The latest PLO and Fatah campaign is not directed only against settlement products. Rather, it is targeting anything made in Israel, as a part of an "anti-normalization" movement, whose goal is to thwart any encounters between Israelis and Palestinians, including peace conferences.
While some Israelis, Americans and Europeans are talking about the need to revive the peace process after the March 17 elections in Israel, the Palestinians are clearly moving in a different direction.
"We are headed for confrontation with Israel." — Mahmoud Aloul, senior Fatah official.
The Palestinian Authority's strategy now is to intensify its campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel in the international community, and promote all forms of boycotts of Israelis and Israeli goods; to force Israel to make concessions through international pressure and through campaigns of boycott and divestment.
These campaigns are further radicalizing Palestinians, driving many of them into the open arms of radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If Abbas is interested in returning to the negotiating table (as he sometimes declares he is), then he needs to prepare his people for that and not incite them even more against Israel.
Those who are opposed to the presence of Israeli products in their villages and cities will be the first to oppose the resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.
It is now clear that Abbas’ threats are empty; they were an attempt to pressure Israel to free the frozen tax revenues. The PLO Central Committee’s decision was also aimed at containing popular rage over the freezing of the revenues and at showing that the PA is not prepared to submit passively to the Israeli sanction.
In reality, Abbas knows that ending security coordination with Israel will harm the Palestinians most of all. Just a few months ago, Israel rescued Abbas’ rule when the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) apprehended an extensive Hamas network in Judea and Samaria that had planned to destabilize the PA with a series of attacks. The security coordination is an inseparable part of the Oslo agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in 1993. Although the PA has violated numerous clauses of the agreement, so far it is refraining from violating this particular clause.
Fatah sources claim that the large-scale exercise conducted by the IDF in Judea and Samaria a few days before the PLO Central Committee met in Ramallah was meant to signal to the Palestinians that Israel will not hesitate to reconquer all of the West Bank if it needs to do so. An escalation of the conflict between Israel and the PA has been deferred for now. Nevertheless, the Palestinians have not withdrawn their application to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Hamas recently sent a series of messages to Israel indicating interest in a long-term ceasefire lasting for several years, in exchange for an end to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, sources told The Times of Israel.
Senior Hamas officials met with Western diplomats about the ceasefire, and also reached a number of understandings about the character of the ceasefire, also known as a tahdiyya.
During the talks, Hamas officials emphasized that they were willing to agree on a ceasefire of at least five years (though some sources said the offer was for 15 years), during which time all military activities “above and below ground” from both parties would end. At the same time, the blockade on Gaza would be removed, including restrictions on exports, and Israel would allow the construction of a seaport and an airport.
The Western diplomats included Swiss Consul Paul Garnier, who has become the key figure in maintaining contacts with Hamas.
Garnier visited Gaza a month ago, and met with several Hamas leaders, including Moussa Abu Marzouk, Bassem Naim, Ghazi Hamid, and others. Garnier presented these conditions to senior EU officials who are in touch with Israeli leaders.
An evil Zionist rabbi, intent to bend the world to his will, secretly manipulates a demented Holocaust survivor to unwillingly make public statements in favor of Israel for his own nefarious purposes.
The plot of a bad neo-Nazi comic book?
No, the reality that exists in the mind of former B'Tselem head Jessica Montell:
Isn't it interesting that a person who tries to present herself to the world as a paragon of morality is so willing to use social media to push what sounds a great deal like a traditional antisemitic conspiracy theory?
I would love to know where she "heard" this from. It would be instructive to know who her friends are.
I saw you during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, Elie Wiesel. You were there, in the gallery, next to Sara Netanyahu. Your appearance was impressive and powerful, leaving its mark on everyone who saw it.
...Your thin, elderly body hardly filled the suit you wore for the occasion. It is obvious you are accustomed to such suits. They are your natural clothing. Their touch is familiar to your skin. You looked like you were completely in your element when Netanyahu pointed you out – the most famous Holocaust survivor today, a Nobel laureate, an admired author – to illustrate his commitment to stopping the fulfillment of the Iranian threat to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Never again, and all that Holocaust jazz. You stood and thanked all the members of Congress, who gave you a standing ovation. You sat down, but they would not stop.
There is an intolerable ease in the applause you receive. It is automatic. Applauding you is the easiest, safest thing to do. And how they applauded. You sat down and stood up, modestly, to receive their overflowing esteem. You gave Netanyahu your symbolic and moral support. It is obvious you are well aware of who you are. You are Elie Wiesel. You are 86 years old. And for you, I count for nothing.
What were you doing there, Elie Wiesel? Netanyahu is my prime minister. You are not an Israeli citizen. You do not live here. The Iranian threat to destroy Israel does not apply to you. You are a Jew who lives in America. This is not your problem. By what right did you stand there, using your reputation and your prestige, to try and influence the members of Congress to accept Netanyahu’s position on an issue that has nothing to do with you?
If Israel’s future is so important to you, if the fate of Jerusalem matters so much to you, why do you not live here? Do you think that you and I have some shared fate because we are both Jews? Think again. Everything that happens to me here in Israel does not happen to you there in New York. Where do you get the right to interfere in my affairs? You have some nerve.
Rogel Alpher has created a new moral rule for the world.
Genocide in Darfur? Beheadings by ISIS? Girls kidnapped by Boko Haram? Don't speak out about it, unless you live in Nigeria or Iraq or the Sudan. Otherwise, you are a hypocritical blowhard.
Sorry, Peter Beinart. In Alpher's world, you have no right to write a column for Haaretz anymore, you damned American.
In Alpher's world, Wiesel has no right to speak out in support of Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, and Kurds. That's almost as heinous a crime as Wiesel's speaking out in defense of Israel Jews!
What chutzpah for a person who survived the genocide of six million Jews to speak out against the potential genocide of six million more Jews! What a hypocrite!
The ironic thing is that Alpher has said that he is so sick of Israel that he will move out - but meanwhile, his opinion of the people he is abandoning is far more important than that of those who identify with and care about them.
Hilariously, the longest paragraph in Alpher's nonsensical piece is about Elie Wiesel's hair. I kid you not.
It is impossible to ignore your white hair, visible from afar, parted by a deep gulf on the slope of your high forehead and dividing into airy stalks of a fluttering, almost youthful, forelock with something Parisian about it. The professorial hairdo of an esteemed intellectual, the kind that characterizes a creative, instinctive and turbulent sort of person. You carry it with open self-awareness, a bit like a preening peacock, a hallmark of the icon you have become. It flew over your elongated head, your beneficent and wise eyes. The feeling was that your very hair carried something of the victory of the human spirit. That is how the hair of a distinguished humanist looks.
This photo of Alpher may explain his obsession with the hair of an 86-year old man.
This is the sort of serious thought that is esteemed by Haaretz and its shrinking readership.
Hamas released a new video yesterday, with the title "You will have no security, even in your dreams."
It shows a stereotypical haredi Jew who has a nightmare about being run over by a Hamas terrorist and wakes up, terrified.
Hamas' Felesteen site adds that "According to Israeli reports, hundreds of soldiers and settlers needed 'psychological help' after the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip, due to stress and anxiety." It claims, improbably, that the video is aimed only at the "settlers" who live near Gaza.
Hamas is freely admitting to threatening and targeting Jews.
The five largest European Union members - Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain - protested to the Palestinian Authority last week that it was not doing enough to rebuild the Gaza Strip, according to European diplomats and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials.
Envoys from the five nations met last Thursday with Alon Ushpiz, a senior diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, for talks focused mainly on the situation in Gaza. During the meeting, which took place at the Foreign Ministry office in Jerusalem, the European representatives surprisingly praised Israel's actions over the past few months to promote reconstruction in Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
The Europeans complimented Israel's cooperation with the reconstruction apparatus that the United Nations is operating, Israel's doubling of the water supply to Gaza and the ease on export restrictions from the Gaza Strip to Israel, the West Bank and abroad. The European representatives also requested to increase the scale and pace of transferring goods from Israel to the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.
The diplomats mentioned they had also met with the PA leadership in Ramallah, the Egyptian leadership in Cairo and a number of Arab governments.
According to a senior official in the Foreign Ministry, the European diplomats remarked the consuls general of their nations held a meeting with senior PA officials several days earlier, in which they conveyed a sharp protest to the PA leadership over the lack of sufficient cooperation in everything regarding reconstruction in Gaza.
A European diplomat familiar with the details of the meetings confirmed that such protest was conveyed. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "They conveyed an unequivocal message that the PA can do more to promote reconstruction in the Strip, and that continued internal political squabbling between Fatah and Hamas are adversely affecting the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the pace and scope of reconstruction," the European diplomat said.
The European diplomat said that in a meeting between representatives of the five EU states and senior officials from the Egyptian foreign ministry in Cairo, the Europeans expressed concern that Egypt is not assisting the reconstruction process in Gaza and is continuing to close the Rafah crossing for extended periods of time.
"They told the Egyptians that we need their cooperation to help bridge the gaps between Fatah and Hamas, and that they are delaying the reconstruction process," the EU diplomat said. At the same time, it is hard to see the Egyptians responding positively in light of the fact that just last week the state court ruled that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Likewise, diplomats from the five EU powers held talks with a number of Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, to complain that those countries have yet to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged for Gaza reconstruction, further delaying resolution to the crisis.
"There is positive movement on the Israeli side in everything regarding Gaza," the EU diplomat said. "While you always need more, the Israelis are removing hurdles and assisting reconstruction. At the same time, reconstruction is still stuck because of the internal fights on the Palestinian side, Egyptian behavior and failure to deliver funds pledged by the Arab states. We fear that if nothing will move on Gaza reconstruction, we will find ourselves facing another round of violence in Gaza."
Egypt's Masr-Alyoum says that French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy is behind all of the "Arab Spring" revolutions which he staged as a precursor to Israel taking over the Middle East from the Nile to the Euphrates. Apparently, the purpose of the revolutions is to break up Arab states so they will be weaker and easier for Israel to dominate.
Iraq Akhbar gives 20 proofs that Israel and Iran are the best of friends and cooperating against Arab nations. For example, they quote Yediot as saying that Israel has some $30 billion invested in Iran. And Iranian Jews are closely tied to the Iranian chief rabbi who is very close to the rulers. And American and Canadian Iranian Jews are the heads of major energy and banking firms as well as prominent politicians. And Iran is more holy to Jews than Israel because Queen Esther's tomb is there.
Al Watan Voice, on the other hand, says that Iran's enemy ISIS is inspired by Jewish scripture when they destroy Muslim shrines. Even beheadings are from the Torah, we are told. And Israel is the one nation that benefits from ISIS crimes.
Kuwaiti intellectual Fajer Al-Saeed is pleased that a tweet of hers from last year, where she said "ISIS burns 1,800-year-old church in Mosul. Islam is innocent of ISIS, Those are the actions of the Jews" has caused Jews to call her antisemitic.
The Wikipedia page about Elder of Ziyon has been suggested for "speedy deletion," a special category that bypasses normal discussion. The reason is that someone named "Gouncbeatduke" wrote that "It is an anonymous blog, Wikipedia has no other anonymous blogs with articles. It is anonymous because it is full of illegal Hate speech, Anti-Arabism, and Islamophobia. It is a very bad first choice for an anonymous blog to include in Wikipedia, Wikipedia is promoting illegal Hate speech with this article."
Apparently the page has been vandalized by anti-Israel Wiki editors for months.
The only part of the page left is a reference to a Mondoweiss article that attacked a single article of mine out of over 20,000, a critique which made a couple of valid points that I immediately addressed and I answered the other points.
(Of course, I have shown many times that Mondoweiss articles were filled with pro-terror nonsense and antisemitism, but no one is pointing out the irony of a lying hate site accusing me of inaccuracy.)
The official reason given for deleting the entry is that the article does not give any reasons why this blog is notable. However, this is after they deleted the parts of the entry that explained why it is notable!
The American Zionist Movement has described Elder as "perhaps the most quoted blogger in the area of Middle East politics".[9] The blog has a high rank on Technorati.[10]
In April 2013 the blog published a scoop revealing that writers for MIFTAH, a nonprofit founded in 1998 by Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi were repeating a centuries-old smear over the Passover holiday on their Arabic Web site, accusing Jews of using Christian blood to prepare the Passover matzoh,[15] causing Algemeiner Journal to name the blog as one of its Jewish 100.[16]
On September 13, 2013 The Jerusalem Report published the article Battle of the Bloggers, which called Elder of Ziyon "perhaps the most influential" pro-Israel blog.[17]
The history page shows how desperate the haters are to discredit me.
Any Wikipedia editors who want to ensure that there is a modicum of respectability at that site are encouraged to do the right thing.
(h/t Reuven)
UPDATE: It is back to how it was, not sure how long that will last though.
Marking International Women's Day, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society released a statement dedicated to 20 Palestinian women serving in Israel jails.
The statement highlighted Lina al-Jarbouni who has been in Israeli custody since 2002. Al-Jarbouni has played a major role defending the rights of Palestinian women in Israeli jails, acting as a representative in talks with the Israeli prison service, said the statement.
Al-Jarbouni was born in 1974 in the town of Arraba in Galilee, which Israel occupied in 1948. She finished high school but never had the chance to realize her dream of studying nursing when she was detained by Israeli forces on April 18, 2002. Originally sentenced to 17 years, the sentence was lowered to 15 after her lawyer appealed the court decision. She has been in Hasharon prison ever since.
Having served 13 years in Israeli custody, the statement added, she suffered from severe cholecystitis, but the Israeli prison service "neglected" her, and she had to wait a year before she could have choleycystectomy, according to the prisoner's society.
Her family had hoped she would be released in 2011 as part of the Shalit prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel.
From reading this article, you would have no idea that Lina al-Jarbouni did anything wrong at all. In fact, she has been a poster child for supposed Israeli crimes, as this poster shows:
Who is Lina Al Jarbouni really? Is she just a random Arab that Israel decided to jail for fun? Is she a "political prisoner"?
No, Jarbouni is a terrorist.
Al Jarbouni is an Israeli Arab who was a member of Islamic Jihad, where she helped senior members of the group carry out terror attacks against Israeli citizens. She provided Israeli identity cards for the other terrorists, rented an apartment for them, managed communications in planning an attack, gave covering fire to the murderers, and provided access to bank accounts.
But she's a sister! And a daughter! So by default, she must be pure, if you believe the propagandists.
Like Rasmea Odeh in the US, if you are a female terrorist who has been involved in killing Jews, you are a heroine to many people who pretend to be "peace activists."
If you support terrorists like Odeh and Jarbouni, you are not interested in peace.
A man who attacked an Israeli plane in 1968 and a woman who placed a bomb in a movie theater in Jerusalem in 1967 are today's Palestinian heroes according to the Palestinian Authority and Fatah.
In 1968, PFLP terrorist Mahmoud Muhammad Issa Al-Naarani carried out an attack on an Israeli El-Al airplane at the airport in Athens with an accomplice. One passenger was killed and a stewardess seriously wounded. When terrorist Al-Naarani recently died, Fatah posted an obituary on its Facebook page, calling him a "hero": Similarly, official PA TV recently honored Fatima Barnawi as "a role model and example and a pioneer of sacrifice." Barnawi placed a bomb in a movie theater in Jerusalem in 1967 that failed to explode. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1977 after serving 10 years. In February, she was honored in Egypt. PA TV broadcast from the event, referring to Barnawi as "an honor to the world's female fighters" and "an honor for the [Palestinian] cause... a positive symbol of the Palestinian woman."
PA TV honors terrorist who attempted to place a bomb in a movie theater
The president’s apologists may blame this on George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq in the first place as well as his kicking the can down the road on Iran’s nuclear program. There’s some truth to that but Bush left Obama a war that was already won by the 2007 U.S. surge. Bush may have laid the groundwork for the current mess. But its shape and the scale of the disaster is Obama’s responsibility.
Iranian influence among fellow Shiites in Iraq is nothing new. But the scale of the current effort and the open nature of the way Iran’s forces are now flexing their muscles — even in the Tikrit region where Sunnis dominate — demonstrates that the rise of ISIS was not the only negative consequence of President Obama’s decision to completely pull U.S. forces out of Iraq when negotiations about their staying got sticky. That enabled him to brag during the 2012 presidential campaign that he had “ended” the Iraq War (the same campaign where he pledged Iran would not be allowed to keep a nuclear program) but neither ISIS nor Iran got that memo. The war continues but the difference is that instead of an Iraq influenced by the U.S., it is now Iran that is the dominant force.
The same is true throughout the region. President Obama spent years dithering about the collapse of Syria even while demanding that Bashar Assad give up power and enunciating “red lines” about the use of chemical weapons. But while he stalled, moderate rebels withered, ISIS grew and Iran’s ally Assad stayed in Damascus, bucked up by Iranian help and troops supplied by Tehran’s Hezbollah auxiliaries. So when the Saudis look at a potential deal that will allow Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure and ultimately expire in ten years, they know that it is directly connected to America’s apparent decision to acquiesce to Iranian dominance in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
Dennis Ross, the man allegedly behind the "concessions document" published by Yedioth Ahronoth over the weekend, told Israel Hayom that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "never agreed to Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders, dividing Jerusalem or the right of return."
The document, which the Likud party claims is part of an orchestrated campaign to topple the current leadership, purports to have been presented in August 2013 and appears to detail the framework for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, suggesting a willingness by the Netanyahu-led government to make dramatic concessions.
According to Ross, the American diplomat who mediated the talks between Israeli negotiator Isaac Molho and Palestinian negotiator Hussein Agha, which included the document in question, "I always felt the best way to [negotiate] would be in a brainstorming set of discussions that could be informal. To that end, starting before I left the administration and continuing after I left, I worked with two long-time friends of mine, Isaac Molho and Hussein Agha, with the aim of coming up with a U.S. proposal for a framework. The idea was that both sides would agree to negotiate using the U.S. proposal, while making clear that they had reservations about provisions that ran counter to their positions."
In an important conversation concerning the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), between Atlantic journalist, Graeme Wood, and public intellectual, Sam Harris, we read the following exchange:
Harris: Have you watched any of the Islamic State’s execution videos?
Wood: I’ve watched many of them.
Harris: I haven’t, and I’m a little surprised by that. At one point, I think I just decided that the trade-off between their information value and emotional toxicity didn’t seem worth it. From your perspective as a journalist, what is the value in watching those videos?
Wood: I would start by describing not the value but the cost. It’s a terrible thing. I feel diminished, permanently, by having watched them.
My inclination, much like Harris', has been to avoid the more graphic material that ISIS vomits into the public sphere.
Wood argues that there is much to be learned, and I do not doubt him, but I simply have not the heart for too much of this material. I saw one video that will stay with me for the rest of my life, however. It showed an ISIS fighter standing in a pool of blood by the edge of cliff with a handgun. Another man ran off camera, returned dragging a person, sometimes a child, which the first man shot directly in the head prompting the second man to throw the body off of the cliff and then run off for another victim.
I stopped watching after maybe the third or fourth heinous murder because, you can be sure, a little of this goes an awful long way.
But, however the West ends up dealing with these gentlemen, it is probably best, unfortunately, that we continue to get to know who they are and what they want. In the very same interview or discussion entitled, The True Believers (a hat-tip to JayinPhiladelphia, by the way)they reference a VICE News piece of investigative journalism from last year entitled, The Spread of the Caliphate : The Islamic State, which draws a portrait of the organization that is consistent with what we have learned about it so far.
Let's give fifteen minutes, or so, for part one of five and see what it tells us.
Don't they look dashing?
They are, in fact, entirely brutal, although seemingly without being crude. They are deeply religious, after all, and see themselves not only as moral, but as quintessentially moral in the eyes of Allah. If you think that they generally feel guilty for their bloody behavior, they do not. On the contrary, they think that YOU are highly immoral. You, in fact, are so immoral that your average ISIS fighter would kill you as soon as look at you.
They are also, it should be noted, often very well-educated and sincere about the intensity of their religious ideology and faith. As has been repeatedly shown, they are not motivated out of material concerns, but out of an intense religious ideology which give their lives meaning and which allows them to feel part of something both larger than themselves and historical in the making.
They tend to focus on the indoctrination of children, as perhaps we'll discuss next week, and honestly want to defeat the forces of "Rome," for hadithian reasons, in the fields outside of Dabiq in Syria. In the cities and townships under their control the "morality police" keep the population in line through intimidation and the kinds of violence (whippings, stonings, beheadings, etc) required by al-Sharia.
This map, directly from the film, shows the swaths of land that the Islamic State currently holds in Iraq and Syria. They are just outside of Baghdad and control Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq.
The film, however, focuses on the Islamic State's presence in Raqqa. in northern Syria. Here we meet now deceased Islamic State Press Officer, Abu Mosa, who took VICE News people to the front lines where ISIS was facing off against Assad's 17th Army Division. The Fighting 17th, however, represented the last of Assad's forces in that part of the country and were run out of the area entirely, although the Syrian army gunned-down Mosa, himself.
During the fighting ISIS killed at least 50 Syrian soldiers and later posted their heads on fence posts in Raqqa in order to, apparently, encourage the ongoing cordiality of the townspeople.
Part one of the film focuses on ISIS as a successful military operation in service of the Caliphate and in service of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the supreme leader of the organization who now formally demands the allegiance of Muslims throughout the world.
He does not get it, of course, but this does not stop him from requiring it.
The fact of the matter is that the great majority of Muslims, everywhere, want nothing to do with this guy, nor his horrendously vicious theo-fascist organization rampaging through the Middle East - perilously close to Israel, by the way - and killing people left and right. It is not hard to understand why Barack Obama, a man with some Islamic background and family, would be protective of the small Muslim minority in the United States and seek to shield it from any association with these bloodthirsty Islamist theologians and their sadistic fighters.
Since 9/11, there has been particular concern, among many in government and the academe, that Americans not persecute, or retaliate against, the innocent Muslim minority in the United States for the behavior of their overseas Jihadi cousins. Americans, much to their credit, have been gracious toward their Muslim friends and neighbors and have not blamed them for the destruction of the Twin Towers, nor the loss of 3,000 souls.
In fact, Hate Crime statistics clearly show that it is the Jewish community in the United States, not the Muslim community, that is particularly singled out for violence and abuse in proportions well above our numbers. According to FBI Hate Crime statistics from 2013, by religion, 60.3 percent of American hate crimes were of an anti-Jewish nature, despite the fact that we only represent about 2 percent of the population, while only 13.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
Nonetheless, if this documentary is drawing an accurate picture of ISIS then, clearly, we are dealing with believers who are not only Islamic, but "very Islamic" as Graeme Wood put it in his piece for the The Atlantic, What ISIS Really Wants. These guys are urber-Islamic-fundamentalists.
They make Evangelical Christian housewives in Tennessee look like a bunch of syphiltic Hollywood gay porn stars on the Sunset Strip.
What the Islamic State, following Mohammad, demands, not surprisingly, is submission. They are definitely sincere and have shown themselves to be exceedingly direct in demonstrating that sincerity. Nothing gets right to the point so much as crucifying people or burying children alive. This will definitely tend to get the attention of others, which is very much a part of the Islamic State's modus operandi.
They honestly believe that torturing people, burning them alive, chopping off their heads and putting it on video to music is a good thing, because it is what Allah wants of them. It is so good, in fact, that such videos serve as a recruiting tool for others, all throughout the world. This obviously flies in the face of normative western (and Jewish) values that tend to view unnecessary cruelty as horrible, even unholy. Nonetheless, different cultures are different and it is only western arrogance that inclines many of us to see all cultures as reasonable, as rational, and as fundamentally like our own. Not all peoples or cultures are alike, however, and if anyone doubts the truth of this observation, I simply invite you to watch the video above.
Mosa, cradling his automatic weapon shortly before martyred in the name of Allah by Assad's forces, tells us this:
I say to America, that the Islamic Caliphate has been established and we will not stop. Don't be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead, send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah over the White House.
This organization is getting quite large, now, and while it has earned our horror and disgust, it has also earned our respect in the sense that more and more westerners are coming to understand that these Jihadi enthusiasts will need to be dealt with... one way or the other.
Wood, by the way, opposes direct military intervention. He believes that putting western troops on the ground would validate the Islamic State's narrative and, thereby, serve to recruit others. It would in this way be counterproductive.
Harris seems a bit more open to the idea of direct, large-scale, military confrontation, although he stops short of an open declaration of support for such an effort. Harris, like many of us, is simply weighing options in his mind and sees very little to draw comfort from.
No one - Jihadis aside - wants war and that goes double for the President of the United States.
Obama - always at heart the community organizing intellectual - seems to think that the proper approach to ISIS is a good jobs program in Europe. In fact, according to "The White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism," one of the approaches the federal government intends to take on this problem is a "workshop with the creative arts community and community leaders in Los Angeles to develop innovative, scalable and implementable programs and tools to counter violent extremism."
A nice anti-racist mural under a highway overpass somewhere in Los Angeles should get the boys in Raqqa to turn in their arms.
Don't you think?
Finally, the meaning of the single digit salute is clear. It refers totawhid, the belief in the oneness of Allah.
The Umma is also one in worship of Allah through the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be unto him). And the Caliphate is the lone, overriding political expression of Allah's will manifested on Earth.
{Next week, I suppose, we'll discuss part 2 of the VICE News documentary, which is concerned with the recruitment of children into the organization.}
In 1905, a Lebanese named Najib Azuri wrote: "These two movements [Zionism and Palestinian nationalism] are doomed to constant struggle, until one overwhelms the other. The fate of the entire world depends on the outcome of this struggle ... which represents two opposing principles." One hundred and ten years later, the two nations are still opposed but does the fate of the world depend on it?
'- Deux phénomènes importants, de même nature et pourtant opposés, qui n'ont encore attiré l'attention de personne, se manifestent en ce moment dans là Turquie d'Asie : ce sont, le réveil de la nation arabe et l'effort latent des Juifs pour reconstituer sur une très large échelle l'ancienne monarchie d'Israël; Ces deux mouvements sont destinés à se combattre continuellement, jusqu'à ce que l'un d'eux l'emporte sur l'autre. Du résultat final de cette lutte entre ces deux peuples représentant deux principes contraires, dépendra le sort du monde entier.;
Nothing about "Palestinian nationalism." He was talking about Arab nationalism altogether, which in 1905 did not include anything about a separate Palestinian state.
There was no Palestinian nationalist movement in 1905. Period. It was a Zionist/Arab conflict then - and it still is.
John Bell is "director of the Middle East Programme at the Toledo International Centre for Peace in Madrid. He is a former UN and Canadian diplomat, and served as political adviser to the Personal Representative of the UN Secretary-General for southern Lebanon and adviser to the Canadian government."
It would be nice if he wouldn't push his own political agenda onto history.
The Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation claims the guards of the Al Aqsa mosque "foiled an infiltration attempt" by "settlers" who dressed in "legitimate Islamic attire and tried to enter one of the doors."
According to the story, the guards noticed them and prevented them from entering.
They claim that "settlers" have repeatedly attempted to sneak in to the Temple Mount in recent years, particularly in times of Islamic prayer when it is crowded with worshipers.
I have no idea if any of this is true. The closest story I was able to find was this one from last year, and the Jews were secular:
Two Jewish youths were taken in for questioning by Jerusalem police after attempting to enter the Temple Mount dressed as Muslim worshippers.
According to initial reports the pair are "secular Jews" who were touring Jerusalem together and wanted to include the Temple Mount on their trip; it is not clear why they chose to disguise themselves.
A group of Temple Mount activists were spotted dressed up as Arabs on Friday in order to be able to enter the compound.
The Jewish activists did not do this in the spirit of Purim, which was celebrated in the capital on Friday. They did it in order to get around a ban on Jewish prayer which was imposed by the police.
Despite a court ruling earlier this week which said that police “must make sure that Jews are able to pray on the Temple Mount”, officers have been restricting Jewish prayer at the compound since Wednesday, telling worshippers that the restrictions are in accordance with a decision by the political leadership following pressure from Jordan.
On Friday, Jews who wanted to visit the Temple Mount were told by officers that on Fridays the Temple Mount must be free of Jews regularly, even on Purim.
The worshippers who were forced to dress up as Arabs said, "It is inconceivable that we cannot be on the Temple Mount on a day like today.”
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Politicians of the Day
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Dry Bones Golden Oldies by Sali, the LSW. This cartoon is from 2014.
Wishing everyone a good week. Here in Israel, we just went off of daylight
savings ...
The Fall of a Black Lives Matter ‘Thugologist’
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When the Feds finally raided Cedric Dean’s mansion, out front were the words
“Thug Mansion” and “Black Lives Matter”.
Inside the homes of the expert ‘Th...
Mamdani the Elder in 2004
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It seems that I never uploaded this post from 2015. But now that his son
is running for election as New York City's next mayor with his 2023 Not On
Our Di...
Elder Eoten
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The Elder Eoten is one of a handful of Apex Creatures you’ll find while
exploring the most difficult Forest Realm in Nightingale. It’s a huge,
animate tree...
Now What?
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Today, Jews cannot walk down the street in North America, Europe, or even
Australia without the possibility of being spat on, beaten, or even
murdered. Cou...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Monday, March 09, 2015
