The Last Straw to Save Assad is Gaza

by Farid Ghadry


Hail the stupid men of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza because even though they have not realized they have been duped by Iran to fight their nemesis Israel, they don’t seem to understand they have lost the moment they fired the first Fajr-5 missile. They forgot what happened to Hezbollah in 2006 and how its men of war live in bunkers.

Besides the fact their waged war kills indiscriminately the innocent civilians the way Assad‘s cannons and missiles kill the Syrian innocent civilians, Hamas may not have realized its war was really more to save Assad than to save Palestine. Don’t tell them though they are the very tool used by Iran to save Assad, the sworn enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus because I am not sure their brains can compute that complexity.

Assad threatened the Syrian war would spill in the region. When it failed to, his regime fired on Turkey and Turkey fired back with restraints; then his regime fired on Lebanon but the Government in Lebanon is an extension of his regime so firing back is self-defeating; then his regime fired across the Golan Heights and Israel fired back with restraints; then his troops fired on Jordanian soldiers manning the borders with Syria, but Jordan did not fire back.

Damn, said Assad, how can I enlarge the footprint of this war? After so many failures, Iran had no choice but to step-in to save Assad the way its IRGC fighters and snipers saved him in Syria.
The result is this new war between the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, whose hate for Israel blinds them, and the State of Israel with a leadership unwilling to let anyone flex their muscles against its own citizens, let alone fire on them.

What did the Iranians tell the Islamists of Hamas to start this war?

That Hamas will destroy Israel? I doubt Hamas is that stupid. That Hamas will avenge their past dead brothers? I doubt someone did not utter “But we will bury even more”. That Hamas will win this war? This one makes sense. More likely, the pitch by Iran probably went along these lines “Israel cannot sustain too many civilian casualties and our Fajr-5 missiles were built to exact a heavy toll on the innocent because of its lack of accuracy. You have thousands to fire and Iran promises you Israel will surrender against this rain from hell”.

Hamas bought the pitch, hook, line, and sinker without asking why now or even what if they fail. Too late for the Islamist Sunnis of Hamas, mere toy soldiers in the hands of the Shia of Iran. Those tunnels and bunkers they built will come handy after Iran departs.

We come to find out today that Iran may have given Hamas too many missiles but Hamas forgot to store enough medical supplies so their hospitals are running short. What does that tell you about Hamas as a fighting machine? Or does it tell us more about what Iran told Hamas to start this war?
Now Erdogan knows his brothers in Hamas have been duped by Iran to try and save Assad, but instead of doing the right thing by condemning Iran, he takes it out on Israel instead by labeling Israel a “terrorist state”. It goes to show you the priorities of the extremist Sunni Muslims on their scale of hate. The Jews come first, then the Shia. The other minorities can be handled much easier later. It’s not that Erdogan is stupid, it’s that he cannot help himself.

The political awakening of the Sunni Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood is shaping rapidly but their power is as immature as it comes. The Muslim Brotherhood remains a toy in the hands of Iran because Iran knows their hate for the Jewish State far outweigh any pragmatism or cost/benefit analysis those Islamists can muster. We have seen this kind of irrational behavior in al-Qaeda against America and we are witnessing it today by the Muslim Brotherhood against Israel.

Now, maybe someone will understand why standing by Israel really saves Muslims from themselves. That’s why I stood by Israel in the past and that is why I will stand by Israel tomorrow. It’s really about saving my people from self-destruction and from this abysmal passionate hate leading us to annihilation.

Happy Thanksgiving America

Farid Ghadry

Source: http://ghadry.com/2012/11/the-last-straw-to-save-assad-is-gaza/

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

Mursi Kills Egypt’s Spring

by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed



It was very difficult for anyone to imagine President Mohammed Mursi doing what he did, but his spokesman announced it clearly, effectively declaring that the president is now above all other authorities. The spokesman said that President Mursi’s decisions are “final and cannot be contested”, adding that “all constitutional declarations, laws and decrees made since Mr Mursi assumed power cannot be appealed or cancelled by any individual, or political or governmental body”.

This statement is a bombshell announcing the end of the January 25th revolution, and inaugurating the solitary rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mursi’s decisions shocked many and united all other Egyptian political forces the same night to warn the public that their president was overthrowing the revolution to become a dictator.

Mohammed Mursi had not yet completed five months as Egypt’s new president when without any reason or provocation he buried the Egyptian revolution and dealt the biggest blow so far to the Arab Spring. This confirms what the skeptics said about Islamist groups not being able to operate in a democratic manner. Mursi and his Brotherhood group have committed the same mistake as Hamas, when the latter turned against the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Hassan al-Turabi and his Islamic Front did the same in Sudan when they overthrew the only democratic government in the Arab world at that time. Before both of these examples, Ayatollah Khomeini drove away his revolutionary partners in Iran and sought to monopolize power for himself; a policy that continues to this day. All these regimes came to power in the name of fighting against dictatorships and calling for the establishment of civilian and democratic rule, but they seized power for themselves in the end.

The extraordinary presidential decrees issued by Mursi three days ago were not announced by the president himself. He authorized his spokesman to publicize them and this indicates that these were the decisions of the Brotherhood group, further strengthening the rumors that Mursi is not the real decision maker in Cairo. Earlier, when Mursi took the decision to dismiss the Egyptian public prosecutor, he was forced to back down when judges challenged him saying that the appointment and removal of such figures did fall under his jurisdiction. When political leaders protested against his decision to incorporate parliamentary legislation within his powers, Mursi said he would only resort to such powers in an extremely restricted manner, but three days ago he used them to the maximum level.

The presidential decrees are equivalent in terms of their importance and danger to the events of the revolution itself. Mursi has now become the president, the judiciary, the parliamentary councils and the guardian of the constituent assembly. Prior to this he dismissed the commanders of the army and intelligence services, securing all powers for himself in a brazen manner that even Hosni Mubarak didn’t dare adopt when he was president, although he did assume such powers under the pretext of emergency rule.

If President Mursi does not reverse his decisions within the next few days, Egypt will enter a new tunnel of tension and its short period of democratic spring will come to an end. If this dark tunnel continues we will witness further decrees to intimidate and control the media, to remove more judges and administrators, and to seize more state-owned companies. This way the Muslim Brotherhood will strengthen its grip on the facilities of government, not as an elected party but as an entity seeking to seize permanent control.


Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed

Source: http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=31936

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

Israeli Satellites Spot Iranian Ships Loaded with Rockets for Gaza

by Israel Hayom Staff and Reuters

Intelligence sources believe Iranian cargo vessel loaded with rockets could be heading to Gaza, Sunday Times reports • "We will attack and destroy any shipment of arms to Gaza once we have spotted it,” Israeli source says.

Israeli sources believe an Iranian shipment that could be headed to Gaza includes Fajr-5 rockets (pictured), like those launched by Hamas into Israel in the latest round of fighting. | Photo credit: AP

Israeli satellites have detected a cargo vessel docked at an Iranian port being loaded with rockets and other weaponry, which analysts believe may be headed toward Gaza, the British Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

The weapons were being prepared for loading at the port of Bandar Abbas last week, according to the report, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire following eight days of fighting in Gaza during which some 1,500 rockets, many of them Iranian-made, were fired into Israel.

“Regardless of the cease-fire agreement, we will attack and destroy any shipment of arms to Gaza once we have spotted it,” said an Israeli defense source quoted by The Sunday Times.

Israeli intelligence sources believe the cargo will pass through the Red Sea, Sudan and Egypt, traveling on a well-known route used by Iran to smuggle arms into Gaza, the report said.

Sources say the shipment may include Fajr-5 rockets, similar to those launched by Hamas into Israel in the latest round of fighting, as well as Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which could be stationed in Sudan to pose a threat to Israel, according to the report.

“With a lot of effort, Iran has skillfully built a strategic arm pointing at Israel from the south,” the Israeli source was quoted as saying. 

“We believe that Iranian warships anchored in Eritrea will accompany the weapons ship as soon as it enters the Red Sea,” another Israeli source told the Times.

On Saturday, senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar showed how fragile the cease-fire with Israel remained, with defiant remarks to reporters saying the Islamists would go on smuggling weapons "by all possible means," including via Iran.

"We have no choice but to continue to bring in weapons by all possible means," Zahar said, adding that he expected Tehran would "increase its military and financial support to Hamas."

"We have a right to take money and weapons from Iran. They [Iran] give to us for the sake of God, no conditions attached, and I am a witness to that," Zahar told reporters.

In a rare phone call to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised what he called Palestinian "resistance and perseverance" against Israel, which he said must now "bow" to Palestinian rights, IRNA news agency reported.

Zahar said that after Hamas' rain of rocket fire that reached as far as Tel Aviv and paralyzed swathes of southern Israel, "the Jews will think twice before" attacking Iran.

Some analysts say otherwise, however, pointing at how the Israeli military inflicted serious blows to Hamas' weapons arsenal, showing the world it has cutting-edge technology, particularly when it comes to missile defense.

Israel Hayom Staff and Reuters

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6520

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

The Writing was on the Disengagement Wall

by Yossi Fuchs


During the years before the unilateral Gaza disengagement in 2005, Gush Katif residents were used as a security buffer between the Gaza Strip and residents of southern Israel. Thousands of mortar shells and Qassam rockets were fired at settlements blocs in Gaza while only a trickle of missiles fell on communities in Israel near the Gaza border. When then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to carry out the disengagement plan, he argued that the plan would lead to a better security situation, though he gave no clear reason as to how and why.

In a discussion of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee about the evacuation-compensation plan, Col. (res.) Itamar Ya’ar, deputy head of the National Security Council for Defense Policy and its coordinator of national security assessment, defended the defense establishment, saying that withdrawal from Gush Katif would not necessarily bring peace to the area, but would certainly be a tremendous financial and resource saving for the Israel Defense Forces and the other forces required in Gaza to protect Israel settlements there.

At the time, we wondered why a more senior representative of the defense establishment, such as the chief of general staff, the head of the Israel Security Agency or head of the National Security Committee, was not sent to this critical discussion. The answer turned out to be very simple. The heads of the defense establishment, particularly former Chief of General Staff Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon, opposed the disengagement and thought it would dramatically worsen the security situation.

Following the Knesset's approval of the disengagement law, I filed a petition to the High Court of Justice on behalf of the Gaza Coast Regional Council and the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, arguing that the disengagement violated the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, in part because it did not spell out appropriate intentions. To the petition was attached the opinion of Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, now head of the NSC in the Netanyahu government.

Amidror accurately predicted the results of the withdrawal. He said: "The IDF's exit from Gaza brings with it real potential for a worsening of the security situation, not just because it will expand the field of range for Palestinian-held rockets ... the Palestinians will be able to direct their full potential at the settlements on the eastern side of the Green Line; suffering will be the fate of many communities further in [to Israel] and not just in Sederot ... Israel will not be able to withstand the political pressure that will mount and we will build a Hamas and Hezbollah state right on the edge of Ashkelon, with the rocket range reaching Ad Halom junction [just south of Ashdod] ... no detailed analysis would be required here if the law were being truthful: that Israel, for unclear reasons, decided to gamble with the safety of residents west of northern Samaria and around the Gaza Strip and give up its ability to protect them, transferring that responsibility to the Palestinians ..."

Justice Edmond Levy, who was in the minority in the court decision and the only one who did not bury his head in the sand, referred to the fact that the state did not produce even a single expert to back its claim that the disengagement would lead to better security. This was in stark contrast to the opposition, which presented a clear opinion: "The disengagement involves far-reaching dangers that render it lacking in appropriate purpose."

Yossi Fuchs

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2944

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

Who Won The Latest Israel-Hamas War?

by Barry Rubin

Naturally the question of who won any given war preoccupies people’s minds. And I’m amused by those who think that Hamas won the recent conflict. Winning has to mean something real, not just bragging to reassure oneself.

Let’s begin by examining the causes and goals of each side. Hamas’s goal was to be able to attack Israel as much as it wanted without significant retaliation. This time, as in late 2008, the war began because Hamas escalated the level of its attacks on Israel to unacceptable levels (more on that phrase in a moment). The same might be said of Hizballah in 2006.

Israel’s goal was to force Hamas to the lowest possible level of attacks and to make such attacks as ineffective as possible. Incidentally, that was also Israel’s strategy in dealing with the PLO. Attempts to “solve” the problem once and for all, varying from the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the Oslo peace process of the 1990s didn’t work too well.

Nevertheless, Israel was able to achieve its more limited aim against Hamas in the later 2008-early 2009 campaign to gain four years of relative quiet. With Hizballah, this goal has now held for six years. That’s not bad given the reality of contemporary international politics and the Middle Eastern situation, both of which keep Israel from gaining a “total victory.”

Ideally, of course, there is no good reason that the world ensure the survival of a terrorist, totalitarian, illegal, and genocide-oriented regime in the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, that is the reality. If the idea of Israel going in on the ground into the Gaza Strip provoked so much international horror, imagine the reaction to Israel overthrowing Hamas altogether.

And for Israel to overthrow Hamas it would either have to govern the Gaza Strip itself, restarting the whole post-1967 process and facing daily gun battles there or to turn over the territory to someone else. Since the Palestinian Authority isn’t interested in such an arrangement and is incapable of even making a serious effort to overthrow Hamas nobody else is going to do so or take power there.

So Hamas’s survival as ruler of the Gaza Strip was not some victory in a war that lasted a little over a week but is guaranteed in effect by the international and regional order. Can Hamas continue to violate the ceasefire? Of course, because Israel's only way of enforcing it is military retaliation and now, as has been true for the last five years, Israel has to consider how to do each one without being blamed for a breakdown in the ceasefire. That won't stop Israel from hitting back with the goal of minimizing Hamas's attacks.

After these two significant factors--which both existed beforehand--it’s all downhill for Hamas. Given the destruction of its weaponry, Hamas is less able to attack than it had been and while every Hamas leader denies it, the vision of their colleagues getting killed does have a deterrent effect on their boldness.

The amount of regional support Hamas received during the recent war was remarkably low. The anti-Islamist Arab states wanted Hamas to lose. Iran cheered and sent missiles which is quite significant but only gets you so far. The Arab street didn’t do much; Syria’s regime is busy with the civil war; Iraq is for all practical purposes out of the conflict. Whatever lip service it gives, the Shia Islamist Hizballah didn’t lift a trigger finger to help Sunni Islamist Hamas.

It was these factors that led Fareed Zaharia, the influential American commentator—no friend of Israel—who has Obama’s ear to write a Washington Post piece entitled, "Israel dominates the new Middle East."

 As for Egypt, while the Muslim Brotherhood regime is 100 percent pro-Hamas, it isn’t going to be dictated to by its much smaller brother. The Egyptian government has bigger fish to fry. It is busy consolidating its dictatorship and reeling in almost $10 billion in foreign aid.

Hamas didn’t consult Cairo over the escalation that led to this war. Equally bad, Hamas has become entangled with small jihadist groups that attack both Egypt and Israel. Naturally, the Cairo government doesn’t care if Israel is the only target but reacts strongly to being hit itself. So before the escalation the Egyptian government was angry at Hamas.

There will be times in future when Cairo will give Hamas full backing but this wasn’t one of them. Moreover, it seems that the Egyptian government has committed itself to crack down more on arms’ imports across the Egypt-Gaza border. Of course, that promise might well not be kept—if only for the bribes paid to Egyptian military officers by smugglers—but retaining the status quo is hardly a victory for Hamas.

The supposed greatest military achievement of Hamas was sending missiles in the direction of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Yet this was accomplished by taking out most or all of the explosives in order to extend the range. The Iron Dome system shot down most of these and little damage was done.

By the end of the war, Hamas was apparently out of missiles (though not shorter-range rockets). It had lost a lot of cadre and needs to rebuild part of its infrastructure and most of its arsenal. Israel faces no such problems. In addition, Israel continues to prosper and advance while the Gaza Strip, in part thanks to Hamas's own strategy, continues to stagnate. 

Of course, Hamas did manage to terrorize a million Israelis in the south and close down normal life there.  This is an accomplishment but something Hamas also did in 2008-2009 with more effectiveness since there was no real anti-missile defense. Everyone knows that Hamas can do this. 

How does that advance Hamas’s cause of wiping Israel off the map?

And Hamas is no closer to taking over the West Bank than it’s been in the past, in no small part because of Israel’s behind-the-scenes efforts. Also of tremendous significance is the fact that the war did not increase Hamas’s legitimacy with the West. If anything, the opposite is true. While one can find plenty of objectionable Western media coverage, it was less hostile to Israel than in 2006 or 2008-2009. Part of the gain is due to the fact that the Israeli government and military have finally learned how to use social media effectively.

At any rate, no one in the West is rushing to have diplomatic relations with Hamas or help it out beyond letting it continue to exist and, of course, terrorize the people of the Gaza Strip and teach children to grow up to be terrorists. It is a disgusting situation but not one amenable to change by Israeli action.

So Israel won the war. The problem is that the word “won” has limited significance and “winning” doesn’t remove the problem and bring long-term peace. That, however, is in the nature of the situation and not in the war itself.

This inability to obtain total victory is characteristic of Israel's strategic situation for reasons totally extraneous to Israel and which virtually everyone in the country understands, though many foreign observers don't. Israel's big victories in the 1967 and 1973 war did not end the conflict or stop attempts by terrorists to attack into the country. The goal is to discourage them and make it harder for them to succeed. 

As a result, Israelis can go about their lives and the country can prosper. Sixty-four years of effort have devastated Israels enemies but brought them not one step closer to wiping it off the map. 

The danger regarding the Gaza Strip is longer-term. As the Brotherhood consolidates control over Egypt and if a Muslim Brotherhood regime comes to power in Syria, there might come a day when Hamas has real support from two powerful Arab states plus Iran. The situation might then resemble that which Israel faced from Arab nationalist governments in the 1950s-1980s period.  

Israel's goal, then, is also to deter even the most hostile, hate-filled Egyptian Islamist regime from going too far in trying to implement the Muslim Brotherhood's genocide program. Its cheering Hamas is not the problem. The issue is how much it will help Hamas and, even more important, whether it will some day fight alongside it. Has this deterrence been increased by the recent war? 

Apparently, yes, and that is a very important outcome. Israel has reminded Egypt of its own power;  Hamas has showed its Egyptian sponsor that it was not a good team player.   Perhaps the better way to put it is that Israel won the battle but the war goes on, as indeed it has for our entire lifetimes.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Source:http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/who-won-latest-israel-hamas-war.html

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

Palestinian Authority Terrorists Fired 516 Rockets at Israel

by Daniel Greenfield




The good news is that these are “our terrorists”, the ones that we’re funding with taxpayer money and providing training for. The bad news is that they’re still terrorists.

Several armed groups belonging to Fatah in the Gaza Strip claimed Saturday that they had also fired various types of rockets and missiles at Israel during Operation Pillar of Defense.

A spokesman for the groups, which are affiliated with Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade, told reporters that his men fired 516 rockets and missiles at Israel during the conflict.

The spokesman warned that the Fatah groups would “continue to defend the heroic Palestinian people against Israeli crimes and massacres.”
According to the spokesman, Fatah gunmen fought alongside members of other groups in the Gaza Strip during the recent escalation.

Fatah is for all intents and purposes, the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is the second state in what politicians and pundits call the Two State Solution. The difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is that one of them is wholly subsidized by America and Europe.

Just to add to the schizophrenia, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is listed as an FTO, Foreign Terrorist Group, by the State Department, which directs huge amounts of money to its parent organization.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/palestinian-authority-terrorists-fired-516-rockets-at-israel/

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

Al-Qaeda’s Child Soldiers

by Frank Crimi





Al-Qaeda’s longstanding use of children to wage jihad was on display in a recent video showing boys as young as five training with assault rifles and handguns at a terrorist training camp.

The video of the gun-toting, prepubescent jihadists was reportedly filmed by the al-Qaeda-linked East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) at one of the terror group’s training camps in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.

Since 1990 the ETIM, which has been fighting to create an independent Islamic state in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, has not only committed more than 200 acts of worldwide terrorism but has trained scores of jihadists to fight alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Like father like son, many of the young boys in the ETIM camp were reportedly orphans of slain al-Qaeda fighters coerced by their malevolent elders into carrying on their families’ jihadi business.
It should be noted that the use of child combatants is a worldwide plague practiced by a wide array of government, militant, insurgent and terrorist forces. In fact, it is estimated that most of the 300,000 boys and girls involved in the over 30 ongoing conflicts worldwide are less than 15 years of age.
Most of these child soldiers are either forcibly recruited — abducted at school, on the streets or at home — or have joined “voluntarily,” driven to enlist by a need to escape crushing poverty.
While some end up in government armed forces and civil militia, most find themselves serving in nongovernmental forces, such as terrorist and insurgent groups, with their combatant roles relegated to such activities as armed fighters, messengers, domestic workers and sexual slaves.

Yet, not surprisingly, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and its Islamist allies have taken their use of child combatants to a completely new and ruthless level, disregard that finds its expression in forced indoctrination and training that includes, among other things, using children as suicide bombers.
For example, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have constructed and operated a slew of suicide training facilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, death factories that have trained over 5,000 Pakistani children, many as young as eight, as suicide bombers.

The Islamist predilection for using children as human explosives can best be explained by the unfortunate fact that children make particularly good suicide terror candidates given that, according to one US intelligence report, “they are more willing to martyr themselves due to their lack of reasoning on taking innocent lives.”

That willingness to die is exploited by the Islamists through a variety of ways, including desensitization and brainwashing. As one Afghan official noted, “They are made to watch video films, showing physical torture and killing of Muslims women and children …by what they call infidels.”

Juvenile bombers are also told that great rewards are earned for performing such deadly deeds. As one youthful captured suicide bomber said, he was told by his instructors that as a good Muslim he had a duty to defend Islam and that “as soon as I blow myself up, I will be in heaven and will get eternal peace.”

For those who chafe at the idea of self-slaughter, the terrorists rely on the threat and use of violence to ensure compliance. Not surprisingly, the need to resort to violence to guarantee obedience comes from the fact that many child recruits don’t come to the jihad willingly, but are the victims of kidnapping by the terrorists.

That type of forced coercion has been disturbingly demonstrated by al-Shabab, Somalia’s notorious al-Qaeda-linked terror group that has gained a well deserved reputation for brutality in its efforts to remake Somalia into a Sharia-run Islamist state.

Specifically, an al-Shabab child terrorist training school was discovered earlier in 2012 by Somali government forces in the capital of Mogadishu. There, young children, all under 10-years-old, were found chained to beds where they were instructed in carrying out suicide bombings and other types of “martyrdom-operations.”

Of course, al-Shabab has found other creative uses for its underage recruits, some of whom are as young as seven years of age. After spending up to three months learning how to use heavy weaponry, including AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, graduates are sent to the frontline to serve as human shields to protect adult fighters.

Like most Islamist terror groups, al-Shabab either abducts its child recruits from their homes and schools or entices them by offers of free food and gifts. In some cases, however, the Islamists take advantage of a child’s grinding poverty by paying for his services.

In northern Mali, for example, Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have paid over 1,000 children up to $30 a day and $400 a month to join their forces.

The use of child combatants is also gaining in popularity in Syria where a report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found the rebel Free Syrian Army, laden with Islamist and al-Qaeda-linked terror organizations, forcibly recruiting children, some as young as eight-years-old, into their ranks.

Yet, as horrific as life is for a child ensconced inside the ranks of an Islamist terror outfit, children outside their deadly confines can still find themselves unsuspectingly used for lethal operations.
In one such particular case in July 2012, members of al-Qaeda in Yemen asked a 12-year-old boy to deliver a packaged gift to his father, a tribal sheik who was an outspoken opponent of the terrorist group. When the boy entered his house, he was killed instantly when the package exploded.

Sadly, the appetite by Islamist terror groups for child soldiers doesn’t appear to be satiating anytime soon given the favorable cost-benefit ratio their use entails.

As Abdul Rahman Barman, a Yemeni lawyer and child rights activist, has explained, “Children and adolescents can be managed easily and can be recruited to carry out terrorist acts at a lower cost because it is enough to tell them that they will end up in paradise to encourage them to die while conducting a terrorist operation.”

Unfortunately for these children, the gruesome reality of their violent deaths will most definitely trump the empty promise of the jihadist paradise painted by their heinous guardians.

Frank Crimi

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frank-crimi/al-qaedas-child-soldiers/

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

Obama and the Morsi Dictatorship

by Jonathan S. Tobin


Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has had quite a week. He helped broker a cease-fire between his Hamas ally and Israel to the acclaim of the international community as well as the United States and his new friend President Obama. He followed that triumph up by issuing new decrees that effectively give him dictatorial powers over Egypt. In less than year in office, Morsi has amassed as much power as Hosni Mubarak had in his time in office as the country’s strongman and he has done it while getting closer to the United States rather than having his Islamist regime being condemned or isolated by Washington.

The full implications of Morsi’s ascendency are not yet apparent. But we can draw a few rather obvious conclusions from these events. The first is this makes the region a much more dangerous place and peace even more unlikely. the second is that the much ballyhooed Arab Spring turned out to be an Islamist triumph, not an opening for democracy. And third, and perhaps most disconcerting for Americans, it looks like the Obama administration has shown itself again to be a band of hopeless amateurs when it comes to the Middle East. While President Obama shouldn’t be blamed for toppling Mubarak, this episode is more proof of the gap between his foreign policy instincts and a rational defense of American interests.


The first point to be made about the cheering for Morsi’s role in brokering the cease-fire is misplaced. It cannot be emphasized too much that the reason why Hamas felt so confident about picking a fight with Israel that it could not possibly win militarily is the fact that Egypt and fellow regional power Turkey were treating it as an ally rather than as terrorist regime that needed to be isolated and controlled. While Morsi has sought to exercise some influence over Gaza by keeping the border crossings to Sinai closed (more as a result of concern over the violence spilling over into Egyptian territory than a desire to restrain terrorism), the support for the legitimacy of the illegal Hamas regime on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood government has been a game changer.

More than ever before, Hamas now has the whip hand over the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. That makes the already nearly non-existent chances of peace between Palestinians and Israelis even smaller. Though it can be argued that the ability of Hamas to preserve its rule over Gaza following the last bout of fighting with Israel in January 2009 already made it clear that it was a force to be reckoned with, the backing of Egypt and Turkey and the tacit approval of the United States in the cease-fire means there can be no doubt that Hamas truly is the face of Palestinian nationalism these days as well as the owners of an independent Palestinian state in all but name. With Cairo and Ankara backing them up and Iranian missiles in their arsenal, Hamas’s strength makes the standard liberal talking point about it being necessary for Israel to make more concessions to Fatah even more absurd than ever.

If the blockade of Gaza is now to be weakened even further to allow “construction materials” as well as the food and medicine that has never ceased flowing into the area from Israel, then it must be acknowledged that Hamas is more powerful than ever and well placed to make mischief in the region whenever it likes. Rather than applauding Morsi’s role in the cease-fire, Americans should be asking why the administration has acquiesced to having one of their nation’s primary aid recipients being an ally of Hamas. They should also be wondering about what exactly it is that passed between Obama and Morsi during their phone conversations and what promises, if any, were made by the United States about future pressure on Israel.

Morsi’s consolidation of dictatorial power also should not have taken Washington by surprise, as it seems to have done. For several months, the State Department has been acting as if it bought the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood government was basically moderate in nature and more interested in economic development than pursuing ideological goals. But Morsi’s actions, in which he has sidelined every competing power base that might have acted as a check on his ambitions, makes it apparent that his real purpose is to make his movement’s control of the country permanent. Any hope that democracy was coming to Egypt or the rest of the Arab and Muslim world was misplaced. And any idea that the United States can bribe Morsi or any other Islamist into playing ball is sheer folly.

That leads us to the final point about the administration’s utter lack of skill in dealing with the realities of the Middle East.

Even if we were to concede that the president’s motives were pure and that he wanted nothing more than to bring peace to the region and democracy to Arab nations that have never known it, virtually everything that the administration has done has made the achievement of these goals even less likely than before.

The president isn’t personally responsible for the collapse of an unsustainable Mubarak dictatorship. But he did nothing to aid the cause of the few Egyptian liberals who actually want democracy. Worse than that, he undercut the efforts of the Egyptian military to act as a brake on the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of seeking to use the billions that Egypt gets from the U.S. as a lever with which he could restrain Cairo from backing Hamas and the Brotherhood from seizing more power, Washington has embraced Morsi. That emboldened Hamas and led to the recent fighting. Though the president said all the right things about backing Israel’s right to self-defense, his diplomatic maneuvering not only helped set the stage for more violence but made it more difficult for Israel to exercise that right.

A president who says he wants peace and democracy in the Middle East is now acting as if the Islamists that run Turkey and Egypt are his new best friends while continuing to treat the head of the only democracy in the region as a nuisance. In doing so, President Obama has helped make the world a lot more dangerous that it might otherwise have been.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/25/obama-and-the-morsi-dictatorship/

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

Egypt's Islamist President Assumes Dictatorial Powers

by Barry Rubin


The French press agency headline says it all: “Egypt’s [President] Morsi assumes sweeping powers, branded new pharaoh.” Mursi has issued a decree giving himself virtually dictatorial powers and contradicting the assumption that he—and his Muslim Brotherhood organization—intend to rule democratically. Opposition forces said this constituted a coup.

Mursi’s spokesman explained the decree in these terms: the president can issue any decree he wishes to protect the revolution. “The constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal.”

It seems apparent that this is another step in the process toward the fundamental transformation of Egypt into an Islamist, Sharia-ruled state. If one views the 2011 revolution as a democratic one, then Mursi is destroying it. But of course he and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists see it as an Islamist revolution, parallel to the 1979 Iranian revolution — though in Egyptian terms, of course. Lest there be any illusions about what this means, note that Mursi is one man whose legitimacy is not established in practice–despite having won an election–and who cannot depend on the country’s institutions to obey him. The power behind Mursi is not that he is president but that he has the support of the country’s strongest group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and can generally count on the Salafists as well.

The timing of this takeover is ironic since it coincides with an all-time high for the Obama administration’s regard for Egypt, following that regime’s brokering of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, including a continuous insistence from the U.S. government and mass media that the Brotherhood was now moderate and pro-democratic. In a normal universe, a U.S. president would be furious at Egypt for being made to look foolish after lavishing so much praise on Egypt and its insistence that the Brotherhood was moderate and democratic. Of course, that will not happen with this administration.

It is true that Mursi acted “pragmatically” on the ceasefire issue. But what does that mean? He took into account his own regime interests and didn’t just howl “Alahu Akhbar!” repeatedly. Westerners seem to think that for someone to be a radical Islamist they have to be a wild man. If Osama bin Laden wore a suit and tie, he’d still be alive today.

But of course Mursi wants to stay in power and strengthen his regime. He’s not going to throw away $10 billion in aid (U.S., EU, IMF) for some wild adventure in the Gaza Strip that Hamas began without asking him. He doesn’t yet control the country or the army. There’s no constitution and no functioning parliament. If the Muslim Brotherhood has proven anything, it is that it has patience.

According to the New York Times:

Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver.
“The thing that appealed to the president was how practical the conversations were — here’s the state of play, here are the issues we’re concerned about,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “This was somebody focused on solving problems.”

But the main problems Mursi is focused on is how to keep the Muslim Brotherhood in power, how to get lots of money from the West, and how to make Egypt into a radical Islamist state. Enforcing quiet in the Gaza Strip right now is part of that effort.

Being the main sponsor of Hamas, a terrorist group, used to be called “state sponsorship of terrorism,” now it is to be admired as being, in the New York Times formulation, Hamas’s “most important international ally.” Another interesting parallel is that Hamas, like the fellow Brotherhood branch in Egypt, won an election and then seized power completely. Things in Egypt have not yet gone that far, but Mursi has taken a big step in that direction.

At home, it has taken only a few weeks for Mursi to return to dictatorship. The decree comes as secular-minded groups demonstrate in the Tahrir Square area while the Islamists call for suppressing them.

Mursi’s offensive seeks to give him the power to purge existing institutions and put supporters in control.

Perhaps the highest priority is to take over the court system by appointing Islamist judges. During the late Mubarak regime, judges were among the most courageous of dissidents, issuing decisions the government doesn’t like. After the revolution, judges gave rulings against the Brotherhood’s goals, for example, saying that the election of parliament—which is three-quarters Islamist—was illegal. Mursi wants to reverse this ruling by decree rather than face new elections where Islamist vote totals will probably plummet.

The other key institutions are the armed forces, where top generals have already resigned, and the religious establishment. While the chiefs of Egypt’s religious system, including the powerful mosque-university al-Azhar, are hardly liberal, they are also not systematic Islamists or Brotherhood supporters. Once such people are replaced with loyalists, the Brotherhood will have the power to define Islam itself.

Given the international authority of al-Azhar, which trains clerics for many different countries, Sunni Islam from Morocco to Indonesia would be closer to becoming thoroughly in line with revolutionary Islamist, anti-Western, antisemitic thinking.  That is not to say it is open, liberal, and tolerant now. But the situation would be far worse and destabilizing. For example, mainstream clerics would issue a stream of rulings justifying terrorism and condemning anyone who cooperated with the West.

The Egyptian regime’s cooperation on a Gaza ceasefire, then, was in large part intended to defuse any reaction against its movement toward dictatorship at home. It is doubtful, for example, that the Obama administration will condemn the new decree giving Mursi total power in the country. And Egypt will get almost $10 billion in aid from the United States, European Union, and International Monetary Fund, even as it becomes a repressive, Islamist state.

This article was originally published on PJMedia.

Barry Rubin

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/11/news-flash-egypt%E2%80%99s-islamist-president-assumes-dictatorial-powers/

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

Qatar Casts a Giant Shadow

by Ted Belman


Qatar is a small country with few people (1.87 million of which only 300,000 are citizens), yet it casts a giant shadow over N. Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. It has the highest GDP per capita in the world and the highest energy reserves per capita in the world. While it treats its women more liberally than S. Arabia does, it has been indicted for immigrant labor violations and human trafficking. It is notorious for how badly it treats its foreign workers.

The U.S. Department of State's 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report reports:

"Qatar is a destination country for men and women subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser ‎extent, forced prostitution. [They] voluntarily migrate‎ to Qatar as low-skilled laborers and domestic servants, but some subsequently face conditions ‎of involuntary servitude. These conditions include threats of serious physical or financial harm; ‎withholding of pay; charging workers for benefits for which the employer is responsible; ‎restrictions on freedom of movement, including the confiscation of passports, travel ‎documents, and the withholding of exit permits; arbitrary detention; threats of legal action and ‎deportation; threats of filing false charges against the worker; and physical, mental, and sexual ‎abuse. In some cases, arriving migrant workers have found that the terms of employment in ‎Qatar are different from those they agreed to in their home countries; businesses and ‎individuals in Qatar reportedly promised migrants employment opportunities that never ‎materialized."

Why would such a rich country treat its invitee workers so meanly?

The world's attention has been focused on Saudi Arabia whose attention has been focused on the U.S. It has built 80% of the mosques in America and has installed Wahhabi Imams in all of them. For almost a century, it has cultivated relations with the State Department and the White House making certain to reward diplomats and presidents, when they retire, with oodles of money for "good behavior". It also has made grants in the tens of millions to some high profile U.S. universities such as Harvard, Columbia, and Georgetown.(See "The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby.")

Qatar, on the other hand, is a Mohammed-come-lately.

After the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. opened the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

The Emir of Qatar is a Wahhabi fundamentalist. He founded Aljazeera in 1996 and it broadcast‎ in Arabic only for many years. It enabled the emir to greatly influence the Arab masses and to ‎radicalize them. It gained worldwide renown due to its coverage of the Afghan War.‎

In '02 the US signed a mutual defense pact with Qatar and began using the Al Udeid‎ base for the US Air command Center in the Gulf. This base now serves as a logistics, command, and basing hub for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At that time, the U.S. Army built the Sayliyah army base in Qatar. It serves as the world's largest prepositioned army equipment base.

Obviously the U.S. and Qatar are joined at the hip.

About half a dozen years ago,

1) Qatar built Education City and attracted many prestigious universities from around the world, including the U.S., with generous grants from the Qatar Foundation,

2) Al jazeera International began broadcasting in English 24/7 throughout the world

3) The Brookings Institution, the most respected think-tank in the world, opened up a service center in its capital Doha, known as Brookings Doha Institute.

Thus Qatar came of age.Qatar was positioning itself to become an international ‎‏mediator‎.‎

According to an academic paper, "Mediation ‎ and ‎Qatari Foreign Policy‎‏:"

‎‏ "‏Since the mid-2000s, Qatar has become one of the world's most active ‎mediators ‎in ‎regional ‎and intranational conflicts across the Middle East and parts of Africa. ‎The ‎most ‎notable of these ‎have involved mediation efforts in Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen, ‎with ‎similar ‎though lower-‎profile efforts undertaken in Palestine and in the border ‎conflict ‎between Djibouti ‎and Eritrea. ‎In the process, Qatar has actively cultivated an image ‎for ‎itself as an honest broker ‎interested ‎in peace and stability.‎" ‎

Libya

The object of the NATO-led war in Libya, according to Pepe Escobar in Asia Times, was
"...about NATO ruling the Mediterranean as a NATO lake, it was about Africom's war against China and setting up a key strategic base, it was about the French and the Brits getting juicy contracts to exploit Libya's natural resources to their benefit"

This was all made possible by the the US-Saudi Libya deal

"You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud."

Qatar was quick to join the fighting in Libva both with troops on the ground and fighter jets in the air. It also became the chief supplier of weapons to the rebels which included Islamists of all stripes. It became the first country after France to recognize the Provisional Transitional National Council of Libya.

David Roberts explains what's behind Qatar's intervention in Libya in an article published by Foreign Affairs.

"Qatar hopes to insert itself as the key mediator between the Muslim world and the West. Qatar sees its role as a highly specialized interlocutor between the two worlds, making -- from the West's point of view -- unpalatable but necessary friendships and alliances with anti-Western leaders, including the Hamas chief KhaledMeshaal, Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, to name but a few recent visitors to Doha."

"Similarly, Qatar recognizes that Islamists are an indelible part of the political landscape in Libya and a potentially combustible one, given that, per capita, eastern Libya alone provided twice as many would-be jihadists as any other Arabic-speaking country to the Iraqi resistance in 2007 and 2008. Ignoring or marginalizing this demographic would not be prudent; but from the West's perspective, engaging with even reformed Islamist fighters is difficult. This is the niche that Qatar is trying to fill in Libya and elsewhere."

This is a facility President Obama is anxious to avail himself of.

Syria

A year ago, Qatar and Saudi Arabia set up a mobile intervention Sunni Muslim force out of al Qaeda-linked operatives for rapid ‎deployment on the Turkish-Syrian border.‎

DEBKA reports:

"A force of 2,500 has been recruited up until now, our sources report. The hard core is made up ‎of 1,000 members of the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya-IFGL, which fought Qaddafi, and 1,000 ‎operatives of the Ansar al-Sunna, the Iraqi Islamists which carried out 15 coordinated bomb ‎attacks in Baghdad last Thursday killing 72 people and injuring 200.‎"

"The new Sunni force, funded by the Persian Gulf oil states, is silently backed by the US and NATO members, with Turkey in the forefront of this support group."

James Lewis, in "Benghazi reveals Obama-Islamist Alliance," published by American Thinker asserted:
"The nature of the Benghazi disaster is now clear. Ambassador Stevens was engaged in smuggling sizable quantities of Libyan arms from the destroyed Gaddafi regime to the Syrian rebels, to help overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. Smuggling arms to the so-called "Free Syrian Army" is itself a huge gamble, but Obama has been a gambler with human lives over the last four years, as shown by the tens of thousands of Arabs who have died in the so-called Arab Spring -- which has brought nothing but disaster to the Arab world.

"For the last four years, the Obama policy has been to offer aid and comfort to violent Islamic radicals in the delusional belief that their loyalty can be bought."

Finally Qatar played host to representatives of the Syrian opposition recently and successfully arranged an agreement for a unified opposition.

To think that Qatar's investment in the overthrow of Assad has a humanitarian agenda is a bit of a stretch. Not only do Qatar and Saudi Arabia want to sever the Syrian's connection to Iran to weaken Iran, but they also want to end up controlling Syria so that they can build a gas pipeline from their countries through Jordan and Syria to the Mediterranean. That's also one of the reasons why Iran is fighting so hard to retain control of Syria.

Europe

Italian journalist Giulio Meotti has investigated Qatar's reach into Europe:

"Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has cultivated the image of a pro-Western reformist, vowed to "spare no effort" to spread the teachings of Wahhabi Islam across "the whole world". Last December Qatari Emir inaugurated the "Imam Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab" Mosque in Doha, dedicated to the founder of the most virulent, anti-Jewish and totalitarian Islamic school of religion.

"Qatar's octopus is working on three fronts: overthrowing despotic Arab regimes and replace these with sharia-based countries; destroying Israel by financing the terror groups (the emir just visited Gaza) -- and Islamizing the European continent through mosques and investments."

In addition to itemizing the enormous investments in Europe made by Qatar which affords her considerable leverage and influence, he highlights her agenda:

"Qatar is a bastion of anti-Semitism, which goes around the world along with the investments. A Qatari television show, based on a book by late Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, shows a Holocaust survivor who resorts to prostitution and claims the Nazis did no wrong. "I didn't see any gas chambers", she is seen saying. An actor depicting former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin calls on Jews to murder Arab civilians.

'Qatar is also hosting many conferences which demonize the Jews. [..]

"In Doha's Friday sermons, Jews are called "parasites". [Back to the Nazis.]

'With an imperial flux of money and ideology, the former British protectorate of Qatar is discouraging Muslim integration in Europe in order to better dominate it, fomenting anti-Semitism and cultural separation, actively encouraging jihad against the State of Israel.

"Qatar's course of action is very practical: convincing Europe that the real name of Jerusalem is Al Quds, that the Koran replaced the Bible and that the Jewish Temple Mount is just a conspiracy."
It is bad enough that a small country like Israel has to contend with the likes of Qatar and their fellow travelers in the Arab world, but to have them embraced by the ruling elites in the US and Europe increases the danger to Israel exponentially. It used to be that anti-Semites were shunned by western societies. But now, they are embraced and sought after with nary a word said. Furthermore these societies and countries assist the Arabs to realize their agendas by participating in the delegitimization and defamation of Israel and Jews.

This embrace is emblematic of a broader embrace. President Obama, from day one of his administration, has aided and abetted Islamists in Libya, Egypt and Syria to come to power. He has embraced PM Erdogan of Turkey, who is also Islamist, calling him his new best friend. Many have argued that he is undermining King Abdullah of Jordan in the expectation that the Muslim Brotherhood will replace him. All this represents extreme danger to Israel. But it also represents extreme danger to America. It is compounded by President Obama's embrace of Islamists in the US who now have undue influence in the FBI, The State Department, Justice, Homeland Security, and the Whitehouse. Except for a few lone voices in the Republican Party, Republicans have not challenged Obama's Islamist embrace. Silence is consent.

I worry for Israel. And for America.

Ted Belman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/qatar_casts_a_giant_shadow.html

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