Obama Administration Suppresses Talk of Muslim Persecutions

by Raymond Ibrahim

Why is the U.S. downplaying or denying attacks against Christians?
"What about the churches which were desecrated? Is this not blasphemy? Where is justice?" — Fr. James Channan OP, Director of The Peace Center, Lahore, Pakistan.
Members of the Islamic group al-Shabaab publicly beheaded the mother of two girls, ages 8 and 15, and her cousin after discovering they were Christians. The girls "were witnesses to the slaughter." — Somalia.
"Christian teaching is extremely harmful to the mental health of the people." — Kazakhstan.
Five years' imprisonment and up to $20,000 in fines for educators if they…speak to a Muslim child of religions other than Islam. — Brunei

Along with an especially jarring list of atrocities committed against Christian minorities throughout the Islamic world, March also saw some callous indifference or worse from the U.S. government.
President Barack Obama was criticized by human rights activists for not addressing the plight of Christians and other minorities during his talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia, where Christianity is actively banned.

According to the Washington-based International Christian Concern [ICC] advocacy group, Obama did not "publicly broach the subject of religious freedom" when he spoke on March 28 with Saudi King Abdullah, despite a letter from 70 members of Congress urging him to "address specific human rights reforms" both in public and in direct meetings with the king and other officials.

"This visit was an excellent opportunity for the president to speak up on an issue that affects millions of Saudi citizens and millions more foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia," said Todd Daniels, ICC's Middle East regional manager. He added that it was "remarkable that the president could stay completely silent about religious freedom," despite pressure from Congress "to publicly address the issue, as well as other human rights concerns, with King Abdullah..."

U.S. officials reportedly responded by saying that "Obama had not had time to raise concerns about the kingdom's human rights record."

Separately, after the United States Institute for Peace [USIP] brought together the governors of Nigeria's mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department, citing "administrative" problems, blocked the visa of the region's only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister. The USIP confirmed that all 19 northern governors were invited, but the organization did not respond to requests for comments on why it would hold talks without the region's only Christian governor.

According to Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington, the Christian governor's "visa problems" are due to anti-Christian bias in the U.S. government: "The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram. It also claims that Christians discriminate against Muslims in Plateau, which is one of the few Christian majority states in the north. After [Jang, the Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who [sic] institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems… The question remains—why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?"

March's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: During pro-Muslim Brotherhood riots, a young Coptic woman named Mary was murdered—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to Brotherhood rioters. According to an eyewitness who discussed the entire event on the Egyptian program 90 Minutes, Mary Sameh George was parking by the church to deliver medicine to an elderly woman: "Once they saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rear view mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked."

Nigeria: A Muslim father allegedly slaughtered or had someone else slaughter his daughter with a machete, wounding a pastor and four others in the attack, because she had earlier converted to Christianity. According to police reports, "the suspect allegedly sneaked into the church premises and inflicted machete cuts on the four persons," which seriously wounded them and killed his daughter. Before that, the father had threatened his daughter to return to Islam or else, and she had taken refuge in the church. Police did not make clear if it was the father or an accomplice who committed the assault.

Separately, Muslim Fulani herdsmen launched another night raid into a Christian majority region. They massacred over 150 people, including a pastor, his wife and children; around 200 homes were torched. A surviving eyewitness said there were about 40 attackers, armed with knives, guns and other unidentifiable equipment. They came in the night, set fire to the homes, and burned dozens of Christians alive: "Those that tried to escape were butchered or gun down."

Pakistan: "A young Christian girl was killed by the Pakistani Taliban in the northern region of Pakistan," reported Agenzia Fide: "The girl had spent a few months on the run and in hiding with her cousin, a Muslim who converted to Christianity a few years ago. Since the conversion, the man is considered an 'apostate' and since then he has been the target of the Taliban. In past days, some militants discovered where the two were hiding: the girl in the escape was reached by a bullet and was killed, while the man managed to escape."

Somalia: Members of the militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, publicly beheaded a mother of two girls and her cousin after discovering they were Christians. According to local sources, the Islamists "called residents to the town center to witness the executions of the 41-year-old mother, Sadia Ali Omar, and her 35-year-old cousin, Osman Mohamoud Moge." Before slaughtering the two women, an al-Shabaab member announced, "We know these two people are Christians who recently came back from Kenya—we want to wipe out any underground Christian living inside of mujahidin [jihadi] area." The two daughters of one of the women, ages 8 and 15, "were witness to the slaughter, sources said, with the younger girl screaming and shouting for someone to save her mother. A friend helped the girls, whose names are withheld, to relocate to another area." She said, "We are afraid that the al-Shabaab might continue monitoring these two children and eventually kill them just like their mother."

Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: After countless death sentences were handed out to convicted Muslim Brotherhood members, their supporters protested and rioted in the streets. According to Spero News, "Violence spilled over from demonstrations in the Cairo suburb of Ain Shams when Muslim protesters attacked a Coptic Orthodox Christian church on March 28. Four people were killed in the attack on the church... Among the dead are a 25-year-old journalist and a Coptic Christian worshipper. When Egyptian security forces intervened, violence spread throughout the surrounding neighborhood. Muslim radicals are frequently whipped up into frenzy by their religious leaders on Fridays when they gather for prayer."

Kenya: During Sunday worship service, two heavily-armed gunmen entered the Joy in Jesus Church in Mombasa—a region which according to authorities has a mosque with ties to the Somali Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab. The gunmen "sprayed the congregation with bullets, killing at least seven Christians and leaving several others in critical condition," including the assistant pastor, according to the Morning Star News. The newspaper continues: "As the attackers fled Joy in Jesus Church, a box holding 26 bullets dropped outside the church" - an act indicating that they intended even more carnage. According to one church leader, "We, as the church, feel that what happened is a retaliation for the attack [by police] that took place in Masjid Musa Mosque recently. When the Muslims are attacked, there is a false generalization that the Christians are the ones doing it. We as the church became a scapegoat for the recent attack on the mosque." (This logic is similar to the barrage of church attacks the Coptic Christians of Egypt suffered after the Muslim Brotherhood and former president Morsi were ousted during the June 30 revolution.

Pakistan: One day after Christians placed a cross on a partially-constructed church that was being built on a fellow Christian's land, a Muslim mob "damaged the building and the land by ploughing the ground with the help of a tractor" and "desecrated" the cross according to the Express Tribune. The chairman of the Human Liberation Commission Pakistan added that "the Christian community was not protected in Pakistan and that they face discrimination at every level." Discussing this incident, Agenzia Fides reported that "when a large group of Islamic extremists saw the Christian symbol [the cross] they arrived unexpectedly with bulldozers and started demolishing the building. ... the perpetrators were not arrested, thanks to the political clout they have. Christians in the neighborhood who have asked for protection to civil authorities, on the other hand have received threats and have to abandon the idea of the project to build a church."

Uganda: In the predominantly Muslim districts of the Christian-majority nation, "Islamic extremists burned down two church buildings of the Free Church of Christ in February and the home of a church leader" in March, as reported by the Morning Star News. Bishop James Kinyewa, 47, said: "While I was preaching, I heard loud noise, people saying, 'Fire! Fire!' coming from nearby neighbors." He went on to say that he found "rowdy Muslim youths with clubs and machetes" who prevented him and others from trying to put out the fire from his house. "They were shouting, 'Allahu Akbar' [Allah is greater]." he said. "Now the same militant group is hunting for my life. My family and I are now hiding ourselves, homeless and waiting for God's intervention." Everything inside the two razed church buildings, which served 240 people, was destroyed. "My church members have no place to worship," the bishop said.

Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

Brunei: A new penal code in the Muslim-majority nation threatens school principals and schoolteachers with five years' imprisonment and up to $20,000 in fines if they teach or speak to a Muslim child of religions other than Islam. (Future punishments may include amputation and execution.) According to the new law, based on Sharia, or Islamic law, it is a crime "to persuade, influence, incite, encourage a child with non- Islamic teaching." It is also a crime to "expose the child to any ceremony or act of worship which is not Islamic or allow the child to participate in activities for the benefit of other religions." The new law is of especial concern to private Christian schools, which Muslim students also attend.

Iran: Vahid Hakkani, a Christian man who was imprisoned and sentenced to 44 months in jail, after being found guilty of "attending a house-church, spreading Christianity, having contact with foreign [Christian] ministries" and "disrupting national security," began a hunger strike in prison to protest the rejection of his conditional release appeal by the Revolutionary Court, despite concerns for his health. Far from rethinking his sentence, according to his family, "prison authorities will transfer him to solitary confinement because he refuses to stop his hunger strike."

Separately, eight more Christians were detained, blindfolded, and interrogated by security forces for their "Christian activities," said rights activists. Some members of the group had their personal items, including cell phones, confiscated.

Kazakhstan: Christian preaching is "extremely harmful to mental health of the people": such was the ruling of a law court which led to the sentencing of a Christian pastor, Bakhytzhan Kashkumayev, to four years in prison. According to Agenzia Fides, "the [67-year-old] Pastor, who is responsible for the Grace Church in the Kazak capital Astana was found guilty of 'causing serious mental disorder' to a presumed victim Lyazzat Almenova. The Pastor will also have to pay a heavy fine ... for the 'moral damage' inflicted." The pastor's lawyer said that this is one of the "strangest cases he has ever come across, in terms of legality."

Pakistan: Sawan Masih, accused of blaspheming, has been sentenced to death at a hearing held in his prison cell, "out of fears that Masih might be attacked on his way to court." In March 2013, after Masih, a Christian, was accused of maligning the prophet of Islam, he was arrested by police. Even after his arrest, thousands of Muslims attacked Christian colonies, and burned churches and homes. Christians who protested were attacked by the police. To this day, not one of the thousands of rampaging Muslims has been convicted.

Separately, two other Christians, a paralyzed, sickly man and his wife, also accused of "blasphemy via sms"—that is, blaspheming via text messaging—remained in prison. According to "World Vision in Progress," the "judges of the High Court were initially convinced of what was said by the defense. But after pressure from Muslim religious leaders and the threats of extremists in Gojra, the judges denied bail, saying the case will be completed within two months. Radical Muslims had already threatened defense lawyers many times." Concerning the aforementioned Christian man sentenced to death, Fr. James Channan OP, Director of the Peace Center in Lahore, Pakistan, said the following: "It was a dispute over a matter concerning property. But the Muslim took advantage, finding a shortcut and accused Sawan of blasphemy. The whole world knows what happened next. Over 100 Christian homes of Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood in Lahore, were destroyed, 2 churches burned, Bibles desecrated and Crosses destroyed by an angry mob of more than 3,000 fanatics. The Christians of Joseph Colony still live in danger and fear that the mob might attack again at any time. ... After Sawan's death sentence, I ask myself: where is justice? Why is nothing done against these innocent Christians who have been attacked and have lost their possessions? What about the churches which were desecrated, Bibles burned and crosses destroyed? Is this not blasphemy?"

Uganda: When a 23-year-old Muslim woman converted to Christianity and a neighbor informed her father, "My father began beating me with clubs and blows, and I started screaming in great pain," she said. "While I was down on the floor bleeding, my father went looking for a knife to kill me. A neighbor named Saleem arrived and helped me escape." She found lodging from a nearby church and was taken to a hospital the next day.

Dhimmitude

Bangladesh: The home of a Catholic family was torched and destroyed during the night, and the culprits, according to residents, "could be Islamic fundamentalists." The family, two women and two children, managed to escape the blaze. According to one of the women, "Three days before the fire we saw some people unknown to us behind our house. They asked around if we were Christians. We feel that this attack was premeditated by them. We have lost in [sic] everything, including our Bible and the crucifix. All we have left are the cloth[e]s on our backs." A local priest adds: "This is an attack against the minority, and could be the hands of Islamic extremists. They are very powerful in the area."

Iraq: A Christian politician and member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement "denounced some officials of the Nineveh province after collecting documented evidence on the corrupt system where many properties—land and houses—belonging to Christians change hands in an illegal and secret manner, without any mandate on behalf of their legitimate owners." He also called on Iraqi Christians who fled their homeland to check the status of the property they left in Iraq and reaffirm their full rights to them.

Pakistan: A March report by Agenzia Fides offers a glimpse of the endemic rape and sexual abuse of Christian girls at the hands of Muslims: "The rape of girls belonging to religious minorities is a very common phenomenon in Pakistan. Christian women are a prime target, because the most vulnerable and defenseless. The majority of cases are not even reported to the police and, when it happens, the perpetrators of violence often go unpunished. The Christian community is still shocked by the recent case of Sumbal, a 5-year-old Christian girl, raped by a group of Muslim men on a street in Lahore. ... Another recent case ... concerns a Muslim man from Lahore who attempted to rape two Christian girls, sisters, aged 1 and 3. ... A few months ago another case aroused indignation: that of a 9-year-old Christian girl who suffered a gang rape by three young Muslims. Violence against children are [sic] committed with ease, explains a source of Fides that assists victims, especially because the perpetrators remain unpunished: injustice fuels the vicious cycle of violence. In 2004, a case that caused uproar around the world was the brutal rape of a-two-year old child Neha Munir, raped because her father, Munir Masih, a Christian, refused to convert to Islam."

Syria: Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic jihadis crossed into Syrian territory over the Turkish border and launched an attack on the Christian Armenian town of Kessab. Among other acts, "Snipers targeted the civilian population and launched mortar attacks on the town and the surrounding villages." Reportedly eighty people were killed. The jihadis later made a video touring the devastated town. No translation is needed, as the main phrase shouted throughout is Islam's triumphant war cry, "Allahu Akbar." About two-thousand Armenians were evacuated to neighboring areas. While occupying Kessab, the jihadi terrorists desecrated the town's three Armenian churches.

Jihadists pose in the deserted streets of the Christian Armenian town of Kessab, Syria, after conquering it and reportedly killing 80 people. (Image source: Salma Media Center YouTube video)

Turkey: Five men held in prison as suspects in the 2007 "Malatya Massacre"—when three Christian missionaries were tortured to death—were released. The five walked free from their high-security prison because their time in detention while still on trial exceeded new legal limits. "It is deeply disturbing to hear that the five men responsible for these brutal murders have been freed on bail, including three who were arrested at the crime scene," said Christian Solidarity Worldwide's chief executive Mervyn Thomas. "We urge the Turkish authorities to take every necessary measure to ensure they remain in the country to face justice, which has been exceedingly long in coming. This trial has been ongoing for six years with no indication of a conclusion in the near future. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims, to whom the release of these men has dealt yet another blow, no doubt leaving them with a deepening sense of uncertainty as to whether they will ever see justice for their loved ones. For their sakes, the Turkish authorities must ensure that justice is served as a matter of urgency."

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians is expanding. "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

It posits that such persecution is not random but systematic, and takes place in all languages ethnicities and locations.


Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013).

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4400/obama-muslim-persecutions

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

Surreal in the Middle East: Hamas's Human Shields

by Jim Waurishuk

Hamas terrorists continued firing rockets indiscriminately at Israel for the sixth day, and Israel continued its efforts to counter with its anti-missile Iron Dome shield, along with coordinated systematic surgical air strikes directed against select Hamas terrorist sites.  Yet most of the international media’s focus of the conflict continues to be one-sided, aimed at limited Palestinian civilian casualties and critical of Israel’s defense actions to protect it civilian population.  As with previous assaults and conflicts orchestrated by an array of regional Islamic terrorist groups against Israel, not much attention is being paid to the way Hamas uses its own Palestinian citizens as human shields, or its deliberate and intentioned strikes on Israeli civilian neighborhoods and population centers.

Hamas sees the use of human shields as a win-win, since if the tactic deters an Israeli response, its fighters and weapons will be safe, and if Israel does respond, the civilian casualties can be internationally exploited for propaganda purposes.  Despite this doctrine and logic, few in the mainstream media find it necessary to be critical and report on Hamas’s efforts both to encourage Palestinians to unknowingly serve as human shields and to directly and deliberately target Israeli areas of population – many of which, by the way, consist of  Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

In order to better understand the rationale for Hamas’s intent and purpose, it is necessary to look at the covenant and charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement, otherwise known as HAMAS, which was issued on August 18, 1988.  This is an extremist fundamentalist Islamic organization operating in the territories under Israeli control.  As a reminder, the U.S. State Department placed Hamas on its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 1997, on par with al-Qaeda, which was added to the list two years later.

Hamas’ Covenant is a comprehensive manifesto comprising 36 separate articles, all of which promote the basic HAMAS goal of murdering Jews and those who support and ally with Israel, and with the ultimate goal of destroying the  State of  Israel  through  jihad (Islamic holy war). 

Historically, by way of its charter, we should also be aware that Hamas is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.  That, of course, will not be what you hear from left-of-center media and sympathetic foreign policy experts and organizations, who are busily drafting and refining their narratives on Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to portray them as moderate political groups who have renounced violence and are really nothing for us to be very concerned about.  Unfortunately, the stubborn fact is that Hamas is the most prominent of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branches, whose operations long predated Hamas and brought Hamas, aka the Islamic Resistance Movement, into being.  Hamas is identified as a “wing of the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to the Hamas Charter, which also calls for the “murder” of Jews, the “obliteration” of Israel, and Israel's replacement with an Islamist theocracy otherwise known as a caliphate.

With regard to current conflict between Hamas and Israel, in contrast to that of Hamas’s actions, are those of the Israel Defense Forces, or the IDF – whose modus operandi and rules of engagement are to issue advanced warnings to Palestinians living in and around Hamas missile launcher locations and sites as well as Hamas command, control, logistics, and operations facilities and centers throughout in Gaza strip.  Israel’s warnings come by way of direct phone calls to residents and building occupants; radio, TV, and internet alerts identifying exact addresses and time-frames of defensive strikes; and information disseminated regarding the type of Hamas target in a respective building, such as “a Hamas battalion mortar team on the 2^nd floor balcony of your apartment."

But having decided to escalate another round of violence by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, Hamas is still hoping to use the presence of its own Palestinian civilians living and in some cases placed intentionally around legitimate military targets, with the specific intent to be used as propaganda weapons against the Jewish state.

As Israel has stepped up its efforts to spare civilians casualties, even as it seeks pinpoint tactics to silence the Hamas terrorist fire, Hamas has also increased its efforts to ensure that as many inhabitants of Gaza as possible are hurt in the fighting.  To do so, Hamas leaders have called on Palestinians, particularly women and children, to ignore Israel’s pre-attack warnings to evacuate their homes and neighborhoods.  Hamas leaders and even Islamic clerics have gone as far as to tell their people not to listen to the Israeli announcements, because the Israelis are after all lying.

In fact, the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry said in an on-air TV announcement to Gaza residents this week that Israeli’s warning messages "are designed to weaken our resolve and to sow panic and fear among us, in light of the failures of our enemies. We call on all Gaza residents not to pay attention to these messages and not to leave their homes."

Another example of this was noted this past Tuesday, when Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV in Gaza aired the group’s spokesperson, Sami Abu Zuhri, urging the population of the Gaza strip to refuse to heed warnings and to use their bodies to shield Hamas facilities:

[T]his attests to the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood.  The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against occupation.  Also, this policy reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes.

The cynicism of this tactic is transparent, but even though Hamas is making no secret of its intentions, international media news reports about the conflict remain centered on the “disproportionate” use of force used by Israel and the contrast between Palestinian and Israeli casualty figures.

It is true that Hamas’s weaponry is no match for the sophisticated Israeli missile defense system known as the Iron Dome, created to shield civilians from rocket fire from Gaza.  It is a defensive system; it does not kill people, whether friend or foe.  Nevertheless, the media continue to remind us that Palestinians have no Iron Dome system to protect them against Israeli counter-strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad missile and rocket sites.  Thus, it is assumed that the war between Israel and Hamas is not a fair fight.  In this manner, Hamas, cheered on by the so-called “moderate” Palestinians like Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Israel of “genocide” in its attacks on Gaza, reinforces the idea that it is a “David” fighting the Jewish “Goliath.”

The notion that Israel faces challenges in what is a classic case of asymmetrical warfare is a given in this conflict.  The Palestinians have perpetuated this war by continually refusing to make peace and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.  They are also attempting to manipulate Western public opinion into believing their version of the conflict, in which they falsely portray Israel as a “colonial” power occupying another people’s land rather than admitting that the dispute is part of an existential struggle aimed at wiping out the one Jewish state on the planet.  The lopsided casualty figures bolster these specious talking points.

In the modern information war, Hamas’s human shield tactics have given its leaders a winning strategy, even if the results are a tragedy for its own people.  But the problem with those who draw superficial conclusions from the daily casualty figures and body counts is not just that they don’t understand what Hamas is doing to inflict as much pain and suffering on their own people as they can.  It’s that these numbers obscure the basic point of the conflict.  Hamas is not seeking to end the occupation of Gaza or the West Bank, or to force Israel to draw its borders differently.  Hamas’s purpose is to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as it can – it is Hamas’s goal and its purpose for existence.  When they speak of “resistance” it is not an effort to push back against particular Israeli policies, but a refusal to accept the permanence of the return of the Jews to their land.

The misleading blood feud narrative adopted by Hamas's supporters and sympathizers in response to the carnage may seem even-handed.  But there should be no mistake about the fact that Hamas’s human shields of Gaza are merely a ploy aimed at diverting the world from the truth about their intentions.


Jim Waurishuk is a retired USAF colonel and a 30-years career senior intelligence and political-military affairs officer, with expertise in strategic intelligence, international strategic studies and policy, and asymmetric warfare.  He served as deputy director for intelligence for U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) during the peak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the War on Terrorism fr0m 2004-2007.  He is a former White House National Security Council staffer and former distinguished senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/surreal_in_the_middle_east_hamass_human_shields.html

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

Israel Is the Victim of Mohammed’s War Against the Jews

by Daniel Greenfield


 

Hamas isn’t shooting rockets at the Jews because of persecution, isolation or occupation. The Sunni Islamic terrorist group is doing it for the same reason that Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other in Iraq and Syria. And why its Muslim Brotherhood core group is killing Christians in Egypt.

To understand why, let’s step into a time machine and go back to the spring of 632. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius is engaged in the first of a series of wars with Mohammed’s maddened followers. England is divided into seven quarreling kingdoms. Across the water, the Merovingians are killing each other in ways that would give George R.R. Martin nightmares. Meanwhile in a more civilized part of the world, China’s fading Sui Dynasty fields an army of over a million men in a failed effort to invade Korea.

Back in Medina, Mohammed had come down with the sniffles. He had a fever and a headache and there wasn’t any Tylenol around for miles. Mohammed hadn’t been a very good man and he made a very bad patient. Upon being told that he had pleurisy, he claimed that only people possessed by Satan came down with that disease so he couldn’t possibly have it and instead blamed the Jews for poisoning him.

His own homemade cures, such as bathing in seven skins of water from seven different wells, didn’t help. But before he died, he managed to make the Middle East an even worse place by ordering the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians.

“Two deens (religions) shall not co-exist in the Arabian Peninsula,” Mohammed declared. “If I live, if Allah wills, I will expel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula.”
There could be only one.

Mohammed didn’t live, but that didn’t matter. His bigotry had long ago been coded into the theological DNA of Islam. Islam isn’t built on matters of the spirit, but the sword. Its theological proof is in the Muslim supremacist subjugation of non-Muslims.

The Bible begins with the creation of the universe. The Koran starts off with curses and threats aimed at non-Muslims and Muslims who aren’t Muslim enough. There is no greater contrast between the sublime and the tawdry than G-d creating the universe and Allah yelling at his followers like a frustrated fishwife with a bad temper.

Over a thousand years later, Muslims are still killing each other, along with Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and countless others, to prove that their flavor of Islam is right and everyone else’s religion is wrong.

Theological consensus can only be achieved by the suicide bomber, the sniper, the Sarin nerve gas shell and the death squad. If England and France have come a long way since then, the Middle East hasn’t.  Mohammed’s way or the highway is still the rule of the road. And Mohammed’s way is whatever the man with the most guns and Korans says it is.

Destroying Israel has nothing to do with the so-called plight of the so-called Palestinians. They weren’t an issue in June 632. It was about oppressing and killing Jews then. It’s about the same thing now.

Israel’s critics start the historical record in 1948 while insisting that before that everyone lived in peace. They zoom in on a country that could be dropped into New Jersey without inconveniencing Jersey Shore surfers while ignoring all the Muslims around it killing each other and any surviving non-Muslims that still haven’t run away.

The truth about what is happening in Israel becomes obvious if you pull back to take in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. And after viewing those three bloody battlefields, we can go on a little tour of the region.

In Algeria, Muslims are protesting the possible reopening of a synagogue because it will “Judaize” the country. Most of the synagogues have already been seized and turned into mosques.

In 1994, the Armed Islamic Group vowed to eliminate Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims whom it accused of “colonizing” Algeria. That same year it met with Bin Laden. Its plot to crash an Air France jet on Christmas Eve into the Eiffel Tower was said to have inspired September 11.

Over 1,300 years after Mohammed called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians, Muslims were still carrying out his will.

In Yemen, a handful of Jews still live in a ghetto. Between a third and two-thirds had already died in the 17^th century after they were ethnically cleansed due to yet another deathbed decree from an Islamic leader. The dying Imam Isma’il based this on Mohammed’s original ethnic cleansing Hadith from 632.

Events like these were and are the normal course of life for Jews under the shadow of Mohammed.

Hamas is not firing rockets at Jews because of some tricky bit of territory that can be swapped at the negotiating table. Its charter, like the Koran, begins by cursing the Jews. It declares that “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it”.

Not Palestine, Islam. Not the 1948 territories, but everything.  Article Seven envisions an end times genocide that will entirely eliminate the Jews. “The Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

The source of that is not some distressed refugee from Gaza. It’s another ancient Islamic Hadith.

Ignorance of history is the greatest ally of Islamic terror.

The rockets falling on Jews are only the latest phase in an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing by Muslim colonists against the indigenous peoples of the Middle East. It’s a campaign that long predates any territorial debates about the West Bank and Gaza.

The same is true of September 11 and 7/7, both of which emerged from an Islamic theocratic worldview rooted in the seventh century that predates the United States and the United Kingdom. The causes of Islamic terror are not rooted in the recent present, but the ancient past.

And it is this past and its burden of bigotry that we are fighting.

The world has changed a great deal since June 632, but the Middle East hasn’t. The armies of Islamic raiders have traded camels and horses for pickup trucks. They recite their boasts over Twitter and share their grisly trophies using smartphones. But the fundamental attitude that drives their violence has been preserved in museum quality terror.

Israel’s critics are at war with context. They want to talk about Gaza, not Hamas. They don’t want to talk about the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood which Hamas is part of. They don’t want to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood’s invasion of Israel in 1948. They don’t want to address the Muslim Brotherhood’s declaration that “Jews are the historic enemies of Muslims”. Or its Secretary General’s statement that “Every Jew is a Zionist… the Zionist question is but a Jewish question with all that the word entails.”

“Would they (Muslims) fight the Jews as he had fought them and eject them from the Holy Land… as their ancestors had ejected them from the Arab Peninsula?”Secretary General Salih Ashmawi asked.

Once again everything returned to Mohammed’s original sin of ethnic cleansing.

Instead of pretending that a few territorial concessions by Jews to the regional Sunni Muslim majority will change anything, we have to address the political and religious territories of 632. Unless Muslims reject that ugly act of ethnic cleansing, their cycle of supremacist violence against Jews and Christians will continue.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/israel-is-the-victim-of-mohammeds-war-against-the-jews/

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

Israel Weighs Ground Operation as Cease-fire Pressure Grows

by Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, Lilach Shoval, Yoni Hirsch and Israel Hayom Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells ministers: No green light yet for ground move in Gaza • Secretary of State John Kerry offers U.S. help to reach cease-fire • IDF: Since start of operation, Hamas has not been able to do anything it planned to do.

Israeli troops wait near the Gaza border, Sunday | Photo credit: Ziv Koren

Israeli troops have gathered on the Gaza border, awaiting an order to go in, but it is still unclear if that order will come. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet and told ministers that he was not yet giving the green light for a ground operation.

Netanyahu also updated ministers on the continuing cease-fire efforts, which have yet to bear fruit. He also spoke on Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who told Netanyahu that the U.S. supported Israel's right to defend itself. The secretary of state strongly criticized Hamas, but also offered U.S. help in reaching a cease-fire.

International pressure for a cease-fire has begun to build. On Sunday, French President Francois Hollande called for a cease-fire, citing an "increase in the number of Palestinian civilian victims."

The Lebanese Al Mayadeen news outlet reported on Sunday that Israeli conditions for a cease-fire included the removal of rockets from Gaza, backed by international guarantees. Israel declined to comment on the report. Hamas responded to it angrily. A senior Hamas official said, "These are illusions Israel is trying to market as part of a fraudulent campaign regarding truce talks and a cease-fire."

Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Salah said, "The proposal for a mutual cease-fire is not acceptable to us. The fire will only stop when the siege of Gaza is lifted and Israeli attacks on Gaza halt."

Nevertheless, Arab media outlets reported that a "reasonable possibility" existed that a cease-fire agreement, currently being drafted in Egypt and Qatar, would be reached within the next few days. The deal would be based on the cease-fire understandings that brought Operation Pillar of Defense to an end in November 2012. The reports quoted Hamas deputy political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzouk, who wrote on Facebook, "Hamas is not a warmonger, it is interested in calm." But, officially, Hamas said it was refusing to discuss various cease-fire proposals.

Meanwhile, the IDF is continuing its preparations for a possible ground operation in Gaza. Overall, 42,000 reservists have been called up so far (the cabinet approved a maximum call-up of 48,000 reservists). A senior IDF officer said the potential that Israel would carry out a ground offensive has increased pressure on Hamas.

On Sunday morning, Israel dropped leaflets in northern Gaza, mainly in the Beit Lahiya neighborhood, calling on residents to leave their homes to avoid being harmed in Israeli strikes. According to Palestinian reports, more than 4,000 residents of the area heeded the warning and went to UNRWA facilities. Hamas called on residents to return to their homes and not surrender to "the Zionist occupier." Hours after the leaflets were distributed, the IAF carried out a number of strikes in vacated areas in northern Gaza. Beit Lahiya is the source of much rocket fire against Israel.

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said Sunday, "After six days [of Operation Protective Edge], we can say that Hamas has not been able to do anything it planned to do."

Since the start of Operation Protective Edge, around 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza. Around 750 have hit Israel and some 200 have been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. The IDF has struck around 1,500 terrorist targets in Gaza.

Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, Lilach Shoval, Yoni Hirsch and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=18767

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Read of the day: Israel as the Last Man Standing

by Thomas Lifson

The Middle East, always complex, is descending into a form of chaos that seems baffling. Bringing order to the complexity is Daniel P. Goldman, aka Spengler, writing in Tablet Magazine.  A former Wall Street numbers guy, Goldman brings together a lot of demographic data expressed in useful charts, to lay out his case that time is on Israel’s side, and that the Muslims of the Middle East are engaged in a long-term battle, which he likens to the 30 Years War that devastated Europe in the 17^th century:

 The region has seen nothing like it since the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Perpetual war has turned into a snowball that accumulates people and resources as it rolls downhill and strips the ground bare of sustenance. Those who are left shiver in tents in refugee camps, and their young men go off to the war. There is nothing new about this way of waging war; it was invented in the West during the Thirty Years War by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, and it caused the death of nearly half the population of Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. (snip)
The mess in the Middle East brings to mind the machinations around Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years War between 1627 and 1635, when France’s Cardinal Richelieu paid Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus to intervene on the Protestant side in order to weaken France’s Catholic rival Austria. At different times, Protestant Saxony and Catholic Bavaria allied with France, Austria, and each other, respectively. France and Sweden began as allies, briefly became enemies, and then were allies again. Looming over this snake-pit of religious, dynastic, and national rivalries was the figure of Albrecht von Wallenstein, the Austrian generalissimo who twice saved the Empire from defeat at the hands of the Protestants. Wallenstein, commanding a polyglot mercenary army with no national or religious loyalty, played both sides, and Austria had him murdered in 1634.
There is more than coincidence to the parallels between the Middle East today and 17th-century Europe. Iran’s intervention into Syria’s civil conflict inaugurated a new kind of war in the region, the sort that Richelieu practiced in the 1620s. Iran’s war objectives are not national or territorial in the usual sense; rather, the objective is the war itself, that is, the uprooting and destruction of potentially hostile populations.

As the Muslims self-destruct, Israel meanwhile prospers, and perhaps more importantly, is having babies at a rate higher than the local Arabs, whose fertility is declining.

The entire long piece deserves to be read. But here are his conclusions:

The historical homeland of the Jewish people [he means the West Bank, aka Judea and Samaria] will pass into Israeli sovereignty not because the national-religious will it to be so, or because an Israeli government seeks territorial aggrandizement, but because Israel will be the last man standing in the region, the only state able to govern Judea and Samaria, and the only military force capable of securing its borders. It will happen without fanfare, de facto rather than de jure, at some moment in the not-too-distant future when the foreign ministries of the West are locked in crisis session over Iraq or Syria. And it will happen with the tacit support of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Israeli authority will replace the feckless regime of the Palestine Authority in order to maintain public order and ensure that the electricity works, and the roads are secure, and that bands of jihadist marauders or Shiite terrorists do not massacre entire villages; this action will elicit the reflex condemnation from bored and dispirited Western diplomats. The realization of the Zionist dream will then be consummated not with a bang, but a whimper; the bangs will be much louder elsewhere.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/read_of_the_day_israel_as_the_last_man_standing.html

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

A Spy Scandal and Scandalous Hypocrisy

by Editorial Staff


Germany’s announcement last week that it uncovered United States spying activity in the German defense establishment raises deep concerns as to whether our intelligence agencies are in need of a major overhaul.

In just about every aspect of the spying business, even the basics, U.S. intelligence has been failing miserably of late.

Rule number one of spying is to not get caught, especially when snooping on friends. And if that rule is broken, it’s absolutely imperative to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Not doing so puts an alliance at risk.

In the span of approximately a year, U.S. intelligence agencies were caught spying on Germany not only once — but twice. First, the NSA scandal broke, which revealed that the U.S. was snooping on Chancellor Merkel’s Nokia cell phone. Now, in the latest blunder, Germany alleges that two German security agents were working for American intelligence, handing over top-secret documents. In retaliation for the espionage, Germany expelled the CIA station chief.

U.S. intelligence has also faltered badly in upholding one of the cardinal principles of intelligence agencies, which is enforcing the “need to know” rule. Spy agencies are supposed to compartmentalize classified information so that if someone decides to blab all he knows to an enemy, the damage will be isolated and contained so that only a slice of a covert operation will be compromised. No individual should have more information than he needs to carry out an intelligence operation.

That this rule has been flagrantly breached first became apparent with the Wikileaks scandal, in which it was discovered that a private in the U.S. military, Bradley Manning, had access to thousands of diplomatic cables on extremely sensitive topics from around the globe. The revelation that a low-level intelligence analyst was given access to such a broad range of classified information should have sent alarm bells ringing throughout the U.S. intelligence community and triggered a thorough review of who has access to what. Instead, we found out that Eric Snowden, a relatively low-level NSA contractor, had similar unwarranted entrée to a treasure trove of classified intelligence. He knew how the U.S. was monitoring al-Qaida, how it was tapping the phones of foreign leaders, and that it was tracking Chinese military investments.

These fiascos, while damaging, might be tolerated if U.S. intelligence was getting the job done in its mandate to gather intelligence — but it is failing there as well. A lack of good intelligence led to the death of an American ambassador and four other Americans in Benghazi. The CIA has been doubly blindsided over events in Syria. First, they were not aware of the groundswell of support for the Syrian rebels. Once the rebellion was underway, and the rebels were capturing major cities, U.S. intelligence services were predicting Assad’s downfall as imminent. In 2012, the CIA was predicting that the Assad regime was doomed. Then it appeared the rebels were in retreat. Wrong again.

A more recent intelligence failure has been during the last several months, where we have seen a new terrorist whirlwind, known as ISIS, coming out of Syria and into Iraq. ISIS has taken control of several strategic cities in Iraq, routing the Iraqi army, taking over former U.S. military bases and weapons, and threatening Baghdad. In a near-panic to stem this scourge from taking over the capital, the president has sent several hundred advisers to Iraq. It’s bewildering that our intelligence agencies were clueless regarding the impotence of the Iraqi army and to the maniacal ferocity of ISIS.

What also emerges from the latest intelligence disaster in Germany is the U.S. government’s hypocrisy about how friends who spy on friends expect to be treated. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to the eavesdropping operation on Merkel, but has said that the U.S. would never agree to sign an agreement that would renounce spying on its allies; that it was standard operating procedure.

Such a stance reveals the double standard that Israel and Jonathan Pollard have had to endure. While the U.S. remains unapologetic in its espionage activities against its allies, it has berated Israel and punished Pollard excessively for his spying on behalf of an ally. In the 30 years since the Pollard case broke, Israel hasn’t been implicated in any espionage cases on American soil. Pollard has been imprisoned for more than 28 years for passing classified information to Israel about Saddam Hussein’s WMD program — information that the U.S. had promised to provide but never did.

The Obama administration is embarrassed over the latest intelligence failure in Germany. They should be equally embarrassed over their hypocritical treatment of Israel and Pollard.

Editorial Staff

Source: http://hamodia.com/2014/07/13/spy-scandal-scandalous-hypocrisy/

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

Palestinian Officials Openly Fault Hamas

by IPT News


Israel's Operation Protective Edge is about to enter its second week, yet Hamas officials show no sign of backing down despite the utter failure of their campaign to rain rockets on Israeli population centers.

The terrorist group controlling Gaza reportedly rejected a ceasefire Egypt tried to broker and fired at least 85 more rockets into Israel Monday.

While American Islamists have remained mute about Hamas' instigating the conflict, and about Hamas officials openly urging Palestinians to run into buildings about to be targeted to be human shields, they have no qualms hyping the resulting casualty figures to criticize Israel.

Zahra Billoo, the top Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) official in the San Francisco area, likened spraying civilian communities with rocket fire to a rape victim's right to fight off an attacker.

Billoo's attitude might draw an argument from a surprising source – Palestinian Authority leadership.

Last week, PA President Mahmoud Abbas wondered what Hamas was "trying to achieve" given that Palestinians "are the losing side, and every minute there are more and more unnecessary deaths. I don't like trading in Palestinian blood."

For that, Hamas officials blasted Abbas for being "a criminal" and "a Likud member."
Abbas' criticism was echoed in remarks made by his representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council last Wednesday on PA television.

Ibrahim Khreisheh warned Palestinians not to try to rush to the International Criminal Court for relief. Palestinian behavior, he said, would look worse in comparison with Israel. "The missiles that are now being launched against Israel – each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets," he said in video translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

He prefaced his remarks by saying he's not a politician, so he can speak without concern for his popularity. He mentioned Hamas officials encouraging people to be human shields, staying in structures after Israel warned occupants to get out before the bombs fall. "In such a case if someone is killed, the law considers that a mistake rather than intentional killing, because [the Israelis] followed the legal procedures. As for the missiles launched from our side, we never warn anyone about where these missiles are about to fall, or about the operations we carry out."

Hamas' rhetoric leads directly to higher Palestinian casualties, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on "Fox News Sunday." "Here's the difference between us. We're using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles."

In a bit of public relations confounding to the sane, Sami Abu Zuhri, the same Hamas spokesman who encouraged people to be human shields, appeared on Hamas' Al Aqsa television Sunday to say his group was not leading Palestinians to destruction. "We are leading them to death," he said.

That, somehow, was offered as a good thing for Palestinians. Surreal.


IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4456/palestinian-officials-openly-fault-hamas

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

Israeli PLO Sympathizer: “We Thought They Wanted a State…. But it Turns Out They Want to Destroy Israel.

by Daniel Greenfield




Shlomo Avineri is an expert on Marx and Engels. He was a fervent advocate of negotiating with the PLO and ended up heading Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Israeli conservatives were not at all happy with that.

When the Rabin government appointed Avineri to the post of Director-General of the Foreign Ministry in 1975, this was harshly criticized by the Likud opposition because of Avineri’s support for negotiations with the PLO (a Likud MK even compared him to “Lord Haw-Haw”, the British traitor who had broadcast from Berlin during World War II and was later executed).

Avineri’s awakening process was really slow. But now approaching 80, he’s sort of figured a few things out. Like that negotiating with the PLO was never going to work.

“We were incredibly stupid…. We thought they wanted a state, and a two-state solution, but it turns out that they want to destroy Israel, because they cannot/will not accept any form of Jewish national self-determination.”
The initiators of Oslo and the process’ supporters saw the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a conflict between two national movements, and believed – as I believed – that in direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO, a solution could be found to the territorial and strategic issues that are the source of the dispute between the two movements. It was not simple to persuade Israelis – and even the Labor party – that there was a national movement on the other side, and that although it had terrorist aspects, at heart it is entitled to fulfill its independent national self-definition, just like Zionism. The viewpoints of Golda Meir on the subject (“there is no Palestinian nation”) have not been forgotten, and the fact that the initiators of Oslo managed to overcome this tradition of denial, to which even the Labor party was a partner, was an accomplishment.
But the basis of this concept had a mistake. All of those who supported the Oslo process believed that we were talking about a dispute between two national movements, and that the other side felt the same way.
We were mistaken.
The Palestinian side does not believe that we are talking about a dispute between two national movements: It believes that we are talking about a dispute between one national movement – the Palestinian – and a colonial imperialistic entity that will eventually die off. Therefore, the parallel that appears in the Palestinian textbooks is Algeria. It isn’t the Israeli presence on the West Bank that is Algeria, but rather the entire Israel is Algeria, and the Israelis will disappear one way or the other, just like the French settlers were expelled from Algeria.

This is the reason why the Palestinian title for the two-state solution is different than the Israeli version. The Israeli stance talks about “two states for two peoples” but in the Palestinian version the phrase “for two peoples” does not appear. It only talks about “two states.” If someone thinks that this is just poor phrasing, he should ask his Palestinian counterpart to express an opinion about the “two states for two peoples” version and he will sooner or later get the answer that there is no Jewish people. This is also the reason why the Palestinians refused the version suggested by [John] Kerry “an agreement between two nation states.”
The truth is – and every Oslo supporter must recognize it – that in the Palestinian narrative, the Jews are not a people or a nation, but only a religious group, and therefore they are not entitled to a state. This is also the reason for the across-the-board and uncompromising opposition of the Palestinian side to recognizing the State of Israel as the State of the Jewish People. Even those who believe that Benjamin Netanyahu raised the topic only to complicate the negotiations, must contend with the fact that the Palestinian refusal to contend with the topic derives from the simple reason that the Palestinians believe that there is no Jewish people.
The source of the dispute is not borders, settlements or even Jerusalem. And of course, this is connected to the Palestinian refusal to waive the principle of the right of return. There are good reasons to criticize the Netanyahu government’s behavior during US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to revive the negotiations, but to ignore these deep-seeded views constitutes a lack of intellectual honesty.

This is what I’ve been writing for a bit. So have most sensible conservatives. The trouble is that he’s done his damage already. It’s nice that some of his generation of leftists have woken up, but the damage is being done by a whole new generation that absorbed and acted on their ideas.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/israeli-plo-sympathizer-we-thought-they-wanted-a-state-but-it-turns-out-they-want-to-destroy-israel/

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Hamas' Collapsing Structure

by Dr. Reuven Berko

Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the northern chapter of the Islamic Movement in Israel, habitually makes inflammatory remarks under the claim that "the Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger" and that the Jews intend to demolish the structure and establish the Third Temple in its stead. Turns out, the rockets Hamas fired at Jerusalem could have totally annihilated the mosque had they not been intercepted by us -- the chosen people, who, according to the Quran, are the rightful inheritors of this blessed land. 

As Israel named its latest military operation "Protective Edge," the Hamas' mujahadeen have dubbed their latest bout of aggression "Solid Structure," which is borrowed directly from Islam. The expression was taken from the Quranic chapter "Al-Saff" ("The Ranks"), Verse 4, which says, "Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks as if they were a solid structure." When Hamas' leaders eventually emerge from their lairs and witness the destruction, they will see that their operation had no structure, nor was it solid. 

While the homes of Hamas leaders are being demolished right over their heads, their command posts and rocket launch pads collapsing one after another, and as the citizens of Gaza surreptitiously curse them, it is becoming more and more clear that most Arab nations want no part in the Islamic "solid structure" Hamas envisaged. Arab countries (excluding Qatar) have finally grasped the danger inherent in the sundry gangs of Islamic terrorism, which include Hamas. This understanding is also shared by Western countries, which have realized by now that Hamas murderers (killing in the name of Allah) are a part of the Islamic terror puzzle that is currently threatening the entire world. 

Armed with firearms and rockets, "the mercenaries of Allah" work toward killing innocent citizens, guided by macabre interpretations of their liturgy. Take, for example, the recent rocket barrage aimed at Tel Aviv. It was called "Al-Asef Al-Maakul," or "Devoured Chaff," which is borrowed from the chapter "Al-Fil" ("The Elephant"). In a matter of speaking, just as God sent swarms of birds down on the enemies of Mecca, elephant riders, pelting them with stones of baked clay and rendering them as devoured chaff, so too would be the fate of Tel Aviv's residents.

It's incredible how Hamas' leaders and even some Arab MKs have justified the rocket volleys fired by Hamas at Israeli citizens as a "legitimate form of resistance to the occupation" while simultaneously demanding that Israel, which is busy defending itself in light of the blatant attempts to slaughter its citizenry, stand trial at the International Criminal Court for war crimes at The Hague. 

This duplicitous conduct is not another sophisticated Arab Islamic ruse -- it is retrograde, twisted behavior, in complete denial of reality. Devoid of self-criticism, it constantly casts blame on the other while blindly believing its own lies. It is a wild phenomenon that has bedeviled psychologists, historians, Middle East scholars, criminologists and sociologists. 

Palestinian terrorists are also bound by frustrating Islamic paradigms, which lead to faulty judgment and fantastical thinking. According to the chapter "Al-Hashr" ("The Exile"), Verse 14, they truly believe that we are a meek, cowardly and self-absorbed nation defending itself from behind fortified walls. They have actually been convinced that the Jews do not constitute a nation, but a religious group, which, suffering God's wrath, has been destined to rove the Earth aimlessly and without a homeland until its ultimate conversion to Islam. Their propaganda machine recites such verses so incessantly that when "inferiors" like us end up pulverizing their people, it undermines their sanity. 

Our enemies function as a herd in which no individuals bears much significance. According to their ways, God helps the patient ones, but anybody who doesn't take courage in patience is an infidel. It was only appropriate that the assertive, argumentative, immediate-gratification-seeking Jews would ultimately understand that patience is the name of the game. We must continue to strike Hamas, patiently, and resist a land incursion into Gaza. 

So they'll think we're a bunch of cowards. So what?

Dr. Reuven Berko

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9125

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

Don't Put Terrorists on Trial

by Daniel Pipes



The Obama administration has brought an accused Libyan terrorist named Ahmed Abu Khattala to Washington for trial. His saga reveals how the government views the Islamist threat, and it's discouraging. Fortunately, a much better alternative exists.

Ahmed Abu Khattala.

Abu Khattala stands accused of taking part in the murder of an ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi in September 2012. After an achingly slow investigation, during which time the suspect lived in the open and defiantly gave media interviews, the American military seized him on June 15. After being transported by sea and air to Washington, D.C., Abu Khattala was jailed, provided with a defense attorney, Michelle Peterson, indicted, arraigned, and, after listening to an Arabic translation of the proceedings, pleaded not guilty to a single charge of conspiracy and requested a halal diet. He potentially faces life in prison.

An artist's rendering of Abu Khattala, wearing a headphone, next to his attorney Michelle Peterson, being sworn in by Judge John Facciola at his hearing on June 28, 2014 in the federal U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

This scenario presents two problems. First, Abu Khattala enjoys the full panoply of protections offered by the U.S. legal system (he actually was read his Miranda rights, meaning his right to stay silent and to consult with a lawyer), making conviction uncertain. As the New York Times explains, proving the charges against him will be "particularly challenging" because of the circumstances of the attacks, which took place in the midst of a civil war and in a country brimming with hostility to the United States, where concerns about security meant that U.S. law investigators had to wait for weeks to go to the crime scenes to collect evidence, and the prosecution depends on testimony from Libyan witnesses brought over to the United States who may well falter under cross-examination.

Secondly, what good does a conviction bring? If all goes well, a minor operative will be taken out of commission, leaving the ideological sources, the funding apparatus, the command and control structure, and the terrorist network untouched. A years-long, cumbersome, expensive, and draining effort will prove a point, not damage the enemy. If Abu Khattala is convicted, administration officials can crow but Americans will be only marginally safer.

This futility recalls the 1990s, when terrorist attacks were routinely treated as criminal incidents and handled in courts of law, rather than as warfare to be dealt with using military force. In response, I complained in 1998 that the U.S. government saw terrorist violence "not as the ideological war it is, but as a sequence of discrete criminal incidents," a mistaken approach that turns the U.S. military "into a sort of global police force and requires it to have an unrealistically high level of certainty before it can go into action," requiring it to collect evidence of the sort that can stand up in a U.S. court of justice.

George W. Bush discarded the criminal paradigm when he dramatically declared a "war against terrorism" in the evening of 9/11. While that is a clumsy phrase (how can one make war on a tactic?), what became known as the Bush Doctrine had the great benefit of declaring war – as opposed to a police action – on those attacking Americans. But now, 13 years later and in part because of the success of this war, the Obama administration has reverted to the pre-9/11 approach of apprehending criminals.

George W. Bush addressing the nation and declaring a "war against terrorism" on 9/11.

Instead of this, the U.S. response to terrorist attacks on Americans citizens should be immediate and lethal. As I wrote 16 years ago, "anyone who harms Americans should know that retribution will be certain and nasty. … When reasonable evidence points to Middle Eastern terrorists having harmed Americans, U.S. military force should be deployed. If the perpetrator is not precisely known, then punish those who are known to harbor terrorists. Go after governments and organizations that support terrorism, not just individuals."

Skip the fine-grain analysis of who carried out the attack. Security depends not on complex court procedures, but on a record of U.S. deterrence established by "years of terrible retribution against anyone who so much as harms a single American citizen." Enemies must expect to face the full fury of the United States when they harm its citizens, thereby dissuading them from committing such attacks in future.

American taxpayers turn over $3 trillion a year to the federal government and in return expect to be protected from foreign threats. This holds doubly for citizens who venture abroad on behalf of their country, such as the four embassy personnel killed in Benghazi.

Crimes require rules of evidence, Miranda rights, lawyers, judges and juries. Warfare requires full-throated retaliation by the American military.


Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/14591/terrorist-trials

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