Are U.S. Officials Understanding and Responding to Middle East Crises? Ya Think?

by Barry Rubin

If you've lost faith in the current administration's ability and mass media's ability to respond to Middle East developments, here's more evidence. There's a relatively new American idiomatic expression, "Ya [you] think?" Said sarcastically, it means: Wow, duh, the answer to that question is really obvious!

So consider how hidden, obscure stories [sarcasm] are being dug out by policymakers and top media. The New York Times reports that the U.S. government is "increasingly alarmed by unrest in Lebanon, whose own fragile peace is being threatened by militant opponents of a politically charged investigation into the killing in 2005 of a former Lebanese leader."

Ya think? Lebanon has been taken over (or recaptured, if you wish) by the Iran-Syria anti-American, revolutionary Islamist, terrorist-sponsoring axis, operating largely--though by no means completely--through their client, Hizballah. Might this be of some concern for U.S. policymakers?

Four years ago, Lebanon was run by an independent-minded, pro-Western government that would have preferred peace with Israel (though knew that was impossible), opposed Iran, and saw radical Islamism as its antagonist. Today, Lebanon has been "lost" in large part through Western (don't forget France's responsibility) weakness and inaction.

I predict that even on this latest point the administration is wrong. There isn't going to be any big conflict over any report that the Syrians murdered former Prime Minister Rafiq Harari. Everybody in Lebanon knows that Syria did so, possibly (though this is far less certain) with Hizballah's help.

But there won't be any problem if the UN-backed investigation publicly states this because everyone in Lebanon has also been intimidated into silence. Even Harari's own son, the most important Sunni Muslim leader and head of the Sunni-Christian-Druze [well, no longer Druze since they have joined the pro-Syrian side for all practical purposes] has surrendered to Damascus.

And of course there remains the question of what, if anything, this administration will do about Lebanon. Answer: Nothing, except continue to aid the army which, at best, is neutral and, at worst, is an ally of Hizballah.

Speaking of Syria and great discoveries. The Washington Post reports that Syria just doesn't seem to be responding to administration efforts to engage, moderate, and pull that country out of Iran's orbit.

Ya think?

During the last almost two years there has been example after example of Syria opposing all aspects of U.S. policy; sponsoring terrorism to kill Americans in Iraq and against Israel; sabotage the Israel-Palestinian peace process; dominate Lebanon; help Hamas and Hizballah; and build an ever-tighter alliance with Iran.

And now people in Washington are starting to notice this? So what will the administration do, end engagement with Syria and take a tough line? Ya think?

Should I mention the blindness towards the Turkish regime's entrance into the Iran-Syria-Hamas-Hizballah bloc, and the need for U.S. opposition to that government to help ensure its defeat in next year's election? Hint: In an interview Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu states, "Washington is just beginning to wake up to the true nature" of the current regime. If that government ever does, it will understand that victory for Kilicdaroglu is a vital U.S. interest.

Should I mention that nothing could be more obvious than the fact that the Israel-Palestinian negotiations process is going to go nowhere because the Palestinian Authority doesn't want to make a deal with Israel. And then add that this problem is being exacerbated by U.S. policy making the PA believe this strategy can succeed fully by getting recognition for a unilateral declaration of independence?

Should I mention the new U.S. policy of engaging the Taliban is disastrous and may result in the movement that partnered the September 11 attacks against America returning to power? The New York Times published an anthropologists' op-ed explaining how the United States can coopt the Taliban and turn it against al-Qaida! Ya think?

But don't take my word for it. Ask the would-be Times Square bomber who worked with that group, or a teenager who describes how the Taliban tried to recruit him as a suicide bomber (something it will be able to do to lots more youth if it can operate legally.

And here's what New York Times reporter David Rhode wrote after spending several months as a Taliban prisoner in 2009: "Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of 'al-Qaeda lite'...primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan. Living side by side with the[m], I learned that the goal [was]...to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world." Ya think?

Should I mention the total reversal of U.S. policy on Hamas from trying to undermnie [sic] that radical Islamist group's rule in the Gaza Strip to believing Hamas will fall if Gaza becomes prosperous?

Should I mention that most Arab governments are shocked at U.S. expressions of weakness and want a strong American policy to protect them from Iran and revolutionary Islamists?

Should I mention that despite the praiseworthy (but overdue) increase in anti-Iran sanctions there's no doubt that Tehran will get nuclear weapons and this development will transform the strategic balance in the region?

Should I mention that the administration doesn't react to its own intelligence which shows Iran is helping kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan through training terrorists and supplying both advisors and military equipment in both countries?

Eighteen months ago I laid out all of these points in detail and pointed out the needed U.S. policy to respond. Every one of these issues has developed predictably since then.

Anybody in the U.S. government noticing these things and perhaps getting prepared to do something about them?

Ya think?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

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

Islamists Accuse Egypt's Christians of Behaving Like…Islamists?

by Raymond Ibrahim

The persecution of Egypt's Coptic minority is taking an ironic, and dangerous, turn: Islamist leaders are now projecting the worst traits of radical Islam onto Egypt's Christians. A psychological phenomenon first described by Sigmund Freud, "projection" is defined as "the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people." As such, consider how the following excerpt from this recent report is a perfect example of projection:

In the last month various fundamentalist groups held ten demonstrations [in Egypt], each after coming out of mosques following Friday prayers, against the 86-year-old ailing Coptic Pontiff, in which he was accused of being a US agent, an abductor and torturer of female Muslim converts from Christianity, of stockpiling weapons in monasteries and churches to carry out war against Muslims, and of plans to divide Egypt to create a Coptic State.

All of these accusations are as ludicrous to apply to the Coptic Church as they perfectly apply to Islamists. Let us first examine the context of these charges:

"Abducting and torturing female Muslim converts from Christianity." Context: The wife of a Coptic priest, Camelia Shehata, was reportedly kidnapped by Islamists, but then returned to her family. In response, Islamist leaders began saying that she had willingly runaway and converted to Islam, and, in fact, has been "re-kidnapped" by the Coptic Church, which has trapped her in a monastery where she is being "tortured" and "re-indoctrinated" to Christianity.

In fact, the opposite scenario — kidnapping Christian women and forcing them to convert to Islam — is a well documented and notorious phenomenon in Egypt. So now the Coptic Church is being accused of behaving identically — not just kidnapping, but torturing, brainwashing, and forcing women to convert. Moreover, that Camelia has appeared on video fervently affirming her Christian faith and denying that she ever converted to Islam has been ignored, no doubt because Islam's ingrained notion of taqiyya, or deceit, is also being projected onto the Copts. Finally, little wonder this charge jibes well with Muslims: their own sharia mandates that Muslim women who apostatize must be incarcerated and tormented until they return to Islam, such as in the recent case of Nagla Imam.

"Stockpiling weapons in monasteries and churches to carry out war against Muslims." Context: On September 15, leading Islamic figure Dr. Muhammad Salim al-Awwa appeared on Al Jazeera and, in a wild tirade, accused the Copts of "stocking arms and ammunitions [sic] in their churches and monasteries"— imported from Israel, no less, since "Israel is in the heart of the Coptic Cause" — and "preparing to wage war against Muslims." He warned that if nothing is done, the "country will burn," inciting Muslims to "counteract the strength of the [Coptic] Church." Awwa further charged that Egypt's security forces cannot enter the monasteries to investigate for weapons (an amazing assertion, considering that Coptic monasteries are not only at the mercy of the state, but easy prey to Islamist attacks, with monks tortured and crucifixes spat upon).

Needless to say, such charges are preposterous: in a nation and society where Islam is supreme; where sharia (which mandates subjugation for non-Muslims, a la Koran 9:29) is part of the Constitution; where Copts have been conditioned over centuries to be happy just being left alone — is it reasonable to believe that these selfsame, down-trodden Christians, who make up 12-15% of the population, are planning a violent takeover of Egypt? It is easy to see, however, why such charges resonate with Muslims; after all, Islamists are constantly arming and stockpiling weapons — a Koranic charge — including in mosques, as they prepare to violently seize power across the nations, Egypt being an especially coveted target. Indeed, at one point, Awwa himself ceded that "Muslims are arrested every day [in Egypt] for extremism and the possession of arms."

"Planning to divide Egypt to create a Coptic State." Context: In a closed conference, Coptic Bishop Bishoy had the temerity to acknowledge history: "Muslims are guests in this country, Christians are the original residents. Prior to the Arab invasion of Egypt, which took place in the seventh century, the majority of Egypt's population was Christian." As usual, this otherwise historically accurate observation has enraged Muslims, been denounced by Al Azhar, and cited as "proof" that the Copts seek to divide Egypt and establish their own state.

It is actually Muslim minorities who habitually try to secede from non-Muslim countries. Whether by creating their own nations (Pakistan), or creating enclaves in the West, the notion of separating from the infidel is commanded in the Koran (e.g., 3:28, 4:89, 4:144, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 58:22), codified in the doctrine of wala wa bara, and imprinted on the Muslim psyche. Unsurprisingly, then, Muslims have come to project this divisive impulse onto the Copts as well.

Yet, there is perhaps no clearer example of Muslim projection than when the aforementioned bishop, in response to the anti-Copt upsurge, declared that Egypt's Christians are reaching the point of martyrdom; amazingly, this, too, has been thoroughly "Islamicized" as a declaration of war-to-the-death, including by Awwa, who, during his Al Jazeera rant, asserted that "Father Bishoy declared that they would reach the point of martyrdom, which can only mean war. He said, 'If you talk about our churches, we will reach the point of martyrdom.' This means war."

Of course, the notion that a martyr is someone who wages and dies in jihad, or "holy war," is intrinsic to Islam (e.g., Koran 9:111). Even the authoritative Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary translates shahid ("martyr") as "one killed in battle with infidels." On the other hand, Christian martyrdom has always meant being persecuted and killed for refusing to recant Christianity — and this is precisely the definition that has for centuries applied to Egypt's Copts, the definition that Bishop Bishoy clearly meant. (See this article for the pivotal differences between Christian and Muslim martyrdom.)

To recap: Islamists regularly abduct, abuse, brainwash, and compel Coptic girls to convert — and now Copts are accused of doing the exact same thing; Islamists regularly smuggle and stockpile weapons, including in their holy places — and now Copts are accused of doing the exact same thing; Islamists are constantly either trying to break away or conquer infidel nations — and now Copts are accused of doing the exact same thing; Islamic martyrdom means participating and dying in jihad — and now Christian martyrdom is defined as the exact same thing.

While anti-Copt sentiment is as old as the Muslim conquest of Egypt, this recent batch of bizarre accusations is making Muslims more irate and paranoid, and bodes greater evil for Egypt's beleaguered Christians. According to sharia's dhimmi pact, the necessary condition for Copts to be tolerated is that they live as subordinate, second-class "citizens." The Islamist psyche — and Egypt is increasingly Islamicizing — expects this. Yet these recent charges portray the Copts as violent antagonists bent on war and conquest. If the Muslim popular mind accepts this new interpretation, far from subjugated dhimmis, or even co-equals, the Copts will be perceived as little better than infidel terrorists, and treated accordingly, that is, barbarously.

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, and guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College.

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

Russia denies contract to sell MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria

by Agence France Presse

MOSCOW: Russia denied Wednesday having signed a contract to deliver MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria, a deal that would provoke tensions with Israel and the United States.

“The contract for deliveries of MiG-31s to Syria exists only in the tall tales of journalists,” Anatoly Isaykin, the head of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“Rosoboronexport has not signed any such contract and there are no negotiations on this subject,” he told the agency during the Euronaval 2010 international aerospace exhibition at Le Bourget, near Paris.

Russian media have repeatedly reported on the alleged contract, despite frequent denials from authorities.

According to the newspaper Kommersant, a contract for the sale to Syria of eight MiG-31s for a price of $400-$500 million was signed at the beginning of 2007.

Syria and Israel remain technically in a state of war, and Russia’s arms sales and possible nuclear cooperation with Damascus, which has close ties to Iran, is unnerving for both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Agence France Presse

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

Man accused of Metro bomb plot

by Peter Finn, Spencer S. Hsu and Caitlin Gibson

Federal law enforcement authorities arrested a Northern Virginia man Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to carry out terrorist bombings at stations in the Washington Metro system.

Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Ashburn conspired with people he thought to be al-Qaeda operatives to bomb the Arlington Cemetery, Pentagon City, Crystal City and Court House stations, according to a federal indictment.

An Obama administration official said Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, first drew the attention of law enforcement officials by seeking to obtain unspecified materials. He later became the target of an undercover sting, officials said.

According to the indictment, federal agents posing as Islamic radicals began meeting with Ahmed in April. At the meetings, held in Northern Virginia hotels, he allegedly agreed to conduct video surveillance of the stations and suggested the best time to attack and the best locations to place explosives to maximize casualties. He is also accused of later turning over video and sketches he made of the stations.

Officials stressed that the public was never in danger. Still, Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said it was "chilling that a man from Ashburn is accused of casing rail stations with the goal of killing as many Metro riders as possible through simultaneous bomb attacks."

Muslim leaders in Northern Virginia said that, as of late Wednesday, no one had reported knowing or having interacted with Ahmed at local mosques. His arrest, however, touched off a conversation about whether Ahmed might have initiated a plot or whether law enforcement officials had floated the idea to him, as has been suggested in other FBI sting operations.

"It's a conversation that's definitely going on in the community," said Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, spokesman for Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church. "At the same time, though, if you're dumb enough and sick enough to think you're working for al-Qaeda, then maybe your behind should be put in jail. If what the authorities accuse him of turns out to be true, I have very little sympathy for someone who plans something like that."

Ahmed was arrested in Herndon at 9:40 a.m. Wednesday after he was told to come to a meeting where he would discuss his surveillance activities, officials said. He later appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on terrorism charges.

Sporting a full beard and wearing a gray polo shirt and bluejeans, Ahmed shook his head and let out a deep sigh in apparent disbelief as the charges against him were read. "Yes, yes," Ahmed said as the judge told him the charges were serious.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson ordered him held until a detention hearing Friday.

'Too close to home'

Ahmed, who holds a bachelor's in computer science from City University of New York, works in Northern Virginia for Ericsson, a telecommunications company, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was pursuing a graduate degree online in risk management and data security at Aspen University, according to the profile.

Kathy Egan, an Ericsson spokeswoman, confirmed that Ahmed is a Reston-based contractor for the firm but declined to release any other details about his employment. "We will cooperate with the authorities," she said.

Neighbors described Ahmed as pleasant but private.

Shaya Fitzgerald, 39, a physician's assistant who lives across the street from Ahmed's brick townhouse, said he has a young son and a wife who dress conservatively.

She "wore a full hijab, the whole thing. She seemed relatively young," Fitzgerald said. "My only impression of him was that he was not that sociable."

Ahmed moved to Virginia from Staten Island, N.Y. His wife, Sahar Mirza-Ahmed, is from Birmingham, England, and is an active member of "Hip Muslim Moms," a Northern Virginia playdate group for women with children younger than 5.

"I don't know what to do. This is too close to home. You don't know anybody," said Esraa Bani, an organizer of the mothers group. She said she wants people to understand what her group is really about: "We are hip, as in a lot of us are born and raised here. We're very savvy moms, working moms, tolerant moms. If we saw any signs of this, it's just not at all part of our demographic."

Phone messages left for Mirza-Ahmed were not returned.

Barbi Shires, Ahmed's next-door neighbor and a resident of the Ashburn neighborhood for 16 years, said that she occasionally exchanged greetings with Ahmed but that they never got together socially. She said that Ahmed's wife once brought over a traditional chicken dinner, soon after his family moved in, and that Ahmed once invited her into his home when she noticed that he was looking at the night sky through a telescope.

"He invited me over," Shires said, "and I looked at Jupiter through his telescope. . . . He was a very nice gentleman."

According to the indictment, Ahmed planned to attend the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, next month and told the people who he thought were his co-conspirators that he would be ready to go overseas "to conduct jihad" in January.

Unlike other U.S. citizens implicated in recent terrorism plots, Ahmed does not appear to have received overseas training from al-Qaeda or any of its affiliates, intelligence sources said. In some previous investigations, however, evidence of connections to overseas organizations have surfaced several days after an arrest.

Series of cases

The arrest is the latest in a series of cases involving U.S. citizens, including another Pakistani American, who was convicted of planning to set off a car bomb in Times Square, that have raised concerns about an increasing number of Americans drawn to violent jihad.

Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Connecticut resident, was sentenced to life in prison this month; the bomb he left in a car in Times Square in May failed to detonate.

Since last year, more than 6o U.S. citizens have been charged or convicted in terrorism cases, according to federal officials. And in some of those cases, suspects were caught in sting operations.

In one case, the suspect allegedly drove an FBI-supplied van that he thought contained a ton of explosives to blow up the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield, Ill. The suspect, Michael Finton, 29, is awaiting trial.

This month, a Jordanian man was sentenced to 24 years in prison for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a Dallas skyscraper. Hosam Smadi, 20, was arrested in September 2009 after leaving what he thought was a truck bomb but was really a decoy from FBI agents posing as al-Qaeda operatives.

Staff writers Greg Miller, Anne E. Kornblut, Jerry Markon, William Wan, Katherine Shaver, Ann Scott Tyson, Derek Kravitz and Kafia A. Hosh and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Peter Finn, Spencer S. Hsu and Caitlin Gibson

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

Iran’s unlikely understanding with Saudi Arabia

by Zvi Bar’el

“Iran is not the enemy, Israel is the enemy,” the head of the Center for Strategic Studies in Saudi Arabia declared in an interview with Al Jazeera. This was his response to a question on whether the $60 billion arms deal between Riyadh and Washington was meant to deter Iran. The American efforts to portray the deal as aimed against Tehran doesn’t fit with the Saudi point of view, and it seems this isn’t the only subject over which these two countries fail to see eye to eye.

[..]
But the frequent contacts between Iran and Saudi Arabia are not over the big arms deal or Iran’s nuclear plans. The two countries have concluded that they need to reach an agreement on two other issues regarding their sphere of influence in the region: Iraq and Lebanon.

Regarding Lebanon, Iran is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to help stop the work of the special international tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This would prevent the collapse of the Lebanese regime. While Iran is worried about Hezbollah’s status, it also doesn’t want Lebanon to collapse or fall into another civil war, whose results cannot be ensured.

Furious American

In this respect, Tehran doesn’t have to make too great an effort to get Riyadh’s support. This became clear last week to Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to Beirut, when he visited Riyadh. During his meeting with King Abdullah, the monarch tried to figure out America’s position if the international court’s work were stopped. Arab sources say Feltman was “furious but restrained,” and made it clear to the king that Washington was determined to support the tribunal.

With all due respect to the American insistence, if the client that is supposed to pay Washington $60 billion decides it’s vital to halt the tribunal’s work, it won’t make do with consulting the Americans. It will throw its full weight behind the efforts. Meanwhile, the indictment the tribunal is due to publish is not expected before February.

After all, what is happening in Lebanon – and Saudi Arabia can’t be accused of not supporting the establishment of the tribunal – is not isolated from other regional issues that involve the Saudis and Iran. Riyadh, which paid millions of dollars in Ayad Allawi’s election campaign in Iraq, is aware that his chances of being elected prime minister are diminishing. The aid last time helped Allawi win two seats more in parliament than his rival, outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, in the past two weeks, Maliki has visited Syria, Turkey, Iran and Egypt in an attempt to garner support. He is trying to persuade Iraq’s neighbors that he is worthy of being prime minister again. But that’s not enough. To win, he has to convince his rivals at home to forgo their aspirations of being Iraqi prime minister and join him.

No dream team

Tehran understands that it can’t get the Iraqi prime minister it was hoping for, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. But it has “convinced” the influential Iraqi religious leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is living in Iran until completing religious studies there, to support Maliki. Maliki is not exactly Iran’s dream prime minister, especially considering that he accused Tehran and Damascus of terrorist involvement.

He is also not a natural partner of Sadr, who won 39 of the 325 seats in parliament. Sadr has also not completely forgiven Maliki for sending Iraqi troops to wage a bloody battle against Sadr’s forces and arresting many of his supporters, some of whom are still in prison. But the Iranian pressure mounted, so Sadr agreed to announce his support for Maliki.

Nevertheless, even with Sadr’s support, Maliki will not be able to set up a coalition without getting at least one other bloc to support him, either the Kurds or Allawi. That’s why Iran needs Saudi Arabia’s help to try to persuade its proteges in Iraq, especially Allawi, to join such a coalition or at least not work against it.

For its part, Saudi Arabia is not prepared to give Iran gifts, but it also doesn’t want to lose all influence in Iraq. In Iraq as in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia realizes it’s in a relatively inferior position vis-a-vis Iran; all it can do in these countries is to prevent Tehran from wielding exclusive influence. This is what the discussion between Saudi Arabia and Iran is now focusing on: deliberations during which Riyadh will try to divide its sphere of influence in Iraq and Lebanon with Iran.

One significant element is missing from these moves – the United States. Washington seeks to promote the process at the international tribunal on the Lebanese issue, blame Hezbollah for the Hariri assassination, see Allawi as Iraqi prime minister and block Iran’s influence in the region.

Meanwhile, it seems the Americans are aiming too high. The real game is in the hands of local forces that are sketching the strategic map, which will be presented to Washington as a fait accompli.

Zvi Bar’el

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

Geert Wilders Wins a Retrial in Dutch Anti-Islam Case

by Soeren Kern

In a stunning turn of events, a Dutch court has summarily removed the judges presiding over the anti-Islam hate-speech trial of Geert Wilders, after it emerged that one of the judges attempted to influence an expert witness before the trial. A hastily convened judicial panel agreed with Wilders that the judges were biased against him and ordered a retrial, sending the closely-watched case back to square one before an entirely new panel of judges. Wilders, who has called the trial a farce, a disgrace and an assault on free speech, welcomed the decision, saying: "This gives me a new chance with a new fair trial."

Wilders is facing five charges of inciting racial and religious hatred for remarks which include equating Islam with fascism and others calling for a ban on the Koran and a tax on Muslim headscarves. Viewed more broadly, however, the Wilders trial represents a landmark case that likely will establish the limits of free speech in a country where the politically correct elite routinely seek to silence public discussion about the escalating problem of Muslim immigration.

The Wilders trial, which began at the Amsterdam District Court on October 4, was scheduled to end on October 22, with the verdict from the panel of three judges due on November 5. But the trial unexpectedly collapsed in disarray on its final scheduled day of hearings after Dutch newspapers reported that Tom Schalken, one of the judges who ordered Wilders to stand trial, had dinner with Hans Jansen, a leading Dutch expert on Islam who also happens to be a defense witness. Jansen said that Schalken had improperly tried "to convince me of the correctness of the decision to take Wilders to court." (An English-language translation of Jansen's accusations can be found here.)

After the allegations came to light, Bram Moszkowicz, Wilders's lawyer, asked the court to summon Jansen, but Moszkowicz was refused. In response, Moszkowicz formally protested that the judges were biased against the defendant and should be dismissed; he also called Schalken's contact with Jansen "scandalous."

A separate review panel was then convened to consider Moszkowicz's complaint, which it upheld by ordering a retrial with new judges. Judge G. Marcus said the panel understood Wilders' "fear that the court's decision displays a degree of bias ... and under those circumstances accepts the appeal." The highly unusual event means that it is likely to be many months before a new trial can be held.

Moszkowicz had previously sought to have the judges removed on the opening day of the trial after one of them passed comment on Wilders's decision to make use of his right to remain silent during the proceedings. But that complaint was dismissed.

On October 15, midway through the trial, the Dutch Public Prosecutor's office argued that there was no case against Wilders and that he should be acquitted. Amsterdam public prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman testified in court that Wilders was not guilty of discrimination against Muslims and inciting hatred against them.

Van Roessel and Velleman said that "comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban along democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law.'" Regarding Wilder's comparison of the Koran with Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, the prosecutors called it "crude, but that did not make it punishable." In any case, they said, the comparison did not originally come from Wilders, but from the late Italian writer Oriana Fallaci.

The prosecutors also argued that Wilders had spoken out not against Muslims per se, but against the threat to Dutch society posed by the growing assertiveness of Islam in Dutch political and social life. The judges dismissed all of the prosecutors' recommendations out of hand.

In June 2008, Dutch prosecutors had initially refused to bring charges against Wilders, arguing that he was protected by the right to free speech. But in January 2009, they were overruled by an appeals court led by Judge Tom Schalken, who ordered that Wilders be charged for "sowing hatred."

During the trial, Moszkowicz rejected the accusations of hate speech against Wilders and urged judges not to "shoot the messenger." He told the court that Wilders is a straight-talking politician seeking to prevent Koran-inspired violence. "Regardless of the danger to his own life, he speaks about the dangers he sees around him that result from immigration," Moszkowicz told the court. "In his eyes, Islam is a totalitarian ideology."

Moszkowicz cited the right to freedom of speech: "Wilders's conscience dictates that he does not close his eyes ... dictates that he places this discussion on the political agenda. As a politician, Wilders does not have to be silent." Wilders "has criticism, and expresses that criticism. Regardless of the danger to his own life, he speaks about the dangers he sees around him that result from immigration."

Moszkowicz also countered accusations by critics who say that Wilders's call for banning the Koran is inconsistent with his defense of the freedom of speech. He told the court that Article 132 of the Dutch Penal Code prohibits books that "incite to violence." He asked if books such as Mein Kampf can be banned under that article, why not another book that manifestly incites its readers to violence and hatred? Moszkowicz said that as long as the Netherlands has such laws, Dutch authorities should apply them consistently and not selectively based on politically correct considerations.

Reacting to the court's decision to order a new trial, Wilders said: "I am confident that I can only be acquitted because I have broken no law but spoke the truth and nothing but the truth, and exercised my freedom of speech in an important public debate about the dangerous totalitarian ideology called Islam."

(In a March 2009 interview with Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, Wilders summed up his views about Islam: "I have nothing against the people. I don't hate Muslims. But Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It rules every aspect of life -- economics, family law, whatever. It has religious symbols, it has a God, it has a book -- but it's not [only] a religion. It can be compared with totalitarian ideologies like Communism or fascism. There is no country where Islam is dominant where you have a real democracy, a real separation between church and state. Islam is totally contrary to our values.")

Wilders has also articulated what is at stake in this case: "I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticize an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom."

Soeren Kern

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Palestinian Authority Threats What Do they Mean?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinian Authority's daily threats are not only harmful to the future of the peace process, but are also radicalizing Palestinians and pushing many of them toward the open arms of Hamas and other extremists.

In recent weeks, Palestinian leaders and spokesmen have been issuing all kinds of threats in light of Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank. In the past month alone, Palestinian officials and spokesmen made at least a dozen threats.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is once again threatening to resign if the peace talks fail. He's also been threatening to dismantle the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Nabil Sha'ath have been threatening that the Palestinian Authority would unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

The two, along with Abbas's chief spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, are also threatening that the Palestinians would seek the United Nations and US recognition of the Palestinian state.

Other Palestinian representatives, such as former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who is one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, has, for his part, gone on the record to threaten that the Palestinians would once again resort to violence against Israel.

Qurei and other Palestinian officials said that the Palestinians don't rule out the possibility of launching another "armed resistance" against Israel if they didn't get all what they were asking for.

These threats are similar to those that were made by Yasser Arafat and many Palestinian officials before the second intifada erupted in September 2000.

The latest threats are not only poisoning the climate and escalating tensions between Israeli and Palestinians, but are also playing into the hands of Hamas, Syria, Iran and Hizbullah – parties that have formed an unholy alliance to thwart any attempt to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Hamas and its allies are using the Palestinian Authority threats to back up their argument that Israel does not want peace and that the only language the Israelis understand is that of force and terror.

When Palestinian leaders threaten to take unilateral actions and talk about the possibility of waging another armed intifada against Israel, they are in fact supporting Hamas's position that there's no point in conducting peaceful negotiations. What the Palestinian Authority needs to realize is that its fiery rhetoric and daily threats are also likely to backfire and undermine the authority itself.

Khaled Abu Toameh

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Dual Debacles in the Middle East?

by Jennifer Rubin

In case you thought the Middle East couldn’t become more contentious and unstable than it already is, there is this report:

The United Nations backs Palestinian efforts to be ready for statehood by August and believes they will achieve that goal, the organization’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert H. Serry said Monday.

“All international players are now in agreement that the Palestinians are ready for statehood at any point in the near future. We are in the homestretch of your agenda to reach that point by August next year, and you have our full support,” said Serry.

He added, “Palestinian statehood is not only a right, and in everyone’s interest: it is also doable.”

As I noted before, the legality of such a maneuver by the General Assembly is somewhat in doubt, but the impact on Israel and its foes would be serious. An Israel hand explains that the Palestinians may seek to be recognized “without a mention of exact borders in the resolution,” or they might opt for a straightforward anti-settlement resolution. The Israel guru notes, “So far, the Palestinians are keeping all their options open, using a variety of spokesmen who are not really authoritative.”

And we have gotten to this point because of diplomatic malpractice by the Obama administration. By distancing himself from Israel, condemning its building in its capital, elevating the settlement issue, and putting his own prestige on the line, Obama has made continued negotiations nearly impossible and UN gamesmanship quite likely. Where is the administration vowing not to allow the UN to dismantle Israel? Where is the pressure on the PA, financial and otherwise, to knock off this sort of talk? It’s not coming from the White House. It will be up to pro-Israel groups and the new Congress to insist that the Obama team head off the Jewish state’s dismemberment.

And while they are dealing with that potential calamity, the Obami might want to attend to Iran. The dual debacles — allowing a UN resolution to carve up Israel and allowing Iran to go nuclear — would define this presidency as one of the most feeble in history. Certainly the world it would leave to its successors would be infinitely more dangerous than the one it inherited.

Jennifer Rubin

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Time to call this man on his bigotry: Desmond Tutu says Israel’s claim to be a “civilised democracy” is “fallacious”

by Robin Shepherd

Desmond Tutu may have retired earlier this month as an Anglican Archbishop, but he has not given up on his obsession with demonising the Jewish state. Yesterday he was at it again with an appeal to the Cape Town Opera to cancel a planned trip next month to Israel and thus join the international boycott movement.

He said the decision to go would advance “Israel’s fallacious claim to being a ‘civilized democracy.’” He added that, like apartheid South Africa, Israel was “a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity.”

Ok. Enough is enough from this man. He’s got away with extreme bigotry against the Jewish state for one reason and one reason alone: because he was a brave and principled opponent of South Africa’s inhuman system of apartheid. But this is ludicrous and it’s time he was called on it.

For one thing, the fact that one opposes something that is wrong does not mean that one is oneself a good person, let alone some sort of saint beyond reproach. Stalin opposed Nazism, which meant that he helped defeat a great evil. He nonetheless remained a great evil himself. While I’m not comparing apartheid to Nazism, or Tutu to Stalin, the principle at issue here should be clear.

For another thing, it is possible to have been a good and decent person at one point in one’s life and to degenerate as life goes on.

Desmond Tutu did good things in the earlier part of his life but has devoted a considerable portion of his later life to pushing and perpetuating the number one cause of bigots around the world: the demonisation of the Jewish state of Israel.

He was once a hero. Now, he’s a disgrace. And none of us should hesitate to say so.

Robin Shepherd

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Full House

by Lee Smith

If the midterm elections give the GOP more power in Washington, that could actually help Obama’s Mideast peace plans

It seems fair to say that the Obama Administration’s Middle East policy has been a bust. The concept of “linkage”—on which the administration has based its approach to such thorny and specific problems as the Iranian nuclear program, the shakiness of the Iraqi political system, Syrian backing for violence, and the rise of Iranian-backed militias like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Iranian take-over of Lebanon—has been clearly revealed as a species of magical thinking the main virtue of which appears to be that it absolves the United States of actually having to address problems that get worse with each passing month.

But if every new administration makes mistakes, and learns from them, President Barack Obama’s self-appointed task of bringing peace to the Middle East may get more difficult with the mid-term elections Tuesday, when the House, and perhaps the Senate, will fall into the hands of a Republican party that is poised to push back against an administration that is commonly perceived as less friendly to Israel than its predecessors.

House Republicans have pitched their rhetoric high. Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, for instance, described the current White House as “the most anti-Israel administration in the modern history of the state of Israel.” Indeed, there’s some concern in pro-Israel circles that the bipartisan nature of support for the Jewish state is starting to show cracks. Fifty-four Congressional Democrats (but no Republicans) signed a letter urging Obama to “press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza” suffering under Israel’s blockade. A few months later 78 House Republicans wrote a letter to the Israeli Prime Minister expressing their “steadfast support” for him and Israel. The same divide seems to hold true with the electorate as well. An October poll conducted for the Emergency Committee for Israel showed that of “those intending to vote Republican this fall, 69 percent would be more likely to vote for a candidate who was pro-Israel” while only 40 percent of Democratic voters are more likely to vote for a pro-Israel candidate. It appears that the new Congress will be very much in line with the man likely to become its new majority leader, Virginia’s Eric Cantor, the House’s lone Jewish Republican, who recently told the White House that playing “hardball” with Israel “jeopardizes our national security.”

The emergence of Israel as a partisan political football is representative of not only a political difference but a philosophical one as well. One segment of the American political class sees Israel as an exceptional, and like-minded, ally and the other sees it as merely another nation-state—and a problematic one at that. Obama, it seems, is of the latter camp. He came to office with the hardly novel idea that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Middle East’s central issue and that ending the conflict would cool off the Muslim masses whose hatred of the United States is supposedly tied to Washington’s “unconditional support” for Israel. A peace deal would also be a powerful means—perhaps the only available means, given the improbability of any kind of further American military action in the Middle East—of reducing the strength of the region’s radical actors, especially Iran.

The president pushed the Israelis hard, which only gave the Palestinian Authority incentive not to negotiate but rather to wait for Obama to deliver the Israelis. Domestically, the administration’s bullying of Israel angered some key Democrats, like New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer and many Jewish Democratic donors. Once the midterms are over, Obama will have at least six months before he has to worry about alienating Jewish fund-raisers for his 2012 re-election campaign. Then, as one source in Washington’s pro-Israel community puts it, “we will see what the administration has learned in 18 months; if they’ve understood that the way to move the process forward is to make the Israelis feel confident by embracing them in friendship, and not club Netanyahu like a fish you’re reeling in.”

It’s not clear yet how, or if, the divide over Israel within the administration has been resolved. Both the pro-Israel faction and the faction less friendly to the Jewish state have lost prominent figures (including former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel from the former [sic] and James Jones, the national security adviser, from the latter). In another internal fight, it appears that Dennis Ross is gaining the upper hand on George Mitchell, who has dropped his chief of staff, Mara Rudman, who was famously in favor of ratcheting up the pressure on the Israelis. But it was the secretary of State who gave perhaps the clearest indication of where things stand in the administration with one of the most sober assessments in the history of American Middle East diplomacy. “The future holds the possibility of progress,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told guests at the American Task Force for Palestine’s annual banquet last week, “if not in our lifetimes, then certainly in our children’s.”

If the State Department is clearly chastened by the failures of the past 18 months, the fact is that the president makes foreign policy. And this particular commander-in-chief has shown not only a reluctance to delegate important matters to subordinates (as Bush handed off all Middle East policy, save Iraq, to Condoleezza Rice), but also that he is willing to stand his ground to do what he thinks is right and only he can get done, regardless of the political cost. For their part, the Republicans will do what they can to put on the brakes.

Already Eric Cantor has touched off a minor crisis by suggesting that a Republican majority would seek to remove Israel from the foreign operations budget. Cantor’s proposal is to move aid to Israel over to the Pentagon in order to protect it if the GOP seeks to attack the president’s foreign aid budget by cutting funds for states that they believe do not merit U.S. aid. The fact that New York Rep. Nita Lowey, a strong supporter of Israel, has slammed Cantor’s proposal as reckless indicates that this is not about Israel but a political instrument to tie down the executive’s prerogative in making foreign policy.

It’s unlikely the Republicans will push their agenda, or counter-agenda, too far, for in the end their options are quite limited. They can call hearings on Capitol Hill, and they can challenge the White House’s Syria policy by maintaining there a hold on the appointment of the ambassador to Damascus, but too many fights with the administration will stretch the time and resources of the majority. The GOP will need to muster its strength for more pressing concerns than a moribund peace process. Despite the relative quiet in Washington over the last few months about the Iranian nuclear program, this is still a major issue for the GOP as is the deadline for the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan looming in July. The reality is that even when Obama was at the height of his powers he couldn’t force the peace process—not because of a lack of will power and volume, but because there are other political energies at work, some of them far outside the Beltway.

That’s not to say Obama won’t keep pressing. Sources close to Netanyahu’s office say that Obama is already pressuring Israel to extend the freeze. In Washington, some believe that Netanyahu will have a very hard time justifying his refusal. If he could do it for 10 months, what is it about 60 more days that imperils his coalition? If he doesn’t, Israeli sources say, the White House has threatened that it will do nothing to block the Palestinians from unilaterally declaring statehood at the United Nations.

Yet apparently Washington was just showing Jerusalem the instruments of torture while it did the same to the PA—and Abbas, who has much weaker domestic support than Netanyahu, appears to have backed down first. Instead of seeking recognition for a state within the 1967 borders, the PA will present a resolution to the Security Council stating that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal and must be evacuated. The Palestinians recognized they would lose U.S. support if they stepped out on their own and maybe even understood that very few of the member nations that matter most were predisposed to recognize such a state; they would have had more support from, say, Norway than Jordan.

In other words, the PA is trying to force an error from the White House with empty threats of its own. “Unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state is one of those things that comes up often,” says Martin Kramer, the Wexler-Fromer fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. “The other is the prospect of impending violence, the next intifada.” However, as Kramer explains, were another intifada to erupt, Abbas and Salam Fayyad understand that the protection and the foreign cash that have created the West Bank’s economic boom would all go away, and they would be left alone to face Hamas.

The peace deal that Obama wants is already out of his hands. The real check on his ambitions is not a Republican majority in the House but the political forces that rule the Middle East. Fayyadism, or that combination of U.S.-sponsored transparency and accountability, is working on the West Bank—at least until Hamas decides to pull the plug on the PA, which is not going to happen so long as the IDF is sitting there. Insofar as Obama believes the status quo is unsustainable, the only other option is chaos—a chaos that he can bring about by forcing the issue yet again.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is in stasis, for the time being anyway, which presents a golden opportunity for a president faced with a hard-line opposition in control of one or both houses of Congress. Let Obama keep his peace process envoys on the run, going back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, and Riyadh, and keep expectations low. Even the smallest concessions will be chalked up as groundbreaking—if, for example, the PA agrees to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or Netanyahu gives more time on the settlement freeze—and if nothing gets accomplished, he can blame it on the Republicans. In the political arena, at least, the end of Obama’s grand ambitions may make him the winner of the next few hands of the Middle East poker game.

Lee Smith

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