snooped on the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2014, and on the McGovern campaign, and the FBI spied on the Goldwater campaign-- but when a president acted against the IC’s convictions, the spooks advanced their own interests and beliefs.

No sooner had President Truman recognized the state of Israel, than the CIA swung into (illegal) action, secretly creating the American Friends of the Middle East, which brought Middle Easterners to America, published their views, and lobbied Congress, all against Israel.  In the words of Hudson’s Michael Doran, 

AFME was a remarkable instance of a CIA-confected front organization designed to counter official government policy, in this case by seeking to delegitimize Zionism in domestic American politics.

Truman quickly understood what was at stake.  “It's become a government all of its own and all secret.  They don't have to account to anybody.”.

It was, Truman recognized, part of a broader problem: bureaucrats who saw themselves, not mere elected officials, as the only legitimate policy makers.  “The civil servant, the general or admiral, the foreign service officer,” Truman insisted, “has no authority to make policy. They act only as servants of the government, and therefore they must remain in line with the government policy that is established by those who have been chosen by the people to set that policy.”

This enraged the president, who was also furious at the State Department’s opposition to his Middle East policies.  Yet bureaucratic action against presidential policies remained common.  As Truman discovered, the IC used “intelligence” to undermine presidential policies and advance its own.  This was demonstrated in the 1970s, when a private-sector group of analysts known as “Team B”—led by the recently-departed Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard--successfully challenged the CIA’s view of Soviet military strength, and the CIA’s conviction that we had very little to fear from the Kremlin.

Back in the Truman years, the president was able to appreciate Soviet intentions better than the IC, ironically thanks in no small part to his own intelligence operation in cahoots with Israel.  Ironically, Truman opened a secret back channel to Tel Aviv at the same time the CIA was sabotaging American cooperation with the Jewish state, via the legendary spook James Jesus Angleton, whose point of contact in Israel was Ben-Gurion’s personal secretary, Teddy Kolleck.  The two worked closely with Israel’s domestic security service, the Shin Bet, debriefing Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Empire.  Angleton, like most CIA officials, suspected the Israelis of collusion with the Soviet Union, but in time he realized this was not true.  Angleton subsequently received the text of Khrushchev’s speech about Stalin’s crimes…from the Israelis.  He was subsequently outed by CIA chief William Colby, with whom he had had many disagreements.

Bureaucratic arrogance is an ongoing problem, nowhere more than the Intelligence Community.  The problem is more grave today, with the advances in electronic snooping, the courts’ willingness to let the intelligence agencies pry into all manner of communications, and the zeal with which the media report improper leaks.  As Lee Smith recently tweeted:

They (the IC) ran a counterintelligence investigation of a former rival spy chief, Mike Flynn, a retired 3-star General. Abuse. Then they leaked intercept of his conversation with Russian ambassador. Crime. Now our 3d world press hires our 3d world spy chiefs.

Secret tribunals guarantee this sort of corruption.  Yes, there are cases where decisions on spying on Americans must be secret, but we pay a terrible price for them.  And as things stand, the snoopers have all the cards.  The game is totally rigged.


Michael Ledeen is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270325/secret-courts-guarantee-abuse-michael-ledeen

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

The Conflict Beyond Advocacy - Dr. Shmuel Katz

by Dr. Shmuel Katz

The Jewish community is in danger and so is the Free World as we know it.

Reprinted from IsraelNationalNews.com.

Who would have believed that within certain communities, there could be more supporters of the radical Arab Palestinian agenda than supporters of the free, democratic and altruistic State of Israel. The relentless Arab Palestinian deceitful and well-organized propaganda, with the irrational support of many in the Western Media, may be a part of this transition.
The Democratic Party in the USA used to be a staunch supporter of the just cause of the State of Israel, but a recent Pew Research Center report showed a dangerous shift in this attitude. Within the more radical liberal branch of the Democratic party, about 38% will be anti-Israeli while the supporters of Israel will be only about 26%. When you look at the overall numbers as they relate to the Democratic party, you find that about 31% will be anti-Israeli and only 33% will be pro-Israel. On the other hand, within the Republican party, about 74% will be pro-Israel.

If one wants to know what the intentions of the Radical Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are, one should just listen to them. They are not bashful.

Despite an absolute bipartisan support for moving the USA Embassy to the legitimate Capital City of Israel, Jerusalem, there were no Democratic members of Congress in attendance at the opening ceremony of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Even more surprisingly, Chuck Schumer, who voted in Congress against the Iran Deal, criticized President Trump bitterly for exposing the bad intentions and the lies of the Iranians, and for withdrawing from the originally ill-conceived Iranian Deal, implemented by President Obama via an executive order, without the ratification by Congress.
If one wants to know what the intentions of the Radical Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are, one should just listen to them. They are not bashful, they will tell you that they are going to “play” the Mainstream Media and the Alternative Media, to carry their vicious propaganda. They are maligning the State of Israel, the USA and the Moderate Western Societies, while they promise to carry out their agenda to destroy the State of Israel within any borders, kill the Jews wherever they can find them, take over the free world as we know it and destroy all Infidels.

A new report just came out, in addition to many others which came out in the past, about the rampant misuse of the millions of dollars of funds given to UNRWA. Instead of educating the Palestinian children and giving them the tools to become useful citizens of society, much of the funds are invested in perpetuating the misery and the conflict which will guarantee the extension of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the hatred of the West, for generations to come.
The following is shocking:

New Video Exposes Terror Education in UNRWA schools in Gaza Funded by the USA & World Donors: 

For some mysterious reason, many in the Media are ignoring the abuse of children, women and the disabled as human shields by the Arab Palestinian perpetrators of the mayhem on the Gaza Border. They will not mention the use by the Arab Palestinians, of Molotov Cocktails, fire bombs, fire arms, fire kites, stones, knives, etc. which were used to assault the Israeli civilians and military. The fact that Israel unilaterally left Gaza hoping for a peaceful resolution of the conflict and the fact that Israel offered multiple times to get into practical negotiations toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict, were totally ignored.

The wishful thinking by some, that should the Radical Arab Palestinians prevail and the state of Israel be eliminated, the free world will be a better place, borders on insanity. Do we have to remind the free press, for example, what happens to journalists under Hamas in Gaza, under ISIS in Iraq, under Assad in Syria, under Erdogan in Turkey and under Chavez in Venezuela?  Do we have to remind the “open minded” people that thousands of innocent people died when the Twin Towers were destroyed in New York City, one of the most liberal locations in the USA?

The dangerous lack of relevant and truthful education of the masses, allows the perpetrators of malicious propaganda to achieve their goals. Many good people do not realize that they are being used and abused to the benefit of self-serving malicious, smooth talking, operatives. These operatives are experts in using the key undeniable appealing words, like: peace, justice, equality, tolerance, legality, human rights and freedom. At the same time, they will abuse the universally objectionable words like: apartheid, oppression, illegal occupation, torture and abuse, even if the true facts will not support the allegations. For them, Delegitimization, Demonization and Double Standards are acceptable means that can be used and abused to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel and that of many others in the free world. 

No wonder that the free world is losing the propaganda war!! The bad people will not feed their children but will put most of their internationally acquired resources, into their anti-Western ideology.

People who know the truth and the facts before being exposed to the Arab Palestinian propaganda machine, are less likely to fall into their dangerous trap.

It is high time for the free world to wake up and put on a serious fight for a better future for all.
We could start by looking into the following resources: 

A few very informative short and factual booklets, addressing these issues, can be found on the web site of StandWithUs at: https://www.standwithus.com/booklets/.

Some wise general information can be found at: https://www.prageru.com.
Valuable films and reports with insight into little known dynamics, can be found at: 
https://clarionproject.org.

Once we are better educated, we could do the following:

1. Expose the bad people for what they are.
2. Expose who is financing them, and what is their real agenda.
3. Shame their use of malicious propaganda by widely exposing their blatant lies and deception.
4. Educate the next generation with the facts and the truth.
5. Share the truth and the facts with all your contacts and advise them to become ambassadors for a good cause, by sharing what they learned from you, with as many people as they can.
6. Find ways to increase the exposure of the good information on the Mainstream Media and on the Alternative Media, and help make them go viral.
7. Find out where you can be even more effective and use it to enhance your message.
May we merit to see better days for the free world, speedily in our times.

Dr. Shmuel Katzwas born in Hungary and was raised in Israel. He served as an officer in the Israeli army during the Six Day War (1967) where he decided to become a doctor. He gained extensive trauma experience while serving during the Yom Kippur War (1973). He is double-boarded in Surgery, a Fellow of the Israeli Surgical Society and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and is a member of multiple other medical societies. Dr. Katz is currently a Senior VP and past Chairman of the Executive Board of the Greater Miami Hebrew Academy; is currently on the board and served as the Past President of the Greater Miami chapter of the Friends of the IDF; on the National Board of the FIDF; on the Board of Trustees of The Shul of Bal-Harbour; a member of the international Board of StandWithUs, PJTN, Jerusalem U, and has played a key role on multiple additional advisory boards and committees, in the USA and abroad.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270320/conflict-beyond-advocacy-dr-shmuel-katz

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

Opening the White House to the Muslim Brotherhood - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

Both Valerie Jarrett and Huma Abedin made the jihadis feel right at home.

One of the unfortunate side effects of Roseanne's racist tweet implosion involving Valerie Jarrett is that it may put off limits the documented influence held by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama administration – influence that was so great that we handed over a loyal ally, Egypt, into its control for a time.

The key player in Obama's administration is the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett. Her role in the Obama administration has been likened to the mysterious Rasputin in the era of the Russian czars:

Her influence is shown by an account in Richard Miniter's book "Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him."
It relates that at the urging of Jarrett, Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission. Seems she was concerned about the possible political harm to Obama if the mission failed.

Then there is Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and top aide to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She is expected to assume the Jarrett role in a Hillary Clinton White House. Her affiliations and loyalties are also suspect:

Her father is said to be close with the Saudi government's Muslim World League, and her mother is said to be a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. World Trade Center bombing prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review: "The ties of Ms. Abedin's father, mother and brother to the Muslim Brotherhood are both specific and substantiated."
The Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt with the Obama administration's approval after it had all but abandoned the government of Hosni Mubarak, a long-time ally and friend. It was while Abedin was advising Hillary that State dropped its long-standing policy of having no dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In early 2015, Jarrett brokered a meeting between Obama and 14 Muslim leaders, some with disturbingly close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood:

[T]he White House confirmed that Azhar Azeez, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was one of the Muslim leaders that met with President Obama. ISNA was founded in 1981 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial[.] ...

Azeez's bio also reveals him as a founding member the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter. CAIR has also allegedly funneled money to Palestinian terror groups and was also started by members of the Muslim Brotherhood[.] ...
Hoda Elshishtawy of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) was also in attendance at the Muslim leaders' meeting with President Obama.
MPAC, just like CAIR and ISNA, was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood[.] ...
Mohamed Majid, who serves as Imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), was also in attendance at the White House meeting with the President, and senior advisors Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett.
In 2002, ADAMS was raided as part of a U.S. government initiative called "Operation Green Quest," where federal agents suspected the group of supporting terrorist organizations. Government documents said that the ADAMS Center was "suspected of providing support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion."

If you have ever wondered just why President Obama could never bring himself to condemn or even say "radical Islamic terrorism," Valerie Jarrett is one of the reasons. One of the very first things he did as president was to give a speech to students in Cairo in 2009 in which he apologized for America's role as the world bully, particularly in the Islamic world, and for our support of our only true ally in the Middle East. His snubbing of both Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not subtle, and his push to make Iran a nuclear power, in opposition to the will of Congress and the American people, showed just where his, and Jarrett's, hearts were.

Christians were being murdered around the world, and little was done by the Obama-Jarrett administration to help them or even acknowledge the fact or that Islamic jihadists have marked them for genocide. President Obama's silence on this ongoing slaughter speaks volumes about his and Jarrett's true loyalties:

From the Christian-influenced Yazidis in Iraq to the Christian schoolgirls targeted by Boko Haram in Nigeria, Christians worldwide have had their churches bombed and burned and themselves murdered, all because of what they believe and who they are.
Yet, with few exceptions, Obama refuses to acknowledge or even mention this fact.
On Sunday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who had also expressed the administration's condemnation of the "random" attacks in Paris, issued a statement condemning the IS's murder of 21 Egyptian "citizens." No mention of their being Coptic Christians.

Ft. Hood was "workplace violence." Benghazi was a spontaneous response to an inflammatory video. Paris was just a case of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When world leaders marched in Paris to protest the latest Islamic atrocity, Barack Hussein Obama was conspicuous by his absence.

In Obama's world, Islam is a religion of tolerance; not so much Christians, maligned as "bitter clingers." He took a shot at Christians when he said at an Easter Prayer Breakfast that "I have to say that, sometimes when I listen to other less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned." Not so concerned was he by the mass beheading of Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach by the Islamic State.

The coziness among Obama, Jarrett, Abedin, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other radical Islamic terrorist groups is a historical fact and should not be obscured by a bigoted tweet.


Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/opening_the_white_house_to_the_moslem_brotherhood.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

Why International Farhud Day Stymies Invented Palestinian History - Edwin Black

by Edwin Black

Remembering the movement to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East.

When International Farhud Day was proclaimed at a conference convened at the United Nations headquarters on June 1, 2015, its proponents wanted to achieve more than merely establish a commemoration of the ghastly 1941 Arab-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad that killed and injured hundreds of Iraqi Jews. Farhud means violent dispossession. The Farhud [was] but the first bloody step along the tormented path to the ultimate expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from across the Arab world. That systematic expulsion ended centuries of Jewish existence and stature in those lands. 

Jews had thrived in Iraq for 2,700 years, a thousand years before Mohammad. But all that came to end when the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the broad Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust that produced a military, economic, political, and ideological common cause with Hitler. Although Husseini spearheaded an international pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Islamic movement from India to Central Europe to the Middle East, it was in Baghdad—a 1,000-kilometer drive from Jerusalem— that he launched his robust coordination with the Third Reich. 

In 1941, Iraq still hosted Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which controlled the region’s oil. Hitler wanted that oil to propel his invasion of Russia. The Arabs, led by Husseini, wanted the Jews out of Palestine and Europe’s persecuted Jews kept away from the Middle East. Indeed, Husseini persuasively argued to Hitler that Jews should not be expelled to Palestine but rather to “Poland,” where “they will be under active control.” Translation: send Jews to the concentration camps. Husseini had visited concentration camps. He had been hosted by architect of the genocide Heinrich Himmler, and the Mufti considered Shoah engineer Adolf Eichmann not only a great friend, but a “diamond” among men. 

Nazi lust for oil and Arab hatred of Jews combined synergistically June 1–2, 1941 burning the Farhud into history. Arab soldiers, police, and hooligans, swearing allegiance to the Mufti and Hitler, bolstered by fascist coup plotters known as the Golden Square, ran wild in the streets, raping, shooting, burning, dismembering, and decapitating. Jewish blood flowed through those streets and their screams created echoes that have never faded.

The 1941 Farhud massacre, which was launched in tandem with an attempted takeover of the British oil fields and London’s airbase at Habbaniya, set the stage for the Mufti-Hitler summit and the establishment of three Islamic and Arab Waffen SS divisions in central Europe under Himmler’s direct sponsorship. After the State of Israel was established in 1948, Mufti adherents and devotees throughout the Arab world, working through the Arab League, openly and systematically expelled 850,000 Jews from Morocco to Lebanon. Penniless and stateless, many of those refugees were airlifted to Israel where they were absorbed and became almost half the families of Israel. 

Remembering the tragic facts of the Farhud process will make it harder for the newly invented history to take root. After the Arabs rebranded themselves as “Palestinians” in May 1964 with the backing of the Soviet KGB, a new narrative began to come together. In part, it pretends that the Arabs of Ottoman and then British Palestine did not arrive in the Seventh Century during the Arab-Islamic Conquest, as history records. Their narrative now asserts that [they] are actually descendants of the Canaanites and the Philistines. Palestine is named for the Philistines. After the Jews were expelled by the Romans in about 135-136 CE, the name of their nation was changed from Judea to Syria Palaestina. But in truth, the Israelites gave rise to the only true surviving Canaanites. The Philistines were Greek Island sea invaders defeated by Ramses III in about 1150 BCE and sequestered into the Gaza Pentapolis, not Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula who conquered in the seventh century CE.

Invented Palestinian history also asserts that present-day Israelis are almost entirely transplants from such alien regions as the Ukraine, Poland, Brooklyn, and Germany—or descendants thereof. Remembering the Farhud helps us understand that almost half the early Jewish families in newly declared Israel were not from across the sea, but rather from across the river, across the bridge, down the road, and plucked from the same culture. 

What’s more, the fabricated Palestinian history laments that Palestine became just a consolation prize for the Holocaust—a tragedy that either never occurred or was a purely European misdeed for which Arabs are not responsible and in which they were not involved. Remembering the 1941 Farhud and the Arab-Nazi alliance that sparked it, locks in Arab involvement in the Holocaust as one of full partnership with the Third Reich. This Nazi-Arab alliance thrived, complete with tens of thousands of Islamic and Arab volunteers arduously fighting in the trenches, coordinating diplomatic and strategic affairs through the Arab Higher Committee, broadcasting nightly incendiary hate messages beginning with words “Oh Muslims,” and undertaking all things calculated to advance a German victory which promised an Arab state in Palestine and a disappeared Jewish population. No wonder the Arab marketplaces were filled with placards that exhorted, “In Heaven, Allah is your ruler. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler.” 

The established and incontrovertible facts chronicling the Arab world’s deep and enthusiastic anti-Jewish alliance with the Third Reich during the Holocaust, which exploded into the Farhud, plus the subsequent population shift that Arab governments engineered to expel 850,000 of their own Jewish citizens, make it impossible to weave a fabric of invented history. Recognizing, remembering, and reminding the world of those facts on International Farhud Day, June 1, will help all participants and observers of the Arab-Israeli conflict confront the true legacy that has helped create today’s stalemate. Recognition is the first step along the painful path toward reconciliation. 


Edwin Black is the New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust, and the prize-winning book The Farhud—Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust. In 2015, Black organized and founded International Farhud Day.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270324/why-international-farhud-day-stymies-invented-edwin-black

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

It's not the 'occupation,' it's the Jews - Dror Eydar

by Dror Eydar

If you're so inclined, look up the Hamas charter online and you will see how blind some of us tend to be to our enemies' deep-seated ideological foundation against our very existence not as Israelis, but as Jews.

Hamas members attend the funeral of their comrades who 

were killed in an explosion, in the central Gaza Strip last month

Photo: Reuters

Look at any news site in the world, and in almost all of them, you'll find the Gaza Strip reported as a territory "occupied" by Israel. 

Here's the reality: Israel withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005, under the misguided assumption that the Palestinian Authority would have jurisdiction there. 

But that was not to be the case. Six months after Israel's withdrawal, Hamas won the Palestinian election and the following summer staged a violent coup. The fact that Hamas was preparing for war prompted Israel to monitor the border crossings between Israel and Gaza, knowing very well that Hamas was less interested in the welfare of the residents of Gaza than in obtaining weapons and building defenses.

The facts are readily available to anyone who looks, but that never seems to matter. We are consistently described as occupiers. Incidentally, the Egyptians also monitor their border crossings with Gaza, but no one ever pulls the "occupier" label on them. That's reserved only for the Jews.

Let's reiterate: The "occupation" is not a claim, it is a perception, and it is founded on the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of the Land of Israel is abhorrent. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, Israel relinquished control over the vast majority of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria. They have a Palestinian government with a Palestinian flag and a Palestinian national anthem and Palestinian budgets. They are supposed to vote in Palestinian parliamentary elections. Most of the territory isn't populated, and Israel has a historical right to it as a nation.

The Israeli military deploys around the Palestinian areas to protect them, and us, from Hamas radicalization. What happened in Gaza could happen tenfold in Judea and Samaria if we make the mistake of pulling out. If we do, we will really have to fight for our lives from the homefront and the Palestinians could sustain a worse blow than anything seen before. So yes, there is an Israeli presence around Judea and Samaria. But unlike the reality in Gaza, our military presence in Judea and Samaria has proved itself. The Judea and Samaria region is one of the calmest, safest places for Arabs in the entire Middle East. But that doesn't matter. The view of Israel in the world is even worse now than it was before the Oslo Accords. We are seen only as occupiers.

Bleeding hearts and rights activists contend that we need to "separate from them or give them full civil rights." But we did separate from them. "Give them an independent state," they demand. They had every opportunity to establish a state in Gaza, but they demonstrated that civil government, in and of itself, is not a priority for them. They only care about self-rule as a weapon of war against us. "Well, then, give them full civil rights," they say. But they do enjoy civil rights under the Palestinian Authority. Who says that every ethnic minority is entitled to its own independent state? And if the designated state fails to thrive, and makes the lives of its citizens miserable? And worse yet, if the state poses an existential threat to Israel? Will it still be deemed such a fundamental right?   

So in the absence of an independent state "give them full Israeli citizenship," they argue. And that will solve the "occupation" problem? There are Arab representatives in the Israeli Knesset already. As far as they're concerned, are they not under an occupation? Do they accept the self-definition of the state that they inhabit? Do they accept its symbols? Do they recognize its sovereignty over the land? You can't fool us. Anyone who read the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee's so-called position paper – "The Future Vision of the Arab Palestinians in Israel" published in 2006 – will see that to them, the Jews are foreign colonialists who came to a land that doesn't belong to them (Palestine). As long as Israel defines itself as the national state of the Jewish people, and not the state of any other nationality, the Arab political (as well as much of the intellectual) leadership will continue to feel that their Israeli citizenship was forced on them as a result of their "catastrophe" in the 1948 War of Independence. So what if they have Israeli citizenship? Would it make a psychological difference to a prisoner if he was allowed cast a vote in the elections for warden? Would it change the prisoner's status?

Incidentally, what about Jordan? Most of Jordan's citizens are Palestinians under the rule of the Hashemite dynasty, originally from the Kingdom of Hejaz. Does this situation not meet all the known criteria for an occupation?

The West, including Israel, holds the Middle East to Western political standards and applies Western insights to the Middle Eastern reality, even though the region is far more ancient than the West and its fundamental governing, political, cultural and religious perceptions are entirely different than the West's. The West speaks in the language of logic – a rational language that flattens the deep layers of life here, ignoring the region's ancient mythology and misguidedly believing that the religious factor here can be countered in the same way it was dealt with in Europe (these days, Christian Europe itself is a bit helpless in the face of the Middle Eastern religion flooding its streets). 

If you're so inclined, look up the Hamas charter online and you will see how blind some of us tend to be to our enemies' deep-seated ideological foundation against our very existence not as Israelis, but as Jews. Article 8 of the charter, the organization's political and military platform, presents Hamas' slogan of resistance, which was originally the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan since 1928: "Allah is [the organization's] goal. The Prophet is its leader. The Quran is its constitution. Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is its most coveted desire." 

This is the root of all the charter's assertions. For example, article 12 describes how negotiations between states or peoples – one of the underpinnings of the conventional Western thinking – are secondary to the idea that the "Nationalism [of every nation], from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed." Do you believe that? In psycho-historical terms, this is tantamount to subordinating the logos (rationalism) to the mythos. This view of the world will never intersect with that of the West unless the Arab world undergoes a profound cultural and scientific revolution, like the West did in the last thousand years. But that's not the topic at hand – we are talking about the "occupation."

Just look at all the Arab countries that have fallen apart before our eyes in the last decade in a vortex of fire and blood. What is actually collapsing is the false nationalism that was artificially imposed on the peoples and tribes of the region some 100 years ago by the European colonialists who divvied up the Middle East after World War I. In one instance, these colonialist powers decided, for example, that the Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Christians, Alawites and Assyrians are one single nation called Syria. So they decided. The region is now reverting back to the tribal structures that preceded these arbitrary divisions. It is going back to its ancient clan and ethnic structures. The veneer of Western rationalism is crumbling and the Middle Eastern mythology is now erupting back to the surface. 

The debate about the "occupation," therefore, is being conducted within the Western construct that assumes a right to national self-determination for every distinct ethnic unit. The West is talking about Israel controlling another people while in reality, the "occupation" is just the tip of the iceberg of the Jewish issue in the region. Take the time to examine the four territories inhabited by Palestinians: the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, Israel and Jordan. The deeper problem is not the "occupation" in the Western sense of controlling another people, but rather in the ancient, mythological sense of controlling the land. 

So while the West talks about "territories" that can be shared, the Arab world talks about land, and in our region, the existence of a man is derived from the man's connection to the land and his possession of it. That is the reason for the endless bloodshed to obtain this land. It is history rapping on our heads in its mysterious ways, forcing us to reconnect with that ancient component in our identity that the good land symbolizes in us. 

Dror Eydar

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/06/01/its-not-the-occupation-its-the-jews/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

Israel versus Iran - S. Fred Singer

by S. Fred Singer

The Iran situation is at long last turning in Israel's favor.

Persian and Jewish people have had friendly relations since biblical times. Emperor Cyrus liberated Jewish exiles in Babylon and helped rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. More recently, the Shah of Iran and Israel planned a pipeline from Eilat on the Red Sea to Ashdod on the Mediterranean to supply Iranian oil to Israel and bypass the Suez Canal.

Things have changed, and in dealing with the hostile regime in Tehran, Israel's aim has been twofold: to interdict weapons transfers to Hezb'allah and to keep Iranian ground forces away from its northern border.

Several weeks ago, DEBKA, a military intelligence website based in Jerusalem, reported on an aircraft strike on 50 Iranian military installations in Syria. All this was accomplished in less than two hours. If true, this represents an important achievement in military intelligence and in operational planning and coordination.

We do not know how many planes took part in the operation, but presume they all returned safely. Somehow, they evaded the vaunted Russian S-300 anti-aircraft (AA) system. Not many Western news services took note of this event, which occurred in the early morning hours of May 11. According to a report in Al Hayat, a London-based pan-Arab newspaper, Russia was not altogether unhappy about the operation.

On May 1, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated another intelligence coup, exposing a truckload of material, consisting of reports, pictures, etc. revealing the continued nuclear activities of Iran. We do not know how Mossad stole all this well guarded material, nor how the operatives managed to transfer it to Israel, but they did. 

A few days later, on May 8, President Donald J. Trump declared that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that severe sanctions will be applied to Iran; the aim clearly was to effect regime change, removing the present theocracy.

In a recent American Thinker article, Boris Gulko expressed his belief that the Iranian rulers will not last long. He speculates that the mullahs may not be around to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their revolution next year. 

Trump also hinted at military action if Iran continued its ballistic missile program and development of atomic weapons. The United States has the military muscle – bunker-buster bombs that can reach well protected underground installations of uranium isotope enrichment centrifuges in Iran.

The Israeli Air Defense Force (IADF) can also attack these sites with great precision. In addition, their aircraft can destroy the plutonium facility at Arak, Iran. The job will be easier if Saudi Arabia permits overflights. Israel's IADF can also terminate Bashar Assad.

With U.S. backing, Israel can do many things that are useful to advance the cause of security in the Middle East. On the other hand, Russia will probably stay out of all this. At least that is the opinion of Moshe Arens, Israel's former defense minister.
Arens is a professor of aerospace at the Technion, Israel's MIT, located in Haifa, and designer of the Israeli Lavie aircraft. Although never built, many of its design features were incorporated into advanced U.S. fighters.

Writing in Ha'aretz, Israel's N.Y. Times, Arens posits a dilemma for Putin: if Israel demonstrates its technological superiority in the air, Russia may lose its commercial business selling the AA S-300 system and lose much needed income for the Russian economy.

Why would Pakistan buy Russia's AA system and spend billions of dollars if Indian pilots can easily learn the necessary tricks to circumvent it?

Even more important, Putin will realize that his investment in Syria is at risk. The naval base at Latakia is within easy reach of Israel aircraft, and so is its military air base. The Russians might lose their investment in the Mediterranean and forfeit their foothold in the Middle East.

Arens believes that Putin will think twice before committing the advanced AA rockets that complement the S-300 system.


Professor Emeritus (University of Virginia) S. Fred Singer was among the first prominent scientists speaking out against global warming alarmism. An atmospheric and space physicist, he headed the U.S. Weather Satellite Service (now part of NOAA). He founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/israel_versus_iran.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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

British 'Justice': Poppycock - Bruce Bawer

by Bruce Bawer

Instead of arresting rapists, the police, in at least a couple of cases, actually arrested people who had done nothing other than to try to rescue their children from the clutches of rapists.

• Instead of arresting rapists, the police, in at least a couple of cases, actually arrested people who had done nothing other than to try to rescue their children from the clutches of rapists.
• So much concern – legitimately so – about the sacred right of the rapists to a fair trial, including the presumption of innocence and an opportunity to retain the lawyers of their choice – but so much readiness to excuse the denial of the same right to Robinson.
• These decades of cover-ups by British officials are themselves unspeakable crimes. How many of those who knew, but who did nothing, have faced anything remotely resembling justice? Apparently none.
• As any viewer of British TV news knows, a "trained professional journalist" in Britain observes all kinds of rules of professional conduct: he calls Muslims "Asians," he describes any critic of Islam, or anyone who attends a rally protesting the unjust incarceration of a critic of Islam, as a member of the "far right," and he identifies far-left smear machines as "anti-racist groups."

The coverage here during the last few days of the Tommy Robinson affair in Britain appears to be having at least a small impact in certain circles in Merrie Olde England. Dispatches have come in from some of the tonier addresses in the UK explaining, in that marvelous tone of condescension which no one from beyond the shores of England can ever quite pull off, that those of us who sympathize with Robinson have got it all wrong; that we simply do not grasp the exquisite nuances of British jurisprudence, specifically the kingdom's laws about the coverage of trials – for if we did understand, we would recognize that Robinson's summary arrest and imprisonment did not represent an outrageous denial of his freedom of speech, his right to due process, and his right to an attorney of his own choosing, but were, in fact, thoroughly appropriate actions intended to ensure the integrity of the trial he was covering. Those of us outside the UK who think that British freedom has been compromised and that the British system of law has been cynically exploited for ignoble purposes are, apparently, entirely mistaken; on the contrary, we are instructed, Britain's police are continuing to conduct themselves in a responsible matter, Britain's courts are still models of probity, and Britain's real journalists (not clumsy, activist amateurs like Robinson) persist in carrying out their role with extraordinary professionalism and propriety, obeying to the letter the eminently sensible rules that govern reportage about court cases in the land of Magna Carta.

"It is true," acknowledged one correspondent, "that in previous years the UK police wrongly hesitated to prosecute Muslim grooming gangs. And it was a shocking scandal, which the Daily Mail did much to expose and excoriate. But that has changed."

Hesitated? Changed? Talk about English understatement. For decades – not years – police, social workers, local politicians, and journalists all over Britain knew that thousands of non-Muslim girls throughout the country were being repeatedly raped by Muslim gangs. The perpetrators were not arrested – partly because police and others in authority were apparently terrified of being called racists.

British police. While U.K. authorities go out of their way to avoid arresting Muslim criminals, they are quick to take into custody Britons, such as Tommy Robinson, who criticize Islam. Photo: Wikipedia.

In addition, they might have feared a massive explosion of Muslim outrage. Also, in a country where class still plays a crucial role, most of the victims were from working-class families, and may thus have been seen by at least some officials who cherish Islamic cultural enrichment as the spawn of lowbrows.

Instead of arresting rapists, the police -- in at least a couple of cases -- have actually arrested people who did nothing other than to try to rescue their children from the clutches of rapists.

To be sure, the Daily Mail finally began to break the news about all this, thereby forcing the hands of police departments and courts. But to suggest that the policies that made these atrocities possible have changed – or that anywhere near all of the Muslim rapists are now facing trial or already behind bars – is an absurd and grotesque lie.

These decades of cover-ups by British officials are themselves unspeakable crimes. Yet how many of those who knew, but who did nothing, have faced anything remotely resembling justice? Apparently none. Clearly, all too many Britons who should be furious not only at the grooming gangs, who have committed monstrous acts on a scale that staggers the imagination, but also at the civil servants who looked away, are instead in high dudgeon over Tommy Robinson, one of the few people who have dared publicly to call the brutal, violent abuse of children by its proper name and to react to it in a manner proportional to its villainy. One Englishman explained that all those upstanding police and courthouse personnel in his country have "thoroughly investigated" the grooming-gang cases, and their efforts have involved "great resources of police time and great expense." By reporting live on Facebook from outside the courthouse, he stated, Robinson risked destroying all their hard work by broadcasting information of which, by law, jurors in this trial, and potential jurors in other rape-gang trials, should be kept unaware.

Poppycock. Robinson did not do anything outside this courthouse that other reporters do not do on a regular basis. The information he supplied, including the names and ages of the defendants, came straight off the BBC website. The critic who expressed such tender concern about "police time" actually argued that Robinson, by reading off all those Muslim names, might have formed unfortunate "preconceptions" in the minds of potential jurors that would make it impossible for them to give future Muslim defendants a fair trial. Is he suggesting that in order for any of these thugs to get tried fairly, the entire British public should be kept in the dark about the reality of Muslim grooming gangs? "Robinson was not just on the street, he was sending a running commentary to the internet," complained one correspondent. "If any other journalist was found doing that, he or she may also have been sent to prison under a gag order until the trial ends."

Does anyone truly believe that some well-known BBC or Sky News talking head would ever have been plucked up from outside the courthouse in Leeds, shoved into a paddywagon, dragged before a judge, and tossed unceremoniously into the clink without so much as being allowed to phone a lawyer? So much concern – legitimately so – about the sacred right of the rapists to a fair trial, including the presumption of innocence and an opportunity to retain the lawyers of their choice – but so much readiness to excuse the denial of the same right to Robinson! "A trained professional journalist," we hear, does not report information about a trial live from outside a courthouse "but sends a report to the newspaper, whose editors and/or lawyers can then check it before it is published." More poppycock. Granted, as any viewer of British TV news knows, a "trained professional journalist" in Britain observes all kinds of rules of professional conduct: he calls Muslims "Asians," he describes any critic of Islam, or anyone who attends a rally protesting the unjust incarceration of a critic of Islam, as a member of the "far right," and he identifies far-left smear machines as "anti-racist groups."

Some British correspondents also expressed concern that reckless rhetoric about the Robinson case might end up causing "an insurrection" in Britain, which "would lead to immense casualties." News flash: there have already been immense casualties. Question for these critics: Are those child rape victims unreal to you? What about the countless UK victims of female genital mutilation, "honor" killings, and other "honor"-related punishments, not to mention various less-than-neighborly activities by Muslim gangs? Yes, there have been casualties, and if Britain keeps on in the direction it is currently going, the number of casualties will only rise. "Demography is destiny," as the saying has it.

One note dismissed the statement by Robert Spencer, quoted by yours truly, that "the darkness of Sharia-compliant totalitarianism" is descending upon Britain. "Someone who utters such a sentence," we are told, "immediately loses the respect of most Britons that I know. In the UK, such lurid rhetoric is seen as characteristic of nutters."

Interesting to bring up the concepts of luridness and respect. Should one still respect the people who covered up child rapes for decades? If there is "lurid rhetoric," well, perhaps lurid events call for lurid rhetoric – especially for events which the powers that be have swept under the rug for years. As for the reference to Robert Spencer, a brave and learned scholar, as a "nutter": well, if head-in-the-sand aplomb amounts to sanity, then count me as a nutter.

One British observer complained that those of us who have criticized Robinson's treatment in recent days are guilty of "ignorantly malign[ing] the authorities." What is this species of Briton who appears to be more exercised by frank criticism of public officials than by mass child gang rapes? I have also been told that "an experienced English lawyer...would have advised" against publishing some passages of my recent articles. Mercifully, not everyone is subject to Britain's increasingly frightening laws.

Another note from the UK flatly denied that freedom in Britain today is on the decline: "Let's be clear, there has been no clampdown on free speech by the British judiciary, government or press in the Tommy Robinson affair." On the contrary, as demonstrated by any number of articles over the last several years, the UK has imposed an increasingly stringent clampdown on free speech about Islam by anyone.

"Reading some of your contributions," charged one communiqué, "you would think the UK has become an Islamist state." No, not yet. It is on its way, though, thanks to complacent people who are more worried about "scare stories," as one man put it, than about the real-life scary actions that these "scare stories" recount. "It's all becoming too hysterical and extreme," the missive charges, and accuses us of "whip[ping] up hatred." Ah yes, let us not rattle the teacups while the barbarians are raping our children. Let us not report honestly on a rape crisis – which often the rapists themselves say is rooted in the teachings of Islam -- lest it turn some readers against the religion.

Yet another letter-writer, while offering a number of similar criticisms, calls Tommy Robinson "a genuine racist." Of course, calling people racists is weapon #1 in any serious campaign to shut down criticism, including of Islam. All of us who have been writing critically about Islam for any length of time are accustomed to being called racists. One gets used to it. But apart from being a shabby card to play -- there are, after all, real racists in the world -- by all appearances, Tommy Robinson is not one of them. He has often pointed out that he grew up in a racially mixed community and that his lifelong friends include Africans, Caribbean blacks, and blokes with Muslim and Hindu backgrounds. His best friend is black. Race simply seems not to have been an issue for him. He left the English Defence League because of its racism.

If there is any bigotry here, it would seem to be on the part of those who view Robinson – whose courage, love of country, and sense of civic responsibility they are incapable of recognizing – as a boorish rabble-rouser who should leave the business of governance to those who possess the requisite breeding, education, manners, and wisdom.

The bottom line here is simple. The claims by these high-toned correspondents to the contrary, Britain is in serious trouble. While foreign truth-tellers are banned from entering the country, jihad preachers are still welcome. While authorities still go out of their way to avoid arresting, prosecuting, or jailing a Muslim criminal, they are quick to take into custody, or at least pay an intimidating visit to, any ordinary Britisher who dares to criticize the Religion of Peace. If people took the trouble to write letters of complaint in response to articles that are sympathetic to Tommy Robinson, it may be because they recognize that the news about the erosion of British freedom is finally getting out – not just to a relatively small circle of people in the U.S. and elsewhere, but to millions -- and they do not like it at all.


Bruce Bawer is the author of the new novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions). His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His other books include A Place at the Table (1993), Stealing Jesus (1997), Surrender (2009), and The Victims' Revolution (2012). A native New Yorker, he has lived in Europe since 1998.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12428/british-justice-poppycock

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

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