May 31, 2011 | Eli E. Hertz
The first paragraph of Article 4 of the United Nations Charter reads:
"Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present UN Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations." (emphasis added)
Article 2 of the UN Charter calls in paragraph 3:
"All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered." The same article calls in Paragraph 4:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."
Security Council Resolution 1377 demands of members states to:
"Reaffirms its unequivocal condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed.
"Stresses that acts of international terrorism are contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and that the financing, planning and preparation of as well as any other form of support for acts of international terrorism are similarly contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations," (emphasis added)
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is emerging as a union of Hamas and Fatah, two groups that have proven to promote terror and thwart any chance for genuine peace. A minimum requirement to join the United Nations Family of Nations is to first and foremost be a "peace-loving state." Can the Palestinian Arabs achieve it? Can they reverse decades of horrendous act of terror in just three short months?
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Rifts in the Muslim Brotherhood Seen Amid Growing Anarchy in Egypt
Amb. Zvi Mazel
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
It seems like the new, revolutionary Egypt will experience many years of confrontations before a new, democratic regime will evolve, based on freedom of speech, human rights, liberation of women, and religious tolerance towards the Copts.
The writer, a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt and Sweden.
The economic, social, and political situation in Egypt is getting worse. Due to the security situation, civilians are buying weapons and hiring militias to protect themselves. Confrontations between Islamists and Copts, as well as Islamists and seculars, are increasing. The ruling Military Council is not coping with the many challenges, and there are voices claiming that Egypt is on the verge of a civil war.
During the first quarter of the year, the Egyptian economy shrunk by 7 percent. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently told CNN that “Egypt is disintegrating socially; economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Saudi Arabia, and the United States have all promised financial support for Egypt. However, this assistance won’t be able to solve the structural problems of the Egyptian economy, which is based on agriculture and tourism, and lacks any serious industrial or high-tech component. Under current circumstances, further deterioration of the socio-economic situation can be expected, which no doubt will benefit the extremist elements, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood.
The leaders of the demonstrators and the secular opposition parties believe that the Military Council is not very keen on executing radical reforms, and purposely acts slowly. Consequently, on May 27, a second Friday of Anger was held across Egypt in order to pressure the Council, and especially its leader, General Mohamed Tantawi. The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it would not take part in the demonstrations, thus reinforcing the growing gap with the secular opposition. But to their great surprise, the young guard of their movement decided to participate, against the will of the supreme leader. This is the first sign of a rift within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known for its intransigent hierarchy and for unquestioned obedience to its leaders since its establishment 83 years ago.
It seems like the new, revolutionary Egypt will experience many years of confrontations before a new, democratic regime will evolve, based on freedom of speech, human rights, liberation of women, and religious tolerance towards the Copts.
The writer, a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt and Sweden.
Omri Ceren
Jordan captured East Jerusalem in 1948 and expelled all surviving Jews from the city. Meanwhile Israel – being Israel – had no problem letting Arabs own homes in West Jerusalem. Israel then reunited the city in 1967, allowing anybody to purchase property anywhere. Arabs continued to buy land in the western part of the city and Jews began to move back to the portions Jordan had occupied. Theoretically this is what we call a “free market” in a “free country” where people live under the “rule of law.” Unfortunately the Palestinians find Jews kind of icky so they’re complaining to the White House about a new cluster of Israeli apartments in East Jerusalem. The State Department dutifully summoned Israel’s ambassador to deliver Obama’s stern warning: “no letting Jews live move into the capital of the Jewish State!” This is working out about as well as you’d expect:
Jerusalem is the “unified capital of Israel and the capital of the Jewish people, and sovereignty over it is indisputable,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday, responding to an American demand to put an end to a housing project to be built in east Jerusalem. “Hundreds of apartments in the west of the city were purchased by Arabs and we didn’t get involved. There is no prohibition against Arab residents buying apartments in the west of the city and there is no prohibition barring the city’s Jewish residents from buying or building in the east of the city,” Netanyahu added at the weekly cabinet meeting. “That is the policy of an open city that is not divided.”…
Netanyahu’s remarks came after Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren was summoned to the US State Department over the weekend and was told that the Obama administration wanted Israel to put an end to construction work at the site of the historic Shepherd’s Hotel in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The summons came following a complaint by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who reportedly told the Americans that allowing Jewish housing in the neighborhood would shift the demographic balance in east Jerusalem.
Obama is such a delicate statesman isn’t he?
But I can understand how the Palestinians would be bummed about the return of Jews to the Old City. During the mid-20th century the Arab world was pretty psyched about how they had successfully and permanently cleansed the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jews. So from a strictly genocidal perspective, this whole thing has to be kind of disappointing:
At the turn of the 20th century the Jewish population of the quarter reached 19,000… In 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War, its population of about 2,000 Jews was besieged, and forced to leave en masse. Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, with whom Mordechai Weingarten negotiated the surrender terms, described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, in his Memoirs (Cairo, 1959): “… The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion…. I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty…. I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction…. Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it…. As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud – a cloud of death and agony.”…
The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
Since the Jews were never going to return, it seemed natural to the Jordanians to destroy 34 out of the 35 ancient synagogues and use them as hen-houses, to rip up ancient Jewish gravestones and use them for roads, and to turn the ancient Western Wall into a garbage dump. So Obama’s peons to demographic balance – super persuasive!
References:
* ‘We won’t halt J’lem housing project’ [JPost]
* Jewish Quarter [Wiki]
Where Obama is leading Israel
Caroline B. Glick
Since the president's policy speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the charge he's the most hostile US leader the Jewish state has ever faced
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it, Obama's assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office. But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's acceptance of Obama's demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued the following statement: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."
In his speech, Obama stated: "The United States believes… the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
That is, he took "the Palestinian goal" and made it the US's goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than that.
And that wasn't Obama's only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only one of many — including the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist, their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their demand for control over Israel's water supply and Jerusalem — that have to be sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for further unreciprocated concessions.
It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by stipulating that Israel must accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations, Obama adopted it as US policy.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
Friday's Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama may pose to the Jewish state. The paper's account was based on administration and Congressional sources. The story discussed Obama's plans to contend with the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu argued that in light of the Palestinians' automatic majority support at the General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution.
Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster. The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO's declaration of independence in 1988.
And the sky still hasn't fallen.
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Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
Yediot's report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What the paper did report was how George Mitchell — Obama's Middle East envoy until his resignation last week — recommended Obama proceed on this issue.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians' demands, which he has now officially adopted as US policy.
As he put it, "there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process — or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world."
From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe. There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel at the G8 meeting.
Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab immigration, Israel's right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.
If Harper had not stood by Israel, the G8's anti-Israel resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution.
Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the top of their lists.
THE FINAL step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does not have Israel's best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas.
At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state "will be free of all Jews."
Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the Palestinians were 9,000 years old.
Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And the PA would continue to hold him hostage.
Shaath's statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas.
And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this.
Obama's now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community. With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel's destruction, the need for unity has become acute.
MADDENINGLY, HOWEVER, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu's government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio's coverage of Netanyahu's visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for Netanyahu to resign.
The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the public with an opinion believes Netanyahu's visit was a success made absolutely no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the Israeli media lend the impression that Israel's leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public into believing that Israel has no option other than surrender.
Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or siding with Obama. Right after Obama's shocking speech on May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech.
With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama's anti-Israel positions.
Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the massive support Israel receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel's position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian "refugees," Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a Palestinian state.
The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama's actions over the past two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence is dangerous.
Since the president's policy speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the charge he's the most hostile US leader the Jewish state has ever faced
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In the aftermath of US President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East, his supporters argued that the policy toward Israel and the Palestinians that Obama outlined in that speech was not anti-Israel. As they presented it, Obama's assertion that peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps does not mark a substantive departure from the positions adopted by his predecessors in the Oval Office. But this claim is exposed as a lie by previous administration statements. On November 25, 2009, in response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's acceptance of Obama's demand for a 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the State Department issued the following statement: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."
In his speech, Obama stated: "The United States believes… the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
That is, he took "the Palestinian goal" and made it the US's goal. It is hard to imagine a more radically anti-Israel policy shift than that.
And that wasn't Obama's only radically anti-Israel policy shift. Until his May 19 speech, the US agreed with Israel that the issue of borders is only one of many — including the Palestinians' rejection of Israel's right to exist, their demand to inundate Israel with millions of foreign Arab immigrants, their demand for control over Israel's water supply and Jerusalem — that have to be sorted out in negotiations. The joint US-Israeli position was that until all of these issues were resolved, none of them were resolved.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, claim that before they will discuss any of these other issues, Israel has to first agree to accept the indefensible 1967 boundaries as its permanent borders. This position allows the Palestinians to essentially maintain their policy of demanding that Israel make unreciprocated concessions that then serve as the starting point for further unreciprocated concessions.
It is a position that is antithetical to peace. And on May 19, by stipulating that Israel must accept the Palestinian position on borders as a precondition for negotiations, Obama adopted it as US policy.
SINCE THAT speech, Obama has taken a series of steps that only reinforce the sense that he is the most hostile US president Israel has ever faced. Indeed, when taken together, these steps raise concern that Obama may actually constitute a grave threat to Israel.
Friday's Yediot Aharonot reported on the dimensions of the threat Obama may pose to the Jewish state. The paper's account was based on administration and Congressional sources. The story discussed Obama's plans to contend with the Palestinian plan to pass a resolution at the UN General Assembly in September endorsing Palestinian statehood in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
According to Yediot, during his meeting with Obama on May 20, Netanyahu argued that in light of the Palestinians' automatic majority support at the General Assembly, there was no way to avoid the resolution.
Netanyahu reportedly explained that the move would not be a disaster. The General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the PLO's declaration of independence in 1988.
And the sky still hasn't fallen.
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Obama reportedly was unconvinced. For him, it is unacceptable to be in a position of standing alone with Israel voting against the Palestinian resolution. Obama's distaste for standing with Israel was demonstrated in February when a visibly frustrated US Ambassador Susan Rice was forced by Congressional pressure to veto the Palestinians' Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for refusing to prohibit Jews from building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
Yediot's report asserts that Obama refused to brief Netanyahu on the steps his administration is taking to avert such an unpalatable option. What the paper did report was how George Mitchell — Obama's Middle East envoy until his resignation last week — recommended Obama proceed on this issue.
According to Yediot, Mitchell recommended that Obama work with the Europeans to draft a series of anti-Israel resolutions for the UN Security Council to pass. Among other things, these resolutions, which Mitchell said would be "painful for Israel," would include an assertion that Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is illegal.
That is, Mitchell recommended that Obama adopt as US policy at the Security Council past Palestinian demands that Congress forced Obama to reject just months ago at the Security Council. The notion is that by doing so, Obama could convince the Palestinians to water down the even more radically anti-Israel positions they are advancing today at the UN General Assembly that Congressional pressure prevents him from supporting.
Since General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight and Security Council resolutions do carry weight, Mitchell's policy represents the most anti-Israel policy ever raised by a senior US official. Unfortunately Obama's actions since last week suggest that he has adopted the gist of Mitchell's policy recommendations.
First there was his speech before AIPAC. Among other things, Obama used the international campaign to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a justification for his policies of demanding that Israel capitulate to the Palestinians' demands, which he has now officially adopted as US policy.
As he put it, "there is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process — or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world."
From AIPAC, Obama moved on to Europe. There he joined forces with European governments in an attempt to gang up on Israel at the G8 meeting.
Obama sought to turn his embrace of the Palestinian negotiating position into the consensus position of the G8. His move was scuttled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who refused to accept any resolution that made mention of borders without mentioning the Palestinian demand to destroy Israel through Arab immigration, Israel's right to defensible borders, or the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.
If Harper had not stood by Israel, the G8's anti-Israel resolution endorsing the Palestinian negotiating position could have formed the basis of a US-sponsored anti-Israel Security Council resolution.
Israelis planning their summer trips should put Canada at the top of their lists.
THE FINAL step Obama has taken to solidify the impression that he does not have Israel's best interests at heart, is actually something he has not done. Over the past week, Fatah leaders of the US-backed Palestinian Authority have made a series of statements that put paid any thought that they are interested in peace with Israel or differ substantively from their partners in Hamas.
At the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian state "will be free of all Jews."
Last week the US-supported Abbas denied the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and claimed absurdly that the Palestinians were 9,000 years old.
Equally incriminating, in an interview last week with Aaron Lerner from the IMRA newsgathering website, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that now that Hamas was the co-leader of the PA with Fatah, responsibility for continuing to hold IDF St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit hostage devolved from Hamas to the PA. And the PA would continue to hold him hostage.
Shaath's statement makes clear that rather than moderating Hamas, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal is transforming Fatah into Hamas.
And yet, Obama has had nothing to say about any of this.
Obama's now undeniable antipathy for Israel and his apparent willingness to use his power as American president to harm Israel at the UN and elsewhere guarantee that for the duration of his tenure in office, Israel will face unprecedented threats to its security. This disturbing reality ought to focus the attention of all Israelis and of the American Jewish community. With the leader of the free world now openly siding with forces bent on Israel's destruction, the need for unity has become acute.
MADDENINGLY, HOWEVER, at this time of unprecedented danger we see the Israeli media have joined ranks with Kadima in siding with Obama against Israel in a joint bid to bring down Netanyahu's government. Yediot Aharonot, Maariv, Haaretz, Channel 2, Channel 10, Army Radio and Israel Radio's coverage of Netanyahu's visit and its aftermath was dominated by condemnations of the prime minister, and praise for Obama and opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who called for Netanyahu to resign.
The fact that polling data showed that only 12 percent of Jewish Israelis regard Obama as pro-Israeli and that the overwhelming majority of the public with an opinion believes Netanyahu's visit was a success made absolutely no impression on the media. The wall-to-wall condemnations of Netanyahu by the Israeli media lend the impression that Israel's leading reporters and commentators are committed to demoralizing the public into believing that Israel has no option other than surrender.
Then there is the American Jewish leadership. And at this critical time in US-Israel relations, the American Jewish leadership is either silent or siding with Obama. Right after Obama's shocking speech on May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement endorsing it. Stand With Us congratulated Obama for his AIPAC speech.
With the notable exceptions of the Zionist Organization of America and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America (CAMERA), leaders of American Jewish organizations have refused to condemn Obama's anti-Israel positions.
Their silence becomes all the more enraging when placed against the massive support Israel receives from rank-and-file American Jews. In a survey of American Jews taken by CAMERA on May 16-17, between 75% and 95% of American Jews supported Israel's position on defensible borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian "refugees," Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist and the right of Jews to live in a Palestinian state.
The refusal of most American Jewish leaders, the Israeli media and Kadima to condemn Obama today makes you wonder if there is anything the US president could do to convince them to break ranks and stand with Israel and with the vast majority of their fellow Jews. But it is more than a source of wonder. It is a reason to be frightened. Because Obama's actions over the past two weeks make clear to anyone willing to see that in the age of Obama, silence is dangerous.
The Totalitarians Within
David Horowitz
On May 11, 2011, I spoke to a student audience at UCLA for about an hour. My speech was video-taped and recorded on audio. Frontpage Magazine posted the video and an edited transcript of the speech. We are now posting an unedited transcript (accessible here) for reasons I will make clear in a moment.
On May 24, the Undergraduate Students Association at UCLA, by a 10-0 vote passed a resolution proposed by the Muslim Students Association declaring that “UCLA is a UC Campus Against Islamophobia.” I don’t mean to suggest that my appearance was the sole trigger of this resolution but it didn’t surprise me to find that among the numerous “Whereas” clauses in which the reasons for the resolution are stated, I am the only individual mentioned, or that it just came two weeks after the “controversy” surrounding my appearance which was really not so much a controversy as a series of one-sided assaults on myself and the College Republicans who invited me. “Islamophobes! Racists!” Call it an opportunity that I presented for the MSA and its supporters to extract concessions from the broader student population and to attempt to reach into their pockets in the process. Since student governments are proving grounds for future politicians, it is also a moment for the rest of us to reflect on what is in store for the country if these university elites can repeat their gains in the world beyond the campus. Here is how the Muslim Students Association formulated the concept “Islamophobia:”
Islamophobia is defined as ideologies, beliefs, and actions that perpetuate inaccurate and xenophobic views toward the culture and practice of Islam and the personification of its followers, such as being seen as monolithic, seen as a separate and ‘other’ culture that does not share common values, seen as inferior to the West, seen as violent, aggressive, and supportive of terrorism, seen as sexist and oppressive of women, seen as a political ideology used for political advantage, anti Muslim hostility, and exclusionary or discriminatory practices against Muslims from mainstream society;
Please note, “Islamophobia” is manifest in statements about Islam that are “innaccurate” (and by whose standard you might ask); by statements that reflect the view that Islam “does not share common values” (as for example, a belief in the separation of church and state?); by attitudes that regard Islam as “inferorior to the West” “as sexist and oppressive of women” (in other words no more noticing that in sharia-governed countries women are consigned to a second class status that renders them the virtual chattel of males); nor can one entertain the opinion that Islam is a political ideology (as it indubitably is in Iran, Saudia Arabia, Lebanon and Gaza, just to name a few zones where the lines between politics and religion are invisible). In other words no noticing that the “Party of God” (Hezbollah) or the Muslim Brotherhood which is now the most powerful political party in Egypt are actually political. Nor can you link the Islamic beliefs, codified by a warrior named Mohammed who urged his followers to slay infidels and cut off their heads with terrorists who invoke those beliefs when slaying infidels by cutting off their heads.
My recent speech at UCLA is adduced as evidence of the Islamophobia directed against Muslims in this clause:
Whereas, On Wednesday May 11th controversial speaker David Horowitz made false allegations on campus against the Muslim Students Association and the Afrikan Student Union, and further instilled hate against Muslims by stating that “Islam is a sick, sick culture” (5)(6);
Two footnotes are attached to this clause as if there were some actual connection to facts of my appearance at UCLA on May 11. One of the footnotes links to a column by a UCLA Muslim, Asra Ziauddin, which seizes on the “Wall of Lies” that I had written and that College Republicans had erected to counter the slanders of Palestinian Awareness Week at UCLA. Palestine Awareness Week claimed among many similar blatant falsehoods designed to demonize Jews and the Jewish homeland, that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Our response: Israel is not only not an apartheid state, it is the only real democracy in the Middle East. To this Ziauddin countered — “Myth: Israel it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Fact: This democracy only works for Jewish citizens.”
Actual Fact: Israel’s democracy works for 1.4 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens as well. To prove his fallacious point Ziauddin writes: “Six million Palestinian refugees have not been granted the right of return.” I don’t for a moment believe that Ziauddin’s invented figure “six million” is a coincidence, but there is no such right of return except in the minds of Palestinian revanchists.
The second footnote refers to the allegation that I said that “Islam is a sick, sick culture.” The footnote is a link to the audio version of the hour speech I gave at UCLA and which none but the most hardy will actually listen to. That is the good fortune of the Muslim Students Association for the transcript of the audio refutes the claim and it provides a measure of the audacity of the lies which the Muslim Students Association has concocted and believes it can get away with. Moreover, these are the kinds of lies with which it makes its case – swallowed whole by the UCLA student government — for suppressing the right to criticize their politics, their views and actions, or the politics, views and actions of any of the Muslims engaged in a holy war against the rest of us.
I am going to reproduce here the actual transcript of the only passage in my speech which refers to “a sick, sick culture.” As it happens – and it is not really coincidental — that I am referring in this passage to a film that was made by Palestinian Muslims at Brooklyn College who then doctored the film, cutting out the premise of statements like “this is sick, sick culture” in order to make me look as hateful as possible. This doctored version was then posted on the Internet with the title “Horowitz Spreading Hate At Brooklyn College.”
In other words, the passage of my UCLA speech which contains this reference is an attempt – a futile one where these religious ideologues are concerned –– to correct the false impression made by the doctored version:
What I said [at Brooklyn College] was this — people have been oppressed for thousands of years, horribly oppressed. Enslaved. Massacred. And yet, in thousands of years of recorded history, there has never before, never, been a people that has strapped bombs onto its own children, told them to go ahead and blow up other children. And if you do, you’re going to go to heaven. And if you’re lucky enough to be male, you’re going to get 72 virgins. That is sick. That’s a sick death cult is what –
(Applause)
Well, every one of you who applauded qualifies to be on the Internet, as I am — Horowitz spreading hatred at Brooklyn College. Because all they show me saying is, “That’s sick, a sick culture,” which it is.
[Click here to see the actual transcript]
In other words, what I was saying was that suicide bombing was sick and that the culture that supports it is sick. I was talking about the Palestinian culture of death, obviously framed by the Hamas version of Islam. So what my UCLA Muslim critics are actually saying is that Hamas’s death cult version of Islam is Islam. I didn’t say this – the Muslim Students Association, which is a Hamas-supporting offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood did. But if the UCLA student government was an actual government, you can bet an Islamophobia law would put me in jail — or worse — I for saying what I did.
Keep in mind that these are students at one of the top dozen schools in America, and there doesn’t seem to be an adult around to teach them what a democracy is and what a totalitarian concept like “Islamophobia” portends.
Ah, yes, I promised in the title of this piece to talk about extortion. Well, one of the consquences of signing to a crusade against Islamophobia like this is that you have to fork over money to fund the crusade – and better yet – the anti-Israel, anti-American clubs and associations at UCLA who will be carrying on the crusade, and let’s have courses and re-education centers at UCLA to indoctrinate UCLA students in our ideology, our cause and our agenda:
Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council does not tolerate or accept the behaviors of students, staff, faculty, or administration that infringe upon the safety of another person and/or develop a hostile and unsafe environment.
Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council supports the efforts of the present work-group between students and respective faculty, in creating a series of general education Introduction to Islam courses, to help foster a better understanding of the religion of Islam and American-Muslim identity.
Let it be further resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council urges the University of California, Los Angeles to financially support and promote all the Ethnic and Religious Studies Interdepartmental Programs, Departments, and Centers at UCLA.
[Editor's note: The graphic for this article is a cartoon illustrated by Bosch Fawstin. Visit his site at fawstin.blogspot.com.]
On May 11, 2011, I spoke to a student audience at UCLA for about an hour. My speech was video-taped and recorded on audio. Frontpage Magazine posted the video and an edited transcript of the speech. We are now posting an unedited transcript (accessible here) for reasons I will make clear in a moment.
On May 24, the Undergraduate Students Association at UCLA, by a 10-0 vote passed a resolution proposed by the Muslim Students Association declaring that “UCLA is a UC Campus Against Islamophobia.” I don’t mean to suggest that my appearance was the sole trigger of this resolution but it didn’t surprise me to find that among the numerous “Whereas” clauses in which the reasons for the resolution are stated, I am the only individual mentioned, or that it just came two weeks after the “controversy” surrounding my appearance which was really not so much a controversy as a series of one-sided assaults on myself and the College Republicans who invited me. “Islamophobes! Racists!” Call it an opportunity that I presented for the MSA and its supporters to extract concessions from the broader student population and to attempt to reach into their pockets in the process. Since student governments are proving grounds for future politicians, it is also a moment for the rest of us to reflect on what is in store for the country if these university elites can repeat their gains in the world beyond the campus. Here is how the Muslim Students Association formulated the concept “Islamophobia:”
Islamophobia is defined as ideologies, beliefs, and actions that perpetuate inaccurate and xenophobic views toward the culture and practice of Islam and the personification of its followers, such as being seen as monolithic, seen as a separate and ‘other’ culture that does not share common values, seen as inferior to the West, seen as violent, aggressive, and supportive of terrorism, seen as sexist and oppressive of women, seen as a political ideology used for political advantage, anti Muslim hostility, and exclusionary or discriminatory practices against Muslims from mainstream society;
Please note, “Islamophobia” is manifest in statements about Islam that are “innaccurate” (and by whose standard you might ask); by statements that reflect the view that Islam “does not share common values” (as for example, a belief in the separation of church and state?); by attitudes that regard Islam as “inferorior to the West” “as sexist and oppressive of women” (in other words no more noticing that in sharia-governed countries women are consigned to a second class status that renders them the virtual chattel of males); nor can one entertain the opinion that Islam is a political ideology (as it indubitably is in Iran, Saudia Arabia, Lebanon and Gaza, just to name a few zones where the lines between politics and religion are invisible). In other words no noticing that the “Party of God” (Hezbollah) or the Muslim Brotherhood which is now the most powerful political party in Egypt are actually political. Nor can you link the Islamic beliefs, codified by a warrior named Mohammed who urged his followers to slay infidels and cut off their heads with terrorists who invoke those beliefs when slaying infidels by cutting off their heads.
My recent speech at UCLA is adduced as evidence of the Islamophobia directed against Muslims in this clause:
Whereas, On Wednesday May 11th controversial speaker David Horowitz made false allegations on campus against the Muslim Students Association and the Afrikan Student Union, and further instilled hate against Muslims by stating that “Islam is a sick, sick culture” (5)(6);
Two footnotes are attached to this clause as if there were some actual connection to facts of my appearance at UCLA on May 11. One of the footnotes links to a column by a UCLA Muslim, Asra Ziauddin, which seizes on the “Wall of Lies” that I had written and that College Republicans had erected to counter the slanders of Palestinian Awareness Week at UCLA. Palestine Awareness Week claimed among many similar blatant falsehoods designed to demonize Jews and the Jewish homeland, that Israel is an “apartheid state.” Our response: Israel is not only not an apartheid state, it is the only real democracy in the Middle East. To this Ziauddin countered — “Myth: Israel it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Fact: This democracy only works for Jewish citizens.”
Actual Fact: Israel’s democracy works for 1.4 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens as well. To prove his fallacious point Ziauddin writes: “Six million Palestinian refugees have not been granted the right of return.” I don’t for a moment believe that Ziauddin’s invented figure “six million” is a coincidence, but there is no such right of return except in the minds of Palestinian revanchists.
The second footnote refers to the allegation that I said that “Islam is a sick, sick culture.” The footnote is a link to the audio version of the hour speech I gave at UCLA and which none but the most hardy will actually listen to. That is the good fortune of the Muslim Students Association for the transcript of the audio refutes the claim and it provides a measure of the audacity of the lies which the Muslim Students Association has concocted and believes it can get away with. Moreover, these are the kinds of lies with which it makes its case – swallowed whole by the UCLA student government — for suppressing the right to criticize their politics, their views and actions, or the politics, views and actions of any of the Muslims engaged in a holy war against the rest of us.
I am going to reproduce here the actual transcript of the only passage in my speech which refers to “a sick, sick culture.” As it happens – and it is not really coincidental — that I am referring in this passage to a film that was made by Palestinian Muslims at Brooklyn College who then doctored the film, cutting out the premise of statements like “this is sick, sick culture” in order to make me look as hateful as possible. This doctored version was then posted on the Internet with the title “Horowitz Spreading Hate At Brooklyn College.”
In other words, the passage of my UCLA speech which contains this reference is an attempt – a futile one where these religious ideologues are concerned –– to correct the false impression made by the doctored version:
What I said [at Brooklyn College] was this — people have been oppressed for thousands of years, horribly oppressed. Enslaved. Massacred. And yet, in thousands of years of recorded history, there has never before, never, been a people that has strapped bombs onto its own children, told them to go ahead and blow up other children. And if you do, you’re going to go to heaven. And if you’re lucky enough to be male, you’re going to get 72 virgins. That is sick. That’s a sick death cult is what –
(Applause)
Well, every one of you who applauded qualifies to be on the Internet, as I am — Horowitz spreading hatred at Brooklyn College. Because all they show me saying is, “That’s sick, a sick culture,” which it is.
[Click here to see the actual transcript]
In other words, what I was saying was that suicide bombing was sick and that the culture that supports it is sick. I was talking about the Palestinian culture of death, obviously framed by the Hamas version of Islam. So what my UCLA Muslim critics are actually saying is that Hamas’s death cult version of Islam is Islam. I didn’t say this – the Muslim Students Association, which is a Hamas-supporting offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood did. But if the UCLA student government was an actual government, you can bet an Islamophobia law would put me in jail — or worse — I for saying what I did.
Keep in mind that these are students at one of the top dozen schools in America, and there doesn’t seem to be an adult around to teach them what a democracy is and what a totalitarian concept like “Islamophobia” portends.
Ah, yes, I promised in the title of this piece to talk about extortion. Well, one of the consquences of signing to a crusade against Islamophobia like this is that you have to fork over money to fund the crusade – and better yet – the anti-Israel, anti-American clubs and associations at UCLA who will be carrying on the crusade, and let’s have courses and re-education centers at UCLA to indoctrinate UCLA students in our ideology, our cause and our agenda:
Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council does not tolerate or accept the behaviors of students, staff, faculty, or administration that infringe upon the safety of another person and/or develop a hostile and unsafe environment.
Let it be resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council supports the efforts of the present work-group between students and respective faculty, in creating a series of general education Introduction to Islam courses, to help foster a better understanding of the religion of Islam and American-Muslim identity.
Let it be further resolved, that the Undergraduate Students Association Council urges the University of California, Los Angeles to financially support and promote all the Ethnic and Religious Studies Interdepartmental Programs, Departments, and Centers at UCLA.
[Editor's note: The graphic for this article is a cartoon illustrated by Bosch Fawstin. Visit his site at fawstin.blogspot.com.]
Israel Policy Update
PM Netanyahu's 7 Points for Peace:
1. Mutual recognition of the Jewish state and the Palestinian state is necessary for peace.
“President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people, and I told you it wasn’t easy for me, and I said… "I will accept a Palestinian state." It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say… "I will accept a Jewish state." Those six words will change history. They will make clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end. That they are not building a state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it. They will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. With such a partner, the people of Israel will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise. I will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about… In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state! And if you do, I promise you this. Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011] 2. Israel recognizes that a Palestinian state should be independent and viable.
“We recognize that a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable, independent and prosperous.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
3. The Palestinian state should be fully demilitarized and there should be an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
“But Israel on the 1967 lines would be only nine miles wide. So much for strategic depth. So it is therefore absolutely vital for Israel’s security that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized. And it is vital that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River. Solid security arrangements on the ground are necessary not only to protect the peace, they are necessary to protect Israel in case the peace unravels. For in our unstable region, no one can guarantee that our peace partners today will be there tomorrow.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
4. The settlement blocs and areas of critical strategic and national importance will remain a part of Israel.
“This compromise must reflect the dramatic demographic changes that have occurred since 1967. The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines, reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and Greater Tel Aviv.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“These areas [settlement blocs] are densely populated but geographically quite small. Under any realistic peace agreement, these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be incorporated into the final borders of Israel.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
5. In any peace agreement, some settlements will end up outside Israel's borders.
“The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders. The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
6. The solution to the Palestinian refugees will be found outside Israel.
“President Obama rightly referred to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, just as he referred to the future Palestinian state as the homeland of the Palestinian people. Jews from around the world have a right to immigrate to the Jewish state. Palestinians from around the world should have a right to immigrate, if they so choose, to a Palestinian state. This means that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
7. Jerusalem will remain Israel's united sovereign capital.
“As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“Israel is the cradle of our common civilization. It's the crucible of our common values. And the modern state of Israel was founded precisely on these eternal values. And this is why Israel's more than 1 million Muslims enjoy full democratic rights. This is why the only place in the Middle East where Christians are completely free to practice their faith is the democratic State of Israel. And this is why Israel, and only Israel, can be trusted to ensure the freedom for all faiths in our eternal capital, the united city of Jerusalem.” [Netanyahu Address to AIPAC, 23 May 2011]
Unilateral Declaration of a Palestinian State:
Palestinian attempts to impose a settlement in the UN will not bring peace.
“Peace can be achieved only around the negotiating table. The Palestinian attempt to impose a settlement through the United Nations will not bring peace. It should be forcefully opposed by all those who want to see this conflict end.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
Palestinian Unity Pact:
Hamas is not a partner to peace and Israel calls on the Palestinian Authority to reject its accord with this terrorist organization.
“Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace. And Hamas is not a partner for peace. Hamas remains committed to Israel's destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, but says ‘kill the Jews wherever you find them’.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“Those who wish to obliterate us are no partners for peace. A Palestinian government with half its members declaring daily that they plan to annihilate the Jewish state is not a partner for peace. Those who say - and I am familiar with the saying - that "peace is made with enemies" must add a small but important qualifier: peace is made with an enemy, but with an enemy who has decided to make peace.” [Netanyahu Address to the Knesset, 16 May 2011]
Incitement:
Palestinian incitement is an impediment to peace.
“They [the Palestinians] were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
Iran:
The greatest danger facing humanity is a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.
“When I last stood here, I spoke of the dire consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, and the hinge of history may soon turn. For the greatest danger facing humanity could soon be upon us: A militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation. This is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message: That America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
US-Israel Relations:
Israel and the US stand together to defend democracy, advance peace and fight terrorism.
“Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“You understand that Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder fighting common enemies, protecting common interests.… Israel and America have drawn from these deep well springs of our common values. We forged an enduring friendship not merely between our governments, but between our peoples. Support for Israel doesn't divide America. It unites America. It unites the old and the young, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans….” [Netanyahu Address to AIPAC, 23 May 2011]
--
Yisrael Medad
Shiloh
Mobile Post Efraim 44830
Israel
www.myrightword.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/green-lined
1. Mutual recognition of the Jewish state and the Palestinian state is necessary for peace.
“President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people, and I told you it wasn’t easy for me, and I said… "I will accept a Palestinian state." It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say… "I will accept a Jewish state." Those six words will change history. They will make clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end. That they are not building a state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it. They will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. With such a partner, the people of Israel will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise. I will be prepared to make a far reaching compromise.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about… In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state! And if you do, I promise you this. Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011] 2. Israel recognizes that a Palestinian state should be independent and viable.
“We recognize that a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable, independent and prosperous.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
3. The Palestinian state should be fully demilitarized and there should be an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
“But Israel on the 1967 lines would be only nine miles wide. So much for strategic depth. So it is therefore absolutely vital for Israel’s security that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized. And it is vital that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River. Solid security arrangements on the ground are necessary not only to protect the peace, they are necessary to protect Israel in case the peace unravels. For in our unstable region, no one can guarantee that our peace partners today will be there tomorrow.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
4. The settlement blocs and areas of critical strategic and national importance will remain a part of Israel.
“This compromise must reflect the dramatic demographic changes that have occurred since 1967. The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines, reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and Greater Tel Aviv.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“These areas [settlement blocs] are densely populated but geographically quite small. Under any realistic peace agreement, these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be incorporated into the final borders of Israel.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
5. In any peace agreement, some settlements will end up outside Israel's borders.
“The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders. The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
6. The solution to the Palestinian refugees will be found outside Israel.
“President Obama rightly referred to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, just as he referred to the future Palestinian state as the homeland of the Palestinian people. Jews from around the world have a right to immigrate to the Jewish state. Palestinians from around the world should have a right to immigrate, if they so choose, to a Palestinian state. This means that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
7. Jerusalem will remain Israel's united sovereign capital.
“As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“Israel is the cradle of our common civilization. It's the crucible of our common values. And the modern state of Israel was founded precisely on these eternal values. And this is why Israel's more than 1 million Muslims enjoy full democratic rights. This is why the only place in the Middle East where Christians are completely free to practice their faith is the democratic State of Israel. And this is why Israel, and only Israel, can be trusted to ensure the freedom for all faiths in our eternal capital, the united city of Jerusalem.” [Netanyahu Address to AIPAC, 23 May 2011]
Unilateral Declaration of a Palestinian State:
Palestinian attempts to impose a settlement in the UN will not bring peace.
“Peace can be achieved only around the negotiating table. The Palestinian attempt to impose a settlement through the United Nations will not bring peace. It should be forcefully opposed by all those who want to see this conflict end.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
Palestinian Unity Pact:
Hamas is not a partner to peace and Israel calls on the Palestinian Authority to reject its accord with this terrorist organization.
“Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace. And Hamas is not a partner for peace. Hamas remains committed to Israel's destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, but says ‘kill the Jews wherever you find them’.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“Those who wish to obliterate us are no partners for peace. A Palestinian government with half its members declaring daily that they plan to annihilate the Jewish state is not a partner for peace. Those who say - and I am familiar with the saying - that "peace is made with enemies" must add a small but important qualifier: peace is made with an enemy, but with an enemy who has decided to make peace.” [Netanyahu Address to the Knesset, 16 May 2011]
Incitement:
Palestinian incitement is an impediment to peace.
“They [the Palestinians] were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
Iran:
The greatest danger facing humanity is a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.
“When I last stood here, I spoke of the dire consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, and the hinge of history may soon turn. For the greatest danger facing humanity could soon be upon us: A militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation. This is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message: That America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
US-Israel Relations:
Israel and the US stand together to defend democracy, advance peace and fight terrorism.
“Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.” [Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress, 24 May 2011]
“You understand that Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder fighting common enemies, protecting common interests.… Israel and America have drawn from these deep well springs of our common values. We forged an enduring friendship not merely between our governments, but between our peoples. Support for Israel doesn't divide America. It unites America. It unites the old and the young, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans….” [Netanyahu Address to AIPAC, 23 May 2011]
--
Yisrael Medad
Shiloh
Mobile Post Efraim 44830
Israel
www.myrightword.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/green-lined
Pakistani jihad group has sleeper cells in U.S.
Jihad Watch
Are U.S. government and law enforcement authorities sleeping as well? More on this story. "COMMENTARY-Lashkar-e-Toiba: Global Outreach," by Shrideep Biswas for South Asia Intelligence Review/India Blooms News Service, May 30:
Lashkar-e-Toiba ranks right up there in the al-Qaida and related groups as terrorist organizations...(Janet Napolitano, US Secretary of Homeland Security, May 27, 2011)
The statement of the US Secretary of Homeland Security, acknowledging the scale of the threat from Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), comes in the wake of cumulative and overwhelming evidence that this terrorist formation has long outgrown its initial focus on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to emerge as a global terrorist threat, matching al Qaida in aspiration, resources and reach. Napolitano’s comment was, however, far from the first acknowledgement of the LeT threat by the United States (US). Recently, on April 13, 2011, Admiral Robert Willard, Chief of the US military's Pacific Command Forces, told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “Unquestionably they [LeT] have spread their influence internationally and are no longer solely focused in South Asia and on India.” He added, further, that the US had evidence of LeT’s presence in Europe and the broader Asia-Pacific region. Willard’s words were almost echoed by former British foreign secretary David Miliband on April 29, 2011, when he cautioned, “If it's true that the LeT is developing global ambitions for its terrorism and its own capacity to do so, as well as regional ones (sic), we have to be even more insistent on the need to roll up that infrastructure.”
On March 12, 2010, US lawmakers had urged President Barack Obama to push Pakistan to crack down harder on the LeT. The House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia held a hearing to discuss LeT terrorism, during which Chairman Gary Ackerman accused the Pakistani military of supporting the banned outfit. [...]
Indian authorities have long warned the world of the augmenting international threat of state-backed terrorist formations in Pakistan, prominently including the LeT. India’s then National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan, for instance, warned, on August 11, 2006, “The Lashkar (LeT) today has emerged as a very major force. It has connectivity with west Asia, Europe... Actually there was a LeT module broken (sic) in Virginia and some people were picked up. It is as big as and omnipotent as al Qaeda in every sense of the term.” Again, on April 21, 2010, he reiterated, “The LeT has networks in 21 countries, including Australia, North America, Europe and Asia."
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database has long documented LeT’s global footprint to note:
LeT has an extensive network that run across Pakistan and India with established branches in Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Bangladesh and South East Asia.
LeT has a network of sleeper cells in the US and Australia, has trained terrorists from other countries, and has entered new theatres of 'jihad', such as Iraq.
LeT maintains ties with various religious/military groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya, primarily through the al Qaeda fraternal network.
LeT is part of the 'al Qaeda compact' and is a member of the "International Islamic Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders" established by Osama bin Laden on February 23, 1998.
LeT was part of the Bosnian campaign against the Serbs.
LeT has links with several international Islamist terrorist groups, including the Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen [Muslim Brotherhood] of Egypt and other Arab groups....
Are U.S. government and law enforcement authorities sleeping as well? More on this story. "COMMENTARY-Lashkar-e-Toiba: Global Outreach," by Shrideep Biswas for South Asia Intelligence Review/India Blooms News Service, May 30:
Lashkar-e-Toiba ranks right up there in the al-Qaida and related groups as terrorist organizations...(Janet Napolitano, US Secretary of Homeland Security, May 27, 2011)
The statement of the US Secretary of Homeland Security, acknowledging the scale of the threat from Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), comes in the wake of cumulative and overwhelming evidence that this terrorist formation has long outgrown its initial focus on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to emerge as a global terrorist threat, matching al Qaida in aspiration, resources and reach. Napolitano’s comment was, however, far from the first acknowledgement of the LeT threat by the United States (US). Recently, on April 13, 2011, Admiral Robert Willard, Chief of the US military's Pacific Command Forces, told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “Unquestionably they [LeT] have spread their influence internationally and are no longer solely focused in South Asia and on India.” He added, further, that the US had evidence of LeT’s presence in Europe and the broader Asia-Pacific region. Willard’s words were almost echoed by former British foreign secretary David Miliband on April 29, 2011, when he cautioned, “If it's true that the LeT is developing global ambitions for its terrorism and its own capacity to do so, as well as regional ones (sic), we have to be even more insistent on the need to roll up that infrastructure.”
On March 12, 2010, US lawmakers had urged President Barack Obama to push Pakistan to crack down harder on the LeT. The House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia held a hearing to discuss LeT terrorism, during which Chairman Gary Ackerman accused the Pakistani military of supporting the banned outfit. [...]
Indian authorities have long warned the world of the augmenting international threat of state-backed terrorist formations in Pakistan, prominently including the LeT. India’s then National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan, for instance, warned, on August 11, 2006, “The Lashkar (LeT) today has emerged as a very major force. It has connectivity with west Asia, Europe... Actually there was a LeT module broken (sic) in Virginia and some people were picked up. It is as big as and omnipotent as al Qaeda in every sense of the term.” Again, on April 21, 2010, he reiterated, “The LeT has networks in 21 countries, including Australia, North America, Europe and Asia."
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database has long documented LeT’s global footprint to note:
LeT has an extensive network that run across Pakistan and India with established branches in Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Bangladesh and South East Asia.
LeT has a network of sleeper cells in the US and Australia, has trained terrorists from other countries, and has entered new theatres of 'jihad', such as Iraq.
LeT maintains ties with various religious/military groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya, primarily through the al Qaeda fraternal network.
LeT is part of the 'al Qaeda compact' and is a member of the "International Islamic Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders" established by Osama bin Laden on February 23, 1998.
LeT was part of the Bosnian campaign against the Serbs.
LeT has links with several international Islamist terrorist groups, including the Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen [Muslim Brotherhood] of Egypt and other Arab groups....
A stronger case for annexing Judea and Samaria?
Israel Matzav
Does pushing Gaza off to Egypt make a better case for annexing Judea and Samaria? At least one person thinks so.
"It is not in Israel's interest to see Gaza and the West Bank as one entity," Eiland observed. That's a view shared not by Palestinians -- whose strong sense of nationalism takes in both enclaves, and overwhelmingly welcome the announced reunification of Hamas and Fatah -- but it's endorsed by Israel's settlers, as determined and implacable a group as you can find in the modern world. They want to hold onto the West Bank, an area rich in Biblical sites and significance to the observant Jews who are the most "hard core" of Jews living on West Bank hilltops, notes Naftali Bennett, director general of the Yesha Council, which represents settlers. Gaza has nothing of consequence to religious Jews, which is one reason to be rid of it.
Another reason: Without the Strip, Israel can make a better case for annexing the West Bank. As Bennett explained the other day to a room of foreign journalists, the case against annexation has always been the assumption that Palestinians would soon outnumber Jews, making Israel a defacto apartheid state, with the minority governing the majority. Few Israelis want to be in that position. But, Bennett maintains, "the myth that demography is against us is wrong. Demography is not against us."
His math is instructive in more ways than one.
Within its borders, Israel has some six million Jewish residents and 1.1 million Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who did not leave in 1948. How many Palestinians reside on the West Bank is a matter of dispute, but Bennett thinks 1.8 million is about right. Combine them, and you have a nation of six million Jews and about three million Palestinians, a comfortable Jewish majority, Bennett says, given the declining birth rate among Israeli Arabs.
And Gaza? What about the 1.5 million Palestinians there?
"Gaza we don't count," Bennett says. "Because that's gradually becoming Egypt's problem."
Of course, Egypt being 'responsible' for the Gaza Strip has some bad aspects to it too, as Barry Rubin points out.
Story 1: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Egypt is losing control of the Sinai Penninsula where there are a lot of terrorists who can go into the Gaza Strip and attack Israel or stage cross-border attacks.
Story 2: Arab newspaper reports an estimated 400 al-Qaida terrorists in the Sinai.
Story 3: Egypt opens border to Gaza Strip so money, terrorists, and weapons can flow in freely.
What could go wrong?
The Blue and White Logo, "I Am Made In Israel"
Lily Steiner
Israel has created the best technologies of the 21st century, and the produce and dairy it exports are also amongst the best in the world. When Israel recognizes its strength, as ‘best in so many fields’, and owns that fact, the issue of delegitimization will no longer be effective, and the U.N. and the E.U. will no longer be able to brand it as a pariah state.
Unlike the U.N, the majority of individuals in the world are not obsessed with Israel in any way. Sports, family 'stuff', NASCAR and thousands of other matters take a much higher priority. So, when this vast majority of the population, of most countries, start noticing a new tag, or label, on the electronic items and food items and produce they are buying and seeing in the stores, new awareness will enter their subconscious. A small, blue and white square, they will see in each item, that means, it was made or developed in Israel, all of a sudden will make them start developing a positive association with Israel. They may not be interested in wars, Israelis or Palestinians, but, just like that little Intel chip logo, when they start to see a ‘Made in Israel’ logo on more and more of what they buy and use, that is a pretty powerful and positive association. No need for words, no need for pictures, just a small, blue and white logo that days it all and will eventually become more recognizable than the Intel logo.
Instead of being afraid of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Campaigns, simply challenge them to get along without products with an Israeli connection. Be proud and trust that more people want the best products and are smart enough to know the Israelis are the good guys. Instead of being afraid of that small group, of loud and noisy naïve impressionable radicals, who have been sold a pack of distorted, half truths and lies, by the same groups who have kept the Palestinians in squalor as a ‘showcase’ for propaganda, trust the majority that knows and finally let the truth win out. Yes, It is true, the Israelis are and always have been the good guys.
The Government of Israel, wake up! You need to stop selling Israeli goods to the Arabs under disguise. Your technology and quality of goods is too valuable to be hidden. If the Arabs do not want to buy the best, let them buy from others. The choice is theirs. You know there are many things they cannot buy from anyone else in the world, why do you allow them to make you small, insignificant and belittle you?
Announce and proudly display what you have created.
Put a small plaque on every single product that has even one part that was developed or produced in Israel.
Israel must proudly brand its accomplishments. If the Arabs and Anti-Semites of all sorts can make it better, let them try - but let the BRAND of 'MADE IN ISRAEL' stand proudly behind all the good things it shares with the world.
Let every medical device, every piece of technology, together with every piece of food or produce, from oranges and cucumber, to tomatoes and apples, and even flowers, be the symbol of the Israeli Parliament-Knesset.
If an Israeli part is inside a telephone, or a computer, rewrite the contracts that mandates the Israeli Parliament-Knesset Symbol be displayed on the device and packaging from, Panasonic to Motorola, and it must be a non-negotiable, a mandate from the government. Enough is enough already
Let these Symbols proudly announce 'I AM FROM ISRAEL,' 'I AM WHAT THE JEWISH PEOPLE GIVE TO THE WORLD.'
Is this not a better, more productive way, than trying to verbally fight against the boycott and divestment people and the useful idiots on the Left, both within Israel and the Diaspora?
If an Arab country does not permit an Israeli passport holder, or even an individual with an Israeli stamp into their country, let them know they are the ones missing out, they are behind the times and politically incorrect – ISRAEL is PROUD of who it is, what it stand for and what it does.
Let Israel list the aid it gives to the Palestinians, together with the commerce it provides.
Israel is loved when it is strong. The Six Day War, the rescue from Entebbe, the first to arrive in Haiti – make the awareness of Israel’s contribution to everyone’s life so well known that our enemies cannot hide behind the lies, like the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel must take back its pride and stop lurking in back doors. BRAND IT ‘MADE IN ISRAEL’, BE PROUD!
Israel has created the best technologies of the 21st century, and the produce and dairy it exports are also amongst the best in the world. When Israel recognizes its strength, as ‘best in so many fields’, and owns that fact, the issue of delegitimization will no longer be effective, and the U.N. and the E.U. will no longer be able to brand it as a pariah state.
Unlike the U.N, the majority of individuals in the world are not obsessed with Israel in any way. Sports, family 'stuff', NASCAR and thousands of other matters take a much higher priority. So, when this vast majority of the population, of most countries, start noticing a new tag, or label, on the electronic items and food items and produce they are buying and seeing in the stores, new awareness will enter their subconscious. A small, blue and white square, they will see in each item, that means, it was made or developed in Israel, all of a sudden will make them start developing a positive association with Israel. They may not be interested in wars, Israelis or Palestinians, but, just like that little Intel chip logo, when they start to see a ‘Made in Israel’ logo on more and more of what they buy and use, that is a pretty powerful and positive association. No need for words, no need for pictures, just a small, blue and white logo that days it all and will eventually become more recognizable than the Intel logo.
Instead of being afraid of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Campaigns, simply challenge them to get along without products with an Israeli connection. Be proud and trust that more people want the best products and are smart enough to know the Israelis are the good guys. Instead of being afraid of that small group, of loud and noisy naïve impressionable radicals, who have been sold a pack of distorted, half truths and lies, by the same groups who have kept the Palestinians in squalor as a ‘showcase’ for propaganda, trust the majority that knows and finally let the truth win out. Yes, It is true, the Israelis are and always have been the good guys.
The Government of Israel, wake up! You need to stop selling Israeli goods to the Arabs under disguise. Your technology and quality of goods is too valuable to be hidden. If the Arabs do not want to buy the best, let them buy from others. The choice is theirs. You know there are many things they cannot buy from anyone else in the world, why do you allow them to make you small, insignificant and belittle you?
Announce and proudly display what you have created.
Put a small plaque on every single product that has even one part that was developed or produced in Israel.
Israel must proudly brand its accomplishments. If the Arabs and Anti-Semites of all sorts can make it better, let them try - but let the BRAND of 'MADE IN ISRAEL' stand proudly behind all the good things it shares with the world.
Let every medical device, every piece of technology, together with every piece of food or produce, from oranges and cucumber, to tomatoes and apples, and even flowers, be the symbol of the Israeli Parliament-Knesset.
If an Israeli part is inside a telephone, or a computer, rewrite the contracts that mandates the Israeli Parliament-Knesset Symbol be displayed on the device and packaging from, Panasonic to Motorola, and it must be a non-negotiable, a mandate from the government. Enough is enough already
Let these Symbols proudly announce 'I AM FROM ISRAEL,' 'I AM WHAT THE JEWISH PEOPLE GIVE TO THE WORLD.'
Is this not a better, more productive way, than trying to verbally fight against the boycott and divestment people and the useful idiots on the Left, both within Israel and the Diaspora?
If an Arab country does not permit an Israeli passport holder, or even an individual with an Israeli stamp into their country, let them know they are the ones missing out, they are behind the times and politically incorrect – ISRAEL is PROUD of who it is, what it stand for and what it does.
Let Israel list the aid it gives to the Palestinians, together with the commerce it provides.
Israel is loved when it is strong. The Six Day War, the rescue from Entebbe, the first to arrive in Haiti – make the awareness of Israel’s contribution to everyone’s life so well known that our enemies cannot hide behind the lies, like the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel must take back its pride and stop lurking in back doors. BRAND IT ‘MADE IN ISRAEL’, BE PROUD!
Contiguous State Deception! (part2)
Steven Shamrak
In his speech Obama said "The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."
What map had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not a friend of Israel, shown to him? Where did he see 'contiguous' land - connection between Gaza and Judea/Samaria (West Bank)? Is he planning to cut Israel a half? Is it OK for Israel to be non-contiguous?
Fatah, Hamas and their masters will never recognize Israel - so forget about Israel as the "Jewish state". They made it clear many times before. The PA blatantly ignores the major Oslo accords' requirements for - recognition of Israel, stopping terror attacks and anti-Israel incitement. A few years ago 8,500 Jews were forcefully removed from Gaza. There are almost 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The PA is planning to create another Islam dominate state without Jews! Why is transfer of Jews from their ancestral land, in order to accommodate bogus claims of the terror supporting population, is satisfactory to the international community and it is not considered as a violation of the 4th Geneva convention, but transfer of the fake Palestinians to Sinai, a vast contagious land with very low population and various resources is not an acceptable one?
Why must the state of this fake nation, which was forged in order to destroy Israel, be created on Jewish land? The international anti-Semites have already displaced and committed numerous genocides and crimes against Jews in Britain, Spain and other places in Europe. Now they are assisting Arabs to finish their dirty job in the Jewish homeland!
Obama has also suggested put aside for the future negotiations the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Recognition of Israel was 'put aside', end of terror attacks again on Israel was 'put aside', establishing a democratic governance in PA is not a priority! Have this 'genius' negotiating tactic brought peace to Israel?
Why can't we talk about fake Palestinian refugees now? During the war of Independence, which Arabs had instigated, some 460,000 people, currently known as Palestinians, left the conflict zone following orders from their leaders. Their numbers had doubled immediately following that the UN announced the aid available to them. Several generations of professional refugees have been created as a result.
Since then, close to 850,000 Jews have been forced to leave Muslims countries. Hypocrisy must be exposed! Facts are available if someone wants to find and learn them. Jew-haters and self-hating Jews do not want to know or just purposely disregard them! The Arab-Israel peace process is a deception!
It is designed to prevent Israel from reclaiming Jewish land and establishing the sovereign Jewish state, Eretz-Israel. Western countries have been using instability in the Middle East in order to control oil supply from Islamic states. At the same time major Islamic ideological powers and organizations (Iran, Wahabi Saudi Arabia and Muslim brotherhood) are using the Arab-Israel conflict to divert attention from themselves and their true Islamic agenda - global world domination of Islam. That is why they created the fake Palestinian nation in 1964. Termination of Israel is just the first step in the Holly war against "infidels"!
This is a peculiar symbiotic relationship between two enemies united by their hate for Jews and lust for power. Traditional anti-Semitism of the Western democracies and Russia have become the best ally of their own mortal enemies!
In his speech Obama said "The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."
What map had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not a friend of Israel, shown to him? Where did he see 'contiguous' land - connection between Gaza and Judea/Samaria (West Bank)? Is he planning to cut Israel a half? Is it OK for Israel to be non-contiguous?
Fatah, Hamas and their masters will never recognize Israel - so forget about Israel as the "Jewish state". They made it clear many times before. The PA blatantly ignores the major Oslo accords' requirements for - recognition of Israel, stopping terror attacks and anti-Israel incitement. A few years ago 8,500 Jews were forcefully removed from Gaza. There are almost 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The PA is planning to create another Islam dominate state without Jews! Why is transfer of Jews from their ancestral land, in order to accommodate bogus claims of the terror supporting population, is satisfactory to the international community and it is not considered as a violation of the 4th Geneva convention, but transfer of the fake Palestinians to Sinai, a vast contagious land with very low population and various resources is not an acceptable one?
Why must the state of this fake nation, which was forged in order to destroy Israel, be created on Jewish land? The international anti-Semites have already displaced and committed numerous genocides and crimes against Jews in Britain, Spain and other places in Europe. Now they are assisting Arabs to finish their dirty job in the Jewish homeland!
Obama has also suggested put aside for the future negotiations the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Recognition of Israel was 'put aside', end of terror attacks again on Israel was 'put aside', establishing a democratic governance in PA is not a priority! Have this 'genius' negotiating tactic brought peace to Israel?
Why can't we talk about fake Palestinian refugees now? During the war of Independence, which Arabs had instigated, some 460,000 people, currently known as Palestinians, left the conflict zone following orders from their leaders. Their numbers had doubled immediately following that the UN announced the aid available to them. Several generations of professional refugees have been created as a result.
Since then, close to 850,000 Jews have been forced to leave Muslims countries. Hypocrisy must be exposed! Facts are available if someone wants to find and learn them. Jew-haters and self-hating Jews do not want to know or just purposely disregard them! The Arab-Israel peace process is a deception!
It is designed to prevent Israel from reclaiming Jewish land and establishing the sovereign Jewish state, Eretz-Israel. Western countries have been using instability in the Middle East in order to control oil supply from Islamic states. At the same time major Islamic ideological powers and organizations (Iran, Wahabi Saudi Arabia and Muslim brotherhood) are using the Arab-Israel conflict to divert attention from themselves and their true Islamic agenda - global world domination of Islam. That is why they created the fake Palestinian nation in 1964. Termination of Israel is just the first step in the Holly war against "infidels"!
This is a peculiar symbiotic relationship between two enemies united by their hate for Jews and lust for power. Traditional anti-Semitism of the Western democracies and Russia have become the best ally of their own mortal enemies!
Ya'alon: Military strike may be needed to stop Iran nukes
JPOST.COM STAFF
Strategic affairs minister calls on "entire civilized world...to take joint action to avert the nuclear threat posed by Iran."
Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon called on the world to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, by all means necessary, including a military strike, the Associated Press reported on Monday. Ya'alon made the comments in an interview to Russian news agency Interfax ahead of a visit to Moscow.
"We strongly hope that the entire civilized world will come to realize what threat this regime is posing and take joint action to avert the nuclear threat posed by Iran, even if it would be necessary to conduct a pre-emptive strike," Yaalon said. Ya'alon emphasized that not only Israel would be endangered by a nuclear-armed Iran. "An Iran possessing nuclear weapons would be a threat to the entire civilized world," he stated.
Western analysts say increasingly tough sanctions on Iran as well as the Stuxnet virus and possible other sabotage have delayed Iran's nuclear progress, even though they say the country now has enough low-enriched uranium for two bombs if refined more.
Enriched uranium can be used to fuel power plants, Iran's stated aim, or provide bomb material if processed much further.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, said last week that "the totality of the evidence indicates beyond reasonable doubt" that Iran was seeking a capability to make such weapons.
If Iran decided to "weaponize" enrichment, it would need about 16 months to yield the first bomb's worth of highly enriched uranium at its Natanz enrichment facility, if all centrifuge machines were used for this purpose, he said.
At least six months would then be required to fashion the highly-refined uranium into a weapon, Fitzpatrick added. Developing a missile to deliver it would add to the timeline, the former senior US State Department official said.
An IAEA report last week said it had received new information about possible illicit military dimensions to Iran's nuclear activities
"The latest IAEA report includes evidence that what originally were thought to be just paper studies also include actual experiments, including on triggers for a nuclear weapon," Fitzpatrick said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Obama's "Muslim Problem"!
Barry Rubin
The idea that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim is ridiculous. (And don’t write me disagreeing because there’s no proof.)
BUT this red herring has blocked a serious discussion of what is Obama’s attitude toward Islam. As so often happens regarding the Middle East and Islam, people spend their time and passions focusing on the wrong issue.
I think two points can be made reasonably:
–Based on his youthful experience, Obama thinks he is a great expert on Islam. He isn’t. And the Islam he came in contact with at the time (in Indonesia mainly) was quite different from what he has to deal with in the Middle East today. Particularly, he genuinely does not seem to comprehend revolutionary Islamism. And since that’s the main international threat in the world today his failure creates a gigantic problem for the future of what used to be called the Free World. Obama has a strong sympathy and empathy for Muslims. In theory, that’s just fine but it has led to a policy of trying to win the love of the Muslim-majority world rather than to develop strategies that work and protect U.S. interests. Another theme that emerges from this is his relentless mirror-imaging in which Egypt’s revolution becomes equivalent to Rosa Parks protesting against segregation on buses in the Southern United States and the quest for democratic liberty by America’s Founding Fathers.
So Obama’s “Islamophilia” makes him have a huge “Muslim problem.” The problem is not that he “likes” Muslims but that he doesn’t distinguish among them. It’s the difference between loving Russia, its people and its culture a generation ago, and not understanding the problem of Communism.
By believing that the only problems are: a tiny group of evil people (al-Qaida) and mistakes made by U.S. policy, Obama is missing the biggest political development in the world today.
It’s like saying after the Russian Revolution that the real problem is a small group of anarchists who want to hijack Bolshevism, but that if the United States is only nice enough to the Communists, shows them that America isn’t their enemy, and helps them get rid of a few extremists everything will be great.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ 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 http://www.gloria-center.org.
The idea that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim is ridiculous. (And don’t write me disagreeing because there’s no proof.)
BUT this red herring has blocked a serious discussion of what is Obama’s attitude toward Islam. As so often happens regarding the Middle East and Islam, people spend their time and passions focusing on the wrong issue.
I think two points can be made reasonably:
–Based on his youthful experience, Obama thinks he is a great expert on Islam. He isn’t. And the Islam he came in contact with at the time (in Indonesia mainly) was quite different from what he has to deal with in the Middle East today. Particularly, he genuinely does not seem to comprehend revolutionary Islamism. And since that’s the main international threat in the world today his failure creates a gigantic problem for the future of what used to be called the Free World. Obama has a strong sympathy and empathy for Muslims. In theory, that’s just fine but it has led to a policy of trying to win the love of the Muslim-majority world rather than to develop strategies that work and protect U.S. interests. Another theme that emerges from this is his relentless mirror-imaging in which Egypt’s revolution becomes equivalent to Rosa Parks protesting against segregation on buses in the Southern United States and the quest for democratic liberty by America’s Founding Fathers.
So Obama’s “Islamophilia” makes him have a huge “Muslim problem.” The problem is not that he “likes” Muslims but that he doesn’t distinguish among them. It’s the difference between loving Russia, its people and its culture a generation ago, and not understanding the problem of Communism.
By believing that the only problems are: a tiny group of evil people (al-Qaida) and mistakes made by U.S. policy, Obama is missing the biggest political development in the world today.
It’s like saying after the Russian Revolution that the real problem is a small group of anarchists who want to hijack Bolshevism, but that if the United States is only nice enough to the Communists, shows them that America isn’t their enemy, and helps them get rid of a few extremists everything will be great.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ 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 http://www.gloria-center.org.
Cameron drinks the Kool-Aid
Melanie Phillips
The Times (£) says that David Cameron’s decision to step down from being a patron of the Jewish National Fund shows the British government is becoming cool on Israel.
You don’t say. Any cooler and it would be frostbite territory. Precisely why Britain’s Conservative-led government has drunk so deeply of the anti-Israel Kool-Aid isn’t clear. Sucking up to Obama? Muslim demographics in the UK? Part of Cameron’s hopey-changey-lefty-loopy repositioning of the Tory Party? Yet another bone tossed to the blood-libelling knitted organic vegan victimologists, aka his LibDem coalition partners?
Whatever. Who cares. The unpalatable fact is that Britain has now reverted well and truly to type in professing with hand on heart an unbreakable bond of brotherhood with Israel while cutting it off at the knees, sliding a stiletto between its shoulder blades and bashing its head in.
The JNF thing (despite Downing Street's unconvincing claim that Cameron has stepped down from a number of charities through lack of time) is the latest act of aggression against Israel by HMG, and is particularly offensive. For the JNF is identified closely with the foundational Zionist dream of making the desert bloom, by buying up and developing the land for decades before the State of Israel was established. And so now– of course – it stands accused of the ‘theft of Palestinian land’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘war crimes’. Ah yes – that terrible weapon of mass destruction, the sapling.
Without getting into the imbecilic interstices of precisely what and where, one key, crucial, overarching, all-important, nothing-else-matters-as-much-as-this point needs to be made (and yes, I have made it before many times, but it needs to be taped to Cameron’s eyeballs and rammed down the throats of the malevolent mandarins of the Foreign Office and delivered by diplomatic cable to Israeli spokesman as their line–to-take in answer to any statement-disguised-as -a-question about their intrinsic belligerency routinely lobbed at them by the Guardian-of-the Airwaves, aka the BBC).
This is quite simply that the territory beyond the ceasefire lines (formed when Israel fought off the attempt by five Arab armies to destroy it at birth in 1948-9, and now falsely deemed to be Israel’s ‘border’) is not Palestinian land. It is not land that is owned by the Palestinians in general, or to which they have any general right or title. On the contrary, it is land to which the Jews in general are legally entitled. All of it. This is not some crazed, ultra-nationalist dogma. It is a matter of historical fact. international law and basic justice.
This fundamental fact, which gives the lie to the anti-JNF libels and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign libels and the rest of the anti-Israel madness, was reiterated in the last few days in a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon from dozens of lawyers from Israel and North America, explaining why the proposed unilateral decision to establish a Palestinian State violates international law. The lawyers said:
The legal basis for the establishment of the State of Israel was the resolution unanimously adopted by the League of Nations in 1922, affirming the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical area of the Land of Israel. This included the areas of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, and close Jewish settlement throughout. This was subsequently affirmed by both houses of the US Congress.
2. Article 80 of the UN Charter determines the continued validity of the rights granted to all states or peoples, or already existing international instruments (including those adopted by the League of Nations). Accordingly the above-noted League resolution remains valid, and the 650,000 Jews presently resident in the areas of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, reside there legitimately.
3. ‘The 1967 borders’ do not exist, and have never existed. The1949 Armistice Agreements entered into by Israel and its Arabneighbors, establishing the Armistice Demarcation Lines, clearly stated that these lines ‘are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto’. Accordingly they cannot be accepted or declared to be the international boundaries of a Palestinian state.
4. UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called upon the parties to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and specifically stressed the need to negotiate in order to achieve "secure and recognized boundaries".
5. The Palestinian proposal, in attempting to unilaterally change the status of the territory and determine the "1967 borders" as its recognized borders, in addition to running squarely against resolutions 242 and 338, would be a fundamental breach of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in which the parties undertook to negotiate the issue of borders and not act to change the status of the
territories pending outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
6. The Palestinians entered into the various agreements constituting what is known as the ‘Oslo Accords’ in the full knowledge that Israel's settlements existed in the areas, and that settlements would be one of the issues to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Furthermore, the Oslo Accords impose no limitation on Israel's settlement activity in those areas that the Palestinians agreed would continue to be under Israel's jurisdiction and control pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations.
7. While the Interim Agreement was signed by Israel and the PLO, it was witnessed by the UN together with the EU, the Russian Federation , the US, Egypt and Norway. It is thus inconceivable that such witnesses, including first and foremost the UN, would now give license to a measure in the UN
aimed at violating this agreement and undermining major resolutions of the Security Council.
Not only has Britain’s Prime Minister apparently totally ignored this legal history and instead swallowed entirely false propaganda about Israel’s ‘illegal’ encroachment onto 'Palestinian land’; worse still, Britain is threatening to vote with Mahmoud Abbas and co when they declare a ‘Palestinian state’ at the UN.
If so, the wheel will have come full circle, and history played first as tragedy will be replayed as tragedy. For in the three decades after it undertook to re-establish the Jews' national homeland in Palestine , Britain tore up international law when it reneged on its own treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout that land – which included what is now called the West Bank as well as Gaza, not to mention the whole of Jerusalem where Jews had been in the majority since the mid-19th century -- and instead took the side of the Arabs and tacitly encouraged their aim of wiping out the Jewish presence from their historic national home. Indeed, when the UN voted to create the State of Israel Britain actually abstained.
Now Cameron has threatened that Britain may support a move which will once again make a mockery of legality by tearing up international agreements and binding UN resolutions – and voting for a Potemkin state whose ‘unity’ government comprises people committed to the annihilation of Israel and every Jew in the world.
It does not seem to trouble Cameron that, once again, Abbas has reiterated that a future state of Palestine will have not one Israeli living there – by which he means, no Jews. (For sure, not many Israeli Arabs will be volunteering to live in ‘Palestine’ and thus sacrifice their human rights.) Every single person who supports the Palestinian cause should thus be asked why they are supporting a racist state committed to the ethnic cleansing of an entire people; and why they are supporting the establishment of such a state with a government comprising people committed to the genocide of the Jews. The government of Israel should now be asking this same question of the British government – and using the most public of international platforms to do so.
It is beyond distressing that, instead of fighting the anti-Israel and Judeophobic bigotry now poisoning British public life, the Cameron government is instead giving it further legs, and providing respectable cover for such bigotry and its denial. With academia in the forefront of the demonisation of Israel, the academics’ University and College Union has now rejected the EU definition of antisemitism -- on the grounds that this incorporates the demonisation of Israel. Thus in true Orwellian mode, the UCU has redefined language itself in order to insulate itself against accusations of Judeophobia arising from its obsessional hatred of Israel. And to do so, it has thus effectively said that no hostility towards Israel can ever be anti-Jew. This is clearly absurd, as Eve Garrard writes on Normblog:
Here we have the academic union wanting to declare that presenting Jews as malignant forces of sinister power, controlling the media and the economy and the government, can’t be anti-Semitic. That the assertion that the population of Gaza (around one and a half million and rising) is in the same position as the population of the Warsaw Ghetto (around half a million falling to virtually zero after three years, as part of a deliberate genocide) just can't involve any prejudice against Jews. That singling out Jews, and the Jewish state, for condemnation and punishment alone among the nations, just can’t be anti-Semitic.
Whatever casuistry these people employ to sanitise the fact that they are singling out Israel for a campaign of demonisation and delegitimisation, double standards, falsehoods and fabrications, blood libels and conspiracy theories which just happen to replicate exactly the unique tropes of Jew-hatred down through the centuries, the undeniable fact remains that they are currently promoting the cause of racist ethnic cleansers and genocidal Jew-haters. They are endorsing aggressors against their victims, reversing truth and lies, tearing up law and justice and turning history upside down.
And the British Prime Minister has now joined them.
When will America Gain its Senses?
Paul Vallely
Our nation simply does not have the human and financial resources to continue investing blood and treasure into nation building enterprises or foreign aid packages into the Middle East. Obama along with other broke, financially strapped European countries is now committing billions of new US dollars to new nation building to the Middle East. All of these Islamic countries seem to be willing to protect terrorists/jihadists, rule by Sharia law in the guise of seeking democracy, chastise America at every opportunity for their own selfish interests and hope of keeping U.S. money flowing into their coffers. How senseless is this? Oh, Treasury, keep printing money - no problem there! Maybe I am naïve, but I think we need to shore up America first. War, more than any other human activity, engages our senses: at times providing a rush of fear, anxiety, horror, confusion, rage, pain, helplessness, nauseous anticipation, and hyper-awareness. It is in these vagaries that imponderables and miscalculations accumulate to paralyze the minds of military and political leaders. In the cauldron of war, “It is the exceptional Warrior who keeps his powers of quick decision intact.” There are other aspects of conflict that will not change no matter what advances in technology: fog, ideology and friction will distort, cloak, and twist the course of events. Fog will result from information overload, our own misperceptions and faulty assumptions, and the fact that enemies will act in unexpected ways. Combined with the fog of war there will be infinite a number of seemingly insignificant incidents and actions that can go wrong. It will arise from fundamental aspects of the condition and unavoidable unpredictability that lies at the very core of combat and international engagement.”
This constant fog and friction of war and conflict turns the simple into the complex. In combat, people make good decisions and mistakes. They forget or know the basics. They become disoriented or oriented. Occasionally, incompetence prevails. Mistaken assumptions distort situational awareness. Chance disrupts, distorts, and confuses the most careful of plans. Uncertainty and unpredictability dominate. Where friction prevails, tight tolerances, whether applied to plans, actions, or materiel are an invitation to failure – the more devastating for being unexpected. Operational and logistical concepts or plans that make no allowance for the inescapable uncertainties of war are suspect on their face – an open invitation to failure and at times defeat. Still another enduring feature of conflict lies in the recurring fact that military leaders often fail to recognize and understand their enemy. War is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass... but always the collision of two living forces. Those living forces possess all the cunning and intractable characteristics human beings have enjoyed since the dawn of history. Even where adversaries share a similar historical and cultural background, the mere fact of belligerence guarantees profound differences in attitudes, expectations, and behavioral norms. Where different cultures come into conflict, the likelihood that adversaries will act in mutually incomprehensible ways is even more likely. Thus, Sun Tzu’s maxim that, “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles” is easier said than done. The conduct of war demands a deep understanding of the enemy – his culture, history, geography, religious and ideological motivations, and particularly the manifest differences in his perceptions of the external world.
The Nature of change – War and conflict will remain a human endeavor, a conflict between two forces, yet changes in the political landscape, adaptations by the enemy, and advances in technology and techniques will change the character of the battle. Leaders are often late to recognize such changes and adjust to the proper uses of hard and soft power options, and even when they do, inertia tends to limit their ability to adapt quickly. Driven by an inherent desire to bring order to a disorderly, chaotic universe, human beings tend to frame their thoughts about the future in terms of continuities and extrapolations from the present and occasionally the past. But a brief look at the past quarter century, to say nothing of the past four thousand years, suggests the extent of changes that coming decades will bring.
Twenty-five years ago the Cold War encompassed every aspect of the American military’s thinking and preparation for conflict – from the strategic level to the tactical. Today, that all-consuming preoccupation is a historical relic. A quarter century ago, the United States confronted the Soviet Union, a truculent, intractable opponent with leaders firmly committed to the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology and expansion of their influence. At that time, few in the intelligence communities or even among Sovietologists recognized the deepening internal crisis of confidence that would lead to the implosion of the Soviet Empire. The opposing sides had each deployed tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, as well as vast armies, air forces, and navies across the globe. Soviet forces were occupying Afghanistan and appeared on the brink of crushing an uprising of ill-equipped, ill-trained guerrillas. In El Salvador, a Soviet-backed insurgency was on the brink of victory.
Beyond the confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union lay a world that differed enormously from today. China was only emerging from the dark years of Mao’s rule. To China’s south, India remained mired in an almost medieval level of poverty, from which it appeared unlikely to escape. To the sub-continent’s west, the Middle East was as plagued by political and ideological/religious troubles as today. But no one could have predicted then that within 25 years the United States would wage two major wars against Saddam Hussein’s regime and commit much of its ground power to suppressing simultaneous insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I was advised years ago (2001 to be precise) by an Arabian confidant, “ Do not put bases or large land forces into the Middle East, as it is a giant SPONGE that will soak up everything with no viable end!”…meaning human and financial resources……
We should have more sense and wisdom about engagement and conflicts in this year 2011 but we do not seem to look back in history well and have major problems in seeing the future. We seem to be a nation that is rudderless. We, the people, are the Masters of our Fate and Captains of our Soul and Destiny.
Paul E. Vallely is Chairman of Stand Up America
www.standupamericaus.com
Our nation simply does not have the human and financial resources to continue investing blood and treasure into nation building enterprises or foreign aid packages into the Middle East. Obama along with other broke, financially strapped European countries is now committing billions of new US dollars to new nation building to the Middle East. All of these Islamic countries seem to be willing to protect terrorists/jihadists, rule by Sharia law in the guise of seeking democracy, chastise America at every opportunity for their own selfish interests and hope of keeping U.S. money flowing into their coffers. How senseless is this? Oh, Treasury, keep printing money - no problem there! Maybe I am naïve, but I think we need to shore up America first. War, more than any other human activity, engages our senses: at times providing a rush of fear, anxiety, horror, confusion, rage, pain, helplessness, nauseous anticipation, and hyper-awareness. It is in these vagaries that imponderables and miscalculations accumulate to paralyze the minds of military and political leaders. In the cauldron of war, “It is the exceptional Warrior who keeps his powers of quick decision intact.” There are other aspects of conflict that will not change no matter what advances in technology: fog, ideology and friction will distort, cloak, and twist the course of events. Fog will result from information overload, our own misperceptions and faulty assumptions, and the fact that enemies will act in unexpected ways. Combined with the fog of war there will be infinite a number of seemingly insignificant incidents and actions that can go wrong. It will arise from fundamental aspects of the condition and unavoidable unpredictability that lies at the very core of combat and international engagement.”
This constant fog and friction of war and conflict turns the simple into the complex. In combat, people make good decisions and mistakes. They forget or know the basics. They become disoriented or oriented. Occasionally, incompetence prevails. Mistaken assumptions distort situational awareness. Chance disrupts, distorts, and confuses the most careful of plans. Uncertainty and unpredictability dominate. Where friction prevails, tight tolerances, whether applied to plans, actions, or materiel are an invitation to failure – the more devastating for being unexpected. Operational and logistical concepts or plans that make no allowance for the inescapable uncertainties of war are suspect on their face – an open invitation to failure and at times defeat. Still another enduring feature of conflict lies in the recurring fact that military leaders often fail to recognize and understand their enemy. War is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass... but always the collision of two living forces. Those living forces possess all the cunning and intractable characteristics human beings have enjoyed since the dawn of history. Even where adversaries share a similar historical and cultural background, the mere fact of belligerence guarantees profound differences in attitudes, expectations, and behavioral norms. Where different cultures come into conflict, the likelihood that adversaries will act in mutually incomprehensible ways is even more likely. Thus, Sun Tzu’s maxim that, “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles” is easier said than done. The conduct of war demands a deep understanding of the enemy – his culture, history, geography, religious and ideological motivations, and particularly the manifest differences in his perceptions of the external world.
The Nature of change – War and conflict will remain a human endeavor, a conflict between two forces, yet changes in the political landscape, adaptations by the enemy, and advances in technology and techniques will change the character of the battle. Leaders are often late to recognize such changes and adjust to the proper uses of hard and soft power options, and even when they do, inertia tends to limit their ability to adapt quickly. Driven by an inherent desire to bring order to a disorderly, chaotic universe, human beings tend to frame their thoughts about the future in terms of continuities and extrapolations from the present and occasionally the past. But a brief look at the past quarter century, to say nothing of the past four thousand years, suggests the extent of changes that coming decades will bring.
Twenty-five years ago the Cold War encompassed every aspect of the American military’s thinking and preparation for conflict – from the strategic level to the tactical. Today, that all-consuming preoccupation is a historical relic. A quarter century ago, the United States confronted the Soviet Union, a truculent, intractable opponent with leaders firmly committed to the spread of Marxist-Leninist ideology and expansion of their influence. At that time, few in the intelligence communities or even among Sovietologists recognized the deepening internal crisis of confidence that would lead to the implosion of the Soviet Empire. The opposing sides had each deployed tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, as well as vast armies, air forces, and navies across the globe. Soviet forces were occupying Afghanistan and appeared on the brink of crushing an uprising of ill-equipped, ill-trained guerrillas. In El Salvador, a Soviet-backed insurgency was on the brink of victory.
Beyond the confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union lay a world that differed enormously from today. China was only emerging from the dark years of Mao’s rule. To China’s south, India remained mired in an almost medieval level of poverty, from which it appeared unlikely to escape. To the sub-continent’s west, the Middle East was as plagued by political and ideological/religious troubles as today. But no one could have predicted then that within 25 years the United States would wage two major wars against Saddam Hussein’s regime and commit much of its ground power to suppressing simultaneous insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I was advised years ago (2001 to be precise) by an Arabian confidant, “ Do not put bases or large land forces into the Middle East, as it is a giant SPONGE that will soak up everything with no viable end!”…meaning human and financial resources……
We should have more sense and wisdom about engagement and conflicts in this year 2011 but we do not seem to look back in history well and have major problems in seeing the future. We seem to be a nation that is rudderless. We, the people, are the Masters of our Fate and Captains of our Soul and Destiny.
Paul E. Vallely is Chairman of Stand Up America
www.standupamericaus.com
Monday, May 30, 2011
Iranian Ayatollah Affirms Legitimacy of Suicide Operations, Approves Killing Israeli Civilians - Including Children
MEMRI
The issue of martyrdom operations and their religious legitimacy has been repeatedly discussed by Iranian ayatollahs.[1] In a recent fatwa posted on his website in response to an online inquiry, Iranian Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-e Yazdi ruled that martyrdom operations were not only legitimate but were a duty incumbent upon every Muslim.
The inquirer asked whether such operations were considered suicide and were therefore forbidden, and whether Israeli civilians, especially children, were to be regarded as illegitimate targets, like civilians elsewhere. In his reply, Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi expressed regret that the inquirer had apparently bought into the propaganda of the enemies of Islam, which presented martyrdom operations as suicide, and that the inquirer was wasting his time on this issue instead of focusing on "uprooting the Zionist regime" and its supporters. The Ayatollah ruled that when defending Islam and the Muslim ummah necessitated martyrdom, it was not considered suicide. Regarding the question about Israeli civilians, he ruled that it was forbidden to harm them only if they had openly declared their opposition to their government. He said it was even permissible to target Israeli civilians used as human shields and in other cases when fighting "the aggressors," i.e. Israel, necessitated it.
Following are the inquiry and the fatwa, which appeared in the English section of the ayatollah's website:[2]
Martyrdom Operations Are Not Only Permissible but Obligatory
Q: "Some people say that martyrdom operations are considered suicide and that they are haram [forbidden] because they contradict Islam. They quote Hadiths, such as this one by Imam Ja'afar [Al-Sadeq]: 'A Muslim may fight and be killed [by the enemy], but will never shed his own blood' and ayat [Koranic verses] such as: 'Do not kill yourselves, for Allah is compassionate towards you. Whoever [does,] does so in transgression and wrongfully. We shall roast [him] in a fire, and that is an easy matter for Allah.' [Koran 4:29-30]
"They say this even about the martyrdom operations against military targets, such as the ones used by Hizbullah [in] Lebanon, or the ones used by the Iranian army against Saddam's army...
"The question [is whether] martyrdom operations, in which a person detonate[s] himself [in the midst of] enemy [forces], are haram. Is it suicide? Why or why not? Please answer this question, as there is lots of discussion and confusion about this issue."
A: "It is regrettable that the propaganda of the enemies of Islam has influenced the Muslim ummah so much that Muslims, instead of planning for the uprooting of the Zionist regime and its arrogant supporters, have occupied themselves with questioning and discussing the legitimacy of the Palestinians' self defense, which is carried out under the most oppressive conditions imaginable.
"[Certainly], when protecting Islam and the Muslim ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but is even an obligation (wajib), as many of the [great Shi'ite] scholars and Maraje' [sources of emulation], including [Ayatollah] Safi Golpayegani and [Ayatollah] Fazel Lankarani, have clearly announced in their fatwas. Consider the rewayah [i.e. tradition about] the prophet of Allah [i.e. Muhammad], who said: 'Whoever is killed in defense of his belongings, he/she is [a] shahid [martyr]' (Wasa'il al-Shi'ah, v.15, p.121)."
Only Those Israelis Who Openly Denounce Their Government Are Illegitimate Targets
Q: "Now, about [the] targeting [of] civilians in the Zionist state. Some say that according to the teaching[s] of [Ahl Al-Bayt, i.e. the Prophet Muhammad's household] and the Koran, it is haram to target civilians in any case. They also say that Israelis are civilians like any other people, while others believe they are settlers and usurpers [rather than] civilians.
"Are the operations [carried out] by Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad against [Israeli] 'civilians' haram? Why or why not? How about the Israeli children killed in such attacks? If it is not haram, what is the answer to those who quote the Hadith [which forbids targeting] non-combatants."
A: "Muslims should not attack those civilians of the occupied territories who have announced their opposition to their government's vicious crimes, except [in] situations in which they are used as human shields and [when] fighting the aggressors depends on attacking those [same] civilians."
Q: "...Given the fact that [today] there are [weapons of] mass destruction and that it is not always easy to prevent civilian [casualties] in wars [as it was in the past], what would be the ruling about attacks that unintentionally kill civilians in wars (as in the case of the Iran-Iraq war)?
"Also, say we live in a Muslim country, and there is another country which attack[s] one of our cities with nuclear weapons and wipe[s] it out. Then this country announce[s that] it will destroy our cities one by one using nuclear weapons.
"Supposing [this same] country ha[s] all its nuclear weapons in one of their cities – would it be [permissible] for [a] Muslim country to attack this city and destroy the nuclear weapons there before they are used to annihilate the Muslims, even though [this] would [cause civilian casualties] in that city, [if] this [were] the only way to protect the lives of the Muslims?..."
A: "In the case of conflict between two Muslim nations, Muslims should assist the oppressed against the oppressor.
"But before the war is waged, initiating [preemptive attacks] depends on [whether] permission [is granted by the] velayat-e faqih [rule of the jurisprudent].
"With prayers for your success."
Endnotes:
[1] For more on Iranian Shi'a's discussion of martyrdom operations and their religious legitimacy, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Report No.439, "Iranian Women's Magazine Shut Down for Publishing Investigative Article on Martyrdom Movement," May 22, 2008, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3228.htm.
[2] http://mesbahyazdi.com/english/index.asp?contact-us/afq/contact4.htm#عمليات+شهادت+طلبانه. The text has been edited for clarity.
The issue of martyrdom operations and their religious legitimacy has been repeatedly discussed by Iranian ayatollahs.[1] In a recent fatwa posted on his website in response to an online inquiry, Iranian Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-e Yazdi ruled that martyrdom operations were not only legitimate but were a duty incumbent upon every Muslim.
The inquirer asked whether such operations were considered suicide and were therefore forbidden, and whether Israeli civilians, especially children, were to be regarded as illegitimate targets, like civilians elsewhere. In his reply, Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi expressed regret that the inquirer had apparently bought into the propaganda of the enemies of Islam, which presented martyrdom operations as suicide, and that the inquirer was wasting his time on this issue instead of focusing on "uprooting the Zionist regime" and its supporters. The Ayatollah ruled that when defending Islam and the Muslim ummah necessitated martyrdom, it was not considered suicide. Regarding the question about Israeli civilians, he ruled that it was forbidden to harm them only if they had openly declared their opposition to their government. He said it was even permissible to target Israeli civilians used as human shields and in other cases when fighting "the aggressors," i.e. Israel, necessitated it.
Following are the inquiry and the fatwa, which appeared in the English section of the ayatollah's website:[2]
Martyrdom Operations Are Not Only Permissible but Obligatory
Q: "Some people say that martyrdom operations are considered suicide and that they are haram [forbidden] because they contradict Islam. They quote Hadiths, such as this one by Imam Ja'afar [Al-Sadeq]: 'A Muslim may fight and be killed [by the enemy], but will never shed his own blood' and ayat [Koranic verses] such as: 'Do not kill yourselves, for Allah is compassionate towards you. Whoever [does,] does so in transgression and wrongfully. We shall roast [him] in a fire, and that is an easy matter for Allah.' [Koran 4:29-30]
"They say this even about the martyrdom operations against military targets, such as the ones used by Hizbullah [in] Lebanon, or the ones used by the Iranian army against Saddam's army...
"The question [is whether] martyrdom operations, in which a person detonate[s] himself [in the midst of] enemy [forces], are haram. Is it suicide? Why or why not? Please answer this question, as there is lots of discussion and confusion about this issue."
A: "It is regrettable that the propaganda of the enemies of Islam has influenced the Muslim ummah so much that Muslims, instead of planning for the uprooting of the Zionist regime and its arrogant supporters, have occupied themselves with questioning and discussing the legitimacy of the Palestinians' self defense, which is carried out under the most oppressive conditions imaginable.
"[Certainly], when protecting Islam and the Muslim ummah depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but is even an obligation (wajib), as many of the [great Shi'ite] scholars and Maraje' [sources of emulation], including [Ayatollah] Safi Golpayegani and [Ayatollah] Fazel Lankarani, have clearly announced in their fatwas. Consider the rewayah [i.e. tradition about] the prophet of Allah [i.e. Muhammad], who said: 'Whoever is killed in defense of his belongings, he/she is [a] shahid [martyr]' (Wasa'il al-Shi'ah, v.15, p.121)."
Only Those Israelis Who Openly Denounce Their Government Are Illegitimate Targets
Q: "Now, about [the] targeting [of] civilians in the Zionist state. Some say that according to the teaching[s] of [Ahl Al-Bayt, i.e. the Prophet Muhammad's household] and the Koran, it is haram to target civilians in any case. They also say that Israelis are civilians like any other people, while others believe they are settlers and usurpers [rather than] civilians.
"Are the operations [carried out] by Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad against [Israeli] 'civilians' haram? Why or why not? How about the Israeli children killed in such attacks? If it is not haram, what is the answer to those who quote the Hadith [which forbids targeting] non-combatants."
A: "Muslims should not attack those civilians of the occupied territories who have announced their opposition to their government's vicious crimes, except [in] situations in which they are used as human shields and [when] fighting the aggressors depends on attacking those [same] civilians."
Q: "...Given the fact that [today] there are [weapons of] mass destruction and that it is not always easy to prevent civilian [casualties] in wars [as it was in the past], what would be the ruling about attacks that unintentionally kill civilians in wars (as in the case of the Iran-Iraq war)?
"Also, say we live in a Muslim country, and there is another country which attack[s] one of our cities with nuclear weapons and wipe[s] it out. Then this country announce[s that] it will destroy our cities one by one using nuclear weapons.
"Supposing [this same] country ha[s] all its nuclear weapons in one of their cities – would it be [permissible] for [a] Muslim country to attack this city and destroy the nuclear weapons there before they are used to annihilate the Muslims, even though [this] would [cause civilian casualties] in that city, [if] this [were] the only way to protect the lives of the Muslims?..."
A: "In the case of conflict between two Muslim nations, Muslims should assist the oppressed against the oppressor.
"But before the war is waged, initiating [preemptive attacks] depends on [whether] permission [is granted by the] velayat-e faqih [rule of the jurisprudent].
"With prayers for your success."
Endnotes:
[1] For more on Iranian Shi'a's discussion of martyrdom operations and their religious legitimacy, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Report No.439, "Iranian Women's Magazine Shut Down for Publishing Investigative Article on Martyrdom Movement," May 22, 2008, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3228.htm.
[2] http://mesbahyazdi.com/english/index.asp?contact-us/afq/contact4.htm#عمليات+شهادت+طلبانه. The text has been edited for clarity.
The Nazis Find a Home in Post-Mubarak Egypt
Andrew G. Bostom
Wednesday May 25, 2001 a group of Egyptians, led by founding member Emad Abdel Sattar proclaimed the establishment of "a contemporary frame of reference" Nazi Party.
Sattar reportedly stated that the party, whose founding deputy is a former military official, would bring together prominent figures from Egyptian society, and vest all powers in a "carefully selected" president.
The Egyptian Leftist publication Al-Masry Al-Youm, at its English website, further contends the Nazi party operated clandestinely during the Mubarak regime which had prevented party leaders from carrying out their activities in the open. Two Facebook pages which appeared recently under the title of "the Egyptian Nazi Party," may confirm the party's public emergence since Mubarak was deposed. Whether or not the inchoate new Egyptian Nazi Party, operating within a "modern framework," becomes a significant political force, Nazism and its ugly resonance with the country's Muslim masses, has a prolonged, disturbing legacy in Egypt.
Aribert Ferdinand Heim, was a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a psychopathic "medical doctor" who committed the most heinous atrocities at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, including: the performance of operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, who were then left then to die on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a "souvenir."
As revealed in this February 4/5, 2009 New York Times story, Heim, like many Nazi war criminals, lived safely in Egypt, perhaps for up to three decades, following his flight from Europe in 1962.
A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim's flight to the Middle East. Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death, in Egypt.
Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, gave the following testimony regarding Heim to a United States war crimes investigating team on Jan. 18, 1946, less than a year after the German surrender.
Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates' mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.
During 1979, Heim (who died on Aug. 10, 1992, according to his son and the death certificate), wrote a letter to the German magazine Spiegel, after the publication of a report about his war-crimes case. Whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in his files (along with numerous others were "written in meticulous cursive style in German or English") is unclear. According to the Times report,
the letter...accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at Mauthausen, of being "the one who invented these atrocities." Dr. Heim went on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added that "the Jewish Khazar, Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who in 1933 declared war against Hitler's Germany." The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim, who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact, he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin.
Heim converted to Islam (in his case, at the Cairo mosque of Sunni Islam's foremost religious teaching institution, Al Azhar), becoming "known to locals" as Tarek Hussein Farid. Apparently, Heim, aka, Dr. Death, became a devout Muslim, "maintained the discipline to walk some 15 miles each day through the busy streets of Egypt's capital...to the world-renowned Al Azhar mosque", and bonded with his Muslim neighbors, who knew him as "Uncle" Tarek Hussein Farid.
He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr. Heim spoke Arabic, English and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German that the Domas had ordered for him. Mahmoud Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle Tarek, whom he described giving him books and encouraging him to study. "He was like a father. He loved me and I loved him."
He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heim's good health began to fail him and he was diagnosed with cancer.
Thus Heim epitomized scores of other Nazis, who found safe haven in Egypt, most importantly, the pious Muslim jihadist and Nazi ideologue, Johannes "Omar Amin" von Leers. Historian Bat Ye'or has described this phenomenon, as follows (here, pp.154-55):
...they lived under false names and worked in anti-Zionist propaganda centers, such as the Institute for the Study of Zionism, which was founded in Cairo, in 1955. Its director, Alfred Zingler (alias Mahmoud Saleh), worked together with Dr. Johannes von Leers (d. 1965, alias Omar Amin), who had been a specialist on the "Jewish Question" in Josef Goebbels' propaganda department. Zingler's main assistants were Dr. Werner Witschale and Hans Appler (Saleh Shafar), who had also served on the staff of Goebbels' ministry, as well as Louis Heiden. Heiden was the editor of one of the many Arabic versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of a translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic. In 1955, the Cairo Egyptian special services for anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda hired Appler.
Other Nazis settled in Egypt as well. Most of them worked with the Egyptian government as advisers on anti-Zionist propaganda or assisted with the organization of police forces or as military trainers in Palestinian terrorist camps. In 1957, according to Frankfurter Illustrierte [August 25, 1957], the number of Nazis in Egypt was two thousand. [emphasis added] Erich Altern (Ali Bella), the chief of the Jewish section of the Gestapo in occupied Galicia [Eastern Central Europe, between Poland and Ukraine] during the war, escaped to Egypt in the early 1950s, where he served as a military instructor in the Palestinian camps. [Standartenfuhrer (an SS regiment leader)] Baumann (Ali Ben Khader), who had collaborated in the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and went into hiding, became a military specialist in Egypt for the army of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The pervasive impact of this ugly mentality is perhaps best illustrated by then Colonel Anwar El-Sadat's 1953 "Letter to Hitler". When, in September, 1953 several news agency reports were circulated claiming that Hitler was still alive, the Cairo weekly Al Musawwar, posed this question to a number of Egyptian personalities, including Sadat: "If you wished to send Hitler a personal letter, what would you write to him?" In response, Sadat wrote the following, published September 18, 1953: (here, p. 155 )
My dear Hitler,
I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor. You succeeded in creating dissensions between Churchill, the old man, and his allies, the Sons of Satan. [emphasis added] Germany will win because her existence is necessary to preserve the world balance. Germany will be reborn in spite of the Western and Eastern powers. There will be no peace unless Germany once again becomes what she was. The West, as well as the East, will pay for her rehabilitation-whether they like it or not. Both sides will invest a great deal of money and effort in Germany in order to have her on their side, which is of great benefit to Germany. So much for the present and the future. As for the past, I think you made mistakes, like too many battlefronts and the shortsightedness of Ribbentrop vis-a vis the experienced British diplomacy. But your trust in your country and people will atone for those blunders. We will not be surprised if you appear again in Germany or if a new Hitler rises up in your wake. [emphasis added]
Almost 40 years ago (1973/74) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably prescient analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.
Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory - as a favored contributor in Goebbels' propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965 - represents the apotheosis of this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, described by Bat Ye'or.
Upon his arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was the jihadist and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, who welcomed von Leers, stating, "We are grateful to you for having come here to resume the struggle against the powers of darkness incarnated by international Judaism." The ex-Mufti oversaw von Leers' formal conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. And von Leers described the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin, that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson,
I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.
Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira. which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.
Von Leers' 1942 essay simultaneously extols the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim,
...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet.
Von Leers, for example, offers this reverent summary characterization of Muhammad's activities in Mecca, and later Medina, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics:
[Mecca] For years Muhammad sought in Mecca to succeed with his preaching that there was only one God, the sole, all-merciful king of Judgment Day. He opposed to the Christian Trinity the unity of God, rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin and salvation, and instead gave every believer as a guiding principle the complete fulfillment of the commands of the righteous, given by a compassionate and just God, before whom every individual person had to account for his acts.
[Medina] September 622 he left Mecca for Medina, where he took up residence. Here he encountered the Jewish problem for the first time. He believed in the victorious power of good in the world, he was firmly convinced that the religion of the one and only God, with its easy, practical, reasonable, basic laws for human life was nothing other than the original religion. He wanted to take mankind out of the current turmoil and lead it toward the original, clear vision of God. But since he had to deal with people who had been influenced by both Christianity and Judaism, he said that it was the religion in which Abraham (Ibrahim) had already believed, andwhich Christ and Moses had proclaimed, only each time it had been distorted by human beings. He said that this had been revealed anew to him by God. He wanted to make the path easy to follow for both Christians and Jews; thus at first he allowed his followers to pray facing toward Jerusalem. He repeatedly emphasized that he only wanted to purify the existing religions, to establish the restored, newly revealed faith. At the same time he was a skilled statesman. When the Arab tribes were unified, theJews became a minority in Medina. Muhammad provided them with a kind of protectorate agreement: they were to retain their administration and their forms of worship, help the faithful defend the city, not ally themselves with Muhammad's opponents, and contribute to the faithful's wars. The Jews could have been satisfied with this. But they began a general hate campaign against Islam, which proclaimed a pure conception of God.
Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Qur'an 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns that vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and, more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith that records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:
On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.
And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith that forty-six years later became the keystone of Hamas's 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:
Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: "Behind me stands a Jew, smite him."
Von Leers's 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:
They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised. . . .
Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken.
Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.
Seven decades ago, University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, and Protestant theologian Karl Barth, each elucidated the profound attraction of Islam for a hardcore Nazi ideologue such as von Leers-which also underpins the subsequent Islamic-Nazi symbiosis so evident in post World War II Egypt.
Gurian, a refugee, who witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous to the 7th century precedent of Muhammad, had been the simplifier of German nationalism.
A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by many differing German groups - even by some people outside Germany - as the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with some distortions and exaggerations - such, as long as he had success, was Adolf Hitler.
Based upon the same clear understandings, and devoid of our era's dulling, politically correct constraints, Karl Barth [from, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day] had offered this warning, published in 1939:
Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill - with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah's Prophet
Investigative journalist John Roy Carlson's 1948-1950 interviews of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson described as a "pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab League Office." Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a Muslim's spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,
You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State Socialism...The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.
And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna himself, who "preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other," Carlson observed:
It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]
However, as Brynjar Lia's 1998 analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood's formative years (1928-1942) points out,
...al-Banna was anxious to distance himself from the aggressive chauvinism and racism that flourished in several countries in the 1930s, and rejected racial theories as utterly incompatible with Islam. In fact, the Muslim Brothers used to make fun of the Young Egypt Party (Misr al-Fatah) which they saw as trying to imitate the German Nazis.
Lia acknowledges how Al-Banna's and the Muslim Brotherhood's vision remained steadfastly Islamic-hence its deep resonance with the timeless aspiration of the Muslim masses to establish a transnational Muslim Caliphate via jihad.
Quoting the Qur'anic verse [2:193] "And fight them till sedition is no more, and the faith is God's," the Muslim Brothers urged their fellow Muslims to restore the bygone greatness of Islam, and to re-establish the Islamic empire...[T]het even called for the restoration of "former Islamic colonies" in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands...When they did express admiration of certain aspects of Nazism or Fascism, it was usually in the context of demonstrating that the Europeans had implemented some of "the principles of Islam," such as modest dress code, encouragement of early marriage, a strong patriotism, and a military jihad spirit.
Remarkably concordant views on jihad were expressed by von Leers during the same era, prior to his formal conversion to Islam. I was able to obtain (from the Russian State Military Archive of captured Nazi documents), and have translated from the original German, an unpublished ~ 6000 word essay Leers' wrote during World War II (apparently in 1942), entitled, "Philosophies of Peace and War in Islam."
Disingenuously ignoring the explicit imperial designs of jihad-to subjugate all of mankind under Islamic Law, as detailed with lucidity in the Koran, sunna, and a millennial continuum of Muslim jurisprudence-von Leers provides this hagiographic overview of Islam's bellicose institution for global conquest, linked to his condemnation of Western European Christendom:
For quite a long time, however, the great colonial powers have been using treaties between themselves and smaller nations merely as a mutual means of help, that is, until one nation has become stronger than the other in its leadership and its means of war. The Qur'an intends and demands that treaties be established upon the bases of justice and equal rights of access, without ulterior motives or underhanded intentions - otherwise, there will never be peace upon the earth.
Leers amplifies this traditional Muslim apologetic in his assessment of the Koranic injunction-verse 9:29-for timeless jihad against Judeo-Christian societies.
"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled" (9:29, Arberry translation). One must therefore fight against those who possess the Book and who threaten the land and life of the Muslims, who oppress the people or want to convert the Muslims to their faith. This enemy, when defeated, must pay tribute....This payment, therefore, is not a "payment of reparations" in the European sense, by which the enemy is completely ruined.
Predictably, Leers also highlights this traditional Koranic statement of Jewish perfidy in relation to wartime treaties. But again, Leers "exegesis" on Koran 8:55 is entirely consistent with the gloss on this verse in the seminal, mainstream Koranic commentary Tafsir al-Jalalayn which maintains that 8:55 refers specifically to the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza.
The Qur'an considered the Jews, who never remained true to the treaties they made with the Prophet, to be lower than cattle. It says concerning them, " Surely the worst of beasts in God's sight are the unbelievers, who will not believe, those of them with whom thou hast made compact, then they break their compact every time, not being godfearing" (8:55-56, Arberry translation)
Until his death in 1965, von Leers remained unrepentant about the annihilationist policies towards the Jews he helped advance serving Hitler's Reich. Indeed he was convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi war against the Jews, and as a pious Muslim convert, von Leers viewed the Middle East as the succeeding battleground to seal the fate of world Jewry. His public evolution over the course of three decades illustrates starkly the shared centrality to these totalitarianisms - both modern and ancient - of the Jews as "first and last enemy" motif.
Over fifty years later ignorance, denial, and delusion have engendered the sorry state of public understanding of this most ominous conversion of hatreds, by all its potential non-Muslim victims, not only Jews. This lack of understanding is little advanced by the spate of contemporary analyses which seek "Nazi roots" of the cataclysmic September 11, 2001 acts of jihad terrorism, and see Nazism as having "introduced" antisemitism to an otherwise "tolerant", even philosemitic Islamic world beginning in the 1930s. Awkwardly forced, and ahistorical, these analyses realign the Nazi cart in front of the Islamic steed which has driven both global jihadism and Islamic antisemitism, since the 7th century advent of the Muslim creed, particularly during the last decade of Muhammad's life.
Finally, an October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writing and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphal Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad (#382):
He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail
The so-called "Arab Spring" has unleashed jihadist forces-most notably within Egypt itself-pious Muslim convert "Omar Amin" von Leers long ago foresaw, and cherished. Those who wish to preserve our uniquely Western heritage of freedom must not ignore, or worse still, delusively re-interpret this existential threat.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/the_nazis_find_a_home_in_postm.html at May 30, 2011 - 10:45:44 AM CDT
Wednesday May 25, 2001 a group of Egyptians, led by founding member Emad Abdel Sattar proclaimed the establishment of "a contemporary frame of reference" Nazi Party.
Sattar reportedly stated that the party, whose founding deputy is a former military official, would bring together prominent figures from Egyptian society, and vest all powers in a "carefully selected" president.
The Egyptian Leftist publication Al-Masry Al-Youm, at its English website, further contends the Nazi party operated clandestinely during the Mubarak regime which had prevented party leaders from carrying out their activities in the open. Two Facebook pages which appeared recently under the title of "the Egyptian Nazi Party," may confirm the party's public emergence since Mubarak was deposed. Whether or not the inchoate new Egyptian Nazi Party, operating within a "modern framework," becomes a significant political force, Nazism and its ugly resonance with the country's Muslim masses, has a prolonged, disturbing legacy in Egypt.
Aribert Ferdinand Heim, was a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a psychopathic "medical doctor" who committed the most heinous atrocities at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, including: the performance of operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, who were then left then to die on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a "souvenir."
As revealed in this February 4/5, 2009 New York Times story, Heim, like many Nazi war criminals, lived safely in Egypt, perhaps for up to three decades, following his flight from Europe in 1962.
A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim's flight to the Middle East. Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death, in Egypt.
Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, gave the following testimony regarding Heim to a United States war crimes investigating team on Jan. 18, 1946, less than a year after the German surrender.
Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates' mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.
During 1979, Heim (who died on Aug. 10, 1992, according to his son and the death certificate), wrote a letter to the German magazine Spiegel, after the publication of a report about his war-crimes case. Whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in his files (along with numerous others were "written in meticulous cursive style in German or English") is unclear. According to the Times report,
the letter...accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at Mauthausen, of being "the one who invented these atrocities." Dr. Heim went on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added that "the Jewish Khazar, Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who in 1933 declared war against Hitler's Germany." The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim, who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact, he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin.
Heim converted to Islam (in his case, at the Cairo mosque of Sunni Islam's foremost religious teaching institution, Al Azhar), becoming "known to locals" as Tarek Hussein Farid. Apparently, Heim, aka, Dr. Death, became a devout Muslim, "maintained the discipline to walk some 15 miles each day through the busy streets of Egypt's capital...to the world-renowned Al Azhar mosque", and bonded with his Muslim neighbors, who knew him as "Uncle" Tarek Hussein Farid.
He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr. Heim spoke Arabic, English and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German that the Domas had ordered for him. Mahmoud Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle Tarek, whom he described giving him books and encouraging him to study. "He was like a father. He loved me and I loved him."
He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heim's good health began to fail him and he was diagnosed with cancer.
Thus Heim epitomized scores of other Nazis, who found safe haven in Egypt, most importantly, the pious Muslim jihadist and Nazi ideologue, Johannes "Omar Amin" von Leers. Historian Bat Ye'or has described this phenomenon, as follows (here, pp.154-55):
...they lived under false names and worked in anti-Zionist propaganda centers, such as the Institute for the Study of Zionism, which was founded in Cairo, in 1955. Its director, Alfred Zingler (alias Mahmoud Saleh), worked together with Dr. Johannes von Leers (d. 1965, alias Omar Amin), who had been a specialist on the "Jewish Question" in Josef Goebbels' propaganda department. Zingler's main assistants were Dr. Werner Witschale and Hans Appler (Saleh Shafar), who had also served on the staff of Goebbels' ministry, as well as Louis Heiden. Heiden was the editor of one of the many Arabic versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of a translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic. In 1955, the Cairo Egyptian special services for anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda hired Appler.
Other Nazis settled in Egypt as well. Most of them worked with the Egyptian government as advisers on anti-Zionist propaganda or assisted with the organization of police forces or as military trainers in Palestinian terrorist camps. In 1957, according to Frankfurter Illustrierte [August 25, 1957], the number of Nazis in Egypt was two thousand. [emphasis added] Erich Altern (Ali Bella), the chief of the Jewish section of the Gestapo in occupied Galicia [Eastern Central Europe, between Poland and Ukraine] during the war, escaped to Egypt in the early 1950s, where he served as a military instructor in the Palestinian camps. [Standartenfuhrer (an SS regiment leader)] Baumann (Ali Ben Khader), who had collaborated in the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and went into hiding, became a military specialist in Egypt for the army of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The pervasive impact of this ugly mentality is perhaps best illustrated by then Colonel Anwar El-Sadat's 1953 "Letter to Hitler". When, in September, 1953 several news agency reports were circulated claiming that Hitler was still alive, the Cairo weekly Al Musawwar, posed this question to a number of Egyptian personalities, including Sadat: "If you wished to send Hitler a personal letter, what would you write to him?" In response, Sadat wrote the following, published September 18, 1953: (here, p. 155 )
My dear Hitler,
I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor. You succeeded in creating dissensions between Churchill, the old man, and his allies, the Sons of Satan. [emphasis added] Germany will win because her existence is necessary to preserve the world balance. Germany will be reborn in spite of the Western and Eastern powers. There will be no peace unless Germany once again becomes what she was. The West, as well as the East, will pay for her rehabilitation-whether they like it or not. Both sides will invest a great deal of money and effort in Germany in order to have her on their side, which is of great benefit to Germany. So much for the present and the future. As for the past, I think you made mistakes, like too many battlefronts and the shortsightedness of Ribbentrop vis-a vis the experienced British diplomacy. But your trust in your country and people will atone for those blunders. We will not be surprised if you appear again in Germany or if a new Hitler rises up in your wake. [emphasis added]
Almost 40 years ago (1973/74) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably prescient analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.
Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory - as a favored contributor in Goebbels' propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965 - represents the apotheosis of this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, described by Bat Ye'or.
Upon his arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was the jihadist and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, who welcomed von Leers, stating, "We are grateful to you for having come here to resume the struggle against the powers of darkness incarnated by international Judaism." The ex-Mufti oversaw von Leers' formal conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. And von Leers described the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin, that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson,
I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.
Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira. which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.
Von Leers' 1942 essay simultaneously extols the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim,
...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet.
Von Leers, for example, offers this reverent summary characterization of Muhammad's activities in Mecca, and later Medina, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics:
[Mecca] For years Muhammad sought in Mecca to succeed with his preaching that there was only one God, the sole, all-merciful king of Judgment Day. He opposed to the Christian Trinity the unity of God, rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin and salvation, and instead gave every believer as a guiding principle the complete fulfillment of the commands of the righteous, given by a compassionate and just God, before whom every individual person had to account for his acts.
[Medina] September 622 he left Mecca for Medina, where he took up residence. Here he encountered the Jewish problem for the first time. He believed in the victorious power of good in the world, he was firmly convinced that the religion of the one and only God, with its easy, practical, reasonable, basic laws for human life was nothing other than the original religion. He wanted to take mankind out of the current turmoil and lead it toward the original, clear vision of God. But since he had to deal with people who had been influenced by both Christianity and Judaism, he said that it was the religion in which Abraham (Ibrahim) had already believed, andwhich Christ and Moses had proclaimed, only each time it had been distorted by human beings. He said that this had been revealed anew to him by God. He wanted to make the path easy to follow for both Christians and Jews; thus at first he allowed his followers to pray facing toward Jerusalem. He repeatedly emphasized that he only wanted to purify the existing religions, to establish the restored, newly revealed faith. At the same time he was a skilled statesman. When the Arab tribes were unified, theJews became a minority in Medina. Muhammad provided them with a kind of protectorate agreement: they were to retain their administration and their forms of worship, help the faithful defend the city, not ally themselves with Muhammad's opponents, and contribute to the faithful's wars. The Jews could have been satisfied with this. But they began a general hate campaign against Islam, which proclaimed a pure conception of God.
Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Qur'an 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns that vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and, more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith that records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:
On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.
And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith that forty-six years later became the keystone of Hamas's 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:
Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: "Behind me stands a Jew, smite him."
Von Leers's 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:
They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised. . . .
Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken.
Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.
Seven decades ago, University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, and Protestant theologian Karl Barth, each elucidated the profound attraction of Islam for a hardcore Nazi ideologue such as von Leers-which also underpins the subsequent Islamic-Nazi symbiosis so evident in post World War II Egypt.
Gurian, a refugee, who witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous to the 7th century precedent of Muhammad, had been the simplifier of German nationalism.
A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by many differing German groups - even by some people outside Germany - as the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with some distortions and exaggerations - such, as long as he had success, was Adolf Hitler.
Based upon the same clear understandings, and devoid of our era's dulling, politically correct constraints, Karl Barth [from, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day] had offered this warning, published in 1939:
Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill - with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah's Prophet
Investigative journalist John Roy Carlson's 1948-1950 interviews of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson described as a "pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab League Office." Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a Muslim's spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,
You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State Socialism...The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.
And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna himself, who "preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other," Carlson observed:
It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]
However, as Brynjar Lia's 1998 analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood's formative years (1928-1942) points out,
...al-Banna was anxious to distance himself from the aggressive chauvinism and racism that flourished in several countries in the 1930s, and rejected racial theories as utterly incompatible with Islam. In fact, the Muslim Brothers used to make fun of the Young Egypt Party (Misr al-Fatah) which they saw as trying to imitate the German Nazis.
Lia acknowledges how Al-Banna's and the Muslim Brotherhood's vision remained steadfastly Islamic-hence its deep resonance with the timeless aspiration of the Muslim masses to establish a transnational Muslim Caliphate via jihad.
Quoting the Qur'anic verse [2:193] "And fight them till sedition is no more, and the faith is God's," the Muslim Brothers urged their fellow Muslims to restore the bygone greatness of Islam, and to re-establish the Islamic empire...[T]het even called for the restoration of "former Islamic colonies" in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands...When they did express admiration of certain aspects of Nazism or Fascism, it was usually in the context of demonstrating that the Europeans had implemented some of "the principles of Islam," such as modest dress code, encouragement of early marriage, a strong patriotism, and a military jihad spirit.
Remarkably concordant views on jihad were expressed by von Leers during the same era, prior to his formal conversion to Islam. I was able to obtain (from the Russian State Military Archive of captured Nazi documents), and have translated from the original German, an unpublished ~ 6000 word essay Leers' wrote during World War II (apparently in 1942), entitled, "Philosophies of Peace and War in Islam."
Disingenuously ignoring the explicit imperial designs of jihad-to subjugate all of mankind under Islamic Law, as detailed with lucidity in the Koran, sunna, and a millennial continuum of Muslim jurisprudence-von Leers provides this hagiographic overview of Islam's bellicose institution for global conquest, linked to his condemnation of Western European Christendom:
For quite a long time, however, the great colonial powers have been using treaties between themselves and smaller nations merely as a mutual means of help, that is, until one nation has become stronger than the other in its leadership and its means of war. The Qur'an intends and demands that treaties be established upon the bases of justice and equal rights of access, without ulterior motives or underhanded intentions - otherwise, there will never be peace upon the earth.
Leers amplifies this traditional Muslim apologetic in his assessment of the Koranic injunction-verse 9:29-for timeless jihad against Judeo-Christian societies.
"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled" (9:29, Arberry translation). One must therefore fight against those who possess the Book and who threaten the land and life of the Muslims, who oppress the people or want to convert the Muslims to their faith. This enemy, when defeated, must pay tribute....This payment, therefore, is not a "payment of reparations" in the European sense, by which the enemy is completely ruined.
Predictably, Leers also highlights this traditional Koranic statement of Jewish perfidy in relation to wartime treaties. But again, Leers "exegesis" on Koran 8:55 is entirely consistent with the gloss on this verse in the seminal, mainstream Koranic commentary Tafsir al-Jalalayn which maintains that 8:55 refers specifically to the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza.
The Qur'an considered the Jews, who never remained true to the treaties they made with the Prophet, to be lower than cattle. It says concerning them, " Surely the worst of beasts in God's sight are the unbelievers, who will not believe, those of them with whom thou hast made compact, then they break their compact every time, not being godfearing" (8:55-56, Arberry translation)
Until his death in 1965, von Leers remained unrepentant about the annihilationist policies towards the Jews he helped advance serving Hitler's Reich. Indeed he was convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi war against the Jews, and as a pious Muslim convert, von Leers viewed the Middle East as the succeeding battleground to seal the fate of world Jewry. His public evolution over the course of three decades illustrates starkly the shared centrality to these totalitarianisms - both modern and ancient - of the Jews as "first and last enemy" motif.
Over fifty years later ignorance, denial, and delusion have engendered the sorry state of public understanding of this most ominous conversion of hatreds, by all its potential non-Muslim victims, not only Jews. This lack of understanding is little advanced by the spate of contemporary analyses which seek "Nazi roots" of the cataclysmic September 11, 2001 acts of jihad terrorism, and see Nazism as having "introduced" antisemitism to an otherwise "tolerant", even philosemitic Islamic world beginning in the 1930s. Awkwardly forced, and ahistorical, these analyses realign the Nazi cart in front of the Islamic steed which has driven both global jihadism and Islamic antisemitism, since the 7th century advent of the Muslim creed, particularly during the last decade of Muhammad's life.
Finally, an October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writing and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphal Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad (#382):
He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail
The so-called "Arab Spring" has unleashed jihadist forces-most notably within Egypt itself-pious Muslim convert "Omar Amin" von Leers long ago foresaw, and cherished. Those who wish to preserve our uniquely Western heritage of freedom must not ignore, or worse still, delusively re-interpret this existential threat.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/the_nazis_find_a_home_in_postm.html at May 30, 2011 - 10:45:44 AM CDT
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