Tag Archives: Barack Obama

The Atlantic Whitewashes Islamist Groups in Abedin Controversy

After a week of evidence coming to light about the connections of Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief-of-Staff Huma Abedin to Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and internationally-designated terrorist enities, the response from the left is ridicule, misrepresentation, caricature and—on the most damning evidence—utter silence. 

A cartoonish chart prepared by The Atlantic’s Serena Dai includes jaw-dropping distortions of Islamist groups—several being officially-designated terrorist groups—to make Abedin’s family and personal connections with them seem benign. 

The blue dots populating “Alleged Connection between Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, and other things that are bad” are laughably incomplete. In her effort to paint these multiple and serious affiliations as a comical six degrees of separation  to the Muslim Brotherhood (and provide talking points to that effect to others in the left media), Dai whitewashes the fact that most of the organizations listed can reasonably be considered Brotherhood fronts, or, at minimum, heavily populated by Muslim Brothers or ideological Islamist fellow travelers. 

The controversy surrounding Huma Abedin—and, importantly, the extent to which her connections to Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, alarmingly seemed not to factor into a background check—arise from letters to Inspector Generals of five departments written by a group of Congressmen Newt Gingrich recently dubbed the “National Security Five.” Examining these connections are crucial in light of the advice the Deputy Chief-of-Staff is giving to her boss, the Secretary of State, at a time when Islamist groups openly declaring jihad against America are being rewarded by the Obama administration with legitimacy in the political process. 

Most egregiously, Dai’s chart omits the closest connection Abedin has to Islamist groups and individuals: she was, herself, an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for seven years along with terrorism financier Abdullah Omar Naseef. The Journal and the Institute for which her father also worked, was the brainchild of Naseef, who found time to found the Rabita Trust (banned by US Treasury just after 9/11) and serve as secretary general to the Muslim World League (MWL), a group founded by the trusted deputy and son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and, reportedly, one of al Qaeda’s prime sources of funding. When looking for a head of the Rabita Trust, Naseef turned to Wael Hamza Jalidan, who had, by then, been an associate of Osama Bin Laden in al Qaeda. 

In other words, many of the people and groups with whom a man like Naseef surrounds himself (at minimum) tend to be what you’d call “problematic,” and a locus of these links should (again, at the very minimum) give a background investigator pause—or, more sensibly, ring the alarm bells—if he finds not one but several links to Naseef or people like him. 

For example, Huma Abedin is linked to Naseef in several ways: (1) herself, through her employment at an organization Naseef founded and chaired, the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs; (2) through her mother, who was also employed by Naseef’s IMMA; (3) through her late father, who served with Naseef as part of the Muslim World League; and finally (4) through her brother, a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, a group which includes Naseef as a board member. That’s a cluster of associations with merely one man, and that one man is a terror funder. 

But let’s pause for a moment. These links are not “guilt by association”—a term the left has wrung of any meaning, transformed into an all-purpose self-satisfied comeback. As Andy McCarthy explains:

A person is not required to have done anything wrong to be denied a high-ranking government position, or more immediately, the security clearance allowing access to classified information that is necessary to function in such a job. There simply need be associations, allegiances, or interests that establish a potential conflict of interest… Government jobs and access to the nation’s secrets are privileges, not rights. That is why the potential conflict needn’t stem from one’s own associations with hostile foreign countries, organizations, or persons. Vicarious associations, such as one’s parents’ connections to troublesome persons and organizations, are sufficient to create a potential conflict.

In an effort to caricature the exhaustive research done by Walid Shoebat, Andy McCarthy, the Center for Security Policy, and others, the Atlantic proceeds to whitewash and downplay as uncontroversial the individuals and groups that the Abedin family is deeply connected with. A sampling:

Dai’s description for the group Abedin’s mother founded, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), is cynically deceptive: “Its website states a goal of defending women’s rights.” In Arabic, its website also recommends repeal of laws forbidding female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape. For justification of these barbaric positions clearly in conflict with the mandate of “protecting women’s rights,” IICWC turns to Yusuf al-Qaradawi—the infamous Hitler-praising cleric who is considered to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist. Oh, and according to the IICWC’s own website (again, in Arabic), Qaradawi was also the author of the group’s charter.

In addition, the Atlantic omits references to Women in Islam, the book Saleha Abedin and her IICWC published, translated into English and distributed through the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), the organization with which Huma Abedin herself was employed. Excerpts of the book were published by the Center for Security Policy, including a chapter arguing for women’s participation in armed jihad, stoning or lashing for adultery, curtailing free expression based on what would benefit Islam, and more. To establish these positions—again, as far from a western notion of human rights as you can get—the book relies on extensive citations from opinions of Muslim Brotherhood figures like Qaradawi and Sayiid Qutb, the ideological inspiration for nearly every modern jihadist group, including al Qaeda.

Moving on, there’s the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR), which Dai refers to as a group that merely “connects various Islamic organizations.” You could say that. You could also say it was banned in Israel for funding Hamas as part of a scheme by the very same Qaradawi and his Union For Good. Saleha Abedin attended IICDR’s board meetings, and their own websites and publications acknowledge the linkage. 

On to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which Dia euphemistically says, “helps the social development of Muslim youth.” As Andrew McCarthy—who has published invaluable information on Abedin’s connections and putting them into context, recounts: 

Its principal role is the indoctrination of young Muslims in supremacist ideology. As outlined in one of its pamphlets, Islamic Views, it aims to “teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and al-Quds [i.e., Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make Jihad for the sake of Allah.” As Matthew Levitt extensively details in Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, WAMY has been a financial supporter of Hamas and al-Qaeda.

“An Islamic organization aiming to further the religion” is how Dai gingerly describes WAMY’s parent organization, the aforementioned World Muslim League (WML). Ian Johnson’s bestselling investigative book on the Muslim Brotherhood in the west, Mosque in Munich, details the development of the WML as an innovation of the Brotherhood at the highest levels, led by Said Ramadan. 

And on and on. 

This episode illustrates the extent to which the left is determined to downplay the explicit danger of well-funded Islamist groups and individuals, ranging from the ideological incubators of shariah and jihad to actual government-designated terrorist sponsors. Rather than being the hyper-partisan defense of Huma Abedin that the writer intends, this piece—and the accompanying chart—willfully contributes to a lack of understanding of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that threaten our way of life, our freedoms, and our national security.

Even more, the hyperventilation on this issue by the likes of CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the evening lineup of MSNBC, John McCain, and Keith Ellison (who’s got his own Muslim Brotherhood ties) has the effect of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood and similar radical groups, effectively delivering the American Muslim community into its hands. If any criticism of the Brotherhood or its court-established front groups is tantamount to Islamophobia and is off limits, then our national security is in a perilous place. And, like their efforts to destroy anti-communists during the Cold War, we’ve got the left to blame.

Anderson Cooper Crosses the Line

Anderson Cooper closed one of five segments of his weeknightly CNN show that he recently devoted to attacking principally Rep. Michele Bachmann with a genuflection towards an iconic newsman, Edward R. Murrow.  He deployed against her the gauntlet Murrow threw down to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in March 1954: “The line between investigating and persecuting is a [very] fine one.”  If anyone has stepped over that line, however, it is Cooper himself, rather than the Minnesota congresswoman.

Night after night during the week of July 16th, the host of “Anderson Cooper 360” failed to meet even the most basic standards of investigative journalism.  The irony is that, in his ill-concealed persecution of Mrs. Bachmann, Cooper has serially engaged in precisely the practices he pillories her and others for allegedly using, by his account, to destroy the reputation of the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Muslim-American woman named Huma Abedin.  Let us count the ways:

  • Anderson Cooper insists that Michele Bachmann (who he singles out for most of his criticism, despite the fact that she was but one of five Members of Congress to raise concerns not only about Ms. Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, but those of a number of others the Obama administration has enlisted as officials, advisors and/or liaisons to “the Muslim community”) failed to do her homework. Yet, Cooper repeatedly showed his ignorance of the extensive evidence cited by the legislators, even as he mentioned the website where some of it resides: the Center for Security Policy’s online video course at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com.
  • As he accused Rep. Bachmann of playing fast and loose with the facts, Cooper repeatedly mischaracterized the nature of the legislators’ request for five federal inspectors general to conduct investigations.  He or his echo-chamber of exclusively like-minded guests complained that Ms. Abedin is accused of being a “spy” and engaging in “treason” and that she has been subjected to a groundless, bigoted and McCarthyite witch-hunt. Several of the reporters and interested parties who added color commentary (sometimes repeatedly) further demeaned Congresswoman Bachmann by asserting that she is simply engaging in partisan politics and fund-raising for her reelection campaign.
  • As with the Congresswoman and to a lesser extent her colleagues, Cooper also made a point of going after this columnist.  If anyone is guilty of “McCarthyism,” though, it is the journalistic poseur who specializes in shooting the messenger and buying into and tendentiously proclaiming that there are “no facts” supporting the unwanted message – rather than rigorously examining and accurately reporting on the vast amount of evidence that inconveniently does exist.
  • While portraying Huma Abedin as an innocent victim of smears, Cooper engaged in his own smearing – occasionally through his rants on the subject, often by citing others who have indulged in ad hominem attacks against the congresswoman and her team.  He repeatedly showcased such attacks by individuals in her own party, even though they were clearly were unfamiliar with the actual nature of the legislators’ concerns and the abundant grounds for raising them.
  • One of the prominent figures in this televised persecution of Michele Bachmann was the man who kicked it off:  Her colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and the first Muslim Member of Congress.  As it happens, according to the public record (recently brilliantly distilled by counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole at PJ Media http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/21/rep-keith-ellison-rewrites-history-on-his-muslim-brotherhood-cair-ties/), Mr. Ellison has himself been closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood – a natty problem Rep. Bachmann has noted, to Cooper’s horror.

So, the “360” host had Keith Ellison on to help deflect that charge.  When the congressman blithely denied that he was a Muslim Brother or, for that matter, that he even knew very much about the Brotherhood, well, that was good enough for crack investigative journalist Anderson Cooper.  Back to the persecution of Michele Bachmann, with Cooper egging on Minnesota’s Muslim congressman.

  • Anderson Cooper further discredited his claim to be an independent, let alone exacting, journalist by taking at face value the FBI’s assurances that it had not dealt with Muslim Brothers or other “extremists” in the recent purge of its training materials and files.  The evidence of that falsehood is readily available.  Yet, the FBI statement was taken – and presented – as though gospel by a credulous host whose only skepticism was reserved for why Michele Bachmann had been charged by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers with investigating the extent of the Brotherhood’s influence operations inside the Bureau.]
  • Perhaps most distressing was the service Anderson Cooper has provided to the Islamists by promoting the meme that inquiries about specific Muslims with demonstrable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood amount to attacks on all Muslims.  This plays into the victimhood mantra Islamists use to justify their jihadism undertaken ostensibly for the purpose of defending beleaguered co-religionists.

Applying Cooper’s logic, every Muslim – even those whose associations (personal, familial, professional or other) with an organization like the Brotherhood that is sworn to our destruction clearly violate the government’s own guidelines for security clearances, to say nothing of the oath of office to support the Constitution and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic – are to be given an automatic pass.  That may also be the view of the Obama administration, but it is a formula for disaster for the country.

There is a particular irony to Anderson Cooper’s, well, jihad against those who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood.  For an avowedly gay man, Anderson Cooper is rooting for the wrong team.  If the Islamists have their way here, he will not simply be on the wrong side of the line.  He’ll be toast.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s American Defenders

On Wednesday, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah’s massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week.
Hopefully it was an instructive meeting for the senior US official, although his Israeli interlocutors were undoubtedly dumbstruck by how difficult it was to communicate with him. Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel’s understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism.
Brennan’s outlook on this subject was revealed in a speech he gave two years ago in Washington. In that talk, Brennan spoke dreamily about Hezbollah. As he put it, "Hezbollah is a very interesting organization."
He claimed it had evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" to a militia and then into an organization with members in Lebanon’s parliament and serving in Lebanon’s cabinet.
Brennan continued, "There are certainly elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern for us what they’re doing. And what we need to do is find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements."
Perhaps in a bid to build up those "moderate elements," in the same address, Brennan referred to Israel’s capital city Jerusalem as "al Quds," the name preferred by Hezbollah and its Iranian overlords.
Brennan’s amazing characterization of Hezbollah’s hostile takeover of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration’s view of Islamic jihadists generally.
If there are "moderate elements," in Hezbollah, from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah’s Sunni jihadist counterpart – the Muslim Brotherhood – is downright friendly.
On February 10, 2011, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made this position clear in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper’s testimony was given the day before then Egyptian president and longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from office. Mubarak’s coerced resignation owed largely to the Obama administration’s decision to end US support for his regime and openly demand his immediate abdication of power. As Israel warned, Mubarak’s ouster paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance to power in Egypt.
In his testimony Clapper said, "The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc."
Watching Clapper’s testimony in Israel, the sense across the political spectrum, shared by experts and casual observers alike was that the US had taken leave of its senses.
The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope." 
How could such a high-level US official claim that such an organization is "largely secular"? 
Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the US. For instance, in a sermon from October 2010, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the US. 
As he put it "Resistance [i.e. terrorism] is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it."
Badie then promised his congregants that the death of America was nigh. In his words, "A nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past. The US is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise."
The obliviousness of Brennan and Clapper to the essential nature of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are symptoms of the overarching ignorance informing the Obama administration’s approach to Middle Eastern realities.
Take, for instance, the Obama administration’s policy confusion over Syria. This week The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration lacks any real knowledge of the nature of the opposition forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian regime. Whereas one senior official told the paper, "We’re identifying the key leaders, and there are a lot of them. We are in touch with them and we stay in touch," another official said that is not the case.
As the latter official put it, "The folks that have been identified have been identified through Turkey and Jordan. It is not because of who we know. It’s all through liaison."
The fact that the US government is flying blind as Syria spins out of control is rendered all the more egregious when you recognize that this was not inevitable. America’s ignorance is self-inflicted.
In the 16 months that have passed since the Syrian civil war broke out, the administration passed up several opportunities to develop its own ties to the opposition and even to shape its agenda. Two examples suffice to make this clear.
First, in October 2011, according to the Beirut-based Arabic news portal al Nashra, Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. According to al Nashra, Mogahed canceled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt.
The White House canceled the meeting days after Rai visited with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. During that meeting Rai angered the French Foreign Ministry when he warned that it would be a disaster for Syria’s Christian minority, and for Christians throughout the region, if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown. Rai based this claim on his assessment that Assad would be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood- dominated Islamist regime.
And nine months later it is obvious that he was right. With Syria’s civil war still raging throughout the country, the world media is rife with reports about Syria’s Christians fleeing their towns and villages en masse as Islamists from the Syrian opposition target them with death, extortion and kidnapping.
Then there are the US’s peculiar choices regarding the opposition figures it favors. Last August, in a bid to gain familiarity with the Syrian opposition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with opposition representatives at the State Department. Herb London from the Hudson Institute reported at the time that the group Clinton met with was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of the non-Islamist, pro-Western Syrian Democracy Council composed of Syrian Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druse, Assyrians and non-Islamist Sunnis were not invited to the meeting.
Clinton did reportedly agree to meet with representatives of the council separately. But unlike the press carnival at her meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood members, Clinton refused to publicize her meeting with the non-Islamist opposition leaders. In so acting, she denied these would-be US allies the ability to claim that they enjoyed the support of the US government.
The question is why? Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere? 
In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, and perhaps to cause the administration to rethink its policies, a group of US lawmakers, members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees led by Rep. Michele Bachmann sent letters to the inspectors-general of the State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice departments as well as to the inspector-general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In those letters, Bachmann and her colleagues asked the Inspectors General to investigate possible penetration of the US government by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.
In their letters, and in a subsequent explanatory letter to US Rep. Keith Ellison from Rep. Bachmann, the lawmakers made clear that when they spoke of governmental penetration, they were referring to the central role that Muslim groups, identified by the US government in Federal Court as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, play in shaping the Obama administration’s perception of and policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied movements in the US and throughout the world.
That these front groups, including the unindicted terror funding co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), play a key role in shaping the Obama administration’s agenda is beyond dispute. Senior administration officials including Mogahed have close ties to these groups. There is an ample body of evidence that suggests that the administration’s decision to side with the hostile Muslim Brotherhood against its allies owes to a significant degree to the influence these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their operatives wield in the Obama administration.
To take just one example, last October the Obama administration agreed to purge training materials used by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies and eliminate all materials that contained references to Islam that US Muslim groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood had claimed were offensive. The administration has also fired counterterrorism trainers and lecturers employed by US security agencies and defense academies that taught their pupils about the doctrines of jihadist Islam. The administration also appointed representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned US Muslim groups to oversee the approval of training materials about Islam for US federal agencies.
For their efforts to warn about, and perhaps cause the administration to abandon its reliance on Muslim Brotherhood front groups, Bachmann and her colleagues have been denounced as racists and McCarthyites. 
These attacks have not been carried out only by administration supporters. Republican Senator John McCain denounced Bachmann from the floor of the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio later piled on attacking her for her attempt to convince the administration to reconsider its policies. Those policies again place the most radical members of the US Muslim community in charge of the US government’s policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist movements.
It is clear that the insidious notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate and friendly force has taken hold in US policy circles. And it is apparent that US policymaking in the Middle East is increasingly rooted in this false and dangerous assessment.
In spearheading an initiative to investigate and change this state of affairs, Bachmann and her colleagues should be congratulated, not condemned. And their courageous efforts to ask the relevant questions about the nature of Muslim Brotherhood influence over US policymakers should be joined, not spurned by their colleagues in Washington, by the media and by all concerned citizens in America and throughout the free world.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Clinton State Department, John McCain and Todays Lax Security Mindset

There was a time when it was considered necessary and proper to be concerned about possible foreign influences in US government and military service. Way back in 1981 when I first filled out forms as part of the process for joining the US military (it was a DOD form, I don’t remember the number) I had to answer a specific question regarding travel. The question asked if I had traveled to any of a list of nations after certain dates (all communist bloc countries) with a date listed by each nation (the date that each country had turned communist).

Anyone who joined the military in the Cold War era probably remembers this form and this question. If the answer to the question for any of the nations involved was "yes" you had to provide a complete explanation for the reason for the trip, when it took place, etc. Having never visited countries like Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, the Soviet Union, etc., I can’t say that I know what the process would have been had I answered yes.

But the point is, if you wanted to join the US military and you had even visited any communist countries, the Department of Defense wanted to know about it.

Fast forward to today. We are locked in a mortal struggle against a force not unlike communism. In fact, it has been called "communism with a god." That force is Islam as defined by the Shariah doctrine which forms the basis for it. There are certain countries and organizations that are prominent in the enemy threat doctrine. Yet, to my knowledge, today we have no similar safeguards in place to what the DOD had during the Cold War years to check on the influence of foreign powers on American institutions.

For instance, are any questions ever raised about travel to Iran, Syria or Sudan, three countries on the State Department’s list of terrorist sponsoring nations? For that matter, what about travel to Yemen, like Carlos Bledsoe did where he was indoctrinated to wage jihad in the USA by Anwar al-Alwaki? What about travel to the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the Times Square bomber traveled and received training? For that matter, how about travel to Saudi Arabia? After all, the Salafi strain of Islam that gave birth to Al Qaeda has its seat there and most of Al Qaeda’s cannon fodder seems to come from Saudi Arabia.

Then there is the whole present question of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is best described as the forefather of all modern Jihadist terrorist groups. Its apologists and proponents claim that the Muslim Brotherhood has completely eschewed violence, yet the available evidence proves otherwise. HAMAS was founded as a Muslim Brotherhood wing and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. HAMAS is one of the deadliest Jihadist organizations in the world, having carried out numerous Islamikaze bombings. And make no mistake, HAMAS has a large presence inside the USA.

There seems to have developed in recent years some romanticized view of the Muslim Brotherhood among certain naive political factions in the USA–and not just Democrats. Rather than being viewed as an organization in the political wing of a global insurgency, the Muslim Brotherhood is unfortunately being embraced in the West and the US. Senator John McCain, for instance, seems to have become smitten with the Muslim Brotherhood after meeting with them for a few hours in Egypt. But no one has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood quite like the Obama administration. The Obama administration has established close ties to Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the US and met with them at length and frequently. All indications are that the Muslim Brotherhood plays a prominent role in the Obama administration. Organizations like CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) and ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America) were named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing conviction in US history. (Attorney General Holder declined to prosecute these organizations when he came to office, despite intentions by others in the Justice Department to do so.) In the Holy Land Foundation trial, in documented evidence that was stipulated to by the defense, both CAIR and ISNA were identified as Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

And yes, a high-level member of the Clinton staff at the State Department, Huma Abedin, comes from a prominent Muslim Brotherhood family. Her father, her brother and her mother all have prominent positions in the Muslim Brotherhood apparatus. If during the Cold War such a person came from a family with extensive ties to the Communist Party of Romania or East Germany, there would have been ample reason to conduct a security investigation. But in today’s politically correct surreal world of Washington DC "go along to get along" culture, it seems that no questions can be raised. This is the same culture that looked the other way while a known Jihadist, Major Nidal Hassan, hid right out in the open in the US Army spouting Islamic Jihad doctrine, culminating in the terrible terrorist attack at Fort Hood.

Well, the Center for Security Policy DID raise questions. The Center produced a 10-part video course on the Muslim Brotherhood in America that every American should watch: http://www.muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com. Among others members of Congress, Michelle Bachmann has written a letter to inspectors general of key Washington departments inquiring as to Muslim Brotherhood influence in Washington’s halls of power. For her trouble, the likes of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Anderson Cooper and a host of Leftist media from the Huffington Post to the Los Angeles Times and MSNBC have attacked Rep. Bachmann.

They have all done so in a total vacuum of knowledge about the Muslim Brotherhood, the Holy Land Foundation trial and American fronts like CAIR and ISNA.

The Center has published a rebuttal to this shrill, emotional criticism.

This all stems from a complete failure of our leadership to put America on a war footing in the wake of 9/11. Our leaders have failed to identify the enemy. They have failed to even try to understand the enemy threat doctrine. In fact they have even denied that an enemy threat doctrine even exists. As a result of this culture, an imperialist, nefarious organization with long-standing ties to terrorism and with goals identical to those of Al Qaeda itself, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, is treated as a friend, rather than as a foe. If you even suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood might be an enemy of America, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Anderson Cooper will attack you as if you are a wild-eyed bomb-thrower. We are indeed through the looking glass.

Center Report Reveals Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official Huma Abedin’s Mother

WASHINGTON, D.C.:  A book published and translated by the mother of Obama administration State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin provides fresh evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aide has deeply problematic foreign associations that could, in violation of departmental guidelines, “create… a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”

In light of the escalating controversy over the role being played in U.S. security policy-making by Ms. Abedin and others with personal and/or professional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Part 8 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), the revelations contained in a new Center report— Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother— could not be more timely, or important.

The Center’s report excerpts and analyzes relevant passages from a book published and translated by Saleha S. Mahmood Abedin called Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations by Fatima Umar Naseef. Naseef is a past head of the “women’s section” and professor of shariah at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where Dr. Abedin is also on the faculty.  The book was published in 1999, the same year Dr. Abedin founded Dar Al Hekma, a university for women also in Jeddah, that Secretary Clinton visited and spoke admiringly of with Huma Abedin in February 2010.  [See Remarks on that occasion by Mrs. Clinton, including her comment that Huma holds a “very sensitive and important position” in her department, and those by her hosts.]

Excerpts from Women in Islam in Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother include Islamic shariah justifications for the following practices:

  • Stoning for Adultery when Married; Lashing for Adultery when Unmarried
  • No Death Penalty for the Murder of an Apostate
  • Freedom of Expression Curtailed to What Benefits Islam
  • Women’s Right to Participate in Armed Jihad
  • Social Interaction Between the Sexes is Forbidden
  • Women Have No Right to Abstain from Sex with their Husbands
  • A Woman Should Not Let Anyone Into the House Unless Approved by Her Husband
  • Female Genital Mutilation is Allowed
  • Man-Made Laws “Enslave Women”

The organization responsible for the publication of Women in Islam was the International Islamic Committee for Woman & Child (IICWC), chaired at the time by Dr. Abedin.  IICWC misleadingly describes itself as “an international organization of concerned women who are committed to improving the condition of women and children around the world.”  In fact, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League (MWL) and other Islamist organizations with which it is associated, the IICWC is committed to eviscerating the rights of women and children by imposing everywhere shariah, a code that denies them fundamental – and, in the United States, constitutional – liberties.

Specifically, the book published by Dr. Abedin wholeheartedly affirms: limits on women’s free expression; the permissibility of stoning as a punishment for adultery, killing of apostates and female genital mutilation; the contention that “man-made laws” enslave women; and more.  It also endorses women’s right to fight in armed jihad.  Women in Islam is available online and sold at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist organization co-founded by Huma Abedin’s mother and her late father, Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin.

On July 21, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy posted an essay at National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone commenting on the request by five Members of Congress led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota for Inspector General investigations of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government.  In it, he observed that the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs “was backed by the Muslim World League. As the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran relates, the MWL was started by the Saudi government in 1962 ‘with Brotherhood members in key leadership positions.’ It has served as the principal vehicle for the propagation of Islamic supremacism by the Saudis and the Brotherhood.”

Mr. McCarthy notes that:

The five House conservatives…are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman – a convicted terrorist and clerical inspiration for jihadists worldwide, whose release from federal prison at the insistence of Muslim Brother and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been the subject of discussions within and enabled by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department – goes on to observe that:

The State Department is particularly wary when it comes to the category of ‘foreign influence‘ – yes, it is a significant enough concern to warrant its own extensive category in background investigations. No criminal behavior need be shown to deny a security clearance; access to classified information is not a right, and reasonable fear of “divided loyalties” is more than sufficient for a clearance to be denied. The [Department’s own security] guidelines probe ties to foreign countries and organizations because hostile elements could “target United States citizens to obtain protected information” or could be “associated with a risk of terrorism.” Note: The Brotherhood checks both these boxes.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, said upon the release of the Center’s new report, Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother:

In the interest of informing the debate about the need to investigate Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda, and those of others shaping policy in the Obama administration, the Center for Security Policy offers in Ties That Bind? further cause for such an investigation.  That includes, for instance, evidence of Dr. Saleha Abedin’s personal involvement with the International Islamic Committee on Woman and Child’s affiliated organization, the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR). The IICDR was banned in Israel in 2008 for its collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi‘s Union for Good in the funding of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, Hamas. In the United States, the Union for Good was designated a terrorist entity in late 2008.

This further documentation of Dr. Abedin’s positions on shariah law, her leadership of the IICWC and its affiliation with a designated terrorist entity such as the IICDR makes plain that a thorough investigation is fully justified regarding her daughter’s access to classified information and policy-influencing role.  In particular, in connection with the latter, Ties That Bind powerfully reinforces the Center’s earlier warning that the IICWC is currently advocating for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to shariah. Americans want no part of such an agenda. They should they have  reason for concern that senior officials in their government are stealthily encouraging it.

 

 

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About the Center for Security Policy

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

Genocide in Sudan: Call for Action, Cry for Change

This month marks the one-year anniversary of South Sudan’s birth as a country, yet there is little to celebrate.  The Bashir regime of the northern Republic of Sudan is perpetuating conflict over resources in the wake of South Sudan’s 2011 succession. Aggressive bombings and genocidal violence are an attempt to win this civil war by essentially wiping out inhabitants in the border regions of South Sudan. Thousands of innocent civilians in Abyei, Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains are targeted by the Sudan Air Force. They are left with a grim choice: either die of starvation while fleeing for their lives, or face the violent attacks of northern air force.

On June 30, 2012, South Sudanese activists around the world joined the Sudanese people and rallied in several major cities, including Washington D.C.

Despite the 100-degree heat, a group of individuals representing the many regions affected by this conflict gathered in front of the Sudanese embassy promoting a clear message: down with Al-Bashir; end the genocide immediately.  This rally focused on supporting recent student anti-government protests in the capital city of Khartoum that began in June.

The resolve of previous administrations led to the diplomatic success of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 which led to the creation of South Sudan by referendum.  Over the past few years, however, Sudanese activists have seen the current administration lend diplomatic credibility to Islamist totalitarians like Al-Bashir in Iran as well as lending military support, money, and aid to Islamists of the same ideological stripes as Al Qaeda in Libya and Egypt. These messages are confusing. 

The Bashir regime has been a long-time partner and supporter of Hezbollah and even hosted Osama bin Laden until it was pressured by the U.S. to deny him safe haven.  Despite Bashir’s unchecked aggression, President Obama telephoned the South Sudanese President Salva Kiir three times this spring asking him not to engage in defense of the Nuba people without significantly challenging the Khartoum regime to any effect.  

The Center for Security Policy captured the hopes and frustrations of those giving a voice to the victims of Khartoum, past, present, and future.

 

For more information and background on the current situation in Sudan:

 

 

The Company They Keep

The truism that you know someone by the company they keep has rarely been more true than with respect to the Obama administration and its burgeoning ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Just this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the latest member of Team Obama to consort with sworn enemies of the United States when she sat down with the newly installed Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi.

Despite official, media and academic efforts to portray Morsi – and, for that matter, the Muslim Brotherhood more generally – as the kind of people with whom the United States can safely deal in the evolving Middle East and here, the determination of such Islamists to impose their supremacist Islamic doctrine of shariah worldwide could not be more palpable. Their hostility to America, Israel, Western civilization and other infidels goes back to the founding of the organization in 1928 and is rooted in its guiding program – shariah – and it is absolute and unwavering. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves or deliberately deceiving others.

While it cannot be confirmed at this writing, presumably Mrs. Clinton was accompanied on her travels as usual – particularly in the Middle East – by her Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin. That would be all the more probable given that Ms. Abedin has myriad family ties to the Brotherhood. For example, her mother, Saleha Abedin, is a leader of the organization’s secretive women’s auxiliary, the Muslim Sisterhood, in which she serves along with Mohammed Morsi’s wife, Naglaa Ali Mahmoud.

The presence of an individual with such associations in the seniormost ranks of the State Department at a moment when the Obama administration is assiduously "engaging" with the Muslim Brotherhood has raised concerns on Capitol Hill. To their credit, five legislators, led by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, have asked for a formal inquiry into the role Ms. Abedin and perhaps others have played in the adoption of problematic policies favorable to the Islamists.

For her troubles, Rep. Bachmann has recently been assailed by one of her colleagues – the self-styled "first Muslim congressman," Keith Ellison. The congresswoman responded Friday with a detailed – and devastating – 16-page, 59-footnote letter (http://bachmann.house.gov/uploadedfiles/letter_to_rep._ellison.pdf) to Mr. Ellison’s rash charge that there was no basis for concerns about Ms. Abedin.

The documentation provided also lays bare the established connections between several Muslim-American organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood. The upshot of Rep. Ellison’s foray is that he has inadvertently called attention to the bad company he keeps – namely, with various known Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Meanwhile, as Secretary Clinton headed off to Jerusalem, reportedly to assure Israeli leaders that Mr. Morsi means no harm to the Jewish State, a very different message is conveyed in a document (http://www.memri.org/clip_transcript/en/3431.htm) currently making the rounds. It is the transcript of an endorsement given at the kick-off rally of the Morsi campaign by one of his supporters, Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi. As the candidate looked on beaming, Higazi declared: "…The dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Muhammad Mursi and his brothers, his supporters, and his political party – that of the United States of the Arabs….The capital of the Caliphate – the capital of the United States of the Arabs – will be Jerusalem, Allah willing."

Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues also asked for investigations into the role being played in shaping U.S. policy by the president of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid. As documented at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com, that senior Brotherhood operative has been an advisor to President Obama, feted at the White House, State and Treasury Departments, literally embraced by the Justice Department and used as the vehicle for serial apologies by the Pentagon. Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole has dubbed Magid Team Obama’s "Diversity Czar."

The fact that the Obama administration is keeping such company is made all the more appalling by the kind of company Czar Magid keeps. For example, as Mr. Poole observed, at a recent ISNA "Diversity Forum" in Dearborn, Mohamed Magid presented CAIR-Michigan executive director Dawud Walid with a "diversity award." It speaks volumes about Walid’s actual "sensitivity" to others that he is on record (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDS-BWqWORw&feature=share) justifying the destruction of Jews. The Investigative Project on Terror’s Daniel Rogell reported last month that, in an anti-semitic rant, Walid asked rhetorically "Did Muhammad order the killing of Jews?" He subsequently answered, "Muhammad didn’t order it. Sa’ad ibn Mu’aadh [one of his followers] ordered that punishment. It was a correct one. (Emphasis added.)

Another award handed out by Mohamed Magid’s organization recognizes "community service" and is named for one of ISNA’s founders, Mahboub Khan. It happens that Mr. Khan is the father of someone else who has long been keeping company with Magid and his fellow Islamists – a controversial member of the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (ACU) named Suhail Khan. The younger Khan once declared at an ISNA conference, "What are our oppressors going to do with people like us? We are prepared to give our lives for the cause of Islam….I have pledged my life’s work…to work for the umma [Muslim nation.]"

Not only can you gain insights into people by the company they keep. When it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamists, it is downright dangerous to do otherwise.

 

Obama’s Spectacular Failure

Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Mursi pledged to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
According to The New York Times’ account of his speech, Mursi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel-Rahman and detainees’ pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel-Rahman."
Otherwise known as the blind sheikh, Abdel Rahman was the mastermind of the jihadist cell in New Jersey that perpetrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His cell also murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. They plotted the assassination of then-president Hosni Mubarak. They intended to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the UN headquarters.
Rahman was the leader of Gama’a al-Islamia – the Islamic Group, responsible, among other things for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. A renowned Sunni religious authority, Rahman wrote the fatwa, or Islamic ruling, permitting Sadat’s murder in retribution for his signing the peace treaty with Israel. The Islamic group is listed by the State Department as a specially designated terrorist organization.
After his conviction in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdel-Rahman issued another fatwa calling for jihad against the US. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden cited Abdel-Rahman’s fatwa as the religious justification for them.
By calling for Abdel-Rahman’s release, Mursi has aligned himself and his government with the US’s worst enemies. By calling for Abdel-Rahman’s release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Mursi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.
And in response to Mursi’s supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Mursi to visit him at the White House.
Mursi is not the only Abdel Rahman supporter to enjoy the warm hospitality of the White House.
His personal terror organization has also been the recipient of administration largesse. Despite the fact that federal law makes it a felony to assist members of specially designated terrorist organizations, last month the State Department invited group member Hani Nour Eldin, a newly elected member of the Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament, to visit the US and meet with senior US officials at the White House and the State Department, as part of a delegation of Egyptian parliamentarians.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to provide any explanation for the administration’s decision to break federal law in order to host Eldin in Washington. Nuland simply claimed, "We have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt’s future. The goal of this delegation… was to have consultations both with think tanks but also with government folks, with a broad spectrum representing all the colors of Egyptian politics."
MURSI IS not the only Arab leader who embraces terrorists only to be embraced by the US government. In a seemingly unrelated matter, this week it was reported that in an attempt to satisfy the Obama administration’s urgent desire to renew negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, and to satisfy the Palestinians’ insatiable desire to celebrate terrorists, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to release 124 Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons in exchange for a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
Alas, Abbas refused. He didn’t think Netanyahu’s offer was generous enough.
And how did the Obama administration respond to Abbas’s demand for the mass release of terrorists and his continued refusal to resume negotiations with Israel? 
By attacking Israel.
The proximate cause of the Obama administration’s most recent assault on Israel is the publication of the legal opinion of a panel of expert Israeli jurists regarding the legality of Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu commissioned the panel, led by retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy, to investigate the international legal status of these towns and villages and to provide the government with guidance relating to future construction of Israeli communities beyond the armistice lines.
The committee’s findings, published this week, concluded that under international law, these communities are completely legal.
There is nothing remotely revolutionary about this finding. This has been Israel’s position since 1967, and arguably since 1922.
The international legal basis for the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. That document gave the Jewish people the legal right to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as well as all the land Israel took control over during the 1948- 49 War of Independence.
Not only did the Mandate give the Jewish people the legal right to the areas, it enjoined the British Mandatory authorities to "facilitate… close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."
So not only was Jewish settlement not prohibited. It was required.
Although this has been Israel’s position all along, Netanyahu apparently felt the need to have its legitimacy renewed in light of the all-out assault against Israel’s legal rights led by the Palestinians, and joined enthusiastically by the Obama administration.
In a previous attempt to appease Obama’s rapacious appetite for Israeli concessions, Netanyahu temporarily abrogated Israel’s legal rights by banning Jews from exercising their property rights in Judea and Samaria for 10 months in 2010. All the legal opinion published this week does is restate what Israel’s position has always been.
Whereas the Obama administration opted to embrace Mursi even as he embraces Abdel-Rahman, the Obama administration vociferously condemned Israel for having the nerve to ask a panel of senior jurists to opine about its rights. In a press briefing, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell banged the rhetorical hammer.
As he put it, "The US position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we’ve seen the reports that an Israeli government-appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts."
In short then, for the Obama administration, it is all well and fine for the newly elected president of what was until two years ago the US’s most important Arab ally to embrace a terror mastermind indirectly responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. It is okay to invite members of jihadist terror groups to come to Washington and meet with senior US officials in a US taxpayer- funded trip. It is even okay for the head of a would-be-state that the US is trying to create to embrace every single Palestinian terrorist, including those who have murdered Americans. But for Israel’s elected government to ask an expert panel to determine whether Israel is acting in accordance with international law in permitting Jews to live on land the Palestinians insist must be Jew-free is an affront.
THE DISPARITY between the administration’s treatment of the Mursi government on the one hand and the Netanyahu government on the other places the nature of its Middle East policy in stark relief.
Obama came into office with a theory on which he based his Middle East policy. His theory was that jihadists hate America because the US supports Israel. By placing what Obama referred to as "daylight" between the US and Israel, he believed he would convince the jihadists to put aside their hatred of America.
Obama has implemented this policy for three and a half years. And its record of spectacular failure is unbroken.
Obama’s failure is exposed in all its dangerous consequence by a simple fact. Since he entered office, the Americans have dispensed with far fewer jihadists than they have empowered.
Since January 2009, the Muslim world has become vastly more radicalized. No Islamist government in power in 2009 has been overthrown. But several key states – first and foremost Egypt – that were led by pro-Western, US-allied governments when Obama entered office are now ruled by Islamists.
It is true that the election results in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere are not Obama’s fault. But they still expose the wrongness of his policy. Obama’s policy of putting daylight between the US and Israel, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against US allies like Mubarak, involves being bad to America’s friends and good to America’s enemies. This policy cannot help but strengthen your enemies against yourself and your friends.
Rather than contend with the bitter consequences of his policy, Obama and his surrogates have opted to simply deny the dangerous reality he has engendered through his actions. Even worse they have come up with explanations for maintaining this policy despite its flagrant failure.
Nowhere was this effort more obvious than in a made-to-order New York Times analysis this week titled, "As Islamists gain influence, Washington reassesses who its friends are."
The analysis embraces the notion that it is possible and reasonable to appease the likes of Mursi and his America-hating jihadist supporters and coalition partners. It quotes Michele Dunne from the Atlantic Council who claimed that on the one hand, if the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical comrades are allowed to take over Egypt, their entry into mainstream politics should reduce the terrorism threat. On the other hand, she warned, "If Islamist groups like the Brotherhood lose faith in democracy, that’s when there could be dire consequences."
In other words, the analysis argues that the US should respond to the ascent of its enemies by pretending its enemies are its friends.
Aside from its jaw-dropping irresponsibility, this bit of intellectual sophistry requires a complete denial of reality. The Taliban were in power in Afghanistan in 2001. Their political power didn’t stop them from cooperating with al-Qaida. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza since 2007. That hasn’t stopped it from carrying out terrorism against Israel. The mullahs have been in charge of Iran from 33 years. That hasn’t stopped them from serving as the largest terrorism sponsors in the world. Hezbollah has been involved in mainstream politics in Lebanon since 2000 and it has remained one of the most active terrorist organizations in the world.
And so on and so forth.
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration happily cooperated with the precursors of al-Qaida in America’s covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It never occurred to the Americans then that the same people working with them to overthrow the Soviets would one day follow the lead of the blind sheikh and attack America.
Unlike the mujahadin in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood has never fought a common foe with the Americans. The US is supporting it for nothing – while seeking to win its support by turning on America’s most stable allies.
Can there be any doubt that this policy will end badly? 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

‘Fundamentally Transforming’ the Military

In Lone Survivor, a chilling, firsthand account of the loss of eleven members of the Navy’s elite Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) Team and eight Army aviators, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell describes the fateful decision that led to disaster for him and death for his comrades.  It came down to a judgment call about whether to risk prosecution and jail-time for doing whatever it took to complete their mission, or to allow three Afghan goatherds to rat out his unit to the Taliban. 

When Luttrell cast the deciding vote to turn loose the farmers who had stumbled upon him and three other SEALs shortly after they had been dropped behind enemy lines to take down a particularly dangerous Taliban leader, he described the thought-process:

 “If we kill these guys, we have to be straight about it.  Report what we did.  We can’t sneak around this….Their bodies will be found, the Taliban will use it to the max. They’ll get it in the papers, and the U.S. liberal media will attack us without mercy.  We’ll almost certainly be charged with murder….”

Such concerns prompted Luttrell to make the call to release the goatherds, setting in train calamity for his buddies and sixteen others dispatched to rescue them from the massive Taliban assault that ensued.  It turns out those concerns were well-founded, as was most recently demonstrated in a case before the U.S. Military Court of Appeals.  By a 3-2 vote, the judges outrageously determined that an Army Ranger, First Lieutenant Michael Behenna, was deemed to have no right to self-defense when he killed the Iraqi prisoner he was interrogating after the latter threw a concrete block at him and tried to seize his firearm. Unless he is pardoned, Lt. Behenna will remain incarcerated for the next twelve years.

Unfortunately, under President Obama, service personnel’s rising fears of being prosecuted for acting to protect themselves and their missions are but one of many ways in which themilitary is being, to use his now-infamous turn of phrase, “fundamentally transformed.”  Consider a few examples:

  • Losing wars:  Few things can have a more corrosive effect on morale and esprit de corps of the armed forces than being ordered to participate in and sacrifice – not least by risking life and limb – in protracted conflicts, only to have political authorities throw in the towel.  Add in the repeated combat tours pulled by many servicemen and women, with all that entails for both them and their families, and you have a formula for disaster for the U.S. military.
  • Budget cuts:  Matters are made much worse by the sense that the military is being asked to pay more than its fair share of the burden associated with deficit-reduction.  Even though defense spending accounts for approximately 20% of the budget, the Pentagon has been required to absorb roughly 50% of the cuts, while entitlements have been entirely spared.

The roughly $800 billion in defense spending already excised or in the works is denying our men and women in uniform the modern, properly maintained and qualitatively superior equipment they need to wage war safely and successfully on our behalf.  The next $500 billion in reductions – which, all other things being equal, are to go into effect in January – will have, in the words Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Demsey, a “catastrophic” effect.

  • A defective Counter-Insurgency (COIN) strategy:  [As documented in Part 9 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum, “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within” (http://MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com),] the effort to win hearts and minds in places like Iraq and Afghanistan has exposed our troops unnecessarily to danger:  They are being obliged not to wear protective eyewear and body armor, at risk literally to life and limb.  They are ordered to honor their hosts in visits with local elders by consuming foods offered, despite the fact that doing so can subject them to lifelong affliction by parasites and diseases. They must observe rules of engagement that restrict use of their firearms and deny them air cover and artillery support in circumstances where it can mean the difference between living and dying.

Worse yet, our troops are seen by the enemy in these and other ways to be submitting to the latter’s doctrine of shariah.  According to that supremacist code, its adherents are compelled when confronted with evidence they are winning, to redouble their efforts to make us “feel subdued.”  This generally translates into more violence against our troops and us, not less.

  • Assault on the culture of the Military: Last, but not least, President Obama’s use of the military as a vehicle for advancing the radical homosexual agenda in the larger society has demonstrated for many in uniform civilian indifference to the unique attributes of the armed forces.  That message can only have been reinforced by the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing fraudulent claims to military decorations as protected free speech.

Unfortunately, these sorts of assaults on the U.S. military are likely to “fundamentally transform” it, all right.  Perhaps that tranformation will manifest itself, among other ways, by precipitating the collapse of the All-Volunteer Force, as many of those who are currently serving decline to do so, and fewer and fewer new, high-quality recruits enlist.  We can ill-afford such an Obama legacy in an increasingly dangerous world.

Yitzhak Shamir’s good, great life

There was something about Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s seventh prime minister who passed away last Saturday, that made you feel shy, in awe when you stood in his presence. In his eulogy at Sunday morning’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted that Shamir "didn’t radiate charisma. He simply radiated inner strength."
Shamir, the diminutive, taciturn leader, was a strong man. And Netanyahu was absolutely right, Shamir’s strength owed to his commitment to his convictions. What motivated him to act were not external conditions, but an internal compass, an internal call to devote his life to the Jewish people and our freedom and safety in our land.
Netanyahu began his eulogy to Shamir on Sunday morning by placing him in the context of his generation. Netanyahu said, "Yitzhak Shamir was from the generation of giants that founded the State of Israel."
There is much truth in this statement. The generation of Jews that came of age in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and established the State of Israel confronted challenges unmatched in human history. They survived the European Holocaust. They stood down and bested the British Empire. They withstood massive terror from the Arabs and repression and betrayal from the British. They defeated the invading armies of five Arab states with a ragtag force of Holocaust survivors and farmers, with little access to arms, and almost no money.
They carved a beautiful, modern country out of the rocks and sands of a long-desolate land.
They absorbed massive waves of aliya from all over the world. They brought together Jews with diverse customs, traditions and languages and reforged a unitary Jewish people bound to one another by our common heritage, faith, resuscitated language and land – all stronger than what divided us.
They suffered agonizing losses at every turn.
But they kept moving forward, sometimes in giant leaps, usually in tiny steps. But they kept moving forward.
So it is true that Shamir’s generation of Jews had more than its normal share of great men and women. But to do Shamir’s memory the justice it deserves it is important not to obscure his personal greatness by bracketing him inside his generation. This is true for two reasons.
First, it was not inevitable that Shamir became a strong, dedicated, successful leader.
Many in his generation were not.
Shamir faced enormous challenges. And his most serious challenges came from his fellow Jews. People like Chaim Weizmann – whom the late Benzion Netanyahu referred to as "a disaster for the Jewish people," due to his chronic preference for British approval over Jewish national and legal rights – were more than willing to compromise away the national rights of the Jews to a state of our own in our historic homeland.
Indeed, in the years preceding Israel’s declaration of independence, national sovereignty was only perceived as a viable option and reasonable goal by a minority. As Shamir said in a 1993 interview published this week by The Times of Israel, in 1945 David Ben-Gurion called for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, rather than a sovereign Jewish state. As Shamir put it, "It was curious that the Zionist movement officially didn’t accept the slogan of a Jewish state as the aim of the Zionist movement!… Weizmann was against it….He want[ed] Jewish unity here… not a state."
LATER, DURING Shamir’s tenure as prime minister in the unity government with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party from 1986 to 1988, Peres sought to undermine his leadership and bring about his defeat in the 1988 elections by collaborating with foreign governments against him.
According to top secret documents from 1988 first disclosed by Yediot Aharonot’s Shimon Schiffer in June 2011, Peres collaborated with then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Shamir’s government. Peres also sought US assistance in subverting Shamir and fomenting his electoral defeat. Aside from that, in breach of both Israeli law and the expressed wishes of Shamir, Peres dispatched his emissary, then-Foreign Ministry director general Avraham Tamir, to Mozambique for secret meetings with Yasser Arafat.
Throughout his career, Peres, who is also a member of Shamir’s generation, has distinguished himself as a politician who prefers his personal gain over that of his nation. In keeping with this consistent preference, last month Peres traveled to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama, at the same time that Obama rejected Israel’s request to commute the life sentence of Jonathan Pollard. It is safe to say that Shamir would probably not have been offered such an award from a US president.
But it is also safe to say that had he been offered the award, Shamir would have used the occasion to publicly press for Pollard’s release.
The other reason it is wrong to view Shamir as a mere product of his times is because by doing so, we effectively say that there is no point in emulating him. If he only became the person he became because he lived through the times he lived through, then his story has nothing to teach us about what it means to lead, or to live a meaningful, good life in the service of a goal greater than ourselves. And this cannot be true.
In a poetic coincidence of timing, as Netanyahu eulogized Shamir on Sunday morning, Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, entered a courtroom in Tel Aviv for the start of his criminal trial related to the so-called Holyland Affair. Olmert is accused of taking bribes from the developers of the capital’s architectural monstrosity cynically named "Holyland," during his tenure as mayor of Jerusalem. He allegedly received money and other benefits in exchange for his willingness to allow the developers to expand the size of the project to more than 10 times the size initially allocated for it.
Olmert’s Holyland trial is only the latest of the ex-prime minister’s legal troubles. On July 10, the Jerusalem District Court will hand down its verdict on two other corruption scandals – the Talansky Affair, in which Olmert is on trial for accepting bribes and for campaign finance irregularities, and the Rishon Tours Affair in which Olmert is accused of double billing his travel expenses.
However Olmert’s legal travails pan out, the fact that he is facing corruption charges to begin with is wholly a function of his character.
Unlike Shamir, Olmert is perfectly prepared to abandon the public interest to advance his personal comfort. During his tenure as premier, rather than stand up to US pressure for Israeli concessions of land and rights to the Palestinians, Olmert preemptively capitulated.
He called for Israel to unilaterally surrender much of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, despite the latter’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. He offered to carve up Jerusalem in his peace proposal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. He continued to embrace the cause of appeasement despite Abbas’s preference for peace with Hamas over peace with Israel.
So too, during the Second Lebanon War, Olmert chose to lose the war, in a vain attempt to uphold his preference for appeasement over justice and victory. To that end, he accepted a cease-fire that left Hezbollah in charge of south Lebanon. That cease-fire led directly to Hezbollah’s takeover of all of Lebanon in 2007.
Olmert defends his behavior through a mixture of lies and self-justification. At The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 29, Olmert claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the greatest military victory in Israel’s history. Apparently he thought we had forgotten about every other war Israel has fought. So, too, Olmert claims that he had no choice other than to submit to US pressure regarding the Palestinians.
SHAMIR’S RECORD is a standing rebuke of Olmert’s excuses for his failures. 
Yes, in two key instances, Shamir caved in to US pressure. He did not respond to Iraq’s missile offensive against Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. And he agreed to participate in the Madrid Conference in 1991 where then-US president George H.W. Bush forced Shamir to hold negotiations on the basis of "land for peace," with the Palestinians and the Syrians.
In both cases, Shamir’s acquiescence to American demands may have been unjustified. Certainly he didn’t exact a high enough price for his sacrifice. 
Yet even these concessions did not change the situation on the ground. Shamir did not agree to give the Arabs any land. And during his tenure the US significantly upgraded its strategic ties with Israel.
Moreover, from the perspective of Israel’s long-term viability and prosperity, Shamir exacted the greatest concession Israel ever gained from the US. He convinced Bush to stop steering Soviet Jewish émigrés to the US and away from Israel. This ensured that one million Soviet Jews made aliya. The Soviet Jewish aliya fundamentally transformed Israel’s economy and demographic posture, and upgraded its strategic position. Whatever damage Israel may have incurred as a result of Shamir’s concessions to Bush was likely outweighed by his success in bringing Soviet Jews to Israel.
And it is true that Shamir was never beloved or even liked by the US government or the leaders of Europe. But it is also true that during his tenure in office major countries, including China and India, renewed their diplomatic relations with Israel.
By standing up for his country, he earned the respect of the world – not just for himself, but for Israel as a whole. And in international affairs it is far more important to be respected than liked.
In his obituary for Shamir, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner explained that Shamir was a successful leader because he was intelligent and tenacious.
Aviner noted that Shamir’s intelligence was hard-earned. He took the time to learn the details of every subject he had to contend with. He was a voracious reader and wanted to gather as much information as possible before he made decisions.
Shamir’s devotion to learning made it possible for him to intelligently weigh the costs and benefits of various courses of action.
Aviner wrote that Shamir’s tenacity was a consequence of his life experiences. He was the commander of the Stern Group (Lehi) guerrilla force in pre-state Israel. He was imprisoned and escaped, twice. He was a Mossad officer. At each stage of his life, he faced great challenges and overcame them.
And each experience steeled him for the next until he gradually became the force to be reckoned with he was as prime minister.
It is important to recognize that Shamir was the product not only of his times, but of his values and of the choices that he made throughout his extraordinary career. 
The greatest compliment one can pay another person is to say that he is a model to be emulated, and that his life should serve as an example for what a good life can and should be.
We were blessed to have had him as our leader. And his memory should be a blessing in the annals of Jewish history.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.