Barry Rubin
Well, sort of. Friedman has tweeted:
“.@nytimesfriedman “Mubarak had 30 years to reform Egypt, then he tried to do it all in six days. Netanyahu is Mubarak of Israel” #AspenIdeas”
So in other words Netanyahu should be overthrown? President Barack Obama should call for Netanyahu to be gone right away? Or merely has Israel failed to change its policies in several decades? Incidentally, Mubarak did change a lot of Egyptian policies and was doing a credible job economically.
But back to Israel. Thirty years ago, Israel rejected dealing with the PLO, rejected a Palestinian state, and was expanding the size and number of settlements in the West Bank. Today it favors a two-state solution; accepts negotiations with the PLO’s successor, the Palestinian Authority; has pulled out of southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip; does not create or expand settlements with a nine-month freeze in all construction at President Barack Obama’s request; and eleven years ago even offered most of east Jerusalem for a Palestinian state. You can argue that Israel is better or worse off for these changed policies but Israel’s policies have changed dramatically, in part due to Netanyahu as well as others. To believe that Israel has been intransigent is nuts. To believe that Israel has been intransigent is also an accepted belief among many Western elites.
What Friedman is doing, as always, is speaking flattery–not truth–to power. Remember Friedman is supposedly one of the people Obama consults most on Middle East policy. I’m not suggesting that Friedman literally wants a revolution to overthrow Netanyahu, but what his writings reveal–and U.S. officials often hint–is that it is Netanyahu and Israel that are blocking peace. Israel just doesn’t know what’s good for itself and needs the great minds of Obama and Friedman to come to its senses.
Let me restrict myself to three responses:
First, although I didn’t vote for him but was a parliamentary candidate for a left-of-center party, Netanyahu was elected by the Israeli public for good reason following its experiences over the last two decades. The vast majority of Israelis think he has done a good job. Indeed, the more Obama and people like Friedman attack Israel (oops, I mean Netanyahu) the more support he has gained.
Second, while the pretense is that Friedman’s line is anti-Likud or anti-Netanyahu, the reality is that this is anti-Israel, seeking to subvert policies necessary for its survival and to destroy American Jewish support for Israel. Netanyahu is not missing any great opportunities for peace, nor is his government “short-sighted” (to use another Friedman phrase).
Third, the underlying assumption is that if only Israel took more risks and made more unilateral concessions peace would be possible, even quick to arrive. We learned eleven years ago that this was nonsense. If Friedman and others haven’t learned this yet that’s their problem. What we are seeing is a systematic campaign to misrepresent reality, the fact that the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian politics are the roadblocks to peace.
Netanyahu and Israel are dealing with the reality of the Middle East, something the Obama Administration would be well advised to do. Note also that most of the American people agree with Netanyahu and Israel according to every public opinion poll. And take another look at the video of Netanyahu speaking before the joint session of Congress, with both Democrats and Republicans going wild with enthusiasm.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Cleric Stresses Spread of Islamic Revolution to US, Europe
TEHRAN (FNA)- Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers Leader Hojjatoleslam Kazzem Sediqi underlined that the growing waves of Iran's Islamic Revolution which have swept the Middle-East and North Africa are now spreading to the European continent and the US.
"The Islamic Revolution (of Iran), featured by confronting the US and defeating the arrogance over the past 32 years, has not only spread to the region but also reached Europe and the US now," said Hojjatoleslam Sediqi in his second sermon to large groups of Friday prayers worshipers in Tehran University campus.He said the movements, originating from the Islamic Revolution of Iran, are getting universalized.
Earlier, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had stressed that the European continent will soon experience popular uprisings and revolutions sweeping the Middle-East and North of Africa at present.
Addressing a large number of Iranian teachers and university professors here in Tehran in May, Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated that the growing wave of Islamic awakening in the Middle-East, North Africa and other parts of the Muslim world has been inspired by Iran's Islamic Revolution, and said this awakening will definitely spread to the European countries.
"This awakening move will certainly advance to the very heart of the Europe and the European nations will rise against their politicians and rulers who have fully surrendered to the US and the Zionists' cultural and economic policies," he said.
Comment: This blog has said this for a long time, finally a cleric decides the time has come to share the truth. Of course there will be readers who discount this statement, who disregard his words and those who dismiss the statement. These are individuals who are unable to see past their agenda, who are willing to forgo data and facts in order that their position, incorrect as it is, survives in spite of what is known. It is like saying the world is flat, the sun rises in the West and sets in the East-know anyone like this? The infiltration began decades ago, they are in place in academia, law enforcement and government-they are ready-are you?
Obama Forming an "I Really Love Israel" PR Squad To Try and Rescue Jewish Vote
Yid With Lid
Perhaps in response to the Politico report earlier this week, it appears that some low-level Jewish players have decided to seal their place in the progressive movement rather than act for the best interests of both the United States and its valuable Mid-East ally, Israel. According to the WAPO's Greg Sargent the Obama campaign is planning to send out surrogates to go on the offensive against pro-Israel groups critical of the president’s Israel policy. “We will have highly credible spokespeople and surrogates speak out in a general manner in support of what this administration has done, and articulate it in a way that we think will resonate with voters who care about this issue,” former Conference of Presidents leader Alan Solow told Sargent. “We will meet with supporters who have expressed concerns or want to be briefed on these issues on a one-on-one basis.”
Just like any predictor, the Obama Jew-squad has picked off a bunch of "never weres" and "used to bes" to try and convince Jews that the truth (he is the most anti-Israel President in history) is not true.
According to the article, the Jew-squad will include Jewish Obama fundraisers, including Solow, former U.S. Reps. Mel Levine and Robert Wexler, and businesswoman Penny Pritzker, (who's position on Israel can be described as slightly more negative than Louis Farrakhan).
This group of house-Jews will work hard to convince that Obama is really pro-Israel, but short of Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower and claiming the last two years were just a bad dream, or simply lying, I am at a loss at how these how these modern day Kapos-in training, will be able to convince people of the President is really a buddy of the Jewish State.
Obama’s supporters say the plan is in effect an acknowledgment that conservative attacks on Obama’s Israel stance have made defections among Jewish voters and donors a possibility they must take seriously. Obama’s advisers see a need to push back even harder on the attacks than they did in 2008, in part because Obama now has a record on the issue to defend — a record that even Obama’s supporters concede has not been adequately explained.
What they don't understand is that it isn't just the conservatives, and it's not just Obama's recent actions, it's the cumulative effect of all of the times Obama has thrown Israel and its leaders under the bus since he was elected President. The reelection committee also forgets that liberal Jews are reading liberal media, who have gone out of their way to protect this president, and yet the liberal Jews still believe Obama is anti-Israel.
The effort to make this point, I’m told, will also be proactive, with surrogates publishing op ed pieces that represent the White House’s point of view. And it will include a renewed effort to highlight other aspects of Obama’s record that have gone under-discussed, like increased military cooperation between Israel and the United States.
Two of the primary conservative arguments against Obama are that he called for Israel to return to 1967 lines and that he has not publicly stated with enough clarity that Israel will not be expected to negotiate with a government that includes a Hamas that has not recognized Israel’s right to exist.
Axelrod says both points are untrue, so I guess the Bobby Ewing strategy is out.
But this point is very true, the fact that this is becoming a key effort of the Obama administration is more proof that the reelection campaign is either losing Jewish money or internal polls are beginning to show that many Jews are considering either voting GOP or at the very least not voting for President in 2012.
Axelrod's choices for this "But Guys I Really Truly, Cross My Heart Hope to Die, Love Israel" PR hit squad shows he is very out of touch with the pro-Israel community, or all the "good people" refused. Either way, its an indication that the rumors are true, the reelection committee is getting a bit nervous about losing the Jewish vote in 2012.
Friday, July 01, 2011
The flotilla and the Third Intifada
Melanie's blog
Is a bunch of young Israeli lawyers working round the clock sustained only by Diet Coke, falafel and cigarettes about to pull off the legal equivalent of the Six-Day War?
Israel famously won that war before it even started by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. Now it’s beginning to look as if the Gaza flotilla of fools and fanatics may be holed below the waterline before it even sets off on its cynical and potentially murderous stunt. Is a bunch of young Israeli lawyers working round the clock sustained only by Diet Coke, falafel and cigarettes about to pull off the legal equivalent of the Six-Day War?
Israel famously won that war before it even started by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. Now it’s beginning to look as if the Gaza flotilla of fools and fanatics may be holed below the waterline before it even sets off on its cynical and potentially murderous stunt.
It was supposed to have sailed by now. Today, however, it was reported that it now may not set sail before next week. The main reason is a series of unprecedented and ingenious manoeuvres by Israeli lawyers which have tied up the boats in legal actions mainly concerning insurance and registration issues.
And I can reveal that a separate legal move today threatens fourteen of the flotillistas with arrest if they enter Israeli territorial waters.
Two Israeli soldiers in the reserves are seeking to bring a private prosecution against those activists who took part in the first Gaza flotilla -- and who are planning to take part once again in the current one -- for the crimes of assault and soliciting aid for an attack.
The fourteen comprise one person from Ireland, two from the US, one from Cyprus, two from England, two from Spain, one from Greece, two from the Netherlands, one from Norway, one from Sweden and one from Qatar. Separately, the captains of the flotilla boats also face the possibility of criminal charges from a similar attempt at a private prosecution.
In addition, the US Attorney General has threatened the 36 Americans on the flotilla that they will be liable for criminal prosecution if they sail.
Already, the number of flotillistas has been whittled down from 1500 to 350, and the number of boats from 15 to ten. Most of the credit should surely go to the Israeli activist law firm Shurat haDin which believes in bankrupting terrorism through a creative use of the law. Here are some of the legal challenges to the flotilla which Shurat HaDin has initiated with seismic effect.
* It sent letters to all the maritime insurance companies in Europe and Turkey, warning them that if they provided the flotilla boats with insurance (a necessary component in the effort to smuggle contraband to the terrorists) that they themselves would be legally liable for any future terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.
* It filed an unprecedented lawsuit to seize the flotilla boats. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of an American terror victim injured by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
* It sent warning letters to a French insurance company warning it not to insure a boat that was to be launched from Marseilles. The company accordingly decided not to provide the French boat with insurance.
* After the main Turkish boat the Mavi Marmara pulled out of the flotilla, the New York Times reported that one reason (along with political pressure) was the boat’s inability to obtain maritime insurance.
* It sent warning letters to the UK and US based global satellite company INMARSAT, stating that it might be liable for massive damages and criminal prosecution if it provided communication services to ships used by suspected terror organizations in the flotilla. Then a resident of the southern Israeli town of Sderot filed a legal suit asserting that, under US law, Inmarsat was aiding and abetting terrorism by providing satellite services to the flotilla vessels.
* This week the New York Times reported that Greek authorities had detained two of the ships docked in Greece, including an American vessel, after Shurat haDin complained to the Greek Coast Guard suggesting that seven of the ships might be lacking insurance or were improperly registered.
For the flotilla is out to provoke violence and mayhem. The claim that its mission is a humanitarian one to relieve Israel’s ‘siege’ of Gaza is patently ludicrous. There is no siege. Israel allows in regular supplies, and Egypt recently opened its own Gaza border. No, the flotilla’s real aim by its illegal breaking of the legal maritime blockade of Gaza is to provoke Israel into violence against those on board so that they can pose as martyrs and will thus trap Israel into blackening its own image.
Yet however transparent the flotilla’s real purpose, the media are sanitising its true aims and potential for violence, as Just Journalism spells out here and here.
Well, the true aim was actually spelled out by Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and a board member of the Free Gaza Movement (which is behind the flotilla), at a meeting last November at Rutgers university in New Jersey to raise money to fund an American flotilla boat. I have obtained a video of this address: This is what Shapiro said:
What we’ve been doing over the last ten years with the International Solidarity Movement, Free Gaza, and all the other outgrowth organisations and movements and groups is to ...work with Palestinian society to ramp up the resistance. This is all part of a Palestinian movement for Palestine...This is truly an international movement ... It’s only Palestine, this cause that has been going on for over 60 years, that generates this kind of activism, this kind of resistance...
Free Gaza is but one tactic of a larger strategy, to transform this conflict from one between Israel and the Palestinians, or Israel and the Arab world...to one between the rest of the world and Israel... [applause]
It’s not just the conflict, it’s not just the siege, it’s not just the home demolitions, it’s not just the wall on the West Bank, it’s not just the effort to continue to dispossess Palestinians of their land...it’s also the attempt to define a place where 20 per cent of the population is Palestinian, to define the land underneath their feet as Jewish, to further dispossess them and subject these people to permanent second third or fourth class citizenship...Free Gaza is a tactic...all of it is part of a strategy now to transform the conflict and internationalise it and really undermine Israel where it gets its most support...
Our ground is the whole world. And that’s where our resistance has to be. The whole world... We already have a third intifada. It’s going on right now. It’s going on all over the world. [my emphasis]
So from the horse’s mouth we learn that the prime aim of the flotilla is not to provide humanitarian supplies to Gaza. It is not even to protest Israel’s ‘siege’ of Gaza. It is instead a tactic in a campaign to undermine Israel itself on account of its 60-plus year existence as a Jewish state. In other words, the flotilla is part of a strategy designed to destroy Israel altogether.
All decent people should hold their breath that Shurat haDin pull this one off, and turn ‘lawfare’ into a boomerang against the jihad and its nauseating fellow-travellers whose true aim is to exterminate the national homeland of the Jewish people.
Obama's "Pants on Fire"
Mike Brownfield
July 1, 2011
In a press conference on Wednesday, President Barack Obama promised to boldly go where no President has gone before, taking “unprecedented” steps to cut back the tangle of regulations that are strangling businesses and leading to America’s anemic job growth. It’s certainly a welcome idea, but the only trouble is that despite the President’s claim, his brave new idea isn’t all that unprecedented, and he is, in fact, a big part of the problem. Government regulation takes a heavy toll on the economy, tying down businesses and preventing them from growing, expanding and creating new jobs. President Obama’s regulators have played a big role in spitting out more red tape—in just two years, they have imposed close to $40 billion in new regulatory costs.
Businesses have loudly complained of those regulations (directly to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, in fact), so it’s no wonder the President made the following proclamation in a desperate attempt to recast himself as a deregulator:
What I have done — and this is unprecedented, by the way; no administration has done this before — is I’ve said to each agency, ‘Don’t just look at current regulations or don’t just look at future regulations, regulations that we’re proposing. Let’s go backwards and look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.”
Oh, if only it were true. PolitiFact.com took a look at the President’s brazen claim and came to the conclusion that it just isn’t true, burning up its “Pants on Fire Truth-O-Meter.”
PolitiFact writes that on September 30, 1993, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12866 calling for a comprehensive review of regulatory policy, using “language that sounds a lot like Obama’s.” And President George H.W. Bush ordered a moratorium and review of all existing regulations. In fact, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on July 16, 2007, states, “Every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations.”
The Heritage Foundation’s James Gattuso chimed-in on the PolitiFact report, remarking that Clinton’s order “is still in force, making the Obama directive technically redundant.” Or consider liberal economist Dean Baker’s assessment of the President’s “nonsense claim”:
I would question whether President Obama has done more in re-examining existing regulations than prior presidents, and if he has I would ask why he wasted the resources. Whatever it is called, presidents are always reviewing regulations to eliminate ones that impose unnecessary burdens.”
That’s not so unprecedented now, is it?
It’s not the first time, though, that the Obama White House has attempted to spin straw into gold on the red tape issue. Gattuso writes that regulatory “czar” Cass Sunstein attempted to deflect criticism of Obama’s regulatory machine, claiming that President George W. Bush was worse:
The annual cost of regulations has not increased during the Obama administration. In its last two years, executive agencies in the Bush administration proposed far higher regulatory costs than did those agencies in the Obama administration in our first two years.
Well, that’s not true, either. Gattuso explains that the Bush’s Administration, which “was no paragon of regulatory restraint” imposed over $60 billion in new regulatory costs during his two terms in office. But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s record on regulations, Gattuso writes: “In just two years, Obama regulators have imposed close to $40 billion in new costs. It took Bush some six years to reach that level. Obama has done it in two.”
Eliminating unnecessary regulation is good policy, and with a mountain of new rules imposed in the realm of health care, banking, the Internet and the environment, the President is well advised to stop feeding the regulatory beast. But he would also be well advised not to make bold proclamations that are blatantly false, especially when he bears responsibility for the problems he claims to be solving.
Quick Hits:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told the President that he may seek to resign as soon as this summer. Geithner is Obama’s longest-serving economic adviser.
As Congress and the White House look to balance the budget with $400 billion in draconian defense cuts, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warns of the perils of their plans.
Libyan rebels, aided by NATO airstrikes, advanced less than 50 miles from the nation’s capital Thursday. Fears of significant civilian deaths remain.
Minnesota’s government shut down after leaders failed to resolve the state’s $5 billion budget deficit. Minnesota is one of only five states to shut down in the last decade.
WEB CHAT: Join Heritage’s Brian Darling today at 12-1 ET for a live web chat on the debt. Ask questions and join in the conversation!
July 1, 2011
In a press conference on Wednesday, President Barack Obama promised to boldly go where no President has gone before, taking “unprecedented” steps to cut back the tangle of regulations that are strangling businesses and leading to America’s anemic job growth. It’s certainly a welcome idea, but the only trouble is that despite the President’s claim, his brave new idea isn’t all that unprecedented, and he is, in fact, a big part of the problem. Government regulation takes a heavy toll on the economy, tying down businesses and preventing them from growing, expanding and creating new jobs. President Obama’s regulators have played a big role in spitting out more red tape—in just two years, they have imposed close to $40 billion in new regulatory costs.
Businesses have loudly complained of those regulations (directly to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, in fact), so it’s no wonder the President made the following proclamation in a desperate attempt to recast himself as a deregulator:
What I have done — and this is unprecedented, by the way; no administration has done this before — is I’ve said to each agency, ‘Don’t just look at current regulations or don’t just look at future regulations, regulations that we’re proposing. Let’s go backwards and look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.”
Oh, if only it were true. PolitiFact.com took a look at the President’s brazen claim and came to the conclusion that it just isn’t true, burning up its “Pants on Fire Truth-O-Meter.”
PolitiFact writes that on September 30, 1993, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12866 calling for a comprehensive review of regulatory policy, using “language that sounds a lot like Obama’s.” And President George H.W. Bush ordered a moratorium and review of all existing regulations. In fact, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on July 16, 2007, states, “Every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations.”
The Heritage Foundation’s James Gattuso chimed-in on the PolitiFact report, remarking that Clinton’s order “is still in force, making the Obama directive technically redundant.” Or consider liberal economist Dean Baker’s assessment of the President’s “nonsense claim”:
I would question whether President Obama has done more in re-examining existing regulations than prior presidents, and if he has I would ask why he wasted the resources. Whatever it is called, presidents are always reviewing regulations to eliminate ones that impose unnecessary burdens.”
That’s not so unprecedented now, is it?
It’s not the first time, though, that the Obama White House has attempted to spin straw into gold on the red tape issue. Gattuso writes that regulatory “czar” Cass Sunstein attempted to deflect criticism of Obama’s regulatory machine, claiming that President George W. Bush was worse:
The annual cost of regulations has not increased during the Obama administration. In its last two years, executive agencies in the Bush administration proposed far higher regulatory costs than did those agencies in the Obama administration in our first two years.
Well, that’s not true, either. Gattuso explains that the Bush’s Administration, which “was no paragon of regulatory restraint” imposed over $60 billion in new regulatory costs during his two terms in office. But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s record on regulations, Gattuso writes: “In just two years, Obama regulators have imposed close to $40 billion in new costs. It took Bush some six years to reach that level. Obama has done it in two.”
Eliminating unnecessary regulation is good policy, and with a mountain of new rules imposed in the realm of health care, banking, the Internet and the environment, the President is well advised to stop feeding the regulatory beast. But he would also be well advised not to make bold proclamations that are blatantly false, especially when he bears responsibility for the problems he claims to be solving.
Quick Hits:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told the President that he may seek to resign as soon as this summer. Geithner is Obama’s longest-serving economic adviser.
As Congress and the White House look to balance the budget with $400 billion in draconian defense cuts, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warns of the perils of their plans.
Libyan rebels, aided by NATO airstrikes, advanced less than 50 miles from the nation’s capital Thursday. Fears of significant civilian deaths remain.
Minnesota’s government shut down after leaders failed to resolve the state’s $5 billion budget deficit. Minnesota is one of only five states to shut down in the last decade.
WEB CHAT: Join Heritage’s Brian Darling today at 12-1 ET for a live web chat on the debt. Ask questions and join in the conversation!
Islam's Useful Idiots
Amil Imani
Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” that Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also live in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.
Useful Idiots are naïve, they are foolish, they are ignorant of facts, they are unrealistically idealistic, they are dreamers and they are willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy. They are anarchists, they are aspiring revolutionaries, they are neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.
The Useful Idiot derives satisfaction from being anti-establishment. He finds perverse gratification in aiding the forces that aim to dismantle an existing order, whatever it may be: an order he neither approves of nor feels he belongs to.
The Useful Idiot is conflicted and dishonest. He fails to look inside himself and discover the causes of his own problems and unhappiness while he readily enlists himself in causes that validate his distorted perception.
Understandably, it is easier to blame others and the outside world than to examine oneself with an eye to self-discovery and self-improvement. Furthermore, criticizing and complaining—liberal practices of the Useful Idiot—require little talent and energy. The Useful Idiot is a great armchair philosopher and “Monday Morning Quarterback.”
The Useful Idiot is not the same as a person who honestly has a different point of view. A society without honest and open differences of views is a dead society. Critical, different and fresh ideas are the life blood of a living society—the very anathema of autocracies where the official position is sacrosanct.
Even a “normal” person spends a great deal more energy aiming to fix things out there than working to overcome his own flaws and shortcomings, or contribute positively to the larger society. People don’t like to take stock of what they are doing or not doing that is responsible for the conditions of which they disapprove.
But the Useful Idiot takes things much farther. The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.
The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as “Political Islam,” or “Radical Islam,” for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter—the Quran—is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.
Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.
But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and State are one and the same—the mosque is the State. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the “moderate” Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well-deserve being maltreated compared to believers.
No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non-Muslims—a few examples of their utter extreme contempt toward others.
Muslims are radical even in their intrafaith dealings. Various sects and sub-sects pronounce other sects and sub-sects as heretics worthy of death; women are treated as chattel, deprived of many rights; hands are chopped for stealing even a loaf of bread; sexual violation is punished by stoning, and much much more. These are standard day-to-day ways of the mainstream “moderate” Muslims living under the stone-age laws of Sharia.
The “moderate” mainstream of Islam has been outright genocidal from inception. Their own historians record that Ali, the first imam of the Shiite and the son-in-law of Muhammad, with the help of another man, beheaded 700 Jewish men in the presence of the Prophet himself. The Prophet of Allah and his disciples took the murdered men’s women and children in slavery. Muslims have been, and continue to be, the most vicious and shameless practitioner of slavery. The slave trade, even today, is a thriving business in some Islamic lands where wealthy, perverted sheiks purchase children of the poor from traffickers for their sadistic gratification.
Muslims are taught deception and lying in the Quran itself—something that Muhammad practiced during his life whenever he found it expedient. Successive Islamic rulers and leaders have done the same. Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, for instance, rallied the people under the banner of democracy. All along his support for democracy was not a commitment of an honest man, but a ruse. As soon as he gathered the reins of power, Khomeini went after the Useful Idiots of his time with vengeance. These best children of Iran, having been thoroughly deceived and used by the crafty phony populist-religionist, had to flee the country to avoid the fate of tens of thousands who were imprisoned or executed by the double-crossing imam.
Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pall over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.
The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amil Imani is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and the upcoming thriller Operation Persian Gulf.
Gaza Shelves Stocked; Palestinians Cause Own Medicine Shortages
Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA
(Reuters) - If pro-Palestinian activists unexpectedly manage to slip past Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip in the coming days, they might be surprised by what they see in the Hamas-controlled enclave when they disembark.
Roads are being paved, houses are being built, new cars have taken to the busy streets and shops are full of myriad products. Even the longtime scourge of unemployment is easing marginally, boosting living standards for a lucky few. I have been without work since 2007. Now I can pick and choose," said construction worker Karem Hassoun. "Life has finally smiled on me and my seven children."
But look beyond the building sites and the handfuls of luxury vehicles and the grim reality of everyday life in Gaza is evident, with over 70 percent of people still below the poverty line following years of isolation, conflict and deprivation.
For the second consecutive year, international activists are assembling in the Mediterranean on a motley assortment of boats and plan to challenge Israel's maritime closure of the coastal enclave, which they say is illegal and inhumane.
A year ago, nine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli forces boarded a cruise liner heading for Gaza as the flagship of an earlier flotilla. Israel says its men acted in self-defense and argues its blockade is to stop arms from reaching the Islamist group Hamas, which refuses to renounce violence.
But, faced by a global outcry over those deaths, the Jewish state has eased its land blockade, boosting Gaza's under-developed economy and enabling Israel to argue that the sea protest is driven by politics rather than humanitarian concerns.
Gazans see things differently. While they agree that there are many more goods on the shelves, the one thing that remains in short supply is hope for the future in a place where two in three of its 1.5 million people are from families of refugees.
"Gaza is essentially a prison, and while the conditions have improved, it remains a prison," said Omar Shaban, a well-known Palestinian economist.
"Therefore, people's hopes for a better future are crushed by reality and will remain on hold until the prison walls fall."
TUNNEL TRAFFIC
Nearly 6,000 tons of food, fuel and other supplies are transferred into the Gaza Strip every day via Israel. But among the items it routinely refuses to let in are cement and steel, both of which are needed to help rebuild from Israel's offensive against Hamas and its rocket teams in the winter of 2008-09.
Israel says such materials, unless for specific foreign-sponsored projects, could be used to make bunkers and weapons. Gaza's other neighbor, Egypt, has helped enforce the embargo.
But Egypt's recent uprising has eroded policing in the Sinai, allowing smugglers to bring in more supplies through tunnels, aiding the reconstruction of Gaza's infrastructure.
The Hamas economy minister, Ala al-Rafati, estimates that up to 14,000 workers had returned to their jobs in the construction sector in recent months, and up to 1,000 factories, most of them small-scale family firms, had resumed operation.
Rafati thought the unemployment rate had fallen to around 25 percent, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) put the figure at 45.2 percent.
"We are not saying the siege is over, but it has failed to achieve its result. The situation in Gaza is that people are refusing to acknowledge the blockade and are challenging it with the few means at their disposal," Rafati told Reuters.
The paucity of the means is obvious in almost any workshop or building site. Spare parts are almost non-existent, while bricks and mortar are as likely to be carried around by donkey and cart as they are by truck or bulldozer.
Adding to the problems, the densely populated is plagued by regular power outages, which cut electricity for up to eight hours a day, adding to miseries in the burning, humid summer.
"Also there are virtually no exports and that prevents a real economic revival. The movement of people is restricted and most Gazans cannot leave," said economist Shaban.
MEDICAL WOES
Egypt said last month it was easing travel restrictions for Palestinians, but this has had little impact so far. It also remains almost impossible for Gazans to enter Israel or travel to the West Bank, where many have friends and family.
About the only way for Gazans to get into Israel these days is if they are seriously ill and need urgent medical attention.
Mahmoud Daher, the Gaza office director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said shortages of medicine and medical equipment were at an "unprecedented" level, forcing the cancellation of some operations and evacuation of patients.
However, this problem cannot be blamed directly on Israel.
Daher said the two main reasons were a failure by the Palestinian authorities to pay suppliers on time and a lack of cooperation between health authorities in the West Bank and Gaza, which are governed by rival Palestinian movements.
The two feuding parties, Hamas and Fatah, announced a surprise reconciliation pact two months ago. Since then, attempts to enact the accord have foundered, to the intense disappointment of locals who want Palestinian unity.
"Man does not live by bread alone. Hope is more important and we have no faith in the future because of continued divisions among our leaders," said Ali Mohammed, 46, a telephone technician and father of four.
"Because of our leaders' unwillingness to unite, our big dream of having our own state is on hold and the most we can hope for is easier access to the crossings."
GAZA
(Reuters) - If pro-Palestinian activists unexpectedly manage to slip past Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip in the coming days, they might be surprised by what they see in the Hamas-controlled enclave when they disembark.
Roads are being paved, houses are being built, new cars have taken to the busy streets and shops are full of myriad products. Even the longtime scourge of unemployment is easing marginally, boosting living standards for a lucky few. I have been without work since 2007. Now I can pick and choose," said construction worker Karem Hassoun. "Life has finally smiled on me and my seven children."
But look beyond the building sites and the handfuls of luxury vehicles and the grim reality of everyday life in Gaza is evident, with over 70 percent of people still below the poverty line following years of isolation, conflict and deprivation.
For the second consecutive year, international activists are assembling in the Mediterranean on a motley assortment of boats and plan to challenge Israel's maritime closure of the coastal enclave, which they say is illegal and inhumane.
A year ago, nine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli forces boarded a cruise liner heading for Gaza as the flagship of an earlier flotilla. Israel says its men acted in self-defense and argues its blockade is to stop arms from reaching the Islamist group Hamas, which refuses to renounce violence.
But, faced by a global outcry over those deaths, the Jewish state has eased its land blockade, boosting Gaza's under-developed economy and enabling Israel to argue that the sea protest is driven by politics rather than humanitarian concerns.
Gazans see things differently. While they agree that there are many more goods on the shelves, the one thing that remains in short supply is hope for the future in a place where two in three of its 1.5 million people are from families of refugees.
"Gaza is essentially a prison, and while the conditions have improved, it remains a prison," said Omar Shaban, a well-known Palestinian economist.
"Therefore, people's hopes for a better future are crushed by reality and will remain on hold until the prison walls fall."
TUNNEL TRAFFIC
Nearly 6,000 tons of food, fuel and other supplies are transferred into the Gaza Strip every day via Israel. But among the items it routinely refuses to let in are cement and steel, both of which are needed to help rebuild from Israel's offensive against Hamas and its rocket teams in the winter of 2008-09.
Israel says such materials, unless for specific foreign-sponsored projects, could be used to make bunkers and weapons. Gaza's other neighbor, Egypt, has helped enforce the embargo.
But Egypt's recent uprising has eroded policing in the Sinai, allowing smugglers to bring in more supplies through tunnels, aiding the reconstruction of Gaza's infrastructure.
The Hamas economy minister, Ala al-Rafati, estimates that up to 14,000 workers had returned to their jobs in the construction sector in recent months, and up to 1,000 factories, most of them small-scale family firms, had resumed operation.
Rafati thought the unemployment rate had fallen to around 25 percent, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) put the figure at 45.2 percent.
"We are not saying the siege is over, but it has failed to achieve its result. The situation in Gaza is that people are refusing to acknowledge the blockade and are challenging it with the few means at their disposal," Rafati told Reuters.
The paucity of the means is obvious in almost any workshop or building site. Spare parts are almost non-existent, while bricks and mortar are as likely to be carried around by donkey and cart as they are by truck or bulldozer.
Adding to the problems, the densely populated is plagued by regular power outages, which cut electricity for up to eight hours a day, adding to miseries in the burning, humid summer.
"Also there are virtually no exports and that prevents a real economic revival. The movement of people is restricted and most Gazans cannot leave," said economist Shaban.
MEDICAL WOES
Egypt said last month it was easing travel restrictions for Palestinians, but this has had little impact so far. It also remains almost impossible for Gazans to enter Israel or travel to the West Bank, where many have friends and family.
About the only way for Gazans to get into Israel these days is if they are seriously ill and need urgent medical attention.
Mahmoud Daher, the Gaza office director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said shortages of medicine and medical equipment were at an "unprecedented" level, forcing the cancellation of some operations and evacuation of patients.
However, this problem cannot be blamed directly on Israel.
Daher said the two main reasons were a failure by the Palestinian authorities to pay suppliers on time and a lack of cooperation between health authorities in the West Bank and Gaza, which are governed by rival Palestinian movements.
The two feuding parties, Hamas and Fatah, announced a surprise reconciliation pact two months ago. Since then, attempts to enact the accord have foundered, to the intense disappointment of locals who want Palestinian unity.
"Man does not live by bread alone. Hope is more important and we have no faith in the future because of continued divisions among our leaders," said Ali Mohammed, 46, a telephone technician and father of four.
"Because of our leaders' unwillingness to unite, our big dream of having our own state is on hold and the most we can hope for is easier access to the crossings."
FLOTILLA ACTIVIST ADMITS IT'NOT A HUMANITARIAN EFFORT – IT’S A POLITICAL PROVOCATION,
Maurice Ostroff
Prominent flotilla activist Joe Catron admits publicly that the Flotilla is not a humanitarian operation, rather, in his words, it is “of course a political provocation.” In an article published on Palestine News Network and in several other media, he quotes Ran Curiel, whom he describes as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, as saying “In our view, the flotilla is clearly a political provocation ... since there's no need for a flotilla to aid Gaza”. Catron, a member of the International Solidarity Movement – Gaza Strip, writes, “his [Cureiel’s] conclusion is sound, if self-evident. The Freedom Flotilla is indeed a political provocation. Why shouldn’t it be? And when has it pretended to be anything else?” (For the record, Ran Curiel is not Israel’s ambassador to the UN. He is ambassador to the EU). http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10322&Itemid=56
This candid admission raises the important question as to the priorities of those of the flotilla participants who are motivated by purely humanitarian considerations. Are they aware of the true objectives and the enormous costs of this international well-organized “political operation”? In view of the invective directed at Israel, one might ask too, whether the participants are aware of the fact that the blockade of Gaza is not conducted solely by Israel. It has been, and until now continues to be, a joint Israeli-Egyptian operation and since the change of government in Egypt, a loosening of restrictions at the Egypt Gaza border may be expected.
In an article in “Liberal Conspiracy” of February 26, 2011, Danny Williams asks an important question which has been ignored by others “Is the second Gaza Flotilla really worth all the money being raised?” He estimates the cost of hiring ships and buying supplies before a penny is spent on aid, at around 10 million euros, not including thousands of dollars on personal expenses and he asks rationally, “isn’t it time to question the logic of throwing more money into this PR abyss – the organizers themselves concede this is about raising awareness and not humanitarian aid”.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/02/26/is-the-second-gaza-flotilla-really-worth-all-the-money-being-raised/
It is shameful to realize that this multimillion wasteful expenditure on a political provocation by “humanitarians” takes place in a world in which, according to the World Health Organization, one-third of the population is under-fed and one-third is starving, while the cost of one flotilla ship could supply lunch to a school full of hungry children every day for a year.
Yes there is still much misery in Gaza, but Gaza does not rate high on a relative scale of the need for aid. According to Bloomberg Business week of June 29, 2011, the economies of the West Bank and Gaza are heading for 8 percent growth this year, that’s up from 7.2 percent in the West Bank in 2009 and 5.4 percent in Gaza. While some of the growth stems from improved investor confidence and the partial easing of restrictions by Israel, the main driver remains foreign donations.
The Palestinian Authority received $525 million of international aid in the first half of 2010, following $1.4 billion last year and $1.8 billion in 2008, according to World Bank estimates.
And the International Herald Tribune of June 27 reports that two luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month, thousands of new cars are plying the roads, a second shopping mall, with escalators imported from Israel, will open next month and hundreds of homes and two dozen schools are about to go up. A Hamas-run farm where Jewish settlements once stood is producing enough fruit that Israeli imports are tapering off.
Despite the disproportionate aid being poured into the territory, the well orchestrated campaign focuses on Gaza with its acknowledged terrorist Hamas government, while millions in real dire need of aid in Darfur, West Papua, Zimbabwe and many other countries are ignored.
According to the World Bank, every year 15 million children die of hunger and well over 500 million people are living in "absolute poverty in Asian, African and Latin American countries. The World Food Programme reports that more than 925 million people don’t have enough to eat. 98 percent of them live in developing countries and
10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths.
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Can there can be any doubt that if logic and consistency were to prevail, every sincere humanitarian would prefer to spend the hundreds of millions that are wasted on this flotilla in alleviating the true devastating hunger that sadly exists in our unfair world, especially when one realizes that hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined and that one in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight?
Prominent flotilla activist Joe Catron admits publicly that the Flotilla is not a humanitarian operation, rather, in his words, it is “of course a political provocation.” In an article published on Palestine News Network and in several other media, he quotes Ran Curiel, whom he describes as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, as saying “In our view, the flotilla is clearly a political provocation ... since there's no need for a flotilla to aid Gaza”. Catron, a member of the International Solidarity Movement – Gaza Strip, writes, “his [Cureiel’s] conclusion is sound, if self-evident. The Freedom Flotilla is indeed a political provocation. Why shouldn’t it be? And when has it pretended to be anything else?” (For the record, Ran Curiel is not Israel’s ambassador to the UN. He is ambassador to the EU). http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10322&Itemid=56
This candid admission raises the important question as to the priorities of those of the flotilla participants who are motivated by purely humanitarian considerations. Are they aware of the true objectives and the enormous costs of this international well-organized “political operation”? In view of the invective directed at Israel, one might ask too, whether the participants are aware of the fact that the blockade of Gaza is not conducted solely by Israel. It has been, and until now continues to be, a joint Israeli-Egyptian operation and since the change of government in Egypt, a loosening of restrictions at the Egypt Gaza border may be expected.
In an article in “Liberal Conspiracy” of February 26, 2011, Danny Williams asks an important question which has been ignored by others “Is the second Gaza Flotilla really worth all the money being raised?” He estimates the cost of hiring ships and buying supplies before a penny is spent on aid, at around 10 million euros, not including thousands of dollars on personal expenses and he asks rationally, “isn’t it time to question the logic of throwing more money into this PR abyss – the organizers themselves concede this is about raising awareness and not humanitarian aid”.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/02/26/is-the-second-gaza-flotilla-really-worth-all-the-money-being-raised/
It is shameful to realize that this multimillion wasteful expenditure on a political provocation by “humanitarians” takes place in a world in which, according to the World Health Organization, one-third of the population is under-fed and one-third is starving, while the cost of one flotilla ship could supply lunch to a school full of hungry children every day for a year.
Yes there is still much misery in Gaza, but Gaza does not rate high on a relative scale of the need for aid. According to Bloomberg Business week of June 29, 2011, the economies of the West Bank and Gaza are heading for 8 percent growth this year, that’s up from 7.2 percent in the West Bank in 2009 and 5.4 percent in Gaza. While some of the growth stems from improved investor confidence and the partial easing of restrictions by Israel, the main driver remains foreign donations.
The Palestinian Authority received $525 million of international aid in the first half of 2010, following $1.4 billion last year and $1.8 billion in 2008, according to World Bank estimates.
And the International Herald Tribune of June 27 reports that two luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month, thousands of new cars are plying the roads, a second shopping mall, with escalators imported from Israel, will open next month and hundreds of homes and two dozen schools are about to go up. A Hamas-run farm where Jewish settlements once stood is producing enough fruit that Israeli imports are tapering off.
Despite the disproportionate aid being poured into the territory, the well orchestrated campaign focuses on Gaza with its acknowledged terrorist Hamas government, while millions in real dire need of aid in Darfur, West Papua, Zimbabwe and many other countries are ignored.
According to the World Bank, every year 15 million children die of hunger and well over 500 million people are living in "absolute poverty in Asian, African and Latin American countries. The World Food Programme reports that more than 925 million people don’t have enough to eat. 98 percent of them live in developing countries and
10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths.
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Can there can be any doubt that if logic and consistency were to prevail, every sincere humanitarian would prefer to spend the hundreds of millions that are wasted on this flotilla in alleviating the true devastating hunger that sadly exists in our unfair world, especially when one realizes that hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined and that one in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight?
Don’t Worry, Be Muslim
Daniel Greenfield
There’s good news on the horizon. According to Trevor Philips, the head of the UK’s ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission’, Muslims “are doing their damnedest” to develop an Islam compatible with liberal democracy. And if you don’t believe him, then just ask Tony Blair, who reads the Koran every day and marvels at how progressive it is.
Forget all the worrying and fussing over Muslim immigration and terrorism. The future looks bright for Britain. We’re probably only days away from the first female Imam and drive through abortion clinics in local mosques. Mecca is going to host its first swimsuit competition on its black rock and Ramadan will unite with Gay Pride Day for a parade that no one will ever be able to forget. At The Guardian, where left is always right, Musleh Faradhi assures us that Sharia courts are not about to displace English law or flog Prince Charles as an adulterer in front of Buckingham Palace. “Women who come to this country with little or no English and are then discriminated against by their own husbands or relatives has nothing to do with sharia, but rather with traditions and culture,” says Faradhi. “This should not be used as a stick with which to beat sharia councils.”
That sounds fair enough except when you remember that Sharia councils are usually the ones who beat women with sticks, rather than the other way around. For reasons that have nothing to do with the Koran, but with traditions, culture and the equinox. It would be a shame if Sharia’s habit of beating women with sticks were to be used to beat Sharia councils with sticks. When it comes to Muslims, turnabout is never fair play. Even when the sticks are metaphorical ones. And the ones they use are all too real.
According to Tony Blair, the Koran is, “ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance”. This claim would be true only if the Koran had been written in the age of the dinosaurs. And probably not even then. The educated Cro-Magnon would have taken one sniff at the Koran and opted for something more progressive. Like the Daily Mail or Benny Hill.
In the progressive words of the Koran, “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other.” (Koran 4:34). It’s hard to argue with that. At least if you’re a woman and under the authority of a Sharia council. Bring enough Muslim men with sticks together and then good luck arguing with Allah’s Theory of Gender Evolution without getting beheaded. Or at least beaten bloody with sticks.
“Good women are obedient,” says the Koran. “They guard their unseen parts.” Which in the Muslim world often includes their faces, their voices and themselves, until the whole woman becomes one unseen part. “As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.”
The liberal Britain which long since disavowed, “A woman, a dog and a walnut tree; the harder they are beaten, the better they be”, has welcomed it back in as, “A woman, a dog and a palm tree.” It is easy to argue with the practices of beating a domestic walnut tree, but who are we to argue with the cultural tree harvesting methods of an ancient belief system which must be superior to ours on account of it being practiced by the people we once colonized.
And the verse finishes, that having beaten them “Then if they obey you, take no further action against them.” This must be the part that Tony Blair and Western liberal readers find so ahead of its time in its attitude toward women. That once having beaten a woman, if she complies, then you should stop beating her. The nobility and generosity of these words should touch the heart of even a Germaine Greer.
The Koran may tell you to beat women, but it doesn’t tell you to keep beating them once they’re cringing on the floor. This generosity extends not only to women, but to all sorts of beloved infidels. Once he surrenders, and pays Jizya, accepting his role as an inferior– the well-behaved Muslim is not supposed to keep beating him. Women, Dhimmis, slaves and other people whom Allah hath made inferior are not to be beaten so long as they obey you.
You can see why Tony Blair might consider this attitude toward governance ahead of its time. Anyone who has had contact with England’s bureaucracy can well appreciate a form of governance that stops beating you once you’re lying prone on the floor.
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Don’t Worry, Be Muslim
Posted by Daniel Greenfield on Jun 30th, 2011
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“The Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins” says the former Prime Minister. “Rather as reformers attempted with the Christian Church centuries later.”. The inability of the former Prime Minister to tell the difference between the Anglican Church and a wife-beating manual is a sad testament to many things. Not the least of which is his functional illiteracy.
If Islam was trying to return to the origins of Judaism and Christianity, it took the wrong road around. Mohammed’s GPS may have told him he was headed to Jerusalem, but instead he ended up in Mecca. Which is what happens when you attach a GPS to a flying horse and religious ideas to greedy bandits.
Jewish and Christian scriptures were not possessed with the “fear of disobedience” or the need to compel their wives to cover their faces to avoid being raped on the spot by their own cousins. Which originated the headbags of Muslim modesty. But then Jews and Christians tended to court their wives, rather than abduct them and rape them in front of their husbands.
When your wedding canopy is a knife at her throat, and your “meet-cute” was burning her village, there’s good reason to fear her disobedience. And when your relationship is based on being the first man to grab her as she made a run for it, there is good reason to keep her inside or cover her from head to toe. You may be her first rapist, but your cousins and friends will have no objection to being her second and third. When rape is legal, and every adult male around you is a potential rapist, then purdah and headbags are a natural way for fathers and husbands to protect their investment.
There is nothing spiritual about Muslim modesty. It is, as Blair said, “Practical”. In a society of rapists, women had better remain at home, cover up, or end up like Lara Logan. But you don’t have to be a blonde at a celebration of Egyptian democracy to be assaulted. It happens just as often in the UK now. Take Abul Malik of Trafalgar Road, who raped a female passenger when she couldn’t cover the full fare. And why not. Back in Pakistan, rape is a time honored means of restitution in disputes. And now so it is in the UK too.
We can of course go on pretending that all this ugly and sordid stuff has nothing to do with the high-minded ideals Islam and go on cheering the Sharia councils who “are doing their damnedest” to make Islam compatible with liberal democracy. Except it isn’t Islam that they are making compatible with liberal democracy, rather it is liberal democracy that they are making damnably compatible with Islam.
Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, has explained that equality before the law now means that some people will be governed under the law, and others under Sharia law. Of course there will be no beating of women with sticks. Yet. For now it will have to be the metaphorical sticks of a legal system which is under the impression that women are an inferior form of life.
How much justice can women expect from divorce proceedings that take place under the authority of the Koran which says that, men have authority over women because “they spend their wealth to maintain them.” Which denies that domestic abuse and marital rape are wrong.
Baroness Cox has introduced the “Arbitration and Mediation Services Equality Bill” which puts forward the controversial idea that no mediator can operate on the belief that a woman has fewer rights than a man. That such a bill had to be put forward in 2011, ninety-three years after the triumph of women’s suffrage, is outrageous. But what is even more outrageous is the opposition to it.
The Islamic Sharia Council’s Suhaib Hasan replied that, “It is indeed a crime that Lady Cox has made no attempt to understand the workings of the shariah councils.” Of course that isn’t an actual crime that she can be beaten with sticks for. Yet.
The media’s message is don’t worry. Every day Muslim immigrants are adapting to the new way of life. But who is really doing the adapting? The real message of don’t worry, is don’t worry and be Muslim. And if you can’t, then keep to the floor and hope that they don’t keep beating you once you’re down.
Annexation Law Gains Momentum
Eitam Abadi
Parliamentary initiatives to annex territories won from Jordan during the 1967 Six Day War have been gaining traction in recent weeks as the Western-backed Palestinian Authority continues its threats to unilaterally declare a state in these territories this September at the United Nations General Assembly. National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beiteinu) raised the idea of annexation at a party convention in Jerusalem two weeks ago and has since been granting interviews on the subject to the local and foreign press, including CNN, which approached Landau to discuss the matter on Tuesday.
“We’ll have to protect ourselves,” he said. “If [the Palestinians Authority declares a state], I’m going to suggest to my government to extend our sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and over the highly populated blocs we have in Judea and Samaria, just to start with.”
Landau and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein (Likud) are slated to speak at a rally for annexing the Judea and Samaria regions at the Knesset next month. Top academics and former foreign minister Moshe Arens are also expected address the event, which is being organized by freshman Likud lawmaker Danny Danon.
“A Palestinian [Authority] declaration of statehood would officially bury the Oslo Accords, which state that final borders will be decided via negotiations and that unilateral actions constitute violation of the accords,” Danon said. “The Palestinians declaring a state would free us of all the diplomatic, security and economic commitments we made in the Oslo Accords.”
Danon favors responding to a PA declaration of statehood by annexing all of Area C, which includes all of the Jewish cities, towns and villages throughout Judea and Samaria, as well as all the vast empty lands throughout Israel’s heartland. Danon said his party leader, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, should follow the example of his predecessors Levi Eshkol, who annexed the eastern, northern and southern areas of Jerusalem, and Menachem Begin, who annexed the Golan Heights.
A source close to the prime minister said that Netanyahu has kept his cards close to his chest as to how he would respond to unilateral action by the PA, but that he has said in the past that Israel has its own unilateral options.
Danon said he hoped the threat of annexation could help Netanyahu to persuade Western leaders to stop the UN from voting on PA statehood at September’s General Assembly gathering in New York.
In addition to his bill for annexation, Danon is also working on legislation to officially repeal the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Since United States President Bill Clinton orchestrated the signing of Oslo between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Labor) and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, Israel has been expected by the international community to cleanse all ethnic Jews from the regions of Judea, Samaria and Gaza in order to cede these territories to the PA.
In 2005, US President George W. Bush succeeded in forcing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (Likud) to implement this agenda in the Gaza region but since the Hamas takeover of that region two years later, Israeli leaders have had trouble convincing the public to willingly comply with Western pressure to further shrink the Jewish state.
According to several politicians and legal experts, the PA attempt to declare unilateral statehood at the UN is a breach of the accords and offers Israel a legitimate way out of what many regard as a policy of national suicide.
Regarding his bill for annexation, Danon expressed confidence that if the legislation would be brought to a vote in the Likud party, it would most likely pass.
Support could also be found from other members of the Likud-led coalition. Lawmakers from the Jewish Home party have indicated that they would support the initiative and a spokesman from the rightist Yisrael Beiteinu faction said that beyond Landau the members are undecided but that it is possible some would back the legislation.
Some legal experts have argued, however, that Danon’s bill is superfluous as there is no reason to officially annex what they say already belongs to Israel.
According to these experts, what is actually necessary is legislation to reverse the 1968 decision of the Shamgar Commission that declared the Judea and Samaria regions to be “disputed territory” rather than part of Israel proper.
Once the Shamgar decision is overturned, the state can institute the 1920 League of Nations resolution from the San Remo Conference recognizing the Jewish people’s right to sovereignty over all territory between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River.
According to the proponents of this plan, reversing Shamgar would annul all agreements concerning Judea and Samaria that conflict with San Remo and would be more effective in securing Jewish rights than Danon’s annexation bill. Following the reversal of Shamgar, international law would unquestionably support the rights of the Jewish people to Israel’s heartland and the only move necessary on Israel’s behalf would be to extend civil law over Area C and to cancel the authority of the “Ciivil Administration.”
BDSers also want to boycott Palestinian Arab products!
Elder of Ziyon
The latest monthly COGAT report shows that not only does Gaza export strawberries and carnations, but also bell peppers:
In January 163.282 tons of strawberries, 2,693,430 carnations and 5.05 tons of bell peppers were exported.
Since the beginning of the season (28 November 2010) 315.27 tons of strawberries, 3,064,638 carnations and 6 tons of bell peppers were exported to European markets.
So the question is, is anyone calling for a boycott of Gaza flowers, strawberries and peppers? Why, yes! The same BDS groups who want to boycott Israel also want to include Gaza - and the West Bank!
Palestinian Arab produce gets exported to Europe through Israel's Agrexco. And the BDSers call to boycott Agrexco.
Here's what they say about Gaza:
Under the severe conditions of Israel's illegal blockade which have brought Gaza imports and exports to a near halt, Agrexco has exploited its close relationship with the Israeli occupation authorities in order to secure a monopoly-like status in the export of Palestinian produce from Gaza, whenever a trickle of Palestinian products is granted to pass the blockade, often for Israeli public relations purposes. In the previous season, for instance, only a few tons of strawberries were allowed out of Gaza. While this season may see a larger quota of exports, the total number of Palestinian farmers involved is less than one thousand. Experts also predict that many of those can switch to producing items that are needed in the local Gaza market, if denied gateways to export strawberries and flowers. All claims that Agrexco operations benefit Palestinian farmers are no more than a fig leaf to cover up its complicity in Israel's violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.... Instead, we call for intensifying pressure against Agrexco through a systematic and full boycott of all of Agrexco’s products and services.
Produce from the West Bank as well as Gaza are marketed by Agrexco under the brand name "Coral." They need to use Agrexco in order to pass all the certifications needed to get into the European market.
Here's one of the people that BDSers are telling to go to hell:
Um Hajjar Al-Ghalayini, 46 years old, owns half an acre of sandy Gaza land that produces two tons of strawberries every season. Since her husband died two years ago, the crop is the sole means of support for her nine children, mother-in-law and widowed sister, so every one of the bright red berries counts.
Last year, she had no choice but to sell her produce to the local market. That filled the Gaza markets with fruits and vegetables to the benefit of consumers, but for growers like Um Hajjar it was a disaster. Her earnings dropped by more than half and the family had a tough year economically. This week, as Israel took another step in easing its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, Um Hajjar delivered her strawberries to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border, their first leg of a journey to the more profitable markets in Europe.
“Now I can say that things are getting back to normal, if not on the right track,” she told The Media Line.
So the BDSers don't give a damn about Palestinian Arab farmers in Gaza or the West Bank!
The next time someone tells you that people who boycott Israel are motivated because they love Palestinian Arabs so much, ask them if they support the boycott of Agrexco's Coral brand as well.
The latest monthly COGAT report shows that not only does Gaza export strawberries and carnations, but also bell peppers:
In January 163.282 tons of strawberries, 2,693,430 carnations and 5.05 tons of bell peppers were exported.
Since the beginning of the season (28 November 2010) 315.27 tons of strawberries, 3,064,638 carnations and 6 tons of bell peppers were exported to European markets.
So the question is, is anyone calling for a boycott of Gaza flowers, strawberries and peppers? Why, yes! The same BDS groups who want to boycott Israel also want to include Gaza - and the West Bank!
Palestinian Arab produce gets exported to Europe through Israel's Agrexco. And the BDSers call to boycott Agrexco.
Here's what they say about Gaza:
Under the severe conditions of Israel's illegal blockade which have brought Gaza imports and exports to a near halt, Agrexco has exploited its close relationship with the Israeli occupation authorities in order to secure a monopoly-like status in the export of Palestinian produce from Gaza, whenever a trickle of Palestinian products is granted to pass the blockade, often for Israeli public relations purposes. In the previous season, for instance, only a few tons of strawberries were allowed out of Gaza. While this season may see a larger quota of exports, the total number of Palestinian farmers involved is less than one thousand. Experts also predict that many of those can switch to producing items that are needed in the local Gaza market, if denied gateways to export strawberries and flowers. All claims that Agrexco operations benefit Palestinian farmers are no more than a fig leaf to cover up its complicity in Israel's violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.... Instead, we call for intensifying pressure against Agrexco through a systematic and full boycott of all of Agrexco’s products and services.
Produce from the West Bank as well as Gaza are marketed by Agrexco under the brand name "Coral." They need to use Agrexco in order to pass all the certifications needed to get into the European market.
Here's one of the people that BDSers are telling to go to hell:
Um Hajjar Al-Ghalayini, 46 years old, owns half an acre of sandy Gaza land that produces two tons of strawberries every season. Since her husband died two years ago, the crop is the sole means of support for her nine children, mother-in-law and widowed sister, so every one of the bright red berries counts.
Last year, she had no choice but to sell her produce to the local market. That filled the Gaza markets with fruits and vegetables to the benefit of consumers, but for growers like Um Hajjar it was a disaster. Her earnings dropped by more than half and the family had a tough year economically. This week, as Israel took another step in easing its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, Um Hajjar delivered her strawberries to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border, their first leg of a journey to the more profitable markets in Europe.
“Now I can say that things are getting back to normal, if not on the right track,” she told The Media Line.
So the BDSers don't give a damn about Palestinian Arab farmers in Gaza or the West Bank!
The next time someone tells you that people who boycott Israel are motivated because they love Palestinian Arabs so much, ask them if they support the boycott of Agrexco's Coral brand as well.
Reuters Airbrushes a Major U.S. Policy Shift Toward the Muslim Brotherhood
Barry Rubin
Here’s the headline: “U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts.” But that’s not true. In fact, as the Reuters article itself admits, there have never been “formal” contacts before but only informal ones. Let’s examine the language, which stems from a “senior U.S. official,” to see what the Obama administration thinks about the Muslim Brotherhood:
A step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.
Note how it is portrayed as an Israel-related issue. Won’t it upset people who care about U.S. interests? Won’t it upset Egyptian Christians? The Saudis and Jordanians and other relatively moderate Arab regimes? Won’t it upset Muslims who oppose revolutionary Islamism? We are supposed to believe that only Israel and the Jews will be upset about the Obama administration moving closer to a radical antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist group that wants to repress women, kill gays, and overturn pretty much every existing government in the region. But just those Jews and their friends will be upset. You know, just like in the 1930s when certain people said that opposition to the totalitarian threat of those years was just coming from the Jews.
Reuters portrays the Brotherhood, as do many, as “a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.” Conservative? You mean they are like the Republican Party? You mean they are for the status quo? And of course one of the things they did since 1928 was to ally with Nazi Germany, and the Brotherhood continues to voice the same political line toward Jews that it did back then
We are also told that the Brotherhood “long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt….” This is simply not true. The Brotherhood merely temporarily renounced violence within Egypt because they knew that any resort to it would get them wiped out by the regime and the army. They postponed using violence until the revolutionary era arrived. Of course, if they can take over Egypt without violence they are happy to do so.
But there’s more. Every day for decades the Brotherhood has supported violence against Israel. It has supported violence against Americans in Iraq, and on various other fronts. Why is this so hard to see?
The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.
That is arguably true, but by recognizing the Brotherhood and having contacts with it, the Obama administration also makes a unilateral concession encouraging the Brotherhood. People who know the Middle East understand how this works: Soon many Egyptians will say (as they said in Iran and as they now say in Turkey) that the United States wants the Islamists to win.
But, the article continues:
U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.
And who do they go to — Middle East analysts who can explain why this is dangerous? No, to the head of AIPAC in order to perpetuate the theme that this is merely a problem with the Jewish lobby! And who is presented to refute this? Former American diplomats. So it is the people who know versus the Jews.
Here’s the headline: “U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts.” But that’s not true. In fact, as the Reuters article itself admits, there have never been “formal” contacts before but only informal ones. Let’s examine the language, which stems from a “senior U.S. official,” to see what the Obama administration thinks about the Muslim Brotherhood:
A step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.
Note how it is portrayed as an Israel-related issue. Won’t it upset people who care about U.S. interests? Won’t it upset Egyptian Christians? The Saudis and Jordanians and other relatively moderate Arab regimes? Won’t it upset Muslims who oppose revolutionary Islamism? We are supposed to believe that only Israel and the Jews will be upset about the Obama administration moving closer to a radical antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist group that wants to repress women, kill gays, and overturn pretty much every existing government in the region. But just those Jews and their friends will be upset. You know, just like in the 1930s when certain people said that opposition to the totalitarian threat of those years was just coming from the Jews.
Reuters portrays the Brotherhood, as do many, as “a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.” Conservative? You mean they are like the Republican Party? You mean they are for the status quo? And of course one of the things they did since 1928 was to ally with Nazi Germany, and the Brotherhood continues to voice the same political line toward Jews that it did back then
We are also told that the Brotherhood “long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt….” This is simply not true. The Brotherhood merely temporarily renounced violence within Egypt because they knew that any resort to it would get them wiped out by the regime and the army. They postponed using violence until the revolutionary era arrived. Of course, if they can take over Egypt without violence they are happy to do so.
But there’s more. Every day for decades the Brotherhood has supported violence against Israel. It has supported violence against Americans in Iraq, and on various other fronts. Why is this so hard to see?
The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.
That is arguably true, but by recognizing the Brotherhood and having contacts with it, the Obama administration also makes a unilateral concession encouraging the Brotherhood. People who know the Middle East understand how this works: Soon many Egyptians will say (as they said in Iran and as they now say in Turkey) that the United States wants the Islamists to win.
But, the article continues:
U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.
And who do they go to — Middle East analysts who can explain why this is dangerous? No, to the head of AIPAC in order to perpetuate the theme that this is merely a problem with the Jewish lobby! And who is presented to refute this? Former American diplomats. So it is the people who know versus the Jews.
Mohammed, a Real Muslim?
Political Islam
The judgment of our leaders about Bin Laden:
“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader…” Barack Obama
“He [Bin Laden] never represented Islam. I actually question whether he was a Muslim or not.” Imam Mohammad Ahmed al Sherif, Imam of the Islamic Center of Nashville. Nashville Scene, May 5, 2011.
When the President and an imam declare that Bin Laden was not really a Muslim, it must be true. According to the establishment, we are to swallow their declarations as the full truth and go on about our business living in a world where all Islam is good. Those “bad” actions are done by I-know-they-are-practicing-jihad-but-they-are-not-really-Muslims Muslims. Or more succinctly: a jihadist is not really a Muslim.
Really? A jihadist is not really a Muslim? This news is going to be such a disappointment to Mohammed, the original Mohammed, the jihadist Mohammed. And let us not leave out the jihadist Allah. Should we declare that all of the first caliphs who were personal companions of Mohammed were not really Muslims as well? After all, all four of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (the first four leaders of Islam after Mohammed’s death) started where Mohammed left off and waged jihad for their entire lives. They created the first stage of the Islamic empire. Why did they practice jihad? Because they were taught by example by Mohammed.
Mohammed’s example was crystal clear. According to the Sira, the sacred biography of Mohammed, he was involved in over 65 acts of jihad, or as we say today, 65 acts of terror. And that was in a 9 year period. Bin Laden was small fry, in comparison to Mohammed.
Why are we being told that Bin Laden was not a real Muslim? The propaganda is that violence has nothing to do with Islam. But Islam is based on Mohammed and he was violent in every way. He assassinated those who opposed him, enslaved thousands and sold them for money to wage jihad, he tortured men to death for money, tortured slaves to get information from them, created a policy of rape of Kafir women and on and on. The only reason to call Bin Laden a non-Muslim is that he did not do enough jihad. Oops, pardon me, terror.
But wait! Maybe the reason that Bin Laden was not a Muslim was because it is true that violent behavior is not Islamic. And since Mohammed was much more violent than Bin Laden, we are left with the conclusion that Mohammed was not a Muslim. He was too violent to be a Muslim.
Of course, there is the argument that Mohammed had just the right amount of violence against the Kafirs (non-Muslims) and that he defines what is right about everything Islamic. In that case the imam and Barack Obama were wrong about Bin Laden. Now we have ourselves in a bind. Was Mohammed wrong or were Obama and the imam wrong? Hmmm. I am betting that Obama and the imam are wrong.
Bin Laden was a fine Muslim in the sense of being a fine jihadist, just like Mohammed, only not as violent. But Bin Laden was the student and Mohammed was the master.
Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink /blog/mohammed-a-real-muslim/
The judgment of our leaders about Bin Laden:
“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader…” Barack Obama
“He [Bin Laden] never represented Islam. I actually question whether he was a Muslim or not.” Imam Mohammad Ahmed al Sherif, Imam of the Islamic Center of Nashville. Nashville Scene, May 5, 2011.
When the President and an imam declare that Bin Laden was not really a Muslim, it must be true. According to the establishment, we are to swallow their declarations as the full truth and go on about our business living in a world where all Islam is good. Those “bad” actions are done by I-know-they-are-practicing-jihad-but-they-are-not-really-Muslims Muslims. Or more succinctly: a jihadist is not really a Muslim.
Really? A jihadist is not really a Muslim? This news is going to be such a disappointment to Mohammed, the original Mohammed, the jihadist Mohammed. And let us not leave out the jihadist Allah. Should we declare that all of the first caliphs who were personal companions of Mohammed were not really Muslims as well? After all, all four of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (the first four leaders of Islam after Mohammed’s death) started where Mohammed left off and waged jihad for their entire lives. They created the first stage of the Islamic empire. Why did they practice jihad? Because they were taught by example by Mohammed.
Mohammed’s example was crystal clear. According to the Sira, the sacred biography of Mohammed, he was involved in over 65 acts of jihad, or as we say today, 65 acts of terror. And that was in a 9 year period. Bin Laden was small fry, in comparison to Mohammed.
Why are we being told that Bin Laden was not a real Muslim? The propaganda is that violence has nothing to do with Islam. But Islam is based on Mohammed and he was violent in every way. He assassinated those who opposed him, enslaved thousands and sold them for money to wage jihad, he tortured men to death for money, tortured slaves to get information from them, created a policy of rape of Kafir women and on and on. The only reason to call Bin Laden a non-Muslim is that he did not do enough jihad. Oops, pardon me, terror.
But wait! Maybe the reason that Bin Laden was not a Muslim was because it is true that violent behavior is not Islamic. And since Mohammed was much more violent than Bin Laden, we are left with the conclusion that Mohammed was not a Muslim. He was too violent to be a Muslim.
Of course, there is the argument that Mohammed had just the right amount of violence against the Kafirs (non-Muslims) and that he defines what is right about everything Islamic. In that case the imam and Barack Obama were wrong about Bin Laden. Now we have ourselves in a bind. Was Mohammed wrong or were Obama and the imam wrong? Hmmm. I am betting that Obama and the imam are wrong.
Bin Laden was a fine Muslim in the sense of being a fine jihadist, just like Mohammed, only not as violent. But Bin Laden was the student and Mohammed was the master.
Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink /blog/mohammed-a-real-muslim/
Freedom Flotilla 2
The Meir Amit
Intelligence and Terrorism
Information Center
Overview
1. On June 27 the organizers of the flotilla held a press conference in Athens where they announced that the flotilla would sail for the Gaza Strip in the near future. They said 327 passengers were expected to sail, 37 of whom were media personnel,2 on ten ships, two of them cargo vessels. They added the ships would carry about 3,000 tons of supplies, including medicine and concrete. According to the announcement, the ships will sail from various Mediterranean ports, unite in international waters and sail to the Gaza Strip. In an attempt to deflect the accusations brought against them, the organizers claimed that the flotilla was bringing a message of peace and was not a "terrorist flotilla." For reasons of security the flotilla organizers are vague regarding the date of departure, ports of sailing, photographs of the ship and their locations of anchorage. 2. At the press conference and afterwards the organizers said that they were experiencing delays caused by technical difficulties and Israeli attempts to obstruct the departure. Among other things, they accused Israel of sabotaging the Greek and Irish ships. However, they said they were confident they would overcome the difficulties and set sail. The flotilla is supposed to be accompanied by supporting events in the United States, various European countries and (according to postings in Facebook) possibly near Israel's borders with Arab states.
3. The various networks and spokesmen connected with the flotilla made the following statements:
1) On June 30 the organizers of the Irish Ship to Gaza claimed that Israel had sabotaged the M/V Saoirse and caused extensive damage. According to the media, the ship was anchored in Turkey (Ynet, June 30, 2011). Before that, the organizers of the Greek-Swedish ship (Greek Ship to Gaza) reported that on June 27 the propeller of the Juliano had been sabotaged. However, they said the damage could be repaired within a number of days (Websites of the Greek network and Haaretz, June 27, 2011). On the other hand, the organizers of the American ship (US Boat to Gaza) announced that preparations had been completed aboard the American ship and it was ready to sail.
2) Mazen Kakhil, ECESG spokesman, reported that all the necessary preparations had been completed and that the ships would reach the Gaza coast next week if nothing unexpected happened. He said that the flotilla would have more than 350 passengers from more than 20 countries (Al-Aqsa TV, June 29, 2011). In a different interview he said that the organizers had contacted the UN and the European Parliament, informing them they were responsible for the safety of the flotilla passengers (Radio Al-Quds, June 28, 2011).
3) According to the "Canada to Gaza" Twitter page on June 28, the Greek dockworkers' union would take care of the cargo ships as an act of solidarity. Previously, an Israeli correspondent participating in the flotilla reported that the Greek general strike might influence the departure of the American ship.
4. The flotilla organizers are currently in Athens, where the senior activists of the Free Gaza Movement (the umbrella network which plays a central role in organizing the flotilla) have set up a kind of command center ("Contact Athens"). It is staffed by the senior FGM activists Huwaida Arraf, Adam Shapiro, Greta Berlins and Ewa Jasiewicz (FGM website). The FGM also established a media center in London called the FGM Media Office ("Contact London"). Senior ECESG activists Rami Abdo and Dr. Arafat Madi Shukri are also in Athens.
Huwaida Arraf from the FGM
Left, Huwaida Arraf from the FGM, one of the most prominent figures among
the flotilla organizers, at a press conference in Athens, June 27.
The tattoo on her right arm reads "Palestine" (Picture from the ustogaza website).
5. The United States continues to express reservations regarding the flotilla. At a press briefing, a spokesman for the state department expressed concern over the participation of American citizens in the flotilla, which was liable to be "provocative" and "dangerous" (words she later repeated): "We are concerned about any of our citizens involved in a situation that could be provocative, that could be dangerous…"She said that "…if people around the world want to help the people of Gaza, we believe that the mechanisms established by both Egypt and Israel are sufficient to achieve that objective…" (ITIC emphasis). She added that Israel had the right to defend itself from weapons smuggling, but that the United States called on all parties to show restraint (United States state department website, June 27, 2011).
6. The flotilla organizers are currently in Greece, although it is unclear which of them will sail. Among them are Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, heads of the Free Gaza Movement, one of the umbrella networks organizing the flotilla. Senior ECESG figures Rami Saleh and Dr. Arafat Madi Shukri are also there.
7. The Western media expressed reservations regarding the presence of extremists among the delegations. For example, on June 28, 2011, a Dutch English-language radio station (RNW) expressed disgust with the flotilla and its participants. It "influenced two Dutch correspondents who had been planning to sail with the flotilla to cancel the participation." (A continuation of previous cancellations by media personnel.) On June 29, 2011, one of the women who had planned to join posted the reasons for her cancellation on the leftist Dutch website Joop. One of them was the involvement of senior ECESG figure Amin Abu Rashad, who claimed he had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The woman added that Abu Rashad had been present at a training session in non-violent tactics held for the Dutch group in Corfu, but had kept a low profile. Allan Sørensen, a correspondent for the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, wrote a column on June 29, 2011 entitled "Pacifists and Black Sheep," about activists who had participated in violent demonstrations and events ("whose names can easily be Goggled"). He wrote that most of the participants belonged to the first group, but that there was a hard core of "black sheep," and it included, among others, activists with ties to Hamas.
8. In response to the media reports about the possible reception of the flotilla in the port of El Arish, "informed sources" in the northern Sinai Peninsula said that they did not know of any agreement for receiving the ships in El Arish should Israel prevent them from reaching the Gaza Strip. The sources said that there was no objection to their landing in El Arish, but they had to go through the proper channels in line with Egyptian procedure and receive authorization from the authorities. Chairman of the board of directors of the Red Crescent in El Arish added that the organization was willing to accept the humanitarian assistance carried by the ships and transfer it to the Gaza Strip (Masrawi, June 28, 2011).
The Significance of the Current Situation
9. The significance of the current situation is the following:
1) Despite the technical and logistic problems, and the bureaucratic and political difficulties, so far the flotilla organizers are apparently still determined to dispatch the ships in the upcoming days. They have repeated their intention to dispatch ten ships, but it is obvious that the number of ships (and participants) will eventually be smaller.
2) Before the ships' departure the organizers were forced to deal with a number of issues, the most pressing of which are: the withdrawal of the Turkish Mavi Marmara and cargo vessel, and to a great extent the retraction of Turkish patronage; bureaucratic difficulties in receiving permits from the Greek authorities to depart from Greek ports; Greece's precarious internal situation, expressed by the demonstrations and strikes against the government over the country's economic situation; political difficulties expressed by international reservations over the flotilla which undermine its logic and benefits (the UN, the United States, the European Union and various Western countries); technical difficulties aboard the Greek and Irish boats, responsibility for which the organizers accuse Israel.
3) The aforementioned difficulties may cause the flotilla to be smaller than originally planned, accentuating the discrepancy between their declarations and the situation on the ground. Its organizers aspired to dispatch 15 ships, later declaring there would be ten, two of them large passenger ships, with the participation of 1,500 activists from 100 countries. Originally planned, it was supposed to overshadow the Mavi Marmara flotilla, bring the campaign to new heights, and make it difficult for Israel to respond to the challenge. In reality, the number of ships will probably be far smaller than planned, there will be no large passenger ships similar to the Mavi Marmara (which became the symbol of the previous flotilla), and the number of participants is expected to be reduced to a few hundred (for expectations compared to the actual situation, see Appendix II).
4) In addition, in the fight for legitimacy, the flotilla planners are losing ground due to the reservations voiced by the international community and the denial of the necessity for a flotilla. Moreover, in the media arena the planners have been forced to take a defensive stance in view of Israeli accusations of the flotilla's potential for violence and the intention of activists to employ extreme violence. In response to the Israeli accusations, spokesmen have stressed that the flotilla is bringing a message of peace, its activists are peace activists, and it is not a "terrorist flotilla." However, despite the media spin, there is evidence of a hard core of activists ("the black sheep") who intend to violence against the IDF (in the previous flotilla as well, there was a distinct discrepancy between the public statements regarding the nonviolent nature of the flotilla and the extreme violence employed during it.) In addition, in view of both the many difficulties and the gap between the expectations of the planners and the final diluted form of the flotilla, some of the activists aboard the ships are liable to employ provocations to embarrass Israel and return the flotilla to the awareness of the international community.
5) The organizers grant great importance to the flotilla's media campaign, and there are a large number of media representatives (more than 10% of the total number of passengers, according to the organizers' expectations). During the briefings the activists received they were instructed to transmit information from the boats to the outside world until the last minute (some of the correspondents have made provisions for satellite communications). They were also instructed to hide their electronic media devices if detained for documentation and for use after release, in our assessment for propaganda and legal purposes.
Arab-Muslim and Israeli Arab Participation
10. So far the participation of an Arab ship or Arab-Muslim groups is not clear:
1) The list of boats issued by the organizers did not include an Arab ship. Moreover, ECESG spokesman Rami Abdo said that so far no Arab-Islamic ship would participate (Al-Aqsa TV, June 27, 2011).
2) On the other hand, Wa'el al-Saqa, chairman of the Jordanian LifeLine Committee, said that an agreement had been signed in Greece for the purchase of a boat which would carry 70 Arabs from five Arab countries, half of them from Jordan (Amonnews.net website, June 9, 2011). Several media, principally Arab, reported Arab participation in the flotilla. According to one source, there will be Tunisian representatives aboard the French ship (Moheet.com website, June 1, 2011).
11. Israeli-Arab participation: In an article published on June 10 in the organ of the northern faction of the Islamic Move (Sawt al-Haq wal-Hurriyeh), Ra'ed Saleh said that the monitoring committee of Israeli Arabs received an invitation to participate in the Israeli-Arab delegation. Muhammad Zaydan, chairman of the committee, told Al-Jazeera TV on June 15, 2011, that ten Israeli Arabs, heads of the committee, would participate (Aljazeera.net website). In addition, on June 10, 2011, Israeli Knesset member Hanin Zouabi, who also participated in the previous flotilla, said that she was determined to participate in this one as well (Moheet.com website). At this point it is not clear how many Arab representatives will participate and on which ships they will sail.
12. Appendices
1) Appendix I: The ships participating in the flotilla
2) Appendix II: Flotilla planning and declarations vs. flotilla reality
Dutch pro-Palestinian activist refuses to be useful idiot, reveals rare inside view of Gaza flotilla
Hasna El Maroudi, 26, can be described as a “Dutch pro-Palestinian activist/journalist of Moroccan descent.” She had planned to join other activists aboard a Dutch ship to Gaza, until she learned that she would be going on a secret Hamas-organized mission and canceled her participation. On Wednesday she published a rare inside account of what she saw in Greece as the activists were preparing to set sail. This English translation of her account is meant to meant to help her discoveries traverse the language barrier. Why I am not sailing aboard the Dutch ship after all
I have been to the Greek island of Corfu over the past few days. I got to know the activists and journalists intending to sail to Gaza and received training on non-violent resistance from Anne de Jong, a passenger in the previous flotilla.
Although I had intended to report on the sail for Uitgesproken Vara and Joop, I was going first and foremost as an activist. I want Israel to lift the illegal blockade on Gaza and give the people that which they are entitled to have: Self-rule.
And that is also the issue for me: The population there. The Palestinian youths who published a document last year in which they expressed their longing for leading a normal life. I didn’t go for any political movement or for those in power.
When I decided to subject myself to the sail and the long list of preparatory engagements and training sessions it entailed, I presented the organizers with one single crucial demand: I wanted to know exactly who would sail with me on the Italian-Dutch ship and requested to have the opportunity to meet them all in advance before embarking on the trip.
I did not want to be surprised by the presence of figures or organizations with which I did not want to become involved. I was told that my demand was self-evident: There would be team-building and “we are going to have it in Greece.”
Despite assurances to the contrary, the Italian activists who were supposed to sail with us were nowhere to be seen upon our arrival in Corfu. More crucially, the Dutch delegation was isolated on the island. The rest of the flotilla was in Athens.
I repeatedly I asked to receive a tentative list of all the passengers. Realizing that many difficulties had been put in the organizers’ path, I did not expect to receive a complete list of participants. I would have been satisfied with the available information. None such information was given. Despite my insistence on receiving the list in advance, it was given to me when I decided to return to Holland. Too late.
But there was more going on. The ship’s funding remained unclear. Also regarding this point I repeatedly asked for information but as answers I was told of a loose web of associations under different umbrella and daughter organizations. The Nederland Gaza Association [the organizers of the Dutch boat ride] claims to be fully transparent. To me, this means publication of subsidies.
If this complicates fundraising and scares off donors, so be it. It’s the only way to show an already-suspicious Netherlands that you have nothing to hide.
The presence of Amin Abou Rashed suggests there is something to hide. He, too, sailed last year to Gaza with the flotilla, and he was arrested by Israel. According to various media, he is Hamas’ top figure in the Netherlands. He is also affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. How much of this is true, I do not know. How much of this is not true, I know even less. That is the problem, and it creates an atmosphere of suspicion.
Over dinner Anne de Jong insisted that it was all lies and that Amin is a terribly nice man with an unbelievable amount of love for the Palestinians. However much I wished I could believe her and those blue eyes of hers, I could not do it. Simply because his involvement with the flotilla was kept secret until the arrival to Greece. And not only vis-à-vis the rest of the world, but also when it came to the flotilla participants. I find this to be detrimental.
On this dangerous action, the participants are laying their lives on the line. It is therefore only fair that they be provided with the relevant essential information.
Amin was there the day the Dutch delegation received a non-violence training but hung in the background. Wilfred van de Poll, a journalist for Trouw, spoke briefly with Amin about his presence and role within the organization. “The brain behind the flotilla” as the man elected to be described, arranged the purchase of the boat. He also provided for the lion’s share of funding, according to Anne de Jong. If he played such a vital role, then why was it kept secret and why couldn’t I know who or what he was?
Our activists were told that the goods [aboard the ship] will be distributed by UNHCR, but it later turned out that this was not 100 percent sure. Few organizations beside UNCHR are capable of performing this task in Gaza. In fact, only one other such entity remains. Hamas. And I wanted to have nothing do with them.
The bottom line is very simple. In a mission such as this one, the activists must be able to fully trust one another, like firefighters entering a burning building. My trust in the organization only diminished the further we progressed.
The moment I expressed reservations about the information which was given out, Anne de Jong’s reacted accusatory and snappy. “Would you rather we told you nothing at all?” she demanded, as though I should applaud her right away for getting to hear anything at all. And as though I had failed to understand the magnitude of the task of setting out against a great power such as Israel.
It is regretful that the organization (according to my opinion) missed its mark. The boat is about to set sail, carrying many good intentions, too little experience and too many illusions. I wish everyone would come back in one piece. Over a period of one week I became truly attached to the Dutch group and I am convinced of their honest motivations in sailing.
I hope they remain extra critical. The goal of freeing Gaza cannot be reached without openness. And it’s up to us to set the example.
END
El Maroudi’s account generated interest in Dutch media. The following articles appeared the next day:
Censorship on the Gaza boat
De Telegraaf, Thursday June 30th, p13, by Bart Olmer
Half a page article, partly literally translated:
Furious at the paranoia, the dictatorial atmosphere, mutual distrust and outright opposition on board, all Dutch journalists decided to leave the ship on which the Dutch activists seek confrontation with Israeli marines in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas leader Amin Abou Rashed to the left behind sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood
According to the four editors who left, they were censored by the activists, who did not like critical questions, such as about the financing of the operational ship, which was bought for nearly three tons. The money is scraped together by for example collections in Dutch mosques, as this newspaper revealed earlier.
Vara editor Hasna El Maroudi decided to quit because the organization did not want to tell her what other people would be on board: "I did not want to be surprised by the presence of figures or organizations that I want nothing to do with. It also remained unclear who financed the boat. Also, I have repeatedly asked about the funding, but the answer was suspended in a web of vague foundations and umbrella organizations.
Now it appears that the infamous Dutch Hamas leader Amin Abou Rashed also been presented the training of the crew in Greece in recent days. El Maroudi: "Amin was present on the day the Dutch delegation, followed part of the non-violence training. Wilfred van de Poll, journalist for Trouw, just spoke with Amin about his presence and his role within the organization. "The brain behind the fleet" arranged the purchase of the boat. He also has a lion's share of funding provided."
El Maroudi: "During the dinner Anne de Jong (one of the driving forces behind the fleet) raved that everything is lies and that Amin is a terribly nice man, who is committed to the Palestininas with incredible love. How much I would like to believe her and her blue eyes, I can not. Simply because his involvement in the fleet had been kept secret until arrival in Greece. Not only for the outside world, but also for the passengers. "
Trouw reporter Wilfred van de Poll withdrew his participation, because he no longer trusted the organization.
Martijn Dekker, spokesman for the Netherlands- Gaza Foundation, is deeply ashamed for the collective departure of the journalists. Dekker: "We can be quite open about for example the origin of the money that the boat is paid with. We can look into the books of the donating foundation Israa. It shows that all donations come from Dutch individuals, not from a shadowy sheik from abroad. "Foundation Netherlands-Gaza says it can only release the list of passengers until after the fleet departs, as it still being changed. The Dutch action ship left yesterday and arrived today at an agreed rendezvous site, which has three other ships awaiting action.
The foundation was forced to admit that Rashed was present in Greece, because of his involvement in the purchase of the ship. But the organization denies his involvement in training, selection and briefings. A unique picture has recently emerged (see above), where the Dutch Hamas leader Sheikh Amin Abou Rashed stands behind Yusuf al Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. This Al Qaradawi is hoping to transform Egypt into fundamentalist dictatorship. The Sheikh, fierce anti-Semite and notorious for his inflammatory speeches, lived in exile in Qatar. After the revolt against Egyptian President Mubarak he returned to Cairo. Al Qaradawi would like to stone gay people and adulterers, would "dismantle" Israel, encourage suicide attacks inside Israel and believes that men should whip "rebellious" women.
Gaza flotilla surrounded by suspicion and deceit
Nederlands Dagblad, Thursday June 30th, p4
Summary:
The Dutch journalists who decided not to participate in the Gaza flotilla do not have anything positive to say about the organization Netherlands-Gaza.
Journalist Eric Beauchemin of the ‘Wereldomroep’ says never to have seen an organization as closed as Netherlands-Gaza. No filming was aloud during the two-day training in Greece, and it was kept a secret which Dutch people would participate in the fleet. It was said that well know people would participate, but this was untrue.
It is unclear who is funding the Dutch participation. VARA journalist Hasna el-Maoudi cancelled the trip because she had the suspicion that the Hamas was involved in the funding.
I have been to the Greek island of Corfu over the past few days. I got to know the activists and journalists intending to sail to Gaza and received training on non-violent resistance from Anne de Jong, a passenger in the previous flotilla.
Although I had intended to report on the sail for Uitgesproken Vara and Joop, I was going first and foremost as an activist. I want Israel to lift the illegal blockade on Gaza and give the people that which they are entitled to have: Self-rule.
And that is also the issue for me: The population there. The Palestinian youths who published a document last year in which they expressed their longing for leading a normal life. I didn’t go for any political movement or for those in power.
When I decided to subject myself to the sail and the long list of preparatory engagements and training sessions it entailed, I presented the organizers with one single crucial demand: I wanted to know exactly who would sail with me on the Italian-Dutch ship and requested to have the opportunity to meet them all in advance before embarking on the trip.
I did not want to be surprised by the presence of figures or organizations with which I did not want to become involved. I was told that my demand was self-evident: There would be team-building and “we are going to have it in Greece.”
Despite assurances to the contrary, the Italian activists who were supposed to sail with us were nowhere to be seen upon our arrival in Corfu. More crucially, the Dutch delegation was isolated on the island. The rest of the flotilla was in Athens.
I repeatedly I asked to receive a tentative list of all the passengers. Realizing that many difficulties had been put in the organizers’ path, I did not expect to receive a complete list of participants. I would have been satisfied with the available information. None such information was given. Despite my insistence on receiving the list in advance, it was given to me when I decided to return to Holland. Too late.
But there was more going on. The ship’s funding remained unclear. Also regarding this point I repeatedly asked for information but as answers I was told of a loose web of associations under different umbrella and daughter organizations. The Nederland Gaza Association [the organizers of the Dutch boat ride] claims to be fully transparent. To me, this means publication of subsidies.
If this complicates fundraising and scares off donors, so be it. It’s the only way to show an already-suspicious Netherlands that you have nothing to hide.
The presence of Amin Abou Rashed suggests there is something to hide. He, too, sailed last year to Gaza with the flotilla, and he was arrested by Israel. According to various media, he is Hamas’ top figure in the Netherlands. He is also affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. How much of this is true, I do not know. How much of this is not true, I know even less. That is the problem, and it creates an atmosphere of suspicion.
Over dinner Anne de Jong insisted that it was all lies and that Amin is a terribly nice man with an unbelievable amount of love for the Palestinians. However much I wished I could believe her and those blue eyes of hers, I could not do it. Simply because his involvement with the flotilla was kept secret until the arrival to Greece. And not only vis-à-vis the rest of the world, but also when it came to the flotilla participants. I find this to be detrimental.
On this dangerous action, the participants are laying their lives on the line. It is therefore only fair that they be provided with the relevant essential information.
Amin was there the day the Dutch delegation received a non-violence training but hung in the background. Wilfred van de Poll, a journalist for Trouw, spoke briefly with Amin about his presence and role within the organization. “The brain behind the flotilla” as the man elected to be described, arranged the purchase of the boat. He also provided for the lion’s share of funding, according to Anne de Jong. If he played such a vital role, then why was it kept secret and why couldn’t I know who or what he was?
Our activists were told that the goods [aboard the ship] will be distributed by UNHCR, but it later turned out that this was not 100 percent sure. Few organizations beside UNCHR are capable of performing this task in Gaza. In fact, only one other such entity remains. Hamas. And I wanted to have nothing do with them.
The bottom line is very simple. In a mission such as this one, the activists must be able to fully trust one another, like firefighters entering a burning building. My trust in the organization only diminished the further we progressed.
The moment I expressed reservations about the information which was given out, Anne de Jong’s reacted accusatory and snappy. “Would you rather we told you nothing at all?” she demanded, as though I should applaud her right away for getting to hear anything at all. And as though I had failed to understand the magnitude of the task of setting out against a great power such as Israel.
It is regretful that the organization (according to my opinion) missed its mark. The boat is about to set sail, carrying many good intentions, too little experience and too many illusions. I wish everyone would come back in one piece. Over a period of one week I became truly attached to the Dutch group and I am convinced of their honest motivations in sailing.
I hope they remain extra critical. The goal of freeing Gaza cannot be reached without openness. And it’s up to us to set the example.
END
El Maroudi’s account generated interest in Dutch media. The following articles appeared the next day:
Censorship on the Gaza boat
De Telegraaf, Thursday June 30th, p13, by Bart Olmer
Half a page article, partly literally translated:
Furious at the paranoia, the dictatorial atmosphere, mutual distrust and outright opposition on board, all Dutch journalists decided to leave the ship on which the Dutch activists seek confrontation with Israeli marines in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas leader Amin Abou Rashed to the left behind sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood
According to the four editors who left, they were censored by the activists, who did not like critical questions, such as about the financing of the operational ship, which was bought for nearly three tons. The money is scraped together by for example collections in Dutch mosques, as this newspaper revealed earlier.
Vara editor Hasna El Maroudi decided to quit because the organization did not want to tell her what other people would be on board: "I did not want to be surprised by the presence of figures or organizations that I want nothing to do with. It also remained unclear who financed the boat. Also, I have repeatedly asked about the funding, but the answer was suspended in a web of vague foundations and umbrella organizations.
Now it appears that the infamous Dutch Hamas leader Amin Abou Rashed also been presented the training of the crew in Greece in recent days. El Maroudi: "Amin was present on the day the Dutch delegation, followed part of the non-violence training. Wilfred van de Poll, journalist for Trouw, just spoke with Amin about his presence and his role within the organization. "The brain behind the fleet" arranged the purchase of the boat. He also has a lion's share of funding provided."
El Maroudi: "During the dinner Anne de Jong (one of the driving forces behind the fleet) raved that everything is lies and that Amin is a terribly nice man, who is committed to the Palestininas with incredible love. How much I would like to believe her and her blue eyes, I can not. Simply because his involvement in the fleet had been kept secret until arrival in Greece. Not only for the outside world, but also for the passengers. "
Trouw reporter Wilfred van de Poll withdrew his participation, because he no longer trusted the organization.
Martijn Dekker, spokesman for the Netherlands- Gaza Foundation, is deeply ashamed for the collective departure of the journalists. Dekker: "We can be quite open about for example the origin of the money that the boat is paid with. We can look into the books of the donating foundation Israa. It shows that all donations come from Dutch individuals, not from a shadowy sheik from abroad. "Foundation Netherlands-Gaza says it can only release the list of passengers until after the fleet departs, as it still being changed. The Dutch action ship left yesterday and arrived today at an agreed rendezvous site, which has three other ships awaiting action.
The foundation was forced to admit that Rashed was present in Greece, because of his involvement in the purchase of the ship. But the organization denies his involvement in training, selection and briefings. A unique picture has recently emerged (see above), where the Dutch Hamas leader Sheikh Amin Abou Rashed stands behind Yusuf al Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. This Al Qaradawi is hoping to transform Egypt into fundamentalist dictatorship. The Sheikh, fierce anti-Semite and notorious for his inflammatory speeches, lived in exile in Qatar. After the revolt against Egyptian President Mubarak he returned to Cairo. Al Qaradawi would like to stone gay people and adulterers, would "dismantle" Israel, encourage suicide attacks inside Israel and believes that men should whip "rebellious" women.
Gaza flotilla surrounded by suspicion and deceit
Nederlands Dagblad, Thursday June 30th, p4
Summary:
The Dutch journalists who decided not to participate in the Gaza flotilla do not have anything positive to say about the organization Netherlands-Gaza.
Journalist Eric Beauchemin of the ‘Wereldomroep’ says never to have seen an organization as closed as Netherlands-Gaza. No filming was aloud during the two-day training in Greece, and it was kept a secret which Dutch people would participate in the fleet. It was said that well know people would participate, but this was untrue.
It is unclear who is funding the Dutch participation. VARA journalist Hasna el-Maoudi cancelled the trip because she had the suspicion that the Hamas was involved in the funding.
Lebanon: I Was Wrong! Hizballah (Plus Syria and Iran) Is Even More in Control
Barry Rubin
I’ve written that Hizballah will have 60 percent of the seats in Lebanon’s new government, with most of the rest in the hands of Syrian-Iranian clients. This is a disaster for Western interests. Lebanon is now in the revolutionary Islamist camp along with Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the Turkish government.
But I was wrong! There have been some changes and now Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has announced his cabinet. And guess what? Hizballah has 70 percent of the ministries! Does the Obama Administration have any serious policy reaction to Lebanon being controlled by a radical Islamist terrorist organization that is a client of Iran? You know, those people who killed 242 American soldiers a few years back, kidnapped and at times murdered other Americans, and waged a war against Israel in 2006 after which the United States and UN promised to help disarm them, block their arms’ imports, and keep them out of southern Lebanon?
Apparently not. n fact, it has never done anything serious about Lebanon. And this threat has been obvious every day since the Obama Administration took power.
The punchline?: About a year or so from now I expect to be writing a similar article about Egypt.
Here are some of my Rubin Reports articles tracing this development:
April 28, 2009: Here Comes Hillary; There Goes Lebanon.”
June 4, 2009: “Hizballah Taking Over Lebanon? Don’t Worry! Be Happy!”
June 15, 2009 “Watch developments in Lebanon carefully as the struggle to form a government is going to be critical. And will the United States and Europe support the March 14 coalition, or rush to “engage” Hizballah, steps which will strengthen the radical Islamist terrorist group, and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors?”
Guess what happened.
September 1, 2009: “Lebanon: A Sinking Ship that the Obama Administration has forgotten….Walid Jumblatt, once the lion of the moderate coalition, has now deserted it, thus weakening the anti-Hizballah, anti-Syrian, Lebanese nationalist forces that want to keep Lebanon independent,”
July 31, 2010: “Syria Marches Into Lebanon; Saudis Surrender to Inevitable; State Department Proclaims Victory.”
Oh, here’s the “funny” part. The New York Times, which a few days ago was preaching there was nothing to worry about, now discovers:
“But the symbolism of Hezbollah’s choosing Lebanon’s prime minister was vast, potentially serving as the beginning of a new era for a combustible country whose conflicts have long entangled the United States, Iran and Syria. A practical impact may be the realignment of Lebanon away from the United States, which treated the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri as an ally.”
Wow! You mean the takeover of Lebanon by a revolutionary Islamist group, armed by Iran and Syria that wants to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence from the Middle East “may” move Lebanon away from the United States?
August 11, 2010: The Week Lebanon Became Part of the Anti-Western Axis and West Governments Didn’t Notice
November 23, 2010: Obama’s Statement of Support for Lebanon Shows His Lack of Support for Lebanon
June 15, 2011: Lebanon: Things Keep Getting Worse.
I would be quite content for you to compare this to coverage in the mass media of Lebanon.
I’ve written that Hizballah will have 60 percent of the seats in Lebanon’s new government, with most of the rest in the hands of Syrian-Iranian clients. This is a disaster for Western interests. Lebanon is now in the revolutionary Islamist camp along with Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the Turkish government.
But I was wrong! There have been some changes and now Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has announced his cabinet. And guess what? Hizballah has 70 percent of the ministries! Does the Obama Administration have any serious policy reaction to Lebanon being controlled by a radical Islamist terrorist organization that is a client of Iran? You know, those people who killed 242 American soldiers a few years back, kidnapped and at times murdered other Americans, and waged a war against Israel in 2006 after which the United States and UN promised to help disarm them, block their arms’ imports, and keep them out of southern Lebanon?
Apparently not. n fact, it has never done anything serious about Lebanon. And this threat has been obvious every day since the Obama Administration took power.
The punchline?: About a year or so from now I expect to be writing a similar article about Egypt.
Here are some of my Rubin Reports articles tracing this development:
April 28, 2009: Here Comes Hillary; There Goes Lebanon.”
June 4, 2009: “Hizballah Taking Over Lebanon? Don’t Worry! Be Happy!”
June 15, 2009 “Watch developments in Lebanon carefully as the struggle to form a government is going to be critical. And will the United States and Europe support the March 14 coalition, or rush to “engage” Hizballah, steps which will strengthen the radical Islamist terrorist group, and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors?”
Guess what happened.
September 1, 2009: “Lebanon: A Sinking Ship that the Obama Administration has forgotten….Walid Jumblatt, once the lion of the moderate coalition, has now deserted it, thus weakening the anti-Hizballah, anti-Syrian, Lebanese nationalist forces that want to keep Lebanon independent,”
July 31, 2010: “Syria Marches Into Lebanon; Saudis Surrender to Inevitable; State Department Proclaims Victory.”
Oh, here’s the “funny” part. The New York Times, which a few days ago was preaching there was nothing to worry about, now discovers:
“But the symbolism of Hezbollah’s choosing Lebanon’s prime minister was vast, potentially serving as the beginning of a new era for a combustible country whose conflicts have long entangled the United States, Iran and Syria. A practical impact may be the realignment of Lebanon away from the United States, which treated the government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri as an ally.”
Wow! You mean the takeover of Lebanon by a revolutionary Islamist group, armed by Iran and Syria that wants to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence from the Middle East “may” move Lebanon away from the United States?
August 11, 2010: The Week Lebanon Became Part of the Anti-Western Axis and West Governments Didn’t Notice
November 23, 2010: Obama’s Statement of Support for Lebanon Shows His Lack of Support for Lebanon
June 15, 2011: Lebanon: Things Keep Getting Worse.
I would be quite content for you to compare this to coverage in the mass media of Lebanon.
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