Islamists infiltrate US civil society

From Clarion, Wed, January 14, 2015, by Ryan Mauro:

An Egyptian government website features a warning that the Muslim Brotherhood has a lobby in the U.S. disguised as civil society organizations, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an entity of the U.S. Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, set up to support Hamas. 

Nihad Awad (C), Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Ibrahim Hooper (L), National Committee Director of CAIR during a press conference in Washington. Photo © Reuters

Watch video: CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) is in damage control after being designated a terrorist org by the UAE.

The Egyptian government’s State Information Service has an entire section devoted to documenting the violence and terrorism of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Egypt is furious with the U.S. for its stance on the Brotherhood. 

President El-Sisi told the Washington Post in December 2013, then as Defense Minister, that the U.S. has turned its back on Egypt and is misunderstanding the Islamist group.

The documentation includes a timeline  of violence perpetrated by Brotherhood members since July 2014, a statement from the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood condemning the Brotherhood’s exploitation of children, and  many videos documenting the Brotherhood’s extremism and the justifications for overthrowing it and banning it.

Most importantly, the section prominently features an article [from June 2014] about the Muslim Brotherhood operating in America and influencing U.S. policy through various fronts. It cites a study done by the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, a highly-respected organization in Cairo.

“She [Center executive director Dalia Zeyadah] warned that the MB has a network based in the US and operating through civil society organizations engaged in community service domains there. These organizations, she also warned, aim to spread the MB's extremist ideologies in the US...”

... the Brotherhood is moving to Turkey to set up the “nucleus of its European headquarters which would be operating under the cover of charity work to carry out terrorist acts across the region.”

The Cairo Post reported in February 2014 that the Ibn Khaldoun Center director Dalia Zeyadah “[asserted] that the Brotherhood are still trying to impact decisions of the White House, noting that campaigns against Brotherhood ‘terrorism’ must continue.”

The Egyptian government often talks about the International Muslim Brotherhood to emphasize that it is not just an Egyptian organization. In his interview with the Washington Post, El-Sisi said it operates in 60 countries and that Hamas is one of its branches. He warned that the group is “based on restoring the Islamic religious empire.”

The Clairon Project’s research into the Brotherhood sympathies of a senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was covered in the Egyptian media in 2013, specifically by the Al-Nahar television network.

The U.S. government confirmed the existence of a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood with a network a fronts under different names during the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, one such trial.
The Justice Department’s list of unindicted co-conspirators in that trial includes a list a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities and members. 

The list includes 

• the Islamic Society of North America, 
• the North American Islamic Trust and 
• the Council on American-Islamic Relations. 

The lattermost organization was listed as an entity of the U.S. Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a sub-section set up to support Hamas.

The United Arab Emirates caused a stir recently when it banned the Brotherhood and some of its most powerful affiliates in the U.S. and Europe, including CAIR, the Muslim American Society and Islamic Relief.

The UAE justified its designation of the U.S-based groups as terrorist organizations despite the immense backlash. The Foreign Minister of the country said it was based on the group’s incitement and funding of terrorism.

Another UAE official said the objective is “putting a cordon around all subversive entities.” And UAE State Foreign Affairs Minister Anwar Gargash said the backlash was being orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood lobby in the West.

“The noise (by) some Western organizations over the UAE’s terrorism list originates in groups that are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and many of them work on incitement and creating an environment of extremism,” Gargash tweeted.

The U.S. Justice Department, countless terrorism experts and the governments of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have confirmed the existence of a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. Brotherhood’s own documents are even publicly available.

Yet, those who point this out are ridiculed by these Islamist groups and their allies as bigoted “Islamophobes.” The accusation is even nonsensically made about Muslims who point this out.

The refusal of the U.S. government to recognize the toxic ideology of the Brotherhood is undermining America’s ability to have a frank discussion about the issue of Islamism

.

Muslim governments are providing verifiable evidence about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, but their warnings are ignored or rejected. Americans (Muslim and non-Muslim) who voice these same concerns are personally attacked.

Terms like Islamism and Political Islam are used regularly in the Muslim world and even on the Brotherhood’s own website, but the U.S. Brotherhood and its apologists say we can’t.  CAIR has waged a campaign to make the media stop using the “Islamist” term.


America is in the middle of a heated debate about the defining the threat. We should listen to our Muslim allies and let the facts speak for themselves, instead of letting Islamists and their apologists edit our vocabularies.

The Fruits of Cowardice and Appeasement Vindicate Zionism

From Isi Leibler, 12 January 2015:

The ill winds that have been gathering over Europe descended with a tornado last week in Paris with the barbaric Charlie Hebdo massacre, followed by the horrific terror attack at a kosher supermarket – a total of 17 dead in three days. But alas, the horrors will in all likelihood soon recede and life will continue as usual until the next attack.

Let me say at the outset that, while obviously condemning the murders and unequivocally defending freedom of expression, I do not associate myself with the “Je suis Charlie” movement. In condemning these barbaric acts, we are not obliged to identify with the racism and vulgarity of the victims. Charlie Hebdo was obscenely offensive to Christians and Muslims and promoted vulgar anti-Semitic satire. On the other hand, some Mormons were presumably outraged by the satirical musical “The Book of Mormon” but that did not grant them license to embark on a killing spree of the producers.

Western governments have yet to internalize the reality that what happened in Paris was not merely another instance of “terrorism” but a classic manifestation of the “clash of civilizations.”

Aside from murderous attacks primarily directed against Jews in Europe over recent months, there have been ongoing massacres and atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists throughout the world. To name a few: the butchering of 2,000 Nigerians this week in the wake of the Boko Haram enslavement of 300 schoolgirls; the murder of 130 schoolchildren in Peshawar, Pakistan by the Taliban; the barbaric videos broadcast of hostages being decapitated; ongoing mass murder in Syria and Iraq; oppression of women; and gruesome persecution, expulsion and murder of Christians in the Middle East.

Today, as the global impact of Islamic fundamentalism with increasing manifestations of brutal terrorism grows exponentially, Western leaders lack the courage even to identify the enemy. It has ominous parallels to the struggle with Nazism. Then as now, Western governments initially sought to avoid conflict by appeasing the barbarians – which only served to embolden them.

This originates in 9/11 when U.S. President George W. Bush, in his call for concerted military action against global Islamic terrorism, sought to placate his Arab allies by describing Islam as a “religion of peace.” This absurd mantra was repeatedly chanted whenever Islamic terror was mentioned and has become an overused term of the political lexicon.

But it was President Barack Obama and his administration that, despite the dramatic mushrooming of Islamic terrorism, must be held accountable for systematically denying its existence, even avoiding the term “Islamic terrorism.”

The same obstinate refusal to face reality and an effort to appease their increasingly radicalized Muslim communities motivated all European governments – in particular the French – to repeatedly state, despite all evidence to the contrary, that these acts of terrorism were unrelated to Islamic radicalism and were the actions of “lone wolves” or demented individuals. Even now, when the massacres were accompanied by calls of “Allahu akbar” and “We are avenging the Prophet Muhammad,” French President François Hollande refused to use the word “Islam,” merely referring to “obscurantist” forces. However, in stark contrast to Obama, Hollande at least condemned the kosher supermarket attack as a “dreadful anti-Semitic attack.”

Throughout the world, jihadist mullahs and preachers promote hatred and extremism. In European cities, second-generation homegrown Muslims and converts are indoctrinated to endorse and in some cases participate in jihad and the murder of infidels. Those who convert are not necessarily from the underprivileged, but “ideologues,” many of whom belong to comfortable middle class families and are university graduates.

But worse has been the unspoken acquiescence of most governments and the media, preventing any meaningful discussion of the threat from Islamic extremism. Apart from downplaying and often even denying the overriding Islamic element in acts of terror, governments and media have disgracefully branded as “Islamophobic” any serious effort to discuss and analyze the problem, even promoting “hate speech” legislation to stifle any such public discussion. The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference has attempted to make blasphemy (i.e., criticism of Islam) a crime in international law.

They have been further emboldened by the failure to immediately prosecute Islamic extremists who threaten violence against those who express criticism or dishonor Islam. What is truly ironic is that many of those on the Left who normally endorse the crudest outbursts against Christianity and Judaism, are the first to accuse any critics of Islam of Islamophobia and they display far greater concern for the sensitivities of Muslims. In many instances, Obama and European leaders have apologized and even groveled every time some crude outburst against Islam was expressed by individuals, many of whom were of marginal importance.

Of course not all Muslims are terrorists. But the number of radicals is dramatically increasing and like al-Qaida in the previous decade, Islamic State is providing them with a sense of empowerment and imbuing them with a willingness to die in pursuit of their objectives. The Paris massacres exemplify what we can expect from the thousands of well-trained indigenous battle-hardened assassins imbued with a fanaticism to sacrifice their lives to promote Islam and terrorize infidels, especially Jews, after returning from Middle East conflict zones.

While local Muslim leaders and heads of Islamic states condemned the massacres, it is chilling to witness the extent that popular public opinion, especially in the Arab world, supports terrorism. We should remind ourselves that it originated with the Iranian ayatollah’s fatwa to murder novelist Salman Rushdie, which was overwhelmingly endorsed in the Islamic world.

Even if only 20 percent of the Muslims are considered pro-jihadist – and there are in all probability more than that – this would represent two or three hundred million potential terrorists. To persist in denying the existence of such a huge Islamic terrorist presence is utterly delusional.

Above all, this undermines the moderate Islamic forces striving to stem or isolate this poisonous fanaticism that has arisen from within. Yet the Obama administration has mollycoddled the Muslim Brotherhood (a more nuanced but nevertheless direct extension of the terrorist network) and condemned the leader of the largest Muslim Middle Eastern country, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Ironically, in a historic and critical New Year address, largely ignored by the mainstream press, Sissi publicly expressed what Obama and Western leaders have been denying. He stated explicitly that jihadism and terrorism were linked to “the corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries.” He warned that this was “antagonizing the entire world,” that “this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed … by our own hands,” and that “we are in need of a religious revolution.” (click here for video link)

Clearly, now that all parties engaged are no longer committed to democracy, this is a time to review our multicultural policies. Western governments must cease their groveling, impose draconian measures against Islamic extremists and intensify pressure on Muslim communities to purge themselves of these elements.

Issues of civil liberties must be considered secondary when the safety of innocent civilians is at stake. If that requires special surveillance and interrogation of suspect Muslims, so be it. It is common sense, not bigotry, to racially profile and concentrate on those from whose midst 99 percent of terrorist outbreaks originate.

It will require intensified penetration of mosques and Islamic community centers to identify and deal with those mullahs and fanatics promoting jihadism, including the Saudi financed Wahhabi outlets in the immigrant ghettoes. It will necessitate a rigorous monitoring of Muslim schools and Internet outlets to eradicate and prosecute the extremists who are transforming youngsters into beheaders.

Failure to act will intensify the prevailing massive swing toward parties opposed to immigration and parties of the far Right like the National Front in France, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is now the frontrunner in presidential polls.

Jews have reassumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the frontlines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support. Indeed, until recently Western governments ignored the carnage in Syria, Iraq and other countries, preferring to concentrate on condemning Israeli housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and regarding Israel as the major lubricant to Islamic extremism. French support of the PA application to the U.N. Security Council on December 30, obviously designed to curry favor with local Muslims, did not deter terrorists from committing their massacres in Paris a week later.

For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the anti-Semitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying. Robert Wistrich, the world’s leading scholar on anti-Semitism, says that anti-Semitism in France is now in “an advanced stage of disease” that cannot be reversed. There were a series of anti-Semitic murders in France and Belgium preceding the Paris massacre but they failed to raise the same level of outrage as the Charlie Hebdo murders. There were no popular campaigns saying “Je suis Juif.” Indeed there seemed to be greater concern about “Islamophobia” than the targeted Jewish victims.

Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall.

For Jews, the Zionist vision has once again been tragically vindicated.

This time, Jewish blood will not be taken with impunity. Never Again.

From PJ Media, January 12, 2015, by Jonathan Spyer*:

The Islamic world is currently in the midst of a great historic convulsion. This process is giving birth to political trends and movements of a murderously violent nature. These movements offer a supposed escape route from the humiliation felt at the profound societal failure of the Arab and to a slightly lesser extent the broader Muslim world.

The escape is by way of the most violent and intolerant historic trends of Islam, into a mythologized and imagined past. The route to this old-new imagined utopia is a bloody one. All who oppose or even slight it must die. The simple and brutal laws of 7^th century Muslim Arabia are re-applied, in their literal sense. The events of last week in Paris were a manifestation of this trend.

These trends exist not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds themselves. Because of mass immigration from the Arab and Muslim world to western European countries, they are also powerful and present in immigrant communities in these countries. The Kouachi brothers and Amedi Coulibaly are the latest, and no doubt not the last representatives of this political world to impose themselves on us.

The political trend in question is called political Islam. It manifests itself in its most extreme form in the rival global networks of the Al Qaeda movement and the Islamic State. But these, alas, are only the sharp tip of a much larger iceberg.


Political Islamists are not all, or mainly, young men from slums. On the contrary, its adherents include heads of state, powerful economic interests and media groups, and prominent cultural figures. Some of these, absurdly, were even present at the "solidarity rally" in Paris.They rendered this event an empty spectacle by their presence.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, for example, came to offer his solidarity to the victims of journalists murdered by Islamists in Paris, just two days after the Turkish courts sentenced a pianist to a 10 month prison sentence, suspended for five years, for the crime of "denigrating religion (ie Islam)." 

More urgently, Turkey has been an active supporter of both Islamic State and al-Qaeda forces in northern Syria over the last three years. That is, Davutoglu was marching in condemnation of forces to which his own government has offered support.

Political Islam is a reaction to profound societal failure. It is also a flight into unreality. It has nothing practical to offer as an actual remedy to Arab and Islamic developmental problems. Economic, legal and societal models deriving from the 7^th century Arabian desert are fairly obvious impediments to success in the 21^st.

Where they are systematically imposed, as in the Islamic State, they will create something close to hell on earth. Where they remain present in more partial forms — as in Qatar, Gaza, Iran, (increasingly) Turkey, and so on — they will merely produce stifling, stagnant and repressive societies.

But the remedy for failure that political Islam offers is not a material one. It offers in generous portions the intoxicating psychological cocktail of murderous rage and self-assertion, and the desire to strike out and destroy those deemed enemies — infidels who transgress binding religious commandments, Jews and so on.

This is not the first time that Europe has encountered political phenomena based on murderous rage and utopias buried in the magical past. The European fascist movements produced precisely such a mix. But of course, this time around, the rage and the utopia derive not from European culture, but from an alien culture which has implanted itself among the Europeans.


Here is the second part of the problem. Arab and Muslim societies may be basket cases, but they retain an exceptionally strong and vivid sense of themselves. It is the irony of history that this sense of self is precisely of a type that is bound to keep their societies mired in failure. 

But history favors irony, and this sense nevertheless remains powerfully experienced and hence politically potent. In this respect, the modern Islamic world resembles western Europe of 80 or 90 years ago, but not the contemporary continent.

In contemporary western European societies, political Islam meets a human collectivity suffering, by contrast, from a profound loss of self. No one, at least in the mainstream of politics and culture, seems able to quite articulate what western European countries are for, or what they oppose — at least beyond a sort of vapid belief in everyone doing what they want and not bothering each other.

The result is that when violent political Islam collides with the satiated, lost societies of western Europe, the response is not defiance on the part of the latter, but rather fear. 

This fear, as fear is wont to do, manifests itself in various, not particularly edifying, ways.

The most obvious is avoidance ("the attacks had nothing to do with Islam," "unemployment and poverty are the root cause," "the Islamic State is neither Islamic nor a state," etc etc).
Another is appeasement — "maybe if we give them some of what they want, they'll leave us alone."

This response perhaps partially explains the notable adoption in parts of western Europe of the anti-Jewish prejudice so prevalent in the Islamic world.

The ennui of the western European mainstream will almost certainly prevent the adoption of the very tough measures which alone might serve to adequately address the burgeoning problem of large numbers of young European Muslims committed to political Islam and to violence against their host societies.

Such measures — which would include tighter surveillance and policing of communities, quick deportations of incendiary preachers, revocation of citizenship for those engaged in violence, possible imprisonment of suspects and so on — would require a political will which is manifestly absent. So it wont happen. So the events of Paris will almost certainly recur.
And lastly, since the elites will not be able to produce resistance, it will come from outside of the elites. Hence the growth of populist, nationalist parties and movements in western Europe. But Europe being what it is, such revivalist movements are likely to contain a hefty dose of the xenophobia and bigotry which characterized the continent of old.

None of this can, at present, be discussed in polite European society. But all of it is fairly obvious. For this reason, Europe's Jews are at present warily eying the door. 

As someone who was born in western Europe, and left it 25 years ago for Israel, I am happy to conclude that as a result of the efforts and sacrifice of many, Europe's Jews are this time around neither defenseless nor alone. Nor will their blood be free to be taken with impunity.


*Jonathan Spyer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).

Lassana Bathily: hero of the kosher-supermarket hostages

From AP, 11 Jan 2015:

At a kosher supermarket in Paris, a quick-thinking Muslim employee hides several Jewish shoppers in the basement before sneaking out to brief police on the hostage-taker upstairs... Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali literally provided police with the key to ending the hostage crisis at the supermarket.

Bathily was in the store's underground stockroom when gunman Amedy Coulibaly burst in upstairs, according to accounts given to French media and to a friend of Bathily's who spoke to The Associated Press. Bathily turned off the stockroom's freezer and hid a group of frightened shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to speak to police. Initially confused for the attacker, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.

Once police realised their mistake, he provided them with the key they needed to open the supermarket's metal blinds and mount their assault.

"The guy was so courageous," said Mohammed Amine, a 33-year-old friend and former coworker of Bathily's who spoke to him about the assault.

Witnesses and authorities have corroborated Bathily's account.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorised to talk on the record, explained that the key Bathily gave police allowed them to storm the supermarket without having to punch their way through the shutters.

... police used Bathily's key to mount their assault, killing Coulibaly and freeing 15 hostages.

Amid the bravery, there was also tragedy.

Police found four hostages dead inside the supermarket, apparently shot by Coulibaly when he entered the store.

Among them was Yohan Cohen, a 22-year-old who Amine said was "someone amazing, friendly, who likes (and) who respects people."

"I'm Muslim and he's Jewish," said Amine, an immigrant from Morocco. "But there's such respect between us. We're like brothers.

"They took my best friend."

The Arab oil era is over

From Ynet News, 5 Jan 2015, by Guy Bechor:

As the Gulf states are left with no money to spend and are experiencing internal shocks, the era of destructive Arab power is coming to an end; the Israeli mind and innovation era, on the other hand, is just beginning.  

The most dramatic news in 2014 almost went unnoticed: The United States lifted the restrictions on American oil exports, and as of the first day of the new year it has begun exporting oil to the world.

No one believed this would happen so fast, but the US is already the world's biggest oil manufacturer, bigger than Saudi Arabia, thanks to the oil shale technology which changed the world of energy.

Within a year, the US is expected to export about one million barrels of oil a day and produce 12 million barrels a day. Iran, for the same of comparison, manufactures about a million and a half barrels a day.

This means that oil prices will continue to drop, as the US is already competing against other manufacturers. As a result, Russia will be crushed, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf states will fall flat on their face, the cartel will collapse, and all the dictatorships which were mainly based on oil – like Iran – will face a gloomy future.

At the same time, democracies like Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and even little Israel will enter the market.


US President Barack Obama with Saudi King Abdullah (Photo: AP)

The Arab oil era is over, and so is the destructive power of the Persian Gulf's oil dictatorships. 

These dictatorships have disgracefully controlled the failing Europe: Buying politicians, bribing companies, taking over the economy and gaining political power which was also used against Israel. 

...The signs of the drop in Arab power can already be seen. Twenty-two Arab states made a huge effort last week to pass an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations Security Council, but failed. The US was undeterred by them, and so were strong Western countries. It's true that France and Luxemburg are still controlled by the Arab capital, or think they are, but they will also realize that the era of Arab money is over.

...And what about the rich Gulf states, like Qatar? They are deluding themselves that someone will be interested in them if they don’t have oil. Some are even toying with the idea of tourism. Well, if there is no oil, no one will want to come there at all, and the sand will once again cover the towers rising in the air which they have built. 

And Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority? Well, no one in the Gulf actually donated money to this entity even before the crisis, although there were always festive declarations. 

As the year 2015 begins, we are facing a new world: A world of a revolution of information, mind, personal strength, innovation and inventions. And in this world, Israel is a real princess.  and the global and Israeli mind era begins. It's a fact that countries which wouldn't dare approach us in the past – because of the Arab extortion – are now doing so hastily, as if to make up for the lost time of so many years.



Israel is becoming a close friend of countries which were distant in the past but are close today, like India, Japan, China and South Korea. They too understand that those who are not innovative and lack a creative mind will just not be. And in this field, Israel has a lot to offer them, just like they have a lot to offer in return.

Will France degenerate into a hostage state

From Spengler, 8 Jan 2015:

Along with journalists and writers everywhere, I mourn our murdered colleagues at Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly that had the courage to poke fun at Islam, and paid a horrendous price.

This is a new and terrible step on the part of the terrorists: they have threatened individual journalists for years and forced a few into hiding or witness protection. But the assault on the premises of a news organization and the massacre of its staff is an entirely new thing. We have never seen anything like this before in the sorry history of terrorism.

How will France respond?

France now faces an existential dilemma. By most independent estimates France now has a Muslim population of 6 million, or almost 10% of its 65 million people. If we assume that just 1% of this population are radicalized to the point of engaging in or providing support for terrorist activities, that is a pool of 60,000 individuals. We are not speaking of 60,000 potential bombers or shooters, but a support network that will allow a much smaller number of terrorists to blend into the broader population. In the “no-go” zones of France now effectively ruled by Muslim gangs, moreover, the terrorists can intimidate the Muslim population. France already has lost the capacity to police part of its territory, which means that it cannot conduct effective counter-terror operations.

To put that number in context, the whole prison population of France is less than 70,000, of whom 60% are Muslims. It only takes a few dozen trained terrorists with an effective support network to bring ordinary life to a stop in a major city. France has had the toughest enforcement policy against radical Islam among the major European nations, as Daniel Pipes observes. But French security clearly has been overwhelmed. The use of assault rifles and (reportedly) a rocket launcher by highly-skilled gunmen in the center of Paris is a statement of contempt towards the authorities on the part of the terrorists.

The means by which France could defeat the terrorists are obvious: To compel the majority of French Muslims to turn against the terrorists ...is a nasty business involving large numbers of deportations, revocation of French citizenship, and other threats that inevitably would affect many individuals with no direct connection to terrorism. In the short term it would lead to more radicalization. ...The effort would be costly, but ultimately it would succeed: most French Muslims simply want to stay in France and earn a living.

There is no good outcome here, but the worst outcome would be the degeneration of France into a hostage state.

The Jews are just an excuse

From Israel Hayom, 8 Jan 2015, by Dan Margalit:

.... The Jews are just an excuse. ... in the past it was the Nazis, now extremist Muslims [want to] enslave all of humanity and crush human dignity and liberty.

A lot of French people, and others, believed that Islamic State and al-Qaida terrorists would only target places like the Jewish school Toulouse or the Jewish museum in Brussels. But as it turns out, that is not the case. ...

... it is radical Islam against Western culture, Christianity and, of course, the Jews. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to declare that "all the free countries and all the civilized societies have to band together to fight this scourge." But nothing will come of it, because there will always be nations and governments that believe that if they only sacrifice the Jews they can achieve peace for themselves. But they would be deluding themselves. 

It is safe to assume, even now, a day after the terrible tragedy in Paris, that many in France would still insist that if only there were no Jews in France, the tension with radical Islamists would not have become as murderous. In any case, they will say, it is all because of the Jewish occupation. 

There are even Jews who believe that. Even Israeli Jews. ...Certain Jews have been influenced by cosmopolitan Europeans and they don't understand that in a crisis, the cosmopolitan Europeans will not hesitate to turn on them. 

....But in one respect, the Jews are better off than their hosts: The Jews have a homeland to which they can return.... Where will the Dutch, Belgians, Germans and Swedes flee when the ISIS death seeds planted in the European hothouse grow out of control? ...

Europe stares into an abyss

From JPost, 8 January 2015, by Melanie Phillips:

Is this a tipping point? Has the West finally been shaken out of its complacency? The horrific massacre in Paris ...has shocked Europe

...The emotion behind the “Je Suis Charlie” demonstrations, as an expression of solidarity with the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff, was very understandable. But did anyone actually mean it?

...very few people indeed mean “Je Suis Charlie,” since the media response to the massacre has been carefully to obliterate the images Charlie Hebdo published that so offended al-Qaida.

The French have also been declaring defiantly that free speech will never be surrendered. But there has been no free media expression about Islam ever since the 1989 Iranian fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie over his book, The Satanic Verses.

That was when the West sold the pass. In Britain, people supporting Rushdie’s murder were never prosecuted.

As his book was burned on British streets, establishment figures turned on the author for having offended Islam.

In 2006, riots following the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons left scores dead around the world. But virtually every media outlet – except for Charlie Hebdo – refused to republish them.

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on a Netherlands street for making a film criticizing Islam. In 2012, Lars Hedegaard, who founded the Danish Free Press Society after the Muhammad cartoons affair,was shot point blank on his doorstep, although he miraculously survived.

To all these outrages, the West responded by blaming the victims for provoking their attackers. After this week’s Paris massacre, commentators on CNN observed that Charlie Hebdo had been “provoking Muslims” for some time. On The Financial Times website, Tony Barber wrote that “some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo... which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.”...

The fact is that Islamic terrorism and intimidation against the West have been going on for decades, matched by displays of Western weakness which merely encourage an enemy it refuses properly to identify.

Over and over again, the West denies that these attacks have anything to do with Islam. First it blamed poverty and exclusion among Muslims. Then it blamed grievances around the world – Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine.

Then it blamed isolated madmen whose Muslim identity was irrelevant.

In France before Christmas, attacks in which cars were used as battering rams against crowds amid shouts of “Allahu akbar” were said by French authorities to be unconnected with each other.

Yet Muslim violence in France has clearly been out of control for years. Just look at the repeated Islamic pogroms against French Jews, which have driven thousands of them to emigrate. Yet none of those attacks provoked the kind of outrage that followed this week’s atrocity. Is free speech more important than the lives of French Jews? 

But the West refuses to join up the dots. The Charlie Hebdo attackers shouted “Allahu akbar” and “We are avenging the Prophet Muhammad.”

Yet Obama, Cameron, and Hollande condemned the attack as merely “terrorism,” carefully omitting to say what kind of terrorism this was.

This follows their absurd statements that the Islamic State terrorist group has “nothing to do with Islam” and that “no religion” condones that kind of barbarism.

Really? What links Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hamas, and Boko Haram? It’s a religion beginning with the letter I and ending with M.

A very senior British civil servant once told me that Islamist terrorism couldn’t be about Islam, because that would “demonize” all Muslims. This absurd non-sequitur was like saying the Inquisition had nothing to do with Catholicism, in order not to demonize Catholics.

For sure, many Muslims are not only opposed to Islamist terrorism but are its principal victims. But to pretend that it is not rooted in a legitimate interpretation of the religion, backed up by the historical evidence of centuries of aggressive and violent Islamic conquest, is ridiculous.

If the West cannot even bring itself to acknowledge what it is up against, then it will surely be defeated by it.

Both France and Britain in their different ways have given in to Muslim extremism...

France, which pushed its Muslims out to peripheral housing estates to fester, has ceded control of those estates to Islamist radicals, thus creating in effect mini-states within a state.

At same time, the West has shown weakness by giving in to terrorism abroad. Thus France voted for the recent Palestinian ultimatum at the UN, thereby rewarding terrorism and Jew-hatred. Obama, who in the wake of the Paris massacre intoned “Free expression and a free press are principles… that can never be eradicated,” is busily appeasing the Iranian terrorist regime, which jails, tortures, and executes political opponents and is pledged to the genocide of the Jews and an Islamic takeover of the West.

What the West should be doing is drawing a very firm line in the sand to defend its own values. It should be fighting Muslim radicalization by establishing what should be considered totally unacceptable.

At present, for example, it ignores the Jew-hatred coursing through the Muslim world.Yet this is a driving force behind Islamist terrorists, who believe not only that modernity and the West must be destroyed, but that the Jews are behind both of them.

Europe has failed to learn the lesson of the Holocaust. This is that Jew-hatred is not some unpleasant but marginal aberration; it is not just a threat to Jews or to Israel.

It is nothing less than a psychic derangement that drives the entire civilization show off the road.

Muslims must confront the beliefs in their own religion and culture that swell the seas in which terrorism swims. And the non-Muslim West must start to teach Muslims the hard truths that will force them to do so.

The problem is that another Western core value is the desire to compromise – even with those whose agenda brooks no compromise, and who see such a desire as a weakness to be exploited.

With the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, Europe stares into an abyss.

But a tipping point? I fear not.

European Recognition of Hamas a win for Islamist terror

From The Australian,  January 10, 2015, by Jennifer Oriel:

IN the long view of history, the Western world’s response to terrorism will be seen as a paradox of criminalising the effects while cosseting the cause. 

Only a few weeks prior to the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo artists in Paris, the European Parliament uncritically acknowledged the terrorist group Hamas as a standing government in its motion to recognise Palestinian statehood.  
 
Australia and the US were the only two members of the UN Security Council to vote against recognition of Palestinian statehood in December. The decision was criticised by acting Labor leader Tony Burke and foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek...

... unqualified recognition of Palestinian statehood presents a significant problem to the free world.

Palestine is governed by a unity alliance between the Palestinian Authority and the terrorist organisation Hamas. To recognise Palestine under the unity alliance government is to afford Hamas a dangerous degree of political legitimacy.

Despite its listing as a terrorist organisation, Hamas has managed to escape broad censure in the recent campaign for Palestinian statehood. Instead, it markets itself as a charitable organisation, giving aid to needy Gazans displaced by Israeli aggression on the one side and Palestinian Authority corruption on the other. Like most terrorist organisations, however, its regime necessitates perpetual war against a permanent enemy.

After establishing government in Gaza, Hamas’s popularity waned, but it was restored by last year’s Gaza war. The Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that following the war, support for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh rose from 41 to 55 per cent while support for the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas fell from 53 to 38 per cent.

Hamas may have lost the military battle with Israel, but it’s winning the propaganda war for Palestinian votes and Western hearts.

Western support for Palestinian statehood followed the Gaza conflict in which more than 2000 people were killed, mostly Gazans. Despite the fact that the war was provoked by Hamas murdering Israeli teenagers and the group bombarded Israel throughout the conflict, international criticism was directed primarily at the Israeli response, which was considered disproportionate.

Hamas used the Gaza conflict to market itself as a permanent victim of Israel for which the only reasonable response was uncritical sympathy. Like Islamic State, Hamas has learned the power of claiming victim status abroad while it practises terrorism at home.

The similarities between Islamic State and Hamas do not end in their shared talent for propaganda. Like Islamic State, Hamas has proclaimed its intention to establish an Islamist caliphate by jihadist revolution. In 2013, Hamas’s “interior minister” in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, declared: “We shall be coming with a third intifada, an armed revolution, a jihadi revolution” as a “prelude to the establishment of the future Islamic caliphate”.

Soon after coming to power in Gaza, Hamas introduced strict Sharia law, consistent with the principles of its founding organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood. Its covenant declares: “Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.” The statement precludes the possibility of a viable peace settlement between Hamas-controlled territory in Palestine and any secular or diverse-faith state, including Israel. Writing for a Hudson Institute journal, researchers Rashad Ali and Hannah Stuart note that the Hamas covenant bears a strong similarity to the official ideology of al-Qa’ida.

Hamas’s commitment to terrorism is evident not only in its founding charter, declarations of jihad and commitment to an Islamist caliphate, but its system of “revolutionary” tribunals, which authorise extrajudicial executions of political dissidents. Last year it executed 18 Gazans, claiming their relations with Israelis constituted treason.

The recognition of Hamas as a legitimate government is implicit in unqualified endorsements of Palestinian statehood. Such recognition sets a dangerous precedent in international relations, which other terrorist groups could use to claim legitimacy in the future.

Despite the apparent threat, the European Parliament enjoined greater Europe to recognise Palestine in December. A brisk coda qualifying the peaceful intent and non-binding nature of the motion assuaged parliamentary centrists, apparently unaware that if made binding the resolution may constitute an accord between greater Europe and Islamist terrorism.

The EU’s in-principle recognition of Palestine as a nation-state was prepared by socialists and includes explicit recognition of Hamas’s governance of Gaza. Hours before the parliament’s decision, the substantive problem of endorsing a terrorist organisation as a ruling entity was transformed into a game of semantics when the EU General Court annulled the decision to list Hamas as a proscribed terrorist group, citing lack of official evidence on the group. While the court may reinstate the terrorist designation, the reprieve enabled parliamentary accession to the Palestinian motion without technical impediment.

As in the EU, socialists have spurred most western European motions to recognise Palestine. Late last year, Sweden’s Social Democrat-Green coalition made it the first major European state to recognise Palestine in a binding motion. France, Britain, Ireland and Spain have passed non-binding resolutions.

One has to peel away layers of spin to expose the fundamental paradox at the core of these resolutions to recognise Palestine. In a statement by Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish government claimed that the unity alliance between the PA and Hamas enhanced the “capacity for internal cohesion” in Palestine towards a peaceful two-state solution.

It remains unclear how the Left-Greens arrived at the absurd conclusion that sharing government with a terrorist organisation presages political cohesion and peace.

Consistent with the red-green alliance driving recognition of Palestine in Europe, Australian Greens leader Christine Milne has declared intent to move a motion on Palestine when parliament resumes next month....