Displaying posts published in

2016

Hamas Threatens Jordan by Bassam Tawil

The signs near the Al-Aqsa mosque were clear: “The cameras will be broken and the hands that hung them will be cut off.”

Installing video cameras near the Al Aqsa mosque would be a painful thorn in the side of all the terrorist organizations. The immensely successful collaborations in the area — those with Jordan and Israel and Egypt and Israel — serve the security interests of all three countries, as well as the Palestinians who do not wish to be taken over by Islamic extremists even more brutal than the leaders we have now. And that is precisely why Palestinian elements, from the Palestinian Authority to Hamas, were determined to sabotage the project.

Changing the name of the Temple Mount to Haram al Sharif is another example of the treacherous United Nations’ rewriting of history. The UN move is seen even by us Muslims as a villainous lie that denies not only the historic Jewish presence in Jerusalem, but the history of Christianity as well. Do they really think we are that stupid?

Regardless of what the treacherous UN thinks, surrendering to Islamist demands will not win the war against terrorism.

An article published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on April 20, 2016 asked why Jordanian Prime Minister Abdallah Ensour fired Salame Hamad from his post as Minister of the Interior, despite Hamad having restored internal security and causing Jordanians to feel they were living in a country of law and order.[1]

The reason, it turned out, was that he was not decisive enough in dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood. While he did close some of its offices and place strict limitations on the number of Gazans visiting Jordan, he apparently did not deal with the movement emphatically enough, and had even met with its leaders in his office twice.

One of the signs of this weakness in dealing with Islamists was Jordan’s surprising recent backpedaling on an agreement instituted by the Jordanian Wakf (office of religious endowment), which was brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. According to the agreement, video cameras would be installed in Jerusalem at the Al-Aqsa mosque. The footage would be transmitted in real time to both Israeli and the Jordanian authorities. Such an arrangement would improve security in Al-Aqsa, and expose and prevent hostile activities by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Northern Branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement and members of the Hizb al-Tahrir radical Islamist group.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, have, in fact, managed also to foul their relations with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. After years of loyalty by Jordanian Islamists to the royal house of the Hashemites, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w.), in recent years Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood entered into conflict with the Jordanian government.

Signs of the conflict were quickly evident in threats plastered on Al-Aqsa mosque. They warned against the installation of cameras. The signs were clear: “The cameras will be broken and the hands that hung them will be cut off.”

It is the very existence of the Jordanian Wakf that keeps the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and subversives from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Movement, Hamas and Hizb al-Tahrir — from turning the Al-Aqsa mosque into a fulcrum for a religious war between Islam and Judaism, on the false claim that the Jews and the government of Israel are supposedly plotting to destroy the mosque.

The truth is that the cameras would finally prove, once and for all, who the genuine provocateurs are that endanger the mosque. The cameras would expose the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Authority, which pretends to care about Al-Aqsa, while actually simply wanting to keep Jews from having access to the Temple Mount.

What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State by Fred Maroun

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly shown that their priority is not peace, or a two-state solution, or a Palestinian state, but repression.

If a Palestinian state is created without correcting these destructive practices, it is highly likely that the new Palestinian regime will follow the same pattern already established, and be a hatemongering, corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, belligerent, and ineffective regime. This would not only be a security threat for Israel, it would mean more of the same for the Palestinians.

France, with the support of the United States, is leading a new attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with the implied goal that an independent Palestinian state would be created — but what should we expect from such a state?

Although past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior, it is a strong indicator of it, especially if no corrective action has been taken.
Violence

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared, “The dawn of freedom rises with the evacuation of the last Israeli soldier and settler.” Yet, instead of using that freedom to build a successful economy, Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that the settlers had left, and terrorists launched rocket attacks against Israel. These attacks forced Israel to institute a naval blockade of Gaza, to limit the supply of weapons to terrorists.

The Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s provided a transition period meant to lead to Palestinian statehood. However, instead of peaceful coexistence with Israel, the Palestinian leadership launched an assault that became known as the Second Intifada.

During the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Abbas declared, “Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will.”

These violent actions and the incitement are not exceptions. They are part of a pattern of Arab denial of the Jews’ right to exist, which started well before Israel declared its independence, and that caused several wars and innumerable terrorist attacks against Israel.
Lack of democracy

Palestinian democracy has so far been a failure. Yasser Arafat was elected in July 1994 as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for a four-year term, but he stayed in power, without further elections, for more than 10 years until his death in November 2004. Mahmoud Abbas was elected President in May 2005, and is still in office, without further elections, eleven years later.

Hamas, which won the PA legislative elections of 2006, was never invited to take the PA reins of power, but it took control of the Gaza Strip through a violent overthrow of Fatah, and still controls Gaza — also without further elections — ten years later.

Fatah and Hamas have used elections to create a semblance of democracy, and both have abused their authority to go far beyond their legitimate mandates. Both routinely use control of the media, control of the education system, and violence to maintain their power, as documented extensively by Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.

Law Enforcement ‘Never Guessed’ Gay Club Would Be Targeted by Jihad by Robert Spencer see note please

George Bush also “purged” references to jihad…see:https://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/the-implications-of-the-dismissal-of-stephen-coughlin-joint-staff-pentagon

His thesis, “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad,” was recently accepted by the National Defense Intelligence College, and deals specifically with Islamic Doctrine dealing with doctrinal drivers of jihad, and the failure of the United States leadership to learn and understand this doctrine.

“on Thursday, January 3, 2008 Mr. Coughlin was told by his employers that his contract would not be renewed due to the fact his message, and therefore he himself, had become too “politically hot.” In a meeting between Mr. Coughlin and a member of Mr. England’s staff, at which Hesham Islam unexpectedly attended, Mr. Islam asked Mr. Coughlin to “soften his message” regarding Islamic Doctrine. Mr. Coughlin refused. Islam was heard referring to Coughlin as a “Christian zealot with a poison pen.” Despite the fact that no one in his chain of command has disputed the veracity, accuracy, and balance for his thesis, lectures, or briefings, Coughlin’s employment is being terminated for speaking the truth to the Department of Defense.”

Because John Brennan and Obama purged “offensive” training material.

While Omar Mateen was casing other gay clubs to determine where he wanted to commit jihad mass murder, law enforcement officials had no idea a jihadi might ever consider such targets.

On Sunday, the East Orlando Post reported startling words from James Copenhaver, whom it described as a “veteran investigator and former Orlando law enforcement officer.” Said Copenhaver:

I have been in this business for 30 years, and we all in law enforcement have talked about one of the theme parks getting hit by these terrorist killers. Never in all my years of training, and being involved in several investigative units, to include the FBI Task Force, would we have ever guessed a LGBT club be a target of an terrorist attack.

Why would they never have guessed?

Because the FBI and other law enforcement agencies don’t study Islam, and this is a direct result of Muslim groups demanding the removal of such material. Those who are committed to protecting us are taught to downplay and deny the motivating ideology behind jihad terror attacks.

The Clinton Global Initiative scam is crashing By Thomas Lifson

According to Sarah Westwood, the great investigative reporter at the Washington Examiner, fewer than half of the projects undertaken by the Clinton Global Initiative since 2005 have been completed. A CGI report

… showed fewer than half of those commitments have been completed since 2005, with roughly a third underway and more than 200 others “stalled” or “unfulfilled.”

Further detail on the already failed (as opposed to merely incomplete) commitments comes from Adva Saldinger of Devex:

Between 2005 and 2015 there were 3,452 commitments made through CGI. Of those, according to the newly disclosed report, six percent were “unfulfilled,” or failed.

But that number might not tell the whole story. An additional 11 percent of commitments in the report — and excluded from the analysis — are labeled “unresponsive,” which means that no progress has been reported in more than two years. It’s likely that some, or perhaps most, of those commitments also didn’t succeed, though impossible to determine due to a lack of information. A further 2 percent of commitments are stalled.

One thing the CGI always succeeds at is the glittery gatherings of elites at its meetings, such as the current gala underway in Atlanta, June 12-14.

For all the glitz, the CGI’s trajectory is downward. Westwood notes:

According to the report, the Clinton Global Initiative received an all-time low number of commitments in 2015, the year Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign and drew a deluge of negative attention to the Clinton Foundation’s work.

A Ramadan Reflection: Trump, Muslims and American Islam By Salim Mansur

The month of Ramadan just begun for Muslims is not merely about the rigors of fasting and prayers, it is also about meditating on man’s responsibility in this world and accountability in the next. One of the most urgent issues for Muslims at the present time is take responsibility for those who commit violence against innocent people in the name of Islam, and unequivocally repudiate them and their theology that defiles Islam and makes a mockery of God’s revelation to Muhammad that first occurred, as tradition records, in the month of Ramadan.

But nearly fifteen years after 9/11 and counting, Muslims in America as elsewhere remain in denial of Islam’s role (or a perverse theological rendition of Islam) in the terrorist violence that spread from the Middle East around the world. This explains in part why any expectation that so-called “moderate” Muslims in sufficient numbers will publicly repudiate their religious compatriots who engage in terrorism as an act of religious obligation, or jihad (holy war), has not materialized yet and likely will not unless there is some significant change in majority American view of Islam that presses upon Muslims.

The emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the presidential election in November could be the spur for a sufficient number of Muslims, if they have courage and imagination, to break from their past. A Trump presidency might well facilitate the making of an American Islam as an effective counterweight to political Islam, or Islamism, that has been ruinous for Muslims everywhere in modern times.

Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims last December “from entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what is going on” followed the Muslim rampage of terror and murder in San Bernardino, California, on December 2, 2015, and the horrific terrorist attacks several weeks earlier in Paris. This suggestion of Trump at a minimum is a prudent choice in defending Americans against those who wish to do them harm.

There is no sign of Islamist terrorism ebbing in the near future. Instead, in the Arab-Muslim world Islamist terrorism has become a daily occurrence, destroying whatever little remains of a culture and civilization that once rivaled that of ancient Rome and Persia.

When Does the Learning Curve Kick In? By Eileen F. Toplansky

It is beyond disquieting when warnings that have been issued for years are ignored, and as a consequence, innocent Americans are the sacrificial lambs for this evil disease known as Islamic jihad, or war against kafirs (infidels) to establish Islam’s sharia law.

The idea that politicians who receive briefings about terrorism profess to be shocked by the recent massacre in Orlando is disingenuous at best. As Bruce Bawer explains, “the only shocking thing about ISIS’s attack on a gay establishment is that it took this long.” After all, according to The Reliance of the Traveller which is the sharia manual “there is consensus among Muslims … that sodomy is an enormity. It is even viler and uglier than adultery,” which is “punished brutally, including by death.”

Three years ago, a Muslim phoned NY1, “a New York City TV news station and stated that all homosexuals should be beheaded.” Horrific videos are constantly posted showing gays being thrown from rooftops in Iran and other sharia-controlled countries.

Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Andrew C. McCarthy, Raymond Ibrahim, Frank Gaffney, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, and a host of other prophets have been warning about the poisonous message of Islam for decades. Yet the leadership at the helm of this country invites Muslim Brotherhood operatives for consultation, hires people devoted to sharia expansion, and won’t acknowledge that Islam is behind these attacks on Western civilization even when the very attackers proudly proclaim their fealty to Islam.

Now that we are in the “highest threat environment since 9/11,” it is incumbent, yet again, to delineate the dastardly ideas integral to Islam. It is “a purely aggressive ideology, which teaches Muslims to hate the infidel.” Once Muslims grow in number, the attacks and abuse of locals begin and never end. It started in the U.K. with the grooming and rape of thousands of non-Muslim British girls. Now we have Londonistan.

Sweden is now the rape capital of the world since the admission of Muslim immigrants.

One year ago, Iranian ayatollah Ali Khamenei “encouraged Western youth to find out about Islam for themselves and not allow their image of it to be clouded by prejudice.” Youths were to “study and research and … receive knowledge of Islam from its primary and original sources.”

Guess Which Country the U.N. Decries Now As Zika spreads, the World Health Organization puts Israel under the microscope. By Janice Halpern

The World Health Organization seems to have its hands full. With the Rio Olympics only two months away, the Zika virus has become an international public-health emergency. Ebola’s embers still glow in West Africa, and yellow fever besieges Angola.

Yet the WHO found time at its annual meeting in May to tackle what it must consider a particularly pressing item: Israel, specifically conditions in “the occupied Palestinian territory” and “the occupied Syrian Golan.” A resolution, reported by the Geneva-based UN Watch, proposed that a field assessment be conducted to investigate. It passed 107-8, with eight abstentions.

The resolution, sponsored by the Palestinian delegation and the Arab bloc, was the only country-specific one considered. The WHO’s session neglected to address the bombing of Syrian hospitals by Syrian and Russian warplanes. It skipped the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where the Saudi-led bombings and blockade have left millions without food and water.

Israel, like any country, makes mistakes. Its actions should be scrutinized, but it shouldn’t be held to an arbitrary, higher standard. Far from being outraged, the WHO should laud the Jewish state for its treatment of Syrians in the Golan. Israeli hospitals have stepped up to provide medical treatment to more than 3,000 refugees from the brutal civil war.

This typifies the Jewish state’s humanity. Palestinians regularly go to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Two years ago, the daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh underwent emergency treatment in a Tel Aviv facility shortly after Hamas-Israel fighting ended.

Health outcomes in the West Bank and Gaza might surprise many readers. Take life expectancy at birth, a classic benchmark. In 2014, the figure for these territories was 73, according to the World Bank. Compare that with Libya (72), Iraq (69), Egypt (71) and Jordan (74). CONTINUE AT SITE

The King and His Court The D.C. Circuit bows to government by executive decree.

President Obama has run roughshod over Congress, and most of the media give him a pass. This has left the judiciary as the last check on executive abuse, and now even that may be falling away. That’s how we read Tuesday’s D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision propping up the new “net neutrality” rules to regulate the Internet like a 19th-century railroad.

A 2-1 panel in US Telecom Association vs. FCC upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 regulations that classify the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The FCC has thrice tried to ram through regulation dictating what an internet-service company can charge for its services; the D.C. Circuit struck down earlier attempts. Now the court has endorsed the most legally and procedurally egregious iteration.

Judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan ruled for the FCC in large part by invoking Chevron deference, a 1984 Supreme Court doctrine that says courts should bow to agency rule-makings when the law is ambiguous. But the relevant 1996 statute says the internet shall remain “unfettered by Federal or State regulation,” which is not vague. The law further says that a service “that provides access to the Internet” may not be straddled with Title II.

The Supreme Court said in 2015’s King v. Burwell that agencies deserve no genuflection in matters of “deep economic and political significance.” This surely applies to reordering the most powerful commercial engine of the century.

There’s also last year’s Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA in which the High Court ruled that agencies can’t impose rules “unrecognizable to the Congress that designed it.” Newt Gingrich and friends ran Congress in 1996 and didn’t want central command of the internet. Yet the D.C. Circuit ignored these instructions and relied on one precedent involving a discrete transmission issue.

This abuse of Chevron is reason enough for the Supreme Court to overturn the circuit, but there’s more. The decision renders the Administrative Procedures Act meaningless: The FCC proposed one rule and then subbed in a different scheme after pressure from President Obama. No notice, no comment period. The circuit court calls the final draft a “logical outgrowth” of the proposal. This is an invitation for bureaucracies to publish obtuse drafts and finalize something else when convenient. CONTINUE AT SITE

Obama and ‘Radical Islam’ The President gives Donald Trump his best talking point.

Sunday’s massacre in Orlando contradicts President Obama’s many attempts to downplay the risks that Islamic State poses to the U.S. homeland, so it’s no wonder he wants to change the subject to something more congenial. To wit, his disdain for Donald Trump and Republicans.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,’” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State. “That’s the key, they tell us. We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer. We’re unaware of any previous American war fought against an enemy it was considered indecorous or counterproductive to name. Dwight Eisenhower routinely spoke of “international Communism” as an enemy. FDR said “Japan” or “Japanese” 15 times in his 506-word declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. If the U.S. is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why. You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men. The threat is religious and ideological.

Islamic State sees itself as the vanguard of a religious movement rooted in a literalist interpretation of Islamic scriptures that it considers binding on all Muslims everywhere. A small but significant fraction of Muslims agree with that interpretation, which is why Western law enforcement agencies must pay more attention to what goes on inside mosques than in Christian Science reading rooms.

Mr. Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” leads to other analytical failures, such as his description of the Orlando terrorist as “homegrown.” The Islamic State threat is less a matter of geography than of belief, which is why it doesn’t matter whether Islamic State directly ordered or coordinated Sunday’s attack so long as it inspired it. This, too, is a reminder of the centrality of religion to Islamic State’s effectiveness.

No wonder the Administration seemed surprised by the Islamic State’s initial success in taking Mosul in 2014—soldiers of faith tend to fight harder than soldiers of fortune—and by its durability despite the U.S.-led air campaign. Last November Mr. Obama boasted that Islamic State was “contained” a day before its agents slaughtered 130 people in Paris. Days later, White House factotum Ben Rhodes insisted “there’s no credible threat to the homeland at this time.” Then came San Bernardino. CONTINUE AT SITE

Orlando and Willful Blindness at the New York Times By Andrew C. McCarthy

The New York Times has an interesting profile of Omar Mateen, the Orlando terrorist who murdered 49 people and wounded more than 50 others at a gay nightclub over the weekend. In the main, the Gray Lady grapples with the profound challenge the FBI faces in striking the balance between investigating ambiguous signs of potential terrorist inclinations and clearing suspects (or “persons of interest,” as they say in the biz) as to whom the evidence seems weak.

It will take some time to draw firm conclusions about Mateen’s case. Still, FBI Director Jim Comey has been admirably open in explaining that while agents appear to have (twice) probed Mateen responsibly, the Bureau must keep exploring whether clues were missed and more could have been done.

That aside, there are two major flaws in the Times’ account, and quite possibly in the government’s self-examination of its performance.

These errors illuminate Washington’s quarter-century of consciously avoiding the proximate cause of jihadist terror: sharia-supremacist ideology.

Sharia-Supremacist Ideology

Drawing on an interview with Mateen’s ex-wife and on aspects of Mateen’s behavior that have been uncovered so far — e.g., frequenting gay bars, possibly using a gay dating app — the Times reasonably speculates that Mateen may have been gay and deeply conflicted about “his true identity out of anger and shame.”

The paper, however, steadfastly avoids asking: What could have caused such wrenching self-loathing?

After all, if he was gay, Mateen would hardly have been the first person to experience great anguish over his sexual preference, despite the fact that American culture has dramatically normalized homosexuality. Yet, those people manage to control their psychological turmoil and depression without walking into a gay club and committing mass-murder.

Drawing on an interview with Mateen’s ex-wife and on aspects of Mateen’s behavior that have been uncovered so far — e.g., frequenting gay bars, possibly using a gay dating app — the Times reasonably speculates that Mateen may have been gay and deeply conflicted about “his true identity out of anger and shame.”

The paper, however, steadfastly avoids asking: What could have caused such wrenching self-loathing?