Iran Throwing its Weight Around Kabul

by Michael Rubin

Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the Obama administration’s decision to throw in the towel on Iraq, and as Team Obama prepares to repeat its mistake in Afghanistan, Iranian authorities seek to make it two for two.

On June 1, Iran sponsored commemorations in Kabul to mark the 23^rd anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s death. From the accompanying BBC Persian photo essay and article, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Ahmad Majidyar—hands down the shrewdest analyst of Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington—highlighted two points. First, Mohammad Akbari, a Shi’a jihadi leader now in Afghanistan’s parliament, declared, “Religious beliefs have no borders. Those who say today that Khomeini belongs to Iran will next day relate Prophet of Muslims Muhammad to Saudi Arabia.” However, Majidyar notes, some Afghans protested the pro-Iranian festivities. “This is Kabul, not Tehran or Qom,” some declared. Other held signs which read, “Puppets: no more betrayal.” Meanwhile, Iranian officials have ramped up pressure on Afghan politicians to reject the Strategic Cooperation Agreement, reportedly offering $25 million in bribes.

Afghans, like Iraqis, do not naturally favor the Islamic Republic. Persian culture is one thing; Tehran’s politics and its official ideology quite another. However, as Iranian proxies not too subtlety point out, “you may like the Americans better, but we will always be your neighbor.” But, Afghans have also never lost a war; rather, they defect to the winning side. With the sense that, under Obama, the United States has no staying power, the Iranian government is making its push to fill the vacuum—or as much as they can fill before Pakistan pushes back. Until Obama signals that victory matters more than the American political timeline, the Iranians will have the strategic advantage.

Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/06/03/iran-throwing-its-weight-around-kabul/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Iranian Official Admits Helping Syria

by IPT News

The Iranian government has consistently smuggled weapons and explosives to proxies in Syria and Lebanon using passenger jets, German broadcaster ZDF reported Wednesday.

Citing Western security officials and information from unspecified sources, the report alleges that Iranian-based commercial airlines Iran Air and Yas Air have transported weapons to Beirut and Damascus on several occasions on aircraft designated as passenger planes.

Though the types of weapons are unknown, ZDF asserts that the weapons were ordered by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The ZDF report came days after the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force admitted lending military support to President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.

Speaking to Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency, Deputy Commander Esmail Ghani said the Quds Force played a "physical and non-physical" role in Syria. This role, he claimed, mitigated the loss of life in the Syrian government's prolonged crackdown on its citizens, which Syrian authorities have consistently blamed on "terrorists" within its borders.

Coincidentally, Ghani's comments came shortly after Assad's forces massacred at least 108 people and injured 300 more in Houla in Homs province on Friday.

"If the Islamic Republic were not present in Syria, the killing of citizens would be greater," Ghani said.

His comments were removed from the ISNA website soon after they were published and no other official news outlet in Iran reported them.

Instead, other Iranian officials have blamed the death of Syrian civilians on Israel.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparsat told Iran's official news agency, IRNA, that Israel was "the root of the problems," and that "the Zionist regime's weakening position in the region" had led to "provocation."

Echoing these sentiments, former Revolutionary Guard chief and current secretary-general of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council Mohsen Rezaee criticized Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for accusing Iran and Hizballah of involvement in the Houla massacre. Though Netanyahu blamed Iran, "evidence suggests the influence of the Zionist regime in Syria," Rezaee said.

Though the United States, European Union and Syrian opposition leaders have long accused Iran of aiding Syria, Ghani's comments on Sunday mark the first time an Iranian official has publicly admitted that the Islamic Republic has a presence in Damascus.

The ZDF report is just the latest development in the history of cooperation between these two Islamic nations. In March, the US Department of the Treasury actually designated Ghani, as well as two other Revolutionary Guard officials and Yas Air, as terrorist entities for shipping weapons to Syria to support Assad's regime.

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3599/iranian-official-admits-helping-syria

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

AP's NYPD Reporting Blasted

by IPT News

Pulitzer Prize winning stories about New York Police Department intelligence and surveillance activity by the Associated Press are inaccurate, misleading and harmful, a top NYPD official writes just days after leaving the department. One allegation was "pure fiction."

Mitchell Silber was the department's director of intelligence analysis from 2007 through last month. His first public act in the private sector is a compelling 6,000 word dissection of the AP reports published in Commentary.

The stories cast the NYPD as waging unchecked, wholesale, undercover surveillance of Muslim communities inside and outside the city, done without cause and in likely violation of civil liberties protections.

It is the product. Silber argues, of "broad allegations and cherry-picked and misconstrued examples to support particularly damaging charges." They were "accepted as gospel" and "created fissures between the police and the communities it sought to protect, undermined confidence in the NYPD."

Although New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was critical of some of those disclosures, a review by New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa found no laws were violated.

Court-approved guidelines allow the NYPD to gather information in public places and from public websites. That's where the bulk of the surveillance took place, he writes. Rare cases in which undercover agents were deployed were done "only on the basis of a lead or investigation reviewed and authorized in writing at the highest levels of the department" (emphasis original).

NYPD does this, Silber explains, to identify pockets of radicalization and potential plots before they materialize. It's a requirement brought on by successful terrorist attacks against the city in 1993 and 2001 and more than a dozen attempts, some of which were interdicted at last minute. In the two attacks on the World Trade Center, conspirators used New Jersey as a base in part because demographics allowed them to lay low.

The same tactics are used to stop everyday criminal networks, from drug dealers and gangs to human trafficking. They are used because they work, he writes, citing the arrest of two men trying to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, and Jose Pimentel, who lived in upstate New York and was "one hour away from completing the construction of a pipe bomb intended for detonation in New York City" when he was arrested.

AP reporters and editors, along with critics of the NYPD who embraced their reporting either haven't read the court guidelines, don't understand them or ignored them, Silber writes. "Anyone who denies the success of the demographics initiative is fortunate not to carry the burden of responsibility should there actually be a counterterrorism failure resulting in an attack. I, for one, would have borne that responsibility. The AP team would not have."

He believes the flaws were intentional.

"The war on the NYPD's method of combating terrorism is a war on the war on terror by proxy—an effort to portray the least controversial aspect of homeland security as instead a matter of great civil-libertarian concern," Silber writes in conclusion.

"By portraying the NYPD efforts as rogue operations, the AP and the Pulitzer committee are seeking to slacken attempts inside the United States to stop terrorist plots before they happen. Letting these false and misleading stories alter local counterterrorism work would be catastrophic."
Read the whole response here.

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3605/ap-nypd-reporting-blasted

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Westernization of Muslim Demographics

by Yoram Ettinger

The dramatic Westernization of Muslim demographics defies conventional wisdom. It requires the re-evaluation of economic, social and national security assumptions and the re-assessment of related policy.

For example, the fertility rate among young Arabs in Judea and Samaria — at an average of three births per woman — has converged with the respective fertility rates of young Israeli Arabs and Jews, while (mostly secular) Jewish fertility rates are currently trending upwards and Arab fertility rates are trending downwards.

The Arab fertility rate in Judea and Samaria is declining at an accelerated pace as a result of modernity: urbanization (70 percent rural in 1967 vs. 75% urban in 2012), increased education, especially among women (most of whom complete high school and increasingly attend community colleges), enhanced career mentality and growing integration into the workforce among women (reproduction starts later and ends earlier), all-time high median wedding age and divorce rate, minimal teen pregnancy (common in 1967 but rare in 2012), family planning and secularization.

David Goldman (“Spengler”) writes in his book "How Civilizations Die" that “as Muslim fertility shrinks at a rate demographers have never seen before, it is converging on Europe’s low fertility. … Iranian women in their 20s, who grew up with five or six siblings, will bear only one or two children during their lifetimes. ... By the middle of this century, the belt of Muslim countries from Morocco to Iran will become as gray as depopulating Europe."

“Demographers have identified several different factors associated with population decline: urbanization, education and literacy. ... Children in traditional societies had an economic value, as agricultural labor and as providers for elderly parents; urbanization and pension systems turned children into a cost rather than a source of income…. Dozens of new studies document the link between religious belief and fertility. ... [An] Iranian 25-year-old’s mother married in her teens and had several children by her mid-twenties. Her daughter has postponed family formation, or foregone it altogether, and spent her most fertile years on education and work. ... World fertility has fallen by about two children per woman in the past half century — from about 4.5 children per woman to about 2.5. Fertility in the Muslim world has fallen two or three times faster than the world average... Across the entire Muslim world, university-educated Muslim women bear children at the same rate as their infecund European counterparts. ... The only Muslim countries where women still give birth to seven or eight children are the poorest and least literate: Mali, Niger, Somalia and Afghanistan. ... Iran’s secular government under the late Shah put enormous efforts into education during the 1970s and 1980s. ... Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution slowed but could not stop the literacy movement.”

Director of the UN Population Division Hania Zlotnik argued that “In most of the Islamic world it’s amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened.” Eight of the 15 countries that experienced the biggest drop in population growth since 1980 are in the Middle East.

David Goldman (“Spengler”) states that “the only advanced country [other than the U.S.] to sustain high fertility rates is Israel...”

He criticizes Israeli leaders who based their policy on erroneous demographic assumptions: “Israeli concessions in the first decade of the 21st century [Rabin’s Oslo, Sharon’s uprooting of Jewish communities in Gaza and Olmert’s unprecedented proposed concessions] were motivated by fear that Arab fecundity would swamp Israel’s Jewish population. In actuality, quite the opposite was occurring..."

In fact, the Jewish fertility rate in Israel in 2012 — three births per woman — is higher than all Arab countries, other than Sudan, Yemen, Iraq and Jordan, which are trending downward. The average Israeli-born Jewish mother exceeds three births. Moreover, Israel’s robust demography yields uniquely promising economic, social, technological and national security ramifications.

According to Goldman, “Israel will have more young people than Italy or Spain, and as many as Germany, by the end of the century, if fertility remains unchanged. A century and a half after the Holocaust, the Jewish State will have more military-age men, and will be able to field a larger land army, than Germany.”

Israel’s rising (especially secular) Jewish fertility rate is in direct correlation to its relatively high-level optimism, collective responsibility, generational continuity (roots and future), patriotism, tradition, faith and value-driven education. Israel’s demographic tailwind is even more powerful, when considering the potential of 500,000 Olim during the next ten years.

The demographic, economic, military and diplomatic resources at the disposal of Israel in 2012 are dramatically superior to those available to Herzl in 1900, Ben-Gurion in 1948 and Shamir in 1992. Anyone suggesting that Jews are doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River, that there is a demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish state and that the Jewish state must concede Jewish geography in order to secure Jewish demography, is either grossly mistaken or outrageously misleading!

Yoram Ettinger

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1982

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

What to Say When You’re Handed the Obama-is-Good-for-Israel Talking Points

by Barry Rubin

Many Americans, and particularly Jews, are starting to receive mailings encouraging them to vote for President Barack Obama or donate to his reelection campaign of by arguing that he is pro-Israel. Several readers have asked me to provide them with responses. Here is a brief answer.

These emails and mailings, though designed to look as if they were written by concerned individuals, clearly draw their texts from talking points posted on the Obama reelection site. The arguments are very thin and selective but are presented as if they represent the totality of Obama policy.

The main arguments are:

1. Obama says he likes Israel.

That’s nice, but so what? Of course it is good when he says nice things (by coincidence, no doubt, usually to Jewish audiences), but one can also find a lot of nasty remarks by him, his advisors, and various officials appointed by him. Every president for the last half-century has said similar nice things; not all the presidents put together during this period have said or done so many hostile things. While it is a great exaggeration to say that Obama hates Israel or wants to destroy it, I think it is fair to say that no president (including Jimmy Carter when in office) has been so cold toward Israel and basically failed to understand its nature and interests.

2. Israeli leaders say Obama is great.

Yes, that’s nice, but it’s not what they say in private. I can tell you authoritatively that not a single Israeli leader in any party has a high opinion of Obama with regard to Israel and its interests. But it is their job to lavish praise on America’s president. Their task is not to defeat Obama or to critique him but to get along with him as well as possible in order to protect Israel’s long-term alliance with the United States without sacrificing any of Israel’s vital interests. They’ve done it well. The one moment the truth emerged was when Obama betrayed Israel, on the diplomatic level, by announcing, without consultation, a new policy on peace terms while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was flying to Washington. You think Israeli leaders (and this is not ideological, not a matter of left or right) have a high regard for Obama? Read Netanyahu’s speech to the joint session of Congress.

Perhaps the equation can be summarized as follows: Obama just gave Israeli President Shimon Peres a presidential medal of freedom. He also has just helped give Israel a second Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime next door and insists that this is a good thing.

3. U.S.-Israel bilateral relations are good especially with regard to military aid.

That’s true, but only a small part of that relates to Obama’s benevolence. Why?

a. Congress supports Israel. There was more pushback against Obama from Democratic members on this issue than on any other, foreign or domestic. Thus, Israel is the only “target” of Obama whose constituency has vocal defenders within his own party that raise the cost of his actions against it, at least during his first term. (Note that last phrase.)

b. The same applies to public opinion, which is strongly pro-Israel. This factor also inhibits Obama, at least during his first term. (Note that last phrase.)

c. Regarding military relations, the U.S. armed forces are generally quite pro-Israel and want these programs. Many of them are based on previous commitments, which Obama merely continues.

An especially important reason why Obama’s administration hasn’t been far more hostile to Israel in practice is that the Arabs and Iran shafted his policy. Remember that Obama offered to support the Palestinians, pressure Israel, and accelerate talks if only the Arab states and Palestinian Authority showed some flexibility. They repeatedly rejected his efforts—refusing even to talk–giving him no opportunity or incentive to press Israel for concessions. Note too, though, that the repeated humiliations handed him by the Arabs never made him criticize them publicly, change his general line, or back Israel more enthusiastically.

The same point applies to Iran. While Obama has intensified sanctions on Iran, he:

• Did so only after a long delay.

• Did less than Congress wanted/

• Exempted in effect China, Russia, and Turkey from observing the sanctions.

Obama has been visibly eager to make a deal with Tehran, even on bad terms. Only Iran’s hard line has prevented some kind of arrangement that favored Iran. Instead, though, Tehran has used Obama’s slowness and desire for some compromise in order to buy time for its nuclear program to progress.

Finally, there’s the most important factor of all. The main damage Obama has done to Israeli security is neither so much in the area of bilateral relations nor regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict but as a result of his regional policy in the Middle East. This includes his:

• Soft line toward antisemitic, anti-Israel, and also anti-American Islamism.

• Support for overturning the Mubarak regime and encouragement for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover there. During the 2011 crisis, Obama never even consulted Israel. The outspoken antisemitism, calls for genocide against Israel’s citizens, and support for anti-Israel terrorism by the Muslim Brotherhood have had no effect on Obama’s policy and brought no criticism by the U.S. government of that movement.

This point must be underlined. Do not forget for one moment that the Brotherhood is an explicitly antisemitic movement that calls for genocide against Jews in and often outside of Israel. It has never to the tiniest degree criticized or repented for its strong support for Nazi Germany. It is in fact that most important antisemitic movement in the world today. Anyone who claims that this movement is in fact moderate (denying its antisemitism and genocidal intentions) and helps it to achieve power is acting profoundly against the interests of Israel and of the Jewish people. Period.

• His soft line toward Hizballah in Lebanon, including breaking promises made to Israel to keep terrorists out of south Lebanon.

• Pressure on Israel to reduce sanctions on the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip greatly empowered that radical antisemitic movement.

• The Obama administration has been passive about the Fatah-Hamas merger and has virtually never criticized or pressured the Palestinian Authority.

• By distancing himself from Israel–something everyone in the world knows except about 60 percent of American Jews–he has encouraged Israel’s enemies to be bolder and others to move away from support for Israel, too.

• One of his worst actions has been to come close to worshipping Turkey’s Islamist regime despite its tremendous hostility toward Israel. Obama’s passivity has helped turn the Turkey-Israel alliance into something verging on cold war. Since the Turkish regime continues to be rewarded by Obama despite doing things like getting Israel barred from the NATO meeting and indicting Israeli officers over the Gaza flotilla confrontation, Ankara has no incentive to stop or reduce its enmity.

• In Syria, he has supported the installation of an Islamist leadership for the opposition movement, posing a tremendous potential future danger for Israel.

• Regarding Iran, Obama was very slow to take up the battle against the nuclear weapons campaign. Despite the relatively high level of sanctions (for which Congress deserves a lot of the credit), one can well doubt his future determination to battle Tehran. He also failed to support the Iranian opposition.

• And by weakening American credibility and alliances, Obama has undermined the U.S. ability to protect its own interests which, in turn, hurts Israel’s security.

There’s a lot more and each of the factors above can be amplified with lots of examples and documentation. All of this far overwhelms the very short “pro-Obama” list.

Did I mention that during a second term he won’t need to worry about fundraising or running for election again?

Barry Rubin

Source: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/06/01/obama-is-good-for-israel-talking-points/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Muslim Outrage, Intimidation, and Blackmail

by Eileen F. Toplansky

In 1997 a huge Muslim outcry ensued that forced Nike to "recall 800,000 shoes because the Muslims claimed the company's 'Air' logo resembled the Arabic script for Allah." Mind you, the decoration was not the name for Allah. As a result of this bogus allegation, Nike would build "three playgrounds for Islamic communities in the United States" as part of the repentance package.

Instead of decrying this false claim of religious insensitivity, the New York Times reported that Nike:

committed a legendary error when it released a pair of athletic shoes in 1996 with a logo on the sole that some Muslims believed resembled the Arabic lettering for Allah. According to John Goodman, a Muslim convert and Ogilvy & Mather's regional director for South and Southeast Asia, '[g]iven that Muslims consider the feet unclean, producing shoes with the name of God on the soles of the feet is not a good idea...they recalled 800,000 pairs of shoes globally.'

Describing the Nike episode as a 'wake-up call' for companies, Goodman said it had also been a turning point for Muslim advocates, who realized that 'if they make a noise, companies would listen and change, that they had economic and social influence.'

Well, these Muslim advocates certainly have exercised their influence at these alleged offenses. In fact, CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, arrogantly responded that, had a settlement not been reached, his organization would have called for a global boycott of Nike products. CAIR's spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, crowed about the settlement: "We see it as a victory. It shows that the Muslim community is growing and becoming stronger in the United States. It shows that our voices are being heard."

In 1998 "Unilever scrapped a new logo it had begun to use on Walls ice creams in the Middle East -- again after Muslims said the intertwining red and yellow hearts looked like 'Allah' in Arabic when viewed upside down and backwards."

Four years before the Unilever episode, in 1994, Karl Lagerfeld designed a dress incorporating a pattern he had copied from Arabic lettering on India's Taj Mahal monument. This resulted in death threats to the German model Claudia Schiffer for wearing the dress.

As a result, Lagerfeld burned the garments and destroyed photographs and negatives of the dress!

One wonders what the insulted Muslims would say about the random playfulness of nature, clouds and trees which also resemble the Allah script.

But I digress.

In 2004 in Denmark, sandals that bore a design that looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic resulted in a Muslim organization suing a Danish supermarket. Fortunately, the supermarket spokesperson refused to remove the sandals from the shelves stating that seven Arabic-speaking employees stated that the design did not refer to Allah's name.

In 2005 Burger King in the UK withdrew its ice cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim who claimed the design was sacrilegious. As a result the man threatened jihad via a boycott of Burger King. Consequently, the chain had to spend thousands of pounds to redesign the lid and had to comply with the Muslim Council of Britain which stated that they "commended the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King [had] taken."

The latest assault occurred on May 27, 2012 and is targeted against a McDonald's Toy. According to the Saudis, the toy "abused the Prophet Muhammad by placing his name at the base of a toy that is being distributed as part of the Happy Meal, a toy which steps on the name 'Muhammad.'" In response, the Saudi McDonald's has withdrawn the toy from all its restaurants, "in order to safeguard against any accusations or misunderstandings."

Indeed, this should be a turning point! It should make Western commercial interests hunker down and refuse to give into the blackmail, expensive redesign implementation, self-censoring loss of creativity, and death threats - all byproducts of these phony pseudo-angry outbursts by far too many Muslims. These preposterous fabrications demand that our righteous indignation call for the end of Islamic triumphalism. It is time for our voices to be heard. We need to recall that "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin, Speech to the Pennsylvania Assembly, November 11, 1755)

At what point will the West politely say, 'No, we will not be intimidated by your rage. We will not be coerced. We will not be frightened into dhimmitude by people who cannot tell the difference between a design and the name of their prophet? When will the West see through yet another excuse to make us bow to these Islamic extremists who will "be outraged by anything short of our adopting Sharia law?"

Eileen F. Toplansky can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/muslim_outrage_intimidation_and_blackmail.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Egyptians Riot over Mubarak Verdict

by Rick Moran

Angry Egyptians took to the streets on Saturday night, protesting the life sentence given former President Hosni Mubarak by a court that tried him for the murder of protestors and corruption.

Reuters:

Egyptians demonstrated throughout the night in Cairo's central Tahrir Square and other cities, enraged that a court had spared deposed leader Hosni Mubarak his life over the killing of protesters in the uprising that ended his three-decade rule.

The vote is seen as the last step in a transition from military rule to civilian government.

Many wanted death for Mubarak, who was handed a life prison sentence on Saturday.

They saw the sentence and the acquittal of senior police officers as proof that the old regime still wields influence and feared Mubarak could now be acquitted on appeal.

Some demanded that the country's presidential election be cancelled.

Thousands of people poured onto the streets on Saturday after the verdict. By Sunday morning, a few hundred were still gathered in Tahrir Square -- focal point of the January 2011 uprising that brought down the longtime U.S. ally - and said they would stay until those killed in the uprising were avenged.

"This was not a fair verdict and there is mass rejection of the judge's ruling," said one protester, Amr Magdy. "Tahrir will fill up again with protesters. In Egypt the only way you can get any justice is by protesting because all the institutions are still controlled by Mubarak figures."

The long-awaited Mubarak verdict deepened fear among many pro-democracy campaigners that recent developments are reversing Egypt's emergence from decades of autocratic rule.

Many of the young liberal and left-wing revolutionaries who began the uprising were dismayed when their own candidates lost the first round of the presidential election last month.

The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Mursi, may call for the cancellation of the presidential runoff election scheduled for later this month. Mursi knows he's losing to Mubarak's former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, largely the result of a backlash against the Brotherhood's accumulation of power over the last few months. It is doubtful the military will agree to a delay given that Shafiq is believed to have strong ties to officers who served Mubarak.

Sharia or autocratic rule? That would seem to be the choice facing Egyptians.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/06/egyptians_riot_over_mubarak_verdict.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Empty Words for Syria

by Dr. Reuven Berko

"There's no tax on words," goes and old Arab adage that aptly reflects the world's dismal condition in the face of an empowered axis of evil. Among the gruesome images broadcast on Syrian national television, one could see the bullet-riddled heads of boys and girls, resting lifelessly in the dim, narrow hallways of cramped buildings.

The state-run broadcast gave special attention to one little dark-haired boy, filming a close-up of the back of his neck, after he had been scalped. The bodies, piling up at a murderous rate in cities across Syria, have turned U.N. observers and their shamed commander into shell-shocked, helpless bystanders, complicit in the tragedy due to pathetic inaction.

The voices of alarm around the world are growing stronger, because, after all, there is no tax on words. The French are discussing a military option, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared that "the situation has become insufferable and one can't remain silent any longer." U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice warned that Syrian failure to comply with Kofi Anan's plan would lead to civil war and harsher U.S. action. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pointed to Russia as the root of the problem, saying that Russian support for the Syrian regime will lead to a bloody civil war.

The Russians, meanwhile, are sticking to their guns. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, guided by the outlook that everything that is bad for the Americans and their allies is good for the Russians and their allies, has argued that "Russia is maintaining a balanced policy on Syria." From their modern Kremlin offices (renovated with American aid money?), President Vladimir Putin's officials are busy trying to restore Russia's superpower status. They back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and threaten anyone considering military action against Syria in efforts to save its citizens.

At the other end of the map stands a menacing Iran, another supporting country, orchestrating the "Syrian death roulette" and threatening that if Syria is attacked, "Israel will burn." Israel is Iran's hostage for the purposes of extortion, but if that is not enough for the Americans, Iran also has additional hostages: the oil exporters on the opposite side of the Persian Gulf. In fact, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards paid a defiant visit on Saturday to three disputed islands over which Iran has forcefully claimed sovereignty, located along the world's main oil supply route in the Persian Gulf.

Assad inherited his predilection for murder from his father, who massacred over 30,000 people in Homs and Hama in 1982, who even then were fighting for the same cause. Until recently, "the Assads" from Damascus hosted various Palestinian terrorist organizations that similarly murdered Israelis. Now, the regime is reaping the bloody fruits of the violence it sowed over the years. The atrocities continue, starring the Syrian army, Syrian security services and the professional assassins in civilian clothing (known as "Shabiha") who rove the streets. Syrian soldiers in tiger fatigues flaunt their Kalashnikov rifles as they victoriously trudge among the corpses of slaughtered children.

The Syrian regime blames its victims and its citizens for killing their own brothers, as murderers tend to do. It continues to wage psychological warfare, announcing the release of hundreds of rebels "without blood on their hands" who have renounced their ways. It's hard to imagine what a peace agreement between Israel and Syria would be worth if signed with this murderous regime. And another nightmare scenario creeps up: What would happen to us and to our children if, God forbid, this horde, which slaughters its own people, were to defeat us in a war?

For the time being the world is putting many things into motion but very little is actually moving. The Iranians continue to play with their centrifuges and are shifting to a higher gear while cruising toward a bomb. Somewhere in Doha a conference will focus on "America and the Islamic World." Terrorist attacks that kill dozens of people occur on a daily basis in disintegrating Iraq, where Iranian hands meddle and impose their will. There was a report out of Pakistan, a Sunni country with nuclear weapons, of a short-range ground-to-ground missile test. The leader of the rebel forces in Syria, a former Syrian air force colonel named Riad Mousa al-Asaad, has called out desperately for the world to help.

In a nutshell, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is celebrating and Assad is raising his glass, but the world media prefers to focus on yet another anti-Semitic boycott of Israeli settlement products. Without a doubt that is the real burning issue.

Dr. Reuven Berko

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1996

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

"Salafi Leader: No Freedom in Islam; Apostates Must be Persecuted"

by Raymond Ibrahim

Last month, Sheikh Yassir al-Burhami, a prominent figure in Egypt's Salafi movement—who also hates Christian Copts, hates Mother's Day, and is an advocate of taqiyya—appeared on the Egyptian show Al Hayat Al Youm ("Life Today"), giving his views on the presidential candidates. At one point, the host asked Burhami which of the policies of Abu al-Futuh—the "liberal" Islamist candidate who lost out to the more "conservative" Muslim Brotherhood candidate—he especially rejected.

Burhami started vaguely, saying "There were some things we were concerned about," adding that they met and discussed these matters with Abu al-Futuh, and how the latter had clarified his position, finally agreeing that he might need to revise his opinion.

Then Burhami made clear what the issue at hand was: Apostasy—if Muslims have the right to leave Islam and convert to other religions. In the words of Burhami:

Is it the right of the Muslim to convert to Christianity or another religion? Of course this is not a right; this is a matter that Sharia has clearly addressed, according to the agreed upon hadiths. It is impermissible, for any reason, for a Muslim to leave the community. Of course, you cannot coerce any infidel to enter into Islam [Koran 2:256]—except for the apostate. It is impossible to let the apostate remain in [a state of] apostasy, deeming it a form of "freedom."

For the record, the "agreed upon hadiths" that Burhami indicated, are, in fact, unequivocal in regards to the crime of apostasy. The most canonical and oft cited among them simply has Muhammad saying: "Whoever leaves his religion, kill him."

Raymond Ibrahim

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3255/salafi-leader-no-freedom-in-islam

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Stealing Their Way to Statehood - Part V

by Gil Bringer

This is Part V of a meticulously researched article that describes in detail how Bedouins of the Jordan Valley are used by the Palestinian Authority to take over territory in Area C surreptitiously.

Read Part I here.
Read Part II here.
Read Part III here.
Read Part IV here.

Eighth Stop: A School as an Outpost

In the year 2009 the residents of Kfar-Adumim served a petition against the construction of the Italian regional school that was in the process of being built below their town. The school was intended for the children of the Bedouin tribes that had settled in different outposts in the area and is located right on Route 1. It serves not only the local people: the PA subsidizes transportation for students who live in more distant locations. It seems that here too, the PA endeavors to create facts on the ground using the Bedouin settlements and is willing to spend money towards that goal. The school that was created in that location is not a means to an end - it is a goal in and of itself, which is a declaration of sovereignty on the area.

A demolition order that was issued regarding the place years ago was never implemented, and this, despite the proximity of the school to a main traffic artery and its location in a firing zone, facts that were supposed to have propelled it to the highest priority for implementation. But these are, of course, exactly the same facts why the PA so much wants to leave the school right where it is.

In the year 2010, the court received the position of the civil authority, according to which the school was not to have been not be destroyed until the end of the school year. This, despite the existence of a school nearby in Abu-Dis, which transports children daily from the surrounding area to the school in Han al-Ahmar, and can accommodate all the students of the (Italian) school. The court determined that the school must not be destroyed until the end of June.

June was over and July arrived. August and September passed as well. Again and again the Prosecutor asked for more time to obtain additional approvals for the demolition of the school, approvals that apparently were impossible to obtain while waiting passively until the end of the school year.

In October, the state requested thirty additional days and in the background was the bustle of students returning for the new school year. In November, the officer in charge of coordination of activities in the territories announced that the demolition tender had progressed considerably and had actually passed every phase except for the signature of the Minister of Security. The minister was supposed to sign the permit for the demolition by the end of 2011, the prosecutor declared to the court.

In February of 2012, the prosecutor explained that because of a "technical problem" the document was not brought to the minister of security for his signature. The prosecutor requested 45 additional days. At exactly the same time that the prosecutor served his request for an additional postponement in order to fix the "technical problem", the newspaper "Haaretz" published the information that General Dangot, who is responsible for coordination of activities in the territories, visited the outpost Han al-Ahmar and announced to the residents that he has no intention to demolish the school. These things are consistent with messages that were transmitted by the people of the administration to the residents of Kfar Adumim, who told "Makor Rishon", that the administration is not interested in demolishing the illegally built school.

In a conversation with the spokesman of the coordinator of activities in the territories, we asked to understand how the response of the prosecutor, according to which only a "technical problem" held up the signature of the minister of security on the confirmation to demolish the building,
sits with the words of Dangot himself, who, according to the announcements, is not at all interested in demolishing the building.

In a verbal conversation, the spokesman claimed that the details that were published regarding Dangot in "Haaretz" are not accurate. We asked to know what, nevertheless, Dangot said to the people of Han al-Ahmar, and then the spokesman asked us to send him an email. The email was sent to the correct address but did not merit a response. We assumed that apparently there was a "technical problem" that seemed to revolve around the issue of Han al-Ahmar. At the request of the spokesman, an email was sent again but since then there has been no trace of him. Not an email nor the spokesman. One can only assume that another "technical problem" was responsible.

Meanwhile, in the PA there are no technical problems. Fiyad decided, of course, to take the Bedouin school fully under his auspices, and in the ceremony of tribute that was held last May (2011) Fiyad came to the outpost to congratulate his people.

“You Bedouins are the guardians of the land”, said Fiyad to the residents. “Your persistence in having your children learn in this modest school, that was built by an Italian organization, is a sign of hope for us all. In my visit to the village there is a strong message for the freedom of my people, and for the establishment of a Palestinian state in which the rights of our people will be maintained. In the name of the Palestinian Authority, which aspires in the near future to be the Palestinian state, we call on the international authorities and organizations to protect the rights of the Palestinians.”

This is the final installment of "Stealing Their Way to Statehood".

Next Week: "Double Standards in Judea and Samaria" by Gil Bringer, Part I

Gil Bringer is an attorney who serves as the legal consultant to the Jewish Home faction in the Knesset and co-editor of the "Tzedek" legal supplement to the "Makor Rishon" Hebrew weekly newspaper. Among other things, he deals with the areas of overlap between law and politics, Zionism and good governance. He can be contacted at gil.bringer@gmail.com

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav

Source: Source: Makor Rishon weekly Hebrew newspaper; http://myesha.org.il/?CategoryID=335&ArticleID=5365&Page=1

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors