The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
Political
science types have a word for every happening. One is the Overton
Window. Like lots of these terms, it is not too scientific, but it well
describes things observed every day.
For
instance, the idea that an eight-year-old boy decides to be a girl,
because he feels like it, and is then medicated with hormone therapy to
look as close to a girl as science enables was once a preposterous
idea. Then it was possible, then probable, and now, voilà! A boy is
now a girl, and if you use the wrong pronoun, you lose your job!
Meet the Overton Window: that period of time when something seemingly quite impossible becomes mainstream.
This is a game two can play.
Coup.
Say it: "This is not just election fraud, it is a coup."
Say
it, and it will start to sink in. As it does, at least for you, your
Overton Window opens up. The impossibility that the election of the
president of the United States of America can be overthrown by
preprogrammed, organized election fraud — that a likely landslide was
turned into a loss — happened. You saw it.
That window is about to open up for our nation.
What's a coup feel like?
We
are all accustomed to seeing tanks around a white palace and palm
trees. Lots of them. The streets are quiet and the means of
communication controlled by the new junta types. There are corpulent
generals with white uniforms and lots of medals. That seems to be our
picture.
This
week may be the first time a sophisticated modern society had a
coup. There, I said it again. Not so startling after you read it a
couple of times.
A
modern-day coup, where Big Media, Big Tech, a political party, and
likely the intelligence agencies gather to change vote counts, both
electronically and physically, has much the same result without the
tanks and fat generals in white uniforms. The first result is that
everyone, or about everyone knows it was a coup. They don't use that
word as it does have an edge to it.
Some stay silent in collaboration. Some do not want to be singled out. Some protest. Many benefit. Most just acquiesce.
We'll see.
Coups
sound really cool to the people who instigate them — in this case,
those noted above. They justify it in their end-justifies-the-means
minds and move on.
It
works in third-world countries because for them, there is no
tomorrow. The armed forces just mandate compliance, and life moves on.
In a sophisticated society like ours, that is a little stickier. Let's go there.
Overwhelming evidence has already come out about institutional voter fraud — for example, here and here.
You
will see many more math geeks showing that there was massive voter
fraud, and you will not see a single deeply researched math person
saying their math is wrong. That's important.
OK, you met Overton above. Meet Occam.
Occam's
razor is the name given to a critical thought shortcut, which dates
back to the Middle Ages, saying that when you are looking at a really
complicated problem, for which there are many causes, the simplest
explanation is likely to be the correct one.
Our
pal Occam describes how people come to reason through a
problem. Americans, particularly 71 million of them, see all the
complicated stuff about voter fraud yet see that it isn't that
complicated at all. Votes were stolen from Trump by many means. They
read articles like the two above.
Applying
critical thought, let's bring in another old, dead white guy,
Bayes. Bayes was an 18th-century reverend who had a thing or two to say
about how people reason. Bayes's Theorem measured something like this:
if someone knows something with incomplete information, when more
information comes in, this happens. "This" is how new info impacts the person's conclusion.
Well,
folks, let's just sit down at the poker table with Occam, Overton, and
Bayes. Together they conclude that as more information appears about
organized election fraud, people's conclusions are likely to move from
"election anecdotes" to "election fraud" to "WTF, this was a coup!"
Some of us are already there.
Why is this important?
As
long as we continue to screw around, acting as though we are dealing
with voter fraud rather than an organized coup, we are playing their
game — the fat generals in Big Media and the coup-instigators. When we
start calling this event what it is, a coup, we impact everyone's
Overton Window.
Want to have great fun? Just watch the Chris Wallace and media types go wild when we say "coup."
When
one is in the middle of a historic event, one does not know it. Seems
like just another day. In hindsight, wow, I was there! I saw our
country fake the vote and put an early dementia patient in the
president-elect column.
The question for us all is how this story ends. We were there. We were at the axis of history.
For once, the sudden upsurge in terror attacks appears to have prompted European leaders to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in their ability to protect Europe against Islamist-inspired acts of terrorism.
"I expect an end to the
misconceived tolerance, and for all the nations of Europe to finally
realise how dangerous the ideology of political Islam is for our freedom
and the European way of life." — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Die Welt, November 3, 2020.
"We see very clearly that terrorist actions can actually be led
by some people who use migratory flows to threaten our territory." —
French President Emmanuel Macron, Politico, November 5, 2020.
For once, the sudden upsurge in terror attacks appears to have
prompted European leaders to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in
their ability to protect Europe against Islamist-inspired acts of
terrorism.
The
belated realisation by Europe's leaders about the inadequacies of their
ability to defend the continent from further acts of Islamist-inspired
terrorism is as welcome as it is long overdue. Pictured: Austrian
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (left) and French President Emmanuel Macron
attend a summit addressing an EU-wide response to recent terror attacks.
(Photo by Michel Euler/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
The latest wave of Islamist-inspired terror attacks to strike Europe
has yet again exposed lamentable flaws in the ability of European
security agencies to provide adequate protection for their citizens.
In all three instances -- the attacks in Paris, Nice and Vienna -- it
has emerged that those held responsible for carrying out the attacks
had links to global jihadi networks that went undetected by European
security officials.
Moreover, the ease with which some of those involved in the attacks
were able to travel freely across the continent has once more raised
concerns about Europe's lax border controls as defined by the European
Union's Schengen Agreement, and the ability of radicalised jihadis to
exploit them.
In the most recent attack in the Austrian capital Vienna on November
2, it transpires that the 20-year-old gunman who killed four people and
wounded 22 others before he was himself shot dead by police had travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July to buy ammunition.
This was after the terrorist responsible for the atrocity, Kujtim
Fejzulai, had been released early from prison in December after serving
two-thirds of a 22-month term for trying to join ISIS in Syria.
And while the Austrian interior ministry still contends that the
gunman acted alone, there are suspicions that he may have been in
contact with extremists in other parts of Austria and neighbouring
Switzerland. And even though Fejzulai was on a watch list by Austria's
BVT counter-terrorism agency, this did not prevent him from travelling
to Slovakia to purchase ammunition.
Similar questions about the effectiveness of Europe's security forces
have been raised by the attack in Nice, France, where it now transpires
that the terrorist suspected of carrying out the murders had arrived by
train from Italy, which he had reached from Tunisia after being picked up by a humanitarian organisation in the Mediterranean.
Reports have also surfaced in France that the Chechen terrorist
responsible for murdering schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who was decapitated
outside his school in a Paris suburb last month after showing his class
two cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and discussing freedom of expression, had been in contact with an Islamist fighter in Syria prior to carrying out the attack.
France's Le Parisien newspaper has reported that, prior to the
murder, Abdullakh Anzorov made contact with an as yet unidentified
Russian-speaking jihadist in Syria, who was located through an IP
address that had been traced back to Idlib, a jihadist holdout in
north-western Syria.
A French television station also reported that the killer, who
arrived in France aged six with his Chechen parents and had been granted
asylum and a residence permit until 2030, had first established contact with the jihadist in September this year via Instagram.
In an audio message in Russian, Anzorov said after the killing he had
"avenged the prophet", whom Paty had portrayed "in an insulting way".
Amid references to the Qur'an and Islamic State, he added: "Brothers,
pray that Allah accepts me as a martyr."
French security officials have subsequently embarked on a nationwide
round-up of suspected Muslim extremists, with French President Emmanuel
Macron ordering the closure
of a Paris mosque said to have links with the Palestinian terror group
Hamas. Mr Macron said French security officials believed that the Cheikh
Yassine Collective, named after a slain Hamas leader, was to be
dissolved because the French authorities had information that the group
was "directly implicated" in the attack.
For once, the sudden upsurge in terror attacks appears to have
prompted European leaders to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in
their ability to protect Europe against Islamist-inspired acts of
terrorism.
In Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called on Europe
to form a common front in what he calls a "war on Islamism", and says
he will push for such an alliance against political Islam when European
Leaders meet for a summit later this month.
Speaking to the German newspaper Die Welt, Mr Kurz commented:
"I expect an end to the misconceived tolerance, and for
all the nations of Europe to finally realise how dangerous the ideology
of political Islam is for our freedom and the European way of life."
In France, Mr Macron has responded to the attacks on French soil by calling
for a "deep overhaul" of the Schengen agreement. Appearing alongside
his Europe and Interior Ministers this week, the French President
committed France to double the number of guards at its national borders
from 2,400 to 4,800 due to the rampant terror threat. "We see very
clearly that terrorist actions can actually be led by some people who
use migratory flows to threaten our territory," he said.
The belated realisation by Europe's leaders about the inadequacies of
their ability to defend the continent from further acts of
Islamist-inspired terrorism is as welcome as it is long overdue. For,
without tighter controls and monitoring, security officials will
struggle to prevent further acts of Islamist-inspired carnage from
taking place on the streets of Europe.
Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
A preview of what’s to come if Biden-Harris take over.
We are already getting an early taste of what Biden-Harris’s America
will look like. Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa thugs harassed,
threatened and assaulted pro-Trump demonstrators, who had peaceably
assembled on Saturday in the nation’s capital for what was billed as the
Million MAGA March. The radical leftists are preparing to own the
streets, forcing law abiding Americans to either kowtow to their demands
or get out of the way.
What a difference four years make. When Donald Trump was elected
president in 2016, 'Not my president' marches took place across the
country. The marches were loud, angry and unruly. Conservatives who
witnessed the marches undoubtedly did not like what they were hearing
and seeing, but they did not try to bully the protesters. They respected
the First Amendment rights of those upset by the election’s outcome so
long as the protesters expressed their views peacefully, which they not
always did.
Fast forward to 2020 when conservatives backing President Trump have
cause to be upset about what many believe to have been a stolen
election. Trump supporters organized protests, culminating on Saturday
when thousands gathered in Washington D.C. for the Million MAGA March.
President Trump drove past and waved at the demonstrators at one point.
The Trump supporters sang patriotic songs and exercised their First
Amendment right to peaceably assemble and voice their objections
regarding how the presidential election was handled. But the radical
leftists could not care less about the First Amendment except when it
helps them. The BLM and Antifa radicals violently confronted the
pro-Trump demonstrators as they were wrapping up the MAGA gathering and
preparing to leave.
The Daily Caller’s Jorge Ventura tweeted,
“Multiple Trump supporters assaulted by pro-BLM supporters in
Washington D.C. One of the supporters assaulted was brutally knocked
out. The scene is chaotic right now #MillionMAGAMarch.”
Andy Ngô is a journalist who has reported extensively on Antifa’s
violence. He was roughed up by Antifa thugs last year in Portland. Ngô tweeted about the rioters’ unprovoked attacks on Saturday, including an attack on an elderly couple. Ngô wrote in one of his tweets,
accompanied by a video of the incident, that a “BLM rioter rushes in
and punches a woman in the back of the head as she’s walking away.”
A video posted on Twitter by NBC reporter Shomari Stone
shows fireworks being hurled in the direction of Trump supporters while
they were dining outside at a restaurant following the MAGA Million
March.
The D.C. police not only failed to intervene and protect the peaceful demonstrators from the rioters. As reported by Breitbart,
the D. C. police blocked a safer route that the Trump supporters were
trying to use to exit the area, forcing them “to walk through a gauntlet
of BLM, Antifa, and black bloc assailants in order to leave the area.”
The Trump-hating mainstream media downplayed or distorted what happened. CNN,
for example, ran a story entitled “MAGA March brings together Trump
voters, far-right leaders and counterprotesters, ending in some
clashes.” CNN’s main takeaway was that “Saturday's rally illustrates the
thinning of a line between the mainstream right and far-right
extremists.” CNN referred to smaller groups of “counter demonstrators”
who had gathered “in support of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral
victory.” There was not a word said about Antifa or BLM specifically,
not to mention their role in starting the “clashes.” We can assume from
CNN’s reporting that CNN believes Antifa and BLM agitators should be
lumped in with the rest of the cadre of Biden supporters.
Ellison Barber, a so-called “reporter” for MSNBC, tried to make herself the victim when she accused Trump supporters of “chasing us as we walk further back,”
after some protesters began chanting “fake news” in her presence. Then
she editorialized: “This gives you a sense of the crowd here. They have
no intention of accepting the election results. And as you can tell from
the jeering right now, not fans of ours, either.” No to worry. MSNBC,
like CNN, has plenty of fans on the far left.
Andy Ngo warned that the “wanton violence in the nation’s capital”
on Saturday “demonstrates that BLM-antifa is not going away. They’re
emboldened. They are an existential threat to the Constitution &
liberal democracy.”
The existential threat is coming not only from the wanton violence
against law-abiding Americans that BLM and Antifa perpetrate. BLM is
most likely going to be given the opportunity by the Biden-Harris
administration to destroy our constitutional republic from within.
Patrisse Cullors,
one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, sent a letter
recently to Biden and Harris claiming in effect to speak for all black
people who voted for Biden. She requested a meeting to "discuss the
expectations that we have for your administration and the commitments
that must be made to Black people." According to Cullors, “The best way
to ensure that you remedy past missteps and work towards a more just
future for Black people—and by extension all people—is to take your
direction from Black grassroots organizers that have been engaged in
this work for decades, with a legacy that spans back to the first
arrival of enslaved Africans. We look forward to meeting with you at
your convenience to begin the immediate work of Black liberation."
What is the ideology that Cullors would bring with her to a seat at
the table in Biden’s White House? “We are trained Marxists,” she has
said.
What is the BLM “agenda” that Cullors wants “to be prioritized?” It includes defunding the police. According to Cullors,
the “fight for black liberation” includes closing all federal prisons
and immigration detention centers and dismantling Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. She supports reparations
for what she describes as "the historical pains and damage caused by
European settler colonialism", including "financial restitution, land
redistribution, political self-determination, culturally relevant
education programs, language recuperation, and the right to return (or
repatriation)." And, by the way, Cullors hates Israel and links the
Palestinians' victimhood narrative with the suffering of black people in
the United States.
Assuming that Joe Biden succumbs to the pressure exerted by BLM and
other progressive leftist movements that claim he is indebted to them
for his victory, the left will have an inside track to enact their
radical agenda. They will also have the BLM and Antifa shock troops to
enforce their agenda and squelch any serious opposition.
One thing seems certain - the money is not being used for the purpose it was intended.
In May 2020, Palestinian Authority Chairman,
Mahmoud Abbas, declared that the PA and the PLO no longer see themselves
bound by the agreements signed with Israel. Implementing this decision,
the PA has refused to accept tax monies that Israel collects and
transfers to the PA. These funds provide for half of the PA’s annual
budget. The unilateral decision to refuse the tax income has once again
plunged the PA into a self-made financial crisis. In order to deal with
the ramifications of the decision, the PA decided to cut the salaries of
all of its civil servants by 50%.
Since the beginning of 2020,
the European Union has provided the PA with hundreds of millions of euro
in aid. Of that aid, over 90 million Euro was given to the PA,
designated, according to EU press statements, for the payment of
salaries to “civil servants mostly in the health and education sector in
the West Bank.”
In November 2019, European Member of Parliament
Carmen Avram submitted written questions to the European Commission
seeking to ensure that the EU aid to the PA was not being used to fund
the payment of salaries to terrorists. The March 2020 response of the
commission explained the mechanism by which the EU ostensibly tracks the
final beneficiaries of the EU aid saying:
“The
Palestinian Authority provides a list of eligible beneficiaries which
is checked by EU-contracted independent auditors against a list of
eligibility criteria as well as a second check of individuals considered
to be associated with any terrorist organisations or activities. No
payments are made to any beneficiaries falling within these categories.”
According to this answer, the EU thinks it knows exactly which civil servants are the recipients of the EU aid.
Since
the EU is providing a considerable amount of funding to these specific
civil servants, one would assume that their salaries have not been
affected by the PA decision to cut all salaries. But this does not
appear to be the case.
In October 2020, PA Prime Minister,
Muhammad Shtayyeh, met with the General Teachers’ Association who
demanded that the PA give the teachers beneficial treatment and be paid
their full salaries or at least at a higher rate. Shtayyeh rejected the
demand.
“[PA] Prime Minister Muhammad
Shtayyeh met with members of the General Teachers’ Association
yesterday, Thursday [Oct. 29, 2020], in his office in Ramallah,
discussed the financial situation with them, and listened to their
demands.
The association
demanded that the prime minister pay the teachers’ salaries in full or
at a higher rate than it is now, and that the banks not deduct the loan
payments from the salaries…
The
prime minister briefed the association on the general political
situation and the successive crises that the occupation is imposing on
our people and our cause, particularly the monetary crisis and its
consequences on the financial situation…
The prime minister explained that at the beginning of the coming week the salaries will be paid at a rate of 50%, and that the [PA] Monetary Authority has asked the banks not to deduct any [loan] payments. He
noted that in the coming months if the crisis does not end and the
salaries are not dealt with, the rate of the payments will be
increased.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 30, 2020]
The fact that all
PA employees have been affected by the PA decision to refuse the tax
income, including those who receive part of their salary directly from
the EU, should be cause for concern for the EU.
If it were the PA
alone funding these salaries, one would be able to understand a
decision, across the board, to cut all salaries due to the
self-inflicted financial constraints. But, this is not the case, since
the EU has contributed almost 360,000,000 shekels (90 million euro) to
paying the salaries of specific PA employees just since the beginning of
2020.
If the EU aid is specifically designated for the payment of
the salaries of the teachers, why are they not being paid the 50% of
their salaries that all the PA employees are receiving PLUS the additional proportional amount from the EU aid?
In
other words, the PA decision to cut all salaries, including those of
the EU paid teachers, proves the claim that the EU (and really all
foreign aid) to the PA is fungible and is susceptible to PA
manipulation.
To explain this, consider the following example.
Although on average the PA salaries to terrorist prisoners is
significantly higher than salaries to teachers, for this example let’s
assume the PA pays 100 teachers and 100 terrorists the same monthly
salary - 2,000 shekels. Accordingly, the cost for the PA of these
salaries would be 400,000 shekels per month. The PA only has income to
cover salaries of 300,000 shekels. The monthly shortfall, 100,000
shekels, is funded by the EU aid. Since the PA ostensibly does not use
the EU aid to fund the salaries to the terrorists, the PA must use its
own resources to do so. Of the PA’s own 300,000 shekels, 200,000 is paid
to the terrorists, while the salaries of the teachers are paid only
partially by the PA and partially by the EU.
During this period of
financial constraints, the PA has continued paying salaries to
terrorists. Since the EU aid to pay PA salaries has not gone down, but
the PA is paying less in monthly salaries to its legitimate employees,
the percentage of the EU aid that is now fungible is even higher than in
normal circumstances.
In addition, as exposed by Palestinian Media Watch,
the PA seems to have learnt that while the international community may
be hesitant to directly support the PA’s terror reward policy, it is
willing to fund salaries for PA civil servants. This understanding has
given rise to the new PA plan to employ ex-terrorists in the ranks of the PA’s security services
and in other PA positions created especially for them. Until now,
according to the head of the PA funded Commission for Prisoners and
Released prisoners 7,000 – 8,000 released terrorists who spent at least
10 years in prison, have been enjoying generous PA “salary payments”
while sitting at home doing nothing.
While the EU claims to have
vetted all the recipients of the EU aid, in reality the EU has no clue
who are the recipients of their funds. There is no system to which the
EU has access in which one could check if a specific PA employee has
ever been convicted of committing a terror offense. The only such system
exists in the Israeli Military Courts for Judea and Samaria and that
system is not accessible to the EU.
The inevitable conclusion
is that without the support of the EU, the PA would not be able to pay
salaries to both the PA civil servants, in particular teachers and
health workers, and continue paying salaries to terrorists. While the EU
would like to argue that its specific aid is not used by the PA to pay
financial rewards to terrorists, one would need to be willfully blind to
accept that argument. Based on this understanding, the only logical
conclusion is that the EU is a willing participant in the PA terror
reward policy.
Coming soon: an ideological Anchluss and silencing of the Austrian.
The German-language Austrian publication Kronen Zeitung
reported Tuesday that Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz flew to Paris
in order to “coordinate ‘on a European level’ with French President
Emmanuel Macron on the ‘fight against political Islam.’” This
coordination involved a video conference that included German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, European Union Council President Charles Michel,
European Commission President Angela von der Leyen, and Dutch Prime
Minister Mark Rutte. They all “announced that they would join forces and
reform the Schengen rules.” But like so many things, it all sounded
great until one started to examine the details.
“More far-reaching measures must be taken so that we can live safely
in Europe and defend our way of life,” said Kurz, and who could argue
with that? “We are in constant danger,” Kurz added, and pointed out that
the European Union was full of “ticking time bombs” that is, thousands
of “foreign fighters.” No argument there, either. But what did he and
his colleagues propose to do about it?
Initially it looked as if the Euro honchos were on the right track:
Macron “suggested implementing measures that have already been planned
and decided in the fight against political Islam, or accelerating their
implementation.”
These would include not only “against hate propaganda on the
Internet and a reform of the Schengen rules,” but also “the linking of
common databases so that the security services of the individual states
can work better together.” Macron declared: “It takes reforms to enjoy
our freedom and security.”
Why yes, Mr. Macron, yes it does. But does Europe have the courage
to implement the reforms that would genuinely protect Europeans from
further jihad massacres, such as immigration restrictions from jihadi
hotspots and strict enforcement of the principle of one law for all,
which would be a direct challenge to Sharia enclaves? None of that
appeared to be even on the table at this video conference.
The Kronen Zeitung reported some of the Austrian Chancellor’s
recommendations: “It is now very important to secure the EU's external
borders and to examine the financing of associations and institutions;
Kurz would like to fight above all the ideological basis behind the
terror.”
Good: the “ideological basis behind the terror” has for nearly two
decades now been ignored, denied, and obfuscated, while those who have
dared to point it out have been vilified, demonized, stigmatized,
marginalized, and silenced. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly
made it clear that this willful ignorance is still very much with us, as
she “declared that terrorism is not a conflict between Islam and
Christianity. ‘Every form of religious hatred is condemned,’ said
Merkel. In doing so, she wants to increasingly rely on a joint approach
with Islamic countries.”
Meanwhile, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “emphasized
that one now wants to make the major Internet platforms more
responsible. They are now to be obliged to process references to
dangerous content within an hour and to delete them as quickly as
possible.”
So while Kurz wants to “fight above all the ideological basis behind
the terror,” Merkel “declared that terrorism is not a conflict between
Islam and Christianity. ‘Every form of religious hatred is condemned.’”
That’s just wonderful, but in saying it, Merkel is making it clear
that she is not willing “to fight above all the ideological basis behind
the terror.” She is not even willing to admit what that ideological
basis is. So will she approve of Europe-wide measures that would
actually take on this ideology? Absolutely not.
In light of the undeniable fact that Germany and probably the rest
of the European Union will continue to deny and lie to themselves and
the world about the ideological basis behind jihad terrorism, Ursula von
der Leyen’s statement is nothing more than ominous. Given the European
Union’s stance on what constitutes terrorism, the “dangerous content”
that she wants quickly removed is much more likely to be “right-wing
extremism” than incitement to jihadist violence. But in the
long-established usage of the European Union, “right-wing extremism”
includes any honest discussion of the “ideological basis behind the
terror.” So that is what is most likely to be silenced, and silenced
quickly.
Thus the situation is most likely to be that these European leaders
started out fighting against “political Islam” and will end up enacting
measures that restrict any actual effective defense measures against
“political Islam.” These are the amusing little ironies that accompany
the death of a once-great civilization.
The Palestinian leadership faces a critical test: A durable peace with Israel with broad Arab backing is now possible, but only if the PA and the PLO cut their links with the Iranian regime, Islamist Turkey and their radical terror proxies and allied groups.
Al-Nahyan
after signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House in Washington,
DC, Sept, 15, 2020 (AFP/Saul Loeb) | Photo: AFP/Saul Loeb
The Sept. 15 signing at the White House of the Abraham Accords
between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel, followed by
Sudan's declaration of normalization with the Jewish state, reflects
tectonic shifts in Middle East geopolitics. These unprecedented
developments have collapsed the long-held orthodoxy in Western
diplomatic circles that Middle East peace first requires a resolution of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
For much of the past two decades, no Arab country or leader wanted to
be associated with the tainted term tatbi'a ("normalization") due to
its negative, even treasonous connotation. However, Arab leaders had
quietly indicated readiness for change. In August 2020, the watershed
event occurred; Arabs were no longer publicly reticent to endorse
relations with Israel and even boast of it.
Three Arab peace and normalization deals with Israel announced in a
period of eight weeks, and a projected five to 10 more near-term
agreements with other Arab states, suggest that Western powers
overlooked or underappreciated the rapidity of the changes in Arab
states' priorities, especially with regard to Iran and Turkey. Former US
Secretary of State John Kerry's unequivocal warning in 2016 that "there
will be no separate peace with Arab countries" is a good illustration
of this misreading of the Middle East political map.
Perhaps equally unexpected has been the Palestinian leadership's
wholesale denunciation of the Abraham Accords, unprecedented
delegitimization of its longtime Arab allies and financial donors and
pivot towards the radical, terror-sponsoring Iranian and Turkish
regimes. The current crisis in Palestinian-Arab relations points to
regional dangers for Middle East security, stability and peace. The
Iranian and Turkish regimes' incitement and threats against Arab, Israel
and Western leaders, including their attacks on French President
Emmanuel Macron, and their nominal justification of recent Islamist
terror attacks in Nice and Vienna, punctuate the problem.
A
billboard showing Saudi King Salman (center) with Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman (rigth) and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (AP/Amr Nabil)
This brief assesses how Palestinian radicalization undercuts Arab
normalization and undermines Middle East stability. It analyzes what
steps the Palestinian leadership needs to take to reconsider its radical
alliances and, instead, realign its interests with Arab states and
Israel to reach a compromise agreement and help secure the Middle East
threatened by Iranian and Turkish extremism and terror subversion.
Arab normalization undercuts PLO ideology, strategy, tactics
The US announcement on Oct. 22 of a peace and normalization agreement
between Sudan and Israel sent a third shock wave in eight weeks through
the decades-long relationship between the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and its political underwriter, the Arab League.
Sudan's public renouncement of its 70-year sponsorship of
international terrorism, that had included hosting Al-Qaeda's founder
Osama bin Laden, serving as a base for PLO terror operations and
providing Port Sudan as a transit hub for Iranian weapons headed for
Hamas in Gaza did not come as a surprise to the Palestinian leadership.
PLO and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had already absorbed
the "shock" of the UAE and Bahrain's agreement to normalize relations
with Israel in August. Nonetheless, The PLO described losing Sudan as a
"disaster."
The Palestinian leadership's use of the term karetha ("disaster") to
characterize Sudan's changing sides reflects the earthquake in Arab-PLO
relations. It had been 53 years ago, in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, in
the aftermath of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, that the Arab
League issued its resounding "Three Nos" to Israel – "no peace, no
recognition, no negotiations." The infamous Three Nos of August 1967
have transformed into Sudan, Bahrain and the UAE's "four yeses" in 2020;
yes to peace, yes to recognition, yes to negotiations and yes to
normalization.
It is the unprecedented Arab readiness to normalize relations with
Israel that has undermined the Palestinian leadership's ideology,
undercut its strategy, and short-circuited its negotiating tactics.
The PLO and its political and diplomatic handmaiden, the Palestinian
Authority, had nominally recognized and negotiated with Israel when PLO
founder and chairman Yasser Arafat signed the US-led and internationally
guaranteed Oslo I and II agreements in 1993 and 1995, respectively.
However, Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, had successfully
executed a strategy of "selective compliance" to Oslo. Arafat financed
terror attacks, while he and Abbas both employed political warfare,
incited to "jihad," issued payments to "martyrs," took unilateral
statehood moves at the United Nations, repeatedly petitioned the
International Criminal Court, sanctioned an international Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel
internationally, while leveraging up the PLO's negotiating position with
the international community.
This international PLO strategy has now been undermined and
dismantled by some of its former leading Arab sponsors. Moreover, the
PLO's ideological anchor has been uprooted. The Abraham Accords'
normalization of relations with Israel effectively canceled the formal
Arab League boycott and its half-century-old sanction of the PLO's 1968
Charter that called for the "Liberation of Palestine" from the river to
the sea, referring to Israel as a "racist," "colonialist" and
"illegitimate" implant in the Middle East. The PLO charter has quietly
remained in place in its entirety post-Oslo. However, now the PLO
Charter that had anchored its political warfare campaigns domestically
against the "Zionist enemy," dawlat al-ihtilal – literally, "the state
of occupation" – has lost Arab regional legitimacy. For the first time,
Arab countries recognized Israel unconditionally. Their exchanges now
include culture, diplomats, politics, arts, music, high tech, civil
society, tourism and sports.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas (AP/Seth Wenig)
The Abraham Accords have refuted the Palestinian leadership's
anti-normalization discourse that it has advanced in Arabic since May
1994 (eight months after the Oslo I Accord at the White House) when
Arafat called for "jihad" from a Johannesburg mosque, and in English
since the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa,
that launched the global BDS campaign against Israel. The PA al-tatbi
("anti-normalization") crusade hit a "high note" in 2014 when Jibril
Rajoub, the PA's minister of sport and head of its Olympic Committee,
launched an international campaign to expel Israel from the
International Football Federation. At that time, he famously posted on
his Facebook page, "Any activity of normalization in sports with the
Zionist enemy is a crime against humanity."
Aside from undermining the PLO's ideological and strategic platforms,
Arab normalization agreements have further undercut Abbas's Oslo
negotiating tactics from 2000 to 2016. Abbas, using the Saudi 2002 Arab
Peace Initiative as a pretext, that demanded a priori an Israeli retreat
to the pre-1967 lines in the West Bank, return of Palestinian refugees
to Israel, the division of Jerusalem and control over Jerusalem's Temple
Mount, rejected six consecutive Israeli land-for-peace offers since
2000. However, the Arab normalization accords have undercut Abbas's
international leverage and neutralized his traditionally Arab-backed
veto power.
The PLO condemnation of Arab states and pivot to Turkey and Iran
The Arab about-face on its decades-long "Palestine First" land for
peace requirement has triggered an unprecedented Palestinian rhetorical
assault on Arab allies. Abbas labeled the UAE, Bahrain and even Saudi
Arabia infidels and branded their moves as a "stab in the back" and a
"betrayal of al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem and the Palestinian issue."
Abbas's fury also triggered him to call an emergency meeting of rival
terror group leaders from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and local
representatives of the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command on Oct. 26 in Ramallah. His invitation to the
PFLP-GC illustrates Abbas's outreach to even his most extreme PLO
rivals. As Khaled Abu Toameh has pointed out, this radical PLO terror
group headed by Ahmed Jibril was responsible for killing Palestinian
refugees in Syria and Lebanon, including massacres of Palestinians by
the Syrian Army.
PLO and Hamas anti-Arab incitement sparked protests in the West Bank
and Gaza. Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem burned UAE flags and
pictures of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. PA mufti of Jerusalem
Sheikh Muhammad Hussein even issued a fatwa, an Islamic religious
ruling, banning citizens of Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, or any
Arab country that may in the future normalize relations with Israel
from praying at the al‑Aqsa Mosque. Hussein's message to the
Palestinians, Arabs and the Muslim world left little room for doubt:
"Arab states that normalize relations with Israel are enemies of Islam
and traitors to the Prophet Muhammad."
Fatah Central Committee Secretary and Sports Minister Jibril Rajoub
went further, demonizing Arab and Israeli leaders. He compared Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the World War II-era fascist
Italian leader Benito Mussolini and the Bahraini and Emirati foreign
ministers to "worms drying out in the sun."
That the Palestinian leadership would condemn the Abraham Accords was
not necessarily self-evident; Abbas could just as easily have leveraged
the UAE's success in forcing Netanyahu to postpone his plan to extend
Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria. Abbas could have used
the Israeli concession and announced a return to negotiations with
iron-clad Arab support, under the American administration's peace
proposal, for a Palestinian state on some 70 percent of the territory,
including proposed land swaps in the Negev and Galilee, and a $50
billion state development budget.
Abbas rejected this approach. Instead, he continued to boycott all
cooperation with Israel, the United States, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and
other Arab states that committed to or were considering regional peace
and security efforts. In contrast, Abbas and his ruling Fatah faction's
arch-rival Hamas and other PLO groups held reconciliation talks in
Istanbul, Turkey, under the sanction of Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosts Hamas leaders in Istanbul on Aug. 22, 2020. Source: Twitter.
Abbas's move was a rhetorical and ideological declaration of war against
Arab states. Erdoğan, the leader of Turkey, the primary state power
behind the global Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement, has been persona
non grata among most Middle Eastern states for his role as leader of
the regional Sunni Islamist bloc, including Qatar's Muslim Brotherhood
government and the Hamas terror organization ruling the Gaza Strip. The
UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have outlawed the Muslim
Brotherhood. Jordan joined this group recently in a far-reaching move.
In July 2020, the Jordanian high court ruled to dissolve the Muslim
Brotherhood, which had been a tolerated political opposition group for
decades.
Erdoğan's hosting of the Palestinian factions has ratcheted up
long-simmering tensions with Egypt, Jordan and the Saudi-led Gulf
states. Erdoğan provided Abbas with a regional platform. As a NATO
member, the Turkish leader also set up a global stage for Abbas to snub
Arab leaders, Israel and the United States. Erdoğan issued similar
condemnations of Arab-Israeli normalization despite Turkey's own
relations with Israel. He condemned his Arab "brothers" via
closely-controlled media, including Yeni Akit, a staunchly pro-Erdoğan
and Islamist militant newspaper, which stated, "The Saudis were
competing with the UAE in treason [against the 'Palestinian cause']."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (EPA via STR)
Abbas's outreach to Erdoğan legitimizes the Turkish leader's support
for Hamas, Abbas's main rival. Hamas's former president and current
politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh, is a frequent VIP guest. Istanbul has
also served as a Palestinian headquarters from where Hamas leaders have
mobilized West Bank terror cells. As recently as Oct. 22, the British
Times revealed that "Hamas has set up a secret headquarters there for
carrying out cyber warfare and counter-intelligence operations."
Hamas's ties with Turkey through the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated
Erdoğan were known. However, Abbas and the outreach of the
internationally accepted PA to Erdoğan should raise a red flag for
Western leaders interested in Middle East peace and security. It is no
secret that Abbas's pivot to Erdoğan threatens Jerusalem's security and
stability. Since 2018, Turkey under Erdoğan has targeted Jerusalem's
Muslim holy shrines as flashpoints for Islamist provocation and a target
of ultimate neo-Ottoman revival and control. Turkish flags have been
seen there since 2018. Turkish agitation in the Temple Mount Plaza poses
a direct threat to Jordanian custodianship of the Aqsa Mosque compound.
Erdoğan has also dispatched Muslim Brotherhood activists to
Jerusalem. On Oct. 1, he declared to Turkish lawmakers, "Jerusalem is
our city," as part of his overall Islamist vision for reinstating the
Ottoman Empire's sovereignty over the entire Middle East. Hamas's and
Abbas's ties to Erdoğan's Islamist agenda undermine Jerusalem's delicate
status quo, which, if threatened by extremism, can ignite Muslim
violence across the Middle East. Arafat and the northern branch of the
Islamic Movement in Israel triggered the deadly al-Aqsa terror war
against Israeli civilians in 2000.
Implications for the Middle East peace process
The Iranian regime has also leveraged Palestinian anger over the
Abraham Accords. It joined Ramallah's chorus of condemnation of the UAE
deal, calling it a "dagger in the back of all Muslims." Iran has sought
to exploit nominal reengagement of the PLO and Hamas over the recent
normalization deals and offered to host Palestinian factions in Tehran.
The Iranian regime has long supported Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad in Gaza, as well as the PLO-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in
the West Bank.
Iranian financial and operational backing and ideological penetration
in Gaza increased since Hamas's violent takeover there in 2007. Iran
and the Palestinian leadership had also coordinated Iranian ships'
transfer of weapons, which were intercepted by Israel between 2001 and
2014. Iran's condemnation of the Arab-Israeli normalization agreements,
which it called "phony" and "shameful," its nominal support of Abbas and
continued active support of Hamas in Gaza recasts Abbas and the PA in
the image of the pre-Oslo terror-supporting PLO under Arafat when he was
recognized in the West as the international community's most notorious
terrorist.
Mahmoud Abbas's delegitimization and denunciation of the Abraham
Accords, the collapse of his relations with Saudi-led Gulf states and
his outreach to the Iranian and Turkish regime portend trouble for a
prospective reactivation of the Middle East peace process. Some of the
leading states among the Saudi-led Arab powers have broken the
seven-decade taboo and publicly reached out to Israel as a partner in
preventing Iranian nuclear ascension and in countering Iran's subversion
of states across the Middle East. Arab amenability and cooperation with
Israel to counter Iran should not come as a surprise. As this brief has
noted, quiet cooperation began well over a decade ago. Jordan's King
Abdullah had warned of Iran's "radical Shi'ite Crescent" in 2004.
Arab-Israeli security cooperation and coordination have grown more
public since 2010. Commercial and energy cooperation and business ties
had begun to flourish. It was only a question of time before Arab states
publicly recognized that Israel was not the region's problem, but
rather a crucial part of its solution.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (AFP/HO/ Khamenei.ir)
However, the Palestinians continued to place themselves at the center
of Middle East affairs, virtually ignoring the larger threat to the
Arab state system posed by radical Sunni and Shi'ite actors led by Iran
and, more recently, Turkey. The Arab powers have grown tired of
Palestinian intransigence, corruption and rejectionism. Saudi Arabia has
criticized the Palestinian rejection of Israeli peace offers, the
Palestinian boycott of cooperation with Israel and corresponding policy
against the Trump administration.
If the PA seeks to achieve sovereign independence for the Palestinian
people, it would be advised to follow the lead of the Saudi-backed UAE,
Bahrain and Sudan. The Palestinian leadership should similarly honor
the Abraham Accords' call for unconditional mutual recognition and
normalization of relations with Israel as the keys to opening a viable
political and diplomatic agreement that can provide enormous benefits to
the Palestinian people. Normalization first, or tatbiya in Arabic, is
the principle behind the "bottom-up" peacemaking that Israeli leaders
across the political spectrum have been advocating as a corrective to
the failed consecutive "top-down" peace negotiations since 2000.
Today, the Palestinian leadership faces a critical test. A durable
peace with Israel with broad Arab backing is possible. But it is only
feasible if the PA and its parent, the PLO, cut their links with the
Iranian regime, Islamist Turkey, and their radical terror proxies and
allied groups. Hasan al-Mujaini, a senior Emirati oil executive, wrote
on Aug. 24: "Although we also have empathy for the Palestinian people,
it is regrettable that instead of grasping this opportunity to advance
their own situation, their leadership has yet again dismissed an
outstretched hand for real and meaningful change."
This is a diplomatic imperative for the incoming US administration
and the European powers that have invested heavily in
Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts. Today, the Palestinian leadership
must be held to the same standard required of emerging democracies
seeking independence and economic prosperity. They must be pressured to
jettison ties to the radical Islamist camp and rejoin the moderate camp.
This realignment with peaceful Arab states will enable the PA to sit
at the negotiating table with its Israeli neighbor without
preconditions, having accepted the Abraham Accords principle of
normalization, mutual acceptance and goodwill. This will maximize the
prospects for a successfully negotiated compromise.
Dan Diker is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center
for Public Affairs. He is director of the Project to Counter BDS and
Political Warfare. His recent book "Israelophobia and the West" can be
downloaded from JCPA.org or ordered from Amazon. He can be contacted at
diker@jcpa.org.
Khaled Abu Toameh is a veteran award-winning journalist who has
been covering Palestinian affairs for nearly three decades. He studied
at Hebrew University and began his career as a reporter by working for a
PLO-affiliated newspaper in Jerusalem. He currently works for the
international media, serving as the "eyes and ears" of foreign
journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Tehran remains dismissive of reports high-profile terrorist was killed on its soil, says US and Israel, "try to shift the responsibility for the criminal acts of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in the region and link Iran to such groups with lies and by leaking made-up information to the media."
Scene of the 1998 al-Qaida attack near the United States Embassy in downtown Nairobi, Kenya | Archives: AP/Dave Caulkin
The al-Qaida terrorist mastermind allegedly taken out by Israeli
agents at Washington's behest was planning attacks on Jewish and Israeli
targets at the time of his death, Israeli media reported on Sunday.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that Abdullah
Ahmad Abdullah, al-Qaida's second-in-command indicted in the United
States for the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, was
shot and killed in Tehran by two Israeli operatives on a motorcycle.
"Abu Muhammad al-Masri was also planning attacks against Israelis and Jews around the world," Channel 12 News reported said, referring to Abdullah by his nom de guerre.
While the NYT report claimed that the hitmen were Mossad
agents, the Israeli outlet said that the gunmen were likely "foreign
operatives activated by Israel."
Tehran has dismissed the report altogether, saying that the US and
Israel, "try to shift the responsibility for the criminal acts of
al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in the region and link Iran to such
groups with lies and by leaking made-up information to the media."
To be sure, there is a great deal of evidence of regular old-timey ballot stuffing and standard election fraud, but computer and internet generated mischief has the potential to far exceed that and seems to Trump's lawyers in fact to have done so.
A couple of nights ago on Lou Dobbs’s show, President Trump's (and General Michael Flynn’s) lawyer Sidney Powell suggested
there was massive fraud in the presidential election vote
tabulations. She said she was about to “release the Kraken.” Lin Wood,
the other most prominent Trump election counsel, suggested much the same
explosion of evidence establishing the presidential vote tabulations
were manipulated.
There
was a bizarre switch on election eve. As vote counting suddenly and
oddly was halted in several key states, the tallies, which had shown
that a substantial victory was in the offing for the President, suddenly
-- and statistically impossibly -- ran up huge numbers for Biden and
away from Trump. This certainly creates an impression that the shift was
the result of theft.
Other
indications besides the statements of these lawyers (the analyses by
statisticians, the hundreds of sworn affidavits by poll watchers) who
certainly would not risk their reputations on baseless charges of such
significance, suggest that the counting was seriously flawed and likely
tampered with.
By
whom and how the evidence of it was obtained remains unclear, but as
this is likely to be a continuing issue, I’d like to share what I have
been able to find through the work of numerous online commenters and
researchers .
While
you may not agree that President Trump is a strategic genius who sees
things far into the future and prepares for all contingencies, it cannot
be doubted that two years ago he anticipated foreign interference with
our election process and issued in an Executive Order a means to investigate and punish any person, group or country which engaged in such international election fraud.
It’s a lengthy order and I’ll try to note some of the most significant portions of it. It
tasks the DNI with preparing a report of the investigative results of
such interference no later than 45 days after an election, but
specifies:
d)
Nothing in this order shall prevent the head of any agency or any other
appropriate official from tendering to the President, at any time
through an appropriate channel, any analysis, information, assessment,
or evaluation of foreign interference in a United States election.
(e)
If information indicating that foreign interference in a State, tribal,
or local election within the United States has occurred is identified, it
may be included, as appropriate, in the assessment mandated by section
1(a) of this order or in the report mandated by section 1(b) of this
order, or submitted to the President in an independent report. [Emphasis added]
Sec.
2. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United
States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or
hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States
person of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred,
paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any foreign person
determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the
Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland
Security:
(i)
to have directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or
otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in a United States
election;
(ii)
to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial,
material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in
support of, any activity described in subsection (a) (i) of this section
or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked
pursuant to this order; or
(iii)
to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for
or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property or
interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
Sec.
7. (a) Any transaction that evades or avoids, has the purpose of
evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate any
of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(c)
the term “United States person” means any United States citizen,
permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United
States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign
branches), or any person (including a foreign person) in the United
States;
(d)
the term “election infrastructure” means information and communications
technology and systems used by or on behalf of the Federal Government
or a State or local government in managing the election process,
including voter registration databases, voting machines, voting
tabulation equipment, and equipment for the secure transmission of
election results;
(e) the term “United States election” means any election for Federal office held on, or after, the date of this order;
(f)
the term “foreign interference,” with respect to an election, includes
any covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful actions or attempted
actions of a foreign government, or of any person acting as an agent of
or on behalf of a foreign government, undertaken with the purpose or
effect of influencing, undermining confidence in, or altering the result
or reported result of, the election, or undermining public confidence
in election processes or institutions
Did
this Executive Order set in place a means to investigate computer
manipulation overseas to affect our election and did such an
investigation reveal that this occurred and significantly affected the
election in several key states? If so, the reported results must be
amended substantially to discard the false count, or other measures
taken to prevent certifying fraudulent results dependent on the
manipulated reported final tallies. That is the issue I think Powell and
Wood are hinting at.
To
be sure, there is a great deal of evidence of regular old-timey ballot
stuffing and standard election fraud, but computer and internet
generated mischief has the potential to far exceed that and seems to
Trump's lawyers in fact to have done so.
Georgia
Georgia has an interesting recent history on the use of equipment purchased by the governor
from a company called Dominion. Last year concerns were raised by and
suits were brought by activists -- from Grover Norquist’s Americans for
Tax Reform and the conservative FreedomWorks to Democratic groups such
as Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight -- who demanded paper ballots
and sought an order for a paper backup for electronic poll books. Judge
Amy Totenberg (who has a history of documenting election fraud, having
served when younger as a field investigator for the UMWA reformers in
collecting
evidence of fraud) was greatly concerned about the unreliability of the
Knowlink PollPads bought from Dominion Voting Systems for more than $100 million, and ordered a paper pollbooks be kept in every polling place in Georgia. By a 2 to 1 margin the 11th Circuit temporarily halted
her order this October. Judge Totenberg declined to order a switch to
hand-marked ballots bypassing Dominion’s equipment altogether because
she indicated a change so close to the election “cannot but cause voter
confusion and some real measure of electoral disruption.
Dominion’s
lobbyist, who pitched the $100 million dollar purchase of these
machines, was Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s former chief of staff.
Georgia’s secretary of State Brad Raffensberger took campaign cash from
the wife of a CEO of Dominion’s partner.
On Parler, Lin Wood posted:
Georgia
Governor Brian Kemp & Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should
be investigated by the GA Bureau of Investigation. Maybe they should
resign.
...in a speech at an election security conference in
Washington DC, said that the voting machine lobby “literally thinks
they are just above the law, they are accountable to nobody, [and] they
have been able to hotwire the political system in certain parts of the
country like we’ve seen in Georgia”.
Wyden
was referring to the fact that Brian Kemp, who is now Georgia’s
governor after overseeing his own election while secretary of state,
appointed an ES&S lobbyist as his deputy chief of staff. Meanwhile, the state is in the process of purchasing more than $150m in new voting machines.
“My
view is that the maintenance of our constitutional rights should not
depend on the sketchy ethics of these well-connected corporations that
stonewall Congress, lie to public officials and have repeatedly gouged
taxpayers.
Dominion
reportedly has Venezuelan and Cuban investment and utilizes parts from
China. Its software is widely used across the U.S.
Dominion
has no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi
family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative,
Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela. Dominion works with all
political parties; our customer base and our government outreach
practices reflect this nonpartisan approach.
Georgia
is not the only state in which the reliability of Dominion was
questioned by representatives across the political spectrum.
In Maryland, Congressman Jeremy Raskin threw down a red flag on the company.
“Raskin’s
bill could affect at least two of the largest election companies.
Dominion Voting Systems, which is the second-largest voting machine
vendor in the US, is based in both the US and Canada. Scytl, which
provides election night reporting and other online election management
tools, is based in Spain.”
Well,
Scytl used to be based in Spain, with offices in Frankfurt and
Barcelona, but it went bankrupt and this October was purchased by an
Irish company, Paragon.
Scytl and Bytes
Linn Wood Wood tweeted:
@LLinWood
Biden
& his criminal cronies are not going to sleep well tonight. Well,
Biden might because he probably forgot the name Scytl.
His co-conspirators know name well. They also know the name Paragon, company which purchased Scytl in 10/20.
Every will be revealed.
#FightBack
Scytl
provides electronic voting systems which have a bad record of
vulnerability to electronic manipulation. Before declaring bankruptcy,
it botched elections in 2018 in New South Wales, in Ecuador in 2014, in
2011 in Norway, and in 2015 in Switzerland before bankruptcy and a sale
to Paragon last month.
Does Trump Have the Goods His Lawyers Hint At?
Representative
Louie Gohmert stated in a video on Friday that the U.S. Army had
possibly seized Sctyl’s servers in Frankfurt. He said that he had
information that Scytl had possession of “extremely compelling
information" proving the votes had been manipulated after the data was
sent from the voting machines to be tallied.
It’s
hard to imagine Germany allowing U.S. troops to seize property in
Frankfurt. (Of course, a covert operation is not unheard of.)
In any event Scytl has categorically denied the Gohmert report. Most particularly
they deny having offices in Frankfurt, or that the U.S. Army seized
anything from Barcelona, Frankfurt, or anywhere else.
Would seizing the Scytl computers be the only way to establish vote tally manipulation?
I
don’t think so. For one thing, Dominion stores its data on Amazon
cloud, and federal law enforcement could get access to it. The Utah Data
Center which, among other things, stores data relating to
cybersecurity, can and does process, “all forms of communication,
including the complete documents of private emails, cell phone calls,
and Internet searches.”
It could
have picked up odd happenings between the overseas offices of the big
electronic election services. All the ways the data could be accessed
is, frankly, a topic beyond my ken.
In
the meantime, personnel shuffles indicate the President was unhappy
with the performance of some of the officeholders. He ordered DHS head
Chad Wolf to fire his cyber chief, Chris Krebs, something Wolf has
refused to do. The President has the unilateral right to dismiss Krebs
without Wolf’s assistance.
At
the Department of Defense, General Michael Flynn’s aide Ezra
Cohen-Watnick has been made acting undersecretary of intelligence.
Previously he was the U.S. strategic policy coordinator for all
intelligence programs, “including, among other things, covert action,
human intelligence, electronic surveillance.”
Are
Trump’s lawyers onto something big or not? We’ll have to see. In April
of last year, Democratic congressman Raskin, while challenging private
voting systems companies, said, “To say that they don’t have any
evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say that nothing untoward
happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we don’t have the
evidence of it.”
