Expert: Agreement Shows Abbas' True Colors

by Elad Benari

Middle East expert Professor Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said on Tuesday that the reconciliation agreement that was signed between Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and the Hamas terror group unveiled Abbas’ true colors.

Abbas and the head of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, met in Qatar Monday and signed an agreement according to which Abbas will head the interim government, which will be made up of "independent technocrats."

On Tuesday, a member of the central committee of Fatah said the new PA interim government will be presented on February 18 in Cairo.

“The negotiations with the Palestinians have been going on for 40 years, and they’ve never had a chance. We wanted to end the conflict, and they want to destroy Israel,” Prof. Sharon told Arutz Sheva. “The Palestinians want to bring back millions of refugees and they want Jerusalem. They want to destroy the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and to return to the borders from 1947, before the State of Israel was established. The signing of this agreement is basically the same as giving official approval, in front of the world, to their desire to destroy us. Hamas has always called to destroy Israel and now Fatah is joining it.”

He added that the unity agreement is intended to realize the common goal of all the Arabs – Israel’s demise.

“They want to show that there is unity among all the factions, as if there is one Palestinian territory,” Prof. Sharon said. “They do not want to continue in a situation in which there is a state in Gaza with its own prime minister, and another entity in Judea and Samaria. They want to show these two areas as belonging to one Palestinian entity. This is a show which is designed to harm the State of Israel.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to the unity agreement and said the PA "can't have it both ways."

“I have said many times in the past that the Palestinian Authority must choose between an alliance with Hamas and peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said. “Hamas and peace do not go together. Over the past few weeks, Israel and elements in the international community have made great efforts to advance the peace process.

"If Abu Mazen implements what has been signed in Doha,” Netanyahu continued, “he will have chosen to abandon the way of peace and to join with Hamas, without Hamas having accepted the minimal conditions of the international community.”

Elad Benari

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152525#.TzL46oFvIi5

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

Delta Decides Ben Gurion Airport Not in ‘Occupied Territories’

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Is Ben Gurion Airport on “occupied” land? That is what Deltas Airlines said – until legal activists gave Delta a lesson in geography – and law.

A reader pointed out to Arutz Sheva that Delta Airlines’ frequent flyer program website on the Middle East includes, among others, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The table “effectively Delta says that if you want to fly from Occupied Palestinian Territory to another place, you need a certain number of miles,” wrote the reader. Ben Gurion Airport is occupied in Lod, within the temporary 1949 Armistice Lines that changed after to include the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria after the Six-Day War in 1967.

“I didn't know that Delta flies from Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the reader added. “It flies from Ben Gurion airport in Lod. Is that Occupied Palestinian Territory? “

The civil rights group Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) also got wind of Delta’s political map and called Delta.

“Delta removed the inaccurate language from its website,” Shurat HaDin said, and added, “Delta‘s quick response demonstrates its acknowledgment of the politicization and widespread misuse of the legal term ‘occupied territory‘ and reinforces the inappropriateness of the application of the term to the disputed territories under Israel‘s administration.”

“The law is clear when it comes to what constitutes an “occupied territory” and neither the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] nor Gaza can be accurately described as occupied by Israel,” according to Shurat HaDin.

Describing the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied Palestinian territories” is intentionally misleading and serves the Palestinians‘ political agenda to prejudice the outcome of future territorial resolutions,” it added.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152534#.TzL3woFvIi5

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

Contentions: Can Israel Strike Iran?

by Michael Rubin

Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal has a column today asking whether Israel can bomb Iran. He writes:

Put simply, an Israeli strike on Iran would not just be a larger-scale reprise of the attacks that took out Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007. On the contrary: If it goes well it would look somewhat like the Six-Day War of 1967, and if it goes poorly like the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Nobody should think we’re talking about a cakewalk.

While many proponents of a military strike draw parallels to Israel’s strike against the Iraqi reactor in 1981, or its attack on the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Stephens is correct to note that the Iranian situation is far different, but he doesn’t go far enough: Even if Israeli pilots managed to fly into Iran with surprise, they will not be able to fly out with surprise once they drop their ordnance. This means that, even before Israeli planes can strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, they would have to strike enemy airfields, surface-to-air missile batteries, command and control centers, and radars. Multiple planes would then strike at the same target to better ensure success. In short, this could mean more than 1,000 sorties. Certainly, Israel has submarines and unmanned drones, but these alone will not suffice.

Too often, discussion about a military strike revolves around the bunker buster issue. This is not a make-or-break issue. While Iran has buried facilities under mountains—not the usual stuff of a civilian energy program—it would suffice to destroy the entrances or exits to such facilities. Israel timed its strike on Osirak to pre-empt the loading of nuclear fuel into the reactor. Iran’s centrifuges are already spinning, so if Israel collapses entrances to the mountain facility, Greenpeace should dance a hora of joy.

Stephens is correct that a strike would likely delay Iran’s nuclear program. Such a strike would come at a high cost, though experts can debate the length of the delay. In all likelihood, it would not equate to the setback suffered by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, whose own missteps in Kuwait contributed to further sanctions and war, extending the delay beyond Israel’s wildest dreams. Still, the real question for policymakers is what plans are in place to take advantage of such a delay. Ultimately, until policymakers are willing to discuss the real problem—not Iran’s potential nuclear weapons but the regime which would wield them—there will be no lasting solution.

Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/07/israel-strike-iran/

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

The OSCE: Yet Another Avenue for Islamists to Control Speech

by Andrew E. Harrod and Adam Turner

Although more attention goes to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) prominent attempts to police speech in Western nations regarding Islam-related topics through the UN and the "Istanbul Process", Muslim and Islamist desires to restrict critical speech concerning Islam-related topics and promote a positive image of their religion have also played a role in yet another international organization's efforts to address the debate about Islam and Muslims. On October 28, 2011, a conference, titled: "Confronting Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims in Public Discourse," was held at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE is an international grouping encompassing 56 states from North America (Canada and the United States), Europe, and the former Soviet Union. At this conference the Danish-Pakistani general-secretary of the Initiative of European Muslims for Social Cohesion (Die Initiative Europäischer Muslime für Sozialen Zusammenhalt or IEMSZ), Bashy Quraishi, called for "guidelines against Islamophobia in public discourse" and stated that "freedom of speech in Europe entails responsibility, something often forgotten by political leaders and journalists." Also, General Quraishi as well as numerous other participants at the conference extolled the civilizational contributions of Islam – and Muslims – to humanity. Perhaps not too surprisingly in this politically correct world, in the end the OSCE seemingly acceded to Quraishi's desire to protect Muslims from insulting speech and promote a positive view of Islam.

This fact is clearly visible in the resulting OSCE booklet titled - Guidelines for Educators on Countering Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: Addressing Islamophobia through Education (available online in PDF format). The OSCE's booklet focuses heavily on fighting "Islamophobia," a problem that even some surprising figures find clearly exaggerated. It claims that the "media" and "some political discourse" has "contributed" to a belief that Muslims are "extremists who threaten the security and well-being of others" and has resulted in a "range of discrimination." The booklet also contains many politically correct, and sometimes undocumented, statements. In countering "recurring stereotypes in public discourse about Muslims" such as "their religion advocates violence" or their being "irrational and violent" and a "security threat," the guidelines recommended a variety of "educational responses." The booklet asserts that there is "much diversity within Islam" and that Muslims have a "great deal in common" with "people with different religious or cultural backgrounds." It also says that "various religious or cultural communities, including Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, can and do have positive impacts on each other, and frequently work and live together in close co-operation and partnership." Finally, it singles out "Islamic cultures and civilizations" for their oft-claimed, yet disputed, "substantial contributions over the centuries to science and technology, the arts and architecture, and law, ethics and philosophy." Meanwhile, the booklet ignores, aside from general references to "radicalism and extremism," the more unsavory issues of Islamist terrorist violence in its various forms and the imposition of radical Islamic norms, such as sharia, making many headlines today in reference to Islam.

Revealingly, the booklet references the OIC, in the section "Resources and Information Tools," as just one institution among others concerned with human rights and freedom of speech. As followers of the LP know, the 57-member state (including, somewhat dubiously, Palestine) OIC has pursued a longstanding international agenda of attempting to legally curb criticism of Islam in general and Islamist groups in particular under the guises of "religious defamation" and "Islamophobia." Further, the OIC contains no developed democracies with protections for human rights and free speech among its member states. Tellingly, OIC-headquarters host Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that bans the proselytization and practice of non-Islamic faiths as well as "blasphemous" remarks against Islam or the Saudi monarchy, punishes homosexuals with death, and prevents women from voting or driving cars. (For specific examples of OIC member nations' poor records of respecting human rights, please peruse the reports of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.) To place the OIC on an equal footing with international institutions committed to equality of all before the law is ridiculous, if not perverse.

But don't worry – there is no need to be concerned about the biased guidelines produced at the OSCE conference. So says Quraishy, who asserts that no Muslims seek a "special status." Followers of the Legal Project might very well be skeptical of his protestations. The one-sided content of the OSCE guidelines and its inclusion of the OIC as a "resource" indicate that this is yet another way for Islamists to advance under the guise of victimization an authoritarian agenda to place Islamic beliefs above reproach in the free market of ideas. The end result of this agenda would be a diminishment of human rights such as freedom of speech and religion

Andrew E. Harrod and Adam Turner

Source: http://www.legal-project.org/blog/2012/02/the-osce-yet-another-avenue-for-islamists-to

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

Caroline Glick: Obama's Rhetorical Storm

by Caroline Glick

The Obama administration is absolutely furious at Russia and China. The two UN Security Council permanent members' move on Saturday to veto a resolution on Syria utterly infuriated US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. And they want us all to know just how piping mad they really are.

Rice called the vetoes "unforgivable," and said that "any further blood that flows will be on their hands." She said the US was "disgusted."

Clinton called the move by Moscow and Beijing a "travesty." She then said that the US will take action outside the UN, "with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future."

The rhetoric employed by Obama's top officials is striking for what it reveals about how the Obama administration perceives the purpose of rhetoric in foreign policy.

Most US leaders have used rhetoric to explain their policies. But if you take the Obama administration's statements at face value you are left scratching your head in wonder. Specifically on Syria, if you take these statements literally, you are left wondering if Obama and his advisers are simply clueless. Because if they are serious, their indignation bespeaks a remarkable ignorance about how decisions are made at the Security Council.

Is it possible that Obama believed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would betray Bashar Assad, his most important strategic ally in the Middle East? Is it possible that he believed that the same Chinese regime that systematically tramples the human rights of its people would agree to intervene in another country's domestic affairs?

Outside the intellectual universe of the Obama administration - where stalwart US allies such as Hosni Mubarak are discarded like garbage and foes such as Hugo Chavez are wooed like Hollywood celebrities - national governments tend to base their foreign policies on their national interests.

In light of this basic reality, Security Council actions generally reflect the national interests of its member states. This is how it has always been. This is how it will always be. And it is hard to believe that the Obama administration was unaware of this basic fact.

In fact, it is impossible to believe that the administration was unaware that its plan to pass a Security Council resolution opposing Assad's massacre of his people - and so jeopardize Russian and Chinese interests - had no chance of success. The fact that they had to know the resolution would never pass leads to the conclusion that Obama and his advisers weren't trying to pass the resolution on Syria at all.

Rather they were trying to pass the buck on Syria.

We have two pieces of evidence to support the view that the Obama administration has no intention of doing anything even vaguely effective to end Assad's reign of terror that has so far taken the lives of between five and ten thousand of his countrymen.

First, for the past 10 months, as Assad's killing machine kicked into gear, Obama and his advisers have been happy to sit on their hands. They supported Turkey's feckless diplomatic engagement with Assad. They sat back as Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayep Erdogan employed the IHH, his regime-allied terror group, to oversee the organization of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

Second, the administration supported the Arab League's farcical inspectors' mission to Syria. That mission was led by Sudanese Gen. Muhammad al- Dabi. Dabi reportedly was one of the architects of the genocide in Darfur. Clearly, a mission under his leadership had no chance of accomplishing anything useful. And indeed, it didn't.

AND SO, after nearly a year, the issue of Assad's butchery of his citizens finally found its way to the Security Council last month. Many in the US expected Obama to use the opportunity to finally do something to stop the killing, just as he and his NATO allies did something to prevent the killing in Libya last year.

Ten months ago Obama, Rice, Clinton and National Security Council member Samantha Power decided that the US and its allies had to militarily intervene in Libya to ensure that Muammar Gaddafi didn't have the opportunity to kill his people as Assad is now doing. That is, to prevent the type of human rights calamity that the Syrian people are now experiencing, Obama used the UN as a staging ground to overthrow Gaddafi through force.

Sadly for the people of Syria, who are being shot dead even as they try to bury their families who were shot dead the day before, unlike the situation in Libya, Obama has never had the slightest intention of using his influence to take action against Assad. And faced with the rapidly rising public expectation that he would take action at the Security Council to stop the killing, Obama opted for diplomatic Kabuki.

Knowing full well that Putin - who is still selling Assad weapons - would veto any resolution, rather than accept that the Security Council is a dead end, Obama had Rice negotiate fecklessly with her Russian counterparts. The resolution that ended up being called to a vote on Saturday was so weak that US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Friday calling for the administration to veto it.

As Ros-Lehtinen put it, the draft resolution "contains no sanctions, no restrictions on weapons transfers, and no calls for Assad to go, but supports the failed Arab League observer mission," and so isn't "worth the paper it's printed on."

She continued, "The Obama administration should not support this weak, counterproductive resolution, and should also reconsider the legitimacy that it provides to the Arab League - an organization that continues to boycott Israel - when it comes to the regime in Damascus."

But instead of vetoing it, the administration backed it to the tilt and then expressed disgust and moral outrage when Russia and China vetoed it.

The lesson of this spectacle is that it we must recognize that the Obama administration's rhetoric hides more than it reveals about the president's actual policies.

THE FIRST place that we should apply this lesson is to the hemorrhage of administration rhetoric about Iran.

For the past several weeks we have been treated to massive doses of verbiage from Obama and his senior advisers about Iran. The most notable of these recent statements was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's conversation with The Washington Post's David Ignatius last week.

Panetta used Ignatius to communicate two basic messages. First, he wanted to make clear that the administration adamantly opposes an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations. And second, he wanted to make clear that if Iran strikes Israeli population centers, the US will come to Israel's defense.

The purpose of the first message is clear enough. Panetta wished to increase pressure on Israel not to take preemptive action against Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The purpose of the second message is also clear. Panetta spoke of the US's obligation to Israel's defense in order to remove the justification for an Israeli attack. After all, if the US is obliged to defend it, then Israel mustn't risk harming US interests by defending itself.

When taken together, Panetta's message sounds balanced and responsible. But when examined carefully, it is clear that it is not.

It is far from responsible for the US government to tell its chief ally that it should be willing to absorb an attack on its population centers from Iran. No government can be expected to sit back and wait to be attacked with nuclear weapons because if it is, the Americans will retaliate against its attacker.

Panetta's message was not just irresponsible. It was obnoxious.

And this leaves the first message. Since Obama was elected the US has devoted most of its energies not to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but to pressuring Israel not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And Panetta's remarks to Ignatius were consistent with this mission.

Some have argued that the US's stepped-up naval presence in the Persian Gulf is evidence that the US is itself gearing up to attack Iran. But as retired US naval analyst J.E. Dyer explained in an essay last month at the Optimistic Conservative blog, the US posture in the Persian Gulf is defensive, not offensive.

The US has not deployed anywhere near the firepower it would need to conduct a successful military campaign against Iran's nuclear installations. The only thing the US deployment may serve to accomplish is to deter Israel from launching a preemptive air strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

It is true that to a certain extent, Israel has brought this escalating American rhetorical storm on itself with its own flood of rhetoric about Iran. Over the past week nearly every senior Israeli military and political official has had something to say about Iran's nuclear program.

But this stream of words does not reflect a change in Israel's strategic timetable. Rather it is a function of the rather mundane calendar of Israel's annual conference circuit. It just so happened that the annual Herzliya Conference took place last week. It is standard fare for Israel's security and political leadership to bloviate about Iran's nuclear program at Herzliya. They do it every year. They did it this year.

And in truth, no one said anything at the conference that we didn't already know. We learned nothing new about Iran's program or Israel's intentions. Had there been no conference last week, there would likely have been no flood of Israeli statements.

We only know three things for certain about Iran. It is getting very late in the game for anyone to take any military actions to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran will not stop its nuclear weapons program voluntarily. And Obama will not order US forces to take action to stop Iran's nuclear project.

What remains uncertain still is how Israel plans to respond to these three certainties. The fact that Israel has waited this long to strike presents the disturbing prospect that our leaders may have been confused by the Obama administration's rhetoric. Perhaps they have been persuaded that the US is on our side on this issue and that we don't have to rely only on ourselves to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But as the foregoing analysis of the administration's very angry words on Syria and very sober words on Iran demonstrates, Obama and his deputies use rhetoric not to clarify their intentions, but to obfuscate them. Just as they will do nothing to prevent Assad from continuing his campaign of murder and terror, so they will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Caroline Glick

Source: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/02/obamas-rhetorical-storm.php

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

Of Mosques and Men

by IPT News

There are times when an unfortunate name can come back to haunt someone even when he or she had nothing to do with the original moniker. Think of Rick Perry's ranch, or a Florida mosque named for a terrorist icon.

The Islamic Community of Tampa, also known as the al-Qassam mosque, hosts an ironic event Friday evening with the local Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter. The open house aims to advance "understanding Islam." Speakers will discuss Muslim beliefs and try to clear up "misconceptions about Islam, and Islam's condemnation of terrorism," a promotional release said.

That's a difficult sell when the mosque exalts Izzedin al-Qassam, who remains an inspirational figure to Palestinian terrorists. Hamas named its terrorist operations branch for al-Qassam. Most rockets fired from Gaza toward Israeli homes and schools are called Qassam rockets.

"The [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad's supporters have elevated him almost to a saintly status," wrote Palestinian academic Ziad Abu Amr in his book Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza. It was al-Qassam who merged religion and violence, advocating "God's book in one hand, and the rifle in the other."

Echoing Al-Qassam, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have charters rejecting any peaceful resolution to the conflict with Israel. Islamic Jihad calls for "The creation of a state of terror, instability and panic in the souls of Zionists and especially the groups of settlers, and force them to leave their houses." Hamas dismisses peace talks as a game beneath Palestinian dignity. "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility. The Palestinian people are too noble to have their future, their right and their destiny submitted to a vain game."

It is fairly rare for a mosque to be named for an individual. A plaque outside the mosque hails al-Qassam as the one who "declared Jihad against the British and Zionist invasion of Palestine. He was martyred on November 19, 1935 in Yabrod, Palestine. Al-Qassam has become a symbol of heroism, resistance, occupation, and invasion of steadfast Palestine."

The mosque's name changed in 1989 when it was run by Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer scientist who secretly served on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's shura council, or governing board. Al-Arian sheltered other board members, including Secretary General Ramadan Shallah. Shallah took over the Islamic Jihad in 1995, just six months after leaving Tampa.

A year earlier, when evidence shows Al-Arian was fighting to keep the Islamic Jihad alive in the face of a financial crisis, Al-Arian wrote to immigration officials on Al-Qassam Mosque letterhead seeking a work visa for Shallah to be the mosque's imam.

In interviews for Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson's "Jihad in America" documentary and a subsequent newspaper investigation, Al-Arian denied the mosque's name indicated any bond with the Jihad or other terrorists. Al-Qassam "became a symbol in Palestine of the first to resist and fight for freedom," he said in 1995. "He was strengthened by religion and devotion to God."

Federal agents arrested Al-Arian nine years ago and he has not been back to the mosque since. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide services to the Islamic Jihad and records make clear his prominent role in the organization. In all those years, however, mosque leaders have not thought to rid their house of worship of Al-Qassam's name.

But they plan to welcome the public Friday evening to persuade the public they stand for the opposite of al-Qassam's message of "God's book in one hand, and the rifle in the other."

It would be like hosting a forum on the South's historic embrace of integration at the Church of the Martyr Bull Connor.

Both the mosque and CAIR seem oblivious.

"Ignorance leads to misunderstanding, which in turn leads to fear, hatred, discrimination, and even violence," said CAIR-Tampa executive director Hassan Shibly in the release. "By reaching out and getting to know each other, we can love each other as a community and recognize that our differences need not divide us."

But violence was at the heart of al-Qassam's message. Jihad, he said, was the only path to freedom. According to a booklet issued by the Islamic Association for Palestine, an arm in a Hamas-support network, al-Qassam instructed followers that "Jihad is a religious obligation till the Judgement (sic) Day. We all need to do Jihad in the name of God to free our countries from the colonialist to become Islamic States that apply God's laws.

"Arm yourself no matter what are the circumstances. Sell everything you have and buy weapons to fight the occupation."

The mosque maintains a significant link to the Al-Arian era through its president, Noor Salhab. In the early 1990s, Salhab leased his home to Al-Arian as office space for a think-tank called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, where Shallah was a director.

Years later, another tenant drew scrutiny from federal law enforcement. Ahmed Mohamed was arrested by police in South Carolina with a trunk load of explosive material and a laptop containing jihadi videos. Mohamed posted one such video to Youtube, showing would-be jihadists how to make remote-controlled bombs "to be used against those who fight for the United States" since he considered them and their allies fighting in Arab countries to be "invaders."

Federal agents searched the house in 2007, looking for bomb-making ingredients including PVC pipes, chemicals, hacksaws and soldering irons. Mohamed is serving 15 years after pleading guilty to providing material support to terrorists.

Salhab is not responsible for his tenants' behavior. And leasing a house to two separate people implicated in terror-support cases could happen to anyone, right? But if the mosque and its partners in CAIR truly are interested in correcting misconceptions about their faith, they might start by removing the name as a show of sincerity.

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3433/of-mosques-and-men

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

Israeli Hackers Take Down Hamas Website

by Yaakov Lappin

By Thinkstock/Imagebank

Israeli hackers took down a website run by Hamas on Tuesday, and warned that the web company which hosted the site will be their next target.

The "IDF Team" hacker group took responsibility for the attack.

The affected website, www.qasssam.ps, is run by Hamas's Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades terrorist force, and often displays content celebrating rocket fire on Israeli civilians from Gaza.

The website was unavailable after IDF Team said it would take the site offline.

IDF Team added that it had first sent an email to the Nashirnet web hosting company asking them "to remove the Hamas terrorist site. But we got a negative answer."

The hackers warned that Nashirnet "will take the fall as well."

"In the future, we hope for more collaboration to avoid action like this," the hackers wrote.

Earlier on Tuesday, computer hackers from the Arab world attacked the Israeli internet news portal Ynet, temporarily taking the site offline.

The site was back online within an hour.

The attack was the latest in a spate of hacking attacks against Israeli websites. The Hebrew website of Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz was disabled by hackers last month.

Yaakov Lappin

Source: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=256872

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

Palestinian Authority: Write Only Nice Things About Your Leaders

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Facebook has become a dangerous playground for Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The US-backed Palestinian Authority security forces belonging to Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad have been monitoring the activities of Palestinians on Facebook to make sure that no one criticizes them.

The Palestinian Authority wants Palestinians to write only nice things about their leaders. Criticism should be directed only against Israel. Those who fail to toe the line will find themselves either behind bars or without work.

The Palestinian leaders are aware of the power of social networking, especially in light of what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria.

The Palestinian leadership's clampdown on Facebook users is seen as a pre-emptive measure to prevent the "Arab Spring" from infiltrating into the West Bank.

Rami Samara, a Palestinian journalist from Ramallah, last week found himself under interrogation by two different security agencies in the West Bank: Military Intelligence and General Intelligence.

Samara was detained while at work in the offices of the PLO's official news agency, Wafa. His crime: a comment he posted on his Facebook page.

The comment was about a statement issued by the PLO executive committee holding Israel responsible for the failure of the recent Israeli-Palestinian talks in Jordan.

Samara wrote in his sarcastic comment: "Ok, no joking now, do the members of the 'sole legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people' believe that this announcement is worth their sitting in their seats, turning on the heaters and drinking coffee and tea in their offices in Ramallah?"

The journalist said he was interrogated separately by the two intelligence forces in Ramallah about the comment and his activities on the social networking site. He was released a few hours later following strong protests by other journalists and human rights organizations.

Samara is the second Palestinian journalist to be targeted by security forces loyal to Abbas and Fayyad because of Facebook.

About a year ago, Mamdouh Hamarneh, a TV producer from Bethlehem, was detained for 50 days after comparing Abbas on Facebook to a Syrian actor who portrayed a "traitor" in a popular Syrian soap opera.

This week, a Palestinian woman complained that she too had been summoned for interrogation because of a comment she had posted on her Facebook page. She said she was interrogated by another security agency - Preventive Security - which also belongs to Abbas and Fayyad.

Because of the crackdown on Facebook users, many Palestinians in the West Bank today think twice before they post a comment that could anger the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.

Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2824/palestinian-authority-facebook-censorship

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

Who Defames the Prophet?

by Ahmed El Aswany

Translated and Introduced by Raymond Ibrahim.

The following op-ed, written by Ahmed El Aswany, appeared in the popular news website El Bashayer, December 22, 2011, following several lawsuits against Egypt's Christians, most notably billionaire Naguib Sawiris, for "defaming Islam." Hard-hitting and self-critical, it deals with an important question: Exactly who is it that defames Islam and its prophet Muhammad? Many in the Muslim world insist it is the West—whether through cartoons, books, or simply free speech. However, as El Aswany boldly argues, no one defames Islam as much as "we Muslims, for imposing a terrorist, hypocrite, and life-hating Islamic model that feeds on killing others in the name of jihad and fighting freedom of expression…"

------

I do not believe that cartoons, books, or movies can defame any religion or affect the faith of its adherents and true believers.

Those who defame the Prophet are they who slaughter and bomb innocent people all over the world—in New York, Madrid, London, Bali, Riyadh, Cairo, Kabul and Baghdad—while citing the name of Allah and his Prophet and under the banner of Islamic jihad. Ongoing demonstrations follow in support of their acts, while Internet sites sing praises of the "knight" Osama bin Laden, the "hero of the two raids on New York and Washington [i.e., the strikes of 9/11]."

Those who defame the Prophet include men like [Yusif] Qaradawi [the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader], who incite killing Jewish babies in their mothers' wombs (his lecture at the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate in 1996), and who incite and support suicide bombings and declared jihad in Iraq, in the name of religion and the Prophet, leading to the killing of innocent people.

Those who defame the Prophet are they who demand the world to enact resolutions against the "defamation of religion," while they practice this defamation in every prayer in their mosques, schools, and satellite stations—especially against Christians and Jews, whom they curse in every prayer. (After the Islamic Human Rights Commission of the United Nations motioned this resolution against "Defamation of Religion," according to the Saudi internet site ArabiaNet, the Saudi Shura [Consultative] Council opposed the resolution—because defaming other religions is a rite and part of the rituals of Islam.)

Those who defame the Prophet are they who issue fatwas sanctioning "adult breastfeeding," who claim that drinking the Prophet's urine is a blessing, and allow such hadiths to be taught in schools and religious universities—including the hadith of the fly and other hadiths advocating humiliating the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] and treating them with contempt, the hadith of "paradise is under the shades of swords," and thousands of other hadiths, the mere existence of which defame the Prophet and Islam.

Those who defame the prophet are they who teach children in Islamic schools to hate Christians, that befriending them is forbidden ("your enemy is the enemy of your religion")—as one niqab-wearing teacher taught my friend's ten-year-old daughter at Al Fateh Islamic Schools in Maadi; and when the parents complained they were told "This is Islam."

Those who defame the Prophet are they who believe that outward appearances—such as beards, zibibas [callous mark, or "raisin," on forehead from prayer], and Islamic female dress—are part of the statutes of Islam, and they accuse people of being infidels and kill them in their cause.

Those who defame the Prophet are they who deem women defective, equating them with dogs and donkeys in that they invalidate prayer, as per the famous Sahih Muslim hadith. They believe that women are brainless and impious—forgetting that women are mothers, sisters, sweethearts, daughters, and wives, and are on an equal par with men. What is even sadder is that the majority of Muslim women believe in the authenticity of such hadiths that disparage them.

Those who defame the prophet are men like [Dr.] Zaghloul El Naggar, who have a claim to knowledge, yet proclaim natural disasters such as hurricanes, volcanoes, and floods as Allah's punishment for sinners, and denigrate both the Bible and Torah, claiming that they are fabricated books. And he does all this under the banner of the Prophet and in the name of Islam, and many rabble emulate him.

Those who defame the prophet are they who propagate myths among the Muslims—such as the "Prophet's medicine" and dream interpretation—and call their followers to replicate the Prophet's traditions [Sunna], thus promoting ignorance and retrogression among Muslims, who fall easy prey into their wicked web.

Those who defame the prophet are the rulers and Sheikhs of the Arab world who have transformed their countries into the last strongholds of tyranny and dictatorship in the world and who manipulate religious texts to justify their crimes.

Those who defame the prophet are not in the West, but rather we Muslims, for imposing a terrorist, hypocrite, and life-hating Islamic model that feeds on killing others in the name of jihad and fighting freedom of expression on the pretext of defending the Umma's [Islamic world's] precepts, which mean only regression and ossification.

They [Western people] only defame and combat the model that we—and no one else—created.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Ahmed El Aswany

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2823/who-defames-the-prophet

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

Banning Dogs as Pets

by Bruce Bawer

This is how it happens, folks. Little by little. Law by law. The proponents of sharia get themselves elected to positions of power – and then, before too long, they start trying to subject the rest of us to it, bit by bit:

Hasan Küçük, Hague councilor for the Islam Democrats, says dogs should be banned as pets in the city, reports De Telegraaf. The Muslim party says that the animals belong in nature, not inside the house. Küçük says that keeping dogs is animal abuse and should therefore be criminalized.

Needless to say, Hasan Küçük’s concerns have nothing whatsoever to do with animal abuse – and everything to do with the fact that Islam considers dogs to be impure. Like women, Jews, and gays, dogs are on the front line of the confrontation in the West between sharia-observant Muslims and the rest of us. When you see Muslims making trouble over dogs, you can bet that it’s just the beginning of all kinds of trouble over all kinds of things that run afoul of Islamic religious law.

To be sure, Küçük’s suggestion – which came in response to a proposal by animal-rights advocates that The Hague be made more dog-friendly – was immediately shot down by other members of the city council. Küçük was undoubtedly not surprised. He knows these things don’t change in a day – they change over time, by a gradual process of wearing down. People like Küçük are exceedingly patient. And they trust in their own patience and intransigence – and in our weakness, our distraction, our readiness to give in, eventually, under steady pressure, on what may seem to us like small matters that are not worth fighting over.

Küçük’s proposal is nothing new. For years now, the Western media have featured, with some frequency, news stories about blind people with guide dogs being refused taxi rides by devout Muslims cabdrivers, being thrown off buses because of complaints by Muslim passengers, or being refused access to stores by devout Muslim shopkeepers. Daniel Pipes has been assiduous in cataloging such cases, some of them dating back to the 1990s, in places ranging from Milwaukee to Melbourne.

The Muslims in these cases invariably argue that their religion commands them not to be around dogs. But it’s not just about dogs but about pretty much every little detail of daily life. The same people who object fiercely to the presence of dogs in their shops or cabs also maintain that their religion commands them not to do, or touch, or say, or see, or be in the vicinity of a great variety of things that are commonplace in the Western world. And once they’ve gotten their way with regard to dogs, they’ll move on to another thing – and then another, and another – at which they take offense, and once again spell out exactly how they expect non-Muslims to change their behavior in order to keep the peace.

It’s the logic of conquerors. But many authorities in the West have bowed to it. In British Columbia, cab drivers whose “honest religious belief…precludes them from transporting certified guide dogs” have been exempted from having to do so. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport has alsoworked out a “compromise” between blind people and Muslim cabbies. In Britain, in response to Muslim complaints about “sniffer dogs” used to identify terrorists at airports, authorities limited the dogs’ activities out of “cultural sensitivity.” When sniffer dogs are taken into mosques or Muslim homes, moreover, they’re fitted with “leather bootees” to avoid giving offense.

Generally speaking, as the Muslim percentage of a city’s population climbs, the demands for appeasement grow more and more aggressive. Last year,reports Soeren Kern, Islamic groups in the Catalan city of Lérida – which is 20% Muslim – called for a ban on dogs on public transport and in certain public spaces on the grounds that their presence violates Muslims’ “religious freedom and their right to live according to Islamic principles.” The city’s refusal to introduce such a ban was succeeded by a series of dog poisonings. No surprise there: this is precisely the kind of development that one can expect after a certain point in this process, when demands and pressure haven’t turned the trick.

To treat Muslims’ complaints about dogs as if they deserve serious and respectful consideration is, of course, absurd. But over time, even the absurd becomes familiar. That’s one thing these people are counting on. They’re counting on their ability to wear the rest of us down gradually, accustoming us to ideas, beliefs, and “sensitivities” that, at first blush, strike us as ridiculous. They’re counting on our ultimate willingness to compromise our values, one by one, out of fear of conflict and a misguided ardor for social harmony. They’re counting on our readiness to tell ourselves that we’re not surrendering or being submissive but are simply being good, respectful, cooperative neighbors.

It’s precisely in this way that sharia law is being introduced, step by inexorable step, into the West. The only way to put a halt to it is to ensure that everyone in a position of power in the West is aware of exactly what the Hasan Küçüks among us are up to, and is willing to stand up to them every step of the way – knowing that it’s not about dogs, but about dogma; not about puppies, but about power.

Bruce Bawer

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/07/banning-dogs-as-pets/

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