The other side of the drachma - Dror Eydar

by Dror Eydar

While the Left doesn't trust human nature when it comes to economic matters, the opposite is true when it comes to foreign relations. When dealing with foreign issues, all wariness disappears and we are asked to blindly trust nations that openly call for our destruction.

1. In these complex times, I am focusing my attention more on economic issues. The deeper I investigate, the more I find a fascinating link between the Left's diplomatic and economic ideas. 

The Left promotes massive government intervention in the economy, oversight over prices and taxes, raising minimum wages, etc. Last weekend, demonstrators against the emerging agreement between the government and natural gas developers called out "only nationalization will save the nation." 

God help us. In other words, the Left doesn't trust the power of the free market. The Left doesn't trust anyone whose natural human inclination is to make a profit to understand that in order to do that they have to compromise and ensure that others profit as well. As far as the Left is concerned, basic human nature is evil and moral economic choices must be imposed on mankind by way of economic laws. 

But here is the question: Is it moral to violate agreements and contracts? How does doing that help the economy? There is not a lot of drilling underway off Israel's shores. In light of massive recent natural gas discoveries there, we should be seeing investors lining up to explore our territory, but we are not. They look at how we abuse the companies that have already discovered natural gas and they keep their distance. 

In response to a recent column I wrote on the topic, a friend of mine who works with very rich Jewish investors wrote to me, explaining their response to Israel's gas controversy. According to him, their attitude is "contributions (to Israel) -- yes. Investment -- absolutely not." Imagine a contractor who signs an agreement with the residents of a building to renovate the existing apartments in exchange for the right to add two new floors that would belong to him. After renovating the building and investing a lot of money in the existing apartments, the residents come to him looking to renegotiate the deal. The roof is ours, they say to him, you are making too much profit. 

While the Left doesn't trust human nature when it comes to economic matters, the opposite is true when it comes to foreign relations. When dealing with foreign issues, all wariness disappears and we are asked to blindly trust nations that openly call for our destruction. We are asked to blindly trust jihadi terrorist organizations and pieces of paper that they sign. Wasn't that the case with the Oslo Accords? Isn't this how they keep trying to lure us? The temptations of "peace" include the promise of an economic paradise, but the reality has taught us that peace made of paper actually requires building a bigger army than ever. It is enough to think about the economic implications of a terrorist pointing a shoulder-mounted missile at Ben-Gurion International Airport from the hills of Samaria to dash the fantasy of an economic paradise. In the event that their lofty ideas actually fail, the response among the Left is similar in both economic and diplomatic cases: denial. 

The Right and the conservatives, incidentally, hold the precise opposite view: Trust the citizens and the market forces and try not to interfere with economic processes, but on the other hand, mistrust the enemy and make them fear you. This view may appear to be simplistic, I know, but it has proved itself. And by the way, isn't "Peace Now" simplistic too?

Just like magical solutions in the diplomatic arena ("make love not war"), socialist solutions are also an easy sell. We all want to help the weak and the foreign and the poor and we all want to make an honest living. The question is how we do it. Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah, from the first century C.E., already taught us that there is a short way that ends up being long and there is a long way that is ultimately the short way (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Eruvin 53b). In short, there are no shortcuts. 

* * *

2. This week, the citizens of Greece voted against paying back their debt -- a massive, nearly unimaginable debt. To receive a bailout, the Greeks were asked to submit to a list of austerity measures in an effort to improve their economy. The measures include raising the retirement age, revoking tax and salary benefits, dismissing some employees from the bloated public sector, increasing competition and more. But Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was voted into power after promising the exact opposite, as socialists are wont to do, as they increase government spending. 

Tsipras was elected on Jan. 25 this year. More than two decades ago, the young prime minister was a member of the Communist youth in his country. While he served in the opposition, during a meteoric rise to the leadership of the radical leftist coalition known by the collective name "Syriza," he opposed the Greek government's austerity program, which was part of the European plan to extricate Greece from its immense debt. 

Three days after he was elected, Israeli MK Dov Khenin (a member of Israel's Communist party, part of Hadash and now the Joint Arab List) wrote a Facebook post full of glowing accolades for the Greek prime minister: "This is how the Left should behave. Note what they have managed to achieve in only three days: They raised the minimum wage to 750 euros; halted the privatization of government companies and public resources; raised pensions for low income earners; reversed the dismissal of public workers; revoked the co-pay requirement for doctors' visits and prescription medication," and on and on. That is all well and good, but where does the money come from? 

Three months later, at the end of April, German paper Bild reported on a phone conversation between Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in which Tzipras asked for more financial assistance and European flexibility. In other words, he said to Merkel: We're out of money. Oh, right. 

In their defense, say the disciples of the Greek socialism, the current government is dealing with the poisonous fruit left over by the rightist leadership. But that argument simply doesn't hold water: With the exception of five years between 2004 and 2009, Greece has been ruled by socialist or socialist-majority governments for the last 22 years. 

Between 2003 and 2007, Greece enjoyed an impressive economic boom (Athens hosted the Summer Olympic games in 2004) of an average of 4%. My friend Eran Bartal wrote this week that part of this growth was based on a lie, because the growth of the public sector was linked to the growth in the business sector: "Say I earn 1,000 shekels and I give my children 500 shekels for behaving well or for cleaning the house or the car. Technically, my children and I have earned a total of 1,500 -- I earned 1,000 and they earned 500. That is the model for Greek growth." 

Every country needs a strong public sector, but it is the business sector that finances it. In Greece, the business sector was expected to generate massive, unrealistic profits in order to fund the monstrous public sector. That would have been possible only in the beautiful socialist fantasies. True, Germany is also guilty of the original sin, allowing Greece's failed economy to join the eurozone. What bank would lend money to someone who is clearly incapable of paying off his debt? 

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3. Speaking of the results of the Greek referendum, it is rather entertaining to see the Left here in Israel praise the Greeks for proudly standing up to European coercion. Is it not the same Left that always chides the rest of us for confronting Europe and the U.S. on fundamental issues on which Israel thinks differently than they do? 

But the result of the referendum vote does not indicate that the gods of socialism have revealed themselves to the Greek masses. It is simply the result of the fundamental national nucleus that exists within any nation, and certainly a nation as ancient as Greece. It turns out that national pride is more important than paying off debts. That is kind of funny considering the political nature of the current Greek government. 

We encountered a similar phenomenon here in Israel during the last election. The Likud party won a resounding victory of 30 Knesset seats precisely because of the tremendous pressure by the left-wing parties and the media to defeat it. Quite a few people voted for Likud not necessarily because they love the Right, but because they hate the Left, or, more accurately, its way of trying to dictate to the people how to vote and what to think. Let us hope that the Greek financial fiasco will serve as a warning sign for us.

Dror Eydar

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13129

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

Islamism: Blaming the West - Samuel Westrop

by Samuel Westrop

• Islamist terror is not the product of Western policy. As David Cameron rightly notes, it is a global ideological network, with both violent and non-violent branches, and appears committed to enveloping everyone throughout the world.
• But in the world of Giles Fraser, Baroness Warsi and friends, it seems as if terrorists are not radical, extremists are not extreme, and Islamism is not the product of Islamist ideas.

In June, Talha Asmal, a 17-year-old Muslim, became Britain's youngest suicide bomber. In a vehicle packed with explosives, Asmal and three other jihadists attacked Iraqi forces at an oil refinery in the northern town of Baiji. Eleven people were killed.

A few days later, three sisters from the city of Bradford left with their nine children – the youngest only 3-years-old -- for ISIS territory in Syria.

In the wake of these latest recruits to the jihadist cause, and a week before 30 British tourists were slaughtered on a Tunisian beach, Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech at a security conference in Slovakia. Before a distinguished audience of politicians, academics, military officials and security experts from around the world, Cameron described ISIS as "one of the biggest threats our world has faced."

The reason young British Muslims join ISIS, Cameron claimed, "is ideological. It is an Islamist extremist ideology – one that says the West is bad and democracy is wrong, that women are inferior, that homosexuality is evil. It says religious doctrine trumps the rule of law and the Caliphate trumps nation state, and it justifies violence in asserting itself and achieving its aims."

A growing number of journalists, politicians and Islamist activists, however, argue that growing radicalization and support for ISIS is the consequence of an isolated Muslim community, which feels aggrieved with government policies. Baroness Warsi, for example, a former cabinet minister, told the BBC that the British government was fuelling the problem of radicalization by "disengaging" from Muslim communities.

Islamist groups argue that foreign policy and police scrutiny directly cause extremism. CAGE, an Islamist group that worked with the black-hooded British ISIS executioner, "Jihadi John," has claimed that heavy-handed security services and "long standing grievances over Western foreign policy" cause young Muslims to turn to violence.

Two of the husbands of the sisters who left for Syria with their children have claimed the British police "actively promoted and encouraged" the radicalization of their wives. They fled to Syria, the husbands claim, because of "oppressive police surveillance."

One official from the Muslim Association of Britain, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, even argued that government cuts to welfare cultivated support for ISIS.

Others, meanwhile, claim that the government does not do enough. Manzoor Moghal, a Muslim commentator, notes that the families of three British schoolgirls who joined ISIS in February expressed similar criticisms: "On that occasion, the parents and their lawyer took their complaints to Parliament, arguing that the Metropolitan Police had been 'a disgrace' in failing to give sufficient warnings of their daughters' vulnerability to the zealots."

In February, three girls from Bethnal Green Academy, in London's Tower Hamlets, travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State as "jihadi brides": 15-year-old Amira Abase (left), 15-year-old Shamima Begum (middle), and 16-year-old Kadiza Sultana (right).

All these critics downplay any individual responsibility for the young British Muslims who embraced jihad. The academic Frank Furedi writes:

"When it was revealed over the weekend that 17-year-old Talha Asmal had become Britain's youngest suicide bomber, many reports suggested that he was a 'victim' of ruthless online groomers. His family described him as 'loving, kind, caring and affable'. The obsession with representing young 'vulnerable' suicide bombers as victims is related to the association of the act of radicalisation with vulnerability. The irrational connection of an act of terrorism to the status of victimhood is so deeply entrenched that the British media have little interest in the real victims in this drama – the people that were maimed and killed by this 'caring and affable' 17-year-old."

Islamist-led Muslim groups are keen to attribute the process of radicalization to extremist online material. Officials from the Muslim Council of Britain -- a group run by operatives from the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami -- refer to "slick ISIS media" found at the "margins of the Internet." These groups might only be keen to blame the Internet, however, because it distracts attention from their own, more persuasive fundamentalism.

Commentators from across Britain's political spectrum seek to ignore the crucial role that extremist preachers and sects play in the radicalization process, inculcating vast swathes of the British Muslim community with fundamentalist ideals.

Owen Jones, a Labour Party-aligned columnist with The Guardian, writes that the government employs "a rhetoric of collective blame that does nothing but play into the hands" of ISIS and other extremist groups. Western wars in Iraq and Libya, he argues, have produced the ISIS threat.

As with Baroness Warsi, Jones seems unable to identify ideology as the key cause. In his mind, Islamism is not a concerted global threat, but an organic response to chaos caused by Western folly.

It suits both Warsi and Jones to ignore the influence of extremism. Both have accepted invitations to speak on Islamist platforms alongside preachers such as Abu Eesa Niamatullah, who claims that Jews "find it so easy and natural... to massacre... to blow up babies," and Yasir Qadhi, who has said: "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews ... 'The Hoax of the Holocaust', I advise you to read this book ... a very good book. All of this [the Holocaust] is false propaganda ... The Jews, the way they portray him [Hitler], is not correct."

To his credit, David Cameron is one of the few who appears to recognize the reality of Islamic extremism. At the security conference in Slovakia, he further stated:

"The question is: how do people arrive at this worldview? ... One of the reasons is that there are people who hold some of these views who don't go as far as advocating violence, but who do buy into some of these prejudices giving the extreme Islamist narrative weight and telling fellow Muslims, 'you are part of this'. This paves the way for young people to turn simmering prejudice into murderous intent."

In that understanding, however, the government appears curiously alone. By contrast, The Times columnist and former Conservative MP, Matthew Parris, writes that merely by mentioning extremism within British Islam, Cameron has become the "ISIS propaganda machine." Parris also claims that jihadists are no different from the "adventurers who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. ... I've heard no evidence that a flyblown stint with murderous bigots in Syria has 'radicalised' young British Muslims who return: these are human beings like us, many of whom will have reacted to the reality of that dirty war in the same way as you or I would have done -- with shock and disillusion."

Matthew Parris seems to have a short memory. Just five months ago, terrorists who pledged allegiance to ISIS gunned down cartoonists and Jews in France. Before that, in 2014, an ISIS-trained terrorist murdered four people at a Jewish museum in Belgium. ISIS-linked terrorists have conducted attacks in over a dozen countries, including the recent attack in Tunisia.

Islamist terror is not the product of Western policy. It is, as David Cameron rightly notes, a global ideological network, with both violent and non-violent branches. It may thrive in chaos, but it is committed to enveloping everyone throughout the world.

The notion that British terrorists are victims of their circumstances is a fallacy that only serves to inspire sympathy with murderers, downplays the reality of global Islamism, and undermines efforts to combat terrorism.

Giles Fraser, a writer for The Guardian and former Canon Chancellor of St. Pauls Cathedral, recently wrote that there is no ideological connection between Islamist terror and Islam itself. The West, Fraser claims, blames "conservative Islam and the dangerous ideas contained in the Quran," for the recent horrors in Kuwait, Tunisia and France, because we refuse to "face our responsibility" for the "long history of disastrous western interventions in the Middle East."

Progressive Muslims might have reason to declare that Islamic scripture does not sanction terrorism, but no one can claim violent Islamic movements do not cause their own violent acts.

To back up his argument, Fraser cites a report published by a British group called Claystone. The study posits that "the connection between radical theology and terrorism" is built on a "flimsy empirical basis," encouraged by "conservative political lobbyists keen to blame conservative Islam for terrorism."

Claystone, however, is run by Haitham Al-Haddad, a British Salafist who describes Jews as "apes and pigs" and "enemies of God." He also claims that Osama bin Laden is a "martyr" who would enter paradise.

The Claystone report claims that Salafist Islam is an ally in the fight against terrorism. The report also makes the baffling claim that people who commit terrorist acts do not necessarily subscribe to extremist beliefs.

In the world of Giles Fraser, Baroness Warsi and friends, it seems as if terrorists are not radical, extremists are not extreme, and Islamism is not the product of Islamist ideas.

There is plenty the British government gets wrong on the question of extremism. It continues to fund problematic groups, such as Finsbury Park Mosque, which is run by Hamas operative Muhammad Sawalha; or Islamic Relief Worldwide, an Islamist charity that promotes extremist preachers. In addition, the government has proposed harsh measures to combat extremist preachers, including efforts to censor what clerics may write or say in public.

But on the question of moral responsibility, David Cameron seems to have it right. The West is not to blame for terrorism. Islamist violence is actually the product of a religious ideology openly committed to enveloping the world. It is not our domestic or foreign policies that Islamists dislike, but the existence of anything not belonging to their version of Islam -- which includes us in the West.

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Samuel Westrop

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6089/islamism-blame

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

What Politicians Say vs. What People Can See - Douglas Murray

by Douglas Murray

• Throughout a bombing-and-murder campaign lasting three decades, the BBC never referred to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as the "so-called IRA." If you flatten ISIS's military, the strong-horse appeal of ISIS would simply go away. If there is nothing to join, no one can join it.
• Cameron's and Obama's tactic is to deny something that Muslims and non-Muslims can easily see and find out for themselves: that ISIS has a lot to do with Islam -- the worst possible version, obviously, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but a version of Islam nevertheless.

A few days after the massacre of 30 British subjects on a Tunisian beach, the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, used an interview on the BBC to berate the broadcaster and others for using the term "Islamic State." Mr. Cameron's suggestion was that the broadcaster should either refer to the "so-called Islamic State," use the acronym "ISIL," or adopt the Arabic term, "Daesh."

None of these suggestions is workable. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was never the "army" of the Irish Republic. It was instead a group of sectarian terrorists who claimed to fight for a community that was largely disgusted by their actions. Yet throughout a bombing and murder campaign lasting three decades, the BBC never referred to the IRA as the "so-called IRA." The group called itself the IRA, and so broadcasters and others referred to it as such. One might wish to call such groups all sorts of things, but calling by the name its leaders adopt is the easiest option of presenting the facts and not getting bogged down in nomenclature.

The Prime Minister's other suggestions -- that the Islamic State should either be called "ISIL" or "Daesh" -- are equally doomed to failure. For ISIL of course simply means "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant," while "Daesh" is effectively an Arabic acronym of the same. If the aim of all this wordplay is that the general public dissociate "Islamic State" from Islam, there seems little hope that this will much help to break the connection. After all, what if someone -- anyone -- asks what ISIL or Daesh stand for? What should people then say in response?

Of course, the problem that the Prime Minister got into on this occasion is the same problem he and all other world leaders get into whenever they adopt the "Islam is a religion of peace" line. What they are perfectly understandably trying to do is to disentangle more than a billion Muslims worldwide (and specifically the tens of millions of Muslims in Western democracies) from the violent jihadists in their religion. At the same time, they -- again understandably -- hope to give the message to their non-Muslim publics that they should not blame Muslims everywhere for the actions of this violent minority.

This is a laudable aim, but it is doomed to failure because members of the public no longer rely on either politicians or the mainstream media as their only sources of information or news. They can perfectly well get on the internet and find things out for themselves, and it is in this growing gulf between what politicians say and what the general public can perfectly easily find out for itself that a real long-term danger could emerge.

Why won't the public believe them when they explain that the "so-called Islamic State" has nothing to do with Islam? Pictured left, UK Prime Minister David Cameron. At right, US President Barack Obama.

All this is really a reminder that if we are in a war with ISIS, it is one in which we are performing very badly. Consider something said by Mr. Cameron's American counterpart a week after Cameron's statement. President Barack Obama gave a press conference at the Pentagon in which he, too, discussed the group that must not be named. On this occasion, the President said that the fight against ISIS was "not simply a military effort," and went on to say, "Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision."

Of course suggesting that there are many people who think a military solution alone can solve the ISIS problem is to create a straw man argument. But it is surely almost undeniable that the best thing on ISIS's side at the moment (and the cause of their current recruitment drive) is that they are seen to be not only on the offensive but on the way up -- gaining ground both figuratively and literally. When they take over whole cities in what used to be Syria or Iraq, radicalized young men and women from across the world, who might have been vacillating on whether or not to jump on board with the group, get galvanized in its direction. But if you flatten ISIS's military, the strong-horse appeal of ISIS would simply go away. If there is nothing to join, no one can join it.

President Obama is right to say that no ideology can be destroyed on the battlefield alone. The destruction of Nazi fascism in the 1940s was completed not only by its wholesale military defeat but by the world's awareness of the evil of the Nazi ideology and its wholesale moral and ethical failure. If the destruction of ISIS's ideology is to be complete, this too will have to be understood. But the U.S. and its allies ought to be wondering what is going wrong here. Although the numbers of citizens we are losing to ISIS constitute only tiny pockets of our own societies (if larger numbers across the Middle East and North Africa), we ought to consider how we are even losing people in ones and twos in a public relations war with this group.

While the Nazis tried to hide their worst crimes from the world, the followers of ISIS repeatedly record and distribute video footage of theirs. Between free and open democratic societies, and a society which beheads women for witchcraft, throws suspected gays off buildings, beheads other Muslims and Christians, burns people alive, and does us the favour of video-recording these atrocities and sending them round the globe for us, you would have thought that there would be no moral competition. But there is. And that is not because ISIS has "better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision," but because its appeal comes from a specific ideological-religious worldview that we cannot hope to defeat if we refuse to understand it.

That is why David Cameron's interjection was so important. The strategy Barack Obama and he seem to be hoping will work in persuading the general public that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam is the same tactic they are adopting in the hope of persuading young Muslims not to join ISIS. Their tactic is to try to deny something that Muslims and non-Muslims can easily see and find out for themselves: that ISIS has a lot to do with Islam -- the worst possible version, obviously, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but a version of Islam nevertheless.

ISIS can destroy its own credibility among advocates of human rights and liberal democracy. The question is how you destroy its credibility among people who want to be very Islamic, and think ISIS is their way of being so. Understand their claims and their appeal, and work out a way to undermine those, and ISIS will prove defeatable not only on the battlefield but in the field of ideas as well. But refuse to acknowledge what drives them, or from where they claim to get their legitimacy, and the problem will only have just started.

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Douglas Murray

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6137/politicians-isis-islamic

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

If Israel disappears, others will too - Mudar Zahran

by Mudar Zahran

We Arabs have wasted seven decades of our existence awaiting Israel's demise. It is time to think of the future, and whether Israel's "disappearance" should be our ‎ultimate wish.‎

Since 1948, we Arabs have been taught that all we need to do is get rid of the Jewish state, and ‎everything else will go well after that. Our dictators took full advantage of this idea. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser locked up and executed his opposition members ‎using his famous excuse: "No voices are to be allowed except for those for the war with ‎Israel." Iraqi President Saddam Hussein adopted the Palestinian flag and had it ‎printed, distributed and flown alongside his own flag, and even said, "Palestine and Iraq share the same ‎identical cause." In short, we Arabs have put 70 years of our existence on hold while awaiting that ‎‎"glorious day" when we defeat Israel and "feed the Jews to the fish." 

But that day did not come, nor does ‎it seem to be coming, as Jordanian opposition figure Emad Tarifi once told me: "It seems the fish in ‎the sea are not betting on us feeding them Jews." ‎

In addition, we Arabs have given our dictators carte blanche to impoverish, terrorize, oppress and ‎destroy us all in the name of "the great Arab struggle to end the Zionist entity." The outcome of this has ‎been clear: While Israel made 10 new breakthroughs in cancer and cardiac treatments in the last two years ‎alone, we Arabs developed new execution methods. The latest is death by drowning in a cage, as ‎shown in an Islamic State group video two weeks ago.‎

We Arabs have wasted seven decades of our existence awaiting Israel's demise. It is time to think of the future, and whether Israel's "disappearance" should be our ‎ultimate wish.‎

Being the son of two Palestinian-Jordanian refugees, I find myself inclined to fear for the future. Regardless of my stance toward Israel, I have to think: What would happen if, one day, Israel were to disappear? While it does not seem feasible, it is the day around which entire Arab political, social and economic systems revolve. ‎

It is not only Arabs who want Israel gone. There are others who seek the same, for ‎example anti-Semites in the West. Just last week, neo-Nazis marched in London with swastikas and the Palestinian flag. The organizer of the march claimed it was a protest "by all of those ‎who have suffered because of Israel." There are groups calling for a boycott of Israel "for ‎the sake of the Palestinian people." There are countries whose entire foreign policy seems to revolve around opposition to Israel. We ‎Palestinians might have believed that these groups and countries actually care about us, but they take no interest in the fate of the ‎‎150,000 Palestinians being starved to death in Syria's Yarmouk refugee camp, nor in an estimated ‎‎5.8 million Palestinians in Jordan (as indicated by a U.S. Embassy cable) who live as second-‎class citizens and are banned from government jobs and any form of state benefits while paying full taxes.‎

If these Israel-haters got their wish to see Israel disappear, what would ‎happen?‎

First, Israel is the only reason Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. Iran could buy the ‎technology to produce them, or could learn it quickly the way Pakistan did. Why has Iran been slow in ‎doing so? Because it learned a lesson from the experience of Saddam's Osirak reactor, which Israeli jets reduced to rubble in 1981.‎

Then, almost everyone, including George H. W. Bush who was vice president of the United States at that time, were furious ‎with Israel's move. But 10 years later, when the U.S. fought to liberate Kuwait, ‎the situation would have been totally different if Saddam had kept his nuclear program -- and the only reason ‎he did not was Israel.‎

Further, Iran already controls at least a third of Iraq and its resources through a pro-Iranian ‎regime. If Israel were to disappear, Iran would extend its influence into Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain ‎the next day, as it would not have to fear an Israeli reaction. Iran could then bring the world to its knees by reducing oil ‎production.

Iran is not the only evil power in the Middle East: We also have Islamic State, which has now spread across ‎Iraq, Syria, Sinai and Libya, with clear ambitions to enter Jordan. Islamic State has not entered Jordan yet, and this is not ‎because of any fear of the Jordanian army. After all, the Global Firepower website ranks Jordan's army at ‎the same level as the Iraqi army, which Islamic State has defeated many times. Islamic State does not dare enter Jordan for one reason only -- its fear that Israeli jets would catch up with it 15 minutes later.‎

If Israel were to disappear and be replaced by a Palestinian state, the Palestinians would most likely end up ‎with another Arab dictatorship that oppresses them and reduces them to poverty. We have partially ‎seen that with the Palestinian Authority and the "liberated" areas it rules. I regularly visit the West ‎Bank and have interviewed scores of Palestinians there. I can confirm that, as much as they hate ‎Israel, they still openly yearn for the days when it administered the West Bank. As one Palestinian told me, ‎‎"We prayed to God to give us mercy and rid us of Israel; later, we found out that God had ‎given us mercy when Israel was here."‎

To those Arabs, Muslims, Westerners and others insisting that Israel must be erased from face of the ‎planet, I say: Don't bet on it, as Israel is becoming stronger every day through its democracy and ‎innovation, while Arab countries are getting weaker through dictatorship and chaos. And be careful ‎what you wish for, because if you were to get it, you too would most likely disappear, unless you ‎yearn to be ruled by Iran or Islamic State.‎

In short, if the day were to come when Israel falls, Jordan, Egypt and many others would fall, too, and ‎Westerners would be begging Iran for oil.‎

We can hate Israel as much as we like, but we must realize that without it, we too would be ‎gone.‎

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian-Palestinian who resides in the U.K.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=13113

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

Traitor Cities - Matthew Vadum

by Matthew Vadum

The "sanctuary city" movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security.

The "sanctuary city" movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security.

Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities frustrate immigration enforcement efforts and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration is fine with that. President Obama has made America a sanctuary country, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, to come to the U.S. and depress labor markets while they suck the nation's welfare state dry.

What these traitor cities do is itself unlawful, Hans von Spakovsky notes, but they get away with it because President Obama is determined to dismantle America's immigration system in order to flood the country with desperately poor, illiterate peasants from the Third World.

Obama wants to do this in order to wash away the rule of law tainted as it is by Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, along with whatever stubborn residue of American Revolutionary enlightenment that remains deeply embedded within the tissues of our culture and free institutions.

Americans are being attacked and killed by illegal aliens in perhaps more than 200 so-called sanctuary cities across the country because subversive left-wing advocates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been working to undermine the nation's borders and immigration laws. Throughout this long leftist campaign those who demand that federal immigration laws be enforced have been smeared as racist and lacking in compassion. It's not fair that illegal aliens aren't given the same rights as U.S. citizens, they whine, mindlessly repeating vapid slogans like "no one is illegal."

As David Horowitz noted in his book, Unholy Alliance, radical activists from the ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and People for the American Way "mobilized legislators in local and state governments to obstruct enforcement of" the USA PATRIOT Act, which was the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's Global War on Terror. All of these groups have taken money from the philanthropies of radical anti-American financier George Soros.

The leaders of these leftist groups are unabashedly pro-open borders and wish "to establish rights for illegal immigrants that would blur the distinction between citizens and noncitizens and extend the protections of the Constitution to the latter."

Not surprisingly, sanctuary cities are known in some circles by the arguably more objectionable euphemism of "civil liberties safe zones," a phrase that blurs that very distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.

The push for sanctuary cities got a huge boost during the Bush administration. Since the Islamic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, these groups have "targeted every effort by the Homeland Security Department under the Patriot Act to strengthen America's borders," Horowitz wrote.

By mid-2004, "320 cities, towns, and counties, as well as four states had adopted resolutions condemning the Patriot Act, many refusing to cooperate with Homeland Security officials in the enforcement of its security measures."

The ACLU's model resolution, which was made available on its website to make it easy for municipalities to copy, "came close to incitement to sedition," in Horowitz's opinion. The document stated that those governments that adopted it would "refrain from participating in the enforcement of federal immigration laws[.]"

It should come as no surprise that federal data show illegal aliens, who comprise just 3.5 percent of the U.S. population, represent a staggering 36.7 percent of federal sentences following criminal convictions. Sorted into categories, the report from fiscal 2014 shows illegal aliens represented 74.1 percent of drug possession cases, 20 percent of kidnapping/hostage taking cases, 16.8 percent of drug trafficking cases, 12.3 percent of money laundering cases, and 12 percent of murder convictions.

Immigration violations were included in the data that were produced by the U.S. Sentencing Commission but an assortment of crimes including state-level cases and death penalty cases were not. If immigration violations are removed from the data, illegal aliens would still account for 13.6 percent of all offenders sentenced in fiscal 2014 following federal criminal convictions, which is still almost four times the 3.5 percent of the U.S. population they make up.

The activists from these pro-crime groups are at least morally culpable for each and every bloody crime committed in this country by the violent illegal aliens they have aided, abetted, and underwritten with taxpayer money. President Obama and his allies are complicit in the murder last week of Americans like young Kathryn "Kate" Steinle by a Mexican national illegally present in the country because they have tolerated, and in some cases, openly encouraged local and state governments to violate U.S. immigration law.

In 2014 the Obama administration scrapped the Secure Communities program which required local governments to check the immigration status of those arrested by their police departments.

In July 2010 the Obama administration gave a green light to these traitor cities to continue efforts aimed at frustrating immigration law enforcement within their jurisdictions.

While the feds' partially successful legal attack on Arizona's state-level immigration enforcement legislation was still pending at the time, Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the administration had no plans to go after sanctuary cities because what they were doing was not as bad as a state like Arizona that "actively interferes."

"There is a big difference between a state or a locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law," Schmaler said.

She added, "that's what Arizona did in this case."

And it is also what these traitor cities are doing today. Although left-wingers piously insist everyone in America has to obey the Obamacare law, those who lean to port pick and choose which laws they are willing to honor.

They may as well be flying the Confederate battle flag at city hall in their modern-day campaign of massive resistance against federal immigration law.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Confederates who resisted federal authority and declared war on the United States 154 years ago, or the neo-Confederates in Southern states who resisted federal authority during the civil rights era, Democratic lawmakers and left-wing activists have been working together for decades to create large pockets of immigration anarchy in the United States where the law cannot easily be enforced.

And although Obama has demonstrated an utter lack of interest in enforcing immigration laws, his administration publicly pretends to oppose the existence of sanctuary cities. His lackeys like Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson act shocked and promise to do something whenever an illegal alien the government has kept in the country commits a heinous murder, but it's only political theater.

After all, the Democratic Party needs illegal aliens to fill the voter rolls.

The administration continues to provide federal funds to sanctuary cities under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program or SCAAP. The program reimburses state and local governments for expenses incurred in jailing illegal immigrants.

This abuse may soon end. This week Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced legislation to prevent cities that don't honor federal immigration laws from receiving federal law enforcement aid. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) is preparing to introduce similar legislation in the House.

Barack Obama has long been a supporter of sanctuary cities. As a U.S. senator he gave sanctuary cities a thumbs-up by voting to kill a proposal to prohibit federal funding for them. (Then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York voted the same way. Motion to table S. Amdt. 4309 to S.Con.Res. 70 agreed to on a vote of 58 to 40, March 13, 2008.)

The principles underlying sanctuary cities are easy to grasp.

As economists are fond of saying, people are rational actors. They respond to incentives. Democratic politicians, left-wing activists, and policymakers are in the vanguard of a campaign to undo America. To fundamentally transform the nation, they encourage lawbreaking by providing incentives to people to commit crimes.

When criminals know there is a place where the law is not enforced or where finding helpless victims is easy, they flock there. Just as shooting-spree killers are drawn to gun-free zones whether they be schools, churches, theaters, or restaurants, when illegal aliens learn they can live unmolested by police in a sanctuary city, they move there.

The role that these lawless sanctuary jurisdictions that are in a state of open rebellion against the federal government play in contributing to crime has been thrown into the national spotlight by the senseless slaying of 31-year-old Kathryn "Kate" Steinle a week ago. Her killer is Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a 45-year-old illegal alien with a second grade education who reportedly has seven felony convictions and who was deported five times to Mexico. San Francisco released him even thought federal officials characterized him as an "enforcement priority" and filed an "immigration detainer" asking jailers to hold him until they could take custody of him.

His criminal career in this country began in 1991 when he was convicted of inhaling toxic vapors, the Daily Caller reports:

Lopez-Sanchez’s record, which stretches back nearly 25 years, shows three lengthy federal prison sentences for felony illegal re-entry. It also shows that on many occasions, Lopez-Sanchez was deported back to Mexico only to illegally re-enter the U.S. within days.

Lopez-Sanchez, who used more than 30 aliases, also has multiple convictions for the manufacture, possession, and trafficking of narcotics.

After being captured by police, Lopez-Sanchez acknowledged the City by the Bay was the place to be because he was safe from immigration enforcement efforts there. Lopez-Sanchez responded in the affirmative when a reporter from TV station KGO asked, "Did you keep coming back to San Francisco because you knew that they wouldn't actively look for you to deport you?" He also claimed he was "looking for jobs in the restaurant or roofing, landscaping, or construction."

In other words, the same progressive policies aimed at undermining the nation's borders by creating sanctuary cities got Kate Steinle killed. If the laws of the land had been enforced, Steinle would be alive today.

And despite what they may say in polite company, Democrats in the heart of latte liberalism and elsewhere are fine with this murder and mayhem. The chaos created provides an opportunity to bring about change, whether it is needed or not.

For example, San Francisco County's sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, a Democrat and convicted wife beater, is unashamed and is proudly standing by the city-county's sanctuary status.

"I firmly believe it makes us safer. We're a world-renowned city with a large immigrant population ... From a law enforcement perspective, we want to build trust with that population," said Mirkarimi, a co-founder of the Green Party of California.

Not surprisingly, the sheriff blames Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for Steinle's murder, claiming ICE should have made more of an effort to pick up the shooter. How ICE could have done such a thing when Mirkarimi's office would not advise the agency of the man's impending release is not explained.

The list of sanctuary cities, which are overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled, is long and growing longer. A list compiled by an activist shows there are at least 30 in California alone including Oakland, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Other major sanctuary cities across the country are Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Providence, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

All these cities serve as magnets for illegals, drawing them from far and wide. Border-jumpers and those getting ready to wade across the Rio Grande know that in these cities they really have to make an effort to get in trouble for immigration law violations.

The sanctuary movement itself began in the 1970s, or the 1980s, according to various sources. Churches wanted to shelter those fleeing violence in Central America and were unhappy that the U.S. government was reluctant to grant the migrants refugee status because they did not meet the legal definition of "refugee," which requires them to be victims of governmental persecution.

Churches, incidentally, still play a significant role in harboring illegal aliens, as Michelle Malkin discovered. There is a certain logic to this. The atheist father of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, preyed on Christian congregations, using them to build up his community organizing empire.

Sanctuary city supporters like Sheriff Mirkarimi claim that encouraging illegal aliens to collaborate with police without fear of being deported improves public safety by helping police go after criminals who might otherwise not be detected. Critics counter that sanctuary cities are bad public policy because they grant illegal aliens special rights and privileges, making them immune to immigration laws and conferring some of the benefits of legal immigration status on them.

As Heather Gies explains at TeleSUR, the Marxist TV network based in Venezuela, the movement attacks the very concept of the illegal alien. Using politically correct language, Gies writes that:

Sanctuary City is a local response to unjust federal immigration policy aimed at carving out spaces of dignity, justice, and solidarity to provide “access without fear” for all on the basis of need, not immigration status. Existing Sanctuary Cities and calls for new ones are part of a broader movement for migrant justice that has been active across the United States and Canada for decades, pushing back against exclusionary immigration laws and border policing. It’s a movement that challenges these oppressive state structures by refusing to accept them and instead creating local alternatives ... Migrant justice activists reject arbitrary categories of legality as a basis for determining who has access and who does not, instead advocating a model of justice, solidarity, and “access without fear” for all, regardless of official immigration status.

"Migrant justice," of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

Los Angeles became the first U.S. sanctuary city in 1979 when its police department issued Special Order 40, a document that forbids police officers from inquiring about the immigration status of individuals not suspected of crimes. This diktat states that "Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of Title 8, Section 1325 of the United States Immigration Code (Illegal Entry)."

Special Order 40 treats the federal crime of illegal entry as a non-crime even though many illegal aliens are by definition criminals. They have committed immigration law-related crimes in order to get onto U.S. soil.

Regardless of what the special order says, in federal law "improper entry" is classed as a crime. It is a misdemeanor for an alien to elude examination or inspection by immigration officers, to enter or attempt to enter the U.S. at a non-approved point of entry (or when an approved point of entry is closed for business), or to enter or attempt to enter the U.S. "by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a fact."

(Contrary to popular belief, "unlawful presence" in the country in itself is not a crime. It is a non-criminal violation of federal law punishable by civil penalties including deportation.    Those unlawfully present in the U.S. may be barred from re-entering the country at a later date. Re-entering the U.S. after being deported can constitute a crime under certain circumstances.)

The LAPD explained the rationale for its standing order this way:

The Department is sensitive to the principle that effective law enforcement depends on a high degree of cooperation between the Department and the public it serves. The Department also recognizes that the Constitution of the United States guarantees equal protection to all persons within its jurisdiction. In view of those principles, it is the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department that undocumented alien status in itself is not a matter for police action. It is, therefore, incumbent upon all employees of this Department to make a personal commitment to equal enforcement of the law and service to the public, regardless of alien status.

By referring to the Constitution's "equal protection" provision, the police agency seems to imply in this seminal document that illegal aliens have a civil right not to be arrested, which is, of course, completely absurd.

But in a post-constitutional age in which the Supreme Court habitually invents new fundamental rights, maybe it's not so crazy after all.

Tolerating seditious cities and their topsy-turvy construction of laws may even be the new normal, which is good news for left-wing revolutionaries and community organizers.

It is also good news for illegal aliens and the Democratic Party that needs them in order to stay electorally competitive.

But it's bad news for unborn generations of Americans and for patriots who see the rule of law, and with it their country, slipping away more and more every day.

Matthew Vadum

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259411/traitor-cities-matthew-vadum

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

The Woman Who Will Crush BDS - Yoni Kempinski

by Yoni Kempinski

Laurie Cardoza-Moore has pioneered anti-BDS legislature in 4 states; now, 35 states and 6 foreign countries are queuing to be next.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of the Christian Zionist NPO Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), has been a leading force campaigning to defend the Jewish state from the scourge of BDS that pushes to boycott and economically attack Israel.

Cardoza-Moore sat down with Arutz Sheva to discuss her important activities in confronting BDS throughout the US and abroad.



PJTN launched its anti-BDS campaign in Tennessee with a resolution against investing in companies taking part in the boycott movement, seeking to fight the phenomenon and educate about the nationwide "anti-Semitic movement."

After successfully passing the anti-BDS resolution in Tennessee in April - following which she traveled to Israel, to present a framed copy of the original resolution to Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein - a similar success was scored in Indiana.

"Since then momentum is growing," remarked Cardoza-Moore, noting on how the resolution went on to pass in the state assemblies of Pennsylvania and New York.

Now, no less than 35 states and six countries have requested further information about the anti-BDS resolution to introduce it in state legislatures and national parliaments, revealed the PJTN head.

"Our goal is to have all 50 states by the end of this year, and at the rate that we're going I think that we'll accomplish that goal," she said. "Our goal is to obliterate BDS and crush it in the United States."

PJTN is also launching a media campaign to accompany the legislative push, in an attempt to spread awareness of how BDS is a form of anti-Semitism, targeting Jewish students as well as Christian Zionists on college campuses around the US.

As part of the media campaign, Cardoza-Moore said a documentary video called "Israel...the Apartheid State?" is in the works, to reveal the true picture that is not being presented by the media. As part of it, the group interviewed Palestinian Arabs working for Jewish employers in Judea and Samaria, who said that if they lose the jobs which are threatened by BDS, they and their families would die.

"If we bring people the unvarnished truth people will get it, they will understand," said Cardoza-Moore, noting that Americans by and large support the Jewish state, as evidenced by a Gallup poll in February that showed 70% of Americans support Israel.

Israel is on the front line in the war against radical Islam, concluded the PJTN head, warning that if America doesn't support the Jewish state it will be next in line.


Yoni Kempinski

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/197929#.VZ7UkkazchQ

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

Turkey's Syrian Kurdish Problem - Jonathan Spyer

by Jonathan Spyer

So where do things stand in the bloody war between the Kurds and the Sunni jihadists over Syria's north? And is there a realistic possibility that Erdogan might intervene?

Syrian Kurdish militia fighters rejoice after recapturing the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad from Islamic State last month.

Syrian Kurdish forces this week succeeded in turning back a murderous and determined attempt by the forces of Islamic State to claw back control of areas of northern Syria recently liberated by the Kurds. The cost was high, nevertheless.

Recent Kurdish successes, meanwhile, have raised the specter of a Turkish armed intervention in northern Syria to crush the growing Kurdish autonomous zones along the border.

So where do things stand in the bloody war between the Kurds and the Sunni jihadists over Syria's north? And is there a realistic possibility that Erdogan might intervene?

First of all, it should be noted that the Islamic State offensives this week carried all the hallmarks of barbaric brutality with which this organization has become associated. This needs emphasizing because the slaughter of 223 civilians in Kobani last week failed to gain the global media attention it deserved. It was overshadowed by the attack in Tunisia against Western tourists, and the bombing of the Shi'ite mosque in Kuwait.

The Islamic State's failed offensive caps a decline in its fortunes in northern Syria since January.

But more broadly, the Islamic State offensive was a further indication of the relative decline in the fortunes of the Islamic State in northern Syria since the beginning of this year.

The failure to destroy the Kurdish Kobani enclave, acknowledged in January, was the first stage in the slow rollback of Islamic State in Syria's north. Since then, the Kurds, supported by US air power, have pushed the jihadists further back in the direction of the east and south.

This culminated last week in the taking of the strategically important border town of Tel Abyad and the linking of two of the three Kurdish cantons along the Syrian-Turkish border – Kobani and Jazeera. The Kurds then pushed eastward to Ain Issa, bringing them to 50 km 

from the capital of Islamic State in Raqqa.

It was at this point that Islamic State launched its counterattacks against Kobani, then against Tel Abyad, and also against the regime army in Hasaka.

These attacks have all now been repulsed, which means the situation, in spite of the Kurdish losses, remains substantively unchanged.

The Kurdish interest is in securing Kurdish majority areas, not launching a general war to destroy Islamic State.

The Islamic State retreat spells reversal but not yet disaster for the jihadists. It is unlikely that the Kurdish YPG and its rebel allies will wish to push further south and east. The Kurdish interest is in securing the cantons and areas of Kurdish majority , not in launching a general war for the destruction of Islamic State.

Unsubstantiated claims of Kurdish expulsion of Arab and Turkmen populations following the conquest of Tel Abyad show the complications inevitably encountered by the Kurdish YPG when operating outside of areas of Kurdish majority population.

But it is precisely the YPG's determination to secure Kurdish majority areas that has the Turks worried. With the Jazeera and Kobani cantons now united, the Kurds control a long contiguous stretch of the Syria-Turkey border. The Turks fear that the Kurds could seek to unite the canton of Kobani/Jazeera with the third autonomous zone, further west, around the city of Afrin.

This prospect is what has led to the jitters in the senior reaches of Turkey's leadership. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a series of statements in recent days saying that Turkey would never allow the formation of another state in northern Syria. This is an allusion to the possibility of a Kurdish state. The presence of the Islamic State clearly exercises the Turkish leader less.

Official Turkish media have begun to discuss the creation of a buffer zone in Syria.

Since then, official Turkish media have begun to discuss the creation of a 112 km by 48 km buffer zone west of the Kobani enclave, taking in the town of Jarabulus and its environs. Evidently, the Turks are keen to establish Jarabulus, west of the Euphrates, as a redline beyond which the Kurds dare not advance without risking Turkish retribution.

The Kurds responded swiftly to the Turkish threat. Murat Karayilan, a senior official and former leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), made clear that should the Turkish Army enter Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), this would trigger Kurdish military action north of the border in Turkey itself.

Interestingly, if such a buffer zone were to be established by Turkey, this would in effect constitute an intervention in Syria by Turkey directed not only against the Kurds, but also de facto in defense of Islamic State. It is the Sunni jihadists who control the area immediately west of the Kobani enclave.

Such an intervention would be in direct contradiction to US and Western policy in northern Syria. It would also be contrary to the will of the leading parties of the opposition; and if it resulted in the deaths of Turkish soldiers, it would likely be unpopular domestically, at a time when Erdogan's AKP has just suffered an electoral setback.

Turkish intervention would be in direct contradiction to US and Western policy in northern Syria.

The Turkish military is also known to be unenthusiastic about the idea. 

Syria as a whole and northwest Syria in particular are a confusing mass of rival political and military groups. The potential for a Turkish force to become sucked into bloody local conflicts with no clear objective and no clear exit strategy would be immense.

A Kurdish push to unite Kobani with Afrin and move decisively west of the Euphrates is probably also unlikely for the moment, precisely because of the risk of Turkish intervention and also of clashes with other strong rebel formations in the area.

For all these reasons, a unilateral Turkish intervention in northern Syria is probably not imminent. Rather, Turkey most likely wishes to serve notice to the West of the seriousness of its concerns regarding Kurdish advances.

Still, the events in northern Syria demonstrate just how strange regional diplomacy and strategy have become. The United States appears to have found an effective and courageous ground partner in northern Syria (the Kurdish YPG). That partner, however, is a franchise of an organization (the PKK) that is on the EU and US list of terrorist organizations – for now, at least.

This partnership is proving effective at driving back the Islamic State. But Turkey, a NATO ally in good standing, maintains deeply ambiguous relations with Islamic State, while openly backing an equally murderous franchise of al-Qaida further west (Jabhat al-Nusra).

The Islamist agenda of the current Turkish government is notable at a region-wide level – for example, in its domiciling and support for Hamas cells engaged in violence against Israelis, and in its support for deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. This pattern of preferences is reflected in its stances in northern Syria.

As of now, the battle in northern Syria between two very different quasi-state entities – the Kurdish cantons and the Islamic State – looks set to continue. The Kurds currently have the advantage. The recent, furious response of the jihadists in Tel Abyad and Kobani reflects this. But the war appears far from conclusion.


Jonathan Spyer, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).

Source: http://www.meforum.org/5369/turkey-syria-kurds

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