Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Douglas Murray: It’s a bad day for Anjem Choudary – and a good day for secular law
So farewell then Anjem Choudary. At least for a few years. Britain’s biggest loudmouth Islamist has finally been convicted in the UK for encouraging support for Isis. He now faces up to ten years in prison.Web of hate: How Anjem Choudary's sermons inspired a generation of home-grown terrorists while he played cat and mouse with the police for two decades
There have been reporting restrictions on his conviction for several weeks now, as we waited for the conclusion of the trial of his associate Mohammed Mizanur Rahman. But now it’s over. At least for a while. There is much to say, but allow me one particular reflection for now.
Like his mentor and predecessor Omar Bakri Mohammed, Anjem Choudary was always a subject of enormous interest in Britain and abroad. Indeed you could argue that for some years now he has been Britain’s most famous Muslim. Most Muslims understandably hated this, but so did everybody else. I once ground my teeth hearing him introduced by a foreign interviewer as ‘leading British Imam Anjem Choudary.’ He was regularly invited onto television and gave other media interviews liberally, as it were.
Which was understandable because he was the perfect go-to guy. Where others ‘ummed’, ‘ah-ed’ and talked of ‘context’ Choudary could be relied upon to give his fundamentalist views straight up. Yet as a trained solicitor he knew where the lines were and carefully stepped away when he felt you encouraging him over them. This was always done in the mutual awareness that his views lay a long way over that line. Whenever people – especially Muslims – assured me that Choudary was merely a joker I always reminded them that in that case he was a joker with a particularly unfunny contacts book.
But all of this presented a problem for the media. You couldn’t avoid him – as some people insisted the media do – not least because (as with the murderers of Lee Rigby) he had a tendency to know the terrorists who were the story. But each non-avoidance of course also made him grow, which among other things risked further flagging him up for anybody attracted to his kind of extremism. But could someone so outspoken seriously be at the centre of anything? Surely every movement and word was listened into by someone?
The hate-filled circle around Anjem Choudary has been a breeding ground for the Islamic extremism which has plagued Britain in the last two decades.
Former law-student Choudary, who previously called for adulterers to be stoned to death and branded UK troops 'cowards', has always hidden behind free speech rules whenever challenged by the authorities.
But the group he helped to set up have been linked to a series of terrorist attacks, as easily-influenced young men became inspired by his twisted vision of jihad.
The best known of his disciples was Muslim convert Michael Adebolajo, who, along with Michael Adebowale, attacked Fusilier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver in Woolwich in 2013 in a murder which shocked the country.
Adebolajo was a supporter of Choudary's al-Muhajiroun group and was pictured standing behind the hate preacher in 2007.
After the incident, Choudary said Adebolajo was 'a practising Muslim and a family man' who he was 'proud of'.
But he denied encouraging the killer to carry out the attack, insisting he was 'channeling the energy of the youth through demonstrations and processions'.
Two years after war, rebuilding in Gaza is far from done, and international donors are bailing
The biggest problem, according to the United Nations, is funding shortfalls. Only about 50% of promised donor aid – about 1.4 billion — was disbursed as of the end of March, according to the latest World Bank report. Among among large donors, the U.S. had transferred all of the $200 million it pledged, but Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had transferred only 15% or less of their pledges . . .Richard Millett: Possible diversion of charitable funds to Hamas but Guardian writer slams Israel.
Gazans blame everyone for the bleak state of affairs: the Israeli military, which keeps the territory under a strict blockade; Arab governments, which have not sent pledged aid on time; and even their own leaders.
In private conversations in cafes and on social media, Gazans say they’re anxious that Hamas’ effort to rebuild its cross-border attack tunnels will one day bring new Israeli destruction to border areas like Shajaiya. They also gripe that the Gaza government has prioritized rebuilding homes of Hamas insiders and mosques.
“There’s great corruption in the reconstruction,’’ said Nawati. “Why is my house not there, I haven’t gotten a clear answer.”
If something bad happens to Jews or the Jewish state there are some, inexplicably, in British media or politics who cannot pass up the opportunity to use it against the former.Is the US Complicit in UNRWA-Hamas Cooperation?
Ex-Liberal Democrat MP felt that the Jews hadn’t learned from the Holocaust. When an Egyptian judoka lost to his Israeli opponent in Rio and promptly refused to shake his hand The Economist used the opportunity to attack Israel as being an “apartheid” state.
Now, after the arrest of World Vision’s Gaza director Mohammad Halabi on allegations of diverting tens of millions of dollars to Hamas Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, secretary general and CEO of CIVICAS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, uses the arrest as an opportunity to attack Israel’s new transparency law.
This new law obligates NGOs that receive more than 50% of their funding from foreign governments or organisations to report where the funding derives from. It doesn’t restrict their activities at all.
In an age of calls for more transparency this can hardly be classed as controversial especially when there are NGOs whose main objective for operating within the Jewish state is merely to destroy it.
But for Sriskandarajah it seems it is controversial. He sees the recent arrests of Halabi and Waheed al Borsh, a UN worker accused of diverting aid resources to help building a jetty for Hamas, as part “of systematic efforts by Israeli authorities to intimidate and undermine civil society”.
Here is a case where a UN agency actually violates the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which states “children… should not be forced or recruited to take part in a war or join the armed forces.”The Olympic Games and the Jewish People.
Yet all this is occurs in the public domain, without a peep from 38 nations that donate huge sums each year to UNRWA, with the notable exception of Canada.
Ottawa suspended aid to the UNRWA general fund in 2008, in response to a report commissioned by the European Parliament, which documented how Hamas was elected to run the UNRWA teachers association and the UNRWA workers association. Now there is a move in the new Canadian government to restore Canadian tax dollars to the general fund of UNRWA.
Yet binding legislation — passed by the US Congress and requiring UNRWA to vet personnel to determine if there are terrorists on its payroll — is ignored. UNRWA simply refuses to vet personnel in its facilities, which operate in the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and no one, including the US, is asking it to do so.
After the March 2009 election, when Hamas was again elected to run the UNRWA workers union and UNRWA teachers association in Gaza, Congress asked newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for comment on whether she would demand the removal of terrorists from the organization’s payroll. Amazingly, Clinton told Congress that there was no evidence of Taliban activity in UNRWA – even though Taliban have never played a role in that part of the Middle East.
In her four years as secretary of state, Clinton did nothing to impede Hamas domination of US-funded UNRWA facilities. The US Congressional Research Service reports that the US has never asked if UNRWA humanitarian funds wind up in the hands of Hamas, or if Hamas is present in UNRWA. Yet UNRWA remains in violation of US penal code § 2339B — providing material support or resources to a designated FTO.
The Hamas Minister of Religion told us on camera, “Hamas’ relationship with UNRWA is good, very good! We assist UNRWA, and Hamas cooperates with UNRWA on many levels. Now a direct connection exists between UNRWA and Hamas.”
In Munich we saw Israelis and Jews slaughtered on prime time television. As we brought our dead athletes home for burial the Games barely missed a beat and, today, a non-state of Palestine participates even as they reject the notion of living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel, and even as the Israeli athletes gather at the Olympic Village to remember our fallen sporting heroes, slaughtered by the Palestinian terrorists that invaded the Olympic Village to seek out and kill Israelis.Judean Peoples Front: #Rio2016 Shows There Is No Arab-Israel Conflict
Even so, we turn up to participate in the spirit of the Olympics to show the world, and ourselves, our finest sporting face, even as the door of the shared bus with the Lebanese delegation is slammed in our face, or when the Saudis refuse to compete with us, or when the Egyptians, who are supposed to have signed a peace agreement with us, refuse to shake our hand.
Was it coincidence that this Egyptian’s name was Islam?
Despite all this rejection, and the inability of the Olympic Organizing Committee to stamp out the unsporting hate that is an anathema to the raison d’etre of the Olympic movement, Israel will continue to show up, strive to do our best and, where possible, to win medals and bring pride to our nation and to the Jewish People.
No, you didn’t misread that headline. The 2016 Rio Olympics does in fact show that there is no Arab-Israel Conflict.Olympic Bigotry: It’s All Israel’s Fault
How can this be, you ask?
The Lebanese team refused to travel in the same bus as Team Israel and with its coach going so far as to physically prevent any Israelis from entering and contaminating the bus with their presence.
A Saudi Judoka forfeited a match in order to avoid competing against an Israeli later on.
Egyptian Judoka Islam el-Shahaby, after losing to Israeli Or Sasson, refused bow or shake his hand (he was eventually forced back into the ring to bow).
What’s more, this is not even close to the first time that Arab and Muslim athletes and celebrities have discriminated against Israelis. Whether it is preventing Israeli sailing teams from competing in races that determine positioning for major international competitions, a Syrian boxer, actually claiming that he couldn’t compete against Israelis since “they kill Syrians” while his own government murders hundreds of thousands of Syrians itself, or even claiming that a selfie with a fellow Israeli beauty pageant contestant was an “illegal photobomb,” as long as there has been an Israel (well actually even before then), there were Arabs and Muslims who went to extreme lengths to discriminate against it. And that isn’t even counting when Palestinian terrorists, financed by
If all of this is going on, how exactly is no Arab-Israel conflict?
It’s simple: if there is a conflict, there are two opposing sides with opposing goals. Such a conflict requires mutual hatred and rejection.
Referring to the Egyptian judoka who refused to shake the hand of the Israeli Bronze winner Or Sasson, The Economist callously exploits the Munich Olympics massacre, saying “Mr El Shahaby’s snub seems mere tokenism compared to the bullets that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972,” but “nonetheless” Israel criticized his bad sportsmanship.Egypt denies judoka was sent home over Israel handshake snub
Does that mean Israel should just accept the Rio snub simply because it wasn’t murder?
Would The Economist say such a thing about anyone else being targeted for their race, religion or nationality?
The article goes on:
"Israel’s holier-than-thou protestations, though, risk sounding shrill."
Holier than thou?!
It is not the Israeli athletes who are blocking the Lebanese from sitting on the same bus or dropping out of matches to avoid playing Arabs. It’s the complete opposite. Sasson reached out his hand to his Egyptian opponent in a gesture of respect, and what a message it could have been for Israelis and Egyptians. But just like throughout history, the Arab spurned the Israeli gesture.
Egypt’s judo federation denied on Tuesday that its Olympic competitor Islam El Shehaby had been sent home for refusing to shake the hand of an Israeli opponent.BBC Sport whitewashes Islamist bigotry with a euphemism
An International Olympic Committee spokesman said Monday that the Egyptian Olympic Committee “strongly condemned the actions of Mr Islam El Shehaby and has sent him home.”
The Egyptian judoka raised a storm at the judo by refusing to shake hands, and at first refusing to bow, after losing to Israel’s Or Sasson. He was reprimanded by an Olympic disciplinary commission.
Egyptian judo federation president Sameh Moubasher told AFP that El Shehaby “was not sent home.”
“He returned with his colleagues. The whole judo team returned yesterday at dawn,” he said.
An article by BBC Sport titled “Rio Olympics 2016: Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby sent home for handshake snub” appeared on the BBC News website’s homepage and Middle East page on August 15th. Readers of the report were told that:Egyptian judoka storyTrump backer Gov. Chris Christie signs anti-BDS legislation
“The Egyptian had come under pressure from some conservative voices in his homeland to withdraw from the bout.”
The same euphemistic statement appeared three days earlier in BBC Sport’s previous article on the same topic (in which, at the time of writing, the Israeli judoka’s name has still not been corrected).
Clearly the BBC’s portrayal of “conservative voices” is not conducive to full audience understanding of the story. It would of course be very surprising to see the BBC describe anyone urging an athlete not to compete against a gay or black opponent as “conservative” and such bigotry portrayed as a ‘traditional value’.
But – not for the first time – we see that the BBC is reluctant to explain discriminatory Islamist ideology to its audiences in clear and precise language.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has signed legislation that would bar the state’s public pension fund from investing with companies that boycott Israel.Why did Trump launch a Twitter feed in Hebrew?
The Republican governor, a key backer of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, signed the legislation Tuesday.
The legislation, passed with overwhelming support in the Democrat-led Legislature in June, prohibits state agencies from investing in pension and annuity funds of companies that engage in political boycotts of the Jewish State.
The measure is part of a broader effort to oppose the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) that targets Israel and Israeli businesses.
The legislation requires the State Investment Council, which manages more than $80 billion in pension assets, to identify any potential investments in companies with Israeli boycotts and to divest from them.
Other states to have passed similar legislation or executive measures against BDS include New York, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois and Colorado.
The Trump campaign has launched a Hebrew-language Twitter feed, aiming to boost support for the GOP presidential nominee in Israel and raising an interesting question: Just how many potential US voters in Israel don’t speak English?Dennis Ross doubts Obama will push UN resolution
The feed, launched Monday night, is named “Campaign Trump b’Yisrael,” and uses the generic handle @USAISRAEL2016, though a quick search shows that the campaign could have chosen, say, @TrumpIsrael2016. Or @TrumpAviv.
In its first 19 hours of existence, the feed tweeted five times, and had 65 followers. One tweet was a pro-Israel quote from Trump’s Monday speech on foreign policy, where he said, “We will work side by side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel.”
Another was a link to a Hebrew-language article about the campaign’s efforts to woo American voters in Israel.
US President Barack Obama will probably deliver a final speech on the Mideast before leaving office in January, though he is unlikely to translate the principles of that speech into a UN Security Council resolution, according to veteran US Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross.State Department Calls Palestinian Authority ‘Antisemitic’
Speaking Monday at a symposium in Washington sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ross said that while it is unlikely Obama wants to launch a big diplomatic initiative before his term ends, a speech laying out the parameters of a Mideast accord was likely, and something Obama would see as his Mideast “legacy.”
Ross, who dealt with Middle East issues under George H.W. Bush as well as under Bill Clinton and Obama, said the president feels that if he sets down a set of parameters about how the conflict could be resolved – even if neither side would accept those guidelines – “over time the rest of the international community and the Israelis and Palestinians will come to realize that these are the only parameters that will actually work.”
For the first time, the US State Department has explicitly accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) of promoting antisemitism, a signal Jewish groups are hoping will lead to change in US policy.Turkey submits Israel deal to parliament for approval
According to a newly released State Department annual report on international religious freedom, official PA media “carried religiously intolerant material,” citing Palestinian television programs that called Jews “evil” or “denied a historical Jewish presence in Jerusalem.”
Previously, US officials labeled the PA denial of Jewish ties to Jerusalem as “material criticizing the Israeli occupation,” but stopped short of calling it antisemitism. Arab media channels that carried the antisemitic content were “nonofficial PA and nonmainstream,” according to last year’s report.
The Obama administration no longer claims that the PA is working “to control and eliminate” expressions of antisemitism in its media outlets. Officials dropped an assertion made in previous years that the PA acted to “prevent preaching” of “sermons with intolerant or antisemitic messages.”
Turkey on Wednesday submitted to parliament a deal to normalize ties with Israel delayed by the July 15 military coup attempt, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.Bulgarian court okays extradition of French terror suspect
The agreement has been forwarded to parliament for ratification before the legislative body goes into summer recess later this month.
In June, Turkey and Israel signed a deal to restore their ties, which hit an all-time low after the 2010 raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla that left 10 Turks dead and several IDF soldiers wounded.
The text of the agreement submitted to parliament reaffirms that Israel will pay Turkey $20 million in compensation within 25 days.
The legal case targeting the Israeli commandos who staged the raid will also be dropped, the report said.
Israeli cabinet ministers in June approved the deal reached with Turkey, leaving Ankara to make the final ratification step.
A French citizen with family ties to the jihadists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris last year will be extradited to France to face terror charges, a Bulgarian court ruled Tuesday.The IDF vs subterranean warfare
Mourad Hamyd, 20, whose sister was married to Charlie Hebdo gunman Cherif Kouachi, was barred from entering Turkey late last month — allegedly after trying to join the Islamic State in Syria — and handed over to Bulgaria’s border authorities.
On January 7 2015, the al-Qaeda-linked Kouachi brothers killed 12 people at the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly in Paris. Their accomplice, IS-linked Amedy Coulibaly, killed a French policewoman a day later and four Jewish men during a siege of a kosher supermarket in Paris a day after that.
France requested Hamyd’s extradition on July 29, accusing him of “conspiring to prepare of acts of terrorism.”
During Operation Protective Edge, Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives carried out a number of attacks in Israeli territory using cross-border tunnels. Terrorists attacked an IDF pillbox tower near Nahal Oz, killing five soldiers. On August 1, 2014, a Hamas force violated the cease-fire, killing three Givati Brigade soldiers, and escaped through an offensive tunnel to Rafah, taking with them the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin. A total of 34 cross-border tunnels used by Hamas were destroyed. The tunnels detected by the IDF during Operation Protective Edge were complex, each with a number of entry and exit shafts. The main tunnel route was often split, and sometimes there were parallel routes. For this reason, dealing with the tunnels was no simple task.Hezbollah's shadow war
As soon as a tunnel was detected, IDF forces took action to isolate the operating area and detect additional shafts and branches. The Special Operations Engineering Unit planted explosives in order to demolish the tunnel. A number of methods were used to demolish tunnels during Operation Protective Edge, including aerial bombardment using JDAM bombs (called “kinetic drilling”), using water to make the tunnel collapse, and using liquid explosives. In retrospect, the IDF learned that aerial bombardment of the tunnel shafts made it harder to detect the tunnels themselves.
The tunnels have been classified as a strategic threat, with the impression given that this is the gravest threat facing Israel. Arguments have since been made that the defense establishment is responsible for a strategic failure, and there have even been demands for an investigative commission on the matter. There is no doubt that the tunnels are a serious problem. Despite the great public attention paid to the problem of subterranean warfare, this does not mean that subterranean warfare is the major strategic threat to Israel. It is merely one of many kinds of warfare. In other words, the issue is currently in the headlines, but long-term thinking should not be distracted by momentary criticism.
It should come as no surprise that Hezbollah is operating a terrorist network in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Despite the strong mutual deterrence along Israel's border with Lebanon, and despite Hezbollah's deep involvement in the Syrian quagmire, the Shiite terrorist organization has not for one second abandoned its jihadist ideology or its efforts to harm Israel in a variety of ways and arenas.Terrorist suspected in stabbing of yeshiva student arrested
The organization's preferred modus operandi is to recruit Arab Israelis for terrorist purposes. The reason is clear: A blue Israeli identification card allows the holder access to (almost) anywhere in Israel, and it is certainly conducive to effective intelligence gathering. Due to the difficulty in identifying candidates for recruitment, Hezbollah occasionally uses criminal networks as a terror platform. Two such cells -- which were involved in drug dealing but were also utilized to smuggle weapons -- were exposed by the Shin Bet security agency in 2012 and 2014. In one of the cases, sophisticated bombs had already been smuggled into Israel.
An alternative recruitment method, albeit less preferable to Hezbollah, is to approach residents of the West Bank. These individuals are recruited directly from Lebanon, or by Hezbollah agents operating out of the Gaza Strip (with the full knowledge of Hamas). While they are easier to recruit than Arab Israelis, the odds of success are far smaller both because of their access limitations and because of the Shin Bet's encompassing intelligence umbrella there, which has enabled the Israeli security agency to thwart a high percentage of planned terrorist attacks.
Israeli security forces arrested a man suspected of stabbing an 18-year old yeshiva student on the Mount of Olives last Thursday.IDF chief: 50,000 Palestinians enter Israel illegally each day
The suspect, Ahmad Naim A-Ashair, is a 19-year-old terrorist from the A-Tur neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Police captured A-Ashair on Tuesday, though the arrest was not cleared for publication until Wednesday afternoon.
Forces were able to apprehend A-Ashair based on information gathered from intelligence sources. The 18-year-old victim of the attack suffered light to moderate injuries.
Upon investigation, the terrorist revealed that he had stabbed the yeshiva student with a board sharpened at its edge.
In addition, it was revealed that the terrorist had previously been involved in firebomb attacks and had hurled explosives at security forces.
IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot on Tuesday urged Knesset lawmakers to complete Israel’s security barrier along the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank to prevent the thousands of Palestinians who enter Israel illegally each day and reduce the recent surge in terror attacks.Palestinian teen killed in clashes with IDF troops in West Bank
At a Knesset State Control Committee meeting, Eisenkot said that Palestinians “view terrorism as a political, social and religious tool to advance political goals,” and attacks were a “daily occurrence that we are grappling with in Judea and Samaria,” using the alternate, biblical name for the West Bank.
Eisenkot highlighted the security risks posed by the porous fence and walled barrier, and said that an estimated 50,000-60,000 Palestinians illegally enter Israel each day.
In contrast, the IDF chief said Israeli security forces only manage to arrest approximately 4,300 permit-less Palestinians per year, and that 44 percent of the terror attacks carried out in the recent upsurge in violence were in some way connected to Palestinians who were in Israel illegally.
A Palestinian teenager wounded during clashes with Israeli troops in the southern West Bank on Tuesday died of his wounds, according to Palestinian medical officials.IDF arrests key Hamas elections official in the West Bank
“Mohammed Abu Hashash, 17, died after he was shot in the chest during clashes with [Israeli forces] in the Fawwar camp,” the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.
Earlier Palestinian medical officials said some 35 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes in the al-Fawar refugee camp, as the IDF carried out an overnight operation to uncover weapons and ammunition.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said live fire struck about 10 people after rioters threw large rocks at Israeli troops. It says the 25 others were struck by rubber bullets.
The IDF said its forces were on an overnight operation “to uncover weaponry” in the camp, when “dozens of Palestinians hurled IEDs (improvised explosive devices), blocks and rocks” at them.
Security forces arrested a top West Bank Hamas official overnight Tuesday, drawing accusations from the Gaza-based terror group that Israel is meddling in the upcoming Palestinian municipal elections.The Failures of UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon
Hussein Abu Kweik was arrested at his home in the el-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, the Shin Bet security agency said in a statement.
Abu Kweik is Hamas’s main West Bank campaigner in the elections, which are slated for October 8. Last week, he was appointed Hamas’s only representative to the PA’s central elections commission, which is overseeing the elections.
He was arrested in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet “for his involvement in security-related activities that presented a threat to security in the area,” the Shin Bet said.
Specifically, Abu Kweik is suspected of “incitement,” the security service said. However, additional allegations may be brought against the senior Hamas official following his interrogation, it added.
Ten years ago, following the ceasefire that ended Israel’s second Lebanon war, the Security Council issued Resolution 1701, which increased the size and capabilities of the UN International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—first established in 1978 during that country’s civil war—and gave it a new mandate to ensure quiet on the Israel-Lebanon border. UNIFIL, writes Assaf Orion, has in fact succeeded at preventing the sort of minor incident between the two countries’ armies that could spark a war. However, it has done little to keep Hizballah and other terrorist groups from attacking Israel:WaPo Writer Discovered on Payroll of Pro-Iran ‘Echo Chamber’ Architect
Since the end of the war, more than twenty incidents of rocket fire from Lebanon into Israel have been recorded, most apparently by organizations other than Hizballah. . . . . In recent years, [though], several Hizballah attacks from Lebanese soil were aimed at the IDF, including explosive devices in the Mount Dov sector and anti-tank guided missiles, which in January 2015 killed two IDF soldiers. (In that incident, a Spanish UNIFIL member was killed by IDF return fire.) While UNIFIL participated in the efforts to contain these incidents and prevent escalation, it failed to prevent them from occurring in the first place and also failed to prevent the basic conditions that made them possible, even when specifically warned in advance. . . .
Since the end of the war, not only has nothing been done [to create] a situation in which UNIFIL’s area of responsibility . . . is “free of any armed personnel, assets, or weapons, other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL” [to quote the language of Resolution 1701], but Hizballah has beefed up, broadened, deepened, and increased its military deployment in southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the country.
A Washington Post writer who recently claimed that a $400 million cash payment to Iran was “American diplomacy at its finest” failed to disclose that he has been on the payroll of an organization that emerged as a chief architect of the White House’s self-described campaign to build a pro-Iran “echo chamber,” according to information obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.Turkish Media after the “Coup Attempt”
Allen S. Weiner, a Stanford law professor and contributor to the Post’s opinions section, co-authored a piece arguing in favor of the Obama administration’s decision to pay Iran $400 million in hard currency in what many described as a “ransom payment” for the release of several U.S. hostages.
Weiner and the Post failed to disclose that the writer has long been on the payroll of the Ploughshares Fund, an organization recently exposed as a key cog in a White House-orchestrated campaign to build what it called a pro-Iran “echo chamber.”
Ploughshares provided millions of dollars to writers and experts who publicly pushed for last summer’s nuclear deal with Iran. Senior White House officials subsequently cited the group as its top pro-Iran ally.
Between the dates of 17th of July–15th of August; the number of mainstream newspapers who directly linked the “Coup Attempt” to Jews and/or Israel is 76.Leaked German Report Accusing Turkey of Supporting Terrorism
Demonisation of Jews and Israel is a constant concept used in the Turkish written media. And on social media…. I don’t even want to go there…
Latest news is suggesting that Fetullah Gülen’s mother’s name is Jewish and the “Üst Akıl” – so called “Supreme mentality” which consists of Jewish and Zionist and Masonic teachings are behind everything.
A confidential German Interior Ministry report accusing the Turkish government of supporting terrorism across the Middle East was leaked to the German broadcaster ARD Tuesday. According to the document, the Erdogan regime supports Hamas, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and several Islamist rebel groups in Syria. The document was originally provided by the Bundestag to the leftwing party Die Linke.
ARD cited the document as saying that “the many expressions of solidarity and support actions by the ruling AKP and President Erdogan for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and groups of armed Islamist opposition in Syria emphasize their ideological affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Founded in 1928 and inspired by the fascistic ideology of the time, the Muslim Brotherhood has been the largest, best-organized, and most disciplined Suni opposition force in Egypt and in other countries — to the point where, for a brief moment in 2011-12, it captured the Egyptian presidency. In 2006, Hamas, an offshoot of the MB, captured the Gaza Strip where it remains the sole sovereign.
The leaked German report says Ankara has deepened its ties with the MB, Hamas and the Syrian groups and is serving as their “platform for action” in the region.
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