Why the “Arab Peace Initiative” is Both a Good Thing and a Scam

Barry Rubin On April 30, 2013 
 

There’s something very strange about this alleged new Arab League peace initiative and I find no serious addressing of these issues in the media coverage. A step toward efforts by Arab states to move toward proposing a possible peace with Israel is a good thing. Especially touted is an idea, mentioned by Qatar’s representative at the Washington meeting, to accept an agreement that small border modifications could be made to the pre-1967 lines.

Yet there are a lot of unaddressed points that make me strongly suspect that this is a public relations’ stunt to convince America and Western opinion that the Arab states want peace with Israel when not all of them do so.

And that’s one of the key questions. At the meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry there were representatives of the Arab League, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority.

Muted Response to Hamas Jihad Program for School Kids

IPT News  
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4001/muted-response-to-hamas-jihad-program-for-school

An article in London's Telegraph is refocusing attention on a school program run by Hamas in Gaza that trains children how to use weapons and explosives.
The "Futuwwa" program started last fall as an elective class and attracted thousands of teenaged boys, who are trained in everything from first aid to handling a Kalashnikov rifle to how to throw grenades. It is the brainchild of Hamas education chief Mohamed Siyam, who denied teenagers were receiving military training. Rather, he said, "we are providing information."
A video posted on Youtube indicates Siyam is being disingenuous. In it, Palestinian students attack an Israeli military post with guns and later seeming to blast it with a shoulder-fired rocket.

Cleaning Islam of its Murderers

Quin Hillyer

It must be said: The time is now for all Muslim clerics of good will, especially within the United States, to band together for a massive public campaign aimed not at convincing non-Muslims of the clerics' own good intentions, but at telling all their fellow Muslims that violent jihad, terrorism, and forced "conversion" (or punishment) of non-Muslims is always and everywhere unacceptable and evil.

The Big Fat Red Line

Sultan Knish

Someone chalked a long red line along the street outside my building. The line is sloppy, it turns, wavers and meanders. Car tires have already rubbed it pink in places and dogs have done to it what large four-legged animals do naturally when taken out of the confines of narrow apartments. The line turns a corner and dives inside a pothole near an exposed sewer grate. And then it is gone.

Obama's red line is more famous than my red line. It appears in the Washington Post and the New York Times. There are reams of speculation over what the nature of the red line is, whether the red line has been crossed, what Obama should do about the crossing of the red line and how many devils can dance on the edge of a red line while juggling Sarin canisters.

The Useful Fools

Nurit Greenger

There are still some people, including the current prime minster of Israel Netanyahu, who still talk – and dream - about a "two state solution," meaning, allowing an Arab state to be established on the land of Israel, the land that was promised by God to His Jewish nation.

It just goes to show that these people do not understand that Mahmoud Abbas, who replaced Arafat and is the designated negotiator with Israel to arrive at peace with the Arabs is a stealth jihadist. He wants exactly what Hamas wants – to destroy Israel- but is using deception and stealth methods to achieve it, methods that, at time, are even more dangerous than conventional warfare. One of the methods is to use the useful fools like Professor Alan Dershowtiz and Israel's president Shimon Peres.

New York Times Whitewashes Islamist Zaytuna College

Ryan Mauro

Zaytuna College was founded by three Islamists with a history of anti-American rhetoric, but you wouldn’t know that if you read the New York Times puff piece about the California school. Readers are left to believe this is a moderate Muslim institution that will “foster an American Islam” to lead the Muslim world into the 21^st century.

Zaytuna College is based in Berkeley and is an unaccredited school that operates on a $4-5 million budget. According to the Times, it has only 30 students and less than 10 professors. The author states that he hears it likened to “a Muslim version of the great Catholic colleges, like Georgetown or Notre Dame.”
Keep that comparison in mind as we go through the records of its three founders: Hamza Yusuf, Zaid Shakir and Hatem Bazian.
Hamza Yusuf is the President of Zaytuna College. He was number 42 on last year’s list of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims. He has mourned “what happened in the 19^th century with the abdication of Islamic Law and the usurpation of its place by Western legal systems.” In the same interview, he accused the U.S. of trying to “unite the world” and criticized the “dominant world order, which is a capitalistic, Western world order.” In 1996, he proudly displayed his anti-Americanism:

Signposts on the Road to Decline

Bruce Thornton On April 29, 2013

In late 1930 the Tory leadership in Britain’s governing coalition decided to back independence for India despite the increasing, vicious sectarian violence that graphically showed India was not yet ready for the British to leave. Later, historian A.L. Rowse would link partisan self-interest to the failure of nerve and collapse of morale that lay behind the policies of the ruling caste. It was in 1931, Rowse wrote, that “the caste lost confidence in itself and, undermined by fear, it lost not only confidence but conscience. Confused in mind about everything, except the main chance––its own preservation, it survived from year to year, from month to month, from day to day, by blurring the clarity of all issues, even the most dangerous––that of the nation’s safety; it maintained its enormous majority by electoral trickery, it spoke and perhaps thought in the language of humbug, it hoped to stave off conflict . . . by offering appeasement.”
These comments can serve as a commentary on the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy. There has seldom been a coherent, sound principle behind that policy other than partisan electoral “preservation” no matter the danger to the nation’s security and interests. Consider this by no means exhaustive catalogue:

Boston Bomber Judge’s Middle Eastern Connections

creeping
Daniel Greenfield via Boston Bomber Magistrate’s Middle Eastern Connections | FrontPage Magazine.

…

After roughly 16 hours of questioning, investigators were surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the hospital room and read Tsarnaev his rights, the four officials and one law enforcement official said. Investigators had planned to keep questioning him.

And

District Court Judge Marianne Bowler arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights.
But Fox News’ sources say there was confusion about Bowler’s timing, with some voicing concerns that investigators were not given enough time to question Dzhokhar under the “public safety exception” invoked by the Justice Department.
Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators’ questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.

What is a Constitution Anyway?

Samuel Tadros

Available for download as a PDF

On the 15^th and 22^nd of December 2012 Egyptians headed again to the polls for the eighth time[1] since the January 25, 2011 revolution which toppled President Mubarak and his regime. The frequency of the voting was not, however, an indication of a vibrant democracy taking shape; rather, it has been the result of the haphazard transition that post-revolutionary Egypt has undergone. Nearly two years after the revolution and after seven elections, Egypt has still not formed the institutions required to sustain a democracy. Today, the country only has an elected president and an upper chamber of parliament—a body which, even though it exists, suffers from the same specter of unconstitutionality under electoral law that haunted its lower counterpart’s existence and led ultimately to its dissolution. However, what was at stake in the elections was far more important than merely an elected body. Moreover, the election wasn’t purely about approving or rejecting a proposed constitution. Instead, the battle over Egypt’s proposed constitution is a function of the larger battle unfolding over ownership of the 2011 revolution and the very identity of the country.

Syrian Brotherhood Leaders to Officially...

 Asharq Al-Awsat

Move comes after membership in the group was banned, on penalty of death, under Ba'athist regimes.

Graffiti of a Syrian opposition flag. (REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed)

Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat—After being banned in Syria for more than 30 years, Muslim Brotherhood leaders have decided to officially return to the embattled country and open offices in areas under the control of the Free Syrian Army. In press statements, Brotherhood controller-general Riyad Al-Shaqfah asserted that he plans to return to his country and resume his political activities. He said that his group recently decided to revive its organizational bodies inside Syria and asked its followers to begin opening offices for the Brotherhood in the areas under the control of the rebels.

Israeli official: We have proof Syria used chemical weapons

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Senior official says intelligence agencies have evidence Assad forces used chemical weapons against rebels; adds Israel should be concerned with weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah, other terrorist groups in Lebanon.

Residents move a Syrian Army soldier, wounded in apparent chemical weapon attack, March 19, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/George Ourfalian

Israel has clear evidence of Syrian President Bashar Assad's army using chemical weapons against rebels, a senior diplomatic source said Monday.

The official said the information is known to all intelligence agency, and that there is no doubt the Assad regime had used weapons of mass destruction against opposition forces fighting to topple him.

"A man cannot be secular and Muslim at a time...We are not in favor of democracy, democracy is for Jews and Christians"

Jihad Watch

The Taliban think that democracy and Islam are incompatible, and are murdering candidates to drive home their point. Democracy, they say, is just for Jews and Christians. Apparently the Taliban are all greasy Islamophobes.
"Eight people killed as Pakistani Taliban target more candidates," from CNN, April 28 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

(CNN) -- At least eight people were killed Sunday as the Pakistani Taliban continued to attack candidates in that country's upcoming elections, authorities said. The Pakistani Taliban, in a statement obtained by CNN, took responsibility for the bombings at the offices of candidates in Peshawar and the Orakzai Agency.
The Taliban said it targeted secular candidates, but many parties have been hit by the increasing violence.
"A man cannot be secular and Muslim at a time. These are two different doctrines in nature," the statement said.

Immigration Bill Doesn't Secure the Border

James Carafano

April 29, 2013

Must Washington fix our broken southern border? You bet.
Will the comprehensive immigration reform bill help? You bet it won’t.
The number one flaw of the bill is it starts by giving amnesty to the unlawfully present population in the United States. As soon as the bill passes, those in the country contrary to U.S. immigration law are granted status to stay.
Amnesty immediately creates an incentive for illegal border crossings and overstays. Thus, the bill’s strategy would drive up the cost of securing the border. To make matters worse, the draft law states that anyone who was present in the U.S. before 2012 qualifies—creating massive opportunity for fraud, since there is no proof required that applicants have been here for several years.
While supporters of the bill trumpet its “border security” features, in reality, the law delivers nothing new—other than the promise of spending a lot more money and running up our debt.

Boston Bomber Suspects' Mom Was Also in Terror Database

Madeleine Morgenstern

The mother of the two Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, speaks at a news conference in Makhachkala, the southern Russian province of Dagestan, Thursday, April 25, 2013. (AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies added the mother of the Boston bombing suspects to a government terrorism database 18 months before the bombings, two officials told The Associated Press. She called it “lies and hypocrisy” and said she has never been linked to crimes or terrorism.

The CIA asked for the Boston terror suspect and his mother to be added to a terrorist database in the fall of 2011, after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that both had become religious militants, according to officials briefed on the investigation. About six months earlier, the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, also at Russia’s request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism.

The Truths About Terrorism Whose Names They Dare Not Speak‏

Barry Rubin

The current conventional wisdom about terrorism, Islamism, and the Middle East is being bent, but not broken, by two events. On one hand, there is the Boston bombing; on the other hand, developments in Syria and to a lesser extent Egypt. What’s happening?

In the Middle East, the misbehavior of Islamist movements is becoming more apparent. In Egypt, there is the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, which may actually intend to create a non-democratic Sharia state! Parallel behavior in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey is under-reported but occasionally surfaces.

The most important single story at the moment, though, is Syria. Basically, the Obama Administration has woken up and recognized what was easily apparent two years ago: They are helping to put radical, anti-American Islamists into power! They are helping to provide them with advanced weapons which might be used for activities other than what is intended!

When the government wakes up it nudges the media to get up also. What is quite startling is the extent to which the mass media is responsive to government policy, at least this government’s policy. I want to explain this carefully in order to be fair.

The Snake in the Bloody Garden

Sultan Knish
The left has a clearly defined set of responses to a terrorist attack. After all the hopes for a properly right wing terrorist have come to naught, it begins the long slow process of rolling back the laws and emotional attitudes stemming from the attack.

For it, terrorism, like anything else, either fits into its narrative or conflict with it. The narrative
defines the world, past, present and future, in terms of the political agenda of the left. An event that clashes with the agenda must have its meaning changed so that the power of the narrative is restored.

Most violent attacks, from a street mugging to September 11, cause people to seek out security by combating the attackers. The left's task is to shift the narrative so that people see it in an entirely different way. The perpetrators become the victims by the trick of transforming the real victims into the real perpetrators. The lesson shifts from going on the offense to learning not to give offense.

U.S. delivers strong warning to Israel

Amid fears Iran about to cross so-called red line

Aaron Klein

TEL AVIV – According to informed Middle Eastern security officials, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a strongly worded message to Israel – do not attack Iran.
The officials told WND that Hagel informed the Israeli government the Obama administration will not accept any unilateral Israeli attack against Iran and that Israel must not strike Tehran without coordination with the U.S.
Hagel further told Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot decide alone whether Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold, or the so-called Red Line previously outlined by the Israeli leader.
In a speech at the United Nations in September, Netanyahu drew a red line on a drawing of a bomb, depicting the point where he said Iran will have enough medium-enriched uranium to move rapidly toward building a nuclear bomb.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu draws a red line on the image of a bomb at the U.N. Sept. 27, 2012.

Death to Churches Under Islam

A Study of the Coptic Church

by Raymond Ibrahim
The Inquisitr

http://www.meforum.org/3492/churches-under-islam

Christians throughout the Islamic world are under attack. Unlike Muslim attacks on Christians, which are regularly confused with a myriad of social factors, the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in the Muslim world are perhaps the most visible expression of Christian persecution under Islam. In churches, Christians throughout the Islamic world are simply being Christians—peacefully and apolitically worshipping their God. And yet modern day Muslim governments try to prevent them, Muslim mobs attack them, and Muslim jihadis massacre them.

Death to Churches Under Islam

A Study of the Coptic Church

by Raymond Ibrahim
The Inquisitr

http://www.meforum.org/3492/churches-under-islam

Christians throughout the Islamic world are under attack. Unlike Muslim attacks on Christians, which are regularly confused with a myriad of social factors, the ongoing attacks on Christian churches in the Muslim world are perhaps the most visible expression of Christian persecution under Islam. In churches, Christians throughout the Islamic world are simply being Christians—peacefully and apolitically worshipping their God. And yet modern day Muslim governments try to prevent them, Muslim mobs attack them, and Muslim jihadis massacre them.
To understand the nature of this perennial hostility, one must first examine Muslim doctrines concerning Christian churches; then look at how these teachings have manifested themselves in reality over the course of centuries; and finally look at how modern day attacks on Christian churches mirror the attacks of history, often in identical patterns. The continuity is undeniable.

Syria: Israel, at least, is militarily ready

 Theoptimisticconservative's Blog

Several websites have picked up on a UPI report that the Israeli Air Force attacked a chemical weapons site in the Damascus area on Saturday.  The report is unconfirmed by any official source, but it is credible.  There are caveats, however.
The site in question, if it was struck, was probably the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), long known to be a key facility in Assad’s chemical and biological weapons program.  (See here as well.)
“Mossomo” at Flopping Aces put together an excellent timeline back in February on the events leading up to a previous unconfirmed report that the IAF had struck the SSRC.  This strike was reportedly conducted on 30 January 2013. Hours later, Israel targeted a truck convoy west of Damascus which was carrying sophisticated new surface-to-air missiles for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
I doubt the convoy’s cargo itself was related to the chemical weapons site; if Israel went after both targets in January, it was because they were close, geographically, and Israeli military authorities wanted to maximize the gain from a rare and dangerous penetration of Syrian air space.

'Obama understands that Abbas doesn't want peace deal'

Senior Israeli diplomatic official: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu willing to make significant progress toward a peace deal, but "everybody knows" that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't allow this • Palestinians continue to insist on preconditions for renewal of peace talks.

Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet in Washington in September 2010 | Photo credit: AFP

"U.S. President Barack Obama understands today that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is not interested in reaching an agreement with Israel," a senior Israeli diplomatic source has said.

According to the official, a regular participant in policy-making, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to make significant progress toward a peace deal, but "everybody knows" that Abbas will not allow this.

Syrian Army Ordered Use of Chemical Weapons: Defected General

Arutz Sheva staff



The Syrian government ordered the use chemical weapons against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) during select battles with Syrian regime forces, a defected general told Al Arabiya late Saturday.



Zahir al-Sakit, a former army general from the chemical weapons branch, told Al Arabiya that he was instructed to use chemical weapons during a regime battle with the FSA in the southwestern area of Hauran.



Instead, Sakit disobeyed the orders and substituted the chemicals with disinfectant water he called “Javel water.”



“I was given orders to execute the use of poisonous chemicals in caves and tunnels that are used by the Free Syrian Army, but I mixed all chemicals with water and used Javel water instead,” Sakit said.

The Fire Burns

Sultan Knish

The circle of men whirls around the fire, hand in hand, hand catching hand, drawing in newcomers into the ring that races around and around in the growing darkness. A melody thumps through the speakers teetering unevenly with the bass, the sound is both old and new, a mix of the past and the present, like the participants in the dance, the traditional garments mixing with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur.

It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday to most, even to those who come to the fires. The remnants of the Jewish Revolt against the might of the Roman Empire are remembered as days of deprivation in memory of the thousands of students dying in the war, until the thirty-third day of the Biblical Omer, part of the way between Passover and Shavuot, the day when Jerusalem was liberated.

Deprived of music for weeks, it rolls back in waves through speakers, from horns blown by children and a makeshift drum echoing an ancient celebration when men danced around fires and shot arrows into the air. The fires and bows have remained a part of Lag BaOmer, even when hardly anyone remembers the true reason for them.

A snapshot of Israel’s economy

Stanley Fisher, Bank of Israel Governor, Assesses Israel’s Economy

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #178, April 26, 2013, bit.ly/11KNmFG

The following summary of the April 23, 2013 address by Stanley Fisher, Bank of Israel Governor, highlights economic indicators which reflect the relative strength of Israel’s economy during the global economic meltdown.  These indicators have enhanced global confidence in the long-term viability of Israel’s economy. Far from being isolated, Israel has become an attractive partner for global trade, an exciting site for astute investors and giant high tech companies.  Israel’s economic performance is praised by the three leading global rating companies and the International Monetary Fund.

Is Obama trying to spin the Boston bombing to whitewash the Islamist threat?

 http://netwmd.com/blog/2013/04/25/11801
President Obama and his lackeys in government still insist that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of “‘workplace violence,’ despite mountains of evidence [that] clearly proves the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror.” Is the Obama administration now taking the same course with the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? How did our national security apparatus allow these brothers to slip under the radar? Two men murdered three people and injured over 175 at an international event in a great American city, and “avoid[ed] capture for three days.” The daily activities of 1 million people were paralyzed in the midst of hundreds of law enforcement personnel.
Ample evidence already exists supporting the theory that the Tsarnaev brothers’ atrocity was motivated by Islamist ideology. Even CNN admitted:

Islamic Terrorist Network in America‏

The Patriot Post

CAIR Misinformation Campaign - Honors Christian Allies

CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups using deception and misinformation to create interfaith alliances. 

 

By Ryan Mauro

Advertisement from CAIR's MyJihad Campaign - Deception and Misinformation

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is making a point on showing how much it treasures its interfaith defenders. Recent CAIR fundraisers and events have highlighted their partnership, flattering them enough to overlooking its well-documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. The federal government specifically identified CAIR as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body set up to advance the Hamas agenda. In 2009, a federal judge ruled in favor of preserving the label, citing the “ample” evidence linking CAIR to Hamas.

Yaalon: Iran's Involved in All the Conflicts

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon meets Canadian Chief of Staff, emphasizes need to stop Iran's nuclear program.

By Elad Benari

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and Canada's Chief of Staff Thomas J. Lawson

Ariel Hermoni

During the meeting, Yaalon praised the strong relations between Israel and Canada, adding that the two countries will work even closer together.

“Israel and Canada have a relationship based on shared values ​​and interests,” said Yaalon. “Canada, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a true friend of Israel and an example of a country that manages policies based on values ​​and moral clarity."

Bonfires to Light the Skies:Lag Ba'Omer: 'Hillula' in Meron, NY Children's Parade, Bonfires

Galilee town of Meron fills for the "hillula" of Rashbi, mystic Sage and student of Rabbi Akiva. Chabad parades during the day.

By R. Sylvetsky and D. Tabak

Lag Ba'Omer Bonfire

"Rabbi Akiva said, how lucky you are, O Israel, for just as a mikva purifies, G-d purifies the people of Israel" - this is the refrain sung over and over by hundreds of thousands at Meron on the night of Lag Ba'Omer as they jump up and down in place for lack of room to dance.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews will be in Meron on Saturday night to celebrate Lag Ba'Omer. The holiday marks the passing of Tannaitic Sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi).
The commentary on the Pentateuch called the Zohar (Shining Light), the classical source of Jewish mysticism, is attributed to Rashbi, who lived in the 2nd century C.E,  is said to have died on Lag B'Omer and is buried in Meron.

COP: Dangerous Times: Will Shale beat Shari'ah?

James Lewis

A week after the Boston Marathon bombing, Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote a shameless puff-piece celebrating the glories of "sensuous" camel racing in the Gulf emirates in the London Telegraph. Gulf Arabs, including the Saudi Arabians, are huge terrorist enablers, big European spenders, London party animals, media investors, sexual abusers, wife beaters, Euro-American arms purchasers, Shari'ah imperialists, massive London vote buyers and powerful political meddlers. 

Boris Johnson, who is not a stupid man, is also aware of a slew of London Jihad bombings starting in 2007, both successful ones and a reported sixteen fizzled plots. He knows exactly who pays for Al Qaida and who pays for vote-buying by hundreds of thousands of radicalized Pakistanis imported into London via the corrupt and politicized immigration system.

Stupendously stupid or surreptitiously sinister

By MARTIN SHERMAN

 

Into the fray: The unilateral two-state initiative endorsed by INSS this week is clearly not a ‘creative’ pro-peace measure but a demonstrably anti-settler one.

Hamas supporters rally in Hebron Photo: REUTERS

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees... by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.
                                         – Ayn Rand, 1965  

 

O, who can hold a fire in his hand; By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite; By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow; By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?
                           – From William Shakespeare’s Richard II

I am appalled. Just how long will politically biased claptrap be allowed to masquerade as serious policy research?

"Creative” capitulation

When I wrote last week’s column, “The coming canard: “Constructive unilateralism,” I was unaware that, this week, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) would hold its sixth annual conference in Tel Aviv. Traditionally titled “Security Challenges of the 21st Century,” the focus this year was billed as “Creative Ideas for Israel’s Changing Strategic Environment.”

The speaker line-up was undeniably impressive, with an array of well-known figures from Israel and abroad – politicians, senior military officers and government officials, media personalities, academics and policy analysts.

The program spanned a range of worthy topics that extended beyond purely military and security spheres, including social, economic and diplomatic matters as well.

Report: US asks Israel to hold back on response to drone

  By JPOST.COM STAFF

Lebanese paper quotes Western official as saying that the Americans have called on Israel to show restraint to not divert attention from the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.

An MQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft in Iraq. Photo: Courtesy of US Air Force

A Lebanese newspaper has claimed the US has asked Israel not to respond to the infiltration of its airspace by a Hezbollah drone earlier this week, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.

A Western diplomat told the newspaper An-Nahar that the Americans have called on Israel to exercise restraint, in part because they do not want to divert attention from the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, according to the report.

The Saudi Follies, Part Two

Diana West

 

Let’s pick up where last week's column left off with that Saudi national in Boston – Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, the 20-year-old “student” who was acting suspiciously enough after the Boston bombing to be “detained” under guard at the hospital and named a person of interest in the April 15 attack.

That same day, law enforcement searched Alharbi’s Boston-area apartment for seven hours, leaving with bags of evidence at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, April 16. On Tuesday afternoon, a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security created what is called an “event file” on Alharbi, calling for his visa to be revoked due to ties to terrorism. That same afternoon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper would inform the Senate Intelligence Committee that Alharbi was now merely a “witness.”

This exonerating designation pulled the public eye off of Alharbi, but only temporarily. On Wednesday night, April 17, Steven Emerson refocused our attention on Alharbi when on Fox News’ “Hannity” show; the terrorism expert broke the news that Alharbi was scheduled to be deported on “national security grounds.”

7 Things Every Moderate Muslim Should Believe

John Hawkins

4/27/2013

 

Before 9/11, most Americans looked at Islam as no different than any of the world's other great religions. But since that terrible day, Americans have read countless stories about crazed riots over damaged Qurans, terrorists who've murdered people in the name of Allah and violent threats over Muhammad cartoons. Quite understandably, this has caused people to become considerably more wary of Islam.

Is that fair to all the good and decent Muslims out there? No, it isn't.
But, let's also stop ignoring the obvious fact that the Islamic faith has a large, radical and violent contingent that the world's other great religions don't have. Oh, but what about the Crusades? Well it's true that the Crusades were bloody, violent and directly connected to the Christian faith. However, the last crusade ended more than 700 years ago. That same sort of fanaticism has largely died out in Christianity while it's still alive and kicking in Islam.

Anyone who can't admit that is lying to himself and everyone else.

All The World

Sultan Knish

THE WAR THAT WON'T GO AWAY

After the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Obama asked, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?”

In Obama’s speech, the willingness of the Tsarnaev brothers to kill the people of the country they had grown up in is a paradox. But it isn’t a paradox; it’s the point.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the marathon massacre not because they were on the outside, but because they were on the inside. Islamic terrorism was their way of expressing their American identity. When they detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, they weren’t doing it as Chechen Muslims, but as American Muslims.

How Much Did U.S. Policymakers Learn about the Middle East in Forty Years? Some Proof

Barry Rubin 

Consider this quotation:

“Israeli pessimism seems largely if not entirely unwarranted. It seems based on an extraordinary lack of understanding of what happened in the Arab world in the last year and a half. Rather than girding their loins for the fifth, sixth, seventh Israeli-Arab wars. The Israelis might examine more carefully than they seem to have done so far the alternative of a peaceful accommodation with the Arabs."

This is not a reference to the "Arab Spring." No, it's from a dispatch sent from the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, January 9, 1975. It concluded that the lack of peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict was Israel’s fault. That dispatch could be published—as we will see in a moment—word for word today, 38 years later, with just as little accuracy. 

The dispatch reflects the unshakable premise--well, from time to time it does decline or disappear for a while--that the Arab side really wants peace, that Israel is not so much threatened but paranoid, that Israel doesn't think enough about making peace, and that conditions in the Arab world demonstrate that peace is possible or even imminent.

Americans-understand what is afoot and escalting

Penn: Muslim Group Calls for ‘Litigation Jihad’ to Spread Sharia in US

  creeping

via Muslim Group Calls for ‘Litigation Jihad’ By Ryan Mauro

The website of the Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), based in Pittsburgh, P.A., calls on Muslims to engage in “litigation jihad” as a means of moving the U.S. towards Sharia law. The anti-American group had its offices raided by the FBI in 2006.

“The United States has long held Muslim political prisoners within its federal, state and now privatized penal colonies. It is by waging a litigation jihad [sic] in the US penal system that some redress can be made in the international community as well. It is for this reason that Muslim inmate legal actions in the US courts constitute the front line of defense of Islam,” SIIASI says.

The objective of the “litigation jihad” is bigger than freeing Muslims from jail. It continues:

Time to confront Obama

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

 

To a degree, all of Netanyahu’s seemingly unjustifiable actions can be justified when weighed against the need to avoid a confrontation with America.

US President Obama at Boston memorial service, April 18, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The time has come for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to confront US President Barack Obama.

A short summary of events from the past three days: On Tuesday morning, the head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Analysis Division Brig. Gen.

Itay Brun revealed that the Syrian government has already used “lethal chemical weapons,” against Syrian civilians and opposition forces. Brun described footage of people visibly suffering the impact of chemical agents, apparently sarin gas.

Hours later, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Netanyahu had told him on the telephone that “he was not in a position to confirm” Brun’s statement.

It is hard to imagine the US was taken by surprise by Brun’s statement. Just the day before, Brun briefed visiting US Defense secretary Chuck Hagel on Syria. It is not possible he failed to mention the same information.

The Honey-Trap of Moral Equivalence

Douglas Murray

People love to lay the blame for the stalemate at 50:50. But the facts do not support this. Israeli schoolbooks do not teach children to hate and destroy Palestinians, as the Palestinian schoolbooks do of Israelis Even the most extreme Israeli politician does not threaten to wipe out the Palestinian people, as even mainstream Palestinian politicians do of Israelis.

Today, in an age that often seems of pragmatism and managerial-ism in politics, if there is a way not just to honor the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's memory but to continue her legacy it should be to encourage and praise those rare individuals who are willing to buck such trends. In Canada recently, I have had an opportunity to reflect on the perhaps surprising fact (also surprising to many Canadians) that in recent years Canada has shown itself to be a home to convictions which ennoble the present and can stand proud before history. The Harper government's moral clarity on a number of issues –in particular religious freedom and Israel – demonstrate a stand that can be rightly admired and celebrated by free peoples around the world.

Call It What It Is: Islamic Terrorism

Christine Williams

Despite these recent attacks on innocent civilians, excuses were made that blamed the victims and exonerated the perpetrators.

A growing problem, the radicalization of Muslim youth, all too often gets brushed off as a Western problem: specifically, being racist toward Muslims, and making them feel alienated and angry .

Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] have thwarted a terrorism plot – one that enlisted the help of Al Qaeda in Iran -- to derail a VIA Rail passenger train. A combined effort between the RCMP, Toronto and Montreal Police and the FBI lead to the arrest of two men on terrorism charges: 35 year old Raed Jaser of Toronto and 30 year old Chiheb Esseghaier of Montreal. This news comes on the heels of the double bombing at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170. Among the dead was an 8 year old boy.

Palestinian Journalists Declare War On Israeli Colleagues

Khaled Abu Toameh

How can anyone talk about resuming the peace process when Palestinians are being told by their leaders, on a daily basis, how bad and evil Israel is? If Israel is so bad and evil, then how can any leader go to his people and say he is negotiating with them?

Palestinian journalists have declared an intifada against their Israeli colleagues.
In recent weeks, Israeli journalists who cover Palestinian affairs have been facing increased threats from Palestinian reporters.

On a number of occasions, the threats included acts of violence against the Israeli journalists, particularly in Ramallah.

Human rights organizations and groups claiming to defend freedom of media have failed to condemn the campaign of intimidation waged by Palestinian journalists against their Israeli fellow-journaists.

Policy and Judgment Lapses – “Tamerlane, The Sword of Islam”

Denise Simon, edited by Scott W. Winchell
UPDATE – 11PM Saturday – A link is embedded below but needs more prominence because it pertains to where Tamerlan Tsaraev was trained by Islamist/terrorists – “Getting the Caucasus Emirate Right” we hope this helps all understand the whole story!
__________________
Named after the Turkic conqueror ‘Timur the Lame’, or ‘Tamerlane’; a vicious warrior of the 15^th century who envisioned an Islamic recreation of the Mongol Empire as the ‘Sword of Islam’, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, born in Russia is now dead. His brother Dzhokhar, born in Kyrgyzstan, is on life support.
Four are now dead, three innocent civilians and one MIT police Officer, and so many more are injured, some gravely, including an MBTA police officer on their hands. Now it appears that to a debatable level, much of the blame can also be attributed to federal governmental failures, coupled with abominable appeasement policies, both foreign and domestic.

by Mudar Zahran, ME FORUM
Thus far the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has weathered the storm that has swept across the Middle East since the beginning of the year. But the relative calm in Amman is an illusion. The unspoken truth is that the Palestinians, the country’s largest ethnic group, have developed a profound hatred of the regime and view the Hashemites as occupiers of eastern Palestine—intruders rather than legitimate rulers. This, in turn, makes a regime change in Jordan more likely than ever. Such a change, however, would not only be confined to the toppling of yet another Arab despot but would also open the door to the only viable peace solution—and one that has effectively existed for quite some time: a Palestinian state in Jordan.

Abdullah’s Apartheid Policies

Despite having held a comprehensive national census in 2004, the Jordanian government would not divulge the exact percentage of Palestinians in the kingdom. Nonetheless, the secret that everyone seems to know but which is never openly admitted is that Palestinians make up the vast majority of the population. 

FYI: More than half the Koran despises, incites against non-Muslims

creeping
A friendly reminder via The violent Quran | Dispatch International. By Peter Nilsson

The Quran does not have a single verse encouraging love towards those outside of Islam. But there are 493 passages that either endorse violence or talk about the hatred of Allah for the infidels, meaning all non-Muslims. The Quran is a book mainly concerned with how Muslims are to think and act towards those outside of Islam; that is, either kill them or force them to live as second-class citizens and pay taxes (Jizya). More than half the contents of the Quran are texts despising or inciting against non-Muslims. This is what turns Islam into a religion of hate and violence, for which history carries much evidence.

Egypt Running Out of Money for Subsidies

Contrary to what was predicted by our own journalist weathermen, the delightful Spring rains, have become a flood of severe proportions.  

The Egyptians are buying billions of dollars of weaponry rather than food from the U.S.  This is ugly. Don

Abigail Hauslohner

Mini-tankers of illegal diesel fuel have become ubiquitous in Egypt. Egypt's rapidly expanding black market for fuel, foodstuffs, and other commodities may be the most tangible illustration of just how badly its economy is failing. The prices of basic goods, like fuel and flour, have been fixed for decades, with Egypt pouring roughly a quarter of its GDP into a bloated and deeply inefficient national subsidy system each year. After two years of political turmoil, the government is quickly running out of money to foot the bill, and the supply of subsidized goods is drying up.

Education by Murder in Boston

DANIEL PIPES April 26, 2013

What will be the long-term impact of the Apr. 15-19 Boston Marathon attack and the ensuing action-movie-style chase, killing a total of four and wounding 265?
Let's start with what its impact will not be. It will not bring American opinion together; if the "United We Stand" slogan lasted brief months after 9/11, consensus after Boston will be even more elusive. The violence will not lead to Israeli-like security measures in the United States. Nor will it lead to a greater preparedness to handle deadly sudden jihad syndrome violence. It will not end the dispute over the motives behind indiscriminate Muslim violence against non-Muslims. And it certainly will not help resolve current debates over immigration or guns.

It's The Religion, Stupid

by TOM MCLAUGHLIN April 26, 2013

It amazes me what lengths to which the left will go to avoid mentioning terrorism and Islam in the same sentence. During the days between the bombing Monday and identifying the two bombers early Thursday, the left desperately wished they would be American white guys. Leftist Salon.com ran the headline: "Let's hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a white American." Writer David Sirotta invoked the leftist creed of so-called White Privilege "There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves, Islamists are existential threats."

Judicial Watch Uncovers USDA Records Sponsoring U.S. Food Stamp Program for Illegal Aliens

April 26, 2013

Documents Reveal that Mexican Government Encourages Maximum Participation in U.S.-Funded Program

(Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch today released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program.
The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as "SNAP" (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance.  Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, "You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children."

The documents came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made to USDA on July 20, 2012.  The FOIA request sought: "Any and all records of communication relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and migrant communities, including but not limited to, communications with the Mexican government."
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that USDA officials are working closely with their counterparts at the Mexican Embassy to widely broaden the SNAP program in the Mexican immigrant community, with no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls. In an email to Borjon Lopez-Coterilla and Jose Vincente of the Mexican Embassy, dated January 26, 2012, Yibo Wood of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) sympathized with the plight of illegal aliens applying for food stamps, saying, "FNS understands that mixed status households may be particularly vulnerable.  Many of these households contain a non-citizen parent and a citizen child."
The email from Wood to Lopez-Coterilla and Vincente came in response to a request from the Mexican Embassy that the USDA FNS step in to prevent the state of Kansas from changing its food stamp policy to restrict the amount of financial assistance provided to illegal aliens.  In a January 22, 2012, article, the Kansas City Star had revealed that the state would no longer include illegal aliens in its calculations of the amount of assistance to be provided low-income Hispanic families in order to prevent discrimination against legal recipients.
The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in August 2012, include the following:

• March 30, 2012 - The USDA seeks approval of the Mexican Embassy in drafting a letter addressed to consulates throughout the United States designed to encourage Mexican embassy staffers to enroll in a webinar learn how to promote increased enrollment among "the needy families that the consulates serve."

• August 1, 2011 - The USDA FNS initiates contact with the Mexican Embassy in New York to implement programs already underway in DC and Philadelphia for maximizing participation among Mexican citizens. The Mexican Embassy responds that the Consul General is eager to strengthen his ties to the USDA, with specific interest in promoting the food stamp program.

• February 25, 2011 - The USDA and the Mexican Consulate exchange ideas about getting the First Ladies of Mexico and United States to visit a school for purposes of creating a photo opportunity that would promote free school lunches for low-income students in a predominantly Hispanic school. Though a notation in the margin of the email claims that the photo op never took place, UPI reported that it actually did.

• March 3, 2010 - A flyer advertises a webinar to teach Hispanic-focused nonprofits how to get reimbursed by the USDA for serving free lunch over the summer. The course, funded by American taxpayers, is advertised as being "free for all participants."

• February 9 , 2010 - USDA informs the Mexican Embassy that, based on an agreement reached between the State Department and the Immigration & Naturalization Service (now ICE), the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) food voucher program does not violate immigration laws prohibiting immigrants from becoming a "public charge."

As far back as 2006, in its Corruption Chronicles blog, Judicial Watch revealed that the USDA was spending taxpayer money to run Spanish-language television ads encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for government-financed food stamps. The Mexican Consul in Santa Ana, CA, at the time even starred in some of the U.S. Government-financed television commercials, which explained the program and provided a phone number to apply. In the widely viewed commercial the Consul assured that receiving food stamps "won't affect your immigration status."
In 2012, Judicial Watch reported that in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions questioned the Obama administration's partnership with Mexican consulates to encourage foreign nationals, migrant workers and non-citizen immigrants to apply for food stamps and other USDA administered welfare benefits. Sessions wrote, "It defies rational thinking," Sessions wrote, "for the United States - now dangerously $16 trillion in debt - to partner with foreign governments to help us place more foreign nationals on American welfare and it is contrary to good immigration policy in the United States."
"The revelation that the USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens should have a direct impact on the fate of the immigration bill now being debated in Congress," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "These disclosures further confirm the fact that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. And the coordination with a foreign government to attack the policies of an American state is contemptible."
Judicial Watch Press Release - click to go to Judical Watch site

Why My Family Came to America

Jessica Zuckerman

More than any other nation in history, the United States has made itself a new home for immigrants in search of a better life. It embraces those who come to this country honestly—often with nothing more than their work ethic—in search of the promises and opportunities of the American Dream.
As a second-generation American, I think of this promise often. Each and every day, when I see my grandfather’s Ellis Island records hanging on my wall, I remember what he went through to come to this country. I remember how he left behind all he had ever known in Hungary to escape discrimination and the destruction left in the wake of World War I; how he gave up everything so that he could offer his children and grandchildren the promise of freedom and opportunity in a new land.

Islam Coexists?

There is an enormous irony contained in the Boston Marathon bombing. When the jihadi Tsarnaev brothers car jacked a Mercedes, it had a Coexist bumper sticker.

The Coexist bumper sticker is the religious symbol of the multicultural crowd -- you know -- all religions are the same. Well, the leading symbol of those who want to Coexist is the star and crescent Islam. And exactly how well has Islam coexisted with all of the others? What kind of neighbor has Islam been over history?
Start with Mohammed. We know an enormous amount about Mohammed as a neighbor to Kafirs (non-Muslims), pagans, Jews and Christians.

Confession

Nurit Greenger
 

I was born in British Palestine approximately nine months before Ben Gurion declared, on 14 May 1948, the state of Israel an independent state.

My mother was a Holocaust survivor and my father, a Jewish warrior who ended up fighting in WWII as a member of the Jewish Brigade in the British army.

I have lived in Africa, Europe and now I live in the United States but Israel has always been my hub. To be in Israel, no matter where I resided, was always being at home.

I turned 65 and so did Israel; both, the Jewish state and me are at retirement age.

However, while for me it is time for reflection and getting older, for the modern state of Israel the journey in modern history has just begun.

And so, I have decided to make a slight confession, based on what I have learned thus far.