Gaza flotillas reek of hypocrisy

From WSJ, 29 July 2010, by DANNY AYALON, Israel's deputy minister of foreign affairs:

A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.

Government ministers and spokesmen tried to explain to the international community that the Palestinian militants were backed by Syria and global jihadist elements.

...the events described above took place ...in Lebanon in the summer of 2007, when Palestinian terrorists attacked the Lebanese Army, which struck back with deadly force. The scene of most of the fighting was the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, which was home to the Islamist Fatah al-Islam, a group that has links with al Qaeda.

At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the "prison camps" in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally.

Today, there are more than 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon who are deprived of their most basic rights.

• The Lebanese government has a list of tens of professions that a Palestinian is forbidden from being engaged in, including professions such as medicine, law and engineering.
• Palestinians are forbidden from owning property and need a special permit to leave their towns.
• Unlike all other foreign nationals in Lebanon, they are denied access to the health-care system.

... the Palestinians in Lebanon suffer from "discrimination and marginalization" and are treated like "second class citizens" and "denied their full range of human rights." ... most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have little choice but to live in overcrowded and deteriorating camps and informal gatherings that lack basic infrastructure.

In view of the worsening plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon, it is the height of irony that a Lebanese flotilla is organizing to leave the port of Tripoli [in Lebanon] in the next few days to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. According to one of the organizers, the participants are "united by a feeling of stark injustice."


This attitude exposes the dishonesty of the whole flotilla exercise. Whether it is from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate in these flotillas reek of hypocrisy.

There are currently 100 armed conflicts and dozens of territorial disputes around the world. There have been millions of people killed and hundreds of millions live in abject poverty without access to basic staples. And yet hundreds of high-minded "humanitarian activists" are spending millions of dollars to reach Gaza and hand money to Hamas that will never reach the innocent civilians of Gaza.

This is the same Gaza that just opened a sparkling new shopping mall that would not look out of place in any capital in Europe. Gaza, where a new Olympic-sized swimming pool was recently inaugurated and five-star hotels and restaurants offer luxurious fare.

Markets brimming with all manner of foods dot the landscape of Gaza, where Lauren Booth, journalist and "human rights activist," was pictured buying chocolate and luxurious items from a well-stocked supermarket before stating with a straight face that the "situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur."

No one claims that the situation in Gaza is perfect. Since the bloody coup and occupation by Hamas of Gaza in 2007, in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed, Israel has had no choice but to ensure that Hamas is not able to build up an Iranian port on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Until Hamas meets the three standards laid out by the international community, namely

• renouncing violence,
• recognizing Israel's right to exist and
• abiding by previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,

Hamas will continue to be shunned by the international community.

While Israel's policy is to continue to see that all civilian needs are addressed, it can not allow Hamas to rearm and use Gaza as a base to attack Israel and beyond. For this reason, Israel initiated a blockade, fully legal under international law, to ensure that no items can be appropriated by Hamas to attack innocent civilians.

Organizations that wish to join the U.N. and the Red Cross to deliver goods or aid to Gaza are welcome to do so through the Kerem Shalom crossing or even through Egyptian ports. Those that refuse and seek to break the legal blockade to boost Hamas are interested in provocation.

If Israel allows these confrontational flotillas to successfully open up a shipping lane for arms smuggling for an Iranian proxy, then the region will suffer from continuous conflict. Actions that embolden the extremists will be at the cost of the moderates and this will pose a grave danger to moving the peace process forward.

The latest flotilla preparing to leave from Lebanon fully exposes not only the hypocrisy but the danger of these provocative vigilante flotillas. The Lebanese flotilla, whose organizers claim injustice while ignoring the dire human rights situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, amply demonstrate that these flotillas have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with delegitimizing Israel.

A Former Terrorist Renounces Islamic Terrorism, Praises Israel and calls on Islam to change

From YouTube, November 16, 2009 poted by PuttingItMildly, produced by Israel National News:

4 Accused of Bombing Plot at Bronx Synagogues

From The New York Times, May 21, 2009, by AL BAKER and JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ:

Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, officials said. But the men did not know the bombs, obtained with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were fake.

The arrests capped what officials described as a “painstaking investigation” that began in June 2008 involving an F.B.I. agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America. As part of the plot, the men intended to fire Stinger missiles at military aircraft at the base, which is at Stewart International Airport, officials said.

...Law enforcement officials identified the four men arrested as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh. [Corrected report: One is a Haitian immigrant and the other three are African-Americans; none are of Arabic descent.] At least three were United States citizens, according to officials. They are all Muslim, a law enforcement official said.

...Political leaders responded to the news of the arrests with statements expressing relief.

“This was a very serious threat that could have cost many, many lives if it had gone through,” Representative Peter T. King, Republican from Long Island, said in an interview with WPIX-TV. “It would have been a horrible, damaging tragedy. There’s a real threat from homegrown terrorists and also from jailhouse converts.” ...

Zachor: Remember Forever

From Arutz Sheva, 12/3/08, by Daniel Pinner:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you were exiting from Egypt: how he chanced upon you on the way, and attacked you by smiting the weak who were straggling behind you, when you were tired and exhausted, and he did not fear God. And it will be, when HaShem your God gives you respite from all your surrounding enemies in the Land which HaShem your God gives you as an inheritance to inherit - eradicate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget.” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)

Every year, on Shabbat Zachor - the Shabbat of Remembrance, the Shabbat immediately preceding Purim - we read these three verses as the Maftir, the concluding section of the Torah reading....remembering Amalek is appropriate in the run-up to Purim, commemorating the attempt of Amalek’s descendant, Haman, to complete his ancestor’s evil work. ...

...what was important was ...the fact that Amalek wanted to exterminate us all.

...See how they hate us. In every generation - not just the original generation of Amalek, but throughout history. Lest anyone mistakenly believe that Amalek reacted to a chance encounter.... he was willing to travel across a thousand miles of desert in a single night, deliberately to come upon us, just to try to exterminate us....

...Lest anyone think that, given time, Amalek would realise the futility of conflict, half a millennium later he was still trying to exterminate us in Israel in the days of King Saul. And lest we think that Amalek only wants to drive us out of Israel, that he would accept us if only we would be exiled from our land, lest we think that Amalek is only against Zionists, but not against Jews, a millennium after his initial attack his descendants are still trying to exterminate us in exile in Persia.....

...And lest anyone think that Amalek only wants to destroy the religious among us, lest anyone believe that assimilation will bring us respite, know that he attacked not the religious or the Torah scholars, but those of the tribe of Dan who were the furthest from Torah. [Hitler tried to murder anyone with just one Jewish grandparent, regardless of their observance or even awareness of their Jewish connection- SL]

And should you desire to know who has the greatest obligation to fight Amalek, never think that if you are a Torah scholar, a yeshiva student, then you are absolved of this duty. Those who fight must be those “men... who are brave, strong in mitzvot, and victorious in war.” And never believe that it is forbidden to leave the cloistered walls of the yeshiva to defend your fellow-Jews: “Go out from the protection of the Clouds of Glory to wage war against Amalek’s camps.” ...

...And know that whenever and wherever Israel is attacked, whether on the way towards Israel, whether within Israel, or whether in exile, the appropriate Jewish response is not to conciliate the murderous attacker, not to try to make peace with the leaders of the enemy nation, but to chop off the enemy warriors’ heads....

...And know that those who try to exterminate us will themselves be exterminated - utterly, irrevocably, eternally. Irony of ironies: the only way that anyone will even be aware that they existed will be that our history mentions them.

They will be consigned to oblivion, having no remembrance in this world or the next. And irony of ironies: the only way that anyone will even be aware that they existed will be that our history mentions them. Had it not been for the Torah, who would ever have heard of Amalek or of his descendant Haman? They are remembered solely by those whom they wanted to exterminate, and who instead exterminated them, measure for measure.

And just as victory over Amalek is crucial, so too is it crucial to “write this as a remembrance in the Book, and place it in Joshua’s ears” - specifically, to inscribe it in the Book of the Elders. The leaders of Israel must perforce be educated in this war against Amalek, lest they forget its eternal messages, and end up trying to placate evil, to co-exist with murderers, and thereby collaborate in the extermination of Jews.

And just as Amalek attacked us when we were at peace in the desert - after 210 years of exile and slavery we wanted nothing more than to make our way back home - so too, measure for measure, when Amalek will think himself at peace, we are commanded to attack him: “When HaShem your God gives you respite from all your surrounding enemies in the Land which HaShem your God gives you as an inheritance to inherit - eradicate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.”

Do not wait for him to make war before going out to obliterate him: attack him when you are living in peace in Israel. Amalek, through his murderous attack on us, has forfeited any right to his own peace and security. And, as Yonatan ben Uziel paraphrases this final exhortation: “And it will be, when HaShem your God gives you respite from all those who hate you surrounding the Land which HaShem your God gives you as an inheritance to inherit - eradicate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.....”

Normal Craziness

From The Times, September 26, 2007:

Ahmadinejad’s relationship with reality is beyond repair

Shortly before he left Iran for New York, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended a military parade featuring army lorries emblazoned with the slogans “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. The Iranian President also told a US interviewer who met him in his garden in Tehran: “I cannot tell a lie.”

Less than 24 hours after the interview was broadcast he was telling an audience at Columbia University that “we do not have homosexuals like in your country” and that Iranian women, who in recent months have been detained in large numbers for failing to cover themselves in public, were “the freest in the world”.

... On his theatrical – and ultimately illuminating – visit to America, Mr Ahmadinejad has provided evidence of nothing so much as sheer mendacity. It is to be hoped that his audience at the UN last night bore this firmly in mind as he lectured them, once again, on Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear intentions.

Mr Ahmadinejad is no more truthful on his nuclear plans than on homosexuality, women’s rights or the Holocaust, which he has called a myth. Even his claim to have a right to develop peaceful nuclear reactors is false: under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, it has forfeited that right by building the plant for highly enriched uranium production that has triggered two sets of UN sanctions in the past year. Neither set has had any significant effect. Iran has refused to cease its enrichment programme or accept the “intrusive inspections” that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is required to carry out in the circumstances.

Iran has no compelling economic need for civilian nuclear reactors. In a perfect world this would not constitute an argument against building them, but power generation is not the purpose of the cascade of 3,000 uranium centrifuges being built at Natanz. Acquiring nuclear weapons is a central aim of Mr Ahmadinejad’s blinkered brand of Persian nationalism, which aims to assert influence far beyond Iran’s borders.

When President Sarkozy of France called a nuclear-armed Iran “an unacceptable risk for regional and world stability”, he was merely articulating common sense. It is not too late to avoid that risk through diplomacy, but time is running out. France, the US and the UK have called for a third UN Security Council resolution and a new set of sanctions to punish Tehran for persistently ignoring its obligations under the NonProliferation Treaty. Such a resolution is unlikely in the short term, largely because of an unhelpful deal struck with Iran by the IAEA on a miscellany of peripheral nuclear-related questions, giving Russia and China a pretext to continue to drag their feet over joining Europe and the US on the core issues of inspection and suspension of enrichment. But even in the absence of new UN sanctions, the EU could usefully tighten its own.

Mr Ahmadinejad has shown why the world should be more concerned about his intentions for Iran. He has condemned himself in his own words.

Ahmadineh-jabber-jabber-wocky in USA

From AFP, 26/9/07 ....

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wraps up his third visit to the United States Wednesday after using his platform at the United Nations to downplay Tehran's nuclear ambitions and attack Washington.

...Despite being derided as a "petty and cruel dictator" while appearing at Columbia University, the Iranian leader used his visit to try to calm the international community over the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions....

....Ahmadinejad used his address to world leaders gathered for the UN General Assembly Tuesday to say Iran considered the controversy over its nuclear program closed and to launch a broad attack on arch foe the United States.

....Iran has come under two waves of international sanctions for its nuclear program, which Ahmadinejad insists is only for energy production......Nevertheless, the international community has taken scant consolation from his comments and is expected to push for a third round of UN sanctions.

The visit comes at a low point in relations between the United States and Iran, which broke off diplomatic ties at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution and have been at loggerheads recently over a raft of issues.

...Iran [is] a state sponsor of terror...arming insurgents battling US troops in Iraq and ...equipping Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah....a terrorist organization....

...he suffered the rare indignity of a public dressing down at the university. Booed and strongly challenged on his views on the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad ..... was forced to sit through 10 minutes of broadsides from university president Lee Bollinger....

..."Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad, accusing him of brutal crackdowns notably on the country's academics and homosexuals and for stifling dissent.

"Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?" he asked, challenging the leader of the Islamic republic to explain his comments downplaying the Holocaust.

"When you come to a place like this, this makes you quite simply ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," he said.

Ahmadinejad ....avoid[ed] any direct answers to Bollinger's challenges.

.... as he talked of Iran's culture and outlook on the world, Ahmadinejad drew the biggest jeers from students for stating that homosexuality did not exist in the Islamic republic. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he said to a chorus of howls, laughter and boos. "In Iran we don't have this phenomenon, I don't know who told you this."

Ahmadinejad was due to fly to Bolivia on Wednesday and to later visit fellow ... pariah, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Al Qaeda's Travel Agent

From The Wall Street Journal, BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut, Monday, August 20, 2007...

Damascus International Airport is a hub for terrorists.

The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

...defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires not only that we continue pressing the offensive against its leadership and infrastructure inside the country. We must also aggressively target its links to "global" al Qaeda and close off the routes its foreign fighters are using to get into Iraq.

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.

.....That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide bombers--and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of the Iraq-bound extremists transit.....and the overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East....

....It is therefore time to demand that the Syrian regime stop playing travel agent for al Qaeda in Iraq. When Congress reconvenes next month, we should set aside whatever differences divide us on Iraq and send a clear and unambiguous message to the Syrian regime, as we did last month to the Iranian regime, that the transit of al Qaeda suicide bombers through Syria on their way to Iraq is completely unacceptable, and it must stop.

....Responsible air carriers should be asked to stop flights into Damascus International, as long as it remains the main terminal of international terror. Despite its use by al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorists, the airport continues to be serviced by many major non-U.S. carriers, including Alitalia, Air France, and British Airways.....

....Simply put, for the U.S. and our Iraqi allies, defeating al Qaeda in Iraq means locking shut Syria's "Open Door" policy to terrorists.....

Hamas TV's child star says she's ready for martyrdom

From the Santa Barbara News, by Dion Nissenbaum, August 14, 2007 ....

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Saraa Barhoum picked at the buttons on her pink bellbottom jeans as she twisted on a chair inside the bustling new Hamas television headquarters. The afternoon light bounced off the sparkly outlines of butterflies on her frilly top, and a colorful hijab framed her 11-year-old face.

Saraa wants to be a doctor. If she can't, the young star of Hamas television's best-known children's show said, she'd be proud to become a martyr. Saraa says little Jewish girls should be forced from their homes in Israel so that Palestinians can return to their land.

With the show's producer helpfully offering written tips during an interview, Saraa didn't get into how she hopes to die for her cause, be it suicide bombing, fighting the Israeli military or some other way. She carefully sidestepped any suggestion that she's subtly calling for the destruction of Israel....

....Saraa is the sweet face of ''Tomorrow's Pioneers,'' a weekly, hour-long Hamas television children's show best known for bringing the world a militant Mickey Mouse look-alike and then having him killed off by an Israeli interrogator. With her jarring mix of innocent charm and militant rhetoric, Saraa is at the center of the militant Islamist group's increasingly sophisticated campaign to become the dominant force in Palestinian politics.

....Since it went on the air last year in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-funded al-Aqsa television has gained momentum and expanded its audience to include the West Bank. Taking a lead from Hezbollah's al-Manar television station in Beirut, Hamas is using al-Aqsa to promote its agenda and challenge its rivals, in this case Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his fractured Fatah allies....

....''Tomorrow's Pioneers'' sparked an international furor in April when it began featuring Farfour, the Mickey Mouse look-alike who sounded more like Iran's firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than a Disney character.

...The Israeli government and activists who monitor Palestinian programming accused Hamas of poisoning the minds of young children with the show. After two months, Farfour was beaten to death on the show by an Israeli interrogator. Nahoul, a larger-than-life bee, is now carrying his message. ''A lot of people in Palestine have died as martyrs, and lots of Palestinians hope to be martyrs,'' Saraa said of Farfour's demise. ''This is one of the ends.''

Asked if she hoped one day to be a martyr, Saraa instinctively nodded her head. ''Of course,'' Saraa said. ''It's something to be proud of. Every Palestinian citizen hopes to be a martyr.''
Saraa helps deliver similar messages to Palestinian children from a Hamas TV set filled with colorful numbers and pictures of kittens. During the show, Saraa fields calls from Palestinian children who warble songs about Islam, liberating Jerusalem and finding answers in the barrel of a machine gun.

... Saraa is the true face of Hamas, an extremist group that's using an innocent front to conceal its real agenda.

...On the show, Saraa offers moral lessons to viewers and urges them to do what they can to fight Israeli occupation. After some prodding in an interview, Saraa offered a personal message for Israeli girls her age. ''They have to leave,'' she said. ''This is our country. They kicked us out and stole our happiness. This is a natural result.''......

---

Follow the links below to see exerpts from the Hamas TV show ''Tomorrow's Pioneers,'' featuring Saraa Barhoum and Farfour:

Farfour's first shows with Saraa

Farfour is killed by Israeli interrogator

Farfour is replaced by Nahoul the bee

Al Qaeda Dislocates US Security Plan by Genocidal Massacre

From a DEBKAfile Exclusive Report, August 17, 2007 [my own emphasis added - SL]...




Yazidi victims of al Qaeda in Iraq




This time, Al Qaeda in Iraq selected a tiny, isolated, unprotected community of some 150,000 Yazidi Kurds, persecuted by Sunni and Shiite Muslims alike, as the victims of its barbarity. Tuesday, Aug. 14, within minutes, three oil tankers driven by suicide bombers had murdered at least 500 people, injured more than 1,000 and transformed an ancient indigenous Iraqi sect into a humanitarian problem.

While rescuers were still digging bodies out of the rubble of their destroyed homes in Qataniya and Adnaniya near Mosul, tens of thousands snatched their remaining belongings and streamed to the Syrian border.

Exchanges among al Qaeda’s adherents in Iraq 4, picked up by DEBKAfile’s special monitors, disclosed method behind the savagery. The jihadists had made an example of the Yazidis of Mt. Sinjar, holding them up as the first complete community they had succeeded in driving out of Iraq. They even urged harassing the refugees to speed the removal of every last Yazidi Kurd from Iraq.

Al Qaeda timed its brutal attack for maximum disruption of the latest American operations in the framework of the US-Iraqi overall Phantom Strike offensive to secure Iraq against insurgents and terrorists....

....To defeat the US-led security campaign, al Qaeda appears to have opted for meting out death and destruction among large groups of civilians, aimed at forcing them out of their homes and causing hundreds of thousands of displaced people to wander hither and thither in search of safety, strangling communications and generating mayhem across the country. Blocked roads are intended to snarl the US offensives and compel the troops to turn to the immediate task of locating the deadly fuel trucks hurtling down the highways before they explode and inflict carnage.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that al Qaeda employed two revealing methods of operation this week:

1. Singled out as a soft targeted for the suicide bombers at the wheels of oil trucks was an isolated sect living in a remote community, which was easily accessible and unprotected by American or Iraqi forces or local security resources. The Yazidis live in communities of 5,000 to 20,000 which are clearly defined by religion and ethnic, tribal and clan kinship.

2. It looks as though Qaeda is bent on reusing its method of attack against the Yazidis for additional sections of the population – in particular the highly inflammable oil trucks driven by suicide bombers.

....The war in Iraq is thus raging on two planes.

On one, coalition and Iraqi forces are launching offensive after offensive to scotch the al Qaeda-Sunni insurgent threat to Iraq’s security; on the second, al Qaeda is seeking to drive masses of terrified civilians out of their homes in chaotic flight.....

New Al Qaeda threat of attacks naming New York, Los Angeles, Miami

From DEBKAfile August 10, 2007....

The threat was picked up by DEBKAfile’s monitors from a rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites Thursday, Aug. 8. The al Qaeda communications accuse the Americans of the grave error of failing to take seriously the videotape released by the American al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gaddahn last week. “They will soon realize their mistake when American cities are hit by quality operations,” said one message.

Another said the attacks would be carried out “by means of trucks loaded with radio-active material against America’s biggest city and financial nerve center.”

A third message mentioned New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets. It drew the answer: “The attack, with Allah’s help, will cause an economic meltdown, many dead, and a financial crisis on a scale that compels the United States to pull its military forces out of many parts of the world, including Iraq, for lack of any other way of cutting down costs.”

There is also a message which speaks obliquely of the approaching attacks easing the heavy pressure America exerts on countries like Japan, Cuba and Venezuela.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources and monitors say there is no way of gauging for sure how serious these threats are, how real, or whether they are part of a war of nerves to give the Gaddahn tape extra mileage. But it is important to note that the exchange of messages took place over al Qaeda’s internal Internet sites and that they contained the threat of radioactive terror and specific American cities for the first time after a long silence on these subjects.
In addition, a growing number of clips has been disseminated of late over al Qaeda sites instructing the faithful how to design remote-controlled gliders, pack them with explosives and launch them against predetermined targets.

Vigilance alone will not win this war

From The Australian, Editorial, July 02, 2007 ...

...Increasingly, Islamism is a threat in the West. Two attempted car bombings in central London on Friday, and a third one at Glasgow airport on Saturday, are evidence of the kind of violence that Australia could face...

.....Our sense of relief that widespread carnage has been avoided is tempered with a sense of catastrophe delayed. These bombs were prevented only because they failed to detonate, not because the authorities were aware of the plots and intervened. Nobody can doubt that Islamists will only redouble their efforts, not be deterred.

The arrest of five Australians in Lebanon who are suspected of being involved with the al-Qa'ida-linked terrorist group Fatah al-Islam emphasises both the direct threat to Australia of terrorist activities in the Middle East and the global nature of the Islamist menace. One of those detained, taxi driver Omar Hadba, is suspected of being the leader of Fatah al-Islam, which is mounting an armed insurgency in northern Lebanon and allegedly had a cache of 500kg of weapons and explosives including assault rifles, grenades, machineguns and mines. Four of the men are disciples of radical cleric Feiz Mohamed, who counts among his students and friends Australia's first convicted terrorist, Jack Roche; the founders of Jemaah Islamiah in Australia, Abdul Rahim Ayub and Abdul Rahman Ayub; Rahim Ayub's former wife, Rabiyah Hutchison, whose sons were deported from Yemen; Zac Mallah, who was acquitted under Australia's new terror laws; hardline cleric Mohammed Omran; and most of those currently facing terror charges in Sydney and Melbourne. As The Australian reports today, Mustapha Kara-Ali, a former member of the Muslim Community Reference Group, has been investigating radicalisation among young Muslim community members in Sydney. He estimates there are between 2000 and 3000 radicalised Muslims in Sydney alone and possibly double that in Australia, who are ideological sleeper cells and who could become extremists.

... the war against terror is not a territorial battle. It is a battle against an anger-ridden ideology, a threat not only to Islam and Muslims but to the entire world. Good intelligence and law enforcement is our first line of defence and will limit the terrorists' ability to kill and maim, but vigilance alone will not defeat the threat we face. Governments, Muslim leaders and the wider community each have a part to play in breaking the link between religion and extremist ideology. Radical sheiks who have hijacked a noble faith and turned it into a violent rallying cry must be silenced. There is no place for their teachings in this country. So far, Australians have been fortunate to avoid attacks on civilians in our own cities, but the threat of home-grown jihadism is real.

Analysis: Ratings are as important as rhetoric for terrorists

From THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 25, 2007, by SHELLY PAZ....

The broadcast Monday of the Gilad Schalit audiotape and the Alan Johnston videotape .... attest to the fact that modern terrorists have adopted the mass media as their weapon of choice, say top Israeli media experts.

"... The higher the ratings, the more people receive the terrorists' message," said Eviathar Ben-Zedeff, a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, on Monday. "Terror is ... psychological warfare. The terrorists' purpose is to influence the viewers and to motivate them ...to put pressure on their politicians to change policy, for example, to give back occupied territories or to free many prisoners," Ben-Zedeff explained.

... "The terrorists wish to influence three sectors: the enemy public, in this case Israelis; the wider international audience; and lastly, their own domestic audience. ... These manipulations of the media are targeted to reach political success at the lowest cost. And it works."

Ben-Zedeff believes that the reporters and especially the editors of the world's mainstream media have to filter the news items they decide to publish more thoroughly to change this reality.

"When Osama Bin-Laden sent his tape to the media, a few days after his organization attacked the Twin Towers in New York, the American communications media reported on the tape but didn't use the footage. By taking this decision, they didn't let Bin-Laden achieve what he hoped to achieve. This model has to be implemented here as well."

...."Terrorists are interviewed on their own terms; they dictate the questions they are asked and the journalists cannot ask hard questions because if they do they will not get the next interview or worse, their lives will be in danger, especially in areas like Gaza or Iraq," she said. "Nowadays, terrorists pass the media's gate through the front door while in the past they were considered the bad guys whom no one wanted to give a stage from which to speak."

Liebes believes that this phenomenon significantly interferes with the journalist's work. Due to competition, journalists are forced to report immediately without even checking the information they have received, Liebes said. "They chase rockets and report on them live and create the atmosphere that everyplace is under attack, they don't invest time in research work, they are led instead of leading," she said.

Liebes, who recently published a book on terrorism and the media called Meeting The Enemy in the Living Room, said that it was the weaknesses of modern commercial media that terrorists are able to exploit to their own ends. To attempt to fight this phenomenon, Liebes suggested wider cooperation between the TV channels, newspapers, and the radio stations, as well as their electronic counterparts. "If editors join forces in the coverage of events, such as rocket attacks or terrorist bombings, and stop being overly competitive, coverage may be less hysterical," she said.

HOW US "REALIM" ADMINISTRATION TAUGHT IRANTHE WRONG LESSONS

From MERIA, Volume 11, No. 2, Article 5/8 - June 2007 by Nathan Thrall ...

The prospect of peacefully preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons looks bleaker by the day. Iran appears more emboldened than it has in decades, and support for the Bush administration's foreign policy is at an all-time low. As a presidential election year approaches, conservatives are seeking to distance themselves from Bush by eulogizing Reagan. Yet they forget or ignore that the present predicament is in large part Reagan's legacy. This article examines how the Regan administration, through a seemingly endless series of self-deceits and capitulations, nurtured the ambitions of Iran's current leadership, ruined U.S. credibility, and eroded America's power to deter the Islamic Republic. Still, while Democrats may welcome any shifting of blame from the failed Iran policies of Reagan's predecessor [Carter], it is they who have the most to learn from Reagan's mistakes; for Reagan's errors were realist errors, and the influence of realism is now rising most markedly on the left. Carter gave birth to the decades-long U.S. appeasement of Iran; Reagan fostered it.....

Follow the link for the full article.

Jenin comes to Lebanon. So where is the outcry?

From The National Post, Tuesday, May 29, 2007, by Jonathan Kay ....

Last week, the Lebanese army attacked a squalid Palestinian refugee camp that's become infested with Islamist suicide terrorists and guerilla fighters. On May 20, government troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week's end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

How did the rest of the world react? The Arab League quickly condemned "the criminal and terrorist acts carried out by the terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam," and vowed to "give its full support to the efforts of the army and the Lebanese government." EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also condemned Fatah al-Islam, and declared Europe's "support" for Lebanon. And the UN Security Council called the actions of Fatah al-Islam "an unacceptable attack" on Lebanon's sovereignty. As for the Western media, most outlets ignored the story following the first flurry of news reports.

At this point, please indulge me by re-reading the first paragraph of this column -- except this time, substitute the world "Israeli" for "Lebanese" in the first sentence. Let's imagine what the world's reaction would be if the ongoing siege were taking place in Gaza or the West Bank instead of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli, Lebanon.

First of all, a flood of foreign journalists would descend on the camp to document Israel's cruelty and barbarism, and the story would remain front page news to this day. Al-Jazeera would be a 24/7 montage of grieving mothers swearing revenge on the Zionist butchers, and rumours would swirl of mass graves and poison gas. The Arab League, EU and United Nations would condemn Israeli aggression -- as would the editorial board of The New York Times. The Independent would dispatch Robert Fisk to embed with Fatah al-Islam. And the newspaper's cartoonist, Dave Brown, would produce another award-winning rendition of his signature theme: Jews eating Palestinian babies.

Actually, we don't need to speculate: What I have just written is exactly what happened when the Israeli army invaded the Jenin refugee camp to root out terrorists in April, 2002, a battle that was similar in scale to this month's siege at Nahr al Bared. (At Jenin, 52 refugee camp residents were killed -- most of them gunmen, according to Human Rights Watch. At Nahr al Bared, the figure is 45 and climbing.) The main difference between the two sieges is that Israel's army put its troops at far greater risk by invading Jenin with infantry -- whereas the less humane Lebanese army has simply pummelled Nahr al Bared with explosives from a distance. Jews apparently care a lot more about saving Palestinian civilians than do Lebanese soldiers.

For years, we have been told that Palestinian suffering and "humiliation" is at the root of the Middle East conflict, as well as the Western-Muslim clash of civilizations more generally. This is nonsense: The 200,000-plus Palestinian refugees who live in Lebanese camps are treated worse than dogs -- with no access to decent schools or good jobs -- and no one in the Arab world cares a whit. In fact, many Arabs seem to embrace the same blind anti-Palestinian hatred of which Israel is typically accused. When Lebanese armoured personnel carriers rolled through Tripoli on May 20, they got a standing ovation from local residents. "We wish the government would destroy the whole camp and the rest of the camps," one local told The New York Times. "Nothing good comes out of the Palestinians."

Just as Lebanon's stew of eternally warring Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Hezbollah terrorists and militarized clans serves as a Mediterranean microcosm for the political dysfunction of the Arab world, this month's events capture perfectly the utter cynicism of the Islamic world's trumped up vilification of Israel, and the West as a whole. As with the Muslim- on-Muslim slaughter in Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza and a dozen other hot spots, the siege at Nahr al Bared shows that what inflames "the Muslim street" (for lack of a better cliche) isn't Muslim suffering, but the relatively tiny fraction thereof that jihadi propagandists and their Western apologists can lay at the feet of Jews and Christians.

Muslim blood apparently comes cheap -- but only when it's drawn by other Muslims.

Extremists are winning the war of words

From The Australian, Thursday, May 31, 2007, by Greg Sheridan ...

SIX years after the 9/11 terror attacks that destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and killed almost 3000 people, a majority of American Muslims do not believe the attacks were carried out by Arabs. And more than one-quarter of young US Muslims believe suicide bombings can be justified in some circumstances.

These shocking and tragic findings, which come from the Pew Research Centre, tell us much about why the war against Islamist terror is going to last for generations. The West is losing the information and propaganda war against Islamist extremism. It is not losing because it is being insufficiently kind to Muslims at home or in the Middle East. As Britain’s Tony Blair wrote in The Sunday Times: “Extremism will be defeated only by recognising that we have not created it ... pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it.”

Blair confronted the argument that Muslims hate the West because it has taken military action in Afghanistan and Iraq: “Tell me what exactly they feel angry about? We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims. Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing?”

The reason we are losing the battle of information and ideas is because the coherent religious and ideological position that al-Qa’ida represents has an extraordinary degree of support within the Muslim world. Even sentiments that don’t finally endorse al-Qa’ida often adopt a similar world outlook that embraces much of al-Qa’ida’s historical narrative and paranoid world view.
Most Muslims are moderates and abhor terrorism. But the minority that is extremist is a big one.

The flipside of al-Qa’ida’s success in the information war is our own dismal effort in this field. This does not mean endlessly telling Muslims how much we love them. Although in principle a bit of that is OK, as Blair implies it can be counterproductive by feeding an unjustified sense of grievance.

A better guide to the roots of our failure comes in a new report from US think tank the Rand Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks. Rand recommends that the US, and by implication allied governments such as Australia’s, should consciously support, materially and morally, and where necessary create, networks of moderate Muslims across the world who reject Islamist extremism.

....moderate Muslims are being outmuscled. As Rand comments, Saudi funding has greatly enhanced religious extremism all over the world (which raises again the question why nobody, in the Labor Party or the Government, has followed up this newspaper’s revelations of Saudi embassy funding of extremists in Australia).

In many nations, moderate Muslims have been intimidated or even killed.

During the Cold War, the US created or supported democratic institutions to fight against totalitarianism in civil society all over the world, especially in any margins of free space in communist societies. The US acted as a foundation, evaluating projects, funding them, then adopting a hands-off approach. In the war on terror, the US has a freedom agenda but no coherent idea of how to support it. It often cannot distinguish moderates from extremists.

The Danish imams who campaigned successfully to turn a few cartoons into a worldwide jihad had previously been wrongly identified as moderates and benefited from state travel grants and the like.

....One of the many disturbing features of the US Pew survey on the attitudes of American Muslims is that younger Muslims are substantially more extreme than their parents or grandparents. This reflects the experience in Europe, and probably Australia, that far from the second generation being more integrated, as has happened with every other migrant group, it is becoming more prey to the appeal of extremist ideologies and more alienated from its host society.

It is important to emphasise that the US survey does show that most American Muslims are moderate and reject extremism, and that American Muslims tend to be more moderate than European Muslims or Muslim populations in most majority Muslim nations.

But the US poll is merely the latest from across the world to show that the extremist minority is a very big, and therefore dangerous, one. A poll by the British think tank Policy Exchange showed similar results. Although most British Muslims are moderate, among 16 to 24-year-olds, 37 per cent would prefer to live under sharia law than British law, while 36per cent believe a Muslim changing their religion to something else should be punishable by death and 13per cent support al-Qa’ida.

Similarly, a joint Asia-Europe Foundation and University of Malaya poll found that 98 per cent of Malay Muslims believe Muslims should not be allowed by law to change their religion, 31 per cent want sharia law to replace the Malaysian constitution, 12 per cent support suicide bombings and a clear majority dislike or hate Europe, the US and Australia.

And in Australia, Taj Din al-Hilali, after all his extremist statements, remains the mufti. After everything, the national imams council still has not dismissed him. To equate this with Christian fundamentalism is utterly absurd. The widespread presence of extremist views in large minorities among Muslim communities poses acute dilemmas for a liberal society that no one has yet begun to face up to.

Lebanon a launch pad for al-Qa'ida's new phase

From The Australian, May 28, 2007, by Martin Chulov ...

The standoff in the Nahr al-Barad refugee camp is a crucial test for the region as the jihadi revolution prepares to spread around the world...

AS the encircled Islamists in north Lebanon heralded their last stand this weekend, regional governments were coming to terms with a much broader battle - al-Qa'ida's opening salvos in the western Middle East.

From the Horn of Africa to the eastern shores of the Atlantic, from Afghanistan to Lebanon, and as far away as Spain, the rise of Salafi Islamic Jihadism has taken on a dangerous new impetus that is likely to reshape the global war on terror. Throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, fully fledged Salafi jihadi insurgencies are being fought in Iraq, Somalia, Algeria and Lebanon. Uprisings are stirring in Gaza, Tunisia, Morocco and the Egyptian Sinai.

All have the potential to drag the West into a conflict it increasingly seems unlikely to avoid.
Salafis are anti-Western and idealise an uncorrupted, pure Islamic religious community.
Of all the flashpoints, Lebanon seemed among the least likely to erupt into a standoff between the global jihadis and the rest of the world. The traumatised nation had been wrestling with sectarian conflict for the past seven months, indeed for much of its past 60 years. But the internecine battles had been fought largely for control of the levers of domestic power.

Lebanon has always been an arena for proxy battles instigated by its neighbours. And a key driver of the current standoff is believed to be no different. Western intelligence officers say the fledgling Fatah al-Islam group now surrounded in the Nahr al-Barad Palestinian refugee camp is directed by Syrian military intelligence chiefs who are determined to reassert their influence in the country they were forced to leave two years ago.

But the same Beirut-based Western spies say Lebanon is now being viewed on a bigger stage. Jihadis, they say, are seen as a potential Islamic emirate - a valuable part of a regional mosaic that draws its strength from the fearsome Iraqi insurgency and the sectarian Sunni-Shia civil war it has spawned.

Were an insurgency to take hold in Lebanon, it would bring the spread of global jihad to the doorstep of northern Europe and give Israel much more to worry about than the Shia militants of Hezbollah. "The game plan here appears to be to import elements of the Iraqi insurgency and kick it off here between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites," said one well-placed security officer. "Fatah al-Islam are an advance guard."

Only Syria stands between Lebanon and Iraq and, according to the US military, Damascus is already a key facilitator of the insurgency in Iraq. An Iraqi intelligence chief claimed on Saturday that the Syrian border area of al-Qaim is the key clearing house for Iraqi insurgents, 70per cent of whom come from the Gulf states, which are largely considered moderate and US-friendly.

"They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brigadier General Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, was quoted as saying in Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper. He said that, once in Syria, the insurgents were given new passports.

Fatah al-Islam's leader, Shaker al-Absi, is believed to be linked to Syrian regime figures. He was released from a Syrian prison after serving a quarter of a 12-year sentence on terrorism charges and soon popped up in two Palestinian refugee camps, from where he launched Fatah al-Islam in the image of al-Qa'ida. Absi is believed to have been seriously wounded in a hand and shoulder during last week's battles with the Lebanese Army. Through a spokesman, he reiterated yesterday that he would not be captured. He claimed that three giant US military aircraft carrying supplies for the Lebanese army, which arrived in Beirut on Saturday, contained cluster bombs and other unconventional weapons to be used in a final assault against them.

The payload arrived less than a week after Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had asked for $US280million ($342million) in aid from his key backer. The threat posed by Lebanon's surprise insurgency was not lost on the White House, which cannot bear Salafi Islamist strongholds mushrooming in the region.

But Fatah al-Islam may also prove to be a harbinger of hope in Lebanon.
If the Lebanese army prevails over the 250 or so militants, it and the Siniora Government will emerge emboldened - even among some supporters of the Hezbollah-led opposition. Mr Siniora can then boast one strong, functional and important arm of the state, reshaped to take on the jihadis, which could finally start to consolidate his ailing Government's position.

Such a result could place the army on an equal footing with Hezbollah, which its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, repeatedly casts as the only capable nationalistic force in Lebanon. Nasrallah, who in the Salafi jihadis' eyes is as much of an infidel as other Shias, Christians, Jews and even moderate Muslims, was struggling over the weekend to position himself and Hezbollah in the face of al-Qa'ida's emergence.

...The next week in Nahr al-Barad will prove a critical test for Lebanon and the region's will to face up to an imported and intensified foe that is making good al-Qa'ida's promise to spread its influence. The Jihadi revolution appears to have moved to a second phase, consolidating on the gains of the past five years and preparing to take the fight well beyond its heartland....

Muslim "politics"

From THE JERUSALEM POST, May. 22, 2007 ....

One in four younger US Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances...

The survey by the Pew Research Center, [is] one of the most exhaustive ever of the country's Muslims.....

While nearly 80 percent of US Muslims say suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam can not be justified, 13 percent say they can be, at least rarely. That sentiment is strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them say it can often be justified, 13 percent say sometimes and 11 percent say rarely....

....US Muslims are far less accepting of suicide attacks than Muslims in many other nations. In surveys Pew conducted last year, support in some Muslim countries exceeded 50 percent, while it was considered justifiable by about one in four Muslims in Britain and Spain, and one in three in France....

..... Only 40 percent said they believe Arab men carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
By six to one, they say the US was wrong to invade Iraq, while a third say the same about Afghanistan - far deeper than the opposition expressed by the general US public.

.....Forty-seven percent said they consider themselves Muslim first, rather than American....

US and EU incentives to terrorists

National Post, Saturday, May 19, 2007, by David Frum [CREDIT: Reuters, Yonathan Weitzman] ...

....It is a little-known fact that international aid to the Palestinian territories has actually risen since Palestinians elected a Hamas government in January, 2006.

According to International Monetary Fund and UN figures, the Palestinian areas received a total of US$1.2-billion in official aid in 2006, up from US$1-billion in 2005.

America's contribution rose from US$400-million in 2005 to US$468-million in 2006. Aid from the European Union and other international organizations also increased handsomely, and the UN has called for still greater increases in aid in 2007.

Look at the incentives that have been created for the Palestinians: vote for terrorism, get an increase in your foreign aid. The Palestinian areas now receive more than US$300 per person, per year, making them the most aid-dependent population on Earth. (The people of sub-Saharan Africa receive only $44 per person per year.)

These incentives allow Hamas to present itself both as the unyielding enemy of the Jewish state --and also as a provider of generous social welfare benefits to the Palestinian people.

What if those incentives changed? What if Hamas's misconduct produced a loss rather than a profit?

Suppose that each Hamas rocket cost the Palestinian Authority US$1-million in reduced U.S. and EU aid? The 80 rockets fired over recent days would mean US$80-million less in salaries, food, aid, subsidies of all kinds. The next 80 rockets -- another US$80-million gone.

For the first time, Hamas's adventurism would exact a serious and predictable cost. Such a cost would do more than any number of U.S.-trained Fatah gunmen to restrain Hamas.

But if the aid continues --if the world continues a policy of sending money to the Palestinian territories, no matter what the Palestinian government does -- Israel, Gaza and the world stand just one well-aimed rocket away from war.

A million moderate Muslims on the march

From THE JERUSALEM POST May. 9, 2007, by Daniel Pipes....

....moderate Muslims are no myth.

In Pakistan, an estimated 100,000 people demonstrated on April 15 in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, protesting plans of a powerful mosque in Islamabad, the Lal Masjid, to establish a parallel court system based on Islamic law, the Shari'a.

....In Turkey, more than a million moderate Muslims in four marches protested the bid of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to take over the presidency of the republic, giving it control over the two top government offices (the other being the prime ministry, currently filled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan).

....a young woman carrying a huge Turkish flag, explained that the crowd was Muslim and believed in Islam, but didn't want Islam "to become our whole way of life." ....

....Nor are the masses alone in resisting AKP's Islamists. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned that, for the first time since 1923, when the secular republic came into being, its pillars "are being openly questioned" and inveighed against the imposition of a soft Islamist state, predicting that it would turn extremist. Onur ymen, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party, cautioned that the AKP's taking the presidency would "upset all balances" and create a very dangerous situation. The military - Turkey's ultimate powerbroker - issued two statements reinforcing this assessment. On April 12, the chief of staff, Gen. Mehmet Ya-ar B y kanıt, expressed his hope that "someone who is loyal to the principles of the republic - not just in words but in essence - is elected president." ....

....Is it not telling that great numbers of moderate Muslims see danger where so many non-Muslims are blind? Do developments in Pakistan and Turkey not confirm my oft-repeated point that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution? And do they not suggest that ignorant non-Muslim busybodies should get out of the way of those moderate Muslims determined to relegate Islamism to its rightful place in the dustbin of history?

Hizbullah training for attacks on US

From Ynewt News, 10/5/07, by Yaniv Halili

Hizbullah has set up a training facility in South America as part of its plan to launch terror attacks against the United States, the American Spanish-language Telemundo television network reported.

According to the report, the terror group is operating in a relatively secluded area on the Paraguay-Argentina-Brazil border, where it is collecting funds, brainwashing locals against the US and Israel and training the next generation of suicide bombers. The activity is being conducted in forests near the city of Ciudad Del Este in Paraguay, which has a large Muslim population.

Washington fears that Hizbullah members are planning to infiltrate the US through its breached southern border with Mexico to carry out attacks. It is suspected that Imad Mugniyah, the terror group’s elusive mastermind, is running the South America operation....