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Ruth King

David Singer: Quartet and Two-State Solution Sink into Political Oblivion

The Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – has effectively consigned any negotiated two-state solution to political oblivion with its latest Report.

Two statements in the Report stymie any resumption of negotiations – stalled since April 2014.

1. “The Quartet reiterates that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community.”

Unilateral actions by the Palestinian Authority – disbanded in January 2013 – have already seen the international community:

(i) Admit “Palestine” as a member State of UNESCO on 29 October 2011 in contravention of UNESCO’s own constitution

(ii) Accord “Palestine” non-member observer State status in the United Nations on 29 November 2012.

Such acts of recognition by the international community – over Israel’s strident objections – have hardened Palestinian demands and expectations that their goals can be achieved without negotiations requiring any concessions to Israel.

Reversing these decisions is a Quartet pipe dream.

2. “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunified under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority on the basis of the PLO platform and Quartet principles and the rule of law, including control over all armed personnel and weapons in accordance with existing agreements.”

Reunification under the “PLO platform” sounds the death knell for the Quartet’s mediating role and the two-state solution.

Hamas will certainly not become a willing player in its own extinction.

The Quartet obviously has not considered how such reunification could be achieved whilst Hamas’s own Covenant declares:

‘Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for the Palestinian Liberation Organization – and what it can develop into – and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.

Fort Pierce Islamic Center’s Terror-Related Past and Present A suicide bomber, a mass murderer, a Taliban supporter, and a Hamas-related spokesman.Joe Kaufman

yed Shafeeq Ur Rahman, imam of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce (ICFP), claims that his mosque – the same mosque where Orlando terrorist shooter Omar Mateen regularly prayed at – condemns radical Islam. But if that is so, then why, following the shooting, would the mosque retain a spokesman who is a leader from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that has numerous associations with the terrorist organization Hamas?

The Islamic Center of Fort Pierce or Masjid Subul-as-Salam was incorporated in September 2003. Its founder was Shafeeq Rahman. Today, Rahman is the mosque’s imam and president. The mosque is a converted church, located at 1104 West Midway Road and owned by Azaan, Inc., a Florida business run by the mosque’s Secretary and Treasurer, Imtiaz Jehan Khan.

Weeks ago, the mosque made the news, following the murders of 49 innocent people at Orlando’s Pulse LGBT nightclub by one of the mosque’s congregants. This had been the second large scale terrorist attack linked to the mosque in as many years.

The first was a suicide attack carried out in Syria by then 22-year-old Palestinian-American Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, aka Abu Hurayra al-Amriki. Abu-Salha was a follower of deceased Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda leader who died via a US drone strike in September 2011. Abu-Salha had flown from the US to Turkey and made his way over the border into Syria, soon to join up with al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front.

In May 2014, Abu-Salha, as a member of al-Nusra, drove a massive truck bomb into a restaurant in Jabal al-Arbaeen filled with Syrian government soldiers. This was said to be the first suicide bombing performed by an American within Syria.

The second attack associated with ICFP took place on June 12th, when Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, also an admirer of al-Awlaki, entered the Pulse in Orlando and shot and killed 49 people and injured 53 more. During the attack, Mateen placed a call to 911 to claim responsibility for the attack and pledge his allegiance to the leader of ISIS. He stated, “I pledge… allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.” He, as well, expressed his solidarity with those who carried out the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and Abu-Salha, who perpetrated the Syria suicide attack.

Antwerp: Magnet for Muslim Terrorists Large Jewish community of the city lives in fear. Emerson Vermaat

Not only Brussels, but Antwerp too, is a significant terrorism hub in Belgium. By January 2016 there were about 440 Belgian jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and most of them were young Muslims from the suburbs of Brussels and Antwerp.

It was in Antwerp in March 2010 that Fouad Belkacem, a Belgian radical Muslim of Moroccan descent, established “Sharia4Belgium.” The group was actively involved in recruiting young Belgian Muslims for the jihad in Syria and Iraq. A Belgian court in Antwerp ruled in February 2015 that “Sharia4Belgium” was a dangerous terrorist organization and that Belkacem and his followers were responsible for sending dozens of young men to Syria. Belkacem, an arrogant and intolerant man, got a 12-years prison sentence.

On June 25, 2016, Belgian Federal Police arrested 38-year-old Saïd M’Nari in the Antwerp suburb of Borgerhout. M’Nari was Belkacem’s right-hand man and left for Syria in May 2013, where he reportedly joined the notorious terror group Al-Nusra, which is linked to Al-Qaeda. The Flemish Arabist Pieter Van Ostaeyen claims, however, that it is quite possible that M’Nari joined the so-called “Islamic State in Syria and Iraq” (ISIS or IS). “We don’t know which group he belonged to,” Van Ostaeyen told a Dutch radio reporter.

What is certain, however, is that M’Nari’s close friend, Hicham Chaib, is now fighting in the ranks of ISIS. Hicham Chaib is from the problematic Antwerp suburb of Borgerhout and became Belkacem’s “bodyguard.” He traveled to Syria in March 2013. The Antwerp court sentenced Chaib in absentia on February 11, 2015 to 15 years in prison.

Shortly after the ISIS-sponsored terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016, Chaib, a war criminal, appeared in an ISIS video showing the execution of an ISIS opponent by him. He also announced in Flemish that there would be more terror attacks. “Just like you are bombing us, we will retaliate by killing you. Your women will be made widows and your children will be orphans. … We are not scared, but you are. You have been humiliated.”

M’Nari was sentenced by the court to twelve years in jail, but he was also in Syria at the time. He managed to slip into Belgium at the end of 2015, possibly via the Netherlands. Although he was on the terrorism watch list, no one in Belgium and Holland noticed that he was no longer in Syria but had somehow returned to Europe. He must have used a forged passport and had probably pretended to be a refugee. He would not have been the first terrorist returnee from Syria to do so.

Released Gitmo Detainee Goes Missing in Latin America How Obama’s dash to release terror suspects from Guantanamo threatens U.S. national security. Michael Cutler

The Obama administration has played politics with virtually every issue, including issues that endanger national security and the safety and well-being of Americans.

Through the issuance of executive orders on immigration that make a mockery of our nation’s borders and immigration laws and that contradict commonsense and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission millions of illegal aliens whose true identities cannot be determined now live in towns and cities across the United States.

Nearly every terror attack carried out in the United States has a connection to a failure of the immigration system. Most of the terrorists who have been identified were admitted into the United States, proving that our immigration system lacks integrity. But failures of the immigration system also include failures to physically secure our nation’s northern and southern borders.

Our borders have become little more than “speed bumps” to smugglers with record quantities of narcotics, including heroin, flowing freely into the United States, along with transnational criminals and gang members.

The immigration policy of “Catch and Release” that has turned hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have been convicted of committing serious crimes loose on towns and cities across the United States has been the focus of a series of Congressional hearings, yet nothing has convinced the administration to stop this lunacy.

Catch and Release is not, however, limited to the way that illegal aliens are apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are released, with the vast majority failing to appear for immigration hearings. In order to keep his promise to close the U.S. facility at Guantanamo, Mr. Obama has ordered ordered terror suspects to be released from custody at Guantanamo. Some have returned to the battlefield where they threaten innocent civilians as well as members of the armed forces of a number of nations including the United States.

It has been reported that 80 radical Islamist terrorists remain in custody in Guantanamo. They must not be released from that important U.S. facility.

Undoubtedly many of these former detainees would love nothing better than make their way to the United States to launch deadly terror attacks inside our borders. ISIS has made it clear that the United States is their prime target.

On July 5, 2016, Fox News reported, “Mystery surrounds whereabouts of former Gitmo detainee in South America.”

Why Hillary Clinton Must Go To Jail No one can be above the law. Daniel Greenfield

In 1994, Hillary Clinton took questions under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Wearing a pink pantsuit, she offered what would become her customary mix of lies and defensiveness, admitting to something and then trying to shift the blame, denying that she had broken the law and then claiming ignorance.

It was an act that we would see over and over again for the next few decades, but back then it was still new when Hillary Clinton claimed that she couldn’t remember anything, that the whole Whitewater affair was an invasion of her privacy and that she had never meant to do anything wrong.

Some twenty years later, we have spent the past few months witnessing the same performance.

She blamed sexism for Whitewater. “It’s a little difficult for us as a country, maybe, to make the transition of having a woman like many of the women in this room, sitting in this house.” Her supporters claim that her email scandal is caused by sexism rather than her blatant violation of the law.

“I do feel like I’ve always been a fairly private person leading a public life,” Hillary Clinton whined about the examination of her shady investments. This time around she claimed that her whole rogue email server filled with classified documents was an attempt at protecting her classified yoga routines.

The truth, then and now, is that Hillary Clinton is a public figure who claims that her private life is being invaded whenever she gets caught violating the law.

Then there are the vague statements that almost sound like apologies, but aren’t. “I’m not in any way excusing any confusion that we have created,” she said of Whitewater. But the only confusion was Hillary’s efforts to make her critics appear to be confused. On her emails, she said that she was “sorry that it has raised all these questions.” Which is another way of saying that she was sorry she got caught.

Finally there is the politician who would be president playing dumb. Hillary Clinton didn’t understand how investments worked back then. She doesn’t understand how emails work now. When all else fails, Hillary Clinton will plead incompetence and then claim that she wants to focus on fixing health care.

Investments are confusing. Email accounts are confusing. Someone please put her in charge of something simple. Like health care for the entire country. Or maybe just the entire country.

No one trusts her and no one believes that she will ever be held accountable.

What About the Clinton Foundation Investigation? By Debra Heine

The investigation into the Clinton Foundation didn’t come up at all during FBI Director James Comey’s press conference Tuesday, prompting pundits like Fox News national security analyst K.T. McFarland to ask why.

“Isn’t there a second FBI investigation? A criminal FBI investigation into the Clinton foundation? What is status of that?”

Fox News reported Tuesday evening that despite the FBI’s ruling on her emails, “Hillary Clinton may not be completely in the clear. ”

“The Clinton Foundation may still be the subject of its own investigation,” Megyn Kelly reported Tuesday evening on The Kelly File. “Director Comey made no mention of the foundation today or whether the FBI is investigating it, at all.”

According to Chief Intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge, Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Jason Chaffetz pressed Comey after his statement at FBI headquarters about whether there would be charges against Clinton’s aides, and whether the entire investigation was closed.

“I specifically asked him what about the other people — what about the IT guy, what about the inner circle, what about the other things. And he quickly said, ‘I can’t tell you about that yet.'” Chaffetz explained on Special Report.

As Fox News reported back in January, the FBI expanded its investigation into Clinton’s emails to include the possible intersection of State Department business and the Clinton Foundation and whether public corruption laws were violated (as chronicled in Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash”).

Herridge noted that it wasn’t typical for Comey to not take questions after making a statement. “He seemed to anticipate the backlash,” she said.

James Comey, Loretta Lynch Called To Testify Before Congress Over Clinton Investigation By Debra Heine

Republicans in Congress have called for Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey to answer questions regarding the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Comey will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday to defend his decision not to recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of State. Lynch, who recently faced heavy criticism over her secret meeting with former President Bill Clinton in Phoenix, was called by Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) to appear before the House Judiciary Committee next week.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

On Tuesday, Mr. Comey said Mrs. Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of emails containing classified material, but that the FBI was not recommending pressing charges against her. Many Republicans were critical of the decision and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) had called for a hearing on the issue.

“The FBI’s recommendation is surprising and confusing. The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law,” Mr. Chaffetz said in a statement Wednesday. “Congress and the American people have a right to understand the depth and breadth of the FBI’s investigation.”

Mr. Ryan has also said Mrs. Clinton should not receive classified information in briefings given to her as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Ms. Lynch is also set to testify before Congress regarding the Clinton email investigation, said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) in a Wednesday statement. A Justice Department spokesman affirmed Ms. Lynch plans to testify next week but said that the appearance had been confirmed since May. CONTINUE AT SITE

Westerners who don hijabs in Iran are a disgrace :Amir Taheri

In Iran, do as the mullahs say, not as Iranians do. This seems to be the motto adopted by a string of foreign dignitaries rushing to Tehran in the wake of the mythical “nuke deal” marketed by the Obama administration.

For more than a decade almost no one wanted to go to the capital of the Islamic Republic, designated by many as “the world No. 1 sponsor of international terrorism.” This year, however, heads of state and other senior officials from over 60 nations, including most Western powers, have taken the flying carpet to Tehran to pay tribute to Obama’s “new moderate Iran.”

President Obama’s seven-year campaign to restore diplomatic relations to Iran was never likely to alter the Khomeinist regime’s destructive behavior. But some European powers were keen to disregard the Islamic Republic’s visceral anti-Americanism and focus on obtaining juicy commercial deals.

The mullahs seized the opportunity to claim “total victory over the Great Satan” as part of a new narrative according to which “the whole world” was rushing to Iran to pay tribute to the “Supreme Guide” as the living incarnation of Islam.

It was no surprise that high-profile visitors like Russian President Vladimir Putin or his Chinese counterpart Xi Jingping failed to mention such issues as human rights, executions and terrorism in polite dinner-table conversation in Tehran.

The surprise came from Western leaders visiting the Islamic Republic and talking in strict accordance with scripts established by the ruling mullahs.

Turkey: Victim of Its Own Enthusiasm for Jihad by Burak Bekdil

“Infidels who were enemies of Islam thought they buried Islam in the depths of history when they abolished the caliphate on March 3, 1924 … We are shouting out that we will re-establish the caliphate, here, right next to the parliament.” — Mahmut Kar, media bureau chief of Hizb ut-Tahrir Turkey

“The magazine [Dabiq] creates propaganda for [ISIS]. It has an open address. Why does no one raid its offices?” — Opposition MP Turkey’s Parliament

The government big guns in Ankara just shrugged it off when on June 5, 2015, only two days before general elections in the country, homegrown jihadist militants for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS or IS) detonated bombs, killing four people and injuring over 100, at a pro-Kurdish political rally. Again, when IS, on July 20, 2015, bombed a meeting of pro-Kurdish peace activists in a small town on Turkey’s Syrian border, killing 33 people and injuring over 100, the government behaved as if it had never happened. After all, a bunch of “wild boys” from the ranks of jihad –which the ruling party in Ankara not-so-privately aspires to- were killing the common enemy: Kurds.

Then when IS jihadists, in October, killed over 100 people in the heart of Ankara, while targeting, once again, a public rally of pro-peace activists (including many Kurds), the Turkish government put the blame on “a cocktail of terror groups,” – meaning the attack may have been a product of Islamists, far-leftist and Kurdish militants. “IS, Kurdish or far-leftist militants could have carried out the bombing,” the prime minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoglu, said. It was the worst single terror attack in Turkey’s history, and the Ankara government was too demure even to name the perpetrators. An indictment against 36 suspects, completed nearly nine months after the attack, identified all defendants as IS members. So, there was no “cocktail of terror.” It was just the jihadists.

Sweden: Rampant Sexual Assaults Steam On One Month of Islam and Multiculture in Sweden: May 2016 by Ingrid Carlqvist

The police released a report noting that Sweden is at the top of the EU’s statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking. The report stated unequivocally that it is “asylum-seeker boys” and “foreign men” who commit the vast majority of the reported crimes.

As far as the widespread sexual assaults at public pools are concerned, the police said that in four out of five cases, the perpetrators have been “unaccompanied refugee children”.

A survey by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) suggested that as many as 38,000 women in Sweden may have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). Yet health care services rarely help women with the complications associated with FGM.

A Swedish father was told that he and his two children are being thrown out of the house they are renting from the municipality — to make room for an immigrant family.

May 4: The terrorist who turned out not to be a terrorist, but was chased by the police all over Sweden in November 2015, Mutar Muthanna Majid, demanded 1 million kronor (about $110,000) in damages from the Swedish government. However, the Chancellor of Justice decided that the standard sum for those wrongly incarcerated was enough compensation. Majid was held in custody for four days, which means he gets 12,000 kronor ($1,300).

May 4: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to the defense of Sweden’s Muslim Minister of Housing Mehmet Kaplan, who was forced to resign after his connections to Islamists and neo-Fascists were revealed, as was his defamatory comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany. According to Erdogan, however, the forced resignation of Kaplan was symptomatic for how Muslims are treated in the West: “Just look at what Sweden has done to a Muslim who reached a position in Cabinet,” Erdogan indignantly said.

May 4: It is now up to Sweden’s Supreme Court to decide if an Algerian, Karim Ageri, should be deported from Sweden after knifing a 16-year-old girl because she refused to have sex with him. November 10, 2015, two teenage Swedish girls visited an asylum house for “unaccompanied refugee children” in the Stockholm metropolitan area. Karim Ageri, who claimed to be 16 years old, groped one of the girls, who climbed out a window to get away from him. Ageri then followed her, and slashed her face twice with a knife. The prosecutor in the case argued that Ageri is at least 21 years old, and should therefore be tried as an adult and, after serving his sentence, deported. However, the Municipal Court did not agree, and sentenced the Algerian to juvenile detention. The Court of Appeals increased the sentence to 18 months in prison, followed by deportation. Prosecutor My Hedström says she is now looking forward to having the case tried by the Supreme Court, to get a precedent on how “refugee children” who commit serious crimes should be handled legally.