Palestinian Affairs: Abbas’s credibility problem

KHALED ABU TOAMEH

To many Palestinians, it’s obvious that the PA leader will continue negotiating with Israel even if the bulldozers are working in the settlements.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s credibility has been damaged to a point where it’s hard to envision a situation where he would be able to convince even a handful of Palestinians to accept any agreement he strikes with Israel.

It’s Abbas’s repeated zigzagging, double-talk and empty threats that have been most devastating for him. This week, with the expiration of the moratorium on settlement construction, Abbas’s credibility suffered yet another severe, if not fatal, blow. For months, he had been threatening to walk out of the peace talks if the 10-month freeze, which expired on September 26, was not extended. In fact, he continued to issue his threats until the last minute.

Only hours before the moratorium expired, Abbas went on the record to declare that “we won’t continue with the negotiations even for one day after the settlement freeze ends.”

Not surprisingly, at the same time that he was threatening, in Arabic, to pull out of the talks, the message he and his aides were sending, in English, to Washington and Western governments was that they had no intention of suspending the negotiations.

During his visit to the US last week, Abbas was quoted on more than one occasion as indicating that even if the construction in the settlements resumed, he would not withdraw from the talks. These statements did not appear in the official Palestinian media, where editors and journalists receive instructions and salaries from the PA government.

To many Palestinians, it’s now obvious that Abbas will eventually continue with the talks even as the bulldozers are working in the settlements. His threat, like previous ones, has once again proven to be an empty one.

Those who have been following Abbas for years have become accustomed to hearing him say one thing and do the opposite. Until a few weeks ago, Abbas had threatened that he wouldn’t enter direct talks until the government of Binyamin Netanyahu accepted the two-state solution, recognized the 1967 line as the border of a Palestinian state and promised to refrain from building in the settlements.

In the end, he entered direct talks without having any of his conditions fulfilled. He has defended his decision by arguing that he had come under heavy pressure from the Americans and Europeans.

Before that, there was another threat that Abbas had made – that he wouldn’t enter indirect talks unless the Netanyahu government agreed to launch the talks from the point where they had stopped in late 2008 during the era of former prime minister Ehud Olmert. In the end, of course, Abbas did launch indirect talks.

Abbas’s threats go back all the way to the days when he was Yasser Arafat’s No. 2. Then, he and his former boss used to quarrel almost every day, sometimes over the most trivial matters, such as where Abbas would be seated during official dinners. Tensions between the two reached their peak less than a decade ago, when Arafat appointed Abbas as PA prime minister. From day one, Abbas started complaining that Arafat was trying to undermine his powers.

Back then, Abbas did what he does best: He threatened to resign – and that was the only time he actually carried out his threat. Since then, he has been making similar threats at least once or twice a week.

The threats are often directed toward the US administration and Western donors. Abbas’s message: Give me more money and political backing or I will resign.

He threatened to quit of the Americans and Europeans did not support him in his power struggle with Hamas. He threatened to dismantle the PA if the West did not put enough pressure on Israel. Before his term in office expired in January 2009, Abbas threatened to quit if Hamas did not allow new presidential and legislative elections in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas’s decision this week to withhold his threat to walk out of the peace talks for another week or two did not come as surprise to many Palestinians. “We’re used to this type of zigzagging,” complained a Fatah legislator in Ramallah. “How can anyone take this man seriously after all these empty threats?”

Abbas is good not only at issuing threats, but also in avoiding responsibility. He is now doing what he has done in the past year – leaving it up to others to decide for him. To avoid responsibility, he has requested an “urgent” meeting of Arab League foreign ministers to discuss the repercussions of the resumption of settlement construction and whether the PA should continue talking to Israel or not.

Abbas wants the Arab ministers to do what they did in the past, namely to give him a ladder to climb down from the high tree. They are undoubtedly expected to “authorize” Abbas to continue with the talks.

This way he could justify the U-turn in his position by arguing that he has a mandate from the Arab world to continue with the talks even as the construction in the settlements continues.

Abbas’s defense is now based on the argument that he went to the talks only because of US and European pressure and he’s continuing to sit at the negotiating table only because his Arab brothers gave him a green light to do so. With such arguments and empty threats, it would be impossible to find one Palestinian who would buy any agreement that Abbas brings home.

Sharia Law: The Key to Linguistic Rearmament in the War against Jihadism

David Hegedus

The struggle against the jihadists is fought both on the physical battlefield and in the war of words. On the physical battlefield, we win easily. In a shootout between predator drones and bolt action rifles, the good guys win every time. However, in the war of words, we've allowed ourselves to be outgunned. We are reluctant to criticize any behavior by Muslims, no matter how outrageous, for fear of being called certain bad words such as Islamophobe, hater, and racist. It's high time we strap on our body armor and start shooting back. Consider the term "Islamophobe." The payload of this verbal barb has two parts. The "Islamo-" part refers to a supposedly harmless foreign religion, and the "-phobe" part refers to an irrational fear. Liberals and jihadists wish to classify us as unsophisticated rubes, xenophobes. Users of this moniker should be corrected -- forcefully and quickly. We are not "Islamophobes," but we can be called "Shariaphobes." The first refers to a religion; the second refers to a legal system.

Sharia Law is a target which the liberals cannot defend. After all, without Sharia Law, Islam would be a harmless religion -- almost benign. Even though liberals might not mind that Sharia Law treats Christians and Jews like garbage, atheists, polytheists, and pagans are treated even worse. And how could any liberal defend the way it treats women and homosexuals?

Another important verbal barb is the term "hate." Liberals will often scold Christians by telling us that it's against our rules to hate. We should politely suggest that their ignorance of Western religions is matched only by their ignorance of non-Western religions: Christians are certainly allowed to hate; we just can't hate people. Historically, Christians have hated a lot of bad stuff. Take for instance slavery and Jim Crow laws.

However, the best example of hateful foreign laws would be the Apartheid laws of South Africa. Once liberals use the word "hate," ask them whether they hated the Apartheid laws of the 1980s. If they answer yes, then ask them: if Apartheid was hateful treating non-whites as subhuman, why isn't Sharia Law hateful for treating non-Muslims as subhuman? Furthermore, you can remind them that South African whites never crashed planes into skyscrapers or attempted to export their laws to Europe or America.

Since Sharia Law was the moral justification used by Mohamed Atta on Nine-Eleven, Americans are more than entitled to fear Sharia Law. Are we not perfectly justified in hating Sharia Law with the same passion the Mr. Ahmadinejad hates Jews? Just at the Iranian president is an anti-Semite, shouldn't patriotic Americans be "anti-Sharia-ites"?

Finally, consider the word "racist." This implies that we, "evil white racists," are now harassing Arabs, not on the basis of their outrageous behavior, but purely because of their slightly darker complexions. We should remind them that under our laws, people are held accountable for their actions as individuals regardless of membership in any ethnic or religious group. We call this equal protection under the law. This is exactly the opposite of Sharia Law. Furthermore, one should suggest (as politely as possible) that if Muslim immigrants find it unbearable to live under a legal system in which they are not given special privileges, they are free to leave.

We can also remind our liberal friends that the poison of Sharia Law crosses ethnic and national boundaries. Some of the world's most vicious jihadists are from Chechnya in the Northern Caucasus Mountains. We must ask our liberal critics how it is possible for American white racists to bring themselves to "hate" these genuine Caucasians.

These Are Jewish Values?

David Harsanyi

As a Jew, I'm often asked why my fellow tribesmen are so predictably left-wing. And because we Jews are in constant telepathic contact, I can answer the question. For Jews, liberalism isn't an ideological choice; it's a spiritual stand-in. The religion of the average American Jew is) liberalism.

So when we talk about the "Jewish community," we mean a rock-ribbed flank of the Democratic Party. When a spokesman from a national organization lectures us about "core Jewish values," he is referring to secular left-wing orthodoxy. But rest assured that even though I'm a lapsed Jew (in both the traditional and political senses), having attended an orthodox yeshiva for years, I can state safely that today's Jewish "values" have as much to do with Talmudic teachings as Lady Gaga has to do with Beethoven.

Here's an example: In Denver, Larry Mizel, a nationally known millionaire, funds and underwrites cultural Judaism across the city. He is a moderate Chamber of Commerce Republican who is known to raise funds for Democrats when it suits his interests. Mizel is also, not surprisingly, a champion of Israel. Thus, at his annual Men's Event charity, he tends to invite speakers who gravitate to the right.

Though I'm not a regular at local Jewish "community" functions (I believe I attended one Men's Event about six years ago), I recall the grousing and pressure from the champions of Judaic tolerance whenever an unacceptable speaker -- conservatives Cliff May and Dennis Prager come to mind -- was scheduled to appear.

This year, Mizel invited crackpot Pastor John Hagee, who happens to be an exemplary friend of Israel. As an evangelical who loves Old Testament lingo, Hagee is antithetical to the "community," so many decided to boycott the charity and succeeded in having Hagee booted.

"My values are not just words. This thing has shaken me to the core of those values," Gary Yourtz, an extraordinarily dramatic former Jewish Federation board member told The Denver Post's Susan Greene. Gregg Drinkwater, deputy director of Keshet, a national group of Jewish gay men and lesbians, said, "Hagee's positions on a very large number of issues are in direct opposition to core Jewish values of inclusion, diversity and respect for all people."

Yeah, tell that to the Amalekites.

Now, I wouldn't have much problem with boycotts or ignoring Bible thumpers, but philosophical diversity and consistent indignation are evidently not Jewish "values."

Where, for instance, are complaints from the 80 percent of American Jews who support a president who actively pressures Israel into agreements that threaten its existence and, at the same time, bows to robed princes and pleads for the friendship of the most illiberal nations in the world?

Where were calls for boycotts of the Democratic National Convention, where -- among other Jew-friendly participants, such as Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson -- the gregarious Al Sharpton mingled with the Jewish core values crowd, or, as the good reverend might call them, "diamond merchants"?

Hagee can offend me, as well. But he's raised awareness among evangelicals about Israel's struggles and the Iranian regime's genocidal daydreams -- you know, real religious fanatics. Elie Wiesel, Joe Lieberman and Alan Dershowitz recently joined Hagee in a video spot produced by Christians United for Israel regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "incitement to genocide." But the indignant Denver Jewish "community" can't have its ideals compromised by listening to the guy for an hour?

Because shutting down a speech is now a core Jewish value.

Boy, Hillel would be proud.

That Building IS Ground Zero

Israpundit

New Rochelle Marine Disputes Defenders of ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque in New York City

Submitted by Robert Cox, New Rochelle Talk

(NEW ROCHELLE, NY) — The ongoing debate over the controversial Islamic community center and mosque planned for the site of what was to have been a Burlington Coat Factory retail outlet in lower Manhattan, has left Peter Parente frustrated. Parente, 42, a U.S. Marine honorably discharged in 1993, was part of the small team of construction workers assigned to clear plane wreckage from the building located at 45–47 Park Place in the days after 9/11.

Sitting at the kitchen table in his modest three-bedroom home in the Halcyon Park section of New Rochelle, Parente is uncomfortable talking about the proposed community center and mosque. He said that his service in the United States Marines was dedicated to defending the Constitution and the American way of life, and while he recognizes the First Amendment right of the organizers to build a mosque on the site, he struggles with coming to peace with the plan. But his eyes light up and there is no hesitation when asked about proponents of the mosque who dismiss critics by claiming that the building is not really that close to Ground Zero.
"I was there", said Parente. "I smelled death. I tasted death. It was in the air that we breathed as we worked. Don't tell me that the building is not near Ground Zero. It was all around us."

WTC_DebrisField_150.pngOn September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. A part of the plane's landing gear and fuselage came out the north side of the tower, crashed through the roof of the building at 45–47 Park Place and down through two floors before becoming embedded in the ceiling of the third floor of what was a five-story building.

It was that piece of wreckage that first attracted Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, 61, the man behind building the proposed 13-story Islamic community center and mosque, to the site. The presence of Park51 "where a piece of the wreckage fell sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11", Imam Feisal told the New York Times last December before the controversy began.

Flight175_Strut_2_455.png

For Parente, that wreckage is personal. Several days after the World Trade Center attack Parente was part of a crew from Forthright Development Company of Mamaroneck, NY, the company hired by Burlington Coat Factory to renovate the building as part of a planned retail store in lower Manhattan. When the building was struck on 9/11, Burlington hired Forthright to go back into the building where they had just completed work and remove the wreckage of Flight 175 from the badly damaged building.

Parente tells of arriving on the scene still worried about the fate of Michael Curtin, his close friend and former Gunnery Sergeant who had been in the area of the attack and reported missing. Sergeant Major Michael Sean Curtin's remains were recovered from Ground Zero in March 2002.

The crew of 15 men made their way into the building with great care, cautiously edging their way up the idle escalators to reach the third floor of the severely damaged structure. There was water everywhere recalled Parente. The sprinkler system had been activated when the building was struck and most of the store merchandise had been ruined.

"It was a mess. The landing gear must have weighed about half a ton and when it hit that building it was like one of those "bunker busters", slicing through the roof and straight down into the heart of the structure. It was sticking out of the ceiling on the third floor. All of us on the work detail got real quiet thinking about the people on that plane."

After securing the large chunk of landing gear with ropes, Parente and the rest of the crew pulled and yanked on the strut, rocking it back and forth, until the ceiling gave way. The landing gear came crashing down into the men's clothing section of the never-opened store.

"We had one hell of a time getting it out of there," said Parente pointing to a photo (below) of James Pasqua, a childhood friend who would die five years after 9/11 from unrelated complications related to Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD).

Flight175_Strut_1_455.png

Parente and the other men, pulled the strut away from the merchandise shelves, laid out boards across the escalator steps and set up winches to haul the plane part towards the escalators and then carefully lower it to the level below. To keep it steady while they lowered the strut down the escalators, Parente sat astride the strut to keep it balanced. At each floor they had to drag the strut across the floor, around to the other side and then down the escalator, repeating this process until they reached the ground floor. They then dragged the landing gear out onto Church Street where they had a truck waiting. The crew lifted the 1,000 pound hunk of metal into the back of a Ford Econoline van.

Parente climbed inside and sat with the landing gear in the back as Pasqua drove north to Parente's garage and service station in Mamaroneck. Once there, they wrapped the landing gear in a tarp and stored it in the back of the garage. Worried that someone might try to steal the strut, Parente and Pasqua parked cars all around the wrapped metal to deter access, and secured the garage as best they could.

Parente said "We were proud to have played a small part in recovering a piece of the plane. We damn sure weren't going to let anyone just take it".

Flight175_Strut_3_455.png

The following day, Parente turned over custody of the landing gear to the owner of Forthright Development which had been directed to deliver the plane part to the headquarters of Burlington Coat Factory in New Jersey. Parente said he was told that the company hoped to create a 9/11 Memorial from the wreckage.

"I never heard what happened to the strut. I would like to think they did something with it to honor our heroes killed in the attack," said Parente. "I sure hope it's not collecting dust in some warehouse".

A spokesperson for Burlington Coat Factory stated that the company turned the part over to government investigators. The company said the part was not returned so no 9/11 memorial was ever created.

Asked why he did not keep even a small memento of that day working at Ground Zero, Parente looked away. Pressed on the point, Parente slowly got up from the kitchen table and disappeared for a moment. When he returned he had two small objects in his hand -- what appeared to be a washer and a nut from the landing gear. Parente turned them over and pointed out a barely legible set of numbers etched into the metal.

"Probably the VIN number for the Flight 175 aircraft", said Parente. He sits down and considers the two pieces of metal that came screaming down from the sky on a bright, late summer Tuesday morning 9 years earlier. Lost in thought he shakes his head slightly before carefully wrapping the two objects in a handkerchief and placing them back in a small wooden box.

"They never asked for this", said Parente. "Maybe I should have offered but I wanted something I could hold to remember my friend Michael Curtin and all those heroes who died that day."

J-Street unmasked

Isi Leibler
October 1, 2010
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2450

Two years ago, when I first condemned J Street's anti-Israeli agenda, I tagged George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian born currency speculator, as one of its major sponsors. Yet J-Street founder and executive director Jeremy Ben Ami, on repeated occasions, adamantly denied this. He even said that he wished that Soros was a funder adding that "we got tagged as having his support without the benefit of actually getting funded."

It has now been disclosed that some $750,000, amounting to almost a third of J-Street's 2008-2009 US revenue, was provided by Soros. After being exposed as an outright serial liar, Ben-Ami tried to weasel his way out of his shameful behavior by "accepting responsibility for being less than clear" about J-Street funding.

In fact Soros and J-Street make a perfect match. Soros has proudly proclaimed "I am not a Zionist, nor am I a practicing Jew." He believes that Israel is largely responsible for anti-Semitism. Much of his venom is concentrated on AIPAC, and he has consistently been attacking all-pro Israeli institutions. He also calls for the recognition of Hamas. His "Open Society Institute" pours vast funds into organizations whose prime objective is to undermine elected governments of Israel. Only last month ago, he contributed a record $100 million towards Human Rights Watch, the purportedly human rights watchdog, which no longer bothers to disguise its blatant bias and hostility towards Israel.

For its part, J-Street condemned Israel for its Gaza offensive against Hamas, describing it as "a disproportionate response." It refused to identify "who was right and who was wrong" proclaiming that "we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly of right and wrong." It not only refused to condemn the Goldstone Report, but facilitated meetings between members of Congress and Judge Goldstone. It even resurrected the anti-Semitic charge of dual loyalties, warning Jews that by "one sided support of Israel," they "risked alienating the American public and would be condemned for displaying greater loyalties towards Israel than the US." It repeatedly slandered AIPAC depicting it as an extremist right-wing body ignoring the fact that it had backed the policies of all Israeli governments, including dovish administrations preceding Netanyahu.

More recently, J-Street called on its supporters to bombard the IRS with complaints that contributions promoting social welfare causes over the green line, including the major settlement blocs and Jerusalem, represented a breach of US law and should be investigated.

There are left wing groups like Meretz and Peace Now who oppose Israeli settlement policies with no less vigor than J-Street. But what primarily differentiate them from J-Street are not its views but its actions. J-Street insists that it knows better than Israelis what is good for them, and employs the obscene analogy of parents required to impose "tough love" on drug addicted children, to justify lobbying the Obama Administration to force Israel to make unilateral concessions to the Palestinians which undermine its security. It also funds Congressional candidates with track records of hostility to Israel policies. It is surely classic Orwellian double-talk for an organization which lobbies foreign legislators to oppose Israel policies, to define itself as "pro-Israel."

To top it off, J-Street was also exposed for having received donations and support from Arab and pro-Arab individuals and organizations.The donors include Genevieve Lynch a former participant of the US Iranian National Council who also serves on the J-Street finance committee; Judith Barnett a former registered agent for Saudi Arabia who also serves on the J-Street Advisory Council; and Nancy Dutton a former attorney for the Saudi Arabian embassy who donates to J-Street's political action committee which finances anti-Israeli congressional candidates.

It was also disclosed that a mysterious Hong Kong donor, "Consolacion Esdicul," whose identity was concealed, provided $800,000 (about half the total annual J-Street income). When Ben Ami was asked to identify the Hong Kong contributor, he declined saying "Bill Bester solicited her." Bester is apparently not Jewish, and in view of Ben-Ami's reluctance to elaborate, there is odium about this contribution. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that it is either clandestine Saudi money or a back channel concealing additional Soros funding. If one combines this extraordinarily contribution from a shadowy Chinese source with that of Soros it is difficult for J-Street to deny that the bulk of their budget emanates from either anti-Israeli or other tainted sources.

How will the lack of transparency, shameless lies and the disclosure that J-Street was clandestinely being funded by a pathologically anti-Israeli Jew like Soros impact on the organization?

It is likely to suffer, but its core support will probably continue supporting it. The real test will be whether the American Jewish establishment will wake up and marginalize this organization from the mainstream instead of bringing it into "the tent."

The core support of J-Street today is based on two groups. The most reliable are the hard line anti-Israeli elements who cynically promote the "pro-Israel" tag in order to maximize their campaign against the Israeli government. They include a strong element of virulent anti-Zionists willing to collaborate with any groups including Arabs and extreme anti-Zionist leftists in order to undermine the Jewish state. They usually come out of the closet and are identified at J-Street conferences. For obvious reasons the leaders seek to divert media attention from these elements who demonize and seek to delegitimize the Jewish state.

The other group represents the bulk of rank and file followers. Many are confused liberals with little Jewish background who Ben Ami once described to the New York Times as being primarily intermarried youngsters who attend "Buddhist Seders." Some are genuinely angered when accused of providing support to those seeking to destroy the Jewish state and maintain that they are partaking in constructive dissident activity which they believe remains within the framework of pro-Israel activity. They are in many respects, reminiscent of the Jewish fellow travelers during the Cold War. They too, were muddled liberals being manipulated by hard core communists into supporting bogus peace festivals and indulging in pro Soviet activities which unquestionably furthered the interests of the "Evil Empire."

For a time, these groups were also tolerated by the Jewish establishment. But when the evidence of Soviet duplicity and anti-Semitism became overwhelming, they were isolated from the mainstream.

Today it is utterly preposterous to define a group like J-Street which describes itself as Obama's "blocking back" in Congress and seeks to undermine support for the government of Israel as being "pro-Israel." Nobody seeks to deny J-Street its right of freedom of expression. The left-liberal media will undoubtedly continue promoting the organization which seeks to provide a pseudo Jewish seal of approval on the Obama administration's one sided pressures against Israel.

However with these recent revelations, American Jewish leaders will hopefully expose them as a marginal anti-Israeli group artificially created by the largesse of Soros and dissociate them from the mainstream of the committed Jewish community which remains strongly supportive of the Jewish State.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post

Is Barack Obama “Good for the Jews”?

Joel Fishman
Makor Rishon
1 October 2010

The attitude of any American president to Israel is a matter of concern because it affects our lives and security. Even this week, President Obama publicly exhorted Israel to extend the settlement freeze. Many Israelis found this interference insensitive and unwelcome. One would not ask if this president is a friend of Israel, because in his Cairo speech of 4 June 2009 he publicly revealed his preference. Just the same, one continuously asks whether Obama is “good for the Jews” (and Israel), even if the question is left unstated.
Normally, one would expect that any president first be good for America, but Obama has not convinced many Americans that this is the case. It is remarkable that a parallel questioning process is taking place in the U.S., where senior political commentators, such as Peggy Noonan, Dinesh D’Souza, Charles Krauthammer, Andy McCarthy, and Victor Davis Hanson, are also asking if the President is good for America, and they are not convinced. Their vantage point may be different, but if America and Israel share the same [Judeo-Christian] values, then the interests of the U.S. and of Israel should largely coincide. The historical record is mixed.

There is a need to examine the recent past, because the two previous American presidents who claim to be friends of the Jewish state have actually caused considerable harm.

From a broader perspective, as president, Bill Clinton’s great failure was that, even after the attacks on the World Trade Center [February 1993] and the Khobar Towers [June 1996], he did not regard radical Islamic terror as a serious threat.

To make things worse, the Clinton administration defined terror down, making it as a criminal offence rather than an act of war. The response to each is different. If one considers terror a criminal act, one brings offenders to law. If one considers terror an act of war, one may fight it by every possible means. There is a difference, and, as Albert Camus wrote, “naming things incorrectly, whether intentionally or not, adds to the misfortune of the world.”

An unwillingness to deal with the dangers of terror helped create conditions which left America vulnerable to a devastating surprise attack. Although the 9/11 report did not assign personal responsibility, the late Professor Emeritus Ernest May of Harvard, Senior Advisor to the 9/11 Commission, independently went public. He reported that “the CIA turned against him [Clinton] when he failed to attend a ceremony for two employees gunned down by a terrorist at the entrance to agency headquarters.” He was also not on speaking terms with Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI. Thus, President Clinton did not have an effective working relationship with America’s main security agencies, and the consequences are known – for America and for its allies, among them, Israel.

With regard to bi-lateral relations, it is not generally remembered that in the spring of 1993, President Clinton compelled the Rabin government to repatriate four hundred and fifteen members of the Hamas leadership which it had expelled to Lebanon in December 1992. Thus, Clinton contributed to the ascendancy of Hamas in Gaza. If we take the combined effects of Condoleezza Rice’s contribution and that of Bill Clinton, it is obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic of Iran owe a tremendous debt to the two recent American administrations.

In addition, there are some things that we may never know. During the advice and consent hearings for Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State, the William J. Clinton Foundation reluctantly disclosed that that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated between ten and twenty-five million dollars to the Clinton presidential library fund. We need to know exactly what Prince Bandar meant when he said that "If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have when they are just coming into office." Clearly there is a lack of transparency here. We still do not know what the Saudis bought with their considerable investment which took the form of a deferred payment.

Just last week, former President Clinton spoke up, and openly criticized Israelis who emigrated from the former Soviet Union because they were critical of the “peace process.” It is inconceivable that an Israeli prime minister would criticize attitudes of any ethnic group in the United States, and this was simply bad manners.

For his part, George W. Bush took great pains to demonstrate his open friendship with Israel. When he came to Israel for the celebration of sixty years of independence, he and Prime Minister Olmert acted like brothers. However, there was a disharmony between appearances and reality. As a consequence of Saudi pressure and threats at the end of August 2001 (right before 9/11), the Americans, for the very first time, sponsored the idea of a Palestinian state. Also, in November 2005, Condoleezza Rice compelled Israel to open the Rafah border crossings. Against advice from all quarters, Rice pressed for elections in the Palestinian Authority (January 25, 2006) which then included Gaza. This turned out to be a colossal mistake. Hamas won in Gaza, and this district became a sanctuary for terror – like Laos in its time. We now live with the consequences of this failure. Thank you, Condoleezza! Mention should also be made of the scandalous and dishonest November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which dismissed the threat of the Iranian nuclear program. This report confused the public and prevented an effective response to the problem.

To date, President Barack Obama has not yet succeeded in doing the same degree of harm to Israel as his two predecessors. To his credit, he does not claim to be a friend. For the present, we must respect his frankness but watch him closely.


Dr. Joel Fishman is a Fellow at a research institute in Jerusalem.

Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules

Daniel Pipes
Commentary
October 2010

http://www.meforum.org/pipes/8913/two-decades-rushdie-rules

From a novel by Salman Rushdie published in 1989 to an American civil protest called "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day" in 2010, a familiar pattern has evolved. It begins when Westerners say or do something critical of Islam. Islamists respond with name-calling and outrage, demands for retraction, threats of lawsuits and violence, and actual violence. In turn, Westerners hem and haw, prevaricate, and finally fold. Along the way, each controversy prompts a debate focusing on the issue of free speech. I shall argue two points about this sequence. First, that the right of Westerners to discuss, criticize, and even ridicule Islam and Muslims has eroded over the years. Second, that free speech is a minor part of the problem; at stake is something much deeper – indeed, a defining question of our time: will Westerners maintain their own historic civilization in the face of assault by Islamists, or will they cede to Islamic culture and law and submit to a form of second-class citizenship?

The cover of the book that prompted the Rushdie Rules.

The era of Islamist uproar began abruptly on February 14, 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's supreme leader, watched on television as Pakistanis responded with violence to a new novel by Salman Rushdie, the famous writer of South Asian Muslim origins. His book's very title, The Satanic Verses, refers to the Koran and poses a direct challenge to Islamic sensibilities; its contents further exacerbate the problem. Outraged by what he considered Rushdie's blasphemous portrait of Islam, Khomeini issued an edict whose continued impact makes it worthy of quotation at length:

I inform all zealous Muslims of the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses – which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran – and all those involved in the publication who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death.

I call upon all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities. God willing, whoever is killed on this path is a martyr.

In addition, anyone who has access to the author of this book but does not possess the power to execute him should report him to the people so that he may be punished for his actions.

This unprecedented edict – no head of government had ever called for the execution of a novelist living in another country – came out of the blue and surprised everyone, from Iranian government officials to Rushdie himself. No one had imagined that a magical realist novel, replete with people falling out of the sky and animals that talk, might incur the wrath of the ruler of Iran, a country to which Rushdie had few connections.

The edict led to physical attacks on bookstores in Italy, Norway, and the United States and on translators of The Satanic Verses in Norway, Japan, and Turkey; in the last case, the translator and 36 others perished in an arson attack on a hotel. Other violence in Muslim-majority countries led to more than 20 fatalities, mostly in South Asia. Then, just as the furor wound down, in June 1989, Khomeini died; his death made the edict, sometimes inaccurately called a fatwa, immutable.

The edict contains four important elements. First, by noting "opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran," Khomeini delineated the wide range of sacred topics that may not be treated disrespectfully without invoking a death sentence.

Second, by targeting "all those involved in the publication who were aware of its contents," he declared war not just on the artist but also on an entire cultural infrastructure – including the thousands of employees of publishing houses, advertisers, distribution companies, and bookstores.

Third, by ordering Rushdie's execution "so that no one else will dare to insult the Muslim sanctities," Khomeini made clear his purpose not only to punish one writer but also to prevent further instances of ridicule.

Finally, by demanding that those unable to execute Rushdie "report him," Khomeini called on every Muslim worldwide to become part of an informal intelligence network dedicated to upholding Islamic sanctities.

These four features together constitute what I call the Rushdie Rules. Two decades later, they remain very much in place.

The edict set several precedents in the West. A foreign political leader successfully ignored conventional limits on state powers. A religious leader at will intervened directly, with little cost or resistance, in Western cultural affairs. And a Muslim leader established the precedent of applying an aspect of Islamic law, the Shari'a, in an overwhelmingly non-Muslim country. On this last point: Western states have, at times, served as Khomeini's effective agents. The government of Austria imposed a suspended prison sentence on a person who defied the Rushdie Rules, while the governments of France and Australia brought charges that could have meant jail time. Most strikingly, authorities in Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, and Israel actually jailed Rushdie-Rule trespassers. It takes effort to recall the innocent days before 1989, when Westerners freely spoke and wrote about Islam and related subjects.

The Rushdie Rules had an immediate impact on Muslims living in the West, whose outbursts of insults and violence generated a newfound sense of power. From Sweden to New Zealand, Islamists responded with joy that, after centuries on the defensive, Muslims had found their voice and, from the belly of the beast, could challenge the West. Most of the violence that followed was of the indiscriminate sort, on the model of 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, and London, in which jihadists killed whoever happened to cross their paths; TheReligionOfPeace.com documents on average five indiscriminate Islamist terrorist attacks per day around the world.

Less common but more intimidating is the violence that targets those who defy the Rushdie Rules. Let us limit examples of this phenomenon to one country, Denmark. In October 2004, an instructor at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute at the University of Copenhagen was kicked and hit by several strangers as he left the university. They informed him that he had read from the Koran, which as an infidel (kafir) he had no right to do. In October 2005, Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose was threatened for having commissioned cartoons depicting Muhammad. Two of the cartoonists had to go into hiding. One of them, Kurt Westergaard, subsequently narrowly escaped physical attack inside his home. In March 2006, Naser Khader, an anti-Islamist politician, was threatened by an Islamist who warned that if Khader became a government minister, he and his ministry would be blown up.

The Danish experience is typical. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Across Europe, dozens of people are now in hiding or under police protection because of threats from Muslim extremists." Even Pope Benedict XVI received a flurry of threats in the aftermath of his quoting a Byzantine emperor on the subject of Islam. In the Netherlands alone, politicians reported 121 death threats against them in just one year. The November 2004 execution on an Amsterdam street of Theo van Gogh – a well known libertarian, filmmaker, talk show host, newspaper columnist, and mischief-maker who had ridiculed Islam – traumatized his country and led to a brief state of insurrection.

Westerners generally perceive this violence as a challenge to their right to self-expression. But if freedom of speech is the battlefield, the greater war concerns the foundational principles of Western civilization. The recurrent pattern of Islamist uproar exists to achieve three goals – not always articulated – that go well beyond prohibiting criticism of Islam.

A first goal consists of establishing a superior status for Islam. Khomeini's demands for the sacred trinity of "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" imply special privileges for one religion, an exclusion from the hurly-burly of the marketplace of ideas. Islam would benefit from unique rules unavailable to other religions. Jesus may be sacrilegiously lampooned in Monty Python's Life of Brian or Terry McNally's Corpus Christi, but, as one book's title puts it, "be careful with Muhammad!"

This segues to a second goal – Muslim supremacy and Western inferiority. Islamists routinely say and do things more offensive to Westerners than anything Westerners do vis-à-vis Muslims. They openly despise Western culture; in the words of an Algerian Islamist, it's not a civilization, but a "syphilization." Their mainstream media publishes coarser, viler, and more violent cartoons than anything commissioned by Flemming Rose. They freely insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. They murder Jews just for being Jews, like Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, Sébastian Sellam and Ilan Halimi in France, and Pamela Waechter and Ariel Sellouk in the United States. Whether because of fear or inattention, Westerners assent to an imbalance whereby Muslims may offend and attack while they themselves are shielded from any such indignities or pains.

Should Westerners accept this imbalance, the dhimmi status will follow. This Islamic concept permits "people of the book," monotheists such as Christians and Jews, to continue to practice their religion under Muslim rule, subject to many restrictions. For its time, the dhimmi status offered certain benefits (until as recently as 1945, Jews generally had better lives in Islamdom than in Christendom), but it is intended to insult and humiliate non-Muslims, even as it exalts Muslims' superiority. Dhimmis pay additional taxes, may not join the military or the government, and suffer from encompassing legal disabilities. In some times and places, dhimmis could ride on a donkey but not on a horse, wore distinctive clothing, and an elderly dhimmi on the street was required to jump out of the way of a Muslim child. Elements of the dhimmi status have recently been applied in such varied places as Gaza, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Clearly, Londonistan and beyond are also in their sights.

In turn, re-establishing the dhimmi status is one step toward the Islamist's third and ultimate ambition, applying full Shari'a law. Closing down discussion of Islam paves the way toward this end. Conversely, retaining free speech about Islam represents a critical defense against the imposition of an Islamic order. Keeping our civilization requires open discussion of Islam.

The Shari'a regulates both private and public life. The private dimension includes such intensely personal matters as bodily cleanliness, sexuality, childbearing, family relations, clothing, and diet. In the public realm, the Shari'a regulates social relations, commercial transactions, criminal penalties, the status of women and minorities, slavery, the identity of the ruler, the judiciary, taxation, and warfare. In brief, Islamic law includes everything from toilet etiquette to the conduct of warfare.

Yet the Shari'a contradicts the deepest premises of Western civilization. The unequal relations of male and female, of Muslim and kafir, of owner and slave cannot be reconciled with equality of rights. The harem cannot be reconciled with a monogamous order. Islamic supremacism contradicts freedom of religion. A sovereign God cannot allow democracy.

Islamists all concur on the goal of applying Islamic law globally. But they differ on whether to achieve this through violence (the preference of bin Laden), totalitarian rule (Khomeini), or by politically gaming the system (the Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan). However done, were Islamists to achieve a Shar'i order, they would effectively replace Western civilization with Islamic civilization. In American terms, allowing the Koran to trump the Constitution ends the United States as it has existed for more than two centuries.

The Muslim Council of Britain wishes to transform schools in the United Kingdom.

Accepting the Rushdie Rules, in other words, implies a process that culminates with full application of the Shari'a. Were Khomeini to have his way, those of us who value Western civilization could not argue against Shari'a. To understand the consequences of closing the debate about Islam, note what appears to be an innocuous report published in 2007 by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a leading Islamist institution in the United Kingdom. Titled Towards Greater Understanding, it advises British authorities on how to deal with Muslim students in taxpayer-funded schools.

The MCB seeks to create an environment in schools in which Muslim children do not make "inappropriate assumptions" that "to progress in society they will have to compromise or give up aspects of who they are, and their religious beliefs and values." Toward this end, the MCB proposes a jaw-dropping list of changes that would fundamentally alter the nature of British schools, transforming them, in effect, into Saudi-like institutions. Some of its suggestions:

* Prayers: Provide (1) extra "water cans or bottles" for washing before the prayers and (2) prayer facilities, ideally separate ones for boys and girls. Schools should also make available "a suitable external visitor, a teacher or an older pupil" to lead the communal Friday prayers and give the sermon.
* Toilets: Water available in water cans or bottles for cleansing purposes.
* Social customs: No pressure to shake hands with members of the opposite sex, whether students or teachers.
* Scheduling: Vacation days for all on the two major Muslim holidays, the Eids.
* Holiday celebrations: Involve non-Muslim students and their parents in Islamic holiday rituals. During Ramadan, for instance, all children, not just Muslim ones, should celebrate "the spirit and values of Ramadan through collective worship or assembly themes and communal Iftar (the breaking of the fast)."
* Ramadan: (1) No examinations during this month, "since the combination of preparing for exams and fasting may prove challenging for some pupils" and (2) no sex education, to respect strictures against sex during that month.
* Food: Provide halal meals. Permit students to eat with their right hands.
* Clothing: Accede to the wearing of hijabs and even jilbabs (a long outer garment down to the ankles). In swimming pools, Muslim children should wear modest swimwear (e.g., for girls, full leotards and leggings). Islamic amulets must be permitted.
* Beards: A right for male students.
* Sports: Sex-segregation where there is physical contact with other team players, as in basketball and football, or when exposed, as in swimming.
* Shower rooms: Separate stalls needed, so Muslims are not subject to the "profound indignity" of seeing or being seen in the nude.
* Music: Should be limited to "the human voice and non-tuneable percussion instruments such as drums."
* Dancing: Excluded, unless it is done in a single-sex environment and does not "involve sexual connotations and messages."
* Teacher and administrator training: Staff should undergo Islamic "awareness training" so that schools are "better informed and have greater and more accurate appreciation of their Muslim pupils' needs."
* Art: Exempt Muslim pupils from producing "three dimensional figurative imagery of humans."
* Religious instruction: Pictures of any prophets (including Jesus) prohibited.
* Language instruction: Arabic should be made available to all Muslim students.
* Islamic civilization: (1) Study the contribution of Muslims to Europe in history, art, mathematics, and science classes and (2) emphasize common aspects of European and Islamic heritage.

One response to the Muslim Council of Britain booklet.

The imposition, explicit or implicit, of Rushdie Rules would render impossible any criticism of a program such as the MCB's. I could not write this article, Commentary could not publish it, and you could not read it.

Overhauling schools is just one of a myriad of planned changes. Step by step, piece by piece, Islamists wish to trump the premises of Western life by infusing its education, cultural life, and institutions with a concurrent Islamic system that in time overrides secular institutions, until an Islamic order comes operationally into being. Some changes are already in place and extend to many aspects of life. A few pungent examples:

Polygamous marriages are valid under certain circumstances in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Australia, and the Canadian province of Ontario. Muslim women-only swimming sessions exist in municipal pools in Washington State. Women-only classes are being offered at Virginia Tech, a taxpayer-supported university. Women can have their drivers license photographs taken wearing hijabs in three U.S. states. If they work at IKEA or for the London police, women can wear branded hijabs provided by their employers.

Piggybanks have been banned as a symbol of saving at two major British banks. "Any matter containing religious materials contrary to Islamic faith" may not be sent via the U.S. postal system to soldiers serving in the Middle East. Medical personnel may not eat or drink in the presence of Muslim patients or colleagues during the month of Ramadan in a Scottish hospital. The City of Boston sold public land at a discount price to build an Islamic institution.

IKEA, the furnishings store, provides branded hijabs for employees in Great Britain.

These steps, large and small, toward Islamization undermine Western values and mores. They are unacceptable: Muslims are entitled to equal rights and responsibilities but not to special privileges. They must fit into the existing order, not remake Western societies in the Islamist mold. Increasing freedom is welcome, regressing to the medieval norms of the Shari'a is not.

In retrospect, responses to the Rushdie edict among intellectuals and politicians in 1989 were noteworthy for the support for the imperiled novelist, especially on the left. Leftist intellectuals were more likely to stand by him (Susan Sontag: "our integrity as a nation is as endangered by an attack on a writer as on an oil tanker") than were those on the right (Patrick Buchanan: "we should shove his blasphemous little novel out into the cold"). But times have changed: Paul Berman recently published a book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, that excoriates his fellow liberals for (as the dust jacket puts it) having "fumbled badly in their effort to grapple with Islamist ideas and violence."

At the time, François Mitterrand, the socialist president of France, called the threat to Rushdie an "absolute evil." The Green Party in Germany sought to break all economic agreements with Iran. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister, endorsed a European Union resolution supporting Rushdie as "a signal to assure the preservation of civilization and human values." The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution that declared its commitment "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy, and read books without fear of intimidation and violence" and condemned Khomeini's threat as "state-sponsored terrorism." Such governmental responses are inconceivable in 2010.

For every exercise in free speech since 1989, such as the Danish Muhammad cartoons or the no-holds-barred studies of Islam published by Prometheus Books, uncountable legions of writers, publishers, and illustrators have shied away from expressing themselves. Two examples: Paramount Pictures replaced the Hamas-like terrorists of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears with European neo-Nazis in its movie version of the story. And Yale University Press published a book on the Danish cartoon crisis without permitting the cartoons to be reproduced in the study.

The reasoning of those who capitulate is as unexceptional as it is dismal: "This decision was based solely on concern for public safety"; "the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority"; "I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat"; "If I would have said what I actually think about Islam, I wouldn't be in this world for long"; and "'If this goes down badly, I'm writing my own death warrant."

Changes since 1989 result mainly from the growth of three isms: multiculturalism, left-fascism, and Islamism. The multicultural impulse regards no way of life, belief system, or political philosophy better or worse than any other. Just as Italian and Japanese food are both delicious and filling, so environmentalism or Wicca offer equally valid alternatives to Judeo-Christian civilization. Why fight for one's way of life when it has no claim to superiority over any other?

But perhaps one way is worse: if Western imperialism and the white race pollute the world, who wants Western civilization? A sizable movement of left-fascists, led by Hugo Chávez, sees Western power, which they call "Empire," as the world's main threat, with the United States and Israel viewed as the chief offenders.

Islamism has grown spectacularly since 1989, becoming the most powerful form of radical utopianism, forming an alliance with the left, dominating civil societies, challenging many governments and taking over others, establishing a beachhead in the West, and smartly advancing its agenda in international institutions.

The yin of Western weakness, in short, has met with the yang of Islamist assertion. Defenders of Western civilization must fight not just Islamists but also the multiculturalists who enable them and the leftists who ally with them.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a columnist at National Review. He delivered an earlier version of this text on receiving an award from the Danish Free Speech Society.

Oct. 1, 2010 update: Much happened right after this article went to press and before it appeared today. For details, see my blog on "Late Breaking Rushdie-Rule Developments."

Raymond Ibrahim: The Ultimate Lesson of Egypt's Fake Photo

Jihad Watch

In "The Ultimate Lesson of Egypt's Fake Photo" in Pajamas Media (via RaymondIbrahim.com), September 22, the ever-insightful Raymond Ibrahim offers a provocative assessment of the influence of Sharia in the Islamic world based on a doctored photo circulated by the Egyptian media: One of the most widely circulated newspapers in the world, Egypt's Al Ahram, recently ran a fake picture depicting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak walking in front of U.S. President Barack Obama and a pack of other Mideast leaders. In fact, based on the original photo, Mubarak, the octogenarian, appeared trailing last.

Why the outlandish deception by an internationally recognized newspaper founded in 1875? Al Ahram editor Ossama al-Saraya defended the fraudulent photo by referring to it as an "expressionist photo ... a brief, live and true expression of the prominent stance of President Mubarak in the Palestinian issue, his unique role in leading it before Washington." All well and good, but beyond the euphemisms and rationalizations, the fact remains: by portraying something that was not true, the state-run Al Ahram intentionally tried to deceive the people.

On the one hand, as Wael Khalil, the Egyptian blogger who first called attention to the altered photo pointed out, this anecdote is a snapshot of the routine deception the Egyptian government foists on the people: "They lie to us all the time. Instead of addressing the real issues, they just Photoshop it." On a deeper level, this incident reveals that, contrary to common belief, the fundamental problem facing the reformation of the Islamic world is not merely doctrinal; it is cultural.

Consider: even though sharia law promotes various troubling doctrines -- the subjugation of non-Muslims and women, animosity to the non-Muslim world, even the use of deception, as in the case of the Mubarak picture -- the one hope has been that only "radical" Muslims follow these mandates. And this is true, consciously speaking. Unconsciously, however, sharia's teachings have become so embedded in the Muslim psyche, permeating the worldview of all people born or bred in the Islamic world, regardless of whether they are "moderate" or "radical," indeed, regardless of whether they are Muslim at all Marshall Hodgson coined the term "Islamicate" to describe this phenomenon, which refers "not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims" (The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, p.59). Daniel Pipes agrees: "Shar'i regulations were also at the heart of many Islamicate patters… [T]he Muslim approach to politics derives from the invariant premises of the religion and from fundamental themes established more than a millennium ago" (In the Path of God, pgs. 91-93).

In other words, if Muslim culture is more mind-molding and consequential than Muslim doctrine, still, the former has strong roots in the latter. Thus, while radical Muslims consciously seek to uphold the letter of the law, moderates unconsciously adhere to its cultural, social, and political manifestations.

In this context, then, Egypt's Al Ahram's Photoshop deception is consistent. Because Muhammad, and by extension sharia, permit deceit, or taqiyya, it was only natural for deception to find its way into the socio-political culture of Islam. So, whereas the radical Osama bin Laden consciously tries to implement Muhammad's injunction that "war is deceit," secularist Hosni Mubarak and his regime, including at Al Ahram, have been unconsciously molded by it. More to the point, aside from the Western media and opposition groups to Mubarak, the so-called "Arab Street" is hardly scandalized by this event, seeing it as a natural occurrence — not so much because the Mubarak regime is particularly deceptive, but rather because the use of deceit to stay in power is consistent to the Islamicate mindset.

Lest one still doubt that aspects of a religion can become casually embedded in the social fabric of a civilization, one need look no further than to Christianity, which continues to exhibit an unconscious influence on the secular West, including upon those who most disavow it. After all, tolerance, human rights, a desire for peace, being the "nice guy"— indeed, all of those concepts most championed by today's liberal secularist, did not develop in a vacuum, but rather from precursor concepts held by a 2,000 year old religion, concepts which were then absurd and today aberrant, but which nonetheless conditioned the West's secular mindset accordingly.

In short, the teachings of a religion can subtly color the worldview of its non-observant posterity. This is especially so for Muslims: for if Western secularists, who disclaim Christianity, are still influenced by its teachings, how much more Muslims who openly avow Islam? Not only Photoshop deceit, then, but any number of "Islamicate" aspects — from a tribal sense of loyalty to fellow Muslims to hatred for dogs, because Muhammad said so — remain part of the average Muslim's intellectual framework.

Let it be known, then, that well meaning, moderate Muslims have yet another obstacle to tackle in their quest to reform the Islamic world. After they manage to revise some of Islam's intolerant teachings and archaic doctrines — a feat difficult enough — they must then figure out how to eradicate the fourteen-hundred year old epistemology borne of them.

Negotiating Until the End

Ali Ibrahim
Asharq Alawsat

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is in a difficult position. The Palestinian negotiators linked the continuation of direction negotiations with Israel – which were launched with great difficulty and are still at an early stage – with an extension to the partial freeze on settlement construction; something that has not materialized from the Israeli side, despite international pressure, in particular from Washington, who are sponsoring the current negotiations. Abbas can either adhere to his previous position and break off negotiations, as demanded by Hamas – thereby returning to square one and waiting an indefinite period of time until the conditions are deemed appropriate for negotiations, if there is still something to negotiate for at this time – or perform a "tactical retreat" in the same manner that he has previously. This tactic is not new in politics and diplomacy and would see a continuation of negotiations in the hope of reaching a final agreement that resolves all the outstanding problems, including the issue of settlement construction, following the demarcation of the Palestinian state.

Indicators suggest that the Palestinians are inclined to continue negotiating, for as Abbas said in Paris on his return from New York, the Americans have a new outlook, while [Palestinian President adviser] Nabil Abu Rudaynah's remarks also give the same impression, especially after he stressed that this was an opportunity that should not be missed, even if a complete settlement freeze would represent the most appropriate atmosphere for negotiations. It seems that the Palestinian negotiators will wait for Arab support from the Arab League's monitoring committee that is scheduled to meet in the first week of October.

When the Palestinians are studying their decision, they must be sure to take into account its pros and cons, as this something that must be the most important factor in any rational decision. Through simple calculation, we find that withdrawing from the negotiations at this time will not give the Palestinians anything, or stop settlement construction. On the contrary, the problem will be even greater when new negotiations commences, whether this is months or years from now, this is not to mention the atmosphere of violence that will emerge in the absence of any hope. This is something that will create new consequences on the ground that nobody can predict.

On the other hand, continuing with direct negotiations will give the Palestinian negotiators a more favorable position at the negotiation table, in front of the international powers and the negotiations sponsors as this shows that the Palestinians are the party that is keen to continue towards peace and search for solutions that don’t lead to obstruction of or withdrawal from, the negotiations. In addition, this also gives the Palestinians more opportunity to explore the features of a final solution – something that would be registered and documented [by the negotiating parties] – as well as [explore] the international agreements and guarantees that will be made to ensure this. The Palestinian negotiators should not waste the momentum they have built up from the current round of direct negotiations, or the interest that the US is currently taking in this. Evidence of the US interest came in Barack Obama’s speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, which focused on the issue of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and his hope that there will be a meeting next year to pave the way for a Palestinian state joining the UN.

The road will not be easy, as there are those in the Palestinian ranks who want to block the path of the negotiations and place obstacles in front of it because they are fundamentally opposed to such negotiations. There are also many on the Israeli side who are fundamentally against the negotiations, and instead wish a continuation of the status quo. This effectively means the unchecked spread of Israeli settlements, which would significantly change the situation on the ground until over time there would be nothing left to negotiate.

However, this opportunity is worth the risk. It is worth negotiating until the end of the road, overcoming all obstacles and surprises that appear here and there, so that at least we would see where this road leads. It is likely that the Palestinian Authority will gain international support and momentum throughout the various stages of negotiations, and it is [also] likely that this momentum would later expand to include other parties such as Syria and Lebanon.

J Street, Down the Rabbit Hole

Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, the liberal Jewish group, e-mailed Goldblog last night: "Reports of our demise (including from you) are greatly exaggerated...." He was referring to a question I posted earlier in the day: "Will J Street even be around in its current form in coming days, now that it is enveloped in a scandal (more of a cover-up than a crime, in the traditional Washington style)?"The scandal grows from a decision by Jeremy Ben-Ami to cover-up, over a long period of time, something he knew to be true: That George Soros, the billionaire investor and non-friend of Israel, provided J Street with almost $750,000 in funding. James Besser, at The New York Jewish Week, frames the impact of this cover-up in stark and simple terms:

There's no way this isn't going to make the politicians supported by J Street and those who may be considering accepting its endorsement incredibly nervous. Instead of providing protection for the politicians they supported, J Street essentially hung them out to dry - not by accepting Soros money, but by lying about their connection to the controversial philanthropist.

And there's no way this doesn't sow mistrust among commentators and reporters who write and speak about J Street, and who were repeatedly misled by its officials. J Street sought to create a climate of trust with a press corps that was being spun heavily by its opponents; this news undoes a lot of that effort.

An Atlantic reporter, Chris Good, was one of the journalists lied to by J Street; he ripped the organization a new one once he learned he was the target of a disinformation campaign.

News of the Soros donation, first brought to light by Eli Lake of the Washington Times, was accompanied by disclosures about a larger, and stranger, donation, by a resident of Hong Kong named Consolacion Escidul, who according to Ben-Ami, is a "business associate" of a prominent J Street supporter named William Benter, a well-known Hong Kong-based horse bettor. Escidul is responsible for contributing seven percent of all the money collected by J Street since its founding, but nothing is known about Escidul, or about the sources of her wealth, but the mere fact that she is not, as far as anyone can tell, an American citizen has J Street supporters on Capitol Hill worried that the organization is using foreign money to provide help to American political candidates.

And now there is a completely new scandal, brought to us, again, by Eli Lake and another Times reporter, Ben Birnbaum. According to an article posted on The Washington Times site last night, J Street helped arrange visits by Judge Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist appointed by the U.N. to investigate the most recent conflict in Gaza, to Capitol Hill. Goldstone's work, heavily reliant on Hamas for uncorroborated information, has been condemned on both the left and right, here and in Israel (including by the left-wing Israeli human rights group B'Tselem), for its fairly obvious biases. From the Times story:

Colette Avital -- a former member of Israel's parliament, from the center-left Labor Party and until recently J Street's liaison in Israel -- told The Washington Times that her decision to resign her post with J Street earlier this year was a result in part of the group's "connection to Judge Goldstone."

"When Judge Goldstone came to Washington, [J Street leaders were] suggesting that they might help him set up his appointments on Capitol Hill," she said.

In the Times story, Jeremy Ben-Ami denied that his group assisted Goldstone in his visit in any way: "J Street did not host, arrange or facilitate any visit to Washington, D.C., by Judge Richard Goldstone." Then, in the same response, he contradicted himself, acknowledging that J Street assisted Judge Goldstone in his efforts to meet members of Congress: "J Street staff spoke to colleagues at the organizations coordinating the meetings and, at their behest, reached out to a handful of congressional staff to inquire whether members would be interested in seeing Judge Goldstone."

This statement is of a piece with Ben-Ami's non-denial denial concerning Soros. On the J Street website, however, Avital issued a more straightforward denial:

I made clear (to The Washington Times) that I was and am completely unaware of any effort by J Street to facilitate visits by Judge Richard Goldstone to Capitol Hill.

I do not know how it is possible for a newspaper to run a story like this after I have specifically told them they have the story wrong.

Unfortunately for Avital, and for J Street, the reporter who interviewed Avital by telephone, Ben Birnbaum, recorded their conversation, and The Washington Times has posted the audio. The recording shows that Avital was quoted accurately, and more than that: It shows that it was Avital, and not Birnbaum, who first raised the subject of Goldstone.

On one level, I understand what is happening here: J Street is made up of liberal Zionists, as well as non-Zionists, and even a few anti-Zionists, and it has been difficult for it to please its differing constituencies. This is why Ben-Ami, its president, might have felt the need to cover-up the involvement of George Soros, because liberal supporters of Israel know that Soros is unfriendly to the Jewish state, and some, presumably, would not want to be part of a group that counted Soros as a prominent supporter. But on another level, what is going on here is inexplicable, and terribly dispiriting to people who thought that J Street was going to make a useful contribution to the debate over the future of Israel.

US denies it sent a letter demanding freeze extension

TOVAH LAZAROFF, KHALED ABU TOAMEH, GIL HOFFMAN
10/01/2010

Mitchell plans to hold second round of meetings with Netanyahu, Abbas; Ashton still to meet with both leaders.

The White House and a State Department official denied on Thursday reports that US President Barack Obama had sent Israel a draft letter in which he offered security guarantees – including a continued Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley after the creation of a Palestinian state – if Israel in exchange reinstituted the moratorium on new settlement construction for 60 days. The Palestinians have threatened to walk away from the direct negotiations that began in early September if Israel does not reinstate the moratorium that expired on Sunday, 10-months after it was imposed by the government.

As of Thursday night, intense coordinated diplomatic efforts by the US and Europe had yet to break the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians over the issue of settlement construction that threatens to put a halt to the fledgling negotiations between the parties.

US special envoy George Mitchell, who arrived on Tuesday, planned to hold a second round of meetings on Friday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in hopes of breaking the deadlock.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who arrived on Thursday for a two-day visit, directly after meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington, also plans to meet with both Netanyahu and Abbas.

The Arab League foreign ministers, who were expected to meet in Cairo next Monday to decide whether Abbas should continue with the negotiations, opted to delay the meeting for two days to give the US administration a chance to persuade the Israeli government to extend the settlement freeze.

The State Department official refused to comment to The Jerusalem Post on the possibility that security pledges and diplomatic incentives had been extended to Israel in the course of the negotiations but had not yet been forwarded to Israel in writing, because no conclusive agreement had been reached on the matter.
The Prime Minister’s Office had no comment on the issue of the letter whose contents were first reported on Thursday by David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“At its core, the draft letter offers a string of assurances to Israel in return for a two-month moratorium extension. More specifically, US officials indicate that the document makes commitments on issues ranging from current peace and security matters to future weapons deliveries in the event that peace-related security arrangements are reached,” Makovsky wrote.

According to Makovsky, the US would not seek a second extension of the moratorium past 60 days. It promised that the US would veto any UN Security Council initiative that related to the peace process during the one-year timetable for negotiations.

In the letter the US, according to Makovsky, promised to accept the legitimacy of Israel’s security needs, including a ban on weapons smuggling and “the infiltration of terrorists” into Israel. It also discussed the need to “enhance Israel’s defense capabilities” by increasing military assistance.

Finally, the US, according to Makovsky, promised to “engage” Israel and Arab states in discussions of a “regional security architecture” with an eye toward Iran.

Israeli politicians who believe Netanyahu has rejected Obama’s offer reacted to the report on Thursday night.

Kadima’s deputy faction chairman, MK Yohanan Plesner, slammed Netanyahu for apparently turning down the president.

“Netanyahu prefers to continue strengthening his government of national paralysis with the extreme Right than accept unprecedented American commitments at the expense of the citizens of Israel and their security,” Plesner said.

Kadima MK Yoel Hasson accused Netanyahu of “acting like a political hack” and not a leader and of “missing an important opportunity due to his narrow political interests.”

But Likud hawk MK Danny Danon praised Netanyahu for standing up to the president of the United States. He advised Netanyahu to wait for an American president who would not pressure Israel to take steps that the overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose.

“We don’t work for President Obama,” Danon said. “It is clear that all his promises for the finalstatus agreement are baseless, because by the time there will be a final-status agreement, Obama will have already been voted out of office.”

PA renews call to extend moratorium

The PA on Thursday renewed its call to extend the moratorium on settlement construction and expressed hope that the US administration would succeed in putting enough pressure on Israel in this regard.

On Thursday, Mitchell meet with Abbas in Ramallah for two hours, in a meeting that chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat described as “thorough.”

“The Israeli government holds the keys to the continuation of the peace talks,” Erekat said. “We have repeatedly asked the Israeli government to halt settlement construction, including natural growth, so as to give the peace process the chance it deserves.”

Erekat said the Palestinians seek peace and appreciate the efforts the US is making in this regard.

“We hope that the US administration and the international community would succeed in obliging Israel to fulfill its commitments, especially with regards to stopping construction in the settlements,” he said.

Mitchell said after the meeting with Abbas that Washington was determined to pursue its efforts to achieve peace in the region.

“We will continue our efforts to find common ground between the parties to enable the direct negotiations to continue in a manner that we hope will lead to an agreement,” he declared.

“President Obama’s vision of comprehensive peace in the Middle East remains our primary goal in the region. That means Israel and the Palestinians reaching agreement on the two-state solution with security and prosperity for both peoples.”


Speaking to the media before his meeting with Mitchell on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that he intended to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians.

“There are many skeptics and many doubts – there are many obstacles on the road to peace. There is only one way to prove them right. That is not to try. We are committed and I am committed to trying to get to a peace agreement that will secure Israel’s security and other vital national interests. That is my goal and that is our policy."

Fear and Survival: The Tragedy And Threat That Is George Soros

RubinReports
Barry Rubin

I’ve long pondered the bizarre doings of billionaire financier George Soros, who's become the single biggest funder of left-wing and often anti-Jewish (certainly, anti-Israel) causes in Europe and North America. Most recently, it was revealed that Soros was a huge contributor to the anti-Israel J Street group even though the organization had lied about that connection.

But how can one explain the behavior and motives of Soros? For me, finally, the missing piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. The first key bit of evidence was Soros’s interview with the December 20, 1998, “Sixty Minutes” television show in which he recounts his experiences as a 14-year-old boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, a time when he said his “character was made.” Soros’ father had sent him to live with a bribed Christian government official who was involved in confiscating Jewish property.

A lot of the discussion about this interview has been misdirected over whether Soros was in some way a war criminal. This is clearly untrue since he was barely a teenager and didn’t actually do anything but observe. He was as he describes himself, a “spectator.”

Let’s get a more sophisticated, accurate understanding by examining what Soros actually said about the experience long afterward. What did he learn from being a spectator, watching both sides but truly being on neither side?

Did watching the extinction of his fellow Jews in Hungary make him feel guilty? No, Soros replied. This is an extraordinary answer. It was decades later and Soros could have done the polite social thing, which would have made him look better, of pretending to feel bad about it.

Soros didn't emphasize, though he mentioned as a passing afterthought, that he didn’t feel guilty because he did nothing wrong. But what about survivor’s guilt, something almost anyone Jewish would feel when he survived and so many others didn't? Again, no, said Soros.

Soros showed precisely why he didn’t feel or even pretend to feel guilty. When the astonished interviewer asked whether Soros might have thought, "I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there?”

Soros’ response is truly extraordinary:

“Well, of course I c--I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was--well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets--that if I weren't there--of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would--would--would be taking it away anyhow.”

Notice how he stutters, no longer the powerful multimillionaire who shakes countries but rather reverting back to the frightened, helpless little boy, his life endangered because he is a Jew. Unlike almost every other Jew in Europe, however, he had a choice.

Does he blame the Nazis and Hungarian fascists or the Jews for putting him in that perilous position? Who does he identify with? What conclusions does he draw about how to ensure his survival in future? Soros tells us clearly:

“I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing was being taken away.”

For me, this is the key to Soros and his behavior today. He would choose to stand with those he sees as winners not losers; strong, not weak; the non-Jews rather than the Jews, the determined extremists rather than the toothless moderates. After all, that choice had been the basis of his survival. What is most important is that Soros survive and prosper, and his background gives him a very different outlook from most Jews and most rich people on how to achieve that goal.

Yet he is no confident mogul but a very frightened man. In this, he is less unique. Non-Jews don’t understand how inside of even the most seemingly powerful Jews—Henry Kissinger offers a prime example—there is a strong sense of fear and vulnerability. One misstep, they think, and everything he has could all be taken away instantly.

Being too much of a Jew is something you will rue. The more visible your wealth and power, the more danger to you. That kind of thinking stems not merely from the Nazi era but is a Jewish condition that goes back to the Middle Ages, when at any second a lifetime of hard work and success could be replaced by poverty, exile, beating or death by a rampaging mob.

How have Jews responded? Some by assimilating and others by being quiet, the kind of approach one might expect someone like Soros to take.

Still others by being defiant as Zionists or as proud Jews. Compare Soros to the man whose life most parallels his, Abe Foxman, long-time leader of the Anti-Defamation League, who was a hidden child during the Holocaust. Another option, becoming a leftist revolutionary, combines defiance of existing society with assimilation and abandonment of Jewishness.

The life of Soros, however, led him to a unique solution: convincing him that he must be highly visible…on the winning side. No longer could he have the anonymity of that fourteen-year-old camouflaged boy, but he could still stand on the safer side of the confrontation.

Read that key sentence again: “I could be on the other side [the stronger side, the side persecuting the Jews] or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away.” In context, he is essentially saying that he could not imagine himself enough of a fool to be on the losing side and is determined never to be one of those helpless, doomed Jews.

And so, decades later, he sought to be on or buy off those he saw as the winning side. As for those on the Jewish side--and Israel being the most intense expression of that posture—they would be the losers in history.

Now comes the final piece of the puzzle. On November 7, 2003, almost five years after the television interview, Soros made a rare appearance at a pro-Jewish Jewish event, a conference of the Jewish Funders Network.

Asked about antisemitism in Europe, Soros responded that it was the result of the policies of Israel and the United States, and particularly of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "If we change that direction, then antisemitism also will diminish," he said.

Once again, his words led somewhat in the wrong direction as some of the attendees were outraged. After all, blaming Jews for antisemitism is an old argument of antisemites. But to focus on that is to miss the point.

Soros continued:

"I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new antisemitism holds that the Jews rule the world," he explained. He knew he is personally vulnerable to such charges. After all, Soros added, "As an unintended consequence of my actions," he said, "I also contribute to that image," no doubt referring to an incident of a few weeks previously when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad referred to Soros personally in saying, "Jews rule the world by proxy."

So he must prove to the enemies of the Jews that he is not someone they should see as an enemy. By fighting Jewish interests he can claim to diminish antisemitism while also protecting his own interests.

What did Soros say was the main lesson he had learned on those streets in 1944 Hungary? “That one should think ahead. One should understand and--and anticipate events and when--when one is threatened.”

So for Soros, religious Jews, Zionists, and in effect the overwhelming majority of the Jewish communities of the world are bringing disaster on themselves by provoking an antisemitic backlash.

His intention here is in no way to help the Jews (“the ones from whom the thing was taken away) but to act in what he perceives as being his own benefit. Soros is not the first Jew in history to calculate that if Israel didn’t exist or that if the Jews merely shut up and hid their identity there would be no problem with antisemitism. And if this happened he could be safe. It isn't surprising that he has come to hate the people who he believes endanger his life and wealth.

Similarly, he is scared that conservatives are provoking a leftist upheaval. Soros is insuring himself against the new winning side by financing it, believing that if America and Europe move ever leftward, this will reduce pressure against capitalism in general or at least protect his personal wealth. After all, he must reason, why would the radical movement--anti-capitalist or anti-Israel--ever turn on its patron?

In effect, Soros reserves the phrase "never again" not in regard to Jewish suffering but in regard to his personally never being "the one from whom the thing was being taken away." And meanwhile he can, ironically enough, use his wealth and power to be the Jew who in the entire world came closest to ruling "by proxy." All the more need for him to take such protective measures.

It is true, as the expert on Soviet affairs Bertram Wolfe remarked about Leon Trotsky (who Wolfe regarded as a "Jewish antisemite"), "A man can reject his heritage but he cannot root the traces of it out of his soul." But for Soros those traces are those of the loser in history. He regards Zionism and Israel as fantasies that will only build the momentum to return Jews to their traditional victim status.

Ironically and sadly, of course, by putting his money into anti-Israel and left-wing causes he is not merely anticipating events but making bad outcomes more likely; not reducing antisemitism but intensifying it; not ensuring social peace but making costly and tragic conflict more likely.

In short, unfortunately, what Soros mislearned from the tragedy he observed as a youth has made him a man helping to bring about more tragedies.

He was also wrong in saying that if he didn't do these things someone else would. There is no one else to play this role because there is no one else who has his combination of life experience and bottomless riches.

Note 1:
Melanie Phillips has provided a list of causes backed by Soros's main front groups that gives a sense of what the billionaire has been doing. Among them:

"•Promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
•Promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
•Opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
•Depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
•Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws....
•Defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
•Financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
•Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending....
•Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather ... the demolition of technological/industrial civilization....”

Note2: A friend suggested it would be appropriate to quote these lines from Bob Dylan's song, "Positively Fourth Street:"

"You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning."

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

MPAC's One-Way Street on Cooperation

IPT News
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2214/mpacs-one-way-street-on-cooperation

By denouncing an investigation aimed at uncovering a possible U.S. support network for terrorist organizations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) shows again it would prefer to impede law enforcement than help it. Last Friday, FBI agents carried out raids in Chicago and Minneapolis to discover evidence of support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), both designated terrorist organizations. Speaking about the raids, Steve Warfield, an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis said:

"the warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism."

MPAC, however, joined other organizations in criticizing the searches as "fishing expeditions." In its press release, MPAC argued:

"squelching healthy and necessary discourse on public policy concerns sends one loud and clear message: The U.S. government has no regard for nonviolent work. Unless there is clear and convincing evidence that these activists were planning terrorist operations, then the justification of the raids is absurd."

Such arguments reveal that MPAC either doesn't understand what activity is proscribed under U.S. law, or simply doesn't care. The government doesn't need to show that these so-called "anti-war activists" were "planning terrorist operations," in order to prosecute them. It is a crime for any person to provide "material support or resources" to a designated FTO. Proscribed support includes:

"any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instrument or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials)."

The statute, which has become a cornerstone in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts since 2001, is intended to cover a wide array of support—both violent and non-violent, because: "foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contributions to such an organization facilitates that conduct." In upholding this law, the Supreme Court recently explained:

"material support meant to 'promote peaceable, lawful conduct' can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups—legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds—all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks."

With the Supreme Court so roundly rejecting the argument that nonviolent support for terrorist groups should not be illegal, critics like MPAC have tried to do in the court of public opinion what they failed to do in a court of law—destroy an effective tool for fighting terrorism.

And while MPAC criticized the Supreme Court's ruling as one that "effectively shuts off pathways toward peaceful alternatives to violence," and claims that the recent actions in Chicago and Minneapolis are nothing more than "squelching healthy and necessary discourse on public policy concerns;" this is part of a long-standing effort to decriminalize "material support" to terrorist groups.

Perhaps this is unsurprising for an organization that routinely defends terrorist organizations and those charged with providing support to them. Or an organization that issues a report, which focuses entirely on the "bomb thrower" at the expense of dismantling the American support structure for these groups. As we explained, reviewing that report, "if the Department of Justice can prevent these militants from getting their hands on money, weapons, communication equipment, etc., they can effectively cripple terrorist organizations. That is why it is so important to strike at the domestic and international support structure."

Details are slowly coming out from the raids in Chicago and Minneapolis, and while MPAC may be quick to criticize the law enforcement community, the FBI should be given some room to investigate claims of support for terrorism.

The PFLP and FARC – two organizations that ideologically couldn't be further apart – share a commonality. The United States has designated them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations because of their unwavering commitment to violence. In just the past month alone, both groups have demonstrated why they are properly on the list of groups for whom no support is appropriate.

The PFLP continues to denounce U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, urging Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to pull out of talks. Meanwhile, the FARC continues to carry out attacks in Colombia, ambushing local law enforcement patrols and setting off explosives at the country's intelligence agency.

MPAC and its ilk can and will continue to criticize U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. But, law enforcement must continue to work towards a multi-pronged counter-terrorism approach—one that will destroy the American support structure that keeps funneling money, weapons, and supplies to international terrorist organizations.