Naval "Iron Dome" - IsraelDefense

by IsraelDefense

The new system is based on the combat-proven "Iron Dome" interceptor that has already achieved more than 1200 successful interceptions.

The Naval Point Defense System, C-DOME, is designed to effectively protect combat vessels against a large set of modern threats. C-Dome handles saturation attacks by engaging multiple targets simultaneously. Reaction time is very short and enables automatic and semi-automatic engagements.

The system will be presented at Euronaval, 27-31 October, 2014 in Paris, France, alongside a comprehensive suite of Rafael's naval vessel defense solutions for detection, tracking, interception and neutralization of a variety of threats.

C-Dome components include a multi-round launcher assembly loaded with vertically-launched canisterised interceptors. The launcher is installed under the ship deck.

C-Dome utilizes the ship’s own surveillance radar and does not require a dedicated Fire Control Radar. Weapon System Command and Control is seamlessly integrated with the ship’s combat management system, facilitating system operation.

C-Dome has a small footprint and can be integrated on small ships, including OPVs and small Corvettes.

IsraelDefense

Source: http://israeldefense.com/?CategoryID=483&ArticleID=3184

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

Disease and Obama - Eileen F. Toplansky

by Eileen F. Toplansky

When the Islamic jihadists struck on 9-11, it was clear that one of their main aims was to destroy the economic success that characterized American exceptionalism.  To that end, the airline industry was very adversely affected.   Thus:

... directly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the federal government closed airports, canceling thousands of flights at a direct cost to airlines. However, even when the airports reopened, passengers were wary of air travel, and airlines experienced at least a 30 percent reduction in demand during the initial shock period immediately following the reopening. In addition, business travel accounts for one of the most profitable segments in the airline business, and after the attacks, a significant number of businesses temporarily suspended non-essential travel for their employees. 

Now fast-forward to 2014, and once again the airline industry will be financially damaged, thanks directly to Obama's executive orders and obdurate stance on not keeping deadly diseases at bay. 

With the busiest travel season a mere month away, one could hazard a guess that many Americans are rethinking their travel plans and will not wish to travel over Thanksgiving.  How ironic that the holiday of thanks has been put at risk from our socialist president.  Listen to this YouTube 2011 interview of Allen West, particularly at point 6:15, where West calls Obama out on his never-ending harmful economic policies.  Yet it is apparent that Obama never swerves off his course to hurt the country.

The Centers for Disease Control directives change daily.  The idea that one is safe if three feet away from an infected individual ignores the fact that seats on airplanes are not three feet away from one another.  If someone is harboring the Ebola virus, it is not hard to fathom why people would shy away from using airplanes or, for that matter, any form of public transportation.

Thus, with commonsense recommendations being thwarted, we have a slowly emerging risk of enormous consequences.  John Hayward writes:

[W]hile city and federal authorities assure us the system is working, it very obviously is not, because the 'enhanced screening' for travelers arriving from West Africa involves testing body temperatures at the airport, and [Dr.] Spencer passed that test with flying colors.  Trusting him to self-isolate didn’t work, either. Nothing worked.  Now we’re just hoping that either his latest screening returned a false positive, or if not, we get lucky and Ebola finds no purchase in a densely-populated city that isn’t exactly the most inhospitable environment for a virus.

While the Ebola story is making the headlines, one must not forget an equally chilling story with far-reaching effects.  Jack Dennis reports that the CDC is admitting that "97  percent of the measles found in the United States this year could be attributed to 'importations from at least 18 countries.'"  Thus:

... [m]easles, respiratory illness, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases continue as a prime concern for the millions of Americans conflicted about the perpetual arrivals of illegal immigrants pouring into the country. While some diseases have emerged from the Philippines, Africa, Asia and Europe, the unprecedented [number] of undocumented aliens is a major issue.

Emergency rooms are reporting being "overwhelmed beyond capacity."  Most of these cases are confirmed to be Enterovirus D68.  But in the non-transparent world of Obama and company, this information is hard to obtain.  In Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, measles and Enterovirus D68 are quite common. 

If you check the article by Dennis,  you can get a state-by-state linkage "between the infectious diseases and the known immigrant activity."  In Florida, a county breakdown of how many illegals have entered is depicted.  In Arkansas, both senators, Democrat Mark Pryor and Republican John Boozman, called on Obama "to ban Ebola stricken [people] ... in West Africa from traveling to the United States."

Do you know whom your child or grandchild is sitting next to in his or her classroom?

And one can reasonably expect an increase in disease since, after the November 2014 election, it is quite apparent that Obama "is preparing a sweeping – and unconstitutional  plan to grant de facto citizenship to millions of people now here illegally by giving them green cards."  That will ultimately result in family members joining them.  We now have a situation of "give me your tired, your hungry... your infected masses," and we'll just wing it the best we can, whatever the consequences.

This is so typical of the Obama way as he continues to chip away at the country's resources and strength.

What better way to burden America and its various institutions than to drop all these people onto the country, thus overwhelming schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, and a myriad of institutions that will not be able to handle the overflow and sudden increase in people?  Perhaps Obama could take time out and watch this piece about "Public Health Service - Disease & Its Control - Immigrants, Ellis Island & Quarantine 1930s."  The introductory words say it all.

The advice 'In time of peace prepare for war' applies to the fight against disease as well as to that against a military enemy.  Disease has destroyed more people than all the wars in history.  Public health workers not only fight epidemics and diseases when they occur, but they must be ever alert and constantly working and devising means to prevent their occurrence.  The protection of the health of the people against the invasion of disease from abroad and the attack and spread within our borders is the purpose ... of the far-flung system of disease prevention.

And while Obama claimed he would "deport 'priority' immigrants with criminal records, he has fallen short in overall deportations."  Thus, in 2014, "ICE agents encountered 585,000 potentially deportable immigrants, but released 442,000 of them without ever bothering to even try to deport them." 

And to end the linguistic babble, let's make this perfectly clear: if someone doesn't want to be called an illegal alien, then he or she shouldn't come to the U.S. illegally.  One cannot expect that these illegals will be law-abiding when they broke the law in the first place, thanks to the law-breaker occupant of the White House.

It is a testament to the American people that panic has not ensued.  But the more Obama causes potential harm to this country, the more that people will respond.  Let's hope that the November elections will begin to put the brakes on the lawless and dangerous actions of this man.  To paraphrase Allen West, it is high time that Americans hold Obama and his actions up to the "same standards they would for a white president."  It is not merely our economy, our health care, or our way of living that are continually being put at risk; it is quite literally our lives that are imperiled if Obama continues to get his way.

Eileen F. Toplansky can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/disease_and_obama.html

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

How Likely Is Deradicalization? - Denis MacEoin

by Denis MacEoin

Will radical Muslims line up to be deprogrammed and end up teaching kindergarten or devising a twelve-step program for their younger siblings? Since the start of deradicalization programs, the number of radicalized Muslims has risen.
Why is there no Muslim Peace Movement campaigning for an end to violence in Muslim countries? Why do Muslims -- and others -- take to the streets to condemn democratic Israel, yet never march to protest Hamas's use of Palestinians as human shields, or the violence of al-Qaeda, Boko Haram or any other jihadi group? Why not be angry at the way violent Muslims drag the image of non-violent Muslims in the mud? Many Muslims, however, complain about "Islamophobia" while ignoring the primary causes of hostility to themselves.
Many Muslims are trapped, because the Qur'an and the ahadith, which make up the holy writ, all condone or command jihad and hatred for non-believers, and they do so abundantly. Yet commentators and politicians still wonder where the fighters of the Islamic State or the killers of Theo van Gogh get their inspiration. A young man who sees the world through such a lens will easily turn to this to justify his desire to wage jihad.
It is still risky for anyone one in any Muslim country to call for a new approach to the most sacred texts.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on September 1 that British jihadists returning to this country would be forced to enter deradicalization programs. Now, the Danish government has offered a similar program to returning jihadists, without prosecution.

A reasonable idea, one might think, and one that we may all hope is successful. But is this latest round in the battle against Islamic radicalism likely to be any more effective than its predecessors? Will radical Muslims -- call them Salafis, jihadis, Islamic State fighters or what you will -- line up to be deprogrammed and end up teaching kindergarten or devising a twelve-step program for their younger siblings now queuing to take their place on the front line between Islam and unbelief?

The Prime Minister indicated that terror suspects will be placed under a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures regime and will now be forced to engage in the government's "Prevent" program, which tackles radicalization. This suggests that Cameron is sadly out of touch. The Prevent program, introduced several years ago, has been described as an abysmal failure by commentators such as Douglas Murray, a Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow.

Will radical Muslims line up to be deprogrammed and end up teaching kindergarten or devising a twelve-step program for their younger siblings?

Britain's Communities and Local Government Committee reported as far back as 2010 that, "the Prevent program was backfiring and it was difficult to know what good it was doing.

On September 13, a 21-year-old British man from the Welsh capital of Cardiff, Khuran Iqbal, was sentenced to three years and three months in prison, after his arrest in Kenya in October of 2011, while trying to cross into Somalia to join the jihadist group, al-Shabaab. British security services became aware of him then, although on his return to Wales he was not charged. Instead, he was placed in the Prevent program. But that did not stop him. In 2012, he flew to Turkey with two friends, intending to reach Syria to fight jihad there, but was again thwarted. In the meantime, he posted 848 links online to violent material and kept copies of al-Qaeda's Yemen-based magazine, Inspire on his laptop. The magazine contained instructions on how to make explosives and how to handle an assault rifle. Deradicalization was clearly ineffective, and three years in jail may radicalize him further and provide him with better contacts in the outside world to facilitate his next attempt to join a jihadi group.

If other inmates do not do the job, some of the 'moderate' imams may do it for them. Professor Anthony Glees, head of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, told the Times: "Our prisons have turned into a state-funded breeding ground for extremism. It is completely unacceptable that imams with extremist views are allowed to preach in prisons." In an e-mail to Mail Online, he added, "What these 'preachers' do is put extreme views to prisoners – for example gays should be hanged, the Jews/CIA carried out 9/11, adulteresses should be stoned to death. They foment resentments and when you add extremism to resentment you get radicalization and ultimately terrorism. Not every radical is a terrorist but every terrorist has been a radical."

There have been other programs, including the Street Project, run in Brixton by Salafi activist Abdul Haqq-Baker, who has been working against the jihadi strand of Islam. He is the author of Extremists in Our Midst: Confronting Terror. But although the Brixton Mosque in Gresham Road (a venue mainly for black converts), where Baker was chairman, tries to maintain a moderate stance, it has received unwelcome attention from pro-terrorist radicals. Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," now serving three consecutive life sentences in Colorado, visited the mosque between 1996 and 1998. Zacarias Moussaoui, linked to the 9/11 attacks, and now serving a life sentence alongside Reid, attended Brixton from 1996-1997.[1]

Brixton mosque is not a radical center, yet, despite claimed attempts to preach moderation, some violent radicals seem to be emerging from there. How far can one genuine moderate turn an extremist mosque into a haven for a genuinely peaceful Islam? Al Furqan, a program run through the 200 or so Muslim chaplains in British prisons, offers some degree of deradicalization for those who have been tried and convicted of terrorist offenses. And there are genuinely moderate Muslims working for similar aims -- men such as Haras Rafiq and Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation, or the extraordinary Dr. Muhammad al-Hussaini, who was a Fellow in Islamic Studies at the Leo Baeck College in London, and who has given anti-terrorism advice to government and other bodies.


Just this July, Times columnist David Aaronovitch complained, in "Moderate Muslims, it's time to be outraged," that there was no sign of moderate Muslim outrage about the Islamic State -- the Muslim default position being victimhood.

He further writes of the inadequacy of Muslim attempts to police their own communities:

"It isn't that some Muslim organisations aren't trying. The two most recent campaigning statements of the Muslim Council of Britain concern condemnation of jihadi recruitment for Isis and female genital mutilation. They deserve credit for that.
"But it is obvious that this self-policing isn't what floats the boat of Muslims politically. There'll be the occasional good statement, but if, say, Israel bombs Gaza, then suddenly social media will fill up with Islamic outrage, careful commentators will become passionate, marchers will hit the streets. Why is there no Muslim Peace Movement campaigning for an end to violence in Muslim countries, where the victims are Muslims and the perpetrators are Muslims? Where it might make the most difference."

Why do Muslims -- and others -- take to the streets to condemn democratic Israel, yet never march to protest Hamas's use of Palestinians as human shields, or the violence of al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, or any other jihadi group? Why not be angry at the way radical groups drag the image of non-violent Muslims in the mud? Jews fight against anti-Semitism, Christians denounce Islamic attacks on their co-religionists, but they do not do so as victims and do not point to their "victimhood" to permit themselves immoral or illegal acts. Many Muslims, however, complain about "Islamophobia" while ignoring the primary causes of hostility to themselves -- 9/11, 7/7, ISIS, the beheadings, the massacres, the enslavement of women and girls, stoning, amputations and the visible hatred of so many Muslims to the West, to Christians, to Jews -- yet many march in the streets of Western cities to praise genocidal movements such as Hamas.

The problem is simpler than any politician or moderate Muslim or Christian outreach foundation journalist has ever been willing to admit: Many Muslims who want to turn young believers away from jihad or hatred of Christians, Jews and other non-believers are trapped. They are trapped because the Qur'an -- the six compilations of sacred traditions (the ahadith), which make up holy writ, as well as the biography of Muhammad (the sira) -- all condone or command jihad and hatred for non-believers, and they do so abundantly.

Muhammad led his followers into some 27 battles[2], and his successors conquered half the known world. Muhammad himself ordered or supported assassinations of individuals or groups. One well-documented list shows 43 occasions on which such killings took place, usually because someone had insulted the prophet.[3] A modern Muslim website carries a translation by the American convert Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley of part of a work by the 12th-century jurisprudent Ibn Iyad, entitled, "The proof of the necessity of killing anyone who curses the Prophet or finds fault with him."

Yet for some reason, commentators and politicians still wonder where the fighters of the Islamic State or the would-be assassins of Salman Rushdie or the killer of Theo van Gogh get their inspiration.

It is hard for a young man, who wants to emulate the only "true role model," to ignore Muhammad's regular use of jihad; and even harder to be seen to contradict verses from what he and his community consider to be God's word, the last divine revelation to mankind.

Here is just one well-known Qur'anic passage (2: 190-191): "Fight in the way of God with those who fight with you... And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter; do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers."

Moderate Muslims interpret this to mean that fighting is only permissible if Muslims are being persecuted. But we know that Muslims all around the world consider themselves to be the victims of the West, the USA, Israel, France, the UK and scores of other places. They see Zionist and CIA conspiracies everywhere. And so a young Muslim man who sees the world through such a lens will easily turn to this and many other verses to justify his desire to wage jihad. He may feel persecuted even when he is not, and he may find confirmation in the frequently violent history of Muslim conquests and the jihad wars throughout the Muslim empires.

It is painful to draw attention to this problem: it seems like the sort of Islamophobic rhetoric so easily found, say, in the extremist writings of other groups or the slogans of the English Defence League. But as a secular humanist and an academic, I have no interest in covering up facts. This is one elephant that threatens everyone in our room, Muslims as much as non-Muslims. And herein lies the irony.

There is a great deal of complexity in learning how to interpret the Qur'an and its traditions in a manner that eliminates jihad from modern discourse. The average mosque imam may not have the skills -- or possibly the will -- to do so. Too many of them seem disposed to interpretations that expresses hatred towards Christians and Jews that trump interpretations that express a favorable attitude. In addition, there was a tradition in Islam of abrogating the kindlier passages in the Qur'an early on. Further, passages such as the following do not help: "O believers, do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends: they are just friends of one another. If anyone among you treats them as friends, he is one of them himself. God does not guide the evildoers." (Qur'an 5: 57).

The problems that verses and utterances like these cause for reformist Muslims have been tackled by a range of modern intellectuals and religious scholars such as the Indonesian Nurcholish Madjid, and the Algerian philosopher and theologian, Mohammed Arkoun. The late Egyptian cleric, Mahmud Shaltut (d. 1963), also addressed the issue of jihad openly in a treatise entitled, The Qur'an and Fighting, in which he argues against the use of force to spread the Islamic religion.[4] Shaltut became the leading scholar of the Sunni world as Rector [Shaykh] of Cairo's al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic learning internationally.[5] Even so, in 1957, seventeen years after he wrote his call for limitations to violence, he spoke in favor of the violent elimination of Israel.

His successor as Shaykh of al-Azhar, Hasan Ma'mun, also asserted that the only solution for the Palestinians was to recover their land by force. One year after the 1967 war, a conference convened at al-Azhar under Ma'mun declared that jihad was again a duty for all Muslims.[6]

The influence of reformist intellectuals outside like-minded circles has been limited. It is still risky for anyone in any Muslim country to call for a new approach to the most sacred texts. More than that, the kind of sophisticated argumentation used by writers such as Arkoun is beyond the range of the traditionalist imams who dominate most British mosques. Few are able to challenge any bright young pro-jihadist who knows his Qur'an and hadith texts well enough to counter any rationalization. Aisha Bewley, the translator of Ibn Iyad, is a remarkably erudite woman by any standards, with a long list of original works and translations to her credit. Such radicals believe that Muslim leaders who work with Prevent or other government-subsidized schemes are working hand-in-hand with anti-Islamic forces and are undoubtedly co-conspirators with the despised Zionists.

If the issue of the actual probability of deradicalization is not addressed openly, and its many complexities brought into the cold light of day, it will fester. Since the start of deradicalization programs, the number of radicalized young Muslims has risen. Some 500 British jihadists are reckoned to have joined the Islamic State at some point, and many are returning to Britain. 

Indoctrinated in the Islamic law of jihad and conversant with the fighting verses of the Qur'an, these young men and women are a match for those who peddle a quietist form of the faith.

We deeply need to find a way that leads, as Salman Rushdie once requested, to a wholesale reformation of Islam -- an Islam in which believers make friends with Jews and Christians instead of leaving home to behead them. James Foley was a Christian, Steven Sotloff a Jew. Another Christian has also been beheaded, and just this month, several Canadians killed and injured. How many more people will die before British Muslims are brought face to face with the problem in all of our sitting rooms?

Dr. Denis MacEoin is a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

---

[1] James Bamford (2005). A pretext for war: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America's intelligence agencies, Random House, Inc. p. 237
[2] Ibn Kathir, Albidaya wa'l-Nihaya, vol. 4, p. 179.
[3] "List of Killings ordered or supported by Muhammad", at Wikislam , where each occasion is sourced to original texts
[4] For an English translation of this short treatise, see Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader, Princeton, 1996, pp. 60-101.
[5] On Shaltut, see Kate Zebiri, Mahmud Shaltut and Islamic Modernism, Oxford, 1993.
[6] Ghada Hashem Talhami, Palestine in the Egyptian Press: From Al-Ahram to Al-Ahali, Lanham MD, Plymouth UK, 2007, pp. 200-201.


Dr. Denis MacEoin is a former lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4815/deradicalization

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

It’s Time to Beat the Jew-Haters - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick


Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

The decision by the most prestigious opera house in America to produce an opera that mainstreams Jew-hatred and anti-Jewish terrorism is a great victory for elitist anti-Semitism. In the world of elite anti-Semitism, Jews are told that truth is but a narrative. Jewish history and rights have no more merit – indeed less merit – than the lies of Jew-haters. And if Jews dare to object to the propagation of lies against them, they open themselves to the easy accusation that they seek to stifle free speech.

The goal of elitist anti-Semitism is to erode the right of Jews to have and promote Jewish rights and interests. This is done by demonizing those who defend Jewish rights and advance Jewish interests, while elevating and romanticizing the lives and largely false narratives of those who seek to destroy Israel.

The Met’s singular contribution to the cause of elitist anti-Semitism is the prestige its production of The Death of Klinghoffer confers on the cause.

Another dam has been breached. Another safe zone has become a no-go zone.

On the other hand, at the end of the day, as bad as elitist anti-Semitism is, over the past decade or so, American Jews have developed tools to deal with it.

In the weeks that preceded the opera’s opening last Monday night, much – although not all – of the Jewish community in New York was able to unify in opposing it. Politicians and luminaries joined with more than a thousand protesters on opening night to express their revulsion at the opera.

And the Met has already paid a price for its elevation of anti-Semitism to high art.

Far from living up to its reputation as a leader in the arts, on Monday, due to the massive protest against the production, the Met lost its artistic credibility. The crowd that gave the opera a standing ovation didn’t do so because they had just experienced a musical masterpiece. They stood and cheered because they were happy the Met elevated murderous, Jew-hating terrorists, whom they support.

One of the novel aspects of the opposition to the production was an action taken Monday by the Zionist Organization of America. Hours before the opera began, the ZOA issued a press release demanding that major Jewish donors to the Met, including the Michael Bloomberg LP company, the Annenberg Foundation, the Neubauer Family Foundation and the Toll Brothers Foundation, account for their decision not to revoke their multimillion dollar support for the opera house.

The ZOA’s move is important because as Jews see more and more public support for the denial of Jewish rights and interests, it will become increasingly important to call to account those backing institutions that advance this growing trend toward Jewish disenfranchisement.

The ZOA’s move was important as well because it points us in a useful direction for dealing with a second and increasingly prominent form of anti-Semitism in the US and Canada. 
That form is violent anti-Semitism.

Increasingly, anti-Semites in the US are adopting brownshirt tactics to violently advance their goal of removing Jews from the public square and intimidating others into boycotting Israel and those who support it.

Take just a few examples in recent weeks. In late September, several hundred anti-Semitic rioters at the Port of Oakland prevented longshoremen from unloading cargo from the Israeli cargo ship Zim Shanghai. According to media reports, there were 50 policemen from the Oakland police force on the scene, but their presence did not stop the rioters or enable the longshoremen to offload the cargo.

None of the anti-Semites were arrested. Zim Shanghai was forced to leave the port with its cargo and sail on to Los Angeles.

The group that organized the assault on the Zim ship calls itself Block the Boat for Gaza. It operates through its Facebook page where it openly organizes violent assaults on Israeli shipping. Another assault is planned, according to its Facebook page, for October 25.

A previous assault in August, during Operation Protective Edge, also took place with police presence and nonintervention. The Zim Piraeus was forced as well to pull anchor with its cargo and sail on to Los Angeles.

Block the Boat for Gaza is supported by another group called Arab Resource and Organizing Center.

On October 8, the Brooklyn Nets played an exhibition game against Maccabi Tel Aviv at the Barclay Center in downtown Brooklyn. The event was a benefit for Friends of the IDF. Twelve IDF soldiers wounded during Operation Protective Edge were guests at the event.

About a hundred anti-Semitic rioters organized outside the event. They were members of variety of organizations reportedly including Jewish Voices for Peace, Adalah – New York, and the Direct Action for Palestine.

After the event, a number of the rioters accosted Leonard Petlakh, the director of a local Jewish community center, as he was leaving the arena with his two young sons. According to The Forward, they shouted, “Free Palestine,” and, “Your people are murderers.” And then one of them punched him in the face, breaking his nose.

The assailant was arrested. But strangely, he was not charged with committing a hate crime despite the clear anti-Semitic character of his crime.

On October 5, hours after the end of Yom Kippur, swastikas were painted on the walls of AEPi Jewish fraternity at Emory University near Atlanta.

Swastikas were also painted at the Yale University campus. In July, mailboxes of AEPi members at University of Oregon were defaced with swastikas.

In August, a Jewish student at Temple University was assaulted by a member of Students for Justice for Palestine.

In a video filmed at the national convention of AEPi and posted on YouTube two weeks ago, members of AEPi from campuses around the US and Canada shared the stories of anti-Semitic assaults they and their friends suffer regularly on their campuses. The attacks described included, among other things, violent assaults.

Gideon Rafal, the president of AEPi at University of Arizona, described how he was assaulted while trying to prevent a group of 20 Jew-hating thugs from forcing their way into his fraternity house.

Rafal said he was struck from behind and lost consciousness.

The injuries he sustained during the assault included a skull fracture, bleeding in the brain, a concussion and a lower back fracture. He says that he was hospitalized for three weeks, spending 10 days in the intensive care unit.

Rafal did not say who the assailants were or what legal measures were taken against them or what organization if any, they were associated with.

Other students described threats against Jewish students manning a table for Birthright Israel programs at Loyola University in Chicago, and the assault of a Jewish female student at University of California at Santa Cruz.

Shane, a student at University of Calgary, described how he, his mother and sister were violently assaulted for counter-protesting at an anti-Israel protest. The group that sponsored the anti-Israel protest and whose members attacked him and his family is an official campus organization.

Shane said he fears for his life as he walks through campus.

In recent years it has become apparent that university campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Semitism. The incidents described by the Jewish students who attended the AEPi convention indicate that the anti-Israel propaganda taught in the classrooms is increasingly being translated into anti-Jewish violence outside of them.

The major American Jewish organizations were incompetent to contend with anti-Israel incitement as it became a major force in university classrooms some 15 years ago. Jewish students found themselves with few communal resources to rely on when they suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves at the front lines of the anti-Semitic battle against Jewish rights.

New groups like Stand with Us and Hasbara Fellowships were formed to fill the vacuum. CAMERA, ZOA and other major groups have in recent years invested massive efforts into empowering students to stand up to this incitement.

But today, as anti-Semites on and off campus increasingly resort to brownshirt tactics, the American Jewish community again finds itself without the means to contend with a new challenge.

And this brings us back to the ZOA’s naming the names of Jewish philanthropists still supporting the Met.

The organizations involved in intimidating Jews and assaulting Jews on and off campus who support Israel are not interested in dialogue. Groups that organize to prevent the conduct of normal commercial relations between Israel and the US are not concerned with whether or not they are considered mainstream. The goal of these groups is to intimidate and terrorize the American and Canadian publics into silence as they make it impossible for Israel and its supporters to have a place in the public square.

Educational efforts are of little value in contending with thugs. But this doesn’t mean that there is nothing to be done. Groups like Block the Boat for Gaza, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, Adalah, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and Direct Action for Palestine need to be investigated.

Where does their money come from? Who are their leaders? What are their ties to terrorist groups? What are their ties to organized labor? What are their ties to politicians? What is their tax status and what do their tax returns say? If members of various groups are intimidating Jewish students then there should be restraining orders against them. Criminal complaints should be filed against them. Their tax-exempt status should be challenged.

Jewish students should be demanding that Students for Justice in Palestine be expelled from their campuses along with other hate groups, like Jewish Voices for Peace. Jewish alumni should be organizing to withhold all donations from universities that permit anti-Semitic groups to operate on campus. And Jewish lawyers should be filing lawsuits against universities and other institutions that enable the operation of anti-Semitic groups on their premises.

If Jewish students complain that they feel threatened on campus, then lawsuits should filed against the universities for engendering a threatening atmosphere against them.

Politicians who support or, when asked, fail to condemn these groups, individuals and their actions as racist and bigoted should be called out for their behavior. Police departments like the Oakland police department that do nothing to stop rioters from preventing the lawful, unfettered operation of a major US port should be subjected to public and legal scrutiny.

The challenge of anti-Semitism in North America is growing and mutating by the day. Jews in America and Canada need to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Reasonably, American Jews have no interest in aping the hateful tactics of anti-Semites to fight them. But an aggressive campaign of legal, political, social and financial opposition to those who seek to demonize Jews and deny Jews civil rights as Jews as well as those who enable them can go a long way toward making members of these hate groups and their supporters rue the day they decided to go after the Jews.

Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.


Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/its-time-to-beat-the-jew-haters/

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

Former CBS reporter shows how the press protects Obama - Rick Moran

by Rick Moran


Even if Sheryl Attkisson's new book, "Stonewalled" becomes a bestseller, only a few hundred thousand people will ever read it. 

But every American citizen concerned about the present and future of America needs to read this book. Attkisson, a former investigative reporter for CBS who quit in disgust last year, details the incredible lengths to which the media went to protect the president and promote their ideological viewpoint at the expense of the news.

Kyle Smith has a long article in the New York Post on the book that should be read in its entirety. Here's a sample:

The administration, with the full cooperation of the media, has successfully turned “Benghazi” into a word associated with nutters, like “Roswell” or “grassy knoll,” but Attkisson notes that “the truth is that most of the damaging information came from Obama administration insiders. From government documents. From sources who were outraged by their own government’s behavior and what they viewed as a coverup.”
Similarly, though the major media can’t mention the Fast and Furious scandal without a world-weary eyeroll, Attkisson points out that the story led to the resignation of a US attorney and the head of the ATF and led President Obama to invoke for the first time “executive privilege” to stanch the flow of damaging information.
Attkisson, who received an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow award for her trailblazing work on the story, says she made top CBS brass “incensed” when she appeared on Laura Ingraham’s radio show and mentioned that Obama administration officials called her up to literally scream at her while she was working the story.
One angry CBS exec called to tell Attkisson that Ingraham is “extremely, extremely far right” and that Attkisson shouldn’t appear on her show anymore. Attkisson was puzzled, noting that CBS reporters aren’t barred from appearing on lefty MSNBC shows.
She was turning up leads tying the Fast and Furious scandal (which involved so many guns that ATF officials initially worried that a firearm used in the Tucson shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords might have been one of them) to an ever-expanding network of cases when she got an e-mail from Katie Couric asking if it was OK for Couric to interview Eric Holder, whom Couric knew socially, about the scandal. Sure, replied Attkisson.
No interview with Holder aired but “after that weekend e-mail exchange, nothing is the same at work,” Attkisson writes. “The Evening News” began killing her stories on Fast and Furious, with one producer telling Attkisson, “You’ve reported everything. There’s really nothing left to say.”
Readers are left to wonder whether Holder told Couric to stand down on the story.

Attkisson also used to play a game she called "substitution" - a popular game played often by the conservative media:

Attkisson mischievously cites what she calls the “Substitution Game”: She likes to imagine how a story about today’s administration would have been handled if it made Republicans look bad.
In green energy, for instance: “Imagine a parallel scenario in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney personally appeared at groundbreakings for, and used billions of tax dollars to support, multiple giant corporate ventures whose investors were sometimes major campaign bundlers, only to have one (or two, or three) go bankrupt . . . when they knew in advance the companies’ credit ratings were junk.”

One new tidbit of information of which I was unaware; Attkisson was asked to do a follow up story to the Rathergate Bush National Guard memos; she refused citing an ethics clause in her contract:

Ignoring Attkisson proved damaging to CBS in other ways. When a senior producer she doesn’t identify came to her in 2004 bubbling about documents that supposedly showed then-President George W. Bush shirked his duties during the Vietnam War, she took one look at the documents and said, “They looked like they were typed by my daughter on a computer yesterday.”
Asked to do a followup story on the documents, she flatly refused, citing an ethics clause in her contract. “And if you make me, I’ll have to call my lawyer,” she said. “Nobody ever said another word” to her about reporting on the documents, which turned out to be unverifiable and probably fake.

Most conservatives don't think much of the reporting profession - and for good reason. But once and a while, someone with real integrity and a passion for the truth emerges from the media scrum and tries to shine a light on the corruption in Washington and disinterest of the media. Attkisson now writes for The Federalist where she has already broken another significant story; Hillary Clinton aides scrubbing Benghazi documents requested by a House committee. 

We can be sure that Attkisson will continue to report the news as it should be reported; with honesty and letting the political chips fall where they may.

Rick Moran

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

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

The Kurds in Turkey and the Fight for Kobani - Veli Sirin

by Veli Sirin

A historical process is now threatened with failure: the reconciliation of the Turkish State with the Kurds living in Turkey.
Turkish guns point in every direction but that of Kobani, and the Turkish air force continues bombing the Kurdish PKK, not ISIS. Many Kurds believe that the Turkish state considers it acceptable for the "Islamic State" to murder Kurds, and would rather bomb the Kurds than help them against ISIS.

The world has watched the town of Kobani on the Turkish-Syrian border, where the Wahhabi terrorists of the so-called "Islamic State" [IS], also known as ISIS, ISIL, and, in Arabic, the "Daesh," are fighting the Kurdish peshmerga, a word meaning "those facing death." The Turkish authorities, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Islamist Justice and Development Party [AKP], have stood among the ambivalent observers of the battle for Kobani.

At the same time, he who is called "the man on the island" has put an ultimatum to Erdoğan. Abdullah Öcalan, in jail surrounded by the sea near Istanbul and still the real leader of the Kurdish Workers Party [PKK], has given the Turkish authorities more time to achieve a full agreement with its Kurdish subjects. If it does not, he says he can do "nothing more for the peace process." But as reported by the London Financial Times on October 22, Öcalan said he remained "optimistic" about relations between Ankara and the Kurdish revolutionaries. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by the United States and various European governments, as well as Turkey.

Still, a historical process is now threatened with failure: the reconciliation of the Turkish state with the Kurds living in Turkey. The country's Kurdish population stands at about 15 million, around one fifth of the total census. Kurds have been repressed since the founding of the Turkish Republic 90 years ago. In combat between the Turkish military and the PKK, almost 40,000 people have died.

Erdoğan's shining moment may have come when he asked the Turkish parliament, on August 11, 2009, "Where would Turkey be today, if we had not wasted 25 years in conflict, unsolved murders, and forcibly-relocated [Kurdish] villages?" At the end of the speech, he declared, "Nobody won. Everybody lost." Many legislators wept.

That was the beginning of a slow process that in 2013 was transformed into official negotiations between the state and the PKK, leading to an armistice. The authorities were to concede more rights to the Kurds and the PKK would end its armed campaign against the government.

Now, after this difficult path has been followed briefly, the arrangement is threatened. The principal obstacle to progress is the situation in Kobani. Kurdish advocates interpret Turkish ambiguity about permitting assistance to the Kurds in Kobani as an attack on all Kurds – whether Iraqi Kurds, with whom Ankara has a good relationship, or Kurds from the PKK. Many Kurds believe that the Turkish state considers it acceptable for the "Islamic State" to murder Kurds.

Öcalan subordinate Cemil Bayık, according to the Middle East news portal Al-Monitor, threatened on September 24 to resume the PKK guerrilla war against the Turkish military, unless Erdoğan and the AKP change their position toward the Kurds. If Kobani falls to ISIS, armed struggle may return to Turkey's Kurdish region.

At the same time, another contradiction is visible. While the AKP government claims that it wants to accelerate the peace process -- especially now, and with particularly greater speed -- at the same time, it condemns the Kurdish political leaders as warmongers. The Turkish regime insists on equating the PKK with ISIS, and alleges there is an alliance between Kurds in Syria and the Damascus dictator Bashar Al-Assad. In addition, this link supposedly extends to a coalition with other Erdoğan targets: the religious movement of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric who now lives in the U.S. and was formerly an ally of the AKP; and the foreign media. These two "enemies" were not only blamed for protests in Turkey, but, according to Erdoğan in an October 13 speech, reported by the Gülen-controlled daily Today's Zaman, they conspire to subvert its internal security. The Turkish state is also seeking ways to enhance police powers against its opponents, in measures described by the leading newspaper Daily Sabah on October 22.

Paradoxically, many Kurds live well in Turkey and support the AKP. Thus, it seems to be Erdoğan himself who destabilizes the country by oppressing the Kurds.

Pro-Kurdish demonstrations in Turkey, in early October, focused on the plight of Kobani. At least 33 people were killed in these protests, and hundreds injured, Daily Sabah reported.

The U.S. military has been helping the Kurds in Kobani recently by supplying arms, ammunition, and medical aid. CENTCOM, the U.S. military Central Command, has publicized several C-130 relief flights to the Kurds in Kobani. Erdoğan has opposed these arms shipments. Returning from Afghanistan on October 19, Erdoğan said that Turkey could not be expected to support such weapons deliveries, as noted by the London Guardian.

The U.S. continues to press Turkey regarding use of the American air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border, for action against ISIS and, it is hoped by many, Syria's Al-Assad regime.

Additionally, some have proposed that Turkey open a corridor through Turkey from Iraqi Kurdistan -- but only to help the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, not Turkish Kurds, reach Kobani, according to AKP foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, as cited in Turkey's leading Hürriyet Daily News on October 21.

The main Kurdish force in Kobani, the People's Protection Units [YPG], is a militia made up of members the Democratic Union Party [PYD], a Kurdish movement in Syria affiliated with the PKK.

The Turkish air force, meanwhile, continues bombing the PKK, not ISIS. Turkey is attacking the fighters who could help defend Kobani.

On October 14, BBC News, as well as Turkish and Kurdish media, disclosed that F-16 and F-4 warplanes from the Turkish bases at Diyarbakir and Malatya bombed Dağlica, a Kurdish area in the extreme southeast of Turkey near the Iraqi border. Turkish authorities said the raids were a response to a PKK attack on a military outpost.

The Dağlica clash was the first between Turkish forces and the PKK since the armistice agreement of March 2013. Whoever first attacked whom, the PKK or the Turkish military, many Kurds remain convinced that the Turkish state would rather bomb the Kurds than help them against IS. Kurdish resentment is stoked by the spectacle of Ankara allowing Kurds be killed in Syria, on the Turkish border, while taking no action to prevent the slaughter.

On a hill in Atmanek, along the Turkish-Syrian frontier, Turkish tanks are parked, reconditioned for winter action. But their guns point in every direction except that of Kobani.

Turkish tanks near the border with Syria, October 2014.

Selahattin Demirtaş, chairman of the legal Kurdish party in Turkey, the People's Democratic Party [HDP], has called for more action from the AKP government. Cited in Today's Zaman for October 14, he declared: "We have not said the Turkish military should go to Kobani and fight against ISIS. We have said that there are tens of thousands of people [in Turkey willing to cross the border to fight against ISIS;] open the door."


Veli Sirin

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4816/kurds-turkey-kobani

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