Pro-Israel Egyptian Activist: Our Fates are Linked

by Melanie Lidman

Tahrir Square activist Maikel Nabil Sanad visits Israel, wants to promote peace in order for Egyptian democracy to thrive

 
Photo: Hadas Parush

As the revolution swelled in Cairo’s Tahrir Square nearly two years ago, there was a lot of passion and uncontrolled anger in the streets. But the angry momentum of a popular uprising needs short and pithy slogans. In Tahrir Square, there was no room for nuance.

Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad was a central activist in Tahrir Square. An avowed pacifist, Nabil founded of the “No to Compulsory Military Service” movement in 2009 and was one of Egypt’s first conscientious observers.

But Nabil has also been an ardent supporter of Israel. In 2010, when he refused to join the military, he posted on his blog: “I also am not willing to be a pawn on the chessboard of an arms race, struggles and bloodbaths in the region. I don't want to point a weapon at a young Israeli, recruited into obligatory service, defending his state's right to exist.”

Nabil’s support for Israel is not as black and white as some activists would like it to be. In the simplest view, Israel is all bad, Palestinians are all good. Instead, Nabil sees shades of grey and lots of nuance. “We should differentiate between supporting Palestinian rights and being anti-Israel,” Nabil said at Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Sunday. Nabil's lecture about Egypt’s historical relationship with Israel drew hundreds of students to Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and more than 50 students were turned away. “Supporting Palestinian state rights doesn’t mean that we have to deny the right of Israel to exist,” Nabil said.

“Me and my friends understand we won’t achieve democracy without peace,” Nabil explained. “[Israel and Egypt’s] fates are linked together. As long as dictatorships and authoritarian governments are using security to take our rights and our freedoms from us we will be losing our rights and moving backwards,” he said.

Nabil stressed that he had serious reservations about Israel: he doesn’t support Netanyahu, Likud, or the army’s compulsory draft. He doesn’t like the fact that religion and state are so closely intertwined or the treatment of women by the ultra-Orthodox. He is furious with Israel for propping up President Hosni Mubarak’s decades of dictatorship. And he blames Israel for making it impossible for Egyptians to visit – Nabil said he tried for two years to get a visa to visit Israel and begin a dialogue, but the Israeli embassy in Cairo refused to even meet with him.

But disagreeing with key aspects of the state doesn’t mean Egyptians should strike down the 30-year peace treaty with Israel, he stressed.  Nabil wants to concentrate on fostering an environment for Egypt’s nascent democracy to grow and thrive. Democracy cannot happen without peace and stability, he said, including peace with Israel.

“I am not saying that I am able to make a huge achievement,” said Nabil. “I just want to open a door for people who are like me, who want to approach the other side and cross these borders and break these walls and try to make a change.”

But many Arab activists in Egypt and in Jerusalem are furious with Nabil’s support for Israel. A dozen students interrupted his lecture at Hebrew University on Sunday, shouting “Shame on you!”  and “The Egyptian revolution hates you!”

Nabil now lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he is studying political science for a masters degree. He knows it may be dangerous for him to return to Egypt due to his political opinions, though he could also be assassinated in Europe as well. “I never felt safe in Egypt and I will never be safe as long as this conflict exists,” he said. “I understand that I am breaking a taboo to come to Israel… and announce it.” Nabil is promoting his trip across social media and dozens of interviews with Israeli media.

Nabil was imprisoned for ten months under the military regime in Egypt. Nabil was arrested was on March 30, 2011, two months after the Tahrir January 25 revolution began. Supporters admitted he made an “easy target” for the military crackdown because of his well-known pro-Israel stance. Twelve days later after he was arrested, a military court sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for “insulting the military” and “spreading false information.” Nabil had started an online database to keep track of army abuses against civilians during the protests.

After a long hunger strike, Nabil was released on January 24, 2012, along with 2,000 other prisoners.  Since then, he has traveled widely to promote his faith in the growing Egyptian democracy, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Nabil estimated that current Egyptian President Muhammed Morsi will last “a maximum of another two months” because he has so little public support among Egyptians. And he said that he is encouraged by the progress in Egypt’s activist community. “This is a process which takes time… but the activist community is moving in the right direction,” he told the Post.

He noted that activists who were imprisoned for similar crimes of “blasphemy” against the government for army are serving shorter and shorter sentences. In 2010, an activist served four years, while Nabil served ten months in 2011, and recently, an activist was released after just a few months of imprisonment, which is another sign of progress.

Nabil's short trip to Israel is meant to regular Israelis. We cannot move forward if you refuse to listen to what I have to say, Nabil told the demonstrators on Sunday, who filed out of the lecture hall voluntarily as the crowd boo'ed, just before security threatened to remove them.

“I am not sure if we will succeed, but we are trying,” Nabil said before the lecture. “We don’t have any other option except to keep trying.”

Melanie Lidman

Source: http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=297054

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

Hagel: A Litmus Test of Obama’s Attitude to Israel

by Isi Leibler

The possible nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary will be a litmus test of whether President Barack Obama is poised to resume his anti-Israeli campaign, despite supporting Israel during Operation Pillar of Defense and only last week employing a U.S. veto in favor of Israel at the U.N. 

One should not underestimate the significance of appointing a man like Hagel to such a key post. He represents one of the most hostile antagonists to Israel in the mainstream political arena. Some of his views have even been compared to the extremist policies promoted by Pat Buchanan, the former Republican radical isolationist.

Hagel has questioned the patriotism of the American Jewish community, accusing it of displaying dual loyalties and proclaiming that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people” and that “I am a United States senator, not an Israeli senator.”

His indifference, and even hostility, toward Israel has been completely out of sync with mainstream congressional attitudes. He was one of four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter supporting Israel during the Second Intifada. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, he blamed Israel and Hezbollah equally for the conflict. He subsequently rebuffed efforts to persuade the European Union to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist group. In 2009, he urged Obama to engage in direct negotiations with Hamas. Earlier this month, the Atlantic Council, which he chairs, published a front page article titled “Israel’s apartheid policies.”

He has unfailingly opposed sanctions or military action against Iran, warning that a nuclear Iran is inevitable and “continued hostile relations between the U.S. and Iran will have the effect of isolating the United States.” He even refused to endorse the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist entity.

Hagel supported unconditional engagement with rogue states, stating, “Engagement is not surrender. It is not appeasement.”

He held both Assads (father and son) in high regard. In 2008, together with Senator John Kerry (now designated to become secretary of state), he wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “It is time to talk to Syria” which stated, “Syria’s leaders have always made cold calculations in the name of self-preservation and history shows that intensive diplomacy can pay off.” 

As late as 2009, Hagel was still urging the U.S. to engage in dialogue with Syria.

Hagel also favors reducing what he described as the “bloated” defense budget, unusual for a candidate to oversee the Pentagon.

Based on this grotesque political track record, even the liberal Washington Post editorial board urged Obama to reject the nomination on the grounds that it was totally inappropriate for such a sensitive position to be headed by a person harboring views which would be regarded as “near the fringe of the Senate.”

Hagel is supported by the wrong people. These include the Council on American Islamic Relations, described by the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator to fund Hamas and also cited as an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. 

Stephen Walt, co-author of the notorious book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which mimicked classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, said that Hagel’s nomination would be excellent because “unlike almost all of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill, he has not been a complete doormat for the Israeli lobby” and was “skeptical about the use of military force against Iran.” He also said that the appointment would represent Obama’s “payback to Benjamin Netanyahu.”

J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami endorsed Hagel as “a fine choice” and “friend of Israel.” He complained that “somebody of Chuck Hagel’s stature and significant record of national service is being slandered.” Peter Beinart condemned the White House for emboldening the “pro-Israel Right” by failing to defend Hagel. 

While public protests against the appointment have until now been somewhat muted, there have been criticisms.

Senior Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens stated that Hagel’s appointment would confirm his belief that Obama was not a friend of Israel and that “perhaps the 63% of Jewish Americans who cast their vote for Mr. Obama last month might belatedly take note.”

In fact, Hagel’s nomination will demonstrate whether pro-Israel Jewish Democrats who voted for Obama carry any weight within the party or are now cynically taken for granted as automatic supporters, irrespective of how the Democratic Party behaves toward the Jewish state.

Interestingly enough, in 2009, after Hagel was named co-chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Ira Forman, then executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (and subsequently appointed Obama’s 2012 Jewish outreach coordinator), felt compelled to state, “If Hagel was taking a policy role, we’d have real concerns.” Forman has declined to comment on the far more significant role for which Hagel is currently being considered.

Ed Koch, a passionate Zionist and former Democratic mayor of New York who endorsed Obama in the elections, said that Hagel “would be a terrible appointment ... and would give comfort to the Arab world that would think that President Obama is seeking to put space between Israel and his administration.”

Zionist Organization of America Chief Executive Mort Klein called on Obama to withdraw the nomination of one of the most consistently hostile political critics of Israel. The ZOA summed up Hagel as “a frightening and dangerous apologist for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as for the terrorist regime of Iran, while being arguably one of the most vicious and hostile critics of Israel.”

Anti-Defamation League Director Abe Foxman, whom those on the Right frequently accuse of deferring unduly to the liberal establishment, stated that Hagel’s record on Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship “is at best, disturbing and at worst, very troubling. The sentiments he has expressed about the Jewish lobby border on anti-Semitism in the genre of Professors John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt and former President Jimmy Carter.”

American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris pointed out that as far back as 1999, Hagel was the only senator who refused to sign a letter urging former Russian President Boris Yeltsin to take action to squash burgeoning anti-Semitism. He noted that the concerns the AJC had about Hagel 13 years ago remain today.

If nominated, Hagel’s confirmation in the Senate will presumably be challenged. However, despite holding views which conflict starkly with mainstream Congress foreign affairs attitudes, rejecting him may be complicated by the fact that he is a former Republican Senator and a popular, highly-decorated war hero.

But there should be no illusions. This is a watershed moment and litmus test of Obama’s attitude to the Jewish state. Should Hagel’s appointment be confirmed it would be perceived as a signal of the president’s determination to revive his earlier efforts to distance the U.S. from Israel and that we are likely to face massive problems during the course of this administration.

To appoint as defense secretary a man who has consistently opposed sanctions, as well as military action, against Iran would also undermine Israel’s confidence that Obama was sincere, despite that throughout his re-election campaign he repeatedly vowed that Iran would never become a nuclear power under his watch.

Isi Leibler’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3104

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

Kerry - Obama's Carbon Copy

by Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi

Democratic Senator John Kerry is not going to have any problems filling the shoes of his predecessors in his new capacity as secretary of state. As the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he has gained expert knowledge on the U.S.'s ties with other countries, making him a natural for the job. 

Kerry will be ready from the first day, almost to the point that he could forgo all the briefings and preparations that are designed to help a new secretary of state settle in to the office on the seventh floor of the State Department. Kerry's confirmation by the Senate floor, and before that by the committee he heads, is virtually a done deal. 

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government might prefer another successor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it is quite evident from Kerry's voting record that he has never missed an opportunity to support legislation favorable to Israel. It should be pointed out that in the current atmosphere, in which the Obama administration is stepping up its rhetoric to express its displeasure with the planned construction beyond the Green Line, Kerry might go even further in condemning the Netanyahu government on that front. At least one well-connected source has communicated such an assessment. 

Kerry supports Israel and its right to defend itself. He believes its borders should be based on the 1949 armistice lines, with some tweaks. U.S. policy on settlements has been consistent for some time; it is the rhetoric that keeps changing, and the criticism could become even more intense on Kerry's watch. 

Something else to keep in mind is Kerry's courting of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, before the latter became embroiled in a bloody civil war. Kerry logged many hours with Assad in his frequent visits to Damascus, making sure to shower praise on him. He called him "very generous," and touted the important role Syria played in the region. Some were bothered that the Kerry had become a regular at Assad's palace, and accused him of cozying up to the Syrian leader. But now Assad is at his low point, his ruthless, bloody character clearly on display. 

There is no disagreement between Kerry and President Barack Obama when it comes to Iran. Just like the president, Kerry prefers to exhaust the sanctions option. Taking out Iran's nuclear installations is much lower on his list of priorities. Kerry is categorically opposed to a nuclear Iran, but he would rather take diplomatic steps before approving any military campaign, an option which will always be "on the table." 

If Obama's likely pick for defense secretary, former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, is confirmed by the Senate, Obama will have appointed two senior officials who see no urgent need to launch missiles against Iranian nuclear sites. While Obama has yet to formally announce his selection for the Pentagon chief, the general consensus is that Hagel is his first choice. 

Will Obama rethink Hagel's nomination? Has the recent criticism over Hagel's views changed anything? We have no way of telling. 

The selection of Kerry, a Catholic with Jewish roots, who has often been dispatched to Afghanistan, Pakistan and other hot spots around the globe on behalf of the president, was the first staffing decision for Obama's new cabinet. This was an impressive choice, but not surprising. 

While Kerry is not a member of Obama's inner circle, the president has not forgotten the support he received from the senator when he sought the presidency, the same office Kerry tried but failed to capture in 2004 as the Democratic nominee (he lost to incumbent President George W. Bush). 

If Netanyahu wins re-election in the Jan. 22 Knesset election, he will get an earful from the new secretary of state when it comes to construction beyond the Green Line.

Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3099

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How Obama’s Moderate Muslim Indonesia is Ruining Christmas

by Daniel Greenfield 



int This Post

 “Is that where you murdered 100,000 Christians?”

If you want to understand Obama, skip the memoirs and head straight for his homeland in Indonesia, the place where he grew up, its history of Christian genocide in East Timor and its treatment of Christians at home who make up 10 percent of the population but have very few civil rights.

Building churches in Indonesia requires dealing with angry Muslim mobs and even angrier Muslim politicians.

A mayor in West Java who disregarded a Supreme Court ruling to reinstate the building permit of a church in Bogor has now dismissed a recommendation by the National Ombudsman Institute to do so.

Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto rejected the recommendation to reinstate the permit for the Indonesian Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Indonesia, or GKI) Yasmin Bogor Church last month, leaving the congregation to worship on a small strip of land as 15 to 20 Muslim demonstrators taunt them.

And now two congregations are locked out of their churches for Christmas.

For the Rev. Palti Panjaitan of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) Filadelfia congregation in Bekasi, the lack of a Christmas tree is the least of his worries.

“How can we think about Christmas decorations or a Christmas tree when our church is still sealed off from us?” he said on Thursday.

“Our focus now is just to be able to hold Christmas prayers in our own church.”
The congregation of around 600 has since 2007 been forced to worship on the street outside its church or in members’ homes as the Bogor district administration continues to deny it a permit.

The congregation has taken the matter to the West Java State Administrative Court and the Supreme Court, both of which ordered the district to issue the permit and reopen the church. But the district has refused to comply, citing residents’ opposition to the presence of the church in their midst.

Remember, Muslims are entitled to build a mosque at Ground Zero, but Christians in even “moderate” Muslim countries are not entitled to just being able to build a church or use it once it has been built.

Outrage from Obama over this in 3-2-1-never. But his State Department is “deeply disappointed” because Israel is building houses in Jerusalem. There may even be a synagogue or two there.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-obamas-moderate-muslim-indonesia-is-ruining-christmas/

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

The United Nations’ Year-End Message to Israel

by Joseph Klein

 

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon devoted part of his year-end press conference on December 19th to bashing Israel for its announcement of plans to build new housing in and around Jerusalem. He claimed that the Israeli announcement was a “near fatal blow to a very fragile Middle East peace process.”

“I am deeply concerned by heightened settlement activity in the West Bank, in particular around Jerusalem,” the Secretary General complained.  “This gravely threatens efforts to establish a viable Palestinian state.”

A Palestinian reporter asked the Secretary General whether he would support Palestinian efforts to join the International Criminal Court and pursue criminal charges against Israel to stop settlement activities. While not answering the question directly, he said that Israel’s settlement activity was “clearly a violation of international law” and that “with the enhanced status of the Palestinian Authority in the General Assembly [with] non-member observer status, I think they have the right to sign the Rome Statute, but it is up to the Palestinian authorities.”

Adding insult to injury, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that Israel should risk its own security by opening its borders to more than 100,000 Palestinians fleeing a refugee camp in Syria that had come under attack, so that they can safely reach the West Bank and Gaza by transiting Israel.

On the same day that Ban Ki-moon was putting Israel through the wringer, France led a chorus of members of the UN Security Council also condemning Israel for building more housing for its residents in Jerusalem.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor countered, in remarks to the press after the Security Council met to discuss the Israeli housing announcement among other issues, that the real obstacles to peace remain “the Palestinians’ quest for the so-called ‘claim of return’, terrorism, and Palestinian incitement.”

There is no credible Palestinian leadership willing and able to stop jihadist terrorism against Israeli civilians. There is no credible Palestinian leadership willing and able to end the extreme anti-Semitic indoctrination so pervasive in Palestinian society, which nurtures a culture of hatred and incitement to violence.  The so-called “moderate” Palestinian leadership under Palestinian Authority President Abbas – feckless at best, malevolent at worst – is the real reason that the peace process is in a deep freeze. Israeli housing construction is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the international community to use in irresponsibly transferring the blame to Israel.

Indeed, Ambassador Prosor might have added the United Nations itself to his list of real obstacles to peace. Last month’s General Assembly resolution created the illusion of Palestinian statehood by upgrading their status at the UN to an observer state, with borders based on the lines in effect before Israel’s victory in the June 1967 Six Days War.  On Dec. 17th, the UN’s head of official protocol wrote to the Palestinian delegation informing them that as a result of the General Assembly’s vote “the designation of ‘State of Palestine’ shall be used by the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents.”

The General Assembly became a tool in the Palestinians’ hands to “legislate” their claim to state recognition within the borders that the Palestinians unilaterally defined, in direct violation of the Oslo Accords signed by Israeli and the Palestinian representatives. The Oslo Accords had called for direct “permanent status” negotiations between the parties on the issues of “Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest.”  Using the UN to decide these issues by fiat is anything but direct negotiations.

The Oslo Accords were intended to help implement the objectives of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which called for the peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict through territorial compromise. The framers of these Security Council resolutions realized that the pre- June 1967 borders were indefensible.

Under the Oslo Accords, both borders and settlements were identified as negotiable issues.  Jerusalem was referred to as one whole city – not artificially divided into eastern and western parts that would become the capitals of two separate states.

When the General Assembly adopted the Palestinian observer state upgrade resolution, it put its weight clearly on the side of the Palestinians’ unilateral position on the borders issue.  It also endorsed the Palestinians’ claim to “East Jerusalem,” which in reality is nothing more than a geographical designation of the portion of the city of Jerusalem that Jordan illegally seized and annexed as a result of its illegal war aimed at destroying the new state of Israel in 1948. It is a complete distortion of international law to claim that the Palestinians are rightful heirs to the old portion of Jerusalem with its holy sites, which Jordan illegally seized in the first place and then proceeded to desecrate.

Israel responded legitimately to the General Assembly’s interference in the direct negotiations process by affirming its inherent right to expand housing within existing Jewish residential communities in Jerusalem and to begin longer term planning for possible residential development in an area contiguous with Jerusalem. There is no basis under international law to support the claim that Jews cannot live wherever they choose in and around Jerusalem and build the housing they need in order to do so.  Yet the international community was outraged, as evidenced in the condemnations on December 19th by the UN Secretary General and all members of the Security Council except the United States.

Meanwhile, the critics of building more housing for Israeli residents in their own city look the other way as Hamas threatens Israel with extinction while re-arming and Hezbollah has amassed at least 50,000 deadly missiles in Lebanon with likely access to Syria’s chemical and germ weapons of mass destruction.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/the-united-nations-year-end-message-to-israel/

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

Time’s Embarrassing ‘Person of the Year’

by Tom Blumer


 

There was a time, so to speak, and it wasn’t that long ago, when there was much anticipation and a great deal of debate over who might be named and who should be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. This year, the relative disinterest is stunning. And why not? The publication’s selection of Barack Obama, though arguably correct, set a new and embarrassing low in utterly vacuous justification.

A half-century ago, Time was a highly respected weekly newsmagazine which, though it clearly tilted to the left, was known for its strong journalism and institutional integrity. Those days are long gone.

The magazine reports circulation of roughly 3.4 million, basically flat since 2007 but about 18 percent below where it spent the 15 previous years. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown by over 20 percent. The level-off of the past five years isn’t due to anything Time has done, but is instead a by-product of the self-immolation seen at Newsweek, its principal competitor. Things are so bad at Newsweek that its owners recently decided to terminate the print edition when 2012 ends.

Time claims “readership” 20 million. Sure. We’re really supposed to believe each copy of the magazine is read by an average of six people. I certainly don’t. The better indication of the weekly yawns the magazine induces in the public is its newsstand sales, which during the second half of 2010 amounted to a paltry 79,000. Each issue is typically so thin you wonder why anyone bothers to publish it, let alone read it.

Those who think that Time might be making up for lost circulation and ad revenue on the web should know that for all its supposedly well-crafted and surely costly content, its total web traffic is only about half that of the usually one-page Drudge Report. Perhaps that explains why Drudge hadn’t even taken note of Time’s selection of Obama as of when this column was drafted.

Or it may simply be that Drudge read — more likely, tried and failed to read — any one of the magazine’s tributes to Obama. Michael Scherer’s five-page love letter describing Obama’s supposed accomplishments and second-term ambitions could induce almost anyone to vomit. If that didn’t get to you, Richard Stengel’s pathetic wrap-up to his tribute would: “For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year.” But to get to either Scherer’s or Stengel’s pieces, most readers would have had to get past the 2012 Person of the Year home page, which describes Obama’s great year thusly: “In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union.”

In an even slightly tolerable establishment media environment, other journalists would be laughing Time into well-deserved oblivion for trotting out such obvious nonsense about Obama’s desire for a “more perfect union.” But we all know that won’t happen.

Barack Obama showed absolutely no interest in a “more perfect union” during the presidential campaign. Never has an incumbent president premised his electoral success so completely on turning Americans against each other and treating his opponents as agents of evil.

To Obama and his apparatchiks, Mitt Romney wasn’t just a guy who disagreed with the President about how to grow an economy. The former Massachusetts governor and highly successful businessperson, who in fact helped build several highly successful companies while creating thousands of jobs, was really a guy who heartlessly threw workers to the wolves and stood by while their spouses got cancer and died. To serve this and other twisted narratives, Obama and his campaign didn’t merely shade the truth; they lied so shamelessly and so often that it became literally impossible to keep up with the accumulated mendacity. That, and not the drivel about a “more perfect union,” is why one could argue that Obama really was 2012′s Person of the Year.

Obama and his campaign’s assertions and tactics never would have succeeded without a pliant press firmly in their corner. To name just three of the most obvious examples of journalistic malfeasance:

• They falsely portrayed the economy, which is in reality in the midst of the worst “recovery” since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal brought about eight years of misery during the 1930s, as being on the verge of a solid recovery while virtually ignoring the ongoing pain and suffering of the unprecedented millions of long-term unemployed and under-employed.

• They minimized the frightening build-up of trillions of dollars in debt our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn will have to repay.

• They ignored the horrors of Operation Fast and Furious and the negligence which led to the death of America’s ambassador and three others in Benghazi.

If Obama is Person of the Year, it’s only logical, based on their conduct, that the press should receive a related award as Enablers of the Year.

Tom Blumer

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/times-embarrassing-person-of-the-year/

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

Islamist Intolerance in Egypt goes Beyond the New Constitution

by Rick Moran



Excellent article in The Telegraph by Richard Spencer who relates the story of an Egyptian man accused of disrespecting the prophet and who got three months in jail where guards urged inmates to beat him.


The Islamist takeover in Egypt goes beyond the new constitution and reflects a changing society where intolerance and cruelty are rising:

"Things are definitely worse than under the old regime," said Gamal Eid, of the Arabic Human Rights Initiative. "It is because of the Islamists having power - their sense that they have won."

That is only part of the story. Despite regular descriptions of ex-President Hosni Mubarak's old dictatorship as "secular", it too made Egypt a country constitutionally obliged to follow the "principles of Sharia". The laws it promulgated were wide enough and flexible enough to turn the Islamist tap on and off at will, according to the Mubarak's regime's short-term interests.
Blasphemy laws have been in place since 1937, and can be used to defend Christianity as well as Islam. But in practice the law was deployed regularly, both as a sop to the Muslim Brotherhood and also simply as a means of state repression.

Nevertheless, Mr Eid says there is a sense that religion can now be invoked to pursue any manner of grievances, in a way designed to emphasise a conservative vision of society.

In one case he has taken up, an 18-year-old girl from a provincial village was arrested for blasphemy after a row with her mother and brother, who had discovered she had met a boyfriend after going away to university.

It was the girl who had complained to the police first, alleging that her mother and brother had beaten her, but when questioned, the mother claimed the girl had cursed her and cursed her religion. That was enough for the police to switch the focus of their attention.

Sharia needs the legitimacy of law. But society must be willing to enforce its strictures - not just authorities but ordinary people too. These changes being wrought in Egypt will permanently alter the culture in ways that even devout Muslims may come to regret eventually.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/islamist_intolerance_in_egypt_goes_beyond_the_new_constitution.html

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

Why Won’t Obama Help Syrian Children and Women?

by Farid Ghadry


The New York Times highlighted, in a story, Assad‘s deliberate targeting of civilians through the use of cluster bombs (Where is the UN to condemn the Syrian regime?).

President Obama has known this fact for many months and yet, he still refuses to aid the Syrian civilian population with even the threat of a No Fly Zone. Tens of thousands of dead people and Obama does not miss a beat.

The use of cluster and phosphorous bombs against civilians is an act that calls for not only condemnation by the international community, but also for an active role in holding an international tribunal, even in absentia. against Assad and his immediate family for crimes against humanity. Threats have been made, but we do not see any movement on this front at all. If anything, Syria is paying the highest price, thanks to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for allowing Bachir of Sudan to walk a free man after killing 300,000 of his own people. To Arab ruling families, crime pays and that is why Assad keeps killing.

But why is Obama silent also on humanitarian aid? That’s not something American Presidents shy away from.

That’s the mystery question Obama feels no necessity to answer and feels he is above giving an answer. It’s not about US troops or US money anymore, yet Obama is MIA when it comes to helping the people of Syria.

My heart bleeds for our innocent children and helpless women.

Farid Ghadry

Source: http://ghadry.com/2012/12/why-obama-wont-help-syrian-children-and-women/

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

Palestinians Burning Their Bridges

by Jonathan Tobin


The Palestinians and their leadership have spent the last 20 years converting a strong Israeli majority in favor of the peace process into one that regards the whole concept as a dangerous fantasy. Twenty years ago the Israeli left romped in an election that relegated the Likud to minority status. In next month’s Knesset elections, not even the Labor party will spend time advocating for more concessions to the Palestinians in exchange for the hope of peace. Terrorism, the second intifada, the rise of Hamas and the conversion of Gaza into a terror state have effectively destroyed the Israeli left. But rather than react to this somber shift in the mood of their neighbors with an attempt to restart peace talks or to convince them that their goal is to end the conflict rather than to merely continue it on more advantageous terms, the Palestinians are planning on doubling down on their negative image.

As the Associated Press reports, the Palestinian Authority is planning on responding to the expected re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a wide range of activities designed to deepen rather than to ameliorate the antagonism and the cynicism with which the majority of Israelis view them. The PA plans to use its enhanced status at the UN to pursue specious charges of war crimes against Israelis in the International Criminal Court and advocating for sanctions and boycotts against the Jewish state. Worse than that, they are threatening not just to organize mass protests and confrontations with Israelis in the West Bank but to end all security cooperation between their armed forces and those of Israel, a measure that has helped keep relative peace in the region. While PA leader Mahmoud Abbas thinks this is a clever tactic designed to force President Obama to pressure Israel into giving in to more of his demands, the result will be nothing less than a third intifada that may help further isolate Israel but which will devastate the Palestinian economy and effectively end all hope for Israeli support for a two-state solution.


The Palestinians claim they have no choice but to resort to this strategy because the Israelis and even many of their foreign friends such as President Obama are ignoring them. But the reason why someone as sympathetic to the Palestinians and hostile to Israel’s government as Obama may have given up on the peace process is that four years of attempts to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction was never enough to convince the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Palestinian harassment of Israelis at the UN and in international forums will be annoying but won’t change a thing. But their decision to go back to intifada tactics is a guarantee of bloodshed. They may claim their protests will be peaceful, but rock throwing inevitably escalates to more violent tactics. It is also a given that Hamas and terrorist elements of Abbas’s Fatah that are tasked with competing with the Islamists in that category will be using the protests as cover for attacks. If the PA ends security cooperation, it will end the same way the second intifada did with PA “police” joining the terrorists in shooting at Israelis.

This will kill what little support remains inside Israel for compromise with the PA. But Abbas is not wrong to believe that it will make the Palestinians more rather than less popular in Europe, where any form of Israeli self-defense will be depicted as immoral no matter what the circumstances might be. A rising tide of anti-Semitism on the continent has made Israel particularly unpopular there. But while heightening Israel’s isolation may seem like a smart thing to do in Ramallah, it won’t do a thing to give the Palestinians a better life or to get them closer to peace or independence.

The only thing that will do that is for Abbas to do the one thing he has refused to do since he fled the talks with Netanyahu’s predecessor when he was offered a state. The best alternative to the status quo isn’t an intifada that will send the conflict into another death spiral of violence and futility. It is negotiations for a two-state solution that no Israeli government could spurn. By choosing to avoid that obvious path to peace, the Palestinians are burning their last bridges to the Israeli people. They shouldn’t expect the United States, even during a second Obama administration to dig them out of the hole they are placing themselves in.

Jonathan Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/12/21/palestinians-burning-their-bridges-third-intifada-israel/

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

It's Official: Muslim Population of Britain Doubles

by Douglas Murray

The strange thing about this "multicultural" society is that it can celebrate every imaginable culture except the one that allows all these cultures to co-exist alongside each other -- and all the time with enthusiasm from pundits and politicians, busy trying to pretend that this is all the most wonderful result imaginable.

The national census for England and Wales has come out, and, as usual, this once-a-decade event has had all of its most significant points overlooked.

By any measure, what it reveals is a country undergoing seismic change. Over the course of a decade up to four million more people have entered the country to live. In the capital, London, people identifying themselves as "white British" have for the first time become a minority. Perhaps most strikingly, the national Muslim population has doubled.

This last fact is perhaps one of the least considered of the census so far. Doubled? Surely not. This has to be the claim of Mark Steyn or some other demographics-obsessed nut. Well no, it isn't, and it is now official: between 2001 and 2011 the Muslim population of the UK rose from 1.5 million to 2.7 million. Otherwise put, that is an increase from 3 percent to 4.8 percent of the overall population.

If in 2001 the British Prime Minister had said to the British public that over the next decade he intended to double the number of Muslims in the country, he would most likely never have been returned to office. But of course he did not say that, any more than any of his successors or predecessors did.

For the last decade, every major politician has lied about this issue. While talking tough, about putting a cap on immigrant numbers, pushing people to assimilate and much else besides, they have done nearly nothing. For instance, ten years ago Home Secretary David Blunkett talked as tough as he thought he could, saying that migrants ought to learn English. His successor, Jacqui Smith, said the same thing five years later. As did immigration minister Phil Woolas a couple of years after that. Throughout the last decade the Labour government managed to do exactly what the Conservative and coalition governments before and after them have also managed to do: go as far as they thought they could in rhetoric while going wholly against what they said -- and the wishes of the country -- in actions.

Now we can see the fruits of their labors. The census reveals that three million people are now living in households where no adult speaks English as their primary language. As Labour's Sadiq Khan has admitted, local councils have spent their money on translation services rather than language classes, thus actually dissuading people from learning the language. The result is communities with inter-generational language barriers. There are parts of London where a quarter of the people are in the same situation. They have created a society where many people can speak about each other but many cannot actually speak to each other. And all the while politicians and pundits are busy trying to pretend that this is all the most wonderful result imaginable.

The London Evening Standard welcomed the news that white British-born people had become a minority in their own city, and ran a lead opinion piece accusing anybody unhappy about the doubling of the number of Muslims of being "Islamophobes." Since then, the comments have barely gotten more enlightened. The author Will Self declared on the BBC's leading talk show Question Time that people unhappy about the direction Britain is going on are "racists."

On the BBC's Newsnight I sat alongside two very nice, wealthy, successful immigrants who explained how positive the census results were for Britain, showing a "diverse" and "multicultural" society. I was the only one of the four panelists to point out that this wave of immigration might have any negative effects. And the only one to point out that the strange thing about a "multicultural" society of this kind is that it can celebrate every imaginable culture other than the one which allows all these cultures to co-exist alongside each other. In other words, it is the center which is the only thing not being celebrated, and the center that is being consciously eroded. Worst of all is that this happened in defiance of the repeatedly expressed views – as tested time and again in nationwide polls – of the general public.

Of course much of this simply confirms what the last Labour government appears to have intended. Three years ago, in the same Evening Standard, Andrew Neather, a former adviser to the Blair government, said that the huge upsurge in immigration over the last decade was in part due to a politically motivated attempt by Labour ministers radically to alter the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity.'"

He went on to say that Labour's relaxation of immigration controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration," but that ministers were nervous about discussing this move publicly because they feared that it would alienate their "core working class vote."

Well, they have certainly managed to do what they wanted. The Labour government, like the Conservative governments before them, and the coalition government since, did everything it could to ignore the real concerns expressed by the majority of the public. But with no decent mainstream party to vote for, the public kept voting for the same parties as usual. Fooled by the occasional speech saying that there was going to be some"'tough" new approach, the country got stuck in a debate that has been played on repeat. Yet all the time that debate-loop was going, the ground beneath us was changing unrecognizably.

Now, true to tradition, a couple of days after the census Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has come out to declare that immigrants to Britain should learn to speak English. It is exactly what all of his recent predecessors have also said, and it is exactly what none of them -- any more than he -- have done anything concrete about. Britain has been changed, and more change is on the way. Some of those changes might be good, and others are likely to be not as good. There are those who wanted this change to happen, and there are those who did not. The former now occasionally notice that their plan has caused troubles of which they were barely aware when they set out. The latter are reviled as backwards, racist, bigoted and out-of-touch with their new country. In reality they are simply people who once had a country and have seen it changed irrevocably, and simply hold on to a feeling of sadness that nobody thought about where this would take us, or whether we the people should ever be listened to in the little matter of our own future.

Douglas Murray

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3511/britain-muslim-population-doubles

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