Egyptian Jihad Against Israel (Apparently) Begins

From PJ Media, 18 June 2012, by Barry Rubin:
Muslim Brotherhood (Probably) Wins Presidency; Egyptian-Islamist/Hamas Jihad Against Israel (Apparently) Begins

A well-organized, well-equipped group of terrorists has attacked Israel from Egyptian territory Monday morning, possibly the second such Egyptian-assisted assault in a week.
As for the presidential election, the Brotherhood candidate, Muhammad al-Mursi, seems the likely winner. His rival, Ahmad Shafiq, won Cairo by a big margin but it was not enough to overcome al-Mursi’s lead in the countryside. The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists are claiming victory. Official results will be released on June 21.
Al-Mursi has openly declared his support for Hamas and priority on battling Israel on some level. Those campaigning for him, in his presence, have said that the Brotherhood is seeking a Sharia state in Egypt and a caliphate over the whole Middle East whose capital will be in a conquered Jerusalem. The Salafists–a coalition of many hardline Islamist groups–gave the Brotherhood candidate full support.
An armed squad of two men—said to be Hamas, though this is not confirmed—crossed the border after travelling 30 miles from the Gaza Strip through Egyptian territory. They wore flak jackets, camouflaged uniforms, and carried a large amounts of explosives. Members of their support team remained on the Egyptian side of the border. The two men hid by Israel’s highway 12, near an area called White River Lake.
When two vehicles came by, carrying workers finishing up a security fence to guard against just such attacks, they set off a bomb that had been placed on the roadway and fired a rocket-propelled grenade. Both missed but bullets from a Kalashnikov hit one of the vehicles which flipped over. One Israeli, an ethnic Arab labor contractor, was killed, two or three terrorists have been shot dead.
Within minutes, Israeli soldiers arrived and fired on the terrorists. Their bullets blew up a suicide vest being worn by one of them, killing two of the attackers.
This event follows a report in Haaretz newspaper, attributed to Israeli security officials, that the Muslim Brotherhood had asked Hamas to attack Israel. According to the story, an Egyptian Bedouin unit was given the job of firing a rocket, which landed in open ground in southern Israel. This story was not picked up by other Israeli newspapers, suggesting either that it was wrong or that it had been a security leak which the army had then stopped.
So far this year, 280 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel. This has prompted no international concern or action. The new fence along the Egypt-Israel border is mostly complete but due to difficult terrain the last portion will only be finished late this year.
At any rate, we are now at the beginning of Egypt’s involvement, directly or indirectly, in a new wave of terrorist assault on Israel. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt, a likelihood made less probable perhaps by the military’s dissolution of parliament, this offensive will enjoy official support. Even if the army remains in control, the Brotherhood and Salafists will use their considerable assets to back this new insurgency war.
The ultimate scenario would be if Hamas decided to renew a large-scale offensive against Israel from the Gaza Strip using rockets, mortars, and attempted cross-border attacks. Egyptian Islamists would send volunteers and money. The Egyptian army would not be scrupulous in stopping the smuggling of weapons, terrorists, and money across the border. As Egyptian fighters are killed in the Gaza Strip the hysteria in Egypt would escalate.
In such a scenario, the army would also allow Hamas to have military bases and headquarters on Egyptian territory, where Israel could not attack them. Indeed, this is already happening. And the Egypt-Israel border would not be protected from cross-border attacks.
A most serious scenario would be if Egypt itself was dragged (under an army regime) or went willingly (under a Brotherhood one) to war with Israel.
Where is the U.S. government in all of this? It’s insisting that the Egyptian military turn power over to a civilian government which, until last week, would have been a Brotherhood government. Washington is merely a distant observer, and one continuing to insist on Muslim Brotherhood moderation despite that group’s extremist history and actions. The policy choice taken by Obama is to issue statements supporting democracy and to view the Brotherhood as a force that can be coopted and moderated. The mass media generally follows this lead in setting the narrative. A different president would understand that the Islamists are the enemy of America and support the military in trying to limit their power. This distinction matters big-time. It helps determine not only the fate of U.S. interests but also the future of 80 million Egyptians, Israel’s security, and the likelihood of further upheavals and wars in the Middle East.

...and from Reuters, 18 June 2012, by Maayan Lubell:

Seven killed on Israel's Egypt and Gaza borders
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Militants who crossed into Israel from Egypt's Sinai Desert fired on Israelis building a barrier on the border on Monday, killing one worker, before soldiers shot dead two of the attackers, Israel's military said. Israel later launched air strikes killing four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including two militants from the Islamic Jihad group on a motorcycle. Two other militants were killed while trying to fire a rocket, Israel said.
The Sinai attack, launched soon after the Muslim Brotherhood declared victory in Egypt's presidential election, raised Israeli concerns about lawlessness in the area since the fall of president Hosni Mubarak last year.
"We can see a disturbing deterioration in Egypt's control of the Sinai's security," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, commenting on the attack.
"We are waiting for the election results. Whoever wins, we expect him to take responsibility over all of Egypt's international commitments, including the (1979) peace treaty with Israel and security arrangements in the Sinai, and to put an end to these attacks swiftly," he told reporters.
Three gunmen crossed into Israel from the Sinai Desert, the Israeli military said.
"A terrorist squad opened fire and possibly also fired an anti-tank rocket at an area where (Israel) is constructing the border fence," spokesman Yoav Mordechai said.
Soldiers who rushed to the scene killed two of the militants but could not find the third, who may have returned to Egypt, the military said.
A military source said the dead worker was an Arab citizen of Israel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which took place about 30 km (18 miles) from the Gaza Strip.
Israel is building a fence along the frontier to curb an influx of African migrants and boost security, and hopes to complete it by the end of the year. It will run along most of the 266 km (165 miles) from Eilat, on the Red Sea, to the Gaza Strip.
In August last year, militants crossed over the Egyptian border and killed eight Israelis, in the most serious attack in the area since the Egyptian popular uprising.
On Saturday, at least two rockets were fired deep into southern Israel, causing no damage or casualties. It was not clear whether they had been launched from Sinai.
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Islamist group Hamas, have launched rockets at Israel from the coastal territory in the past. Israel says Palestinian militants have also crossed into Sinai to launch similar attacks.
Late on Sunday, Israeli aircraft carried out a series of strikes in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the enclave. Medical sources in Gaza said seven people were wounded.

Obama's Pressure on Israeli settlements has undermined peace prospects

From JCPA, 17 June 2012, by Steven J. Rosen*:

Summary only. Follow the link to view the study (PDF)
http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/StrategyRosen-14jun12.pdf

Mahmoud Abbas participated in 18 years of direct negotiations with seven Israeli governments, all without the settlements freeze that he now insists is an absolute precondition to begin even low-level talks.
President Obama's failure to distinguish construction in east Jerusalem from settlement activity in the West Bank put him at odds with the Israeli consensus. No major party in Israel, and no significant part of the Jewish public, is willing to count the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem as "settlements" to be "frozen."
The Sharon government reached an understanding with the Bush administration to ban outward geographic expansion of established settlements, while reserving the right to continue expansion inside the "construction line" of existing houses. Almost all the construction that the Netanyahu administration has allowed is either in Jerusalem or in the settlement blocs, the two categories that Israel had thought were protected by understandings with the Americans.
Israelis were bitterly disappointed by the Obama administration's refusal to acknowledge agreements with a prior U.S. government that the Israelis considered vital and binding. Sharon aide Dov Weissglas said, "If decision-makers in Israel...discover, heaven forbid, that an American pledge is only valid as long as the president in question is in office, nobody will want such pledges."
Stalled peace negotiations in the Obama years cannot be blamed on Netanyahu's policies of accelerating settlement construction. He has in fact slowed it down. What has undermined peace negotiations, rather, is Obama's policy on the settlements - and the unrealistic expectations that policy has nourished.
*Steven J. Rosen is Director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum and served for 23 years with AIPAC.

Ugly EU foreign policies

From The Jerusalem Post, June 15, 2012, by Caroline Glick:

With her unbridled hostility towards Israel, the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton provides us with an abject lesson in what happens when a government places its emotional aspirations above its national interests.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, many of Israel's elite have aspired to be embraced by Europe. In recent years, nearly every government has voiced the hope of one day seeing Israel join the EU.
To a significant degree, Israel's decision to recognize the PLO in 1993 and negotiate with Yasser Arafat and his deputies was an attempt by Israel's political class to win acceptance from the likes of Ashton and her continental comrades. For years the EU had criticized Israel for refusing to recognize the PLO.
Until 1993, Israel's leaders defied Europe because they could tell the difference between a national interest and an emotional aspiration and preferred the former over the latter. And now, Israel's reward for preferring European love to our national interest and embracing our sworn enemy is Catherine Ashton.
To put it mildly, Ashton is not a friend of Israel. Indeed, she is so ill-disposed against Israel that she seems unable to focus for long on anything other than bashing it. Her obsession was prominently displayed in March when she was unable to give an unqualified condemnation of the massacre of French Jewish children by a French Muslim. Ashton simply had to use her condemnation as yet another opportunity to bash Israel.
Her preoccupation with Israel was again on display on Tuesday. During a boilerplate, vacuous speech about President Bashar Assad's slaughter of his fellow Syrians, apropos of nothing the baroness launched into an unhinged, impassioned, and deeply dishonest frontal assault against Israel.
The woman US President Barack Obama has empowered to lead the West's negotiations with Iran regarding its illicit nuclear weapons program stood at the podium in the European Parliament and threw an anti-Israel temper tantrum.
The same woman who couldn't be bothered to finish her speech about Assad's massacre of children, the same woman who is so excited about her Iranian negotiating partners' body language that she doesn't think it is necessary to give them an ultimatum about ending their quest for a nuclear bomb, seemed to lack a sufficiently harsh vocabulary to express her revulsion with Jewish "settlers."
As she put it, "We are also seriously concerned by recent and increasing incidents of settler violence which we all condemn."
It's not clear what "recent and increasing incidents of settler violence" she was referring to. But in all likelihood, she didn't have a specific incident in mind. She probably just figured that those sneaky Jews are always up to no good.
ASIDE FROM condemning imaginary Israeli crimes more emphatically than real Syrian crimes, Ashton's speech involved a presentation of the EU's policy on Israel and the Palestinians.
That policy is based on three premises: The EU falsely claims that all Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are illegal.
It rejects Israel's legal right to assert its authority over Area C - the area of Judea and Samaria that is empty of Palestinian population centers.
And it will only soften its anti-Israel positions if the Palestinians do so first.
Aside from its jaw-dropping animosity towards Israel, what is notable about the EU's position is that it is actually far more hostile to Israel than the Palestinians' position towards Israel as that position was revealed in the agreements that the Palestinians signed with Israel in the past. In those agreements, the Palestinians accepted continued sole Israeli control over Area C. They did not require Israel to end the construction of Jewish communities outside the 1949 armistice lines. The peace process ended when the Palestinians moved closer to the EU's position.
The EU's antipathy towards Israel as personified in Ashton's behavior teaches us two important lessons. First, it is often hard to tell our friends from our foes. Israelis - particularly those born to families that emigrated from Europe - have traditionally viewed Europe as the last word in enlightened democracy and sophistication and style. We wanted to be like them. We wanted to be accepted by them.
Indeed we were so swept away by the thought that they might one day love us back that we adopted policies that were inimical to our national interest and so weakened us tremendously.
It never occurred to us that the fact that Europe insisted that we adopt policies that undercut our national survival meant that the Europeans wished us ill.
They seemed so nice.
The second thing we learn from Ashton's anti-Israel mania is that when we engage in foreign policy, we need to base our judgments about our ability to influence the behavior of our foreign counterparts on a sober-minded assessment of two separate things: our interlocutor's ideology and his interests. In Ashton's case, both parameters make clear that there is no way to win her over to Israel's side. She is ideologically opposed to Israel. And the citizens of Europe are becoming more and more hostile to Israel and to Jews.
These twin parameters for judging foreign leaders and representatives came to mind on Wednesday with the publication of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss's critical report on the government's handling of the Turkish-government supported, pro-Hamas flotilla in May 2010. Perhaps the most remarkable revelation in the report is that up until a week before the flotilla set sail, led by the infamous Mavi Marmara, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was under the impression that he had reached a deal with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Netanyahu believed that through third parties, including the US government and then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, he had convinced Erdogan to cancel the flotilla. He had a deal.
The fact that Netanyahu thought he had a deal with Erdogan is startling and unnerving. It means that Netanyahu was willing to ignore the basic facts of Erdogan's nature and the way that Erdogan perceives his interests, in favor of a fiction.
By May 2010 it was abundantly clear that Erdogan was not a friend of Israel. He had been in power for eight years. He had already ended Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel. In 2006, Erdogan was the first major international leader and NATO member to host Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh. His embrace of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood made clear that he was Israel's enemy. It is a simple fact that you cannot be allied with Israel and with the Muslim Brotherhood at the same time. The same year he allowed Iran to use Turkish territory to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War.
In 2008, Erdogan openly sided with Hamas against Israel in Operation Cast Lead. In 2009, he called President Shimon Peres a murderer to his face.
By the time the flotilla was organized, Erdogan had used Turkey's position as a NATO member to effectively end the US-led alliance's cooperative relationship with Israel, by refusing to participate in military exercises with Israel.
THE NATURE OF the flotilla organizers was also known in the months ahead of its departure for Gaza. The IHH's ties to al-Qaida had been documented. Netanyahu's staff knew that the IHH was so extreme that the previous Turkish government had barred its operatives from participating in humanitarian relief efforts after the devastating 1999 earthquake. They feared the group would use its relief efforts to radicalize the local population.
In and of itself, the fact that Erdogan was openly supporting IHH's leading role in the flotilla told Israel everything it needed to know about the Turkish leader's intentions. And yet, up until a week before the flotilla set sail, Netanyahu was operating under the impression that he had struck a deal with Erdogan.
It is likely that Netanyahu was led to believe that a deal had been crafted by the Americans.
Obama is not the only American leader that has been seduced into believing that Erdogan and his Islamist AKP Party are trustworthy strategic partners for the US. Many key members of Congress share this delusional view.
According to a senior congressional source, Turkey's success in winning over the US Congress is the result of a massive Turkish lobbying effort. Through two or three front groups, the Turkish government has become one of the most active lobbying bodies in Washington. It brings US lawmakers and their aides on luxury trips to Turkey and hosts glittering, glamorous receptions and parties in Washington on a regular basis. And these efforts have paid off.
Turkey's bellicosity towards Israel as well as Greece and Cyprus has caused it no harm in Washington. Its request to purchase a hundred F-35 Joint Strike Fighters faced little serious opposition. The US continues to bow to its demands to disinvite Israel from international forum after international forum - most recently the upcoming US-hosted counter-terrorism summit in Istanbul.
Certainly Turkey's strategic transformation under Erdogan's leadership from a pro-Western democracy into an anti-Western Islamist police state has dire implications for American national interests. And the Americans would be well-served to look beyond the silken invitations to Turkish formal events at five-star hotels and see what is actually happening in the sole Muslim NATO member-state. But whether the US comes to its senses or not is its business.
Israel had no business buying into the fiction in 2010 that Erdogan could be reasoned with.
True, today no one in Israel operates under that delusion anymore. But the basic phenomenon of our leaders failing to distinguish between what they want to happen and what can happen continues to exist.
Ours is a dangerous world and an even more dangerous neighborhood. Everywhere we look we see cauldrons of radicalism and sophisticated weaponry waiting to explode. The threat environment Israel faces today is unprecedented.
At this time we cannot afford to be seduced by our dreams that things were different than they are. They are what they are.
We do have options in this contest. To maximize those options we need to ground our actions and assessments in clear-headed analyses and judgments of the people we are faced with. Their actions will be determined by their beliefs and their perception of their interests - not by our pretty face.

Mohamed Mursi or Ahmed Shafiq? MB or an MB/SCAF alliance?

From JPost, 15 June 2012, by Herb Keinon:
When Egyptians go to the polls on Saturday and Sunday to decide the first democratic election in Egypt’s long history, one question will be foremost in the minds of the public: Who poses the biggest threat?
Is it Mohamed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, who many fear will thrust the country on a fast track to Islamic radicalization? Or is it Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister, air force commander and “old guard” member whom many considered a successor to Hosni Mubarak even before last year’s revolution?
“Up until this point, this has been an entirely negative campaign,” said Janice Gross Stein, director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.
Gross Stein, in Israel this week to receive an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for her work in conflict resolution and Middle East studies, said the choice the Egyptians face is definitely not the one they wanted.
“Less than 25 percent of the voters voted for these two candidates,” she said. “Certainly those responsible for overthrowing Mubarak are hugely disappointed. Many are disenchanted and will probably stay home and not vote.”
Gross Stein said that what has emerged is two candidates who have powerful political machines behind them: Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood, with its enormous infrastructure and capacity to mobilize, and Shafiq, who has the “deep Egyptian state and its apparatus” at his back.
The question, she said, will hinge on who is the better mobilizer and who is perceived by the populous as the bigger threat.
This matchup, she added, will provide its share of paradoxes.
For instance, the Salafists, considered religiously to the right of the Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to vote against the Brotherhood’s candidate because they won’t want to see the Brotherhood have a monopoly on the interpretation of Islam in Egypt.
Likewise, she speculated, many Muslim Brotherhood followers are likely to vote for Shafiq because, having lived under a monopoly of power for decades, they don’t want the Brotherhood to control both the parliament, which it did until Thursday when the Constitutional Court dissolved the lower house and forced a revote, and the presidency.
Gross Stein said that huge demonstrations should be expected if Shafiq wins. She said that such an outcome would be widely interpreted as the reinstatement of the army and the old inner circle. Even if the election was not rigged, she said, it would be viewed as if it was.
If Mursi is elected, she predicted that the street would react more quietly and an arrangement would likely be worked out whereby the military – a dominant force in Egyptian society – would withdraw to the barracks in return for a commitment that the government would not threaten the military’s status and economic interests.
In the short term, the Brotherhood would be interested in this arrangement, she said, because it would not want to antagonize the military and put all its gains at risk.
Gross Stein said that despite all the attention the Egyptian- Israeli relationship is getting in Israel, the issue is only a marginal part of the electoral campaign and is very low on the domestic political agenda, which is focused on the country’s huge economic problems.
Gross Stein said that regardless of who wins the weekend’s polling, she did not see any one backing off from the Camp David accords, at least for the short term, which she defined as a period of five years.
While she did not think the Muslim Brotherhood would talk to Israel if Mursi were to win, she anticipated that the level of ties between the two countries would remain what they are now, with the interlocutor on the Egyptian side being the military, not the government.
A Mursi victory, she added, could in the short term have more of an impact on the Palestinian Authority than on Israel, since it would probably lead to a strengthening of ties between Hamas and Egypt, thereby further isolating President Mahmoud Abbas.

Will Islam allow critical thinking and independent judgment?

From Gatestone Institute, June 15, 2012, by Harold Rhode:
Until Muslim countries and Muslim communities in the West allow their people to express themselves freely -- without fear of reprisal -- it is unlikely that the Muslim world will be able to think creatively and again become a center of science and knowledge, as it used to be in the early centuries of Islam.
The exercise of critical thinking and independent judgment – or Ijtihad --was an important way to address questions in the early centuries of Islam. After approximately 400 years, however, the leaders of the Sunni Muslim world closed the "Gates of Ijtihad;" Muslims were no longer allowed use itjihad to solve problems. If a seemingly new problem arose, they were supposed to find an analogy from earlier scholars and apply that ruling to the problem that arose. From the 10th century onwards, Sunni Muslim leaders began to see questioning as politically dangerous to their ability to rule. Regrettably, Sunni Muslim leaders reject the use of itjihad to this day.
As questioning could very likely upset the established order and bring down the autocracies and despotic regimes which rule most of the Muslim world, even Muslims who live in freer Muslim countries such as Turkey often hesitate to exercise ijtihad. How did the Muslim world succumb to this situation, and is there a way out?

Ijtihad in historical context
Ijtihad was important in early Islam: when questions arose - even while Muhammad was alive - for which there were no answers, Muhammad would call the Muslims together in their mosque. They would discuss the issues at hand, reason them through, and come to a consensus -- so came into being the Islamic concept of ijma' (consensus among the scholars).[1]
After Muhammad died, however, the Muslim community rapidly expanded; the community of scholars became too large, and ijma' no longer practical. What developed was a body of traditions – called hadiths – sayings and deeds attributed to their prophet Muhammad. When new questions arose, people would seek out individuals who had known Muhammad and ask them whether they had seen or heard Muhammad address the matter at hand.
Within 200 years, the number of hadiths was thought to be in the hundreds of thousands, but people had no way of knowing which were true and which were fabricated. The great Muslim scholar, al-Bukhari (810 -870 CE), who analyzed them, concluded that only a few thousand were reliable.[2]
Later, when still more questions arose, diverse schools of thought developed. The Quran, the hadiths, and those schools of thought were collected into Islamic law. This body of Islamic religious guidance is known as the Shari'a, or "The Path."
During the first four centuries of Islam, Muslim scholars seem to have exercised independent judgment freely, and debated rigorously new issues that arose. The Muslim world at that time seems to have been inclusive and flexible; it accepted differing views, differing conclusions and differing sorts of influences that arose as part of the cultures of its large empire.[3]
Muslim scholars studied Arabic translations of ancient Greek texts which they thought might help them understand the nature of mankind as well as other aspects of life. These texts, though clearly non-Islamic, nevertheless provided scholars with useful insights. There were also intellectual interchanges with Jewish scholars, particularly in the fields of science, medicine, language, and geography. There seems to have been, however, little discussion with Christians.[4]
With time, however, the situation became unwieldy. Certain groups (called ghulat) were accused of extremism – going too far -- and attempts were made to rein them in.[5] Questions arose as to the limits of divergent views, and whether "extremist elements" could still be considered Muslim. The many schools of Islamic thought were reduced to four; these became the basis of the Sunni Shari'a.
As Islamic rule started to become more autocratic, Islamic rulers began to see discord as potentially able to undermine their rule.
All four schools accepted the Quran as the divine word of God, and the hadiths as the source for legal decisions. But it soon became apparent that the larger the number of hadiths a school of thought accepted, the more restrictive and rigid this school became. The Hanafi school of law, for example -- the most liberal school of thought, founded by Abu Hanifa (699-767 CE) -- accepted over a few thousand hadiths. In contrast, the most restrictive of the four schools – founded by Ahmad ibn Hanbal (778-863 CE) -- accepted tens of thousands. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the 18th century Wahhabism -- probably one of the most restrictive forms of Islam -- developed out of the Hanbali School of law.
The Islamic authorities possibly still worried that despite four schools of thought, dissent would become unmanageable. Towards the end of the eleventh century, therefore, they officially closed the "Gates of Ijtihad." There may have been too many different answers to the same questions, leading to confusion. Possibly this, in turn, may have made it difficult for the authorities to maintain order as well as to justify their autocratic rule.
Muslim scholars also appear to have decided that as all questions had been addressed, there was no longer any need to exercise independent judgment. The result was that exercising independent judgment became no longer permissible.
During the twelfth century, nevertheless, there were still attempts to use rational and deductive reasoning. In Muslim Spain, for instance, Averroes (aka Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198 CE), one of the founders of secular reasoning in Europe, refused to accept the closing of the Gates of Ijtihad. He continued to use Arabic translations of classical Greek sources, and preferred strictly rational methods to decide matters in contention. As in the Muslim world the Gates of Ijtihad had been closed, however, his rulings proved unacceptable.
What happened once the Gates of Ijtihad were closed: The Ottoman example
What followed the closing of the Gates of Ijtihad in the Muslim world were centuries of intellectual and political decline. At the same time, Europe, with its many states constantly at war with each other, was on the ascendancy. One of the major reasons Europe advanced appears to have been that its warring political entities needed to find new methods of defeating their adversaries. The Europeans were therefore drawn to study science and technology to enable them to produce weapons -- powerful naval vessels, for instance, that could be used in war both at home and overseas. The Muslims, on the other hand, who had fewer internal wars, had no incentive to invent new techniques to survive.
Yet all was not lost for the Muslims: European businessmen had weapons to sell and were perfectly willing to sell them to Muslims. Additionally, after many European wars, a continuous flow of refugees fleeing Europe brought their skills and knowledge to the Ottoman Empire. The Muslims were then able to take advantage of many of the technological and scientific developments in Europe. This was essentially how the Ottoman Empire (ca. 1389-1918) was able to hold its own land -- and even capture European land -- until the seventeenth century, when it began to lose battles and was forced to retreat from territories over which, for centuries, it had ruled.
Ottoman literature and chronicles are filled with descriptions of the Europeans who fled to the Empire, and the technologies they brought with them. The Ottomans, however, never seem to have asked why it was that the Europeans invented these technologies while the Muslims did not.
Why didn't the Ottomans invent these technologies? So long as the Ottoman Empire expanded, it did not need to invent them. Could the answer be -- even in retreat and today –- that, as of Gates of Ijtihad are still closed, Muslim culture does not allow the necessary creativity?
What happened once the Gates of Ijtihad were closed: The Muslim world today
From what one reads and hears in the media among other places, many Muslims quietly ask themselves this question, but are afraid to state it publicly for fear of being ostracized, arrested, or even killed by their co-religionists. Why, these Muslims ask, can Muslims who emigrate to the West – especially to the U.S. and Canada – invent and innovate in the fields of science and technology, but not in their native lands?
When one looks at which Muslims succeed in the West and which do not, it seems that Muslims who live outside Muslim communities in the West, or who have, at best, only marginal connections with these communities, are the most likely to succeed. By examining the lives of successful Muslims in the West, it seems clear that those who live in Muslim communities -- and whose social life revolves around these communities -- seem to suffer from the intellectual constraints just as their fellow Muslims do in their lands of origin.
According to one Palestinian Muslim who has chosen to live outside the Muslim community in the U.S., the answer is, "They don't allow us to think." ("They" refers to the leaders of the community back home and abroad.) Muslims, he states, are subjected to intellectual oppression at home: they are not allowed to question. When young Muslims do ask questions, their elders usually humiliate them – often publicly -- a sure-fire way to discourage intellectual development and curiosity. If Muslims repeat what is proscribed, they are praised; if they question, they are chastised.
The political despotism that characterizes their governments also seems to filter down to lower levels to suppress dissent, keeping every individual and group both intimidated and dependent. The same appears to apply to Muslim communities outside the Muslim world. On paper, young Muslims who live in the Western world have the freedoms that any other Western citizens enjoy. In practice, though, this is not what takes place.[6] Those who speak out, or who do not conform to Islamic rules as dictated by their communities and families, suffer greatly.[7]
During the twentieth century, there were countless attempts, by Muslim scholars and non-Muslims, to address this problem; but little seems to have come from them.
The Chinese peasants who went to work as laborers for the British in Singapore in the 19th century managed to produce the economic marvel that Singapore is today. Similarly, South Korea went from a semi-medieval kingdom 50 years ago to the tenth largest economy in the world. The Muslims of Aden in southern Arabia, however, lived under British rule, like the Singaporeans, yet they remain as underdeveloped as their neighbors who never lived under foreign domination. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yu, for example, once asked a well-known scholar of Islam, "Why is it that whatever we do to help our Muslims advance fails? We provide them with educational opportunities, give them financial incentives, and so on, but nothing works. They still remain at the bottom. Why?"

Ijtihad among the Shiites
Shiites have a different approach to the problem of questioning -- an approach which might help solve the Muslim dilemma of how to remain Muslim yet take part in the modern world. For Shiites, the Gates of Ijtihad have never been closed. Shiite religious figures also have the title mujtahid, or "one who engages in the exercise of independent judgment and critical thinking to try to solve contemporary problems."
There is a noticeable difference between how Shiites in Iran, for example, and those in Iraq or Lebanon approach exercising independent judgment. Most Iranian mullahs – (especially those involved with the government) even those who are known as mujtahids -- rarely use ijtihad. The Iraqi and Lebanese Shiites are more likely to engage in independent judgment than their counterparts in Iran. As the Shiites are the dominant group in Iran, they never needed to worry about what those around them might do to them; hence they had less incentive to innovate or think creatively. The Shiites under Sunni rule in the Arab world, however, always had to be concerned about what the Sunnis might do to them -- a situation that induced these Shiites to find ways to survive, and possibly be more open to exercising ijtihad.
If one compares different modes of exercising judgment: in the West, Judeo-Christian thinking is based on divinely-revealed law, but with a heavy dose of critical -- mostly Aristotelian -- deductive thinking, closer to the Shiite approach. The Western tradition also sees modern science and technology as gifts from God, developed by man -- and encourages their use.
When, for example, a medical question recently arose over whether to abort large numbers of fetuses (over three) to protect the life of the mother to enable the others more successfully to be brought to term, senior Shiite religious authorities responded that although they had not really studied the problem, these were questions to consider. The Sunnis, however, said that embryos turned into fetuses because of the will of Allah, so abortion would be unacceptable -- even if the mother and all the fetuses were to die, there was nothing to be done. Only one Sunni agreed with the Shiite approach – a Sufi mystic who refused to accept that the Gates of Ijtihad were ever closed – but his is not the prevailing approach in the Sunni world.
Even though both Sunni and Shiite religious leaders approach ijtihad differently, neither encourages their followers to think creatively. Although in theory Shiite religious leaders can exercise independent judgment, in practice only a few do so -- and rarely, at that. The rest of the Shiite community is encouraged instead, in a process known as taqlid, to choose a religious leader to follow, then "imitate" him. Although these leaders are allowed to question, the masses are not encouraged to think, but to follow. So on a fundamental level, neither Shiites nor Sunnis really approaches ijtihad all that differently.
Even if, on the surface, the Shiites appear to offer a solution to the problem of independent thinking, it is hard to imagine, given the present political climate, how the Sunnis, who constitute about 85% of the 1.3 billion Muslims of the world, would be prepared to borrow anything from their Shiite enemies.

Muslim attempts to re-open the Gates of Ijtihad
Most of the governments of the Muslim world are despotic regimes run by autocrats who do not allow their citizens to question them. Questioning might lead to insurrection; governments might be overthrown. These leaders, therefore, make sure to appoint "official" religious leaders who will endorse the government line. Ijtihad might lead people to question regimes; a situation that cannot be tolerated. It is not surprising that calls for re-opening the Gates of Ijtihad fall on deaf ears, as the Saudis, Egyptians, Emiratis, and others all do their utmost to stamp out individual thought.
Because questioning religion -- and much else -- is not allowed, some young Muslims who grow up in Islamic lands find much of what was forced down their throats meaningless, then reject Islam. When some of them come to the West, often their first reaction is to stay as far away from Islam and Muslims as possible. Some, after they remain in the West for a while, stumble upon books about Islam in libraries; they start reading and realize that there is a lot of beauty and knowledge in Islam – just not when forced down their throats. They read, but find almost no one with whom they can share their newfound curiosity.
If and when they do find a kindred spirit, there is often a sort of dance – a tiptoeing around the real questions – mostly out of fear and suspicion. With time, when they realize that other people might have similar interests and feel safe enough to open up, they introduce each other to other men who think like them, but as if these are secret societies: there is a fear that if others, who may not agree, find out what they are discussing, both they and their families back home could suffer. They know well that organized Islam, even in the West, is controlled overwhelmingly by forces that strongly oppose ijtihad.
The internet has offered many the anonymity to pursue an interest in Islam. A surgeon from Malaysia now living in California who says he is happy with his life there, writes on the internet extensively about his fascination with Islam and ijtihad. (See his blog at http://www.bakrimusa.com) His daring has attracted others who write on his blog about Islam. He also boldly states that he could never have engaged in these types of discussions about Islam in his native Malaysia. Could the internet be a way out of this Muslim predicament?
There is also a remarkable group called the Ahl al-Quran[8] which originated in Egypt. The group's adherents maintain that the only true source of Islamic law is the Quran, the only divine text of Islam. The hadiths and the legal exegesis which constitute Shari'a law, they argue, are just interpretations of the Quran. The interpretations were made by man, and occurred because of problems Muslims had after the Quran was revealed. The scholars addressed problems Muslims faced centuries ago. Muslims in the 21st century, they state, face different problems and should use the Quran – and only the Quran, just as the earliest Islamic scholars did – to find solutions to modern problems. They see no reason why Muslim scholars today cannot think creatively as the scholars of early Islam used to do.
As it is more comfortable to find Quranic material that can be used to address modern situations, and not then feel encumbered by the enormous weight of the hadiths and other legal and interpretive material from ancient religious scholars, an Egyptian organization, Ahl al-Quran, maintains that science and technology are Allah's gifts to man, to be used to address contemporary problems.
After Egypt's religious establishment ordered the Ahl al-Quran banned, arrested, or expelled, the group was forced to flee; it is now based in the United States. Why was it forced out? Its adherents, well versed in the Quran, rejected the imposed decision-making of Egypt's al-Azhar religious establishment,[9] and stated that Islam strongly opposes dictatorship in both its political and religious forms. Instead, this group has been using the Quran to demonstrate that the original Muslim community was inclusive and that it encouraged discussion,[10] both of which today are absent in Egypt and throughout the Muslim world.
When Western officials ask Egyptian political and religious officials about the Ahl al-Quran, the Egyptians laugh and smear the group, labeling its members as crazy extremists with no following. Sadly, because of our ignorance of Islamic culture, or political pressures, we usually accept what the Egyptian government officials tell us without subjecting their remarks to "our own ijtihad," thereby closing our eyes to a force which could help save the Muslim world from itself, and possibly even help prevent a clash between the Western and Muslim worlds.

Conclusion
Is there a chance that the Muslims could reopen the Gates of Ijtihad? For the foreseeable future, the answer seems to be a resounding no. The mislabeled "Arab Spring" has turned into an "Arab Winter" in which the forces who apparently want to recreate an imagined, glorious past society modeled after what they believe their prophet established. Add to that the huge amounts of money Wahhabi "allies" of the U.S. are spending throughout the Muslim world, to propagate their militant version of Islam, and things do not look promising.
Those who understand that without itjihad, they have no future, are being forced underground, and, if they are lucky, then emigrate. These emigrants who think critically rarely move into Islamic communities where critical thinking is discouraged.
The way things look now, only if the forces which want to bring back seventh century Islamic society were to suffer a massive defeat, could there be much hope. Only then, after the anti-ijtihad forces were defeated and no longer had access to unlimited financial resources with which to spread their anti-critical thinking, can things change.
Until then, the Gates of Ijtihad will almost assuredly remain tightly shut, and the forces which now control Islam will see to it that they remain so.
Regrettably, if this analysis is correct, the future does not look able to be transformed for the Muslim world or its adherents in the near future. Until Muslim countries and communities in the West allow their people to express themselves freely -- without fear of reprisal -- it is unlikely that the Muslim world will be able to reopen the Gates of Ijtihad and again become a center of science and creativity as it used to be in the early centuries of Islam.

Notes:
[1] According to early Islamic doctrine, so Muslims as a community could not go wrong, decisions were made by discussing problems which faced the community. But as the community grew in size, it became unwieldy to call the community together in one meeting.
[2] The Sunnis (about 85% of the Muslim world) accept al-Bukhari; but the Shiites have their own collections of hadiths.
[3] For example, when the Muslims reached India about 100 years after Muhammad's death, they came across a culture not mentioned in the Quran. While Islam is fiercely monotheistic, Hinduism has many gods and idols, anathema to Islam. The Quran demands that polytheists be enslaved, then offered the choice of conversion to Islam or death. During the early Muslim conquests of India, Hindus were massacred or enslaved, but there were simply too many Hindus for the Muslims to be able to comply with what was required by the Quran. The Muslims therefore devised the following solution: The Quran lists three groups of people who had received a revelation from God prior to Islam, and were therefore allowed to live under Islamic rule: the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabi'ah. No one knew who the Sabi'ah were, so the Muslims seem to have decided that that this term referred to other large groups such as the Hindus and Zoroastrian Persians. This decision evidently enabled the Muslims to allow Hindus live as Hindus under Muslim rule.
[4] The Jews, who did not have a state of their own, seem not to have constituted a threat to the Muslims. Moreover, unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism is not a triumphalist religion – one whose adherents believe they have the final revelation from God to mankind, and therefore the obligation to bring that religion to the rest of humanity. Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, were rivals.
[5] For example, a certain ruler of Egypt, the Fatimid (Isma'ili Shiite) ruler al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, (985- ca. 1021) declared himself God. The Druze still regard him as divine.
[6] When, for instance, the Canadian Muslim woman, Irshad Manji, as a teenager, questioned her imam about his sermons, she was chastised by the imam, and ostracized by her family and community. She said she clearly respected Islam and considered herself an observant Muslim, but that her thoughts on re-opening the Gates of Ijtihad as a way of saving Islam fell on deaf ears.
[7] This shows why surveys done in the Muslim world, especially in the more totalitarian countries, on topics involving politics or questioning authority, are meaningless: the consequences of telling anyone that you think differently from the prevailing trend could be devastating. Western academics and officials might do well to keep that in mind when they speak with locals about their thoughts.
[8] Probably best translated as "Quranics": those who believe only in the Quran.
[9] …which almost everyone in Egypt sees as a tool of the Egypt government. It repeats whatever the government tells it to say.
[10] See footnote 1 on ijma' – the concept of consensus in Islam.

Russia sends troops to Syria

From NBC News, 15 June 2012, by Jim Miklaszewski*:

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports that a Russian military ship carrying troops is on its way to Syria to protect a Russian deep water port.

Russia is sending armed troops to Syria amid escalating violence there, United States military officials told NBC News Friday, in a move certain to frustrate Western efforts to put pressure on the regime of President Bashir Assad.
Moscow has sent a ship carrying a small contingent of combat forces to guard Russia’s deep-water port and military base at the Syrian city of Tartus, the US officials said.

Days before President Barack Obama's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, there has been a war of words between the U.S. and Syria's longtime military supplier. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

It comes after the conflict was declared by France on Wednesday to be a full-blown civil war.
The head of the U.N. observers in Syria said Friday a recent spike in bloodshed is derailing the mission to monitor and defuse more than a year of violence and could prompt the unarmed force to pull out.
"Violence over the past 10 days has been intensifying willingly by the both parties, with losses on both sides and significant risks to our observers," Maj. Gen. Robert Mood told reporters in Damascus. "The escalating violence is now limiting our ability to observe, verify, report as well as assist in local dialogue and stability projects."
Tartus is one of Russia’s most strategically-important assets, giving it military access to the Mediterranean Sea.
Russia and China, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council with veto power, frustrated attempts by key Western figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to enforce a United Nations peace plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan....

...Russia, ...has come under increasing criticism from the West for arms deliveries to Syria ...Russia says it is fulfilling existing contracts for air defense systems against external attacks. ...at least nine Mi-25 helicopters were sent to Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad to be repaired by Oboronservis, owned by the Defense Ministry.

Russia delivered three different missile systems including Bastion anti-ship missile units and another anti-aircraft system to Syria last year.
At least two ships carrying Russian weapons have reportedly travelled to Syria since the beginning of the year...
*Reuters contributed to this report. Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News.

J Street: anti-Israel, anti-peace and cannot tell the truth

From The Gatestone Institute, June 14, 2012, by Alan M. Dershowitz:

President Obama recently ...reiterated to me in private what he had previously said in public: namely,

• that he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons;
• that containment of a nuclear Iran was not an option;
• that sanctions and diplomatic pressures would be applied and increased first; but
• that, as a last recourse, the military option would not be taken off the table.

What the President said is now the official American policy with regard to the threat of a nuclear Iran. It is clear that sanctions and diplomacy alone will not convince the Iranian mullahs to halt their progress toward their goal of an Iran with nuclear weapons. The only realistic possibility of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions is for them to believe that there is a credible threat of an American military attack on their nuclear facilities. Unless this threat is credible, the Iranians will persist. And if the Iranians persist, and the Israelis do not believe that the American threat is credible, the Israelis will undertake a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. It is crucial, therefore, for America's military threat to be credible and to be perceived as credible by both the Israelis and the Iranians.
Enter J Street. J Street is a lobby in Washington that advertises itself as "pro-Israel and pro-peace." But its policy with regard to Iran is neither pro-Israel nor pro-peace. It is categorically opposed to any "military strike against Iran." It is also opposed to maintaining any credible military threat against Iran, through "legislation, authorizing, encouraging or in other ways laying the ground work for the use of military force against Iran." This is according to their official policy statement that can be read at http://jstreet.org/policy/policy-positions/iran. They favor sanctions and they recognize that "Iran obtaining nuclear weapons would pose a very serious threat to America and Israeli interests." But they believe that diplomacy and sanctions alone can deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons. By advocating this path, they are totally undercutting the policy of the Obama Administration. They are sending a message both to Iran and to Israel that there is no credible military threat, and that if Iran is prepared to withstand sanctions and diplomacy, they will have nothing further to worry about if they move forward with their nuclear weapons program.
The Obama Administration has tried very hard to persuade Israel that there is no space between the American position and the Israeli position on Iran. Whether or not this is true, there is a hole the size of a nuclear crater between Israel's position, reflecting a widespread consensus within that country, and J Street's position. Virtually every Israeli wants the United States to keep the military option on the table. This includes "doves" such as Israeli President Shimon Peres. Former United States President Bill Clinton also believes that the military option must be maintained. Virtually everyone, Israelis and Americans alike, hope that the military option will never have to be exercised. But the best way to make sure that it will not have to be exercised is to keep it credible. As George Washington put in his second inaugural speech: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace."
J Street, in addition to undercutting both mainstream Israeli and American policy toward Iran, has also mischaracterized the views of those it cites in support of its benighted position. It cites Former Mossad Chiefs, Meir Dagan and Efraim Halevy as opposing any "military strike against Iran." It cites these two security Israeli security experts in the context of opposing an American strike and an American threat to strike. Yet Dagan has explicitly stated that he would favor keeping the American military option on the table. This is what he has said: "The military option must always be on the table, with regards to Iran, but it must always be a last option." This is quite different from the misleading manner in which J Street has characterized his views. The same is true of Efraim Halevy. When I read the J Street reference to Halevy, I immediately called him and told him how J Street had characterized his views and asked him if that was a correct characterization. His response: "That's absolutely false." He told me that he had repeatedly stated that the United States must keep the military option on the table as a last resort, though he hoped that it would never have to be used.
J Street can no longer pretend to be pro-Israel, since it is actively seeking to undercut a joint Israeli and American policy designed to protect Israel and the world from a nuclear armed Iran. Nor can J Street claim to be pro-peace, since its policy will likely encourage Iran to take actions that will inevitably result in an attack either by Israel, the United States or both. Finally, it cannot be trusted to tell the truth, as evidenced by its deliberate misattribution of its views to security experts that don't share them.
Some people have accused J Street of carrying President Obama's water with regard to Israel and of having been "invented" to give the Obama Administration cover for taking tough policies with regard to Israeli settlement activity. But in this instance, J Street is completely undercutting the Obama policy. That would not be so bad except for the fact that the Obama White House sometimes seems to be embracing J Street and its followers. This public embrace sends a message to Iran that the Obama Administration may not mean it when it says that it will use military force if necessary to prevent a nuclear armed Iran. This may be a false message, but it is a dangerous one nevertheless. Absolutely no good has come from J Street's soft policy on Iran.
Either J Street must change its policy, or truth in advertising requires that it no longer proclaim itself a friend of Israel, a friend of peace, a friend of truth, or a friend of the Obama Administration.

Stay out of the Syrian Morass

From The Washington Times, June 13, 2012, by Daniel Pipes*:

As the Syrian government makes increasingly desperate and vicious efforts to keep power, pleas for military intervention, more or less on the Libyan model, have become more insistent. This course is morally attractive, to be sure. But should Western states follow this counsel? I believe not.
Those calls to action fall into three main categories: a Sunni Muslim concern for co-religionists, a universal humanitarian concern to stop torture and murder, and a geopolitical worry about the impact of the ongoing conflict. The first two motives can be fairly easily dispatched. If Sunni governments – notably those of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar - choose to intervene on behalf of fellow Sunnis against Alawis, that is their prerogative but Western states have no dog in this fight.
Generalized humanitarian concerns face problems of veracity, feasibility, and consequence. Anti-regime insurgents, who are gaining on the battlefield, appear responsible for at least some atrocities. Western electorates may not accept the blood and treasure required for humanitarian intervention. It must succeed quickly, say within a year. The successor government may (as in the Libyan case) turn out even worse than the existing totalitarianism. Together, these factors argue compellingly against humanitarian intervention.
Foreign policy interests should take precedence because Westerners are not so strong and safe that they can look at Syria only out of concern for Syrians; rather, they must view the country strategically, putting a priority on their own security.

Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy has helpfully summarized in The New Republic reasons why a Syrian civil war poses dangers to U.S. interests: the Assad regime could

• lose control of its chemical and biological arsenal;
• ... renew the PKK insurgency against Ankara;
• regionalize the conflict by pushing its Palestinian population across the Jordanian, Lebanese, and Israeli borders; and
• fight the Sunnis of Lebanon, reigniting the Lebanese civil war.

Sunnis jihadi warriors, in response, could turn Syria into the global nexus of violent Islamist terrorism – one bordering NATO and Israel.
Finally, he worries that a protracted conflict gives Islamists greater opportunities than does one that ends quickly.

Jordanian Salafi leader Abou Mohamad Tahawi sees Alawis and Shi'is – not Israelis - as the greatest threat to Sunnis.
To which I reply:

• Yes, the WMDs could go rogue but I worry more about their ending up in the hands of an Islamist successor government.
• A renewed PKK insurgency against the hostile government ruling Turkey, or increased Sunni-Alevi tensions in that country, hardly rank as major Western concerns.
• Expelling Palestinians would barely destabilize Jordan or Israel.
• Lebanon is already a balkanized mess; and, as opposed to the 1976-91 period, internal fighting underway there only marginally affects Western interests.

The global jihad effort has limited resources; the location may be less than ideal, but what better than for it to fight the Pasdaran (Iran's Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) to the death in Syria?
As for time working against Western interests: even if the Syrian conflict ended immediately, I foresee almost no prospect of a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional government emerging. Whether sooner or later, after Assad and his lovely wife decamp, Islamists will likely seize power, Sunnis will take vengeance, and regional tensions will play out within Syria.
Also, overthrowing the Assad regime does not mean the sudden end of Syria's civil war. More likely, Assad's fall will lead to Alawi and other Iranian-backed elements resisting the new government. Moreover, as Gary Gambill points out, Western military involvement could embolden opposition to the new government and prolong the fighting.

Finally (as earlier was the case in Iraq), protracted conflict in Syria offers some geopolitical advantages:

• It lessens the chances of Damascus from starting a war with Israel or re-occupying Lebanon.
• It increases the chances that Iranians, living under the thumb of the mullahs who are Assad's key ally, will draw inspiration from the Syrian uprising and likewise rebel against their rulers.
• It inspires greater Sunni Arab anger at Tehran, especially as the Islamic Republic of Iran has been providing arms, finance, and technology to help repress Syrians.
• It relieves the pressure on non-Muslims: indicative of the new thinking, Jordanian Salafi leader Abou Mohamad Tahawi recently stated that "The Alawi and Shi'i coalition is currently the biggest threat to Sunnis, even more than the Israelis."
• It foments Middle Eastern rage at Moscow and Beijing for supporting the Assad regime.

Western interests suggest staying out of the Syrian morass.

*Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Sanctions and other alternatives may be given more time to stop Iran

From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 14 June 2012:

Over the last six months, the prospects of an Israeli preemptive strike against the Iranian nuclear weapons program have been much discussed. Back in early February, media reports suggested that the US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, was increasingly concerned about a possible ‘window’ for an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities during the months of April, May and June. The Israelis said they feared the Iranian nuclear program would soon enter a ‘zone of immunity’ when it would become harder to stop by military means...
...In the meantime, sanctions will be given a chance to work—but not much of a chance. The growing ferocity of the sanctions is actually a silent testimony to the fact that the sanctions must show quick results.
Media reports suggest Netanyahu has bought into this position, albeit without enthusiasm. In April he told a news conference that Iranian economic difficulties had not succeeded in pushing the Iranian nuclear program backwards, ‘even a millimetre’, an interesting formula since a large part of the public debate over the merits of a preemptive strike concerns just how much the Iranian program could be set back by such an event. Even Netanyahu would probably concede, though, that an on-going campaign of disruption against the Iranian nuclear program—the Stuxnet virus and the assassinations of key Iranian scientists—has borne fruit. Israel might still have further cards to play in that regard. For all those reasons, news reports in Israel suggesting that the initial April–June window has been pushed back have a ring of credibility to them. A recent report in The Jerusalem Post, for example, titled ‘Confrontation with Iran may be delayed to 2013’ tells just such a story. In the meantime, it’s likely the Americans are doing a full court press around the region, in an effort to build regional support for both the sanctions, and for the idea that more serious alternatives will follow if the Iranians move further towards weaponisation.

Follow the link to download a pdf copy of the full paper.

Teaching hatred in kindergarten

From Ynet News, 12 June 2012, by Elior Levy:

Kids at Islamic Jihad kindergarten celebrate end of year ... Teacher: "We educate them to love resistance, Palestine..."
Children attending a kindergarten in Gaza that is run by Islamic Jihad celebrated their graduation by dressing up in army attire, waving toy rifles and chanting anti-Israel slogans.
"It is our obligation to educate the children to love the resistance, Palestine and Jerusalem, so they will recognize the importance of Palestine and who its enemy is," the kindergarten's director said. 


'Palestinian prisoner tortured.'

The children were dressed up in uniforms of Jihad's armed-wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and each of them received a toy rifle. Some of them held up photos of Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shaqaqi.

'Palestinian prisoner and Israeli guard'

The event was attended by the children's relatives, some of whom belong to Islamic Jihad and other armed Palestinian factions.

'Until I die as a shahid.' Gaza kids during party

During the ceremony the children were asked to stand next to mock coffins draped with flags of the various armed factions. The flags bore the images of "shahids (martyrs)."


Kindergartners defend 'al-Aqsa mosque'

One child, Hamza, said "When I grow up I'll join Islamic Jihad and the al-Quds Brigades. I'll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shahid and join my father in heaven.
"I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing," he said.
..."At every kindergarten graduation ceremony we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah so they will grow up to love the resistance and serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine," one of the teachers said.

Face facts: Iran wants nucear weapons

From The Australian, June 12, 2012, by Emanuele Ottolenghi*:

AS negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are about to resume in Moscow next Monday, Western leaders insist that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has yet to make a decision about whether to build nuclear weapons, despite evidence that Iran has been seeking nuclear weapons ever since the beginning of its nuclear program, almost 30 years ago.
...On February 25, for example, the Director of US National Intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr, testified before the US congress that "Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so." He added, "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."
Three days later, US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta repeated this view to congress: "They're developing a nuclear capability (but) our intelligence makes clear that they haven't made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon."
.... against their repeated reassurances that Iran has not made a decision yet, there's Iran's constant pulling of the curtain seconds before its cheating act is caught on camera.
Consider the following:
Iran pursued major elements of its nuclear program in secret for at least 18 years, in violation of its solemn Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations.
Iran procured much of its nuclear technology, including plans to build uranium metal hemispheres that can only be used for a nuclear device, from A. Q. Khan. The Khan network supplied Iran and other countries, such as Libya, with sensitive nuclear technology, including blueprints for a nuclear device. Iran never denied having received any of the above. On the contrary, it confirmed that it possessed the Khan documents.
Iran insists that it intends to enrich uranium to feed several nuclear power plants. Apart from Bushehr, however, work has not started on any other plants. And the uranium needed to fuel the Bushehr plant will come from Russia. But the 60,000 sq m centrifuge field at Natanz, constructed deep underground and protected by layers of reinforced concrete, is capable of producing highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
All research centres involved in Iran's nuclear program have links to, or are an integral part of, the Iranian armed forces. This would be both inappropriate and unnecessary if the centres were designed for purely civilian purposes. The Revolutionary Guards play key roles in all matters relating to the nuclear program, while Iran's military industry manufactures the uranium-enriching centrifuges.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, "Iran had used undeclared nuclear material for testing and experimentation in several uranium conversion, enrichment, fabrication and irradiation activities, including the separation of plutonium, at undeclared locations and facilities".
Iran's scientists have conducted experiments with high explosives and special triggers that could work in a nuclear device; they have studied the geometry of implosion of the Trinity Test - America's first plutonium nuclear weapons test - and they have refitted long-range missiles to accommodate a non-conventional payload.
The program includes a heavy-water research reactor, whose structure and dimension suggest a military purpose - the enrichment of plutonium - given that Iran's power stations would ostensibly be fuelled by uranium.
Faced with pressure to open Parchin, a military site, to inspections due to mounting evidence of nuclear weapons-related military tests, Iran is trying to sanitise it, much like Syria did with the rubble of its undeclared nuclear reactor after it was destroyed in an Israeli air raid in 2007. As if all of this was not enough, there is the underground enrichment plant at Fordow, whose "size and configuration", as Barack Obama said in 2009, "is inconsistent with a peaceful program".
These are commendably blunt words. ...But the argument according to which Iran has not made a decision yet, weighed against the evidence of almost 30 years of dogged, relentless and stubborn pursuit of nuclear weapons, sounds like a betrayed husband choosing not to believe what everyone else already knows.
*Emanuele Ottolenghi is a fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies and the author of The Pasdaran: Inside Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Corps.

Waves of Freedom

“Aliya Bet,” facilitated the “illegal” immigration of the wretched survivors of the Holocaust into pre-state Israel. For four decades, the role that about 200 North American volunteers played in Aliya Bet has remained one of history’s forgotten chapters. Not until Murray Greenfield’s book The Jews’ Secret Fleet was first published in 1987 did the heroic story of the young American volunteers come to light.

Last year, an hour-long documentary film by Alan Rosenthal called Waves of Freedom, based on Greenfield’s book, retold the dramatic story, this time with actual footage of the events in addition to interviews with several of the participants – not just survivors and volunteers, but also with the British naval officers who worked to stop the immigrant ships.
Follow the link to read about the book, the movie, and to order copies.
http://www.gefenpublishinginisrael.com/2012/06/11/waves-of-freedom/

UN-supported puppet show:"don't smoke - carry a machine gun"

From PMW, 4 June 2012:

Puppet 1: "I wanted to stand before the audience and sing to Jerusalem, which is being kept from us. Jerusalem, whose youth are being killed by the Jews. To sing and to say: Jerusalem, we are coming, Jerusalem, the time of death has arrived. Jerusalem, we will not surrender to the enemies or be humiliated."

Puppet 2: "What am I doing to myself [by smoking]? I, and many other youth like me, think that through cigarettes we will be adults and men. Jerusalem doesn't need youth who hold cigarettes. It needs men who hold machine guns, not cigarettes."

Note: According to the Burj Luq Luq Center's website where the puppet show was held, they are funded and have ties to

• the French Consulate,
• the Swiss Development Agency,
• the Italian Institutions' Union,
• the UNFPA,
• the [PA] Ministry of Youth and Sports,
• UNICEF and
• UNESCO.