RUTHFULLY YOURS

Peter Berkowitz, a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

TEL AVIV—In exercising its right of self-defense in the Six Day War, Israel seized from Syria the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau that looms over northeastern Israel, rising sharply from the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee to a height of more than 3,000 feet. Since June 1967 a powerful consensus has prevailed in the international community, including the United States, that the Golan is occupied territory.

The Syrian civil war, which has been raging for almost five years, has done little to disturb the consensus. But the chaos in Syria has weighty legal and political ramifications that should impel the international community to revise its understanding of the Golan’s status.

Modern Syria, which was born in 1946, has ceased to exist. Bashar al-Assad—who hails from the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam—retains the title of president of Syria though he now controls less than 25 percent of his former country. Despite recent advances by government troops, the Islamic State and other Sunni Islamists continue to dominate much of the territory Assad once governed.

Assad’s quest to retain power has produced carnage of epic proportions. When the dictator moved to crush the anti-regime, pro-democracy protests that broke out in Syria in early 2011, the country’s population numbered approximately 22 million. Since then violence has taken at least 250,000 lives, with more recent reports putting the figure significantly higher. Between 1 million and 1.5 million people have been wounded. More than 5 million refugees have fled to neighboring countries and to Europe. The Economist estimated in September 2015 that an additional 7 million people have been forced from their homes but remain within Syria’s official borders. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes that more than 13 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The leaders of both France and Italy set aside their values to appease the president of Iran.

In France, protesters demanded that President François Hollande challenge the Iranian president about his country’s human rights abuses. France’s leadership, however, raised no questions of that sort. Instead, Mr. Rouhani was welcomed as a superstar.

According to a 659-page report by Human Rights Watch, Iran’s human rights violations under Mr. Rouhani’s governance have been increasing. Social media users, artists and journalists face harsh sentences on dubious security charges.

In November, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld a criminal court ruling sentencing Soheil Arabi to death for Facebook posts “insulting the Prophet” and “corruption on earth.”

Right after signing the Iran nuclear deal with itself — Iran still has not signed it, and even if it did, the deal would not be legally binding — members of the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) have been showing their eagerness to establish improved relations with their imaginary partner.

Last month, after the lifting of international sanctions, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, went on a five-day trip to Italy and France.

From the accounts of those in the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) and elsewhere, it is clear that anti-Semitism surfaced in the Labour party at exactly the moment the party started to be led by a man who, throughout his political life, had demonstrated extreme comfort with anti-Semites.

“The decision of the club [OULC] to endorse a movement with a history of targetting and harassing Jewish students and inviting antisemitic speakers to campuses, despite the concerns of Jewish students, illustrates how uneven and insincere much of the active membership is when it comes to liberation…” — Alex Chalmers, who resigned from the Oxford University Labour Club.

The British Labour party is currently led by a man, Jeremy Corbyn, who has described Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and has spent his years in the political wilderness with Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, terrorist-sympathisers and all manner of other undesirables. Now that he is the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, he has tried to present himself as a more moderate force by stressing that he has spent his life fighting racism and anti-Semitism. In fact, he appears to have spent his life being remarkably content with exponents of both.

His Shadow Chancellor spent the same period in similar company, but with an even more fervent devotion to the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army.

The communications chief of this whole disastrous enterprise is one Seamus Milne, who devoted his career at The Guardian to keeping the scent around Joseph Stalin rosier than it ever ought to have been. If a fish, as the saying goes, rots from the top, who can be surprised if there is rot also from the tail up?

Last week it was the turn of the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) to throw their wares open for public view. Thanks to the unusually principled resignation of the co-chair of the organization, Alex Chalmers, we now know that apparently a large proportion of the youth branch of the party also has “problems with Jews.” Indeed, it appears that anti-Semitism has moved from the margins to the very centre of University Labour life.

In the past two weeks a number of events have taken place in Turkey that, taken together, indicate that this erstwhile U.S. ally is spinning dangerously out of control with neither Ankara nor Washington and its European allies having the slightest clue of what to do. It started several days ago with the Turkish artillery targeting the Kurdish YPG military units n Syria, a key U.S. ally against ISIS, as they made progress in taking over formerly terrorist-occupied terrain north of Aleppo. This was followed by Turkey enabling thousands of jihadists entering Turkish territory from Syria with all of their weapons and exiting back into Syria from a different border crossing to join the battle against the anti-Assad forces. As if to show on whose side Ankara really is, a local news agency provided pictures of trucks loaded with Turkish ammunition delivered to these very people. It may be recalled that for publishing similar pictures of supplies to Syrian jihadists by the Turkish Intelligence Organization (MIT), in January 2014, two prominent journalists were accused of “treason and espionage” and are facing the prospect of life in prison. In yet another proof of Turkish collusion with ISIS terrorists, wiretaps of phone conversations between Turkish military and ISIS commanders have just been made public that show close cooperation.

The problem that Turkey and its Islamist leadership are now facing is something that has been known for a long time, but is no longer credibly deniable. Under Erdogan, Turkey has never been interested in fighting ISIS, Al-Nusra, and other Sunni terrorists. On the contrary, it has assisted them in every way possible for at least the last three years. Washington under Obama preferred to look the other way, but the latest events have faced it with a stark choice — either defeat ISIS and limit growing Russian influence in alliance with the Syrian Kurds, or continue to put up with Erdogan’s duplicitous Islamist agenda and lose the last shreds of credibility it has left in the region. With the leader of the Turkish parliamentary opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, now openly calling for the leaders of the AKP to be tried for “aiding and abetting terrorist organizations,” it is high time for Washington to reconsider its failing policies.

Why it is that such a small segment of the population — just two-and-a-bit per cent by Ms Ismail’s Q&A reckoning — requires so many apologists is a question the ABC long ago concluded is best not considered.
Telegenic Muslim women never lack for invitations to go before the ABC’s cameras and put a happy face on their religion, not least when one or other bloody outrage demands a very special brand of cultural contextualizing. Q&A newcomer Raihan Ismail can look forward to many more close-ups
Zaky Mallah shot his bolt last year and Perth academic Anne Aly must have been pumping out po-mo piffle about terrorism as “the new theatre” or somesuch, so Q&A on Monday night had to find another presentable Muslim to fill the sane, sincere and smooth-cheeked seat. We all know the shtick: Islamic mischief has nothing to do with Islam … you can’t bomb an ideology … and, inevitably, Islamophobia! Islamophobia! Islamophobia! Fortunately, Minaret Central Casting sent over ANU’s Raihan Ismail, who played the evening’s tame Muslima with competence and assurance. Actually, she was better than good and quite fetching to boot. Susan Carland, watch your back.

That Q&A refuses to expand diversity with an odd Buddhist, Mormon or a Wiccan is a pity but no real mystery. Those creeds’ adherents don’t demand constant attention to their grievances or grow immediately and explosively tetchy at perceived slights and insults, nor do many of their children conclude that gunning down innocents is just the shot – literally – to advance the spiritual side of things. Islam is a religion that needs smiley faces on its talking heads and Ms Ismail exemplified both of those required attributes. With Anne Aly, now a federal Labor candidate, and Carland, who is also Mrs Waleed Aly, forever in the running, competition for the spotlight is already fierce and bound to grow more intense. Factor in as well that the ranks of those eager to explore hijab’d hermaneutics include Ruby Hamad and Miriam Veiszadeh, plus variously veiled others, and the simple truth is that there are more microphone-ready Muslimas than available TV spots to accommodate them.

Until the next shooting or knife attack, when it will be all hands on deck to remind us that Islam is the religion of peace, the ABC and SBS are obliged to put a ceiling on the number of seats available to otherness. Neither broadcaster, for example, would dream of inviting an Islamic spokesperson to discuss the right of crossdressing schoolboys’ to hang out in girls’ lavatories. Much better to assault the imagined homophobia of Middle Australia than embarrass representatives of a religion whose more ardent acolytes delight in throwing homosexuals off tall buildings.

U.S. officials said China recently sent fighter jets to a disputed South China Sea island at the center of an escalating spat over who is to blame for the “militarization” of the region.

News of China’s latest deployment of fighter jets to Woody Island, part of the Paracel Islands chain, comes amid bilateral tensions over Beijing’s recent placement of air-defense missiles on the same island and while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was visiting Washington.

U.S. officials cited the latest aircraft deployment as fresh evidence of Beijing’s efforts to militarize the South China Sea to bolster its maritime claims. Chinese officials have defended their activities in the area as defensive and legitimate, and blamed Washington for fueling regional tensions.

The recent fighter-jet deployment “is not a surprise and has been going on for the last few years,” said Capt. Darryn James, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Command. “But it is still part of a disturbing trend of China’s militarization of the South China Sea.”

The fighters include the advanced J-11, a Chinese variant of the Russian-made Su-27, and the indigenously designed JH-7 fighter-bomber, according to Capt. James. He didn’t elaborate on when and how many aircraft were sent to Woody Island. READ MORE AT SITE

U.S. President Barack Obama has proudly declared that the Iran nuclear deal was the signature achievement of his second term in office, and his key foreign policy accomplishment. What Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) was for his first term, the Iran nuclear deal was for his second. And much like Obamacare, time has not healed the wounds of the debate over the Iran deal or made the “accomplishment” any more popular.

It should be no surprise that Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction by an overwhelming margin (over 70% believe this) or that the Iran deal has become less popular over time. We are in the midst of a presidential election campaign. Republicans routinely skewer the president on both domestic issues and foreign policy — particularly regarding the chaotic nature of the situations in Libya, Syria and Iraq, and the emergence of the Islamic State group, which has led to the greatest human disaster in the Middle East in decades and Europe’s greatest refugee crisis in 70 years.

Every presidential debate involves several if not all the Republican contenders denouncing the Iran deal as one of the worst ever negotiated, and one that — given its status as an executive agreement rather than a treaty — is subject to immediate termination upon a new president taking office. The Democrats — meaning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — almost never discuss foreign policy, since the energy in the Democratic race has been supplied by Sanders and his supporters, and their agenda is almost exclusively domestic (other than cutting defense spending). Both Sanders and Clinton supported the Iran deal, as did almost all Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, choosing loyalty to their president over any realistic appraisal of the merits of the agreement (giveaway) negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department official Wendy Sherman.

The most recent public opinion polling on the Iran deal by the Gallup organization shows 57% opposed and 30% in support. This is by far the widest margin favoring the opposition to the deal since the talks began and since the deal was struck. Barely half of Democrats (51%) support the deal, and only 9% of Republicans do. Independents oppose the deal by almost the identical percentage as the entire national survey, 53% to 30%. Only 14% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Iran.

Again, this should be no surprise — the agreement is routinely condemned in the debates in one party for the nomination — the one which has attracted far more voters and media interest so far. Democratic presidential candidates and the Obama administration itself have been making almost no effort to defend it.

The president and his administration have also been on defense almost since the moment the deal was struck. The supposed “new Iran” which was ready to join the community of nations and become a more moderate, responsible regional power, has been anything but. The president appeared to believe that a stronger, more confident Iran, could achieve a rough balance of power with the Sunni Arab states, and this would enable the United States to further disengage from the area. The president seems to believe that the world is better off and more likely to resolve its disputes when the United States is removed from the picture. Somehow this balance of power arrangement in the region would also be stable and peaceful. It is difficult to choose the right word to characterize such a belief in everything just working out in this part of the world — but it is somewhere between naivete and lunacy.

The seizure of an American ship by the Iranians, and the humiliating picture of our captive sailors with their hands over their heads, was probably the single worst pubic relations disaster for the administration. But anyone following the recent news on Iran would also be aware of their ballistic missile tests and their

Henry Kissinger famously remarked some time ago that Iran must decide whether it wants to be “a nation or a cause.” For decades, U.S. presidents of both parties have been trying to coax Tehran toward the former and away from the latter.

Most recently, the U.S.-led global nuclear agreement with Iran – with its scores of billions in sanctions relief that President Obama hoped Iran would invest to improve the living standards of its people – was designed to convince Tehran to abandon its revolutionary ways and become a nation in good standing.

But if Tehran’s political crackdown before its upcoming Feb. 26 elections for the Assembly of Experts and Parliament is any indication, the Islamic Republic shows few signs of moderating its ideological impulses. Thus we should expect more of the revolutionary fervor that drives Iran’s efforts to destabilize Sunni regimes, impose its will on their successors and, in that way, advance its hegemonic ambitions.

All of that, in turn, presages no new day in U.S.-Iranian relations, as Obama and his top advisers hoped to create in inking the nuclear deal. Instead, it sets the stage for a still-larger challenge for the next president, with Tehran deploying the financial windfall from that deal to expand its military, advance its weaponry and strengthen its terrorist proxies.

Iran’s ruling class has long played a cat-and-mouse game with the nation’s limited democratic processes – promoting Iran’s democratic trappings to a naive Western audience that seeks its global integration while, behind the scenes, ensuring that no real democracy will unseat the clerics who run things.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Pope Francis declared on his flight back to Rome last week.The political implications of his statement have been considered in some detail in recent days, but his assertion also needs to be examined in the light of history.

Had it not been for the walls, strongly built and staunchly defended, Christendom would not have survived the onslaught of Islam in its thousand-year-long period of military expansion. Two prominent examples come from the final two centuries of that period: the sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683. The first marked an important early check on Turkish advances, after a century of conquest in the Balkans and Central Europe. The second saved Europe and finally turned the tide. German, Hungarian, Polish, and other defenders of the walls of Vienna were Christian warriors par excellence. During the second siege the city was saved thanks to an alliance between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland, which was brokered at the last minute by Pope Innocent XI. In thanksgiving for the victory at Vienna on September 12, 1683, Pope Innocent fixed that date as the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary.

Over two centuries earlier, in July 1456, some 6,000 Christian soldiers successfully defended the walls of Belgrade from Sultan Mehmed’s army of 50,000. During the siege Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of all churches to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for Belgrade’s defenders; that practice has continued to this day, even though not many people know its origins. An old Franciscan monk and preacher, John of Capistrano, played a key role in the battle and personally led a detachment of troops. For his valor and burning faith Pope Alexander canonized “the soldier priest” in 1690.

Considering what European Union policies have done to Europe, it seems all too apt for its capital to be a hive of Islamic terror and on the road to becoming a majority Muslim city.

Then turn to Brussels, some parts of which host large communities of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, mostly from religiously conservative regions of those countries. Among respondents in the city, practising Catholics amounted to 12% and non-practising ones to 28%. Some 19% were active Muslims and another 4% were of Muslim identity without practising the faith. The atheist/agnostic camp came to 30%.

Among people who actually practice a religion, Muslims are a majority. And as usual, with Islamic indoctrination and birth rates, the news becomes more troubling in the lower age groups.

Thus among respondents aged 55 and over, practising Catholics amounted to 30% and practising Muslims to less than 1%; but among those aged between 18 and 34, active adherence to Islam (14%) exceeded the practice of Catholicism (12%). Admittedly the sample (600 people in all) is small. But if this trend continues, practitioners of Islam may soon comfortably exceed devout Catholics not just in cosmopolitan Brussels, as is the case already, but across the whole of Belgium’s southern half.

Here’s how demographics sneak up on you. And they have a hell of a bite. Now you can understand why Brussels has become such a terror hub.

The greater Brussels area has long been considered to be a hotbed for radical Islamists. Troubled neighborhoods like Molenbeek and Anderlecht are known as being homes to secluded communities of immigrants in which radicals can easily go underground. So has Belgium become the center of terror in Europe and a security risk for the entire Continent?

These people who are firing their weapons and blowing themselves up don’t appear out of nowhere,” respected Belgian sociologist Felice Dassetto wrote on his blog after the Paris attacks. “They were not born yesterday, in the last months or solely in the context of Daesh (editors: the pejorative Arabic term for Islamic State). They are the children and grandchildren of 50 years of radical ideology and jihadists.” And whereas it has taken a half-century to create this jihadi culture, it will take many more (than 50) to convince Muslims that the culture of jihad has led Islam to its current moral and intellectual disaster, “but it is never too late to start.”