The Ever More Complex Levantine Puzzle By Srdja Trifkovic

“Both Mr. Assad and the jihadists represent a challenge to the United States’ core interests,” former U.S. Ambassador in Damascus Robert S. Ford wrote in The New York Times on June 10. He advocated a strategy that would supposedly deal with both Bashar al-Assad and the jihadists: “with partner countries from the Friends of Syria group like France, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, we must ramp up sharply the training and material aid provided to the moderates in the armed opposition.”

Decrying Washington’s “hesitation and unwillingness to commit to enabling the moderate opposition fighters to fight more effectively both the jihadists and the regime,” Ambassador Ford advocated providing his unnamed Syrian “moderates” with advanced military hardware, including “mortars and rockets to pound airfields to impede regime air supply operations and, subject to reasonable safeguards, surface-to-air missiles.”

Ford’s article is irresponsible and ill-informed at best. It was published on the very day the insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as “ISIS” to include Syria) started its spectacular advance on Mosul, Tikrit, and points further south. Even more surreally dangerous were the BloombergView editors, who urged (also on June 10) an outright, American-led anti-Assad intervention: “the U.S. and its European and regional allies should take the initiative to circumvent the UN Security Council and put the needed military muscle on the ground. Yes, Russia and China will be furious. So be it.” Now that would be a bold strategy, with many exciting ramifications in Ukraine, along the shores of the South China Sea, and elsewhere. With their gas supplies in balance, “the European allies” can hardly wait.

Ambassador Ford has wisely stayed out of the news over the past couple of days, but it would be interesting to find out if he still stands by the assessment he made four days ago. Does he still advocate arming the Free Syrian Army (FSA) “moderates,” who have been comprehensively routed by the Syrian security forces and who no longer exist as a fighting force? That same FSA, whose units invariably melt away – Iraqi-army-style – whenever confronted with the warriors of jihad, and who have observed a truce with ISIS since late September 2013? To claim that its pathetic remnant can be trained, armed and equipped to the point where it would be able take on Bashar’s army and ISIS simultaneously is insane. Or does Ford have the murderous Al Nusra Front in mind, jihadist to boot, which is a battlefield rival to ISIS and hence perhaps worthy of being treated as a “moderate” force? That same Al Nusra which is currently spreading its reign of terror into Lebanon?

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Equates Kidnapping to Israeli Defense

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon compared the Israeli air strike against an active Hamas/Salafi Jihad terrorist to the kidnapping of 3 Israeli children.

Following repeated missile launches from Gaza into Israel, as well as a plot to take down a helicopter, the IAF struck back, taking out Hamas policeman and rocket terrorist Mohammed Awar last Wednesday. Also injured in the strike was Awar’s human shield, his 7 year old nephew, who died on Saturday.

Unlike Ban Ki-moon’s unequivocal condemnation of the kidnapping of Turkish diplomats in Iraq last week where he said, “this is totally unacceptable” and he was “shocked” to learn of the kidnapping by “terrorists”, Ki-moon felt, in the case of Israel, the need to compare, in his boilerplate statement, the deliberate kidnapping of three Israeli children, to the strike against an active terrorist, which also killed a human shield the terrorist thought would protect him from an Israeli strike, as he continues his terror attacks.

Ban Ki-moon expressed, “deep concern on the trend toward violence on the ground and attendant loss of life, including today of a child in Gaza as a result of a recent Israeli airstrike.” Ban urged all parties to “exercise restraint and lend urgent support for the release and safe return of the three youths.”

Ban Hi-moon should have pulled an Obama, and just kept his mouth shut.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS

CONTRARY TAKES

– The real winner in Iraq may not be Al Qaeda, but Iran. Ir may just be Jihadist gossip, but ISIS appears to have an interesting working relationship with Assad and now Maliki behind the scenes, despite trying to massacre Shiites. The ISIS assault may be what Iran needs to turn Iraq into a puppet.

– I don’t want to dampen any of the Brat celebrations, but that MSNBC interview gave me a Doug Hoffman vibe. Hopefully that’s not the case and his district is conservative. As much as I like to see Tea Party candidates beat the establishment GOP, I would like to see them beat the Dems even more.

– I’m not celebrating the Rivlin win in Israel either. Rivlin is being described as a hard-liner and he is, compared to Peres, but he’s also often unpredictably liberal. He’s a wild card and he’s certain to continue the politicization of the presidency and I suspect he’ll speak out more from the left…

I hope I’m wrong.

THE KKK: A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF DEES INC.

Two years ago the Southern Poverty Law Center named me, a bar sign and a brand of gun lubricant as hate groups. It wasn’t the punch line to a joke about a Minister, a Rabbi and a Priest. Instead it was another tribute to the research skills of the country’s wealthiest, dumbest and laziest civil rights group.

Morris Dees began in the mail order business and ended up in the mail order civil rights business. Every month elderly retirees receive envelopes covered with pictures of Klansmen burning crosses. Those photos are the SPLC brand the way that the “swoosh” is for Nike and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Dees had already trademarked the KKK.

The Southern Poverty Law Center Stands Up for Hamas

Politician Who Smuggled Guns to Druglords Thinks Americans Need to do “Soul Searching” Over Guns

Obama: Al Qaeda Takeover of Iraqi Cities Not a Military Problem

Before heading to a Laguna Beach fundraiser, where 25 supporters paid $32,400 for a shot at him, Obama said, “We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraq security forces and I’ll be reviewing those options in the days ahead.”

Sure. He’s been saying that ever since the crisis began. Here’s a nutty idea, maybe he should have been on top of this from the beginning instead of treating it like extra work.

And maybe he can skip the fundraiser when a major terrorist group is taking over entire cities. But he didn’t do it for Benghazi. Why would he do it here.

It’s true. Obama is too smart to be president. Can’t someone get him a job delivering TED talks or a New York Times column.

JAMES HORN: IS THE U.S.A. PREPARED FOR AN UNMITIGATE DISASTER THAT MAY TAKE THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN LIVES? ***

THANKS TO VICTOR SHARPE
WWIII By James E. Horn
Retired U.S. Diplomat
info@jamesehorn.com
Author: EXPERIENCING ISLAM [Censored by the CIA, Banned by Librarians]

Is the USA prepared for an unmitigated disaster that may take out thousands of American lives? Soon?

Iran and Iraq, and American Folly

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
Western powers have not fared well in dealing with Islam. The British were handed their royal backsides in a basket after nearly two hundred years in Afghanistan/Pakistan and departed with their tails between their legs.
The Russians and Eastern Europeans have done better. The Austrians and Poles stopped the Turks and saved Europe 200 years ago. Russia has been a bulwark resisting Islam in the Caucasus for centuries.
When the Russians went into Afghanistan forty years ago, they had a good chance of success until the myopic progressives and reactionary conservatives of the west, led by Jimmy Carter, stepped in to help our mortal enemy against the Russians. In disgust, the Russians bailed and left a void soon filled by America’s creation, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In repayment for the billions spent in nurturing Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the World Trade Center was wiped out, and embassies have been attacked and bombed with impunity.
With billions invested in working to civilize Iran, Jimmy Carter started to seriously dismantle America’s defenses to let the Mohammedans take over Iran, whose surrogate Shiia militia, Hezbollah later murdered 243 Marines in Beirut (Reagan ran away from that fight), and slick Willie let other Islamists humiliate us in Somalia. The paper tiger became a reality.

POLITICAL ISLAMIC CORRUPTION IN AMERICA
The mainstream Islamists of OPEC surged forward in Europe and the United States funneling billions of petrodollars in bribes to successfully take control of greedy western politicians and institutions. Most of those witless politicians believed they were merely getting cash donations, while a few seditionist traitors just knew they were selling their American people down the drain to oblivion. Americans included in this list include the Clintons (including aspiring POTUS, Hillary) the Bushes, Chuck Schumer, “Turban” Durbin, and many others; and the self-affirmed Islamist in the White House, Barak Hussein Obama.
These treacherous greedy bastards have clearly accepted bribes and placed anti-American Islamist colonizers in the highest places of American National Security organizations and in institutions all over the country. Politically, the US leadership is hamstrung with many in the tank for Islamists who are increasingly controlling us as they attack our Constitution from all flanks.

TRAIN WRECK
“What difference does it make?” bellowed Hillary Clinton regarding the four dead at Benghazi, a terrorist action directed at an American diplomatic mission that happened nearly two years ago with no appropriate retribution from the USA, a further affirming our inability to hold Islamofascist terrorists accountable. Neither did Hillary and her fellow obeisant servant to the Saudis, Obama retaliate at the Moslem Brotherhood for their attack on the Embassy in Cairo. In fact, Obama with Hillary’s connivance paid tribute to Morsi and his Moslem Brotherhood.

Afghanistan and Iraq
Witless George Bush decided to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where empires have fallen on their asses. Ignorant, Bush went into Iraq to take out a tyrant which led to the installation of a greater evil. Bush’s adviser on Arabic affairs spoke not a word of Arabic, had never cracked the cover of a Koran, and then advised Bush to declare that Islam is a religion of peace without understanding the duplicitous meaning of that word vis-à-vis Islam. Bush’s equally ignorant Security Adviser, Condi Rice blissfully played along because she had no idea of what needed to be done.

THE TACTICAL MYTH OF PALESTINIAN IDENTITY: BRIAN WIMBORNE (FROM AUSTRALIA) ****

“Consequently, the sight of Mahmood Abbas negotiating a peace deal with Israel, under pressure from Obama and Kerry, is a pathetic farce and the actors know it. The slightest compromise by Abbas would effectively sign his own death warrant. The farce of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations proceeds largely for the benefit and amusement of the rest of the world.There is an even deeper reason why an Arab peace with Israel is unlikely. According to Muslim law, once a territory has been under Islamic control, it may never revert to ownership by non-Muslims. It is the Islamic version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, under which a communist country must never be allowed to revert to a non-communist one.Meantime, the talks will go on, terrorist attacks on Israel will proceed under Iranian and Syrian directives, and Palestinian Arabs living beyond Israel’s borders will continue to wallow in the ordure created for them by their fellow Arabs.”

There are no such people as Palestinians and there never have been. Nor was there ever a state called Palestine or a Palestinian culture or a Palestinian language. If truth prevails over the left’s revisionist history, Palestine will never be more than the name of a geographical region

Following the rise of the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1969, there was a push to convince the world that Palestinians are a unique people of Arab origin who had inhabited the lands of Israel for thousands of years. The uninformed and gullible believed it, and leftists still promote it.

In fact, there are no such people as Palestinians and there never have been. If anyone doubts this they should consider the following statement made in 1977 by Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive committee member, during an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a “distinct Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

Nor was there ever a state called Palestine or a Palestinian culture or a Palestinian language. Like the Jordanians, Palestinians are a recent creation. If truth and justice prevail over revisionist history promoted by the Left, there never will be a state called Palestine in place of Israel and the word will remain no more than the name of a geographical region.

The Roman emperor Hadrian, in an effort to destroy Jews once and for all, renamed the territory of Judea (the present-day West Bank), Palaestina, after the Philistines, an Aegean people who had conquered the coast of Canaan. They appear in the Old Testament as depraved pagans and have long since vanished from history.

Hadrian’s intention was to eradicate memory of the Jewish people whom the Romans exiled from their homeland as punishment for having rebelled against them in 130 AD. Nevertheless, a handful of Jews remained in Israel, and their descendants have been a Jewish presence ever since. In fact, Jews are the only group of people to have lived continuously in Israel for the past 3700 years.

With the fall of the Roman empire, a host of interlopers took over the region called Palestine—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Crusaders and Mamluks—but they never created an independent country. Even under Ottoman rule (1517 to 1917) Palestine did not become a state.

FUNDRAISING: A TERRORIST SECRET WEAPON BY: ED ZIEGLER

Fundraising sounds harmless and caring. The vast majority of fundraising is just that.
Many years ago I attended a fundraiser for Afghanistan against Russia held at Faneuil Hall, birth place of the Boston Tea party of December 16, 1773. Feeling moved I donated money not knowing the true nature of Islamic terrorists.

Main stream media rarely reports on radical Islamists who are attacking us, frequently, violently and subtly. Here I present an important tool they use, fundraising. Money is of major importance in any war. Radical Islam is well aware of its value. Covertly they are taking our money and sending it to terrorists who, in turn, are using it for weapons that are killing our soldiers.

The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was the largest Islamic fundraiser in the United States. They were found guilty of funneling $12 Million to Hamas. The U.S. government designated HLF a terrorist organization, seized its assets, and closed the charity. HLF and five of its organizers were convicted of supporting Hamas. One of the defendants, Mohammad El-Mezain, ran Holy Land’s California office, also raised money for KindHearts.

KindHearts, an Ohio charity, allegedly supported the terrorist organization Hamas, as well. It had it’s assets frozen in 2006. KindHearts made a deal with the U.S. Treasury Dept in November, 2011. It was disbanded after agreeing to distribute its funds to various humanitarian causes.

It has been well established that The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has ties with terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. CAIR was classified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial.

A federal jury in Boston found Libyan-born Emadeddin Muntasser, Muhamed Mubayyid, a Lebanon native and Samir Al-Monla, an immigrant from Kuwait, guilty of conspiring to defraud the government by using tax-free donations to support holy war and holy warriors. They raised nearly $ 2,000,000. Muntasser, was turned down for U.S. citizenship.
Sam Al-Arian a Florida professor was one of the founding fathers of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the United States. He’s also a founder of the Islamic Society of North America. Sami was convicted of fundraising for Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Trojan Horse debate: We Were Wrong, All Cultures Are Not Equal: Allison Pearson *****

For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance
“Why must the tolerant be made to carry the can for the intolerable?”
I have learnt one thing working with children as a teacher, a volunteer and, more recently, a parent, it’s that what children want above all else is to fit in. The desire not to be different must be hard-wired, so urgent is the need of your average nine-year-old to have the same pencil case as every other nine-year-old. Individuality, much prized in adult life, is abhorred by our conservative juniors, who crave acceptance as the thirsty crave water. “Fitting in” is braided into the DNA of every child, regardless of creed or colour. When the deep, resonant bell of human evolution tolls, it says: “Belong, belong, belong.”
Integrating children into a new society, then, should not present too much of a problem. A football, some Panini World Cup stickers to trade, One Direction, Harry Potter, 97 episodes of Friends, especially the one where Rachel has a baby: common interests for youngsters are not hard to find. So how have we ended up with a situation where so many Muslims are adrift from the mainstream? Why this scandal in Birmingham where five overwhelmingly Muslim schools, some until recently judged to be outstanding, are to be put into special measures because they have sought to inculcate ideas that are repellent to this country?
Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”
Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so.

Czech President Zeman Refuses to Apologize for Quote From Koran Calling for Muslims to Kill Jews See note

READ ABOUT HIS FAMOUS SPEECH: (June 3, 2014)
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/06/03/daniel-greenfield-czsech-mate-milos-zemans-amazing-speech/

Czech president Miloš Zeman, via his spokesman, stood by a speech made at the Israeli Embassy in Prague, where he quoted the Koran calling for Muslims to kill Jews, refusing to retract what he said or apologize for quoting from the holy book.
Czech media reported spokesman Jiří Ovčáček’s statement saying that Zeman would not be apologizing for his statements in which he linked Islamic ideology with violence.
“President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologize,” the spokesman said. “For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologize for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text.”
Iyad Ameen Madani, Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, issued a statement condemning Zeman’s speech, saying, “It is only appropriate that President Milōs Zeman apologizes to the millions of Muslims worldwide for his deeply offensive and hateful anti Islam statements.”
In the OIC’s statement, it said, “The Secretary General reiterated that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and that terrorism should not be equated to any race or religion; a stance upheld by all major UN texts on the subject of countering terrorism. He added that the OIC countries share a profound respect for all religions and condemn any message of hatred and intolerance.”
The criticism of Islam in Zeman’s speech was widely reported, as he reflected on the Brussels Jewish Museum shooter, with the primary suspect now believed to be an ISIS soldier, the French Islamist Mehdi Nemmouche. But many newspapers left out the actual quotes from the Koran and the Hamas charter Zeman used in his speech, something he may have expected on the grounds of “political correctness,” which he mentioned, suggesting that the phrase is now a “euphemism for political cowardice.”
Zeman said:

MELANIE PHILLIPS: AUSTRALIAN LESSON FOR THE UNITED STATES

For the past six years, Israel’s government has had to manouevre round the fact that its most powerful ally is run by a man who, while claiming to ‘have Israel’s back’, loses no opportunity to stick the knife into it.

Last week, this dismal history reached a new low when the Obama administration declared it would recognise the new “unity” government in which the Palestinian Authority has allied itself with Hamas.

The US has said it will continue to fund the PA, even though Congress bans US aid to any Palestinian administration controlled or influenced by Hamas.

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas thinks he has got round this through structuring his administration in a way that some American observers claim has Obama’s fingerprints all over it.

Nevertheless, Hamas has declared it will not renounce violence, recognise Israel or honour past agreements, in direct contradiction of Abbas’s claim that the new administration would do so.

That means the supposedly moderate, Israel-recognising and peace loving Abbas has allied himself with people who will not stop trying to murder Israelis and are pledged to wipe out not only Israel but every Jew on this earth.

Of course, Abbas himself is not moderate or Israel-recognising at all, and tore up the Oslo agreement when he sought UN recognition for “Palestine”. But the deal means that the US will now be indirectly funding a terrorist body, Hamas, which openly promotes another Jewish genocide.

Recognising the Hamas/Fatah hydra serves one purpose only: to legitimise terrorist mass murderers – who are also currently in league with a country, Iran, that is at war with the US – and thus strengthen them against their potential victims.

A disgusting move, but one that should not surprise anyone who has followed the double standard by which the Obama administration gives a free pass to Abbas for inciting terror and anti-Jewish hatred while blaming Israel for building houses in areas which it was always understood would remain under its control in any final agreement, and to which it is in any event legally entitled under international law.

Parade of the Pretentious, the Preposterous and the Puerile: Martin Sherman

The current leadership seems totally incapable of recognizing the Palestinians for what they are, and what they declare themselves to be – an implacable enemy.

‘What happened yesterday, when four senior ministers gave public addresses one after the other with each proposing a different political solution, was a grotesque performance.”

– Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday evening session at the 14th Herzliya Conference, “Israeli Leaders Debate Peace,” June 9.

I was thinking of headlining this column “Depressing, disturbing, disarray,” a title that I believe Liberman, would warmly endorse – given his censure of the abysmal appearances of four government ministers (and the head of the Opposition) at this year’s Herzliya Conference, earlier this week.

I have, of course, serious differences with Liberman on several issues, including some of those on which he excoriates his colleagues. I must confess, however, that watching the cavalcade of almost comic caricature his colleagues provided the Israeli public, I found myself strongly identifying with his acerbic assessment of their performance.

‘Israeli Leaders Debate Peace’

At the plenary session of the conference on Sunday evening, a succession of five senior Israeli politicians took the podium to present their prescriptions for what should be done now, in the wake of the collapse of the US Secretary of State John Kerry-sponsored “peace initiative.” Of the five, four were leaders of political parties in the current parliament; three of them in the ruling coalition – Finance Minister Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid faction, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett of Bayit Yehudi, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of Hatnua; and, as mentioned, one from the Opposition, MK Isaac Herzog, head of the Labor Party.

The largest faction in the coalition, the Likud, was represented by Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

In many ways, the debate was a disconcerting – almost heartbreaking – spectacle, exposing the appalling paucity of the Israeli political leadership. (Please don’t take my word for it – you can judge for yourselves, as the entire depressing debate is available on the conference’s website, which I urge you to visit.) True, some of the speakers (notably Bennett and Sa’ar) did make several good points, but these were confined to critical appraisals of the others’ proposals, rather than relate to any rational blueprint of their own policy that could secure Israel’s long-term future as the nation-state of the Jewish people.