Category Archives: Middle East

War Time President or Ally? Not so Much

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Much has been written that Barack Obama is feeble when it comes to foreign policy. There is the matter of Syria where deference was given to Putin by the White House to handle matters regarding the civil war there as well as the chemical weapons. Well, now additional chemical weapons are being used today that are chlorine based barrel bombs. Then there is Iraq where war again is as bad today as it was in 2004.

One cannot overlook the matter of the Budapest Memorandum where the United States as well as the United Kingdom must protect Ukraine with something more than a VP Joe Biden visit and MRE’s.

Completely ignored until 300 girls were kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Harem, it was not until the media reported the vast kidnappings that we found that neither Hillary Clinton or John Kerry listed Boko Harem on the FTO (Foreign Terror Organization) list. Heck it was not until this past January of 2014 that the attackers in Benghazi, Ansar al Sharia was listed on the FTO.

There is a war brewing in the South China sea where China continues to be aggressive over disputed islands involving Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

So, sanctions rule and go where no offensive measures shall. Diplomatic victories should prevail for sure but to date, all diplomatic efforts and talks have failed with Iran nuclear negotiations are now permanently broken as is the matter between Israel and the Palestinians.

The truth be known, America is at war and Barack Obama has not figured out how to be a war time president except to retreat without tangible victories anywhere.

Allies are asking hard questions of the White House and not getting any responses, so their conclusions are such that they doubt seriously that America even with NATO’s Article 5 will not be at their side at all.

 

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May 27, 2014

U.S. Foreign Policy Barack Obama Is Accused Of Timidity Overseas, Raising Fear and Anger Among The Country’s Allies.

By Geoff Dyer

When President Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, he pulled off what for Democrats was a remarkable feat – he took foreign policy off the table as a campaign issue.  Ever since Harry Truman was accused of “losing China”, Republicans have sought to cast their Democratic opponents as weak in the face of foreign challenges. Yet fresh from his risky but successful military operation to kill Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama side-stepped the usual assault during his re-election campaign. His challenger Mitt Romney hardly brought up foreign policy.  Eighteen months later, the political ground is shifting rapidly beneath Mr. Obama’s feet. As he prepares to give an important address on foreign policy at West Point tomorrow, the president finds himself under attack over what critics charge is a record of indecisive leadership.  The loudest voices have been Mr. Obama’s political opponents at home, but the critique of a rudderless, risk-adverse president has also found strong echoes among some of America’s most important allies. From Saudi Arabia to Japan, officials have been wondering whether the US would still come to their defense.  Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 reflected a widespread belief at home and abroad that there was “too much America” in the world. Although he still seems to be in tune with the US public, Mr. Obama faces the accusation that there is now too little.  Even John Kerry, his secretary of state, appeared to acknowledge this international perception in a speech last week. “We cannot allow a hangover from the excessive interventionism of the last decade to lead now to an excess of isolationism,” he told students at Yale. “Most of the rest of the world doesn’t lie awake at night worrying about America’s presence – they worry about what would happen in our absence.”

In his West Point speech, Mr. Obama will lay out how the US intends to “lead the international community but without getting overextended”, as a White House official puts it. But the persistent attacks have left Mr. Obama in a defensive crouch, tetchily defending his cautious approach.  “That may not always be sexy. That may not always attract a lot of attention, and it doesn’t make for good argument on Sunday morning shows,” he said during a recent Asia trip. “But it avoids errors.”  The rap sheet on Mr. Obama has two basic charges: that he is too timid in his approach to foreign affairs; and that the US has begun a process of retreating from its place in the world during his presidency.  “On all these issues, our response has been to do the minimum and no more,” says Bob Corker, the leading Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee. “Every allied government I talk to, I get the same questions about whether we will be there.”  On one level, the claim that Mr. Obama is too passive is part of a longstanding intellectual debate in Washington about foreign policy.

When he was first elected, many analysts pegged Mr. Obama as an idealist – a reflection of his stirring rhetoric, his reaching out to the Muslim world and his longstanding association with Samantha Power, now his UN ambassador and the leading intellectual voice of liberal interventionism.  Instead, in recent years Mr. Obama has revealed himself as a president more rooted in a realist tradition that is more focused on the defense of national interests and is wary of moral causes. This should not have come as a complete surprise: even during his first election campaign, he told interviewers of his respect for the foreign policy of George HW Bush. Mr. Obama’s reticence over Syria reflects a belief that it is better to avoid mistakes than to appear decisive.  “The United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries,” Mr. Obama said in a speech to the UN last September.  “Obama’s mistake on Syria was not that he did not follow through on the red line he set [about the use of chemical weapons],” says John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago scholar who is one of the leading realist thinkers. “It was setting a red line in the first place.” (He adds that he believes Mr. Obama “95 per cent supports” his point of view.)    Such a world view, however, puts the president at odds with a large part of the US foreign policy establishment on both the left and the right, which, despite the traumas of Iraq, is still instinctively interventionist.

Some supporters worry that the president’s caution can become an excuse for inaction. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser, says that he believes Mr. Obama often has the right instincts but that “he does not always translate that into diplomatic strategies to achieve his goals”.  Mr. Obama has added to the impression of dithering and inaction through his highly deliberative style of decision-making, which is in stark contrast to George W Bush’s reliance on gut instinct. The months of painstaking discussion in the first term over whether to put more troops into Afghanistan have been matched in the second term by a series of reviews of Syria policy, which have each ended with Mr. Obama deciding to do little.  The root cause of much of the angst about Mr. Obama has been his public wobble last September over whether to launch Tomahawk missiles against Syria, culminating in the walk on the White House lawn when he decided to punt the issue to Congress. Outside of the Middle East, few US allies were worried about the details of the proposed Syria strike: what rattled them was the sight of a US president making a threat and then deciding he did not have the political authority to carry through with it.  “We have lost some of the aura we used to enjoy in the region,” says Vali Nasr, a former state department official in Mr. Obama’s first term who has been a strong critic of the administration’s approach to the Middle East. Since then the humanitarian catastrophe of the Syrian war has only deepened, yet Mr. Obama has consistently resisted pressure from within his administration to do more. Even those aides who agree with his caution admit it has been an inglorious episode.

The unfolding events in Europe and Asia have also fed the perception of a US president losing his capacity to shape events abroad. At a time that the Pentagon budget is being cut, China is increasingly bent on pursuing its territorial claims and on challenging American naval dominance in the western Pacific.  In Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has been able to annex Crimea and to destabilize parts of the east of the country while the west has scrambled to come up with a response that will be effective in the short term. “While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to come to the rescue of the pack,” former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal told the FT.  The second, broader argument about the Obama presidency – that the US is disengaging from the world – is much harder to support. After all, the Afghanistan mission, which formally ends this year, is the longest-running conflict in US history.

The strongest complaints about American retrenchment have come from the Middle East. Yet even after the withdrawal from Iraq, the US military presence in the region remains formidable, following a dramatic expansion in recent decades. During the second term of Ronald Reagan, at the height of the cold war, the US had an average of 8,800 troops in the Middle East: it now has 35,000. “Over the years we have steadily militarized our approach to the Middle East, which has not always been in our interests,” says Dennis Blair, the retired admiral and former Director of National Intelligence.  In some parts of the region and south Asia, Mr. Obama has provoked anger not for reticence over Syria, but for his aggressive use of drone strikes or cyber attacks against Iran.  Indeed, a significant part of the criticism from allies in the Middle East has been much less about the credibility of the American president and more about basic differences in interests. Washington’s biggest focus is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon without starting a new war. The Saudis and Israelis, however, are incensed that the US would negotiate with a country they believe to be a rival for regional influence or an existential threat.  Many of the Sunni-dominated Gulf    nations see the Syrian war in sectarian terms and want to defeat Shia Iran. Yet the sectarian nature of the conflict is one of the main reasons the US is reluctant to get involved.

In Asia, the Obama administration is expanding America’s military presence, signing agreements with Australia and the Philippines for much greater access to bases and deepening co-operation with Japan. One explanation for recent Chinese assertiveness is that Mr. Obama has been pushing too hard rather than that he is considered a pushover.

Europe is the one place where the US military footprint has significantly shrunk. However, the case for a bigger American presence in Europe would be easier to make if European governments were not slashing their own defense budgets. Moreover, it is a stretch to suggest that Russia felt emboldened to annex Crimea because there were fewer US soldiers stationed in western Germany.  “We should worry less about putting more NATO troops in the Baltics, and more about whether there are disaffected Russian populations  that Putin can take advantage of,” says Thomas Graham, a former White House official under George W Bush.

Sometimes lost in Washington’s rancorous debates are the changes taking place in the world, the underlying shift in relative power that is being caused by the “rise of the rest”, the new generation of great powers that are staking their own claims.  The crises facing the administration are in many ways an early example of the harsh realities that a more multipolar world can bring.  Countries such as China and Russia appear to have found new ways to gradually chip away at US influence, pursuing territorial claims in Crimea or the South China Sea in a manner that fall well short of casus belli.  The fresh strategies that the US will require to meet this sort of challenge are rarely captured in the discussions about decisive presidential leadership.

Jeremy Shapiro, a former Obama administration official now at the Brookings Institution, highlights this changed foreign policy landscape. “With such a structural shift in international politics, the US will need to operate in different ways, but we are still struggling to come to terms with the new reality,” he says.

No Place is Safe for Christians

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We have read that Iran jails Christians, we have read that in Egypt the Coptics are burned out of their churches, we have read that in Syria, Christians are either killed or have fled. But it gets worse as the worst place to be a Christian appears to be Pakistan.

Jihad America

The hardest place on earth to be a Christian

While there are many terrible places on earth to be a Christian (Sudan, North Korea, Afghanistan, Bhutan, etc.), Pakistan is arguably the worst. Other nations persecute believers, but in Pakistan the entire country has spent generations forming a world view that values the torturing of those that claim the name of Christ.

Pakistan used to have a noticeable Christian presence. Presbyterians had a sizeable school system, and those schools were largely responsible for the country’s relatively high literacy. But in 1973 Islam become the nation’s religion and the government seized those schools and replaced their teachers and curriculum. Now the Koran is required to be read and recited in all classes at all levels. When little kids learn science, they memorize passages about how Mohammad prophesied modern inventions. When they learn English, they learn it through the Koran. Meanwhile, it is illegal for Christians to touch or own the Koran.

Now, 40 years later, this plan was successful. Literacy in Pakistan is around 50%, but literacy for Christians is less than 10%. Universities require Koran memorization for entrance, so Christians are unable to hold any jobs which require an education. There are only a handful of believers who work for the government at any level. Christians are reduced to living in slums, where they are routinely robbed, and their houses frequently burned.

But that is not the worst of what happens to Christians there. The worst is that their children—particularly their young daughters—are the targets of violence. It is estimated by the few Christian organizations that track these things that around 3,000 Christian girls between the ages of 10-12 are kidnapped every year. Schools make Christians wear different uniforms than the other students, making them easy targets. They are forced to “convert” to Islam and marry Muslims (often becoming a man’s third or fourth wife), and their children are by law considered Muslim. Young kidnapped girls that refuse to convert and marry are beaten, physically tortured, and either killed or simply raped and left to die naked in the wilderness.

Christians do not have access to the legal system in Pakistan. By law, a Christian’s testimony carries only half credibility in court. Police must arrest Christians for any crime they are accused of, and they are really only accused of one crime: blasphemy, which carries an automatic death sentence. In perhaps the most perverse aspect of the legal system there, the government can say that they have never officially executed anyone for blasphemy because it is the lawyers who often carry out the execution before the trial.

Judges in Pakistan have been thoroughly intimidated by Al Qaeda.  They know that if they ever find a Christian innocent of blasphemy that the judge’s family will be murdered. A few years ago (when there were still lawyers who would defend Christians) a Christian was convicted of writing blasphemy against Mohamed, and her case was appealed to the Supreme Court. There it was shown that the accused was actually illiterate, and obviously incapable of writing. The judge acquitted her, and he was murdered the next day. Since then there have been no cases of Christians found “not guilty.” They usually don’t even survive to their trial.

This is an important point because in the last few years blasphemy charges against Christians have become more common. Two particular cases are well known by most Pakistanis, and they served as the model for the current wave of persecution. In 2009 two neighbors were having a property dispute—it essentially boiled down to who was responsible for a hole in the fence. One neighbor was Muslim, and the other was a Christian. The Muslim fabricated a charge of blasphemy, the police incited a crowd, and the Christian family was beaten. Eventually the police arrested the Christian woman (Asia Bibi), who was convicted of blasphemy. The mob seized her house and turned it over to her Muslim neighbors.

In 2011 a wedding was being hosted in the house of a Christian family. A group of Muslims wadded up pages of the Koran and threw them over the fence into the yard, and then summoned the authorities who arrested the bride. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Those two cases have made a pattern for the rest of the nation to follow. Christians are frequently falsely accused of blasphemy, arrested, and their houses are seized. If they lived in the slums (where most Christians live) it is likely that their entire neighborhood will be burned and turned into a mosque.

Because judges don’t want to hear these cases, and lawyers are afraid for their lives that they will not be seen as sufficiently hard against blasphemy, the most common outcome of these cases is that the accused are murdered by their lawyers.

In one of the most infamous cases, in 2012 a group of Muslims handed an 11-year-old Christian girl a bag with burned pages from a school book. The girl would have simply been kidnapped and forced to convert, but because she had Down’s Syndrome, they did not want to marry her to a Muslim. Instead, she was asked her to bring the bag home with her, and a mob then surrounded her house. She was arrested and charged with blasphemy, because the school book contained passages from the Koran. Because this story was picked up by international news, she was not immediately killed. Eventually she was given asylum in Canada.

This kind of extremism has essentially succeeded. Today in Pakistan, Christians cannot read. Their daughters are kidnapped. It is nearly impossible for Christians to get an education, and there are no jobs for them. Their houses are attacked, they have no access to the police, and parents are afraid to teach their children the basics of the gospel—out of fear that their children may say something that will get them killed.

I spoke with a Pakistani pastor this week, and asked him how its possible that so much of the population in Pakistan goes along with something that is so barbarically evil. He pointed out that Christians grow up talking about love, singing about love, and esteeming love. Thus their world view is formed by love. Pakistanis grow up in a school system that talks about Jihad, hates Christians, and from an early age everyone is taught that Christians are deserving of death. It forms their world view.

That observation has been backed by outsiders. In 2011 the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom completed a study of the educational structure in Pakistan. They reported that “all” of the public school teachers they interviewed taught their students that Jihad was the violent struggle against infidels and that it is “compulsory” for Muslims to be violent toward Christians (see pg. 16 of that report). Pakistan is a nation where nearly all—if not all—of the teachers, at every level of education, teach their children to kill Christians.

If you ever meet a Pakistani Christian, ask for his story. Ask how persecution affected his family. Strive to encourage them in anyway possible. There is really no way to give to the church there. They need audio Bibles (because of illiteracy), but other than that, this is not really a problem that money can fix. Instead, please be faithful to pray for the few believers that remain in that dark country.

Pre-9/11 Attack Chatter Again

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Ladies and gentlemen, we are finding ourselves in a deja vu condition again and sadly no one is warning America. It seems that Iran has openly issued a renewed fatwa against the West. There are open forums on the internet where plans of action on waging new attacks are being discussed including Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

While some Democrats are calling Barack Obama ‘flat-footed, detached and incompetent’, this for sure is the case when it comes to many issues least of which is the Veteran’s Administration scandal, but it could be more fatal as we exit Afghanistan for good at the end of this year, leaving yet another country even more vulnerable to the full take-over by al Qaeda factions and the renewed growth of the Taliban.

So, at the core of the chatter is Iran, but who is being offensive in any mission against Iran? Not the White House and not John Kerry. So what is Iran doing exactly?

 

Jihad America

 

Iran’s ayatollah: Jihad will last until America is wiped out

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah  Ali Khamenei, said the era of negotiation of Tehran’s nuclear program has  ended and that those who wanted to deal with America — which he said must be  destroyed — are guilty of treason.

“Those [Iranians] who want to promote negotiations and surrender to the  oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit  treason,” he said Sunday during a public address to members of parliament, Fars  News Agency reported.

Mr. Khamenei also said a combative-type  mindset was necessary for Iran to achieve its higher  goals and win over the “oppressors’ front,” The Daily Caller reported.

“The reason for continuation of this battle is not the warmongering of the  Islamic Republic,” he said. “Logic and reason command that Iran,  in order to pass through a region full of pirates, needs to arm itself and must  have the capability to defend itself. Today’s world is full of thieves and  plunderers of human honor … [who] commit crimes and betray human ideals and  start wars in different parts of the world.”

One lawmaker asked how long the battle would wage, The Daily Caller  reported.

His reply: “Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue  to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the  oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws  on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy  struggle and need for great strides.”

Then we have some unsuspecting adversaries now standing hip to hip in discussions as the U.S. policy needs its own Amber alert. Remember Jews are not allowed to fly into Saudi Arabia on commercial airlines but…..

Former Israeli, Saudi Intel Chiefs Debate Hot-Button Mideast Issues

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Former Israeli and Saudi spy chiefs debated a spectrum of hot-button Mideast issues — including the Iranian nuclear threat, Islamic terror, Syrian civil war and, of course, prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace — in an unprecedented public event Monday in Brussels.

The May 26 debate — discussion, really — brought Prince Turki bin Faisal, youngest son of the late Saudi King who headed Riyadh’s General Intelligence for 22 years, side-by-side with retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel’s military intelligence chief from 2006-2010.

Hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the US and moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, the two agreed on the need to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad for what Turki called “blood crimes” against his people.

They also shared a professed desire and hope to see in their lifetime peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

On Iran, they concurred on the imperative of denying Tehran’s nuclear weapon ambitions, yet differed on matters of substance and strategy.

Yadlin — a former fighter pilot who participated in Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor and managed, as military intelligence chief, Israel’s 2007 attack on a Syrian nuclear complex — made subtle, but clear reference to the so-called military option. “The goal of my government is to do everything so that Iran will not hold a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Turki, in contrast, highlighted Israel’s own nuclear weapon arsenal and the desire of all Mideast countries to rid their region of weapons of mass destruction. The Saudi royal urged Israel to break decades of resistance and agree to enter denuclearization negotiations; a step, he insisted, which would greatly affect the outcome of ongoing talks with Tehran.

“This issue is not one-sided. I’d urge Israel to take that seriously … To have a zone free of weapons of mass destruction,” Turki said.

On Syria, the Saudi prince warned that world powers must not repeat the mistakes of Afghanistan, where “neglect” and the precipitous withdrawal of forces resulted in a breakdown of central authority and stability.

Acknowledging Saudi’s role in arming opposition forces, Turki insisted neither his government nor the forces it supports seeks to dismantle the Syrian state or sovereign control of its territory.

“Should the opposition succeed in Syria, the world community must come together and sustain the viability of the Syrian state. The opposition is not offering to break down the present Syrian state as the Americans did in Afghanistan,” Turki said.

“We want to maintain the state of Syria and its institutions, whether it is the armed forces, police, or government structure … We just want to clear the from blood crimes,” he added.

On prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Saudi royal urged Israel to negotiate on the basis of the so-called Saudi Peace Initiative, a plan adopted in March 2002 by the Arab League.

“Israel has atomic weapons, it has means to deliver those weapons” by air and under the sea, Turki said. “So the Arabs are not crazy. Instead of waging war, the Arabs are waging peace … This is what we want to do; just sit down and talk,” he said.

Yadlin noted that at the time the Saudi plan was first proposed, Israel had been struggling with waves of terror that prevented the plan from gaining traction by a public preoccupied by the threat. “Today, 74 percent of [the Israeli public] have no idea what the Arab Peace Initiative is,” he said.

Yadlin then turned dramatically to his Saudi counterpart and invited him to come to Israel to explain the plan. “I suggest that his Highness come to Jerusalem, pray in the mosques … then we’ll drive to the Knesset.”

When asked whether the Saudi would consider the Israeli invitation, Turki replied, “Absolutely not.”

While it was a dying wish of his father to pray in Jerusalem, Turki insisted that such a step would be a diversion based on emotion. “You need genuine commitments to achieving peace. Not to use emotions as a means of influencing or attempting to divert attention on the important issue,” Turki said.

“And the important issue is that the Arabs have put forward what the rest of the world views as a reasonable first step … [You can’t] put me as a stumbling block, or as a key for opening the door. Who am I?”

Open and public calls for jihad against the West. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/syria-islamic-jihadist-threatens-jihad-attacks-against-obama-canada-and-the-u-s

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/10687163/Al-Qaeda-unveils-new-magazine-aimed-at-Western-jihadis.html

http://www.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Zelin_Global%20Jihad%20Online_NAF.pdf

 

 

 

 

Maps for History and Truth

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For those that think they understand the Middle East, a lesson in historical maps is required. For those that think they understand the Palestinian Authority, for those that think they understand Islam, for those that think they understand treaties, a lesson in historical maps is required.

The lesson begins here.

Davids Temple

Rashid Khalidi, a history professor at Columbia University and who has deep connections within the Barack Obama circles and the State Department is quoted here:

“Palestine” did not exist in the Arab imagination before World War I. Local Arabs neither perceived “Palestine” as a distinct country nor themselves as “Palestinians.” Shortly before the birth of the State of Israel Arab historian Philip Hitti acknowledged: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history.”

Real Refugees

Palestinian nationalism is deeply embedded in, and derived from, Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Without Zionism as their primary source of inspiration Palestinians would lack a historical narrative of their own. According to Columbia history professor Rashid Khalidi, an expert on Palestinian identity, “Palestine” did not exist in the Arab imagination before World War I. Local Arabs neither perceived “Palestine” as a distinct country nor themselves as “Palestinians.” Shortly before the birth of the State of Israel Arab historian Philip Hitti acknowledged: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history.”

To compensate for their missing past, Palestinians plunder Jewish texts and history, and Zionist nation-building, to frame their own national identity. They claim the Canaanites as their ancestral people. They demand recognition of the burial sites of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people as their own holy sites. They frame their naqba as the real “holocaust” that Israel inflicted on them. Copying Israel’s Law of Return (1950), which granted to all Jews the right to settle in their ancient homeland, they insist upon the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

According to Palestinian sources, between 800,000-900,000 Arabs were forced to abandon their homes during the fighting in 1946-48. Many left of their own volition to escape the turmoil; others because their leaders urged them to do so, assuring their return once the Zionist enemy was defeated. Israeli historians claim that the number was closer to 600,000-700,000, while Efraim Karsh concludes, based on his extensive research in Palestinian and Israeli sources, that between 583,000-609,000 Palestinians became refugees.

But who is a “refugee”? As originally defined by the United Nations, refugees were “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Fair enough. But according to best current estimates, only 30,000-40,000 of those displaced persons are alive to legitimately claim “refugee” status. They could easily be permitted to return to their homeland without undue demographic disruption for Israel. The Palestinian refugee problem would be instantly solved.

Not so fast. To stoke Palestinian claims against Israel the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA), established in 1949, expanded its definition of “refugees” to include “descendants” of refugees. Only Palestinian refugees are so defined. With that alteration, five million children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees now claim refugee status even if they never spent a day in Palestine. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be 15 million Palestinian “refugees.” Only Palestinians embrace perpetual refugee status. If this sounds like a formula designed for the demographic destruction of Israel, it is.

The Palestinian Authority seems to care little about its own “refugees.” Thousands are still confined to camps in Jericho, under Palestinian Authority rule since 1994. According to former Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, they live in “miserable conditions.” The Palestinian Authority needs suffering refugees to nourish its narrative of Israeli oppression.

But Palestinian “refugees,” few in actual number if many in anti-Israel rhetoric, now confront a serious challenge to their victimization supremacy: they are vastly outnumbered by actual refugees from Syria. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2.6 million Syrians, whose primary places of refuge are the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, now qualify for refugee assistance. Collectively, they comprise the world’s largest refugee population.

More people have already been killed in the Syrian civil war than in all the Arab-Israeli wars and Palestinian intifadas combined. Even if they were still alive, the estimated one million Palestinian refugees from Israel’s Independence and Six-Day wars would not reach even half the number of current Syrian refugees. What that says about the vile double standard that Israel confronts in the international community, where it is relentlessly castigated, boycotted and sanctioned for causing and ignoring the plight of Palestinian refugees while Syrian refugees are ignored, is self-evident.

Jerold S. Auerbach is author of the recently published Jewish State Pariah Nation: Israel and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy (Quid Pro Books)

 

Sitrep, America vs. al Qaeda

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Twelve years later and counting, lets examine any advances in destroying Usama bin Ladin’s mission.

bin ladin

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

“Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory” [Quran 22:39]

“Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan.”[Quran 4:76]

Some American writers have published articles under the title ‘On what basis are we fighting?’ These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth – as an explanation and warning – hoping for Allah’s reward, seeking success and support from Him.

While seeking Allah’s help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you? Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) – and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah’s wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.

(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.

(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.

(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.

(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

(g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it.

(2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!

(3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

(c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us.

(d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us.

(e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.

(f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs.

The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question:

Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?

If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them – peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

(b) It is the religion whose book – the Quran – will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.  

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton’s immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he ‘made a mistake’, after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

(viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries.

(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

(xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others.

(a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the ‘American friends’. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them – a new lesson from the ‘American book of democracy’!!!

(b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them.

(c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America.

(d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for – you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious.

(e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws.

What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces – you hypocrites, “What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?”

(3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves – and I doubt you will do so – to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to.

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.

(6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.

(7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: “Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers’) hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.” [Quran9:13-1]

The Nation of honour and respect:

“But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers.” [Quran 63:8]

“So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers” [Quran 3:139]

The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life:

“Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers.” [Quran 3:169-171]

The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised:

“It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it.” [Quran 61:9]

“Allah has decreed that ‘Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.’ Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty.” [Quran 58:21]

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.  

This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious?

Translated and published, November, 2002

The Intelligence Community has only released and published 17 documents found at bin Ladin’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan. No others to date have been released. The summary of the documents released can be read here.