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."
Amicus brief argues plaintiffs are at odds with four European countries whose healthcare authorities called for curtailing the availability of transitioning treatments for minors.
Seventeen
attorneys general have filed an amicus brief supporting a Florida
regulation that denies Medicaid coverage for gender transitioning
procedures.
The states are supporting Florida's motion for summary judgment in August Dekker v. Jason Weida, a lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court Northern District of Florida Tallahassee Division.
In the case, transgender plaintiffs are suing Weida, the secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is leading the coalition,
which also includes the attorneys general of Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana,
Iowa, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
The brief argues that the medical interest groups in the case that
have promulgated guidelines or treatment statements are advocates for
transitioning treatments and that they suppress dissent.
"These groups do not represent 'medical opinion,' just an outspoken slice of it," the brief said.
The brief said that the groups are at odds with four European
countries whose healthcare authorities assessed transitioning treatments
and called for curtailing the availability of transitioning treatments
for minors. Those countries are the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and
Norway.
"Based on the evidence reviews they conducted (or are conducting),
healthcare authorities in these countries have called for curtailing the
availability of transitioning treatments for minors," the brief
said. "As the council responsible for the assessment of public
healthcare services in Finland put it, 'In light of available evidence,
gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice.' Florida's
like conclusion was reasonable."
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a news release that
states have the right to regulate medicine and determine appropriate
treatments for Medicaid coverage.
"Our tax dollars should not be spent on life-altering and damaging
experimental medical treatments," Landry said. "Florida's comprehensive
review does not support the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones,
and reassignment surgeries as safe and effective treatments for gender
dysphoria; and the Sunshine State should be allowed to follow the
science."
Bill creates a state criminal offense of improper entry from a foreign nation.
The
Texas Senate has passed a bill authorizing Texas law enforcement
officers to arrest foreign nationals who’ve illegally entered Texas from
Mexico.
SB 2424, which creates a state criminal offense of improper entry
from a foreign nation, filed by Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Grandbury, passed
the Senate along party lines by a vote of 18-12.
Birdwell argues the federal government has abrogated its duty to
enforce immigration law and “Texas had to fill the gaps.” However, he
also said in a statement, “Texas peace officers would not be enforcing
federal immigration laws, but rather a new state-level crime created by
the bill: illegal entry into Texas from a foreign nation.”
The bill would create a new offense, “improper entry from foreign
nation,” in state penal code. It clarifies that those committing the
offense are an illegal “alien” who “enters or attempts to enter this
state from a foreign nation at any location other than a lawful point of
entry; eludes examination or inspection by United States immigration
officers; or attempts to enter or obtains entry to this state from a
foreign nation by an intentionally false or misleading representation or
the intentional concealment of a material fact.”
SB 2424 also would authorize state law enforcement officers to arrest those who violate the law anywhere in Texas.
State law enforcement officers through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border
security mission, Operation Lone Star, are already arresting illegal
foreign nationals violating state crimes. These crimes range from
criminal trespass, to burglary, to assault, to murder, to trafficking of
people and drugs, among others. Texas law enforcement officers do not
enforce federal immigration laws.
The bill creates a class A misdemeanor for a first offense, but
penalties increase with each subsequent arrest, including up to a
second-degree felony; violent offenders would face a first degree felony
charge, according to the bill summary.
Birdwell said he hopes with stronger penalties, the legislature was
sending a message that entering Texas illegally “comes with real
consequences.” He said if foreign nationals want to enter the U.S.
illegally they can choose to “go through New Mexico, Arizona, or
California.”
Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, disagreed with his approach,
arguing OLS has resulted in thousands of arrests that have clogged court
systems and facilities, created backlogs and overcrowded jails. He
expressed concerns during discussion over the bill that an even greater
number of arrests would overwhelm an already overburdened criminal
justice system.
Since March 2021, OLS officers have apprehended more than 367,000
illegal foreign nationals including making over 27,000 criminal arrests,
according to data from the governor’s office as of April 21.
"I agree that the federal government is not doing enough in meeting
its responsibilities along the border," Hinojosa said. "But this bill
cannot work. It is going to create complete chaos and a mess along the
border."
Birdwell addressed his concerns by saying state resources allocated
for border security efforts would increase to $4.6 billion, including
opening up additional holding facilities for OLS detainees. DPS troopers
would also enforce the law “with an eye towards overcrowding,” citing
testimony from DPS Executive Director Steve McCraw, Birdwell said.
DPS troopers are currently focused on arresting human smugglers and
illegal foreign nationals they believe are the most dangerous who pose
the greatest safety threat: single military-aged men.
Birdwell said his bill doesn’t conflict with federal immigration law:
it “neither enforces nor contradicts federal immigration law. It is
carefully tailored to avoid intruding on federal immigration enforcement
authority while providing law enforcement with an important new tool to
deter unlawful entry into Texas."
The bill has been received in the House and is already scheduled to be heard by the House State of Affairs Committee.
The battle is existential and reflects a similar struggle in the West.
Israel’s three-month-old protest movement, which has repeatedly
brought tens of thousands into the streets, is now crossing an
increasing number of red lines.
There are serious anxieties that protests will disrupt next week’s
Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers and Independence Day ceremonies.
At a Holocaust Remembrance Day synagogue service this week,
anti-government participants forced Likud MK Boaz Bismuth to leave after
they shouted at him to get out and started to become physically
violent.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, announced that because the
government had “divided society,” he would boycott the traditional
torch-lighting ceremony that ends Memorial Day and opens Independence
Day.
It was hitherto unthinkable that Israelis could desecrate those three
sacred days. It was similarly unthinkable for soldiers of the IDF to
refuse to serve their country, as did a group of elite Air Force pilots
in protest against the government.
Even the memory of the Shoah is being traduced. On an
El Al flight from Tel Aviv to New York on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the
pilot announced, “Things like [the] Holocaust are potentially carried
[out] in a dictatorship, and we are fighting in Israel to remain a
democratic country.”
On the same day, in another obscene equivalence, a ceremony at the Mateh Asher Regional Council displayed pictures from the Holocaust alongside photographs from the protests.
It should be apparent to rational observers that this has gone way
beyond the issue of judicial reform. That particular agenda is now all
but dead in the water. The government has retreated. Yet the protests
are not only continuing but are becoming increasingly disturbing.
This is because judicial reform is a flashpoint for profound
divisions that have previously escaped attention but have now erupted.
The Israeli protests are being fed by several different agendas. Some
people oppose the judicial reforms because they believe the judiciary
provides the only check on political power. Some want to bring down
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some are frightened by
religious or nationalist extremists in the government.
The deeper reason, one that connects all of the above, is secular
Israel’s onslaught against Jewish religiosity in the public square.
For this, religious leaders bear significant responsibility. The
reformist Orthodox Rabbi David Stav has warned that the extremism of the
religious Zionist bloc has caused a dangerous rift in Judaism and
Israeli society.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “some of our leaders, elected officials and
rabbis speak in a tone that frightens many people in Israeli
society—and rightfully so.”
However, secular Israelis are intolerant of all Orthodox religious
observance. When a Jewish prayer service was held in Tel Aviv’s
Dizengoff Square to celebrate Passover, the city’s Deputy Mayor Reuven
Ladyansky attacked
it as a “scandal” and demanded that “the organizers be fined in the
most severe way possible” because they had separated men from women.
In Tablet, Liel Liebovitz reported
that one of Tel Aviv’s protest organizers told him: “We’re here because
we want this to be a normal state, you understand? Just like the United
States or France or Germany. We don’t want this country to be taken
over by those fanatics with their beards and their religion.”
As Rabbi Stav observed, many religious Israelis are now afraid to wear their kippah at their workplace because the “forceful and violent” rhetoric from secular Israelis has made the atmosphere so toxic.
Obviously, this tumult reflects the ambiguity over national identity
that’s remained unresolved since Israel’s rebirth in 1948. Was the new
Jewish state to be a recovery of Judaism’s ancient religious calling, or
would the “new Jews” who replaced religion with secular values
repudiate that calling?
These secular Israeli “New Jews” view themselves and their country as
no different from other peoples or countries. That’s why they sign up
to the universalist principles promoted by the “human rights”-driven
judiciary. The erosion of the judiciary’s power is therefore
intolerable.
But Judaism, the most particularist of creeds, stands in direct opposition to universalism.
Judaism created the nation-state that universalism seeks to destroy.
Jewish human rights are created from the network of duties that form a
civilized community and nation. Modern, secular “human rights” have no
such prior network of duties and instead divide people into groups
warring for power.
Jews can never be the same as other peoples. Israel, like the Jewish
people, is unique. If it tore up its ancient identity, it would tear up
the reason for its existence as a Jewish state.
In America, liberal Jews have embraced secular ideologies inimical to
Judaism. As a result, Jewish identification is dwindling and America’s
Jewish community is being inexorably reduced to a small rump of the
truly observant.
A similar process is happening more broadly in the West. For decades,
it has been subjected to a sustained onslaught on its cultural
inheritance of laws, morality and traditions based on the Hebrew Bible,
in an attempt to replace them with supposedly universal principles
intended to bring about the brotherhood of man.
This has both eroded the West’s internal cohesion and undermined its
defenses against the enemies of civilization. Western liberals deem
these enemies victims of the powerful, and thus excuse their violence
and other misdeeds.
These liberals believe that if they are nice to their enemies, their
enemies will lay down their weapons and chant “kumbaya.” That’s why U.S.
Democrats grovel to the genocidal fanatics of Iran and pressure Israel
to kowtow to the Palestinian Arabs, incentivizing their agenda of
exterminating the Jewish state.
This attitude also dominates Israel’s military and official classes,
among whom the “Oslo” mindset—which held that the Palestinian Arabs will
end their aggression if offered a state of their own—still endures
despite the destruction of that fantasy.
Of course, when rockets start flying from Gaza or Lebanon, the IDF
responds appropriately. But in the daily war of attrition by Palestinian
Arabs in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, Israeli
soldiers are told to enforce “normal life” for the Arab residents.
So, instead of doing everything possible to save the lives of Israeli
citizens, the soldiers refrain as far as possible from any action that
may disrupt normal Arab life.
Unless soldiers endorse this mindset, they come up against a
promotional glass ceiling. That’s an important reason why so many senior
officers have such liberal views.
This amounts to the same unadmitted but devastating cultural pressure
that exists in Western universities and other cultural institutions and
ensures that anyone who dissents from prevailing liberal shibboleths is
pushed out.
It is impossible to understand the tumult in Israel without
understanding that it is a rerun of a battle that goes back to the
earliest days of the Jewish people—the titanic struggle between paganism
and Jewish monotheism; between universalism and Jewish particularism;
between Jewish Hellenists and those desperately defending Mosaic law
against the manifold seductions of Greek culture.
The battle over Greek Hellenism fatally undermined the Jews’ defense
against their enemies and led to their expulsion from ancient Israel. A
direct line can be traced from today’s Western progressives through the
18th century Enlightenment all the way back to the ancient Greeks.
The current onslaught against biblical values and their replacement
by secular and even pagan ideologies is sacrificing the West on the
altar of identity politics, moral relativism and the retreat of reason.
Israeli secularists are prepared to bring Israel to its knees in
order to be like the West at the precise point that the West is going
down the tubes.
It’s often said that the Jewish community is the canary in the
cultural coal mine. What’s happening in Israel is that the canary is now
fighting off an adder it hadn’t noticed was coiled up inside its cage.
The fate of the Jewish canary should be of acute concern to the West, to which that adder belongs.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author,
writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of
London,” her personal and political memoir “Guardian Angel” has been
published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The
Legacy.” Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work.
Both sides are discussing issues “frankly and honestly,” and Netanyahu wants to reach a compromise, the Israeli president says.
President Isaac Herzog (center) leads negotiations on judicial reform at
the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, March 28, 2023. Photo by Kobi
Gideon/GPO.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed optimism this weekend
regarding the negotiations taking place under his auspices over the
government’s judicial reform initiative, saying they are being held amid
a “positive atmosphere.”
“There’s goodwill and there’s a positive attitude in the room, and things are discussed frankly and honestly,” Herzog told Arutz Sheva
in an interview, adding that “all the hard issues [were] on the table”
and the sides were attempting to reach an “amicable solution.”
“I’m definitely giving [the process] a chance. I will say,
furthermore: I believe that the alternative is much worse, and all the
parties concerned and their leaders know [this]. And more than that I
truly believe that if we work well here, and if we work with trust, and
we don’t let all sorts of forces undermine the process, we can reach a
positive outcome,” the president added.
In a separate interview with Channel 13, Herzog insisted that “no one is using me” and that he had “a great appreciation” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think that he is a brilliant man who has done great things as
prime minister. I don’t want to talk about the current period because
whatever I say will be construed as political. I’m convinced he wants to
reach a compromise,” said the president.
Herzog
launched the negotiations in late March after Netanyahu announced in a
national address that he was putting a hold on the reform program in
order to “provide a real opportunity for real dialogue.”
Both Hamas and the PA are deeply cynical: if they wished to increase the well-being of the average Palestinian, they would pursue peace.... One has to ask if peace with Israel is in their interest....
Hamas is an enemy [of
Israel], but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which is determined to
go ahead and develop nuclear weapons with the sole objective of
destroying Israel... Hamas is extreme in its ideology, which is radical
Islam. They have absolutely no desire to resolve this conflict with
Israel in the ways that Western leaders hope and expect -- which is
settling the conflict by accepting what we have been calling a two‑part
state for a very long time. That is not the objective of Hamas. The
objective of Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel.
The Palestinians are unfortunate to have, on the one hand, a
leader who is corrupt and really does not care very much about average
Palestinians and may even want the conflict to continue so that he can
continue to cash in on international handouts from the EU, America and
others; then on the other hand, there is Hamas. This terrorist deadly
group, also does not care about Palestinian lives. That is where the
problem lies.... Both Hamas and the PA are deeply cynical: if they
wished to increase the well-being of the average Palestinian, they would
pursue peace.... One has to ask if peace with Israel is in their interest....
Hamas is an enemy, but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which
is determined to go ahead and develop a nuclear weapon with the sole
objective of destroying Israel.
In terms of foreign policy, it is important to realize that the
threat of radical Islam, it may have faded away from the desks of
policy‑makers in the United States...but it has not gone away.... If
anybody is paying attention, Islamists remain a force to be reckoned
with in Africa: think of Somalia, the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger),
the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger), Mozambique, and
Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood and sympathetic groups are very much
active on American soil, in the UK, and in many other Western countries.
Their front organizations pretend to be humanitarian, charitable,
educational or religious organizations. In its world view...the
Brotherhood is not that different from that of violent groups such as
Al‑Qaeda or ISIS. Where they differ is on the tactics to get there.
Their activities are just coated in a language that is appealing to the
leadership... and especially appealing to Westerners, often including
support for "democracy". It is time that we expose the Muslim
Brotherhood for what it is.
[A]ny human being who is suffering, regardless of their color,
regardless of their geographical location, whatever language they speak,
awakens your compassion, your empathy, and your sympathy. I hope that
we can do that -- so an African, or an Arab, or anyone from any part of
the world will feel empathy with a white person who is suffering and the
other way around. That is where the message of common humanity is
powerful. That is the only way to defeat these ideologues who are trying
to divide us.
What we are seeing happen to women in Islamic communities in
Western countries, as well as in majority-Muslim countries, is what has
been happening for decades. Everyone has been looking away. There are a
number of Muslim women, individuals, who were able to escape their
families. The oppression really comes for these women... from their own
families, from brothers, fathers, husbands, cousins, nephews.... It's
just that there is this constant struggle within the West of trying to
undermine the values that are the tools of emancipation and dismissing
them as white supremacy, or colonialist, or ethnocentric.
Now, there are women who really want no trouble at all, they just
want to emancipate themselves from this straight jacket. They want to
go to school. They want to work. They want to pursue a profession of
their choosing. They want to live like the average European woman or
American woman -- fend for themselves and control their own destiny.
Those are the women that are often regarded as abnormal by those around
them. their immediate environment.... We can help them by empowering the
women who want to emancipate themselves... their right to autonomy in
their life.
What if you have hundreds of thousands of young men who come from
a society with the opposite norms, and they come into various parts of
Europe...? They just come, they are shocked, and then they act -- and
people react. It is a huge problem. There have been lots of journalists,
commentators, scholars who have been warning European leaders for
decades about this collision of values....They have all been ignored or
demonized as racists and xenophobes.
Parts of Paris, parts of Marseille are now completely locked in
with this confrontation between what they call Islamist separatism,
which for decades they pretended did not exist. Many French
intellectuals were trying to sound the alarm for decades and were
demonized. They continue to be demonized. If you look at some of the
entrenched Islamist groups in France, the ideology is hostile towards
the civil Republic just as the ideology of Hamas is hostile to
co-existence with Israel. They reject the French Republic as much as
Hamas rejects the Israeli government. They call it a parallel society.
It is like having an alien state within the state.... [T]he objective of
the leadership of that infrastructure is to create these parallel
states.
With the Internet now, there are opportunities for women that we
did not have before. Where we can connect like‑minded people with
like‑minded people. It is just that there is this constant struggle
within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the tools of
human emancipation and dismissing them as based on white supremacy, or
as colonialist or ethnocentric.
The problems we have been seeing in Europe is that the punishment
and the legal frameworks -- prosecuting, sending people to prison,
fines, and other corrections they have in place -- for whatever reason,
do not seem to make an impression on some of the perpetrators. When I
talk to men who have come to Europe, they say that what would make an
impression on them is to be sent back to the country they came from. One
of the reasons why, is that the families have invested so much in these
young men to send them to Europe. For them to be sent back, the
families are going to be met with shame and embarrassment that their
child was sent back.
Also, a number of the men who are coming from Syria, Iraq, even
as far as Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Somalia and Eritrea have
entrenched prejudices against European women that reflect their
societies of origin. They look at white women, and they see them from
Hollywood, they see them in pornographic movies, and they think when
they go to Europe, that is what they are going to encounter. They have
an inaccurate picture. Women, they think, are going to have sex with
them readily. Then the reality hits, and they see that this is not the
case, then they use force and act in groups, and do not understand why
they are being punished when the women are out and about. The women are
in the parks. Women are going to work, they are dressed as they please.
The men are very confused by that.
Now, if we take in hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, do
we sit back and say, well, you can continue to treat women as you like,
it is your prerogative, it is none of our business -- even though you
now want to build a future within our societies?
Do we say, there are red lines that you cannot cross, and we are
going to uphold our norms and values, and particularly, our laws? For
me, integration or assimilation means that you uphold those laws, and
values, and norms, and that you tie credible consequences to those who
refuse to abide by the laws.
Where I grew up, I was raised to believe that unless you had
almost your entire body covered, you were regarded as naked. When I
first encountered women in parts of Germany and the Netherlands who were
in tank tops, and shorts, and mini-skirts, and out and about during the
day and all hours of the night I thought this was crazy. It was a
revolution; it was shocking.....
I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of publishing
papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear of being
fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them are just
speaking the truth.
"I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of
publishing papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear
of being fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them
are just speaking the truth." — Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Photo by Jemal
Countess/Getty Images)
Note to readers: Announcing a new series of
webinars on free speech, The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Dialogues, with Ayaan Hirsi
Ali and expert guests. The first one will take place this Tuesday,
April 25, at 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/6 pm CET. You can register for it here.
For more information on the webinar series, see here.
Even if you can't attend, please sign up regardless to receive a recording of the webinar and future updates on the series.
" The right to think, to speak, and to write in freedom and
without fear is ultimately a more sacred thing than any religion. It
matters more ...because without it all other freedoms are unattainable.
How can you fight for any other freedom if you can't even speak up in
defense of it?" — Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Hamas is extreme in its ideology, which is radical Islamist. They
have absolutely no desire to resolve their conflict with Israel in the
ways that Western leaders hope and expect -- which is settling the
conflict by accepting what we have been calling a two‑part state for a
very long time. That is not the objective of Hamas. The objective of
Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel. Keeping the conflict going is,
in a way, beneficial to them as a group even if it hurts normal people.
As long as Hamas holds onto that stance, stays with that extreme
position and remains intransigent, the problem will never be resolved. I
forget the count of the number of intifadas that we have seen or are
going to see.
We have seen this play out over decades: the Israeli government will
weaken Hamas's military position, then Hamas regroups, restocks, and
starts the whole confrontation again from scratch. They have been
digging tunnels underneath Israel, and they have been using Palestinian
children, Palestinian women, and the Palestinian elderly, just normal
average citizens, as a front and as human shields, cleverly exploiting
public relations tactics and Western sensitivities in the process.
Regardless of who is leading Israel, when Israel defends itself,
Hamas can pretend, through its public relations and propaganda
materials, that Israel provoked the attack and that Israel is wantonly
killing women and children. In fact, that is not the case. It is much
more complicated than that. In short, I would say that Hamas, as an
organization and as a movement, does not attach any value to the lives
of Palestinians and is willing to use Palestinians as collateral damage
for public relations purposes: the common man, as far as Hamas is
concerned, is readily expendable.
As long as Hamas is in place and is presenting itself as the voice
and as the leadership of the Palestinians, then, unfortunately, this
problem is not going to be resolved.
Mahmoud Abbas's "Palestinian Authority" is no authority. He and his
organization are corrupt. They have been selling out the Palestinian
population for a long time. One has to ask if peace with Israel is in their interest — as they perceive it — also.
In that sense, the Palestinians are unfortunate to have one leader
who is corrupt and really does not care very much about them and may
even want the conflict to continue so that he can continue to cash in on
international handouts, the EU, America and so on; and then have as the
other group, Hamas. This terrorist deadly group, also does not care
about Palestinian lives. That is where the problem lies.
The Palestinians in a sense find themselves without ethical
representation: ordinary Palestinians are being used by their leaders
who seek to bolster their own position and power base. It is a mistake
to view either Hamas or the PA as "representing" the interests of the
average Palestinian. Both Hamas and the PA are deeply cynical: if they
wished to increase the well-being of the average Palestinian, they would
pursue peace. Peace with Israel, however, is not necessarily in the
self-interest of either the PA or of Hamas as they themselves currently
view their interests.
This brings us to Iran. Since Iran's revolution in 1979, the Iranian
regime has made it clear it is working towards the destruction of
Israel. It is important to make a distinction between the regime, which
is Islamist, and the Iranian population. A considerable number of
Iranian citizens abhor their own regime, as they have been demonstrating
for years, and want nothing more today than to have that regime go
away.
The threat to Israel from the Iranian regime is more profound than
the one that Hamas presents. Hamas is an enemy, but it is a much weaker
enemy than Iran, which is determined to go ahead and develop a nuclear
weapon with the sole objective of destroying Israel.
It would be best if the Biden administration would continue with the
previous administration's policies towards Iran -- which was to compel
the Iranian government to give up the development of these nuclear
weapons if they want to become a part of the international community.
There, we should not compromise, but all indications are that the
American officials who originally negotiated the JCPOA during the Obama
Administration are desperate to get back to it, even in the face of
aggression and weakness by the Iranian regime.
The United States and Europe, if they have got one thing wrong about
radical Islam and its leadership, it has been the Muslim Brotherhood,
its affiliate organizations and groups sympathetic to it. The Muslim
Brotherhood is able to play Western governments and Western media
associations in a way that they have failed to play -- until recently --
Arab Muslim countries.
The Muslim Brotherhood right now is illegal in Saudi Arabia, in the
United Arab Emirates and in Egypt, among other countries. That is one
reason why Hamas is so desperate, with the help of Iran, to cling onto
their leadership position, which they have been losing because they have
lost their legitimacy.
The Muslim Brotherhood is very much active on American soil, in the
UK, and in many other Western countries. Their front organizations
pretend to be humanitarian, charitable, educational or religious
organizations. In its world view, in its ideal vision for society, the
Brotherhood is not that different from that of violent groups such as
Al‑Qaeda or ISIS. Where they differ is on the tactics to get there. It
is coated in a language that is appealing to the leadership – whether it
be the media or the political and policy‑making community – and
especially appealing to Westerners, often including support for
"democracy". After all these years, it is probably high time that we
expose the Muslim Brotherhood for what it is.
First, it is important to realize that the threat of radical Islam
may have faded away from the desks of policy‑makers in the United
States, and maybe even some other countries, but it has not gone away;
it is as potent as ever.
If anyone is paying attention, Islamists have taken over whole swaths
of territory in Africa. They are treating countries such as Chad,
Cameroon, Niger, Mali, you name it, all of these countries, my home
country of Somalia, these are the new bases for all sorts of Islamists,
from Al‑Qaeda to the regrouping of ISIS. For our leaders, it is so
important to realize that this threat is not gone, this ideology is not
gone, but continues to thrive here in the United States. ISIS has been
weakened but not defeated.
Another problem that concerns me is Muslim women. The entire moral
framework that governs the relationship between men and women is based
not only on Islam (the Shariah) but also on tribal or clan relations and
the "honor" which can be tarnished by the reputed immodesty of women.
There is a distinction that they make between good women and bad women,
modest women and immodest women, virtuous women and women who are not
virtuous. This is mostly based on reputation and rumors rather
than on actual behavior: a woman can be virtuous, but one
unsubstantiated rumor about her that gains traction can be catastrophic
for the honor of her tribe or family. It puts women in an extremely
difficult position.
The women who are considered virtuous, they are the ones who comply
with those rules of staying at home, covering yourself, and being
submissive to your male guardians, your father, your brother, your
husband, and so on. You operate under those rules. There are women who
not only comply with those rules but who also enforce them.
Now, there are women who really want no trouble at all, they just
want to emancipate themselves from this straitjacket. They want to go to
school. They want to work. They want to live like the average European
woman or American woman -- fend for themselves and control their own
destiny. Those are the women that are regarded as abnormal by the people
around them. Very often, they are regarded as immodest, unchaste, and
sexualized. Those women are seen as prey because they are unprotected
because they have removed themselves from that ruling framework.
When men from these parts of the world come to Europe and they look
at European women, they see unprotected women, women who are not
protected by their male guardians. You can see the logic of the
misunderstanding. We can help them by empowering the women who want to
emancipate themselves.
Ten and 20 years ago, we were talking about how can we help women
from different parts of the world? Right now, in Europe and in America,
we are enmeshed in our own ideological problems. A lot of it is
navel‑gazing, but a lot of it is really pathological -- if you look at
some of this woke ideology, where white people are not allowed to say
anything positive or negative about people of color, black people.
When you say, How can I help Arab women, or Muslim women, or women in
the developing world, you are very quickly going to be told to mind
your own business, and who the hell do you think you are as a white
woman to be imposing your values on others? This is the world we live in
now.
We can begin to change things by continuing to build on the common
humanity that America and the constitutions of many European countries
also represent, which is an emphasis on the human being as an individual
and to be in search of our common humanity regardless of our skin
colors, gender, and all the rest of it.
When you approach it that way, any human being who is suffering,
regardless of their color, regardless of their geographical location,
whatever language they speak, awakens your compassion, your empathy, and
your sympathy. I hope that we can do that -- so an African, or an Arab,
or anyone from any part of the world will feel empathy with a white
person who is suffering and the other way around. That is where the
message of common humanity is powerful. That is the only way to defeat
these ideologues who are trying to divide us.
Of course, every country is different. There are countries that
simply cannot ignore the rise of Islam. Look at what is going on in
France. They have their own problems. Parts of Paris, parts of Marseille
are now completely locked in with this confrontation between what they
call Islamist separatism, which for decades they pretended did not
exist.
Many French intellectuals were trying to sound the alarm for decades
and were demonized -- and continue to be demonized. If you look at some
of the entrenched, established Islamist groups in France, the ideology
is just like that of Hamas. They reject the French Republic as much as
Hamas rejects the Israeli government. It is like having an alien state
within the state. They call it a parallel society. They have passed a
bill where they are going to try to mitigate that. I hope it is not too
late. If that infrastructure exists within a country that has both taken
in a considerable number of Muslims and has an infrastructure of dawa
-- proselytizing the ideology of radical Islam -- whether Germany,
Sweden, or the UK -- the objective of the leadership of that
infrastructure is to create these parallel states. None of these
countries can pretend that the problem has gone away or that it affects
just France – that "it doesn't affect us" -- that would be a mistake.
There are different kinds of feminists -- some whose objective is to
lobby for women to shatter the glass ceiling and to achieve positions of
leadership in corporations and so on. Those feminists are not really
looking out for working‑class women who are affected negatively by
immigration, especially immigration from Muslim‑majority countries. Then
there are feminists who have drifted away from the mission of fighting
for women's rights and women's liberation. Their stated objective is to
fight the phantom of "toxic masculinity." At this moment, what we really
lack is a credible, legitimate, feminist organization or movement that
articulates the problems that working‑class women are facing. Those
feminists would much rather be attacking Israel or Western democracies
such as America. You have the feminists who are on this mission drift.
They do not have to be from the left.
When we have immigration, especially with the emphasis on immigration
from Muslim‑majority countries, in those countries, men have a
different attitude to women than the relationship between European men
and European women, and American men and American women.
When those men come ‑‑ and they are coming in large numbers to Europe
‑‑ they continue to behave towards women ‑‑ in this instance European
women, not immigrant women ‑‑ in the ways that they were used to
behaving towards their local women. Right now, I do not see a feminist
movement or organization that is addressing this issue in a meaningful
way: there are some individual feminists who do speak out but they do so
at significant risk.
Most of the victims, most of the women who are affected by the
negative unintended consequences of this immigration, are working‑class
women in working‑class neighborhoods. These women also share certain
conditions with immigrant Muslim women.
Maybe now it is time for immigrant women and the working‑class women
of Europe, in the countries that took in large numbers of Muslim men --
like Sweden and Denmark, where on the front‑line you see Muslim women,
women who are previously from Kurdistan or Turkey, and other North
African countries -- to work together and bring about a movement or a
coalition that comes out and articulates this problem.
What we are seeing happen to women is what has been happening to us
for decades. Everyone has been looking away. It is tragic. There are a
number of Muslim women, individuals, who were able to escape their
families. The oppression really comes for these women... from their own
families, from brothers, fathers, husbands, cousins, nephews.
Some of these individual women have been able to escape. The majority
of Muslim women who live in Europe have seen their status actually go
down because these neighborhoods have become ghettos.
There were women and girls who were able to find a way of advancing
their own rights, going to school, finding jobs, staying in those jobs,
and most important of all, finding their own sexual autonomy, instead of
having to face forced marriages.
Things are going backward, tragically, for these immigrant women
because these ghettos apply the Islamist's social controls that are
applied in the countries of origin. Many women in France, Sweden and
Germany say that their neighborhoods are really not very different from
the countries from which they came.
* * *
Question: Do you think it is possible that the men are happy
with the current arrangement, as it provides a free workforce at home,
just as slavery did, and that therefore, they are fighting not to change it?
Hirsi Ali: If you speak to immigrant men who are well
assimilated into various European countries, what they explain is that
some of the immigrant Muslim men who perpetrate sexual misconduct in
Europe face almost no consequences.
Even when they face consequences, they think of it as a joke. The
deterrents that are in place in many of these European countries do not
seem to be convincing, or else fail to make an impression on the
perpetrators and on potential perpetrators.
Also, the men who are coming from Syria, Iraq, even as far as
Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Somalia and Eritrea, they have entrenched
prejudices against European women. They look at white women, and they
see them from Hollywood, they see them in pornographic movies, and they
think when they go to Europe, that is what they are going to encounter.
Women, they think, are going to have sex with them readily. Then the
reality hits, and they see that this is not the case, then they use
force and act in groups, and do not understand why they are being
punished when the women are out and about. The women are in the parks.
Women are going to work, they are dressed as they please. The men are
very confused by that.
Some of the Muslim men who have spent years in European countries are
saying that really the emphasis should be on integration. As soon as
these men arrive, they have to be acquainted with the norms and values
that prevail in Europe. Instead of leaving them to be miseducated by
either Islamists or the young men who continue to be a menace to women,
their own women, and others.
Where I grew up, I was raised to believe that unless you had almost
your entire body covered, you were regarded as naked. When I first
encountered women in parts of Germany and the Netherlands who were in
tank tops, and shorts, and mini-skirts, and out and about during the day
and all hours of the night I thought this was crazy. It was a
revolution. It was shocking. I would ask the people around me, "What is
this? How do you maintain order with this type of interaction between
men and women?" and they explained to me that it is attainable, that one
can ingrain into young boys and young men to be respectful towards
women and to restrain their sexuality.
What if you have hundreds of thousands of young men who come from a
society with the opposite norms, and they come into various parts of
Europe and they have not had this kind of education? They just come,
they are shocked, and then they act, and people react. It is a huge
problem, but there have been lots and lots of journalists, commentators,
scholars who have been warning European leaders for decades about this
collision of values, this clash of cultures and values. They have all
been ignored or demonized as racists and xenophobes.
Then, when you sit in these parliamentary sessions and other
conferences, seminars, and so on where the issue is talked about, you
always have a number of people who say, "Who are we as Europeans to
impose our values on minorities?"
Now, women are reaping the fruits of that misguided approach. Instead
of seeing an assimilation of the people who are coming into European
societies, what you are seeing is an adaptation of women who are now
feeling unsafe in the public space and adopt some of the survival
mechanisms that Muslim women use -- which are, I cannot leave the house
when it is dark, or I need someone to accompany me, or I have to buy
pepper spray, or I wanted to go out tonight for dinner or out with
friends to the pub but I'll just forego that because it is not safe
anymore.
European women are beginning to make the exact same considerations
that Muslim women are used to making back home in any Muslim country.
There is this erosion of women's ability to access the public space. It
seems gradual. You cannot see it immediately. If you go from America,
you obviously go to the beautiful cities, and the museums, and the
restaurants, and you miss out on a lot of this.
If you really go to the working‑class neighborhoods, you will see
that this problem is profound. It is barely addressed at the moment.
Question: How could we help the education of women in, say,
Southeast Asia without having these women threatened and tortured as
Malala Yousafzai was?
Hirsi Ali: With the Internet now, there are opportunities for
women that we did not have before. Where we can connect like‑minded
people with like‑minded people. It's just that there is this constant
struggle within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the
tools of emancipation and dismissing them as white supremacy, or
colonialist, or ethnocentric.
As long as we can resist that, we will be able to maintain the rights
and freedoms that we have already achieved for women in the West and
hopefully spread it to other parts of the world.
We do have to resist this notion that the ideas of freedom, equality,
individualism, and objectivity, and so on, and institutions that
safeguard due process, that this is all just white supremacy. It is
appalling to watch what is going on here.
Step number one is to say, integrate into what? What is acceptable, and what is not acceptable? If you look at the subject of "Prey,"
this is really a clash of values. It is the way we view women in the
West and how different it is in the way women are viewed in the Arab and
Muslim world.
Now, if we take in hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, do we
sit back and say, well, you can continue to treat women as you like, it
is your prerogative, it is none of our business -- even though you now
want to build a future within our societies?
Do we say, there are red lines that you cannot cross, and we are
going to uphold our norms and values, and particularly, our laws? For
me, integration or assimilation means that you uphold those laws, and
values, and norms, and that you tie credible consequences to those who
refuse to abide by the laws.
If men are organizing groups, and they go on the rampage against
women, they harass, they grope, they gang-rape, and you send them to
prison for a few years where they watch television, and play sports, and
come out and do this all over again, that is not a credible way of
dealing with the problem.
Question: You have been a Dutch parliamentarian. What are your thoughts, please, about China and what the US should be doing there?
Hirsi Ali: For years China has been marketing itself as having
an alternative to, say, Western liberal values. What we are now seeing
is its values are tyrannical... I'm not talking about the whole of
China.
Again, as in Iran, we need to make a distinction between the
communist regime and the people. The communist regime of China is
violating human rights, stealing intellectual property everywhere,
exploiting the continent of Africa and other countries, and it is trying
to dismantle the liberal order that was established and is led by the
United States and its allies.
It is a big threat. I am not a China expert, but it is common sense
to say that the United States of America and other Western allies really
should be extremely serious about confronting this expansionist
attitude of China. I also want to mention the treatment of the Uighurs.
It is incredible that China is now lecturing us about how racist our
systems are, when in fact, they are interning more than 1 million
people, destroying their culture, subjecting Uighur women to forced
sterilizations and systematic rape. Many people have used the word
genocide, and I think it applies. We are sitting back and doing nothing
about it.
Obviously, there is a grumble here and a grumble there, but right
now, I have not seen any kind of organized policy of the US and her
allies to stop China from treating people like this. Where we show
weakness, that emboldens China, and not just China, but Iran and all
other tyrants of the world.
Question: How can one even begin to turn around the lies and information?
Hirsi Ali: My assumption is that, as human beings, if we are
open to learning, we can learn. We can change our minds. We can change
our behavior. For some people, it is really just a matter of exposing
them to different worldviews and different ways of doing things. For
others, they need to be incentivized in a different way. You reward good
behavior and you punish bad behavior -- the carrot and stick. Half of
the problems that we have been seeing in Europe is the punishment and
the legal frameworks: prosecuting, sending people to prison, fines, and
other punishments that they have in place -- for whatever reason, they
do not seem to make an impression on some of the perpetrators. When I
talk to men who have come to Europe, they say that what would make an
impression on them is to be sent back to the country that they came
from.
One of the reasons, is that the families have invested so much in
these young men to send them to Europe. For them to be sent back, their
families are going to be met with the shame and the embarrassment that
their child was sent back.
Another incentive is for each of these individuals to make their way
from South Asia, from the Middle East, or from Africa, it is really an
arduous journey. Many people die. Many of them are traumatized. They
feel... It takes quite a lot of grit to just make that crossing. If they
fully understand that if they commit a crime, there is a likelihood
that they are going to be sent back, that might work as a deterrent.
These options have to be considered.
They are not being considered by the European leadership because of
other legal frameworks that they have in place, such as the human rights
treaties, the asylum framework. All of that has to be looked at. It is
complex, but it can be done.
Question: What are your thoughts about family violence?
Hirsi Ali: Honor killings, honor violence, all sorts of
traditional and sometimes Islamist practices that in America we pretend
happen elsewhere but are happening right here.
We have been exposing them, and we have been getting good feedback.
We have been training police, social workers, other service providers,
schools, to recognize these problems, and to help those who are affected
in appropriate ways that save their lives, and then help them onto a
path where they can have a life of quality.
With honor killings, we are trying. There was a gentleman who ran
over his daughter. The whole family, the brothers, the mother, they all
collaborated in this, but only the father is put away for the crime of
killing his daughter and maiming the daughter's best friend.
It was very difficult to educate Americans on this because it is
extremely difficult for Americans to understand a parent killing a
child, or an entire network of the family and extended family,
collaborating to kill that child or that member of the family because of
behavior that in America is just normal.
Wearing makeup, having a boyfriend, dressing as you please. One of
the ways we are trying to educate people is to say that before it gets
to an honor killing, there is this long road of honor violence --where
the individual who is seen to be bringing shame upon the family is
coerced in so many different ways.
They are beaten. They are put under house arrest, they are made to
stay at home. Their clothes are taken away. Their phones are taken away.
It is only over a period of time when that individual persists in
that behavior -- continues to see the boyfriend she is not supposed to
see, continues to dress in the way she is being told not to -- that the
family come together and say that it is now time to eliminate her
because it is the only way that they can recover their honor. When they
do that, it is the whole family often that know about it.
It is most important that people understand this because the more
people who are involved, the more that there is a likelihood that if
they knew, they also could be punished for their involvement, for their
collaboration, even for their silence -- and that they would go to the
police and say, look, this thing is about to happen, we need to stop it.
Question: What would you say to the people who have been so
obstructive to you, both in canceling your appearance at Brandeis, and
now in Congress, who rather have a different view from yours? What would
you say to them?
Hirsi Ali: This all comes into the cancel culture. When I was
canceled from Brandeis, like many other people at that point, I
attributed it to this narrow group of Islamists who would claim the
status of victimhood. They said that if I came to Brandeis, they would
not feel safe, or their human rights were violated.
By saying these things and getting the signatures of lots of people
from faculty and other students -- and that was a minority at the time
-- the president of the school and the board, they capitulated and they
said, "Okay, so we are going to disinvite you."
I just thought that this was something only within the realm of
dealing with the obstacles that radical Islam puts in the way of open
debate. To my shock and horror, I am seeing this thing has spread, and
that it has nothing to do with Islam.
The Islamists are exploiting the opportunity, but cancel culture and
these post‑modernist ideologies were born and developed in our own
universities, and they are affecting everyone right now. This thing is
spreading on to schools.
It is a relatively new ideology. It has been mainstreamed, and in
many ways, it is more dangerous than Islamism because it is affecting
the mainstream, affecting everyone – often for very trivial
infringements. I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of
publishing papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear
of being fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them
are just speaking the truth.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of nine books and a Research
Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, is also the
founder of the AHA Foundation, a nonprofit "committed to preserving,
protecting, and promoting Western freedoms and ideals."
This article is based on a briefing to Gatestone Institute.
Will the closing of the flagship Whole Foods store on Market Street
in San Francisco impact the precious shopping habits of progressives who
like to munch on first-rate delicacies as they talk woke politics?
Can you be starving and still be woke?
Believe it or not, in San Francisco there’s an openly gay Democrat brave enough to challenge the woke status quo.
The closing of Whole Foods made international news with CNN saying
the company shut its doors because it had concerns for worker safety.
The safety factor mentioned here includes retail theft, or shoplifting,
as well as San Francisco’s huge adjacent drug market — syringes on the
street, rampant homelessness (and the crimes concurrent with that) — in
short, the typical baggage that comes with big Democrat cities.
DailyMail.com weighed in on the Whole Foods story with a feature
detailing how progressive district attorneys in cities like Chicago, New
York, Portland, Philadelphia and California are to blame for such
closures because they have effectively legalized shoplifting by either
slapping shoplifters on the wrist or not prosecuting thefts under $950.
The closure of these stores, including a number of Walmart stores in Chicago’s south and west sides, all come with Democrat signatures.
The Daily Mail also quoted a Walmart CEO who said that the
store decided to shut 17 of its outlets across nine states because theft
and shoplifting was “the highest it’s ever been around the country and
if it did not slow down, stores would have to close.”
San Francisco’s Whole Foods is located in the Tenderloin district, a
part of the city made famous for its musical scene, and where Dashiell
Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. Today that history is being replaced by the devastation caused by big-city Democrat policies.
Whole Food’s closing was such a shock to the city that an openly gay
member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took a step back from
the Golden Gate Left agenda book when he announced a proposal to change
the city charter in order to benefit police.
Supervisor Matt Doresy, who represents the mid-Market area where the
store is located, told SFGATE that Whole Foods’ closing resulted from
what one might expect: “Retail theft and individuals suffering from
mental illness and or substance abuse having outbursts in the store.”
Voicing his extreme disappointment at the closure, Dorsey
nevertheless admitted that he’s “seen a lot of issues of people acting
out and shoplifting” in Whole Foods.
Then Dorsey dared to do what no other Board of Supervisors member
dared to do: he revealed that he is working on a charter amendment that
would mandate a minimum number of police officers in the city.
To leftist ears, this is sheer heterodoxy.
Dorsey’s call immediately aroused the poisoned antennae of hard-core leftists.
His proposed charter amendment would require the approval of San
Francisco voters in the next citywide election (March 2024) rather than a
simple approval by the Board of Supervisors. But leftists on the board
are leery of increasing the size and funding of the city’s police
department, and this means that Dorsey is in for a fight.
If the board approves the amendment, the proposed change will be on
the ballot, but if it is not approved, Dorsey says he is ready, along
with his co-sponsor, District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani, to collect
signatures to have the question on the ballot.
“I’m committed to do it if I have to,” Doresy says. “I think I have
the support for it. I’m not facing my own election for a few years and
I’m happy to do the heavy lifting.”
In 2020, caught up in the defund-the-police madness following the
death of George Floyd, San Francisco joined many other Democrat cities
when it diverted funds from police. Mayor London Breed, in an announcement
on July 31, 2020, said: “We will redirect $120 million from law
enforcement to support these priorities over the next two years, Let me
repeat that. This is $120 million.”
The mayor’s plan was to redirect that money into “addressing disparities in the Black community.”
“With this budget, we are listening to the community and prioritizing
investments in the African American community around housing, mental
health and wellness, workforce development, economic justice, education,
advocacy and accountability,” Mayor Breed stated.
One year later, in 2021, Mayor Breed reversed course when she
announced that “compassion cannot be mistaken for weakness or
indifference.”
Breed then announced that more police officers would be deployed to
“address the unacceptable level of crime in our city, namely the
Tenderloin.”
In what then seemed like a giant mea culpa to the city, 200
vacant police positions were filled for the 2022-23 fiscal year, and
funds were added for officer retention bonuses.
The current “thing” in left progressive cities is to take much of the
sting out of traditional police work (keeping order) by redirecting it
into counseling roles, especially when it comes to mental health and
substance abuse issues. Dorsey, who worked as the press spokesperson
for the San Francisco police prior to his appointment
to the Board of Supervisors by Mayor Breed, reiterates that a police
department’s job is to keep order, even in cases of addiction-driven
theft.
Dorsey, who has always been a Democrat and who publicizes his
HIV-positive status, has formidable enemies among San Francisco’s
progressive communities.
He first fell out of favor with the leftists when he and Mayor Breed
refused to march in San Francisco Pride 2022 after organizers banned
police officers from marching in uniform. It was only after Pride
reached a compromise with the police that he and the mayor agreed to
march.
For Dorsey to go against the rainbow mafia within the LGBT community
was no small thing. For an urban gay man, and especially a politician,
this can be social suicide. (The gay press will ignore you and you’ll be
shunned by gay paparazzi in search of glossy PR photo ops.)
Just last year in my own city of Philadelphia, Pride organizers banned police officers from the event.
“Cops are there to protect and serve systems that have historically
oppressed and marginalized us,” Philadelphia Pride Collective’s leading
organizer Abdul-Aliy Muhammad told one publication. “It’s clear and
simple to me that cops are just not healthy for our communities.”
Dorsey was slammed by city leftists earlier in 2023 for his proposal
to change the city’s sanctuary city policy. His call to end protection
for undocumented immigrants charged with a violent or drug-dealing
felony including fentanyl-dealing convictions was met with angry
resistance.
An immigrant advocacy group, FREE SF Coalition, spearheaded a rally
in response to Dorsey and DA Brooke Jenkins’ plan to rescind a policy
that grants illegals some protections from deportation.
“We’re not going to let him do it,” said fellow Supervisor Hilary
Ronen. “We’re not going to fall for this age-old attack on immigrants.”
Ronen apparently isn’t aware, or refuses to accept the fact, that
over 95% of the opioids being sold on the streets of San Francisco are
sold by illegal Honduran immigrants.
This is further proof, indeed, that the Left has its head in the sand
not only when it comes to illegal immigration, but the reasons why
major businesses are leaving once-great cities like San Francisco.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism.
The F-35 aircraft that shot down the drone in 2021 only did so after being assigned to do so through intelligence provided by the Navy.
The Saar 6 missile boat’s
highly advanced radar systems were used successfully in March 2021 to
help track an Iranian attack drone and to facilitate assigning a
specific F-35 aircraft to shoot down the incoming drone.
Although
the incident was previously announced, now is the first time that it
has been revealed that the method for having identified and tracked the
attack drone was via an Israeli naval vessel.
Until
now, many had theorized that either land-based or aerial-based Israeli
radar had caught the Iranian attack drone, especially since an F-35 aircraft had shot it down.
However,
it is now clear that the F-35 aircraft only did so after being assigned
to do so through intelligence provided by the Navy.
Other revelations about Israeli missile boats
This
revelation comes along with other revelations regarding Israeli missile
boats, including that they and other Israeli naval vessels – as well as
US naval vessels – were involved for two weeks in mid-2022 to prepare
for setting up the critical new Karish natural gas field.
An Israeli Navy vessel is seen firing a missile (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
Previously,
it had been reported that on July 2, 2022, an IDF plane and gunboat
intercepted three hostile drones launched from Lebanon toward the
airspace over Israel’s economic waters.
Hezbollah
claimed responsibility and its affiliates claimed that launching the
drones was justified, called it “successful” and asserted it helped
Lebanon in the negotiations being carried out to delineate its naval
border.
Yet,
only now are fuller details coming forward about the Navy’s role, the
two weeks of operations and the specific assistance of the US Navy with
intelligence and threat issues at the Karish setup stage.
The
Navy currently has 12 ships at sea to provide defense at all times
which has included running 13 operations as well as 26,364 general hours
at sea.
Further, the
navy is providing enhanced defense capabilities at a time when 70% of
Israel’s energy needs have shifted to arriving from the sea.
That
is without considering the huge volume of grains, wheat, weapons,
communications and other issues which are enabled by Israel maintaining
unmitigated access to the sea.
Part
of the shift in increasing the navy’s powers and responsibilities came
as a result of government decisions noting that Israel was becoming even
more reliant on the sea following the discovery of vast natural gas
resources off the coast.
What is the Saar 6?
The
Saar 6 has 18 different advanced Israeli-developed systems it works
with to fill the role of providing greater defense at sea to Israel’s
new maritime assets.
In
late March, the Israeli navy and five other countries completed a
multi-week international joint drill with the Sa'ar 6 playing a
prominent role, Naval Squadron 32 Cdr. Steven Gordon told the Jerusalem Post at the time.
“We
led this international drill for three weeks, including Greece, Cyprus,
Italy, the US and France. This was one of the bigger drills. We went
all over the Mediterranean Sea and along the various coast points of
Israel,” said Gordon.
The naval commander said that the exercise involved a mix of above-the-surface naval vessels, submarines and aircraft.
Gordon
also called the drill historic because it was the first time that the
relatively new Sa’ar 6 vessel participated in an international drill,
though it has participated in internal Israeli drills since being
delivered to Israel over two years ago.
There have been a number of new positive turning points for the Sa’ar 6 both in late 2022 and early 2023.
An Israeli Navy vessel is seen near the Karish gas field in the Mediterranean Sea (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
The 90-meter-long 2,000-ton Sa’ar 6 ship
has a maximum speed of 24 knots with a range of 2,500 nautical miles.
Though not much longer than its naval predecessor, the Sa’ar 5, they
have been built to better handle rough seas and stay at sea longer.
“The
drill included practicing maneuvers and operations against submarines,
other above-surface vessels, aircraft, maneuvers to protect strategic
assets, and inspections of suspicious ships,” said Gordon.
The
reference to suspicious ships would usually refer to efforts to smuggle
weapons or carry out terror operations by groups from Gaza, but could
also relate to Iranian smuggling attempts throughout the region.
Gordon
did not want to reveal specific scenarios, but it appeared pretty clear
that the reference to strategic assets included defending Israel’s
natural gas platforms.
For
example, the naval commander discussed with the Post the July 2022
incident in which the IDF shot down the three unmanned aerial vehicles
launched by Hezbollah toward Israel’s economic waters over the
Mediterranean Sea.
One
of the three UAVs was shot down by an F-16, but two others were downed
by the naval Barak 8 medium-range surface-to-air missile system, which
is also installed on the Sa’ar 6, marking the first time the system was
used against aerial threats.
The
Barak-8 MR-SAM system is able to shoot down enemy aircraft at a range
of 50-70 kilometers (32-43 miles). It is designed to defend naval
vessels against a myriad of short- to long-range airborne threats, such
as incoming missiles, planes and drones at both low and high altitudes.
Gordon
confirmed that his naval vessels trained “to defend against drone
attacks,” while noting that the Barak 8 defense system is only one of
the various defense options against drones.
The INS Magen, Israel's Sa'ar 6 corvette missile ship. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
The
Sa’ar 6 also comes equipped with two Naval Dome missile interceptors
for rockets (the maritime version of the land-based Iron Dome.
In
addition to interception missile defense systems, the ships also have
16 anti-ship missiles, one 76mm Oto Melara Super Rapid main gun, two
Typhoon 25mm remote weapon stations and two 324mm torpedo launchers for
MK54 Lightweight Torpedoes. Each state-of-the-art ship will also be
outfitted with cyber and electronic warfare systems.
The JFNA is hosting a General Assembly in Tel Aviv in honor of Israel's 75th Independence Day.
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu holds a news conference in Tel Aviv, last Monday
(photo credit: TOMER NEUBERG/FLASH90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
canceled his participation in a huge Sunday evening event in honor of
Israel's 75th Independence Day - presumably because of the huge protests
planned inside and outside of the Expo Tel Aviv convention center in
Jerusalem.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has informed us that he is not able to appear at tonight’s event sponsored by Jewish Federations of North America
(JFNA), The Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod, and the World
Zionist Organization celebrating the last 75 years of our communities’
investment and support in the state of Israel’s growth and development,"
the organizers of the event sent to the participants.
"We thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for his message of friendship between our communities."
General Assembly organizers
"We
thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for his message of friendship between
our communities and his acknowledgment of the important role North
American Jewry has played in building and developing the state of
Israel. We look forward to hearing from President Isaac Herzog tonight and wish him continued luck in advancing a compromise agreement on judicial reforms
that will be acceptable to the broad majority of Israelis and
strengthen Israel’s democratic institutions," the message to
participants read.
Dr. David Barak-Gorodetsky, head of the Ruderman Program for American-Jewish Studies at the University of Haifa and an expert in US Jewry told The Jerusalem Post
that "throughout the years, American Jewish organizations have managed
to work across the isle in Israel." He added that it is "important to
keep the American Jewish relationship with Israel bipartisan and not
have the American Jewish community be identified with just one side of
the political discussion in Israel. To that end, the JFNA announcement
is commendable, but the current situation presents unprecedented
challenges. Let's hope unity will prevail."
JFNA wasn't worried about planned protests
President and CEO of JFNA Eric Fingerhut told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that he is “not afraid” of the outcome of planned protests before and during the then-planned Netanyahu speech on Sunday.
“Obviously
we hope that the people who are coming to protest understand that the
event that they're protesting is an event being held by an organization
that is so deeply dedicated to the future of Israel and has been so
deeply involved in everything that has happened and in the State of
Israel,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with the JFNA delegation, May 27, 2021. (credit: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)
Thousands
of protesters were planning on surrounding Expo Tel Aviv where the
conference is expected to take place, together with the Jewish Agency,
Keren Hayesod and the World Zionist Organization. They planned to
protest against Netanyahu because of the proposed judicial reforms, even
though their legislation has stopped and there are currently
negotiations taking place at the President’s residence.
“I
hope the protesters understand how we have assisted the State of Israel
for the past 100 years, even before that state was established. I hope
that will factor into how they conduct themselves,” Fingerhut said on
Thursday.
Anna
Kislanski, CEO of The Israeli Movement for Reform and Progressive
Judaism responded to the cancellation of Netanyahu in a statement with a
hint of criticism towards the leadership of the organizations hosting
the event.
It would be
better if from the beginning [the organizers] would understand the
murmur of our hearts and those of our brothers and sisters in the
Diaspora regarding the Prime Minister," Kislanski said. She added that
Netanyahu's "submission to extreme groups Jewish groups, who have been
bullying [progressive Judaism] for years, has been alienating them from
Israel and signaling the deepest rift between Israel and the Diaspora."
She explained that in her opinion the organizers "shouldn't have invited
him in the first place." She also criticized the fact that MK Simcha Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, is still speaking on Monday.
