Snowden Documentary another Sign the Left is about to Throw Obama under the Bus - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Last night, the first screening was held for Citizen Four, a new documentary about Edward Snowden that comes with backing from The Weinstein Company, one of the most powerful of Hollywood heavyweights. The trailer can be seen below. I haven’t seen the film, but Roger Friedman, who has, writes:

It doesn’t paint the Obama administration in a very good light as Snowden explains how the government has violated privacy rights on a massive scale.
Also the filmmakers clearly ind[i]cate that all roads lead to POTUS, a fairly serious accusation. There may be serious repercussions.

The film is the product of Laura Poitras, the filmmaker who worked with Glenn Greenwald in breaking the Snowden story, and obviously paints a favorable picture of him.

Here is the trailer:

There are several pieces of new information in the film that may be enough to bring it good box office returns. Seth Abramovitch and Chris O’Falt write in the Hollywood Reporter:

A second National Security Agency whistleblower exists within the ranks of government intelligence.
That bombshell comes toward the end of Citizenfour, a new documentary from filmmaker Laura Poitras about NSA informant Edward Snowden that had its world premiere on Friday at the New York Film Festival.
In the key scene, journalist Glenn Greenwald visits Snowden at a hotel room in Moscow. Fearing they are being taped, Greenwald communicates with Snowden via pen and paper.
While some of the exchanges are blurred for the camera, it becomes clear that Greenwald wants to convey that another government whistleblower -- higher in rank than Snowden -- has come forward.
The revelation clearly shocks Snowden, whose mouth drops open when he reads the details of the informant's leak.

This suggests that there are more bombshells coming. The left is already embarrassed by Obama’s failures, and fears being discredited by his application of leftist ideology to health care, the economy, and national security. As with excuses offered for the failures of communism, the problem is never with the ideology, but with the implementation being not radical or pure enough.

Thus, in order to protect The Cause, it will be necessary to portray Obama as a reactionary, and the NSA spying, along with the limited and ineffective Obama response to ISIS, are all the fodder the Left needs to feed that beast.

Snowden makes an interesting vehicle for the role of point man. Roger Friedman points out:

It’s instructive to see his evolution from eyeglass wearing nerd to contact lenses and moussed up hair sporting hero of his own thriller. It’s all very Tom Cruise.

One of the weirdest elements of Snowden’s initial narrative was his pole-dancing girlfriend, with whom he lived in Hawaii, whom he abandoned, even though they had been a couple for many years. The movie provides a happy ending of sorts:

 Near the end of the film, which received a rousing standing ovation, it is revealed that Lindsay Mills, Snowden's dancer girlfriend of 10 years, has been living with Snowden in Moscow.
When Poitras went to Moscow in July to show Snowden an early cut of the film, she shot footage of the two cooking dinner together, which appears in the final cut. 

Snowden remains an enigmatic figure. To be sure, there were some shocking abuses that he revealed. But he also took his information to the Chinese and to the Russians, (apparently ISIS was not available at the time, and besides, they were likely to behead him), thereby handing them crucial strategic advantage, and negating many years and many billions of dollars’ worth of work. We’ll probably never know the dimension of the disaster this has created, but it has to be substantial. This is not a good way to defend the Constitution.

But the most interesting aspect of all of this is the clue it gives to what the Left plans for Obama, who has become tarnished to the American public, and probably to history. If he thinks he’s had a tough two years, he doesn’t know what’s ahead for him. In order to save itself, the Left will have to portray him as a tool of the right, a flawed and destructive reactionary, and this film is an initial pre-election volley.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/snowden_documentary_another_sign_the_left_is_about_to_throw_obama_under_the_bus.html

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

Congress: Stop Subsidizing Biased Middle East Studies - Daniel Pipes

by Daniel Pipes


In return for receiving taxpayer funds for foreign regional studies, universities must agree, according to Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HAE), to conduct "public outreach" programs aimed at K-12 teachers and the general public.

Problem is, as shown in research by Campus Watch and others, the Middle East studies centers betray a relentless bias in their Outreach programs against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, while showing a willful blindness to radical Islam. Three examples:

• Gilbert Achcar of the University of London began a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2011 by declaring, "Don't expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I'm an Arab." Achcar went on to declare that "The Shoah [Holocaust] ended in 1945, but the suffering of the Palestinians is never-ending."
• Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter in the U.K. spoke at UCLA in February 2012 and charged Israel with being a "settler-colonial state" that engages in "criminality" by its very existence. He also offered this apologia for Palestinian terrorism: "Peace is not the only means of bringing an end to an oppression, in this case colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing." 
• Sherman Jackson of the University of Southern California said at Harvard in November 2013 that the U.S. Constitution "can be challenged, modified or even abandoned" to conform to Islamic law, or Shariah.

To remedy this torrent of bias, critics convinced the U.S. Congress to pass reforms in 2008 requiring that government grants be made on the condition that the Outreach programs "reflect diverse perspective and a wide range of views and generate debate on world regions and international affairs." In other words, don't just offer the usual anti-American screeds but also something mainstream. 

However, the 2008 legislation failed to provide an enforcement mechanism to hold universities accountable and so, in the end, it proved toothless.

To fix this problem, a group of ten organizations announced on September 17 an effort to cut off taxpayer support from biased, anti-American, and anti-Israel Middle East studies programs at American universities.

Those ten organizations are: the Middle East Forum, Accuracy in Academia, AMCHA Initiative, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Endowment for Middle East Truth, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, Zionist Organization of America.


This initiative calls on Congress, when reauthorizing HEA (which is now underway), to take two small steps to address the problem of bias: 

First, require universities receiving Title VI funds to establish grievance procedures in case programs do not in fact "reflect diverse perspective and a wide range of views."
Second, instruct the U.S. Department of Education to establish a formal complaint-resolution process such as that already in use to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

These two steps should help. But if they do not fix the problem, Congress should defund any Title VI Middle East studies centers that flout the law, mislead the public, and undermine the country's security.


Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/14999/congress-stop-subsidizing-biased-middle-east

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

Thank You, ISIS - David Horowitz

by David Horowitz


 

Reprinted from National Review Online.

Beheadings of innocent human beings are unspeakable acts reflecting the barbaric savagery of the Islamic “holy war” against the West — against us. Yet despite the intentions of their perpetrators, they have had an unexpected utility. Their gruesome images have entered the living rooms and consciousness of ordinary Americans and waked them up.

The barbarity of the Islamic movement for world domination has actually been evident for decades: in the suicide bombing of the Marine compound in Lebanon in 1982, in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, in the suicide attacks on Jews — men, women, and children — during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and in the beheadings perpetrated in Iraq by al-Qaeda’s Abu al-Zarqawi and the Salafist group known as Ansar al-Islam during the Iraq War.

Unfortunately, the response to these barbarities on the part of the Democratic party and the liberal elites has been to condemn and marginalize anyone who called them barbarous. In their eyes, it is racist to use the word “barbarism” to describe the acts of any Third World people. To associate Islam with the Islamists was Islamophobic. President Obama is still trapped in this time warp, denying in so many words that the Islamic State is Islamic. For America’s commander-in-chief to make such an obviously moronic statement about his country’s enemy in wartime reflects how deeply settled is the ideology of protecting the Islamists (and jeopardizing the innocent). Even Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, could not bring himself to describe the enemy as Islamic. Settling on “War on Terror” as a descriptive term was a way of eliding the fact that the savagery was motivated by not by nihilism but by Islamic faith. The Obama Democrats have gone even deeper into denial, eliminating “War on Terror” from the government vocabulary and replacing it with “overseas contingency operations.”

For more than a decade, a handful of conservatives, of whom I was one, tried to sound the alarm about the Islamist threat. For our efforts, we were ridiculed, smeared as bigots, and marginalized as Islamophobes. In 2004 I published a book called Unholy Alliance about the Islamist movement and the support it was receiving from the American Left. For my concern, Harvard professor and Islam expert Noah Feldman dismissed me as a “relic” in the New York Times Book Review. It was the last time the Times mentioned one of my books.

In 2006 and 2007, I organized nearly 200 “teach-ins” on American campuses, which I called “Islamo-Fascism Awareness” weeks. The idea was to legitimize the term “Islamo-fascist” as a description of the enemy confronting us. These demonstrations were attacked by the Muslim Students Association, which is a recruiting organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, and by Students for Justice in Palestine, a front for the terrorist party Hamas. They also inspired the contempt of the liberal Left. Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo devoted two YouTube videos to ridiculing me for holding the demonstrations. Campus leftists called the students who organized them racists, bigots, and Islamophobes.

Resolutions denouncing critics of Islamic misogyny and terror as “Islamophobes” were unanimously passed by leftist-run student councils at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and a dozen other elite schools. Lengthy reports on the menace of Islamophobia targeted me and other speakers at our campus demonstrations, including Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes. These reports, costing tens of thousands of dollars to produce, were published by FAIR, CAIR, the egregious Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for American Progress — the brain trust of the Democratic party.

And then came ISIS. The horrific images of the beheadings, the reports of mass slaughters, and the threats to the American homeland have accomplished what our small contingent of beleaguered conservatives could never have achieved by ourselves. They brought images of these Islamic fanatics and savages into the living rooms of the American public, and suddenly the acceptable language for describing the enemy began to change. “Savages” and “barbarians” began to roll off the tongues of evening-news anchors and commentators who never would have dreamed of crossing that line before, for fear of offending the politically correct.

Virtually every major Muslim organization in America is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Islamic terror. Huma Abedin, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and is still Clinton’s confidante and principal aide), comes from a family of Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Yet legislators who have the power to investigate these matters are still intimidated from even raising them. Representative Michele Bachmann, who did raise them, was excoriated as a racist not only by the Left but also by John Boehner and John McCain.

Language is a weapon in the battle against the threat we face. We cannot fight a war effectively when we cannot name the enemy or describe his methods or examine his influence on our own policy. The Islamic State has created an opportunity for common sense and realism to prevail. The tragedy is that it has taken the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East and the ongoing extermination of the Catholic presence in Iraq to begin to wake people up. And, unfortunately, the president is still asleep or, less charitably, is hostile to American purposes, is hostile to the military that defends us, and identifies more with the Islamic world that has produced these forces who would destroy us than with the country he is sworn to defend.


David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/thank-you-isis/

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

The Cream Puff Corps: Australia, Belgium, Britain and France; Not Just The Netherlands - Peter Martino

by Peter Martino

If trains and buss are no longer safe places for soldiers on their way to work, surely they are no longer safe for ordinary citizens either.
"The best thing you can do is to make an effort to kill any infidel, French, American, or any of their allies... Smash his head with a rock, slaughter him with a knife, run him over with a car throw him from a high place, choke him or poison him." — Mohammed al-Adnani, ISIS spokesman, September 2014.
Instead of telling their soldiers to hide themselves, Western governments should tell their soldiers to show themselves to make clear to the jihadists, and to frightened citizens, that we in the West are not afraid of terrorists. On the contrary, we will root them out and come down on them with all our military might.

Earlier this week, Timon Dias wrote on these pages that the Dutch authorities have ordered Dutch soldiers not to wear their uniforms when they are using public transport on their way to the barracks. But the Dutch are not the only cowards in the West. Unfortunately, the Netherlands is not the only country that, for fear of attacks by Muslim extremists, has advised its military to no longer wear their uniforms in public. Apparently, Australia, Belgium, Britain and France have done the same.

As Dias wrote, the order in the Netherlands was a response to a threat by a Dutch jihadist known as Muhajiri Shaam, who is currently fighting in Syria with al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. After the Netherlands announced that Dutch F-16s would participate in the allied offensive against ISIS in Iraq, Shaam tweeted that the Dutch people had now become a target for jihadists.

In Belgium, a country that has also sent F-16s to participate in the attacks on ISIS, soldiers have also been advised not to wear their uniforms when using the Belgian public transport system. According to General Tom Middendorp, the Dutch supreme military commander, the British and French authorities have made similar recommendations. In May 2013, after the murder of Lee Rigby -- a British soldier hacked to death by two Muslims outside his military barracks in London -- the British military commanders already told their troops not to wear their uniforms outside their bases.

It seems that the Europeans are terrified by the presence on their soil of jihadists targeting the army. Last September's assault on a uniformed Australian Navy officer in Sydney reinforced these fears. Immediately after the Sydney attack, Australia's defense chiefs also issued a warning, advising the military not to wear uniforms while off duty.

The result is that the military in Australia and Europe are currently behaving like cream puffs. If trains and buses are no longer safe places for soldiers on their way to work, surely they are no longer safe for ordinary citizens, either. Jihadists are also threatening to murder ordinary citizens.

Brave today, cream puffs tomorrow? Three Australian Navy sailors receive a Group Citation for Bravery, May 10, 2012. (Image source: Royal Australian Navy)

Three weeks ago, ISIS spokesman Mohammed al-Adnani called on jihadists worldwide to assassinate citizens from the Western countries belonging to the international coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. "The best thing you can do is to make an effort to kill any infidel, French, American, or any of their allies. ... Smash his head with a rock, slaughter him with a knife, run him over with a car, throw him from a high place, choke him or poison him," al-Adnani said.

What will the cowardly authorities in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Britain and Australia do when terrorists randomly kill the first citizen on the streets of their countries? Advise them to cover themselves in hijabs when female, or grow beards and dress in djellabas when male?

Instead of telling their soldiers to hide themselves, Western governments should tell their soldiers to show themselves in order to make it clear to the jihadists, and to frightened citizens, that we in the West are not afraid of terrorists. On the contrary, we will root them out and come down on them with all our military might.


Peter Martino

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4762/cream-puff-corps

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

Obama Secretly Giving In to Iran’s Nuke Demands - Majid Rafizadeh

by Majid Rafizadeh


For several reasons, President Obama appears to be desperate to seal a final nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, even if the comprehensive nuclear pact would leave the Iranian leaders with the nuclear infrastructure and required centrifuges to build an atomic bomb. Based on the latest developments, it is clear the Obama administration has steadily become much more lenient and compromising, giving unprecedented concessions to the Islamic Republic, some of which have been kept clandestine.

As the nuclear talks continue between Iranian leaders and representatives from the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the nuclear negotiations have turned primarily into a show between the United States and the Islamic Republic. Increasingly, Iranian and American politicians from both sides have been holding bilateral talks in order to strike a nuclear deal by the extended deadline of November 24.

The US and Iran appear to be the two major players in the nuclear talks, as the White House began reshaping the nuclear negotiations which fall right into the interests of Iranian politicians.

First of all, the main demand of the United States and other world powers was that the Islamic Republic had to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure for the United Nations Security Council to remove the four rounds of economic and political sanctions on Iran. Dismantlement of the major nuclear facilities would give the international community a considerable amount of relief from Iran’s potential to develop an atomic bomb anytime soon.

In the past months, the nuclear talks became stagnant due to the fact that Iranian leaders, particularly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, suggested that they will not give an inch or dismantle their nuclear infrastructure.

How did President Obama respond to Iranian leaders’ zero sum political game and uncompromising standpoint? Intriguingly, President Obama made a decision to secretly lower the international community’s demands to satisfy the Iranian nuclear team’s demands. It is key to point out that the decision he made highlights a significant shift in nuclear negotiations. The White House proposed that the Islamic Republic disconnect rather than dismantle its centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium and obtain a nuclear bomb. This is a critical shift in the American position towards Iran’s nuclear defiance.

President Obama’s proposal to the Islamic Republic would in fact leave Iranian leaders with all their nuclear infrastructure they have so far developed. Iranian leaders would also be capable of secretly continuing to enrich uranium through bypassing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s rules. In addition, since the nuclear infrastructure and centrifuges would remain almost intact, the Islamic Republic would be capable of resuming its nuclear activities anytime they desire in the future; this can occur potentially after economic sanctions were removed and Iran’s objective achieved.

President Obama’s offer to the Iranian leaders was kept secret from the public and US Congress as well. The proposal was disclosed by the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who held private conversations with U.S. experts in New York.

After President Obama’s proposal was revealed, Congress understandably raised a series of concerns. Senator Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) initiated a letter, which included thirty other Senators, to Secretary of State John Kerry, pointing out that the Obama administration “may now be offering troubling nuclear concessions to Iran in the hopes of rapidly concluding negotiations for a ‘deal.’”

President Obama will be in office for a few more years, but if the final nuclear deal is signed based on President Obama’s proposal, it will pose an unprecedented danger and an irresolvable global issue with regard to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threat as well as Tehran’s ideological and hegemonic ambitions.

Numerous reasons may be behind President Obama’s leniency, priority changes and determination to strike a final nuclear deal with Iran. First of all, Obama cannot run for reelection. As a result, a flimsy nuclear deal — which would leave the Islamic Republic with a path to develop a nuclear bomb — would not affect his political career. Secondly, President Obama can add another achievement to his political career and history for being the first US President to seal a final nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Third, President Obama’s leadership has always been weak when it comes to dealing with Iran’s Supreme Leader and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian leaders have masterfully taken advantage of his leaderless personality. The Islamic Republic is even attempting to get more concessions from the White House by linking its fight against the Islamic State with the nuclear negations as a trade off. Apparently, all odds are in favor of the Iranian leaders so far as they are cognizant of that fact that they are facing a lenient and weak US President and as they are increasingly and steadily increasing their leverage over the US.

President Obama’s proposal and leniency would grant Ayatollah Khamenei what he desires: removal of economic sanctions as well as maintaining the right the enrich uranium; build an atomic bomb.


Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian-American political scientist and scholar, is president of the International American Council and serves on the board of the Harvard International Review at Harvard University. Rafizadeh is also a senior fellow at the Nonviolence International Organization based in Washington, DC and is a member of the Gulf project at Columbia University. He can be reached at rafizadeh@fas.harvard.edu. Follow Rafizadeh at @majidrafizadeh.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/obama-secretly-giving-in-to-irans-nuke-demands/

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

Satellite Evidence Proves Explosion in Iran's Parchin Took Place - Ben Ariel

by Ben Ariel

Satellite evidence received by Israeli defense news website refutes Iran's denial that an explosion occurred at military compound.

 

 

Aerial view of Parchin site

Reuters

 

Satellite evidence has been received that refutes the denials of the Iranian government regarding this week’s mysterious explosion at the military compound in Parchin, Israel Defense reported on Wednesday.

Satellite images of the area, to the east of Tehran, prove that the explosion reported by the Iranian media had, indeed, occurred inside the military compound in Parchin, where, according to western intelligence agencies, trials are being conducted on nuclear missile fuzes.

Satellite images obtained by the Israel Defense website and analyzed by specialist Ronen Solomon clearly show damage consistent with an attack against bunkers in a central locality within the military research complex at the Parchin military compound.

The locality in question is situated at the center of the compound, adjacent to another installation where, according to intelligence sources, the trials being conducted involve controlled detonation of fuzes intended to serve as triggers for nuclear devices.

The locality consists of a sizable testing center and what appears to be an area with bunker-shaped structures. "Before and after" images indicate that a complete section of structures was simply eliminated by an unexplained explosion, according to the website.

The explosion wiped several testing units off the face of the earth while inflicting collateral damage on adjacent buildings, with traces of fire clearly visible in a section located in a sparsely afforested area.

The images, taken by the French satellite Pleiades at a 0.5 meter resolution on the day following the reports at 07:30 a.m., also show vehicles – probably fire trucks, at the scene.

At least two people, among them an unnamed "nuclear expert", were killed in Monday’s explosion at the compound, though official Iranian sources said that there had been an “incident,” but not an explosion.

The sources added that there was no nuclear work being done at Parchin.​

Iran has refused to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to access Parchin since 2005, and both opposition figures and others have accused the regime of using the site to house an illegal nuclear weapons program.

Last month, Israel's Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said he had "reliable information" that Parchin was being used for secret tests of technology that could be used only for detonating a nuclear weapon.

Satellite evidence last August and in 2012 suggested that nuclear bomb triggering devices are being tested in Parchin.


Ben Ariel

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/185986#.VDbmXhYYjLN

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

A Message to Nasrallah - Dan Margalit

by Dan Margalit

Out of the north the evil will break forth, as expected. Hezbollah is keen. It has apparently lost over a thousand fighters battling in Syria, after coming to the aid of the unpopular Bashar Assad. 

Hezbollah is a natural enemy of the Islamic State group, which has supplanted it as the face of religious radicalism, and it sat by in almost complete silence during Operation Protective Edge as Israel was battering Hamas. Hassan Nasrallah's supporters expect more from him, something more violent. Therefore he has begun, with increasing frequency, answering the expectations of the extremists, but on a scope that will not drag him into a third Lebanon war. 

Over eight years after sparking the Second Lebanon War, Nasrallah himself should remember what he said when the war ended, that had he known what Israel's response would be in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut in southern Lebanon, he would not have abducted IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. It's possible the passing years and his failures in other arenas have helped him forget the consequences of provoking Israel.

The IDF has noticed the growing restlessness in the north. When Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz toured the border area, it was not as part of their routine visits, but to gauge the atmosphere in the northern sector from up close. The shooting and wounding of a Lebanese soldier on Sunday has not been linked to the Tuesday's roadside bombings. The solider was searching for drug smugglers, mistakenly crossed the border and was wounded. Hezbollah, however, had an interest in causing friction, which it did yesterday by detonating the explosives it had set along the border fence a while ago. 

Israel believes it is highly unlikely Hezbollah wants to open another front against Israel right now. It is mired in a frustrating campaign alongside Assad, and its mission in Syria exceeds its capabilities. The recent fights in the Middle East, however -- from the Second Lebanon War in 2006 through all the flare-ups and operations in Gaza -- happened against the expectations of the leaders, apparently from both sides of the fence. 

Nasrallah does not want a war, but in July this was also believed to be true of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, yet the shooting spiraled out of control regardless. Not to mention that in the Middle East the words "quiet will be met with quiet" are perceived, not as a practical proposal in the spirit of compromise, but as a sign of weakness on the part of the side making the proposal. 

Under these conditions Nasrallah and his advisers may believe that Israel's ability to withstand another missile campaign is rather limited, and that following Protective Edge it will do whatever it can to prevent another conflagration. Such estimates, however, are always different than the final bill. 

Israel has no interest in another military campaign. It has even less of an interest though in a trickle of rockets, which includes the infamous roadside bombs from those days in the security zone in southern Lebanon. Israel also doesn't have another 50 days to spare while the situation gradually deteriorates like it did in Gaza. 

Quiet is preferable, but our patience is on a short a fuse. Hezbollah -- and the Lebanese government along with it -- need to take into account that Lebanon's ability to withstand an Israeli military onslaught is less than that of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and that Israel will not allow its patience, nerves and restraint to be tested for very long. Not all escalations happen gradually, if, heaven forbid, the need for urgency is created.

Dan Margalit

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10193

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

Israeli Arab diplomat calls for disbanding notion of the Nakba - Shlomo Cesana

by Shlomo Cesana

"To me it seems the Nakba has been transformed from a humanitarian issue to a political one, to perpetuate the current situation as leverage on Israel. It is time to put the hatred and alienation behind us," says Deputy Ambassador George Deek.

Israeli Deputy Ambassador to Norway George Deek | Photo credit: George Deek

Israeli Deputy Ambassador to Norway George Deek is a Christian Arab has called on disbanding the notion of the Nakba, or "Catastrophe," as many Arab nations refer to Israel's establishment in 1948.

Deek, the son of refugees from Jaffa, has lectured throughout Europe on his family's history, and has called on others who left or were deported from Jaffa after 1948 to let go of the Nakba concept.

"When I walk through my birthplace, Jaffa, I think about the fishermen's beach in 1948, about my house in Ajami [neighborhood] and the stories I heard about those years," Deek said in a lecture uploaded recently to YouTube.

"My grandfather George, after whom I was named, lived in Jaffa with his family for 400 years. He married Vera, my grandmother, and a few months later their plans changed. The United Nations recognized Israel and a few months later the State of Israel was formed. The Arab leaders warned that anyone who stays will be murdered by the Jews and they suggested running away. They said that armies of five Arab nations would destroy Israel and we would be able to return to our homes.

"The war ended with an Arab failure. [They] did not succeed in destroying Israel. Since 1948, there have been numerous occasions, including now, of refugees being kicked out of their homes."

Deek questioned why the displacement in Israel is the only one to be called the Nakba. 

"Why are Poles, Iraqis and others not mentioned by the international community and the U.N., but the Nakba is? To me it seems the Nakba has been transformed from a humanitarian issue to a political one, to perpetuate the current situation as leverage against Israel. It is time to put the hatred and alienation behind us."

Shlomo Cesana

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=20639

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

"Remove Israel from That Map!" - Khaled Abu Toameh

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The uproar that erupted throughout the Arab world over the use of a map with Israel's name on it is yet another reminder that many Arabs still have not come to terms with Israel's existence -- and apparently are not interested in coming to terms with it.
The protestors were not demanding a two-state solution and an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They were protesting against Israel's existence; that is what really bothers them.
How can anyone seriously expect that, if Israel pulled back to the pre-1967 lines, the Arab world will consider the "Israeli-Arab Conflict over?"
This conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or a fence -- but about Israel's very existence. To make peace with Israel, the Arab world needs to prepare its people for such a move, and not incite violence against Israel and demand that it be removed from maps.

The Saudi MBC TV network was recently forced to apologize to its hundreds of millions of viewers for using the name Israel instead of Palestine.

The apology came after viewers strongly condemned the network and threatened to boycott its programs over the use of a map with Israel's name on it.

The reason Israel appeared on the MBC's map was because of the participation of two Arab citizens of Israel in its popular Arab Idol contest. The show, based on the popular British show Pop Idol, is the most widely viewed in the Arab world.

The two Arab Israelis, Manal Moussa, 25 and Haitham Khalailah, 24, are from villages in northern Israel. They are among many contestants from all over the Arab world who are performing songs on stage in front of four judges and the public.

This is the first time that Arab Israelis have participated in the popular show.

When this season's show began in mid-September, the TV station introduced a map with the names of the contestants' countries. This year, of course, the map showed Israel as one of the countries taking part in the show.

The Saudi station and directors of the Arab Idol show quickly learned, however, that they had committed a big and unforgivable crime. Within minutes, they were flooded with requests to remove Israel from the map and apologize to all Arabs for this "serious offence."

The condemnations did not come only from Palestinians, but from nearly all the Arab countries. The protesters demanded that MBC immediately replace "Israel" with "Palestine" or face a massive boycott campaign.

Arab activists did not even wait to hear back from MBC, and launched their own online campaign to boycott the station. One group launched a Twitter campaign entitled "Shut Down Arab Idol." Another campaign was launched under the banner, "Palestine is Arab, not Hebrew." A third online campaign carried the title, "Together Against Arab Idol."

And of course there were the more extreme activists who issued threats against the station and its Saudi owners, whom they dubbed "Zionist Arabs."

Not surprisingly, embattled MBC managers rushed to issue a statement apologizing for displaying a map that referred to Israel as an existing state. MBC claimed that Israel appeared on the map as a result of a "technical error." The name Israel was removed from the map, which now uses only the name Palestine.

Israeli citizen Manal Moussa, shown in this image appearing on the "Arab Idol" show, is labeled on-screen with "Palestine" as her country of residence.

But with that, the story did not come to an end. Under pressure from the viewers, the two Arab Israeli singers are now referred to only as Palestinians. There is no mention whatsoever of the fact that both Moussa and Khalailah were raised in Israel and hold Israeli passports.

The uproar that erupted throughout the Arab world over the use of a map with Israel's name on it is yet another reminder that many Arabs still have not come to terms with Israel's existence -- and apparently are not interested in coming to terms with it.

This refusal is not related to the recent war between Israel and Hamas or to settlement construction. Rather, it is the narrative that has been prevalent in the Arab world since 1948 -- a narrative that considers Israel an alien entity that was violently planted in the Middle East and needs to be removed.

The incident with MBC's Arab Idol show came amid renewed talk of the purported readiness of some Arab countries to make peace with Israel, in light of the increased turmoil and anarchy in the Arab world and the war on the Islamic State terrorist group.

Every now and then, Israel is advised by some of its friends to consider endorsing the 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative, which later became to be known as the Arab Peace Initiative.

In the initiative, the Arab countries say that if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 lines, they will consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement and establish normal relations with Israel.

These, of course, are just promises made by heads of state and monarchs, most of whom were never elected, and hardly represent the sentiments on the Arab street.

If a powerful TV network such as MBC was unable to face pressure and intimidation and had to remove Israel from its map, how can anyone seriously expect that Arab leaders will be able to win the backing of their people for an initiative that talks about "establishing normal relations" with Israel?

And how can anyone seriously expect that if Israel pulled back to the pre-1967 lines, the Arab world will consider the Israeli-Arab Conflict over?

The protesters who forced MBC to remove Israel from its map were not demanding a two-state solution and an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They were protesting against Israel's existence; that is what really bothers them.

Their success in forcing MBC to remove Israel from the map is a symbolic victory for those who seek Israel's destruction. But it is also a reminder that this conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or a fence -- but about Israel's very existence.

In order to make peace with Israel, the Arab world needs to prepare its people for such a move, and not incite violence against Israel and demand that it be removed from maps. Unless that happens, the prospects for real peace will remain as remote as ever.


Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4765/remove-israel-map

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

Confirmed: 4 ISIS Terrorists Apprehended at Southern Border in last 36 Hours - Rick Moran

by Rick Moran

You may have read of the shocking allegations made by Rep. Duncan Hunter on Tuesday when he claimed that 10 Islamic State terrorists had been apprehended at the southern border.

“There’s nobody talking about it,” Rep. Hunter told Fox. “If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border. It’s that simple…They caught them at the border, therefore we know that ISIS is coming across the border. If they catch five or ten of them then you know there’s going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the border patrol.”

Not so, says DHS:

“The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the Southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,” said DHS spokesperson Marsha Catron. “DHS continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.”

Hunter claimed to get his information from a high level DHS source. And now, Judicial Watch has confirmed at least part of the story:

Islamic terrorists have entered the United States through the Mexican border and Homeland Security sources tell Judicial Watch that four have been apprehended in the last 36 hours by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr.
JW confirmed this after California Congressman Duncan Hunter, a former Marine Corp Major and member of the House Armed Services Committee, disclosed on national television that at least ten Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) fighters have been caught crossing the Mexican border in Texas. The veteran lawmaker got the astounding intel straight from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Homeland Security agency responsible for guarding the 1,933-mile southern border.
“If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border,” Hunter proclaimed on a national cable news show this week. “It’s that simple. ISIS doesn’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have nuclear weapons. The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming in through the southern border – which they already have.” The three-term congressmen went on: “They aren’t flying B-1 bombers, bombing American cities, but they are going to be bombing American cities coming across from Mexico.”
In late August JW reported that Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources confirmed to JW that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat.

Ther's an interesting bureaucratic dynamic at work. Agents with the US Customs and Border Protection service have been complaining for years about our porous southern border. Unlike the rest of DHS immigration agencies, they have been vocal about enforcing border security.

Perhaps the entry of these terrorists was the last straw. Knowing that DHS would sweep it under the rug, CBP leaked the info first to the congressman and then to JW. And the fact that they were willing to go on the record makes the DHS look like a bunch of liars.

It may be that we were keeping the apprehension of these terrorists secret until we could interrogate them to discover if they have any associates in the US and what was their plot. But once the information was out, DHS had no cause to lie anymore.

And you know that if 4 were caught, there are others who were successful in breaching our border security. It's unsettling to contemplate the lack of urgency by this government to shore up our security at a time when terrorists are able to cross the border with impunity.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/confirmed_4_isis_terrorists_apprehended_at_southern_border_in_last_36_hours.html

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