Sarkozy: 8,000 Killed in Homs in 3 Weeks

by Farid Ghadry

The latest death toll just in the city of Homs after 3 weeks of shelling is 8,000 according to President Sarkozy. This brings the total to 16,000 innocent Syrians dying for their freedom.

This week, both Prime Minister Cameron of Britain and President Sarkozy of France threatened Assad with consequences and indictment at the Hague for the crimes he committed in Syria. Both countries closed their Embassies in Damascus.

But if we look at the history of indicting, capturing, and holding Middle East genocidal maniacs accountable, no one should hold their breath. In fact, this is the reason why Assad of Syria is neither afraid nor concerned about the empty threats of any EU leader.

If there is one extreme case the world and many human rights organization remain in shock over, it’s the case of Omar al-Bachir of Sudan. How did someone kill 300,000 of his own people and yet remain on the loose and in power? Worse than that, he is celebrated in countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia who seem oblivious to the whole matter of killing innocent women and children.

For those who followed Sudan, beginning of February of 2003, one would know how the non-Arab oppressed southern tribes rose against their oppressor Omar al-Bachir heading the Sudanese Government. Al-Bachir armed the Janjawi herdsmen to attack them, which caused the death of an estimated 300,000 people in southern Sudan.

The events in Sudan at the time almost mirror those that are happening in Syria today.

An oppressed [people] rises against his oppressor and is met with savagery and death. As in the case of the Arab League dispatching a failed mission of some 60 observers to Syria under the supervision of the General that led the Genocide in Sudan, the African Union dispatched, in 2004, some 150 observers to Sudan for the same reason with the same failed results.

But unlike Syria, the UN did actually vote for a toothless Resolution 1564 condemning the government of Sudan.

It took the international community six years, led by the Bush administration, before it was able to bring the conflict to an end but with one caveat: Omar al-Bachir of Sudan would survive. To make matters even worse, the Hague did in fact condemn him for crimes against humanity and the ICC issued an arrest warrant for his arrest in March of 2009 but the Arab League opposed both on the grounds it will cause instability in Sudan.

No kidding, read this interview by the Emir of Qatar in Der Spiegel. To some in the Arab League members, sidelining a killer causes instability. That’s what happens when one reaches the summit with his pockets full and his head empty.

Since March of 2009, al-Bachir has visited several Arab countries openly. The ruler of Qatar even rolled the red carpet for him the same month an arrest warrant was issued against him by the ICC.

For the same reason the Arab League defends one of its own murderers to protect its outer shell and against such maneuvers in the future is the reason today why the Arab League attacks Assad publicly but is begging the international community not to interfere in Syria by aiding with military weapons. It just does not want any precedent, so close to home, no matter the outcome.

In the case of the Arab Spring, both Tunisia and Egypt took everyone by surprise and the events unfolded rather too quickly for the Arab League to react to or be able to contain their outcome. As far as Libya is concerned, Qaddafi has been on a tear against every ruler of the GCC and Member States of the Arab League were happy to see him go.

In conclusion, Assad will be indicted but will not be brought to justice the same way the international community, to this day, has failed to bring him to justice for killing Rafik al-Hariri and many other bright minds like Gibran Tueini.

Maybe the Arab League won’t roll the red carpet for him but Iran and Russia will. And as long as Assad has these powerful friends the way al-Bachir has the backing of the Arab League, Assad will roam free even if indicted and an arrest warrant is issued against him.

When Europe indicts a Genocidal killer and he remains not only free but in power because the EU leaders are too feckless to impose their will on the Arab League, it does not provides us with any comfort knowing that if Assad is indicted Russia and China still stand by him.

Assad knows it and that is why he is fearless in massacring women and children. For that, we should really thank the Arab League for setting this precedent of letting maniacal killers on the loose.

Farid Ghadry

Source: http://ghadry.com/2012/03/03/8000-killed-in-homs-in-3-weeks/

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

Love and Hate in Norway

by Bruce Bawer

“If you hate Norway so much,” read the email in my inbox the other day, “why don’t you go back to America? Why don’t you go back to the Midwest or the Southern states where you can live with your beloved Tea Party friends?”

The email was in Norwegian, and the sender had a Norwegian name. This is far from the first such e-mail I have received in my thirteen years in Norway. A few years back, in a piece for the New York Times about the Norwegian economy, I made what I thought was a harmless remark in passing about the matpakke, the wrapped-up homemade sandwich that many workers in Norway, including high-ranking executives, chow down at their desks at lunchtime because it’s just too expensive here (Oslo is the world’s priciest city) for most people to go out for even a modest lunch. After that article, I got several hundred outraged text messages, e-mails, and phone calls asking me why I was living in Norway if I hated its beloved traditions so much and ordering me to go back to America. I even got a couple of death threats.

The reason for this latest wave of unfriendly e-mails, however, is my new e-book, The New Quislings, in which I examine the aftermath of the dozens of murders committed on July 22 by an insane young Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik, most of whose victims were members of the youth division of Norway’s Labor Party, explained that he was motivated by a hostility toward Norway’s multicultural immigration and integration policies, which are largely the work of the Labor Party and which are turning Norway, like much of the rest of Europe, into an increasingly Islamic state.

After Breivik’s atrocities, Norway’s left-wing cultural elite lost no time linking him publicly with every prominent writer, foreign or domestic – myself included – who has warned about the Islamization of Europe. We Islam critics, it was asserted, had created an atmosphere of “Islam-hate” and were thus, in part, responsible for Breivik’s actions. Some members of the elite insisted that we Islam critics needed to change our tune about Islam; others went further, saying that if we didn’t shut up and play along, we should be punished for it – silenced.

For months, the Norwegian media were full of demonizing, menacing rhetoric – rhetoric that thoroughly misrepresented the views of people like me and Robert Spencer and Bat Ye’or, making us sound like genocidal racists, threats to civilization, democracy, and pluralism. All the while, those who truly represented a threat to civilization, democracy, and pluralism were the very people who were leveling these charges – who were cynically exploiting the acts of a lone madman in an effort to strangle free speech in Norway and destroy their own ideological opponents.

To a frightening extent, the attempt worked – and continues to work. For a time, criticism of Islam was almost entirely muted. Then, gradually, the critics began to speak up again – but in all too many cases, the criticism was more tepid, more timid, than before. In some cases Islam went entirely unmentioned, the focus instead being purely on immigration and integration policies. When word began to spread that I had written a book whose title compared Norway’s would-be censors of Islam criticism to Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi puppet who ran Norway during the occupation, my fellow Islam critics in Norway rushed to distance themselves from the book and to reject the comparison. Even though many of the influential left-wingers I had written about were actively out to crush free speech in Norway, it was simply over the top, I was told, to compare them to Quisling.

It is, of course, a truism that one should not be quick to compare one’s ideological opponents to Nazis. Yet in this case the comparison seemed to me amply justified. First of all, it is not as if Nazi comparisons are absent from the Norwegian public square. On the contrary, one of the most familiar memes in the Norwegian press these days is the notion that Israel is today’s Nazi Germany and that the Palestinians are its victims in precisely the same way that the Jews were the victims of Europe’s Nazi conquerors. Norway’s most celebrated editorial cartoonist, Finn Graff, has more than once drawn cartoons making precisely this equation. He is respected and beloved, and has won major awards for his work.

Needless to say, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is obscene. But it did not, and does not, seem to me unreasonable to suggest that there are, in fact, significant continuities between Quisling and his wartime supporters, on the one hand, and today’s left-wing Norwegian cultural elite, on the other. Consider this: a few months ago, some wartime films surfaced showing uniformed Nazis parading through the streets of Oslo while Norwegian crowds cheered them, blew them kisses, and gave the Hitler salute. There was a controversy over whether these films should have been made public, because many of the people shown in them were readily identifiable. One was a woman who went on to be a famous performer. Others were the parents or grandparents of people living today, some of them quite prominent. The argument was that it was unfair to these people to have it known that their family members had been Nazis, or, at the very least, had put on a very good show of being Nazis.

Bruce Bawer

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/02/love-and-hate-in-norway/

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

Obama, Israel and the Mullahs

by Joseph Klein

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting in Washington, D.C. on Monday March 5th. This meeting is likely to be their most critical one to date. The Iranian nuclear problem, and the need for a definitive response, are expected to dominate their discussions. Israel believes that time is quickly running out for non-military means such as economic sanctions to stop Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb at will. The Obama administration is saying “not so fast” and to give sanctions more of a chance to work.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to publicly express a hard line against Iran during the meeting, according to a senior Israeli official quoted by Haaretz. Netanyahu will reportedly press for American support for firm action beyond the vague declaration that all options remain on the table. He wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain “red lines,” according to this Israeli official. Obama is unlikely to go anywhere close to making such a public declaration or to openly back Israel if it decides to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The United States and Israel do agree on two basic points. They agree that Iran is intent on achieving a nuclear arms capability and is moving full-steam ahead with its nuclear program. They also agree that there will come a point when it will probably be too late to stop Iran from achieving its objective.

Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have confirmed that there is a sound basis for these concerns in their latest report. They concluded that Iran is pushing ahead with its nuclear program while stonewalling the agency’s efforts to investigate allegations that Iran’s scientists had conducted extensive research on how to build a nuclear warhead. When IAEA inspectors visited Iran recently, Iranian officials refused to allow them to visit a key research facility where some of the alleged experiments were said to have occurred.

However, while sharing concerns about Iran’s advancement towards becoming a nuclear power, the United States and Israel disagree on the urgency of the problem and the timing of any military action to counter it. They differ on the precise point when it will become too late to stop Iran from producing a nuclear bomb and whether Iran can be successfully contained even if it is not stopped in time. “We believe that there is time and space to allow for a diplomatic resolution,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said last month.

No meeting will paper over these differences as long as Obama, who has yet to visit Israel as president while managing to find time to visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, fails to fully appreciate the threat that Israel is confronting. He fails to understand Israel’s acute sense of vulnerability against hostile forces determined to destroy the Jewish state by any means possible and Israel’s fierce determination to protect itself at any cost. Nor does he seem to understand that the direct threat a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Israel today will become a direct threat to the United States in the not too distant future if the jihadist megalomaniacs now ruling Iran or their like-minded successors remain in charge.

In short, Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat. No wonder, considering the Iranian leaders’ repeated calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state, Iran’s proximity to Israel, and the ease with which Iran’s surrogates in the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations can be used to help carry out its plans for Israel’s destruction.

On the other hand, while the Obama administration views a nuclear-armed Iran as a very serious threat to regional peace and security, it does not view a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to the United States itself or to the free world generally. It believes that even a successful military strike would only delay Iran’s nuclear program for a few years and would almost certainly set off a firestorm of violence in the Middle East and elsewhere with dangerously unpredictable consequences for America’s strategic interests. That is why President Obama and his top officials have been urging Israel not to take precipitous unilateral military action.

Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli intelligence and director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, discussed this difference of perspective in his op-ed article published by the New York Times on March 1st. The article is entitled “Israel’s Last Chance to Strike Iran“:

Today, Israel sees the prospect of a nuclear Iran that calls for our annihilation as an existential threat. An Israeli strike against Iran would be a last resort, if all else failed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. That moment of decision will occur when Iran is on the verge of shielding its nuclear facilities from a successful attack — what Israel’s leaders have called the ‘zone of immunity’…

Israel doesn’t have the safety of distance, nor do we have the United States Air Force’s advanced fleet of bombers and fighters. America could carry out an extensive air campaign using stealth technology and huge amounts of ammunition, dropping enormous payloads that are capable of hitting targets and penetrating to depths far beyond what Israel’s arsenal can achieve.

This gives America more time than Israel in determining when the moment of decision has finally been reached. And as that moment draws closer, differing timetables are becoming a source of tension…

Asking Israel’s leaders to abide by America’s timetable, and hence allowing Israel’s window of opportunity to be closed, is to make Washington a de facto proxy for Israel’s security — a tremendous leap of faith for Israelis faced with a looming Iranian bomb.

Israel has a fleet of advanced F-16 fighter planes. Its military has repeatedly shown incredible ingenuity in retrofitting imported military equipment with Israeli technology to meet Israel’s own military strategies. Israel also has some bunker-busting bombs, which were supplied by the Obama administration. However, Israel obviously does not have the most advanced military capabilities that the U.S. has to reach all or most of Iran’s widely dispersed and deeply buried nuclear development facilities. Nevertheless, as Israel’s past pre-emptive actions demonstrate, such as destroying much of the Egyptian air force at the outset of the Six-Day War, the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and the destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, Israeli leaders will do whatever they believe they have to do to protect the Jewish nation from what they regard as existential threats.

The Obama-Netanyahu meeting next week will likely result in a communiqué indicating both leaders’ strong resolve to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Indeed, according to the Haaretz report, the White House has proposed to the Prime Minister’s Office that the two leaders release a joint statement following their meeting, the goal of which, according to the report, would be “to bridge apparent disagreements between the United States and Israel, and to present a single U.S.-Israeli front in order to leverage pressure on Iran.”

The joint statement may ratchet up the rhetoric a bit regarding the use of military force as a last resort option. But if Prime Minister Netanyahu is hoping for something much more concrete, such as Obama’s unequivocal public support for Israel if it decides it must take military action alone to defend itself or, alternatively, a public ironclad American assurance that the United States will do whatever is necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran before it is too late, I think he will be disappointed.

If history is any guide, regardless of whether Obama pledges unequivocal support for whatever Israel decides to do to defend itself or hints to Netanyahu privately that the United States will not stand in Israel’s way, Israel will most likely choose to act against Iran while it still can.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/02/the-most-critical-us-israel-meeting-to-date/

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

U.N. Panel on Women Slams Israel — Not Syria

by Newsmax.com

The ongoing conflict in Syria has left thousands dead, including hundreds of women, but a United Nations body dedicated to women’s issues has attacked only one country in this year’s agenda — Syria’s neighbor Israel.

The Jewish state is the target of the only resolution dealing with a specific country under consideration during the Feb. 27 to March 9 session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York.

The resolution calls Israel’s occupation of disputed territory “the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society.”

It cites “the systematic violation of their human rights resulting from the severe impact of ongoing illegal Israeli practices.”

No resolution on Syria has been issued, even though a U.N.-backed independent commission of inquiry has reported on what it called “widespread and systematic violations” by Syrian security forces, including sexual violence, rape, and torture, according to CNS News.

At last year’s CSW session, held while the conflict in Libya was raging, the only nation attacked in a resolution was — yes, Israel.

The resolution, entitled “Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women,” was adopted by a vote of 26 to 2, with Israel and the United States opposing and eight countries abstaining.

Iran used its seat on the CSW last year to call the plight of Palestinian women “one of the greatest tragedies of history.”

The World Economic Forum’s 2011 “Global Gender Gap,” which assesses how well countries have closed gaps between women and men in economic participation, opportunity, and other areas, placed Israel at No. 55 among the 135 nations on the list, with the United States at No. 17.

Syria was No. 124, one place ahead of Iran at No. 125.

Newsmax.com

Source: http://www.nhinsider.com/press-releases/2012/3/4/newsmax-un-panel-slams-israel-ignores-syria-obama-gives-wind.html

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

Uncovering Saddam's Secrets

by Alex Berman

Joseph Sassoon, a native of Baghdad and a seasoned commentator on Arab affairs, is an adjunct professor of Middle East studies at Georgetown University and a former public scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has published extensively on Iraqi history and politics, and is the author of Economic Policy in Iraq, 1932–1950 (1987) and The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the Middle East (2009). On January 26, Sassoon spoke to the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, on "Uncovering Saddam's Secrets," in which he drew on his latest book, Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge, 2012).

Joseph Sassoon's new book attempts to "understand the inner workings of a modern Arab state from its own meticulous records, rather than journalistic or secondary sources." Making extensive use of official Iraqi archives retrieved after the 2003 Iraq war, Sassoon studied the functioning of a "one party Arab state in the grip of an authoritarian theology" by focusing on three aspects of the regime: durability; intelligence gathering; its collapse and the rise of sectarianism.

The Baath Party, along with the bureaucracy and military, formed the three pillars of the state that maintained a tight grip on every facet of Iraqi life. This structure explains the regime's durability, aided by Saddam's deliberate weakening of the armed forces as a means of "coup-proofing" his rule.

Baathist power was further centralized within its secretariat, which served as a "board of directors" of sorts, and its ability to recruit and retain millions of followers. From a population of 25 million, some four million—sixteen percent of the population—were card-carrying Baath affiliates, each of them charged with gathering and reporting information to the government. The resulting volume of information was so huge that it was often inaccurate, whether by design or error, by the time it reached Saddam.

Party members and others were subjected to a system of punishments and rewards that further secured Saddam's rule. While the tortures were well known, the reward system underscored, in Sassoon's words, "the necessity and importance for every individual to support [the party]," which reciprocated by conferring symbols of status and privilege on tens of thousands of members, and through them—jobs, financial compensation, admission to institutions, and appointments. Such rewards were presented as gifts from the supreme leader himself rather than the State, thus confirming that "Saddam was Iraq."

Sassoon concluded that Saddam's hubris led to his downfall and eventual execution. Isolated from international opinion, and surrounded by a docile flock of lackeys too terrified to tell him the full truth, he adamantly opposed America's interests rather than recognize a common enemy in militant Islam. Absent the U.S. invasion, with no internal opposition and a domestic economy and infrastructure that by late 2000 had rebounded to pre-Gulf War strength, Saddam's rule could have lasted for many more years.

Alex Berman

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3185/saddam-hussein-secrets

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

Defending Shariah in America

by Pamela Geller

America, apologizing to brutal murderers for disposing of terrorist messages in a quran, is Shariah law in America.

America, Judge Martin dismissing the charges against a Muslim who attacked a Halloween parade goer because his costume was an insult to Muhammad, is the Shariah.

America, mosqueing the workplace is the Shariah.

America, demonizing and marginalizing of pro-freedom voices like mine, like those of my colleagues, is the Shariah.

America, mosqueing the public school is the Shariah in America.

America, mosqueing the neighborhood is the Shariah in America.

The Washington Post on March 2 ran a piece written by Omar Sacirbey for the Religion News Service. Muslims launch campaign to 'understand' Shariah. It began: "Against a backdrop of heartland fears that U.S. Muslims seek to impose Islamic law on American courts, a leading Muslim group will launch a campaign on Monday (March 5) to dispel what it called misconceptions about Shariah."

"Heartland fears" are actually heartland realities: a new study has found that Shariah has already been used as a determining factor in court cases in 23 states.

"Many Americans associate Shariah," says the Post, "with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, even as U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others." It quotes Zahid Bukhari, president of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Circle of North America, complaining: "There were all these wrong notions about Shariah."

Here's the thing: "U.S. Muslim groups insist they have no desire to introduce Islamic law on themselves or others," so why should they be blocking efforts to outlaw it? It doesn't make sense. And it's not that "Americans associate Shariah with the harsh punishments carried out in a few Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia" -- it's that those things are part of every form of Shariah ever known since the beginning of Islam. So are Americans right to associate Shariah with stonings, amputations, clitorectomies, honor killings, death for apostates, the denial of free speech, and the treatment of women like slaves? When has there ever been a Shariah state that didn't feature those things?

Bukhari goes on, as quoted in the Post: "The most worrisome thing, he said, was that the level of hatred toward Shariah had spread from the margins of society to the mainstream. The ICNA campaign has already drawn fire from 'anti-Shariah' groups in the United States."

"The level of hatred toward Shariah." It's "hatred" now to know what Shariah is and has always been in every place it has ever been implemented.

The article says that ICNA is sponsoring the "roughly $3 million dollar campaign" that "will feature billboards in at least 15 U.S. cities, 'Shariah seminars' on 20 college campuses, and town hall-style forums and interfaith events in 25 cities."

This sinister, deceptive taqiyya campaign has 3 million dollars, and we're having trouble scraping together two nickels for our campaign countering it with the truth. If we had 3 million dollars, everyone in America would know the truth about Shariah.

One of the billboards that ICNA has set up above the Holland Tunnel in New York City says, "Shariah is not scary." Shariah is not scary, unless you're an apostate from Islam, or a girl who doesn't want to wear hijab, or a wife who angers her husband, or a Christian who says he doesn't think Muhammad is a prophet, or a Jew who is breathing...

Then the WaPo mentions the resistance: "Even before the campaign was launched, there was already pushback from two groups, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of Nations, both categorized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Note how the WaPo mentions the SPLC's politicized and manipulative designation, while never mentioning that SPLC characterizes essentially any and every effective group that is not far-Left or Islamic supremacist as a "hate group." Nor does it mention that ICNA is a Muslim Brotherhood group, so designated in a captured internal MB document that says that the Brotherhood in the US is dedicated to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house."

The article does have the decency to quote me calling the ICNA campaign "a complete whitewash." Er yup. Then it says: "The two groups have designed a billboard parodying ICNA's Kansas City billboard. 'Shariah: Got Fatwa? Get help!' it says, along with a toll-free number and website, neither of which worked."

The WaPo is lying. They both work.

The deceptions start coming thick and fast in the WaPo article after that: "Geller wrote on her blog that the Quran endorses wife beating and mandates that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's. Shariah, she said, mandates the death penalty for apostasy and the subjugation of non-Muslims."

Wife-beating: "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (Quran 4:34). Testimony: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (Qur'an 2:282). Death penalty for apostasy: Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57). Subjugation of non-Muslims: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." (Quran 9:29)

But the WaPo tells us not to believe the Quran's plain words: "Muslim scholars counter that Geller and like-minded critics cherry-pick from Islamic scripture or quote it out of context to paint a false picture of Shariah."

Does anyone still fall for this "out of context" line? Can anyone explain a context in which it is OK to say that a man can beat a woman? What context justifies saying apostates from Islam should be killed? What context makes it just fine that non-Muslims should be warred against and subjugated? They don't address any of that, only the question of a woman's testimony. They quote "Sheikh Abdool Rahman Khan, an ICNA Shariah expert and resident scholar at the Islamic Learning Foundation outside Chicago," acknowledging that "early Islamic law said a woman's testimony was worth half a man's, but only in some areas, such as finance and medicine, where there were few women bankers or doctors. 'It wasn't about equality, it was about participation of women in certain professions,' Rahman said."

And yet Shariah states like Saudi Arabia and Iran still devalue a woman's testimony. But they don't mention that. Instead, they haul out the familiar claim that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures contain "problematic texts" also, as if the world were plagued with Scripture-quoting Jewish and Christian terrorists. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im of the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta says: "But Christians aren't judged based on what the Bible said 2,000 years ago, but on how they behave today. Why are Muslims judged according to these literalist interpretations, and not according to how the vast majority of good Muslims behave today?"

The vast majority of Muslims today don't live in Shariah states. But that doesn't change the nature of Shariah, or what it would be like if implemented again.

Bukhari concludes: "The Muslim community also needs to be educated about Shariah, and we will be having these programs also for Muslims."

Yeah, sure you will.

Pamela Geller

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/defending_shariah_in_american.html

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

Harvard Had no Room for a One Jewish State Solution

by Wallace Edward Brand

This Harvard alumnus applied to speak at the Harvard One State Solution Conference, but his solution was not seen as deserving of a voice in the "free market of ideas" advertised by the university.

The question of the day is: how much lasting influence does Prince Talal's $20 million check have, the one he donated to Harvard in 2009? To my knowledge, donating to colleges is not a part of AIPAC's operations.

What I do know is that here is no room for a one Jewish state solution with a continuing Jewish majority population at the Harvard Conference on March 3 on one state solutions to the Arab-Israel Conflict.

Alan Dershowitz talks about this biased conference in Newsmax at http://www.newsmax.com/AlanDershowitz/harvard-conference-palestinians-israel/2012/02/26/id/430605

A Mr. S. Benzimra of Toronto and I have been trying to get Harvard to accept a speaker on the panel to talk about a one Jewish state solution. He just had his book on the San Remo Agreement of 1920 published last November. The San Remo Agreement granted the Jews exclusive political rights to Palestine.

The speaker would have also talked about the Palestinians being a people invented in 1964 by the Soviet dezinformatsia. The term "Palestinian Arab People" appears three times in the preamble to the 1964 Charter of the PLO as if to comply with the Humpty Dumpty standard. It is the first time it had been seen anywhere so far as I can tell. It is corroborated only by affirmation of the first 422 members of the Palestinian National Council, formed contemporaneously, each hand picked by the KGB.

The PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow, according to the reports of Major General Ion Pacepa. He was the highest ranking defector from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. He has personal knowledge of the matter. Newt Gingrich recently said they were an "invented people", but didn't say who invented them, Pacepa did.

The speaker would also talk about the fiduciary obligations of Britain under the trust or guardianship and of Britain ignoring them in the White Papers of 1922, 1930 and especially the Chamberlain White Paper of 1939 that blocked Jews trying to flee for their lives from the Holocaust from entering what was to become Israel. In the debates on Chamberlain's 1939 White Paper, Winston Churchill charged that Britain was reneging on its promise to the Jews.

The speaker could also dispel some of the canards about Israel, including the lie that the Jews expelled the Arabs from Israel, by showing that the Wall Street Journal reported that Mahmoud Abbas has written to the contrary in "Filastin", the official organ of the PLO. He wrote that almost all left at the call and threats of the Arab Higher Executive without ever seeing a Jewish soldier; and after a manufactured report of a massacre at Deir Yassin, ultimately corrected by the BBC interviewing the Arab news commentator of 1948.

Harvard put out a statement on this conference extolling its free market of ideas -- this about a conference that has only Arab and Israeli anti-Zionists and apologists for terrorism speakers on its schedule. Try as we may, we cannot get our speaker on the panel or even have an op-ed published in the Harvard Crimson that would let the students know about the possibility we raise, based on a Jewish one state solution in the San Remo agreement. San Remo is obscured by time and the action of anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. It would be an excellent history lesson for the students.

I have a connection to Harvard. My late wife and I were in the Law School class of '57; she also was in the Radcliffe class of '54. Her mother was President of the Radcliffe Class of 1920, her father was at the law school then; her two brothers went there in the '50s.

I attended the funeral of a relative last week in North Carolina whose family connections to Harvard go back to the time of the sinking of the Titanic. But no access to the panel for our speaker.

Prince Talal went to Menlo College in California and did graduate work at Syracuse, but I have found no evidence of his donations to them. He is known as a shrewd businessman.

Harvard has put out a statement about its free market of ideas, but access to that market is blocked to us.

It really would be an excellent history lesson, commencing with the drafting of Part I of the Treaty of Versailles that is the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article 22 provides for trusts or guardianships over parcels of land captured from the Ottoman Empire in WWI by the Allies.

The speaker could show that the Allies intended to reconstitute a Jewish state by granting exclusive political rights to the Jews, but these were not to vest until the Jews were a majority population, a goal to be attained from immigration from the diaspora. If it had been allowed to vest immediately, the plan would have been anti-democratic, as the Jews were only 10% of the population in 1917.

This was referred to in a memo of the British Foreign Office in September 1917 by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier during the drafting of Lord Balfour's declaration. and also confirmed by Winston Churchill after WWI as stated in the Arabs' submission to UNSCOP in 1948. (See: Musa Alami, The Future of Palestine, Hermon Press, Beirut and London, 1970.) That policy is what was later adopted by the Allies at San Remo.

Ironically, Alan Dershowitz although a strong pro Zionist, is a liberal and supporter of Obama, and is pushing for a two state solution that would needlessly give away much of the Jewish and Christian heritage in Palestine. such as Rachel's Tomb, Tomb of the Patriarchs and sites in Bethlehem.

But a Jewish one-state solution would end up. in the short run. with one less enemy on Israel's borders. and in the long run. with sovereignty over Gaza as well if it doesn't stop firing rockets at Israel.

Home Rule could be provided for the Gazans, but no vote on Israeli policy, until the Jewish population expands enough so that annexing Gaza would not destroy the Jewish democracy, Israel, the only MIddle East country with western values.

That is all that was guaranteed by the cession of sovereignty over Palestine by the Ottomans in Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres -- unamended in the Treaty of Lausanne. It preserved the civil rights of the non-Jews in Palestine prior to the Mandate, but no more. That is all the rights the Arabs in Palestine had for 400 years of rule by the Turkish Ottomans before 1920. It is also all that was required by the French process verbal to the British Mandate for Palestine -- that the non-Jews do not lose any rights.

According to Abbas Zaki, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, and quasi Ambassador to Lebanon, "With the two-state solution, in [his] opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made - just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward".

He suggested, however, also in Arabic, that this view not be made known to the West.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3d5_1242669760

Mr. Benzimra and I have fashioned a one Jewish state solution that proposes a continuing Jewish majority for one Jewish state in cisJordan, as transJordan was traded in 1994 for a Jordanian quiet claim to cisJordan.

It would commence with a prompt annexation of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem, where the Arab claims of population are much overstated.

Gaza's continuing attacks on Israel are a casus belli that would justify Israel taking over Gaza. As stated above, it could be given Home Rule but no vote in Israeli elections until growth in Jewish population warranted its annexation.

This, in our opinion, would satisfy the requirement that the civil rights of non-Jews must not be impaired, as the Arabs in Gaza never had rights to vote in elections determining the policy of the Ottoman empire. That met the test of the French "process verbal" appended to the British Mandate for Palestine and the San Remo Agreement of 1920.

It would leave one Jewish state with a western valued democracy and borders that are more defensible than those of the two state solution.

We will be sending an op-ed shortly with more details on the San Remo Agreement, using it as a basis to secure a "One Jewish State Solution".

Wallace Edward Brand

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11323#.T1NiCVFvIi5

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The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests

by Raymond Ibrahim

Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.

Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time.

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today's Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).

Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq's (d. 767) Sira ("Life of Muhammad"), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi's (d. circa. 820) Maghazi ("Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]"); Baladhuri's (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan ("Conquests of the Nations"); and Tabari's (d.923) multi-volume Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, ("History of Prophets and Kings"), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.

Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts—oral and written—tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).

It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the "Muslim world."

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.

The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad's death in 632. Many tribes which had only nominally accepted Islam's authority, upon Muhammad's death, figured they could break away; however, Muhammad's successor and first caliph, or successor, Abu Bakr, would have none of that, and proclaimed a jihad against these apostates, known in Arabic as the "Ridda Wars" (or Apostasy Wars). According to the aforementioned historians, tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword until their tribes re-submitted to Islam.

The Ridda Wars ended around 634. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. By the early 8th century, all of north Africa and Spain to the west, and the lands of central Asia and India to the east, were also brought under Islamic suzerainty.

The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or "dhimmis," paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.

Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.

Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America's classrooms, as many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion's intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided—extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc.—by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued—and heavily taxed—subjects, not as Muslim equals.

Meanwhile, as U.S. textbooks equivocate about the Muslim conquests, in the schoolrooms of the Muslim world, the conquests are not only taught as a matter of course, but are glorified: their rapidity and decisiveness are regularly portrayed as evidence that Allah was in fact on the side of the Muslims (and will be again, so long as Muslims uphold their communal duty of waging jihad).

The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook's mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad—Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations—which portrays jihad as a "spiritual-struggle" against one's vices.

Contrast this definition of jihad with that of an early edition of the venerable Encyclopaedia of Islam. Its opening sentence simply states, "The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general.… Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.… Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated." Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.

Likewise, the Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam's theological texts—the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures.

It should also be noted that, to Muslims, the Islamic conquests are seen as acts of altruism: they are referred to as futahat, which literally means "openings"—that is, the countries conquered were "opened" for the light of Islam to enter and guide its infidel inhabitants. Thus to Muslims, there is nothing to regret or apologize for concerning the conquests; they are seen as for the good of those who were conquered (i.e., the ancestors of today's Muslims).

In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in U.S. textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history—which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed.

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

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3182/history-muslim-conquests

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The Psychology of Jews Who Embrace Their Enemies

by Manfred Gerstenfeld

Interview Series: Psychiatrist-author Kenneth Levin: "Those of the Jewish community who live and work in environments hostile to Israel, commonly embrace the anti-Israel bias around them. And they often insist they are being virtuous by doing so."

“A number of Jews and Israelis embrace criticism coming from anti-Semites and extreme anti-Israelis. They have many precursors in the lengthy history of the Jewish Diaspora.

“This phenomenon reveals great similarity, at the level of human psychology, to the response of children subjected to chronic abuse. Such children tend to blame themselves for their suffering. In their helpless condition, they have two alternatives. They can either acknowledge they are being unfairly victimized and reconcile themselves to being powerless, or they can blame themselves for their predicament. The attraction of the latter - ‘I suffer because I am bad’ - is that it serves the desire of being in control, fantasies that by becoming ‘good’ will elicit a more benign response from their tormentors. Both children and adults invariably seek to avoid hopelessness.”

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist, historian and author of several books, among which is The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege.¹ He is a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

In The Oslo Syndrome, Levin explains the attitude of Israeli self-haters: [There is] “a wish to believe Israel is in control of profoundly stressful circumstances over which, unfortunately, it has no real control. Genuine peace will come to the Middle East when the Arab world, by far the dominant party in the region, perceives such a peace as in its interest. Israeli policies have in fact, very little impact on Arab perceptions in this regard, much less than the dynamics of domestic politics in the Arab states and of inter-Arab rivalries.”

Levin adds now: “Popular hatred for Israel, which is fanned by Arab governments, education systems, media and Muslim clerics, runs deep in Arab opinion. This is not a totally isolated phenomenon, but fits into a much broader framework. Since the earliest days of the existence of the Arab-Muslim world, there has been widespread animosity against both religious and ethnic minorities in the region. It would be a mistake to attribute, for instance, the pressure on Christian minorities exclusively to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Popular Muslim-Arab hostility has also led to pressures on non-Arab Muslims such as the Berber populations in North Africa.

“While those Jews and Israelis who embrace anti-Jewish arguments typically do so in the hope of ingratiating themselves with the Jews’ enemies, they will rarely acknowledge this motive. Rather, they typically claim that their position reflects a higher moral or ethical position.

“In the past and present, a common claim by anti-Semites has been that Jews are interested exclusively in their own well-being. This has led many Jews to focus their energies on broader social causes, even as the Jewish community suffered unique disabilities. Jews who take this course typically do not admit they are doing so to avoid being accused of Jewish parochialism. Rather, they claim to be righteously transcending narrow concerns to address more universal needs.

“During World War II, particularly after the Nazi extermination program was revealed in late 1942, many American Jewish leaders sought to raise public awareness of the plight of Europe’s Jews and promote rescue efforts. Yet they also limited their campaign out of fear of arousing public anger over Jewish concern with a Jewish issue, and they often rationalized their doing so as reflecting devotion to the greater patriotic task of winning the war. It was largely non-Jewish voices which insisted the Nazi extermination program was not only a crime against the Jews but a crime against civilization and all of humanity and therefore should be of concern to everyone.”

Levin observes: “In the last sixty years, the American Jewish community at large has energetically embraced support for Israel. This has been made much easier by the fact that the wider American public has traditionally been sympathetic toward the Jewish state.

“On the other hand, Israel has come under much criticism in certain American media, on many American campuses and in several mainstream liberal churches. Those segments of the Jewish community who live and work in environments hostile to Israel, commonly embrace the anti-Israel bias around them. And they often insist they are being virtuous by doing so.

“The psychological dynamics of communities under attack explain why, both abroad and in Israel, the virtual siege placed upon the Jewish state will continue to lead segments of Jewish communities to support the besiegers and to urge Jewish self-reform as the path to winning relief. Yet the path they advocate is no less delusional than that of abused children who blame themselves for the abuse they experience. All too often such children doom themselves psychologically to lives of self-abnegation and misery. In the case of Jews indicting Israel for the hatred directed against it, the misery they cultivate goes far beyond themselves and ultimately, undermines Israel’s very survival.”

---

¹ Ken Levin, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege (Hanover, NH: Smith & Kraus, 2005).

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has been a long-term adviser on strategy issues to the Boards of several major multinational corporations in Europe and North America. He is the Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11347#.T1Nb0lFvIi5

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The Obama-Netanyahu Relationship: "Talking Points"

by Steven J. Rosen

A hallmark of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to Israel has been to confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly about areas of disagreement almost every time they meet. The headlines are always about settlements, occupied territory in Jerusalem, restraining Bibi on Iran, and pushing Israel on borders. Obama's theory seems to be that you have to show daylight with Israel to get progress on peace and win friends in the Muslim world.

But what if the president tried the opposite approach? He could begin by using his speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference this coming Sunday, March 4, to build trust and win the confidence of the Israeli government as a foundation for future diplomatic cooperation. What could Obama do to set a new tone? Here are four ideas.

1. Obama should sharpen the message his administration is sending to Iran. Netanyahu believes recent comments by senior U.S. officials cautioning Israel against striking Iranian nuclear sites have reassured the Iranians and encouraged them to press ahead with their nuclear program. Particularly disturbing were remarks by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who referred to the Iranian government as a "rational actor" and said an attack by Israel would be "destabilizing" and "not prudent." To restore credibility to the threat that "all options are on the table," what if Obama repeats this weekend the exact words Senator Obama said at the AIPAC conference in June 2008, during his presidential campaign: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything." Hearing those words from a sitting president would be hard to ignore.

2. For more than three years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to sit down with the Israeli prime minister for serious top-level peace talks. In taking this position, Abbas is openly violating the solemn pledge he made in November 2007 in front of the foreign ministers of 47 countries at the Annapolis peace conference. There he said: "We agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations … [and to] engage in vigorous, ongoing, and continuous negotiations." Abbas is now ignoring the core commitment his predecessor Yasir Arafat made to then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993: "The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process … and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations." And he is defying the Middle East Quartet's appeal of March 2010, which called for "the resumption, without preconditions, of direct bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues as previously agreed by the parties." On more than 13 occasions, Obama and his top officials have publicly rebuked Netanyahu on points of disagreement. Not once has any Obama official similarly remonstrated with Abbas. This Sunday is an opportunity for Obama to restore some balance in how he assigns blame for the sorry state of the peace process. It is time to single out Abbas's refusal to negotiate with Israel.

3. At last year's AIPAC conference, Obama upset Netanyahu by pressing Israel to accept the 1967 borders with land swaps as a starting line for negotiations. This year, Obama could restore some balance by bringing up a final status issue for which he believes the Palestinian camp needs to take a similar forward step. He could call on Abbas to acknowledge that it is unrealistic to expect that the 5 million people now registered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency as Palestinian refugees will be "returning" to Israel (where, in any case, more than 90 percent never lived). Yes, Palestinians will find this upsetting as a rejection of their "narrative," but no more so than Israelis when they are told that the lands of their ancestors are occupied territory that rightfully belongs to the Arabs. And it would support the administration's plan, announced in June 2011, to get both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to adopt Obama's principles "as a basis for negotiation."

4. George W. Bush's administration announced in July 2002 that it would veto one-sided anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolutions, a policy known as the Negroponte Doctrine. The Obama administration has never revealed whether the United States remains committed to this doctrine. As a presidential candidate, Obama wrote to Zalmay Khalilzad, then Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, urging him to "ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution" that fails to blame the Arab side for the attacks that provoke Israeli responses. "The Security Council should … make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against such actions," Obama wrote. "If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all." Obama's ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said in July 2010 that the United States would "combat all international attempts to challenge the legitimacy of Israel -- including and especially at the United Nations." In February 2011 she said the United States was vetoing a unilateral statehood resolution because it "could encourage the parties to stay out of negotiations and, if and when they did resume, to return to the Security Council whenever they reach an impasse." At AIPAC on Sunday, Obama could add deterrent value to these principles by pledging that the United States will veto all one-sided resolutions against Israel at the Security Council.

If Obama decides to work with Netanyahu, instead of confronting him, the president might get some surprising results. Unlike Israeli leaders from the left, prime ministers from Netanyahu's center-right Likud party who are prepared to take bold steps -- like Menachem Begin giving up the Sinai or Ariel Sharon disengaging from Gaza -- might not advertise in advance the concessions they are willing to consider. It is time to recognize that Netanyahu is the Israeli people's clear choice to lead their nation, and the president of the United States does better when it works with him than when it works against him.

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as a senior official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He is now the director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3184/obama-netanyahu-talking-points

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