Category: Radical Islam

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PALESTINIAN SUFFERING AND ISRAEL

The Palestinians the international media don’t talk about — and the reason why.

How can we explain the international community’s indifference to Palestinian suffering? Every day, angry bands of protesters burn the flag of Israel, call for the destruction of the Jewish state and insist that Israel and its Jewish citizens be shunned from polite society and thrown out of the global economy all in the name of opposing “the Occupation.”

Although the breathless protesters insist that all their efforts are directed toward the Palestinians, as it works out, none of their assaults on Israel have improved the Palestinians’ lot. To the contrary, their protests have given a free pass to those that do the most to harm Palestinians.

The angry, hateful protests against Israel tell us nothing about either the history of the Palestinians’ relations with the Jewish state or their present circumstances.

And what are those circumstances? Consider the stories of two different groups of Palestinian prisoners.

The first story relates to the Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails after being tried and convicted of engaging in terrorist attacks against Israel.

Led by terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences for killing multiple Israelis, in April more than a thousand jailed terrorists opened a hunger strike demanding an improvement in their prison conditions.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Barghouti and massively covered the strike. Numerous other marquee media organizations similarly provided sympathetic coverage of the event.

Hidden beneath mountains of column inches was the basic fact that the terrorists’ demands made clear that their strike was ridiculous.

They weren’t demanding food. They weren’t demanding fair trials or the right to speak to their attorneys.

They were demanding that Israel add 20 new channels to their standard, free cable television access.

They demanded that Israel let them have telephones in their rooms.

They demanded that Israel buy them air conditioning units.

In other words, they were demanding that Israel treat them better than it treats its own soldiers.

The second prisoner story is the story of the 12,000 Palestinians that have been jailed in Syrian regime prisons since the start of the Syrian civil war. These men, women and children are denied sufficient food and water. They are subjected to torture. Several cases have been reported of Palestinian female prisoners being subjected to gang rapes. More than 500 Palestinians have died in jail. More than 500 Palestinian children are behind bars.

And the plight of the Palestinians on the outside is no better.

Nearly 4,000 Palestinians have been killed by regime forces since the start of the war. Yarmouk refugee camp has been all but depopulated. Whereas before the war began in 2011, more than 120,000 Palestinians resided in the camp just 8 km. from central Damascus, today a mere 20,000 remain. Those who remain have been besieged by regime forces for nearly three years. They have been starved and parched. Running water was cut off years ago.

And yet, the only journalist who has consistently covered the story is Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh, writing for the niche website of the Gatestone Institute.

As Abu Toameh noted in a report on the Palestinians in Syria last August, the leaders of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority like their sometimes-rivals- sometimes-partners in Hamas have refused to intervene on their behalf.

To the contrary, the PLO happily reopened its embassy in Damascus last year, despite the fact that it is accredited to a regime that is slaughtering the people that the PLO claims to represent.

Abu Toameh wrote bitterly, “The Palestinians of Syria would have been more fortunate had they been living in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Then the international community and media would certainly have noticed them. Yet when Western journalists lavish time on Palestinians delayed at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, and ignore barrels of explosives dropped by the Syrian military on residential areas in refugee camps in Syria, one might start to wonder what they are really about.”

This week we got reminder of what this is really about from an odd source.

During his interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, Russian President Vladimir Putin grew exasperated with Kelly’s repetitious line of questioning about whether or not Russia colluded to get President Donald Trump elected last November.

After repeatedly denying Kelly’s allegations, Putin insisted that the Russian-US elections narrative is simply a conspiracy theory invented by Democrats and their allies to avoid the blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat.

In Putin’s words, “It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not our fault. It’s the Russians. They intervened. They interfered.’” Putin then compared the anti-Russian conspiracy theory to antisemitism.

“It’s like antisemitism,” Putin explained. Anti-Jewish conspiracy spinners use the Jews as a means to deflect blame for their failures. In his words, “‘The Jews are to blame.’ You’re [not] an idiot. Because ‘the Jews are to blame.’” Putin’s statement is important for two reasons.

First, the former KGB chief knows a thing or two about antisemitic conspiracy theories. Russia has played an outsized role in inventing them for precisely the reason that Putin gave – blame deflection.

It was a precursor of the KGB, the czar’s secret police, that wrote the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion which purported to expose a Jewish world conspiracy to control humanity for nefarious ends.

And in 1949, it was the KGB that created the antisemitic conspiracy that has animated and controlled Western discourse on Israel ever since. It was then that the Soviets invented the term “anti-Zionism,” and began referring to Jews as Zionists.

And this brings us to the second noteworthy aspect of Putin’s discussion of antisemitism. The KGB rebranded Jews as “Zionists” and antisemites as “anti-Zionists” to rescue antisemitism as a tool of political warfare from the ruins of Auschwitz.

Until then, it was socially unacceptable to hate Jews.

After the KGB moved to pan Zionism as a form of colonialism and imperialism, it became fashionable again.

What Putin explained in his remarks is that conspiracy theories are not accidental occurrences.

They are deliberate, premeditated acts of political warfare that serve specific political purposes for their creators.

Anti-Zionist conspiracies, like their traditional anti-Jewish antecedents are particularly attractive because Jews are such an easy target.

Their small numbers and the ease with which they can be singled out makes them natural targets of conspiracy mongers.

After all, who will stand up for Israel and the Jews? Jews, of course, have no credibility as defenders of the Jewish state, because, well, they’re Jews.

As for non-Jewish defenders of Israel – they can dismissed as hired guns or religious fanatics or discredited in any number of other ways.

Sadly, while Putin has no compunction about standing up to the anti-Russia conspiracy spinners, with each passing year, the American Jewish community has had more and more difficulty recognizing that they are the target of a conspiracy theory and acting appropriately. Rather than stand up for Israel and against its detractors, more and more American Jews have joined them.

And those who do not join them try to get out from under the conspiracy web by pretending that it is a rational argument, rather than a conspiracy.

Indeed, increasingly, American Jewish organizations make distinctions between Israel and Judea and Samaria. They don’t take their tours beyond the 1949 armistice lines. They say that boycotts of Jewish products made beyond the lines are legitimate.

They try to “dialogue” with anti-Israel activists and blackball Israeli conservatives.

And lo and behold, it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work because it cannot work. Because the conspiracy mongers are not interested in compromising, they are interested in delegitimizing the very notion that Jews can argue with them.

The toll this has taken on the American Jewish community was clearly in evidence this week at the Israel Day Parade in New York.

15 years ago, some 100,000 area Jews marched in the parade. This year, official counts put the number of marchers at 40,000. A disproportionate number of them were Orthodox.

Fifty years after the Six Day War, Israel has become a hard subject for American Jews to discuss not because it is hard on the merits to defend, but because the conspiracy theories which have taken control of the non-Jewish discourse on Israel have captured the American Jewish discourse as well.

The most pressing duty of the American Jewish community then is to finally recognize the nature of the battle they are beset by and fight it as hard as they can.

The long-suffering Palestinians will no doubt thank them for doing so.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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After Raqqa Falls, Can an Israeli Supported Kurdistan Reshape the Middle East?

With the battle for Raqqa about to get underway, those countries looking to pickup the scraps after ISIS is dead and buried are numerous, but essentially fall into two categories.  The first are Iran, Russia, Allawite Syria, and Turkey.  The second group is made up of the emerging Sunni alliance led by Saudi Arabia, Syrian opposition groups, the Kurds, and Israel.

The emerging strong man in the battle for Raqqa is the YPG, which is the American backed Kurdish militia of Northern Syria.  Just like the Peshmerga in Iraq, the Kurds in Syria fight with the same determination against ISIS.  Yet, with ISIS on the run and the Kurds fully backed by the USA a post caliphate Middle East is already emerging. It is clear as that the Turks have increasing nightmares of a Kurdish state rising on their border from the Mediterranean to Iran. Furthermore, this Kurdish state would be backed by the USA. the irony cannot be mistaken as the plan of the Shiites led by Iran has always been to create a corridor from Tehran to the Mediterranean.

The battle after Rakka will be an attempt to destroy the nascent Kurdistan by Turkish and Shiite forces.  The Turks opposed the US arming of the YPG a month ago.  One Turkish official said the the decision to arm the YPG was “tantamount to placing dynamite under Turkey-USA relations.”

Kurdistan – Image Source – PANONIAN

Israel Must Back Syrian Kurds

With Iran on the march and the US still trying to find its footing in the Middle East, the long standing covert alliance between Iraqi Kurdistan and Israel, must be applied to the YPG and the autonomous Kurdish cantons in Northern Syria.  The only force capable of providing stability East of the Levant are the Kurds. They, like the Jews, Druze, and Arameans have been systematically displaced over the 1400 year Jihad led by arabized Muslims who were only indigenous to Saudi Arabia until they pushed out of the Arabian peninsula after Muhammad died.

ISIS was conceived by the Obama administration, Turkey, and the Gulf States to hold back Iranian influence in the region.  The problem was that this entity turned on its masters and subsequently invited itself to be destroyed.  The Kurds, whom most of the players used and then abused over the years are the only stable option to holding back the rising Shiite influence in the area. The challenge is that Erdogan’s Turkey has decided that Iran is a far better partner than allowing a sovereign Kurdish entity from exposing the myth of Turkish control and historical continuity in the region.

The Trump Administration has clearly opted for the approach that backs a rising Kurdistan despite the threats from Turkey in doing so. The lines are being drawn.

Post Raqqa, the real war will begin.  Israel’s backing of a rising Kurdish state can ensure a totally different Middle East.

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IRAN UNDER ATTACK: Multiple Targets Hit in What Appears to Be a Jihadist Suicide Attack

With news continuing to come out of Iran of multiple targets being hit in the country’s capital Tehran, the style and nature of the confrontation lends itself to a Jihadist attack, possibly done by ISIS.

What is known so far is the following:

  • Two Suicide vests were detonated. One at the shrine of Imam Khomeini Mausoleum and the other 18 km away at the Iranian Parliament (Majlis).
  • Attackers have killed seven people and injured many more.
  • The attackers are still inside the parliament building as security forces battle to neutralize them.

Who is Behind the Attack?

Although it is too early to confirm, the style for the attack lends itself to either ISIS or another Jihadist Sunni group who are known to use suicide vest.  Of course these groups have been acting as proxies for the Saudis in Riyadh for years.  This attack comes on the heels of the break in relations between Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states with Qatar over its connection Iran.  If this attack was planned and directed by the new Sunni Alliance, it would signal a shift in using radical Sunni proxies from attacking Israel and the West to their arch nemesis Iran.

When the gunfire stops, Iran will have two options.  The first will be to use the attack as a trigger to take the conflict directly to the Saudis.  The other option will be to cover it over in order to conceal the fact that Iran was hit in the heart of their capital.

Either way, the Sunni-Shiite conflict is about to enter a new phase, which means many more people will be killed.

 

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RUN, HIDE AND DENY IN LONDON

Islamic terrorism has no religion even when it’s shouting, “This is for Islam.”

As Muslim terrorists rampaged around London, Met police debuted the new “Run, Hide and Tell” program. But instead some Londoners chose to stand and fight. They fought with pint glasses and barstools as the Muslim killers shouting, “This is for Allah” stabbed women in trendy eateries.

Some drivers tried to ram the killers. An unarmed police officer attacked the terrorists with a baton. An off-duty police officer tackled one of the Muslim terrorists. Both men were severely wounded.

Other unarmed police officers ran away.

Met counter-terrorism chief Mark Rowley sympathetically noted that, “If someone acts on instinct and perhaps decides to fight because they have no choice, we would never criticise them for that.”

It was kind of him not to criticize those Londoners who reacted with their base instincts and tried to fight the Muslim killers instead of running, hiding and telling, then reemerging for a vigil or a concert.

After the Manchester Arena attack, Rowley had urged, “Enjoy yourselves. We can’t let the terrorists win by dissuading us from going about our normal business.”

Going about our normal business has become the highest form of courage. Run, Hide and Deny.

Ariana Grande’s manager described her upcoming Manchester concert as representing, “courage, bravery and defiance in the face of fear”. “We’re going to go shopping’ – How defiant Londoners refused to bow to terrorists,” an article at The Independent boasts. Courage, bravery and defiance used to be found on the beaches of Normandy. Now they come from attending a concert or trying on a new blouse.

Londoners took Rowley’s advice. And then they found themselves running and hiding from Muslim killers. Video shows cringing diners lying on the floor of “London’s Coolest Bierkeller” as frantic Met police scream, “Get down”. In the Black & Blue Restaurant, the first “modern American steakhouse” in the city, some hid under the tables. Four friends jammed inside a toilet stall while the screams went on outside. A woman barricaded the door while other diners fled through the back.

At Elliot’s, an eatery “based in the inspiring environment that is Borough Market”, a Muslim terrorist stabbed a waitress hiding behind a partition. At El Pastor, where the tacos are “made from scratch in house every day”, a woman was stabbed before diners drove the terrorist away by throwing chairs at him and then barricaded themselves inside. Diners on lobster risotto at Applebee’s huddled in terror.

Pictures show courageous and defiant revelers trooping out with their hands behind their heads.

Bravely and courageously having butterfly prawns in crispy breadcrumbs or listening to a pop star trying to lip sync only works until grim men shouting about Allah come through the door. And then it’s time to try out the Met’s advice. “Hide: Turn your phone to silent. Barricade yourself in if you can.”

It is at these moments where the real courage of resisting Islamic terrorism is divided from the false courage of going out for a night on the town in “defiance” of terror.

There is no bravery or courage in denying reality. It’s just another form of cowardice.

The champions of nightlife courage mock those who warn of Islamic terrorism for “giving in to fear”. President Trump has been accused of “stoking fear” for calling for common sense migration reform in response to the attacks. Only fools and idiots aren’t afraid of a serious threat. The hollow courage of holding up candles at a vigil or heading to a trendy nightlife spot is no match for the reality of terror.

Denial is always cowardice.

When the UK PM claims that, Islamic terrorism “is a perversion of Islam”, that’s cowardice after an attack in which the Islamic killers made a point of proclaiming, “This is for Islam” and “This is for Allah”.

While the latest wave of Islamic terror swept across the UK, the University of London hosted the Muslim World League’s conference on “Tolerance in Islam”. The League is a Saudi group that has been linked to Al Qaeda whose employees included Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and one of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists. The Secretary General of the League has insisted that “terrorism has no religion”.

Indeed.

Meanwhile a friend of one of the attackers claimed that the terrorist had been influenced by the Islamic teachings of Sheikh Ahmad Musa Jibril: a Palestinian Muslim cleric in Dearborn who is popular with Al Qaeda and ISIS Jihadists. He has a degree in Sharia law from the Islamic University in Saudi Arabia.

Jibril was inspired by Salman Al-Awdah, a Saudi sheikh associated with the monarchy. Also inspired by Al-Awdah was a devout Muslim by the name of Osama bin Laden. Jibril’s site urged Muslims that their “heart must contain nothing but HATE to all kafers [non-Muslims]… Not just plain hate it must be the peak of hate”. And “Give them a knife and a bulletful of gun.”

And so the Muslim terrorists in London, inspired by Saudi Sharia scholarship, with hearts containing nothing but hatred for the non-Muslims dining out at trendy nightspots, gave them the knife.

But Islamic terrorism has no religion. Even when it’s stabbing you while shouting, “This is for Islam.”

Courage means running for cover when an attack happens and then denying the obvious. It means believing that what the terrorists really want is to prevent us from enjoying our dinner rather than forcing us to submit to Islamic law.

“We ran into the restaurant and tried to find a safe place but there wasn’t one,” an eyewitness to the attack said.

Run, Hide and Tell. We’ve been running away for generations. The Jewish and Christian populations of the Middle East have mostly fled to America, Europe and Israel. Now there are no more places to hide.

We’re swiftly running out of safe places. There are thousands of soldiers in the streets of London and Paris. German cities on New Year’s Eve are no-go zones. There are thousands of potential terrorists under investigation in every state in the United States. Thousands more in the UK and Europe.

We can stand up to Islamic terror migration. Or hide under the tables and hope they don’t notice us.

The Islamic terrorists are no longer just in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. They’re here. They’re outside the room. They’re coming in with knives, guns and bombs. We’re running out of places to hide. And there’s nothing left to deny when the killers shout that they are murdering us for Islam and Allah.

Opposition to Islamic migration reform is support for Islamic terror. We can build walls and border controls. Or we can build barricades of tables in bloodied eateries and throw chairs at the attackers.

We can defend our countries at the border or desperately try to survive a night on the town.

We can acknowledge that the problem is Islam. Or we can courageously eat out while trying not to wonder if that grimacing man with his hand under his coat muttering about Allah is here to kill us now.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

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SARSOUR AND THE PROGRESSIVE ZEITGEIST

What’s the real reason Linda Sarsour was invited to be a commencement speaker at CUNY?

In US academic tradition, university administrators choose commencement speakers they believe embody the zeitgeist of their institutions and as such, will be able to inspire graduating students to take that zeitgeist with them into the world outside.

In this context, it makes perfect sense that Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at City University of New York (CUNY), invited Linda Sarsour to serve as commencement speaker at his faculty’s graduation ceremony.

Sarsour embodies Mohandes’s values.

Mohandes’s Twitter feed makes his values clear. His Twitter feed is filled with attacks against Israel.

Mohandes indirectly accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wishing to commit genocide. Netanyahu, he intimated, wishes to “throw the Arabs in the sea.”

He has repeatedly libeled Israel as a repressive, racist, corrupt state.

Mohandes has effectively justified and legitimized Islamic terrorism and the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza. The Islamic terrorist assault against Israel, led by Hamas from Gaza, is simply an act of “desperation,” he insists.

By Mohandes’s lights, Hamas terrorists are desperate not because they uphold values and beliefs that reject freedom, oppress women and aspire to the genocide of Jewry and the destruction of the West. No, they are desperate because Israel is evil and oppressive.

Who could Mohandes have chosen to serve as his commencement speaker other than Sarsour, given his positions? Sarsour, the rising star of the Democratic Party, not only shares Mohandes’s values and positions, she has taken those common values and positions and amplified them on the national stage.

Sarsour has taken support for Islamic terrorism and Jew hatred – positions that not long ago were considered beyond the pale in the Democratic Party – and moved them into the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

In fact, Sarsour has gone far beyond Mohandes. She has left him in the dust with her willingness to shill for radical Islam and its oppression of women and express openly her desire to see Israel destroyed while embracing Islamic terrorists and murderers.

Whereas Mohandes generally has shielded himself from accusations of bigotry, support for Hamas, and misogyny by basing his Twitter posts on statements by non-Muslim opponents of Israel like Kenneth Roth from Human Rights Watch, Sarsour has publicly embraced Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists.

She unapologetically justifies Islamic misogyny, attacks opponents of Islamic misogyny and terrorism and whitewashes Islamic violence against women.

Indeed, Sarsour has mainstreamed all of these things by fusing support for Islamic terrorism, misogyny and antisemitism with black anti-white racism and leftist hatred for police and law enforcement agencies more generally.

So in light of Sarsour’s trailblazing role in advancing Mohandes’s apparent values as signaled through his Twitter feed, his decision to have her speak to his graduating class this Thursday is entirely understandable.

The only truly challenging aspect of Mohandes’s invitation is that he didn’t tell the truth about why he chose to honor her. He didn’t say he invited her for her pioneering work in mainstreaming antisemitism, anti-Americanism, anti-white bigotry, Islamic misogyny and terrorism in the Democratic Party.

To the contrary, he hid those things.

Mohandes wrote that he invited Sarsour to speak at commencement because her work “has emphasized women’s health issues in the New York area.”

No it hasn’t.

At least, not unless you consider calling for women to have their vaginas carved out “emphasizing women’s health issues.”

In 2011, Sarsour used her Twitter feed to call for precisely that in a shocking verbal assault against two female icons – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has dedicated much of her career to protecting Muslim girls from female genital mutilation and was herself victimized by the barbaric practice, and Brigitte Gabriel, who as a Lebanese Christian suffered firsthand the wrath of Islamic supremacism during the Lebanese Civil War.

In Sarsour’s words, “Brigitte Gabriel= Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women.”

Earlier this month, during a speech at Dartmouth College, Sarsour was asked by a student how her professed feminism could be squared with her expressed support for genital mutilation of her ideological opponents.

Sarsour’s response was telling.

First, she delegitimized the student, insisting that since he is “a young white man” he had no right to ask her such a question.

Then, she intimated that she never wrote the offensive post.

Then, she insisted that her words are unimportant because she wrote them when she was in her 20s. (She was 31 in 2011).

In her uplifting words, “People say stupid sh*t sometimes, right?” Finally, Sarsour insisted that what she said is irrelevant.

“I will be judged by my impeccable record for standing for black lives and immigrant rights, and women’s rights and LGBT rights. You judge me by my record and not by some tweet you think I did nor did not tweet 10 years ago or seven years ago, or whenever it was.”

But if we judge her by her record, we see the only thing that is impeccable about it is her consistent, unapologetic defense of Islamic misogyny, terrorism and Jew hatred.

Sarsour has been extolled for her championing of women’s rights by former president Barack Obama, and New York Senator Kristin Gillibrand. But it is not clear when she has ever done so in her own community.

For instance, as Ian Tuttle reported in National Review, in 2014 Sarsour (who was then leading efforts to fuse the Black Lives Matter movement with anti-Zionism) published an article on CNN.com titled, “My hijab is my hoodie.”

There Sarsour conflated the death of Trayvon Martin with the 2012 murder of Shaima Alawadi.

Alawadi was a Muslim woman who was beaten to death in her California home.

Sarsour alleged that Alawadi was murdered because of Islamophobia. But this was a lie. And it would be bizarre if Sarsour didn’t realize it was a lie when she wrote the article.

If Islam had anything to do with Alawadi’s murder, it may have served as a justification for her Muslim husband’s decision to beat her to death. Her husband was arrested for her murder in 2012. He was convicted and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison in 2014.

That wasn’t the only time that Sarsour used false allegations of American anti-Muslim bigotry to whitewash Islamic misogyny.

In 2014 she took to her Twitter feed to defend Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women while belittling Saudi gender apartheid that among other things, bars women from driving cars.

In her words, “10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame.”

In 2015, she extolled Sharia law, which among other things allows men to marry four women and sanctions wife beating and child brides.

As she did in her defense of Saudi misogyny, Sarsour defended Sharia by ignoring its hatred of women and pretending it is no different from progressive socialism.

Again turning to Twitter, she wrote, “You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest free. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” As for LGBT rights, Sarsour pretends to support them. But she is silent about the systematic oppression of homosexuals in Muslim society.

With everything related to Jews and Israel, Sarsour has been outspoken in her bigotry, support for terrorism and anti-Jewish supremacism. Sarsour is a leader of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that seeks to bar pro-Israel voices from college campuses and wider American society.

Sarsour was one of the organizers of the anti-President Donald Trump woman’s marches in January. Yet, Sarsour insists Zionist women cannot be feminists.

She recently publicly embraced a Hamas terrorist. She rejects any cooperation with Jewish groups that support Israel. Her relatives have been served time in Israeli prisons for terrorist activities on behalf of Hamas. Hamas of course, calls for the genocide of world Jewry in its charter.

Sarsour supports the Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh who murdered two Israeli students in a bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket in 1970.

The most notable aspect of Sarsour’s “impeccable record” is that it is all in the public square. She has hidden nothing.

This tells us the most distressing thing about the Left’s decision to promote her. The Left is empowering Sarsour not despite her views, but because of them.

She is being elevated by CUNY, by the Democratic Party and by major American media outlets because she mainstreams Jew hatred, anti-Zionism and Islamic misogyny, not despite the fact that she does those things.

Sarsour has been rightly condemned by opponents of Islamic misogyny, supremacism and terrorism and by supporters of Israel.

But the truth is she’s not the real problem.

The real problem is that Mohandes was right to invite her. Not only does she share his values, she embodies the zeitgeist of the American Left today.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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Will Trump Triumph or Will Abbas Mimic Arafat

Will President Trump achieve the impossible breakthrough his predecessors were unable to accomplish? Or, like his predecessors will he fall victim to two-faced Arab Palestinian leadership?

Let’s not forget how hard President Bill Clinton tried to forge an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO founder Yasser Arafat during the Camp David ll negotiations in 2000. Prior to negotiations Arafat was all smiles and sounded committed to peace between the Arab Palestinians and Israel. Negotiations dragged on and on. Barak provided Arafat with an incredible offer, which would have placed Israeli security at great risk. Virtually 100% of Judea/Samaria, commonly called the West Bank was offered to Arafat. Jerusalem would have been divided and eastern Jerusalem would be awarded to the Arab Palestinians. A land bridge between Judea/Samaria and the Gaza Strip was included, effectively splitting Israel in half. Compensation for so-called refugees was included.

President Clinton would later say he could not believe how good the offer was. Yet all Arafat said was “no.” in the end Clinton was furious with him and publically blamed him for the collapse of the talks. Subsequent to the failed negotiations the Arab Palestinians rioted and an extended intifada ensued.

Arafat fell from favor as far as Clinton was concerned. He learned a painful and embarrassing lesson. Arafat could not be trusted.

In 2002 when the late Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister President George W. Bush was attempting to persuade Arafat to stop his terrorist activity and pursue peace with Israel. Sharon then dropped the hammer on the two-faced Arafat. He provided documents which proved that while Arafat kept up the diplomatic chatter, he was signing off on terrorist operations. Bush was angry and embarrassed. He had faith that Arafat could be a genuine peace partner.

However, when Sharon proved Arafat to be a liar, Bush publically called for his ouster. Relations between the Bush administration and Arafat went flat and never recovered.

Abbas Echoes Arafat

Subsequent to Bush came 8 years of an Obama administration. In 2008 another incredibly generous offer was put forth by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. This time the recipient was Mahmoud Abbas who had succeeded Arafat who passed away in 2004. Abbas rejected the offer out of hand. Abbas demanded Israel halt “settlement” construction as a pre-condition for peace negotiations.

In an effort to entice Abbas to the table, Israel did stop construction for 10 months. However, Abbas failed to return to negotiations. Obama was never able to achieve measurably diplomatic breakthrough during his 2 terms as president.

Enter the Trump Era

He’s called a peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs the “ultimate deal.” He’s met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and PA President Abbas. This past week he made his first foreign trip as President. The first stop was Saudi Arabia where he spoke to an assembled audience of 50 Arab leaders.  The Saudi Royal Family rolled out the red carpet, signaling a clear departure from uneasy relations with the Obama administration.

In Trump’s speech to the audience of Arab leaders he said they must “drive out” the terrorists from their countries and from the earth. These are the strongest words ever spoken by a US President while in an Arab nation, and speaking to Arab leaders. Trump also signaled the Saudi’s are warm to his efforts to achieve a peace agreement with Israel.

Trump moved on and flew to Israel. He met with Mahmoud Abbas, who has already told Trump he is ready to begin negotiations with Israel right away….without preconditions. This is a departure from his long held position of demanding Israel halt all construction before he would consider coming to the table. The question begs, is Abbas sincere? Will he come to the table while Israel continues to build?

Something else noteworthy took place while President Trump delivered his remarks as he stood next to Abbas. Not once did Trump mention the words “Palestinian State,” nor did he use the phrase “two state solution.”

While in Israel Trump became the first sitting US President to visit the Kotel (Western Wall). He also paid a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum. While in Israel he restated the US commitment to Israel’s security and promised a continued qualitative edge in weaponry for Israel.

Yet, as was the case in Bethlehem with Abbas, in all of Trump’s remarks while in Israel he neglected to use the words “Palestinian State,” or “two state solution.”

A Quid Pro Quo?

One cannot help but wonder what took place in the private discussion between Trump and Abbas as well as with Netanyahu. Did the Saudi’s whisper something in Trump’s ear while he was there? Is there a quid pro quo brewing?

Will Donald Trump be able to achieve the impossible and forge an agreement between Israel and the Arab Palestinians as well as the Arab world in general? Is Mahmoud Abbas changing his colors and expressing genuine interest in peace with Israel? Will he sign off on what no other Palestinian leader has been willing to? Will he recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state? Will he accept Israeli sovereignty over Temple Mount?

President Trump seems to suggest there is a fresh wind of optimism blowing through the halls of power in the Middle East. He is eager to facilitate the most dramatic diplomatic breakthrough ever in the Middle East. He deserves an opportunity to do the unthinkable.

However, what remains to be seen is what Abbas will do. Will he follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and say one thing publically in English, while continuing his Islamic agenda of terror when he speaks in Arabic? Will he string President Trump along, only to ultimately show his true colors and embarrass President Trump as Arafat did with two previous presidents?

Or will Abbas do what no other Arab Palestinian leader has done?

We will wait, watch and witness…

Read more articles by Dan Calic on his Facebook page.

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JEWS UNDER ATTACK: Jewish House Near Lions Gate Firebombed

Although deep inside what even Arabs consider to be a dangerous part of Jerusalem’s Old City do to rival Arab clans, Jews have returned to their former property near to the Lions Gate. Despite the isolation from the other burgeoning Jewish areas that have continued to grow througout the Old City, the reacquired building has undergone significant renovations in the past few months.  With two liveable rooms and more to be renovated the, the house near the Lions Gate provides hope that the Jewish return to the entire Old City will continue to all parts of the ancient walls.

With the Lions Gate property showing increased Jewish presence the Arab neighbors have now decided to stop more Jewish residents from moving in.  Over the past week Arab neigbors have violently firebombed the front entrance to the house in the hopes Jewish residents will flee, but the opposite has occurred.

The Lions Gate property is key to continuing the returning of stolen Jewish property throughout Jerusalem’s Old City.  Where Jews move into, safety and security can be established once there is a critical mass. The Lions Gate property will lead to more properties and they will connect the last area once void of Jews to the growing Jewish areas on the main street running from the Western Wall to Damascus Gate.

Redemption occurs in steps.  The Lions Gate property like those Jewish properties in other parts of the Muslim Quarter have become beacons of light, shining the pathway to redemption in a sea of darkness.  Now is the time to strengthen the lights of the Jewish return to Jerusalem.

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Toxic Relationship: Nazis and Islamists Are United in Their Hate for Jews

A few weeks ago there was a report that the video game Steam platform was being used by neo-Nazis and Islamists to link up with each other and express anti-Semitism. According to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, over 11,000 Steam users have the account name Adolf Hitler, while a further 3,000 go by the name Osama Bin Laden. There are many thousands of other accounts which are “brazenly anti-Semitic,” the CAA added. The CAA found that “Islamists and neo-Nazis [are] even discussing what it might be like to kill Jews in real life.”

This type of collusion between the two groups seems strange as one would expect the neo-Nazis to hate anyone not like them, especially non-whites, but many have actually found a common cause with the Islamists, especially with regards to hating Jews.

This has been going on since shortly after 9/11 and was seen when white supremacist web sites like National Front, Combat 18 and White Nationalist Party were reproducing articles from the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahir.

The anti-Semitic cartoons and caricatures printed in the Arab world have been reproduced by these white supremacists.

When the Malaysian President, Mahathir Mohamad, announced in 2003 to a summit of Islamic leaders that “Jews rule the world through proxy” and “have others fight and die for them,” the White Nationalist Party urged members to phone the Malaysian embassy in London to express their support for him.

On the website of the white supremacist Aryan Nations, August Kreis posted a letter to offer his thanks to Islamic terrorists:

“We as an organisation will also endeavour to aid all those who subvert, disrupt and are malignant in nature to our enemies. Therefore I offer my most sincere best wishes to those who wage holy Jihad against the infrastructure of the decadent, weak and Judaic-influenced societal infrastructure of the West. I send a message of thanks and well-wishes to the methods and works of groups on the Islamic front against the Jew such as Al-Qaeda and Sheik Usama Bin Ladin, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and to all Jihadis worldwide who fight for the glory of the Khilafah and the downfall of the anti-life and anti-freedom system prevalent on this earth today.”

The same website has a quote on its main page from SS-Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Gottlob Berger, “a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East.”

A neo-Nazi group in America, the National Alliance, published an essay written by William Pierce who claimed that the 9/11 attacks in New York had forced the whole subject of US policy in the Middle East into the open. He writes about the subject of American interests versus Jewish interests, of Jewish media control and its influence on governmental policy. He claims that Osama bin-Laden broke the “taboo” about questioning Jewish interests, which “in the long run may more than compensate for the 3000 American lives that were lost.”

In addition, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, in 2005, from Defence for Democracies has brought to light several attempts by neo-Nazis to reach out to Islamists. His findings include people like William Pierce, James Wickstrom, Ahmed Huber and William W. Baker. An American neo-Nazi website ADLUSA says that the attempts by the ADL to have the Hezbollah official TV channel banned for being part of a terrorist organisation is a campaign of “smear, corruption and harassment”. On this website, there was also a plea directed towards Islamists: “Moslems, lay down your guns and join our mission to remove Jews from positions of power from which they persecute one people after another; killing Americans misled by Jews only incites endless wars.”

In 2006 it was reported that one of the former leaders of the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 and the founder of the British National Socialist Movement, who had been jailed for racist attacks, had converted to Islam. He seemed to have jumped from a lunatic anti-Semitic fringe group to the more popular band wagon of anti-Semitism and had declared that:

“The pure authentic Islam of the revival, which recognizes practical jihad as a duty, is the only force that is capable of fighting and destroying the dishonour, the arrogance, the materialism of the West . . . For the West, nothing is sacred, except perhaps Zionists, Zionism, the hoax of the so-called Holocaust, and the idols which the West and its lackeys worship, or pretend to worship, such as democracy. They want, and demand, that we abandon the purity of authentic Islam and either bow down before them and their idols, or accept the tame, secularized, so-called Islam which they and their apostate lackeys have created. This may well be a long war, of decades or more — and we Muslims have to plan accordingly. We must affirm practical jihad — to take part in the fight to free our lands from the kuffar [unbelievers]. Jihad is our duty.”

David Myatt is a classic example of the crossover from neo-Nazi to Islamist. Although he subsequently changed his tune, and in 2012 left Islam, announcing that he now viewed Hitler as a man who “caused great suffering and whose actions and policies where dishonorable and immoral.” He has also denounced Holocaust denial and praised the victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany as a “moral necessity”. Nevertheless, the gateway transition that the far-right provided for him to convert to extremist Islam through common interests, is worthy of note and should be used as a warning of how others can and have done the same.

The neo-Nazi political party Jobbik in Hungary found common cause with the Iranian regime in 2013 based on their hatred of Jews and Israel.

The white supremacist Glen Miller who killed three Jews in Kansas expressed admiration for Louis Farrakhan, the extremist Nation of Islam and said he had “a great deal of respect for Muslims.”

This admiration is not just a one way street. There seems to be a reciprocation of support and understanding from some Islamists, this is not a new phenomena. As is well known, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, during World War 2, went to visit Hitler and pledged to work with him to destroy the Jews and established Bosnian Muslim Wafen-SS units to fight for the Nazis. He wasn’t the only one to make use of fascism for the Muslims. Muhammad Navvab Safavi’s manifesto that foreshadowed the Iranian revolution was a stark resemblance to Nazi propaganda and others have also made use of fascism for bloody nihilism.

The Arab Nationalists in the 1930’s modeled themselves on German fascism, as seen with the Ba’sthist movements in Syria and Iraq, in the way that the Arab world was to become one nation bound by military discipline and heroic individual sacrifice, a very fascist belief.

In more recent years, in 2010 the American Muslim Association of North America featured on its website a video by David Duke, the former KKK leader and now white supremacist. Another David Duke video, a conspiracy theory about “Zionist running dogs”, was found on the website belonging to Canadian Shia Muslims Organisation. An organisation that supposedly “supported multiculturalism” and “interfaith dialogue.”

One of the founders of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Asghar Bukhari, from the United Kingdom, supported the infamous Holocaust denier David Irving and raised funds from Islamists for him to defend himself.

The neo-Nazi William Baker has been invited by several Muslim groups in both America and Canada to talk to large crowds of Muslims. This includes groups such as Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Student Association of Western Michigan University, the Muslim Student Association at the University of Pennsylvania and several others.

This alliance is a seemingly strange one but when the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is applied, their hatred for Jews binds them together. Not only that, but both wish to see the destruction of the current liberal democratic system in the West replaced with one of their utopia. The Nazis believe they can rid the world of corruption whilst the Islamists believe they can bring the Kingdom of Allah to the world. With these two fanatical groups finding common ground, can there be a more toxic combination?

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THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL’S NEW PRO-HAMAS ISRAEL ADVISOR

The swamp strikes back against Israel and Trump

Kris Bauman, the National Security Council’s new point man on Israel, believes that the “Israel Lobby” is a threat, that Israel should be pressured into making concessions to Islamic terrorists and that “the Obama Administration must find creative (but legal) ways to include Hamas in a solution.”

Yael Lempert, Bauman’s predecessor, had been one of the Obama holdovers that conservatives had fought to pry out of the swamp. Lempert had been described as “Obama’s point person in the White House orchestrating his war against Israel.”

Lee Smith wrote that, “Lempert, one former Clinton official told me, ‘is considered one of the harshest critics of Israel on the foreign policy far left. From her position on the Obama NSC, she helped manufacture crisis after crisis in a relentless effort to portray Israel negatively.’”

Lempert’s mother, Lesly Lempert, had been an anti-Israel activist with the misleadingly named American Israeli Civil Liberties Coalition. Yael had carried on her mother’s work. Her departure should have been a victory for conservatives. Instead the swamp was replaced with more swamp.

Kris Bauman had been part of the failed “peace” efforts in the Obama years working for Hillary ally, General Allen. His views on Israel, the PLO and Hamas were those of the Obama-Kerry team.  Bauman believes that Israel is at fault for the failure of previous peace efforts and that peace can only be achieved when the United States applies enough pressure on Israel.

It’s like Yael Lempert never left.

Once McMaster took over as National Security Adviser, the swamp was back. McMaster has warned Trump against talking about Islamic terrorism. He had tried to force out Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who played a crucial role in exposing the Obama eavesdropping, and replace him with Linda Weissgold, the director of the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis, who had helped draft the Benghazi talking points which blamed the Islamic terror attack on “protests”.

President Trump overruled McMaster. Just as he had overruled Mattis’ plot to bring in Michele Flournoy, Hillary Clinton’s likely Secretary of Defense, and move Anne Patterson, the Muslim Brotherhood’s favorite State Department hack, in as undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon.

But not every tidal flow of the swamp can be stopped.

Kris Bauman is exactly whom the swamp and the Deep State want to be there “explaining” the wrong things to the right people. Bauman raised eyebrows when he appeared as the highest ranking administration official at a PA-PLO reception shortly after his appointment.

It won’t be hard to guess what Bauman’s views on the peace process are. He laid them out in great detail in “The Middle East Quartet of Mediators: Understanding Multiparty Mediation in the Middle East Peace Process”. In the hundreds of pages, Bauman makes occasional efforts to pretend that he’s delving into the narratives of both sides, but his conclusion makes it painfully clear whose side he’s on.

Kris Bauman is eager to whitewash the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists of Hamas. He insists that Hamas had “signaled moderation was a real possibility” and bemoans the “failure” of the Quartet,” to capitalize on this event by recognizing Hamas’s signals of willingness to moderate.”

Bauman complains that America’s failure to deal with Hamas played into Israeli hands.  “Once Hamas came to power, the US and the EU refused to deal with it. This strengthened Israel’s ‘no partner’ argument as more ‘facts were created on the ground’ daily in the settlements.”

He even defends Hamas against accusations that its takeover of Gaza was a coup.

Bauman accuses, “Israel and the Quartet refused to engage with Hamas and instead turned Gaza into an open-air prison.” This isn’t even an anti-Israel position. It’s Hamas propaganda.

Kris Bauman insists that “given the widespread popularity of Hamas… some kind of inclusion of Hamas is absolutely necessary if a peace agreement is event to be reached, much less implemented and sustained.” He whispers that, “the Obama Administration must find creative (but legal) ways to include Hamas in a solution” and “the Quartet must find a way to meaningfully engage Hamas”.

In Kris Bauman’s twisted mind, the obstacle to peace isn’t PLO and Hamas terrorism, but supporters of Israel in America. He favorably quotes Walt and Mearsheimer’s anti-Semitic tract, The Israel Lobby. Bauman urges overcoming the “Israel Lobby” which he claims “is a force that must be reckoned with, but it is a force that can be reckoned with.”

Progress in the peace process requires that the United States apply diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel. And indeed, Bauman’s recommendations mirrored the policy of Obama, Hillary and Kerry.

Kris Bauman urges that the United States move further away from Israel and adopt “a new US policy on Middle East peace that is closer to the policies of the other members of the Quartet.” In Bauman’s formula that would include not only the UN, the EU, the US and Russia, but also the Arab League.

Kris Bauman not only equates Islamic terrorism and Israeli self-defense against terrorism, but at one point he actually equates Jews living in territory claimed by the terrorists with Islamic terrorism.

And he insists that the latter is worse than the former.  “It is true that one could make an analogous argument regarding Palestinian terrorism, but there is one major difference between the two. Israeli government control over settlement expansion is far greater than Palestinian Authority control over terrorism.”

This was the man who had played a key role in defining what security will look like for Israel. And who will likely be doing so once again.

It goes without saying that Bauman doesn’t like Israel and especially dislikes Israeli conservatives. He accuses Netanyahu of “inciting Palestinian violence” and winning because he “played on the public’s security fears”. He accuses Netanyahu of having “derailed the peace process almost completely”.

President Trump had promised to repair relations with Israel. The NSC’s Israel advisor shares Obama’s loathing for Netanyahu. And blames him, instead of the Islamic terrorists, for the violence.

Bauman blames the Second Intifada on Sharon’s visit to the holiest place in Judaism which had been occupied and colonized by Muslim settlers.  “Ariel Sharon’s September 28 visit to the Temple Mount / Haram alSharif was a spark on dry tinder,” he writes. “His visit set off a series of demonstrations, suicide bombings, and IDF reprisals that became the Second Intifada.”

Bauman’s statement is a lie. The Second Intifada had been planned by the PLO before Sharon’s visit. But Kris Bauman doubles down, “The Al-Aqsa Intifada spontaneously erupted in the fall of 2000 because of the anger and disillusionment among Palestinians after the failure of Oslo, their ongoing, daily affliction, and the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount area.”

The Intifada was as “spontaneous” as Benghazi. But Bauman is too busy sympathizing with the “affliction” of the terrorists to tell the truth.

Kris Bauman consistently blames Israel for Islamic terror. He suggests that the Muslim violence following the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel was a “needless provocation of the Palestinians.”

Even Arafat’s rejection of the 2000 Camp David offer under Barak and Clinton was Israel’s fault. “Permanent cantonization, permanent settlements, and essentially, permanent occupation,” he huffs. “Of course they rejected it.”

And of course Kris Bauman stands with the PLO’s rejectionism and makes excuses for it.

Every peace deal in the past, Bauman suggests, “overwhelmingly favored Israeli interests.” The terrorists couldn’t be blamed for rejecting every single peace deal. The United States must turn on Israel and threaten it with the loss of “diplomatic support”.

This should sound familiar. It’s what Obama did. And what Trump blasted him for doing.

But it’s just another day in the swamplands of foreign policy mired in the muck of the Deep State.

Kris Bauman extensively quotes Robert Malley, who was briefly fired by Obama when his Hamas contacts for Soros’ International Crisis Group came to light. Obama later brought Malley in and moved him all the way up. Bauman also quotes and praises the Soros organization’s attempts to push engagement with Hamas. And the swamp doesn’t get any deeper than George Soros and Hamas.

Bauman’s policy prescriptions are relics of the Obama era. He should have become history just like John Kerry, Yael Lempert and his former boss, General Allen who bellowed at the Democratic National Convention that, “Hillary Clinton will be exactly, exactly the kind of commander-in-chief America needs” and warned that Trump’s fight against Islamic terrorism would kill “innocent families”.

Trump had blasted Allen. Why is his former chief of staff now occupying a major position in the NSC?

Draining the swamp is hard work. Because the swamp is bigger than you are. It’s a powerful and influential establishment. And if you look away, the swamp will swiftly come flowing back.

Published first on FrontPageMag.