RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to Israeli security forces, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to the Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, according to sources, is to topple the Palestinian Authority and launch terror attacks on Israel.

Some 200 supporters of the Islamic State, who held up Islamic State flags, took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the latest cartoons published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. They also chanted slogans that called for slaughtering French nationals, and burned French flags. Attempts by Hamas to impose a news blackout on the protest failed, as photos and videos found their way to social media.

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this?

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.

Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“Defensive warfare does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages. That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.”
–Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War (1812)

For Israel, long beleaguered on many fronts, Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood are progressing at approximately the same pace. Although this simultaneous emergence is proceeding without any coordinated intent, the combined security impact on Israel will still be considerable. Indeed, this synergistic impact could quickly become intolerable, but only if the Jewish State insists upon maintaining its current form of “defensive warfare.”

The day after a brutal stabbing terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, social media users glorify the weapon used, with #JeSuisCouteau hashtag.

On Wednesday, Jan. 21, an Arab terrorist from Tulkarem, boarded a public bus during the morning rush hour and viciously stabbed a dozen Israelis. Several people remain in critical condition.

The bus driver, Herzl Biton, was stabbed multiple times as he bravely fought back against the attacker. He was in a medically-induced coma, as was another victim, but Biton today regained consciousness.

n his brief treatment of international affairs in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama offered essentially two assertions about his foreign policy: It is not reactive, nor is it one-dimensional. Yet this was more of an unwitting self-critique than the defense he intended. Both principles are undeniably sound, but the Obama administration has not practiced them; paradoxically, they are two of the major flaws in how the U.S. has recently conducted foreign affairs.

There is no clearer sign of the reactive nature of U.S. foreign policy than the near-absence from the speech of the “rebalancing” to Asia–the intended centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy–or of other early-term priorities such as Israeli-Palestinian peace or improved relations with Russia.

Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe.

On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM.

On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before.

The missile and the launch pad indicate that Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is an integral part of its nuclear weapons program, is moving forward at full throttle. The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States as well.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner has asked Netanyahu to address US lawmakers on February 11 regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the threat to international security posed by radical Islam.

The world’s leaders marched boldly through the streets of Paris, proclaiming themselves undaunted champions of free speech. Then they went home to supervise prosecutions and deportations of those who mistook their photogenic posturing for sincerity.

The Charlie Hebdo murders followed a perverted logic. No unprecedented, out-of-the box act, it was the work of cultural aliens to whom we in the West have already partially awarded the right to crimp and intimidate our civil society and its heritage, not least in Section 18C-style efforts to gag free speech. The “endarkenment” is what columnist Brendan O’Neill calls the movement to erase the gains accrued since the Enlightenment, and he is not guilty of exaggeration.

The recent great march in Paris, led by leaders from around the world, may have appeared impressive at first glance. Yet, many of the political leaders, who led that parade, are hypocrites of greater or lesser degree. Barrack Obama has been severely criticised for preferring to watch a football match, rather than participate in a spectacle supposedly dedicated to free speech. He compounded his indifference by failing to ensure that any member of his administration attended in his stead.

It is impossible to tell how soon France and the rest of Europe will be Judenfrei, but the process is well underway. When the exodus is complete, let’s just see how well the Continent’s sophisticates get along with the sort of people who cheered the Charlie Hebdo massacre

My European Jewish brethren are in danger. Again. European streets are ringing with “Death to the Jews” and “Gas the Jews” – ugly mobs, salivating for Jewish blood. Again.

They have almost stopped pretending that Israel’s existence is the reason for this hatred. They hate Jews, pure and simple. But who are the “they”? German burghers, dreaming of re-living their grandparents’ glory days as Nazi stormtroopers? I don’t think so. Germany was thoroughly de-Nazified after WWII and has sincerely atoned for the Shoah. It is, apparently, a different nation.

While the West has abandoned its brand of post-9/11 counterinsurgency, our Islamist opponents continue to operate by the old rule book. As we now face the difficult task of crafting an alternative way of war against guerrillas and militia forces, history’s lesson cannot be ignored

We still assume that if correctly managed, counterinsurgency can succeed anywhere. It is a dangerous assumption, for it may lead policymakers to commit American lives, lucre, and prestige to causes better analysis might have revealed to be chimerical.
— D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency Policy

In a speech at the Australian Defence College in Canberra in February 2007, the Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, posed the question: “How do the West’s fast-food nations fight a one-hundred-year war against Al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies?” Even as Pace spoke, the response was already well under way in the halls of power in Washington and London: employ armies in long-term counterinsurgency campaigns over years, if not decades, in order to bring about stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, there is probably no more unpopular form of war for a liberal democracy than counterinsurgency. The West’s record in fighting modern insurgents from the Cold War era to the age of globalisation is characterised by multiple political reverses.

The reporter’s computer was hacked, possibly by the feds, but the DOJ and the media turn a blind eye.

Sharyl Attkisson was one of the most distinguished investigative journalists in television news, covering everything from the dangers of certain prescription drugs to mismanagement at the Red Cross to TARP to K Street. Over a career that spanned more than 20 years at CBS News, she received numerous awards for her work, including multiple Emmys.

In her memoir Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, Attkisson looks back on the final years of her network career. One concludes from her book that Attkisson encountered more difficulty practicing her profession at CBS News during Obama’s tenure than at any other time. She reached an agreement for her departure from CBS News in March 2014, well before her contract was to expire.