Tag Archives: Barack Obama

For negotiating US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Obama taps the Muslim Brotherhoods Qaradawi

Andy McCarthy points to a terrifying story from the Indian newspaper The Hindu, reporting that the Obama administration has tapped informal Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusef al-Qaradawi, the world’s most famous Sunni shariah jurist and thinker, to facilitate negotiations with the Taliban for American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

n order to fully appreciate the magnitude of the decision to work with Qaradawi (if the initial report is true), McCarthy helpfully recalls some of Qaradawi’s statements. On suicide bombings: “They are not suicide operations… These are heroic martyrdom operations… The martyr operations is [sic] the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah.” On Jews: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption…The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them… Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

If there is one man not to empower in the Muslim world at large, it would be Qaradawi. Despite his overt jihaist pronouncements, Qaradawi is a deviously brilliant force behind the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist agenda; his tv show “Shariah and Life” is watched by millions of Muslims, his website OnIslam/IslamOnline is monstrously-popular clearing-houses for the shariah take on everything, and his Ireland-based European Council for Fatwa and Research serves as a think tank for Brotherhood ideas within the West itself. Qaradawi is a sophisticated propagandist who can speak the language of “rights,” “justice” and “democracy” while subverting its essential concepts to shariah.

McCarthy concludes:

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

Welcome to 2012 in America.

Defining down the enemy

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden offered the latest – and arguably the clearest – evidence of Team Obama’s strategy for victory in what was once euphemistically known as the "War on Terror":  Define down the enemy.

In an interview with former State Department official Leslie Gelb published in Newsweek, Biden declared: "The Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests."

In other words, the Obama administration appears to have embraced the Taliban line that it will stop killing and maiming our people as soon as there are no more of them in Afghanistan.  As one of its operatives told reporters for The Daily Beast:  "We are not a worldwide movement. Our focus is totally on Afghan territory. Ninety-nine percent of Taliban couldn’t even find the U.S. on a map."

There is a question that must be answered before we go any farther in the direction Obama-Biden and Company clearly have in mind – namely, negotiating what amounts to the surrender of Afghanistan to so-called "moderate" members of the Taliban:  The issue is not whether the Taliban is a worldwide movement, but is it part of one? 

Indisputably, the Taliban considers itself to be an element of the umma, the Dar al-Islam, the Muslim world.  As such, it embraces, practices and imposes the totalitarian, supremacist political-military-legal doctrine known as shariah.  It has these attributes in common with al Qaeda.  It also shares them with other unsavory elements around the world such as: the Muslim Brotherhood, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizb ut Tahrir, Hamas, Hezbollah, the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group that massacred dozens of Christians on Christmas Day.

The Obama administration refuses to recognize this reality.  It would have us believe that the only threat we face comes from al Qaeda.  In fact, increasingly, it seems to suggest that we need not be unduly concerned about its franchises in the Levant, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, just "core" al Qaeda.  For that matter, we don’t really have to worry about the core group’s foot soldiers, just their leadership.  And, according to senior U.S. officials, we have killed all but two of those. 

Thus, we are encouraged to recognize that the war – now re-euphemized as "Countering Violent Extremism" – is just about over, to the great credit of our Commander-in-Chief.

The only problem with this rosy picture is that it bears no resemblance to reality. 

In fact, our shariah-adherent enemies are not in retreat, let alone defeated.  Even if the top ranks of al Qaeda now doing business out of Pakistan have been substantially depleted, neither that hydra-headed organization nor its fellow jihadists with other affiliations evidence anything but a growing determination:  They see the coming of a  divinely mandated opportunity to prevail over the "Great Satan," a United States that has actually retreated from Iraq and is signaling its determination to do the same from Afghanistan.

This ominous assessment was validated just before Christmas in federal court in the Southern District of New York.  Notwithstanding the contention that the deep-seated enmity between Islam’s Shia and Sunni factions precludes cooperation between them, Judge George Daniels ruled that Shiite Iran is liable, along with the Sunnis of al Qaeda and the Taliban, for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

More to the present point, as the Associated Press put it, the judge also found that: "Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda by providing a safe haven for al Qaeda leadership and rank-and-file al Qaeda members."

Put simply, our enemies who share a fealty to shariah are perfectly capable – despite differences on fine points of Islamic practice – of collaborating to the common end of seeking our forcible submission to their doctrine or, failing that, to effecting our destruction.

In the interest of achieving tactical political advantage at home, President Obama and his subordinates are studiously ignoring this reality.  Worse yet, they are insisting that no one else understand it either. 

At this writing, an official witch-hunt is underway to find and eliminate training materials in FBI, other law enforcement, intelligence and military files that show the immediate threat we face emanates from shariah, not the leadership of core al Qaeda.  And to help ensure conformity with this dictate going forward, the administration is relying on vetting of trainers by "community leaders" affiliated with organizations the federal government has established are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Five thousand years ago, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu famously warned: "If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

At the moment we seem a lot closer to losing every battle than we are to winning any wars.  It would be a grave disservice to our splendid men and women who fight them – and perilous to the country they sacrifice so much to defend – were the Obama administration to persist in seeking the pretense of victory by defining down the enemy, and, in the process, ensuring we succumb to defeat.

In Egypt, Christians endure their ‘Kristallnacht’

Recently Jews in synagogues around the world heard an ancient prophesy about a time of tribulation for the Christians. In the haftarah, the Prophet Obadiah hears G-d warning the Edomites (traditionally a Jewish term for the people who eventually made up the Christian world): "Behold on that day… Your mighty ones to the South will be broken… every man will be cut off by the slaughter…"

How eerily reflective of the moment: Within just the last couple of weeks, the Washington-based Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a "Genocide Warning" for Christians and other religious minorities across the Middle East, and launched a petition urging President Barack Obama to speak up.

The "Arab Spring" seems to be rapidly springing shut on Middle East Christians, most clearly in Egypt where Islamists scored a landslide victory in the first of a three-stage parliamentary election there. The Muslim Brotherhood – whose goals include world conquest in the name of Allah, and whose motto is "Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope" – gained 40 percent of the vote, and the Salafists – who are said to be even more radical – garnered 25 percent. And that’s just in the big cities. As Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick surmises, the results will only get worse as results trickle in from the more religious hinterland.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s yuppies – the grand hope of dreamy Westerners – Twittered and Facebooked themselves a pathetic 15 percent of the vote. They will likely fade away, be absorbed or be wiped out.

While Israel fears for its peace treaty with the Arab world’s biggest country, Egypt’s Copts face a more immediate crisis. This Christian minority, which numbers some 11 million, was established in the land of the pharaohs long before the Islamic conquests. For the Copts, the "Arab Spring" is already a deep, deep, cold winter – and Obadiah’s words might seem a contemporary foreboding.

On December 7, Cynthia Farahat, a Coptic writer and human rights activist, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about the plight of her people. Farahat’s colleague Michael Mosad was one of the Christian men crushed by a military vehicle during the October 9 Maspero massacre, triggered by Copts protesting the burning of their churches by Islamist thugs. Farahat told the commission:

His legs were nearly severed from his body. As [Michael’s fiancée] sat next to him …soldiers gathered … brutally beating and kicking his motionless body. Vivian threw her body over his to protect him … but military officers beat and cursed her; they called her an infidel, ‘Christian sons of dogs,’ and worse–

Bothaina Kamel, a Muslim TV personality who hid inside a television station during the protests, heard the soldiers and the policemen yelling "Allahu Akbar" as they brutally beat the protestors.

Kamel told the commission she was able to get out of the building only by claiming she was a believing Muslim. She said that she had been warned that the military was inspecting people’s hands, as many Copts had tattoos of crosses. She said to leave the building, she had to trudge through the blood of Christians whom the soldiers had beaten to death.

 

 

 

Gordon College is a Christian school between Salem and Rockport. A few weeks ago I spoke there at a commemoration of Kristallnacht, Germany’s night of broken glass, the first mass assault on Europe’s Jews and the harbinger of the Shoah. I told the Christian audience how good it was to feel Christian support for Jews in these times, and that even some of the most stubborn of my people were now appreciating Evangelical support for Israel. I also said that we felt this blessed support came from a spirit of Christian altruism. But given the news from the Middle East, concern for others is surely not the only reason Christians need to support Israel.

I asked how many in the audience of 250 knew of Anne Frank. Almost every hand shot up. Then I asked how many had heard of Ayman Labib. I got a mass blank stare. Ayman was a 17-year-old Egyptian Christian who just weeks ago was beaten to death by his Muslim classmates as teachers watched because he refused their demand to remove his cross necklace.

I asked how many knew about the Maspero massacre, which had left at least 24 Copts dead and 270 injured. And whether they knew that since January, there had been more than 70 attacks on Christian churches or institutions in Egypt.

While tonight you commemorate a Jewish pogrom, I told them, Christianity has just suffered its own "Kristallnacht" … and I have yet to see much of a Christian response.

Christian persecution is spread throughout the Middle East, I told them. Christians are under siege in Iraq. In Syria, they are clasping tight to Bashir al Assad as a sort of protector, and will be completely vulnerable if – or when – he falls. The Lebanese Christians are threatened by Hezbollah, and the Sudanese Christians lost millions to the Jihad over the last two decades. Christians (and Jews) have been thoroughly "cleansed" from Saudi Arabia already.

In discussions that followed at Gordon, the Christians lamented that they lacked the sense of family that the Jewish people have. "Look at what you did for one Jew, Gilad Shalit. We don’t feel that way about other Christians." The global jihad, I said, might change that.

Meanwhile, the group Children of Holocaust Survivors, I’m proud to report, is ringing the alarm bells – on Facebook and Twitter – echoing the Christian Solidarity International genocide warning. And I am hearing rumblings of Christians coming awake.

I urge my readers to respond to this real, mounting humanitarian crisis by visiting www.csi-usa.org.

Tom Friedman’s losing battle

For decades New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman balanced his substantively anti-Israel positions with repeated protestations of love for Israel.

His balancing act ended last week when he employed traditional anti-Semitic slurs to dismiss the authenticity of substantive American support for Israel.

Channeling the longstanding anti-Semitic charge that Jewish money buys support for power-hungry Jews best expressed in the forged 19th century Protocols of the Elders of Zion and in John Mearshimer’s and Stephen Walt’s 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Friedman denied the significance of the US Congress’s overwhelming support for Israel.

As he put it, "I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."

It would be nice if Friedman is forced to pay some sort of price for finally coming out of the closet as a dyed-in-the-wool Israel hater. But he probably won’t. As he made clear in his column, he isn’t writing for the general public, but for a very small, select group of elitist leftists. These are the only people who matter to Friedman. And they matter to him because they share his opinions and his goal of indoctrinating young people to adopt his pathologically hostile views about Israel and his contempt for the American public that supports it.

It doesn’t matter to Friedman that overwhelming survey evidence, amassed over decades, show that the vast majority of the American public and the American Jewish community support Israel. It doesn’t matter to him that the support shown to Netanyahu in Congress last May was a reflection of that support.

As he put it, "The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away."

Embedded in this statement are two key points. First, Friedman assesses that the prevailing view on US college campuses are his own radical views. And he is convinced that college students share his views.

As he sees it, if college students share his views, then it doesn’t matter that Congress supports Israel today. Through the youth, he and his anti-Israel colleagues will own the future.

THE KEY question then is is Friedman right? Do he and his friends on the Israel bashing Left own the future? Are their efforts to convince young Americans in places like University of Wisconsin to embrace leftist dogmas, including rejection of Israel’s rights working? Is support for Israel diminishing? 

A plethora of data indicates that while the picture is mixed, the dominant trends do not favor Friedman’s views. This is true not only in the US but in Israel as well.

For instance, last week the Washington Examiner’s senior political commentator Michael Barone noted a massive deterioration of US President Barack Obama’ support levels among voters under 30 years old. Whereas Obama won this demographic in the 2008 elections by a 2-1 margin, two recent surveys show that if elections were held today, he would receive the support of just over a third of young voters.

Barone hypothesized that young Americans’ disenchantment has to do with their generational individualism bred of their limitless ability to express themselves through technology. This individualism has nothing in common with Obama’s economic and foreign policy collectivism.

As for young American Jews, according to a study published in August 2010 by Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, the ratio of young American Jews who feel attached to Israel – while lower than that of older Jews — has remained constant over the past twenty years. Moreover, Brandeis’s researchers told the Forward that "Every generation goes through a normal ‘lifecycle,’…in which attachment to Israel grows as people get older."

Even more notable than the consistency of support levels over time is the fact that researchers discerned no difference in levels of support for Israel across the political spectrum. As the study reported, "We found that conservatives were no more likely than liberals to feel connected to Israel or regard Israel as central to their Jewish identities. These findings are remarkable given that liberalism is associated with reduced support for Israel in the broader American population."

So not only have Friedman and his colleagues on the far Left failed to convince the general public to give up support for Israel, they have failed to get young American Jews to give up support for Israel.

THE FAILURE of Friedman’s fellow radicals to convince university students to abandon support for Israel or to water it down to the point of meaninglessness was demonstrated last month by Berkeley’s Jewish Student Union.

In recent years, Berkeley’s Hillel has come under withering criticism from pro-Israel activists on campus and countrywide for its leadership’s willingness to accept anti-Israel groups as members of its community of sponsored organizations.

Hillel-sponsored groups like Kesher Enoshi have welcomed the virulently anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace group into the Hillel tent. Hillel groups have participated in Israel Apartheid Week activities and supported university divestment from Israeli-owned firms. So too, Hillel’s leadership has held dances on Memorial Day for Fallen Israeli Soldiers, published fliers demeaning observant Jews and discouraged students from flying Israel’s flag at demonstrations.

Last month, Berkeley’s Jewish students took a step to regain control over their community from the anti-Israel radicals running Hillel. On November 16, Berkeley’s JSU voted to deny membership to J Street U, the college wing of the anti-Israel lobby J Street.

Speaking to the local Jewish paper j.weekly, Jacob Lewis, co-president of the pro-Israel student group Tikvah explained, "J Street is not pro-Israel but an anti-Israel organization that, as part of the mainstream Jewish community, I could not support."

Hillel’s leadership is up in arms. Rather than respect the decision of the JSU, Hillel’s professional "grown-ups" are urging them to reconsider.

In a letter to Haaretz and to the j. weekly, Berkeley Hillel’s board president Barbara Davis and its executive director Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman wrote, "We respect the right of the Jewish Student Union…to make its own decisions, but we encourage JSU to reconsider its vote and include J Street U as a member." 

The two then pledged that despite the verdict of Berkeley’s Jewish students, Hillel will continue to find J Street U’s programming.

THE SITUATION on Israeli college campuses is similar. Here too, Israeli students are in revolt against post-Zionist and anti- Zionist academics. Here too, the best efforts of radical professors to convince their students to abandon Zionism seem to be faltering. A poll of young Israelis taken last year by Dahaf for the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation indicated that young Israelis are far more politically conservative than their baby boomer parents and professors. And this disparity is apparent on university campuses.

Last year the Im Tirtzu student group published a report on the state of Political Science studies in Israeli universities. In a follow-on report, it placed a spotlight on the situation at Ben Gurion University’s Politics and Government Department.

Both reports were attacked by the media and by the professoriate as cheap, academically shoddy attempts to harm academic freedom.

Im Tirtzu’s reports were based on an analysis of course syllabi at all university departments and they concluded that there was a clear far left ideological bias inherent in course materials. Pro-Israel and non-hostile books and research were almost entirely absent from the curricula, they alleged.

As for Ben Gurion University’s Politics and Government Department, the Im Tirtzu report claimed that aside from political bias reflected in the course curricula, the department’s faculty is dominated by anti-Zionists. It charged that nine out of 11 permanent faculty members were involved in "radical left-wing" political activities and that six signed a letter supporting refusal to serve in the IDF.

While the media and the professorate pilloried their reports, the group’s charges caused the Council for Higher Education to form a blue ribbon committee last November comprised of seven political scientists – three from Israel and four from abroad — to conduct a study of all of the political science departments in Israeli universities. Last month the committee presented its conclusions to the CHE. And they were devastating.

The committee’s general recommendations involved requiring professors at all universities to make a distinction in their classrooms between facts and their political opinions. It also called for a more theoretical approach to political science with emphasis on research methods rather than activism and ideology. University departments were urged to use more politically balanced curricula.

As to Ben Gurion University, the commission said the Politics and Government Department needs to clean up its act or be shut down. Not only is it giving short shrift to the academic foundations of the discipline in favor of activism, its instructors use the classrooms to indoctrinate students.

So too, due to the department’s academic inadequacy, the committee claimed its master’s program’s "value…is doubtful," and said that the faculty could not adequately educate doctoral students.

On November 29, the CHE unanimously adopted the committee’s findings and recommendations. It gave Ben Gurion University until April to enact the required changes in its Politics and Government Department or shut its doors.

It will be interesting to see how events progress at Ben Gurion in the coming months, but one thing is clear enough, like Friedman and the Berkeley Hillel, its professors will no longer be able to pretend that they are fair and balanced professionals.

Their bluff was called.

On December 7 Politico’s Ben Smith published a detailed report about how two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters are waging a concerted, continuous campaign to diminish left wing Democratic support for Israel. Media Matters official M.J. Rosenberg acknowledged that given the depth of popular support for Israel in the US, chances are remote that their efforts will pay off in Congress today. He explained that his goal is to shift the Democratic Party’s position on Israel through its younger generation

As he put it, "We’re playing the long game here."

Happily, to date, they are losing the long game as well as the short game both in Israel and the US. While it is important to remain on guard against radicals like Friedman and Rosenberg and their fellow travelers on campuses, it is also important to recognize that despite their powerful positions, they remain marginal voices in both Israel and the US.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Speak Not of Evil

One of the most popular attractions in Washington, D.C. is a building that graces Pennsylvania Avenue with an exterior engraved with the First Amendment to the Constitution and its guarantee of, among other liberties, freedom of speech.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been well advised to hold her three-day meeting last week with the some of the most determined enemies of free expression – increasingly doing business as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – at the Newseum, rather a few blocks away in Foggy Bottom.

After all, at that shrine to our most fundamental civil rights, the delegates would have found an exhibit about freedom of speech which declares: “For better or worse, the First Amendment helps shelter the varied results of free expression even when they are considered by some to be offensive or distasteful.”  

Unfortunately, such shelter is precisely what the Organization of Islamic Cooperation wishes to eliminate when it comes to expression about its faith that the OIC’s 57 member nations and other Islamists find “offensive or distasteful.”  

Advancing that agenda is the OIC’s purpose in the so-called “Istanbul Process” that it launched with Mrs. Clinton last July in Turkey.  As the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea pointed out in a withering indictment of this diplomatic exercise published last week in the New York Post, “the gathering was folly.”  

Ms. Shea provides several reasons for that conclusion.  Reduced to their essence, it is folly for America to be legitimating – let alone engaging in – a search for ways to “bridge” the gap between our First Amendment rights, on the one hand, and the Islamists’ belief that anyexpression that “offends” their religion is a capital offense, on the other.  To do so is to affront the Constitution and threaten the free and tolerant society it has made possible in this country.

The Obama administration started down this ill-advised road by cosponsoring in 2009 an OIC-drafted resolution in the UN Human Rights Council that condemned “defamation of religion” – read, Islam.  That initiative helped advance the Islamists’ twelve-year campaign to “prohibit and criminalize” such defamation in accordance with the “blasphemy laws” that are part of the totalitarian doctrine they call shariah.

Then, as more and more of the Free World began awakening to the danger posed by such efforts to compel them to submit to shariah, Team Obama helped engineer a new document at the Human Rights Council.  Adopted in March, Resolution 16/18 focused, instead of banning defamation, on getting the world’s nations to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization, and  discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”  

In Istanbul in July, Mrs. Clinton kicked off her “process” with a passing nod to free speech: “We…understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy.”  She went on, however, to declare:  “So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’tfeel that they have the support to do what we abhor.”  

In other words, the Obama administration believes it can silence those whose expressions are, in the words of the Newseum, “considered by some to be offensive or distasteful.”  Or, in the words of the OIC, “Islamophobia.”  It’s just that, instead of criminalizing such behavior, Team Obama will use “peer pressure and shaming.”

It gets worse. In the course of last week’s three-day, mostly closed-door confab at the State Department called to “implement” Resolution 16/18, the OIC focus seemed to be on how the United States and other non-Muslim, freedom-loving states would prevent “incitement.”  Sec. Clinton asserted that we would only be obliged to counter incitement  to “imminent violence.”  But this is a classic slippery-slope, opening America to prohibitions on “hate speech” at the insistence of people who, irony of ironies, are more routinely engaged in incitement to imminent violence and religious intolerance than anyone else on the planet: the Islamists.

The appearance of U.S. submission to shariah was only exacerbated by the opening comments of the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Thomas Perez.  As Ms. Shea put it:

“[[Perez’s] opening keynote address gave a one-sided historical depiction of American bigotry against religiousminorities, including Muslims, without explaining our relatively exemplary achievement of upholding individual freedoms of religion and speech in an overwhelmingly tolerant and pluralistic society.] He told the participants,some representing the world’s most repressive states, that America can learn to protect religious tolerance from them.”

It is particularly troubling that Nina Shea has just been removed as a commissioner of the U.S. Commission onReligious Freedom.  That was the upshot of a compromise that saw Senator Dick Durban abandoning his stealthy bid todeny the reauthorization of the Commission, but only if Ms. Shea and nearly all of her colleagues lost their posts.  Practically the only exception is Dr. Azizah al-Hibr, a woman who has espoused the creation of shariah courts in the United States.

If you haven’t been to – or, for that matter, been by – the Newseum lately, you might want to make a point of paying it a visit.  See it before the diplomats decide that our pesky First Amendment condones “offensive or distasteful” expression that constitutes unacceptable “incitement,” and is no longer applicable.

Islamic World Tells Clinton: Defamation of Islam Must be Prevented — in America

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to Washington this week, it is critical that Americans pay attention to what these two leaders intend to do.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, working teams from the Department of State (DoS) and the OIC are going to discuss implementation mechanisms that could impose limits on freedom of speech and expression.

The OIC’s purpose, as stated explicitly in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia, is to criminalize "incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds."  Incitement is to be defined by applying the "test of consequences" to speech.  Under this twisted perversion of falsely "yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater," it doesn’t matter what someone actually says — or even whether it is true or not; if someone else commits violence and says it’s because of something that person said, the speaker will be held criminally liable.

The OIC is taking direct aim at free speech and expression about Islam.  Neither Christianity nor Judaism is named in the OIC’s official documents, whose only concern is to make the world safe from "defamation" of Islam — a charge that includes speaking truthfully about the national security implications of the Islamic doctrine of jihad.

Incitement to hatred under the OIC definition includes artistic expression like the Danish cartoons, literary expression like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, or Pastor Terry Jones’ burning of his personally owned copy of the Qur’an.  According to the "test of consequences," if Muslims feel compelled to burn, loot, riot, and kill in response to such exercises of free expression, under the laws the OIC wants the U.S. to enact, it would be the editor and cartoonist of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Salman Rushdie, and Terry Jones who would be held criminally responsible for any damage or deaths that ensue.

Last March, the State Department and Secretary Clinton insisted that "combating intolerance based on religion" can be accomplished without compromising Americans’ treasured First Amendment rights.  But if that were so, there would be no possible excuse for engaging at this level with an organization like the OIC that is openly dedicated to implementing Islamic law globally.  This is why it is so important to pay attention not only to the present agenda, but to a series of documents leading up to it, issued by both the U.S. and the OIC.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, the DoS and OIC working teams will focus on implementation mechanisms for "Resolution 16/18," a declaration that was adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in April 2011.

Resolution 16/18 was hailed as a victory by Clinton, because it calls on countries to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization" based on religion without criminalizing free speech — except in cases of "incitement to imminent violence."  But if the criterion for determining "incitement to imminent violence" is a new "test of consequences," then this is nothing but an invitation to stage Muslim "Days of Rage" following the slightest perceived offense by a Western blogger, instructor, or radio show guest, all of whom will be held legally liable for "causing" the destruction, possibly even if what they’ve said is merely a statement of fact.  The implications of such prior restraint on free speech would be chilling (which is precisely the point).

In fact, the "test of consequences" is already being applied rigorously in European media and courts, where any act or threat of violence — whether by a jihadist, insane person, or counter-jihadist — is defined as a "consequence" of statements that are critical of some aspect of Islam and, therefore, to be criminalized.  Recent trials of Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, Austrian free speech champion Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Danish Islamic expert Lars Hedegaard (as well as the witch hunt for "instigators" that followed the murderous attacks by Norwegian blogger Anders Behring Brevik) all attest to the extent of these "hate speech" laws’ oppressive pall over what is left of the European Enlightenment.  Now, if the OIC and the Obama administration have their way, it’s America’s turn.

Once it’s understood that under Islamic law, "slander" is defined as saying "anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike," the scope of potential proximate causes of Muslim rage becomes obvious.  For instance, in the Preamble to the Resolutions on Legal Affairs Adopted by the 38th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC in Astana, Kazakhstan in June 2011, under paragraph 9, the OIC:

Denounces media campaigns and fabrications made by some quarters in non-Member States [i.e., the Dar al-Harb or West] regarding the mistreatment of non-Muslim minorities and communities in the OIC Member States under the slogan of religious freedom and so on.

Consider what is likely to be a bloodbath for Coptic Christians that will occur as soon as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafist allies are firmly in control of Egypt.  This provision means that any Western media that accurately report that coming massacre could be legally charged with "incitement to imminent violence" under the test of consequences, in effect blaming those who raise the alarm instead of those who perpetrate the violence.

Clearly, the OIC feels some sense of urgency to get the rest of the non-Muslim world, and especially the U.S., on board with these objectives as Paragraph 10:

Expresses the need to pursue as a matter of priority, a common policy aimed at preventing defamation of Islam perpetrated under the pretext and justification of the freedom of expression in particular through media and Internet.

In this same document is the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers’ "Resolution No. 1/38-LEG On Follow Up and Coordination of Work on Human Rights," which makes reference to the OIC’s new "Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights" and stipulates that it "shall promote the civil, political, social, and economic rights enshrined in the Organization’s covenants and declarations and in universally agreed human rights instruments, in conformity with Islamic values."  [Emphasis added.]  This wording alone should set off alarm bells in view of the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), which explicitly declared that when the Muslim ummah (as represented by the OIC) uses the term "human rights," what is meant is Islamic law (sharia).  "Universally agreed" or not, the CDHRI was served as an official document to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1993, thereby creating an established instrument of reference on the Islamic definition of "human rights." 

The foundational documents upon which the Muslim ummah — the OIC — now relies to undergird its sharia agenda were drafted years ago.  The 1966 U.N. Commission for Human Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which entered into force in 1976, was based firmly on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and preceded the 1969 creation of the OIC by just a few years.  The ICCPR’s Articles 19 (3) and 20 nevertheless foreshadow sharia Islam’s demand for restrictions on free speech in an explicit and chilling way — and, as will be seen, in a way the OIC is trying to exploit:

Article 19

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference

2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression: this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of this choice

3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as provided by law and are necessary.

   (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

   (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

Article 20

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Clearly, the OIC is trying to exploit these international standards, as shown in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia posted at its online Islamophobia Observatory.  Given the ICCPR’s assertions above, the OIC’s objective has long since been entered into official U.N. language.  It required only a narrowing of the focus from the generality of the ICCPR down to the OIC’s exclusive interest in protecting Islam from discrimination.  It also required bringing the U.S. on board with the program to enforce Islamic law on slander.  With the willing participation of the Obama administration, the OIC has tackled both of these challenges.  In Section 6 of the Islamophobia Report, "Conclusions and Recommendations," the language references the OIC goal of "removing the gaps in international legal instruments" to force the non-Muslim world to comply with its plan to criminalize "slander" of Islam (emphasis added):

d. Ensuring swift and effective implementation of the new approach signified by the consensual adoption of HRC Resolution 16/18, entitled ‘combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief’, by inter alia, removing the gaps in implementation and interpretation of international legal instruments and criminalizing acts of incitement to hatred and violence…

e. Constructively engaging to bridge divergent views on the limits to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, in a structured multilateral framework…geared toward filling the ‘interpretation void’ with regard to the interface between articles 19(3) and 20 of the ICCPR based on emerging approaches like applying the ‘test of consequences.’

Those "gaps in implementation and interpretation" refer to U.S. objections to criminalizing free speech (in violation of the First Amendment), and the "structured multilateral framework" would appear to be the agenda in Washington, D.C. from December 12 to 14 at the meeting between Clinton and OIC Secretary General Ihsanoglu.  It would not be overreaching to conclude that the purpose of this meeting, at least from the OIC perspective, is to convince the Obama administration that free speech that rouses Muslim masses to fury — as defined by the "test of consequences" — must be restricted under U.S. law to bring it into compliance with sharia law’s dictates on slander.

Clinton’s own statements reflect the OIC language on the "gap" (emphasis added):

… together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps … to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

Despite disingenuous protestations by Clinton, another OIC document likely to be on the table at the Department of State/OIC working sessions abandons all pretense that any other religion besides Islam is the point of discussion.  The Resolutions on Political Affairs Adopted by the Thirty-Eighth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers at the June 2011 OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Kazakhstan (emphasis added):

5. Affirms that freedoms have to be exercised with responsibility and with due regard for the fundamental rights of others and, in this context, condemns in the strongest possible terms, all blasphemous acts against Islamic principles, symbols and sacred personalities, in particular, the despicable act of burning of the Holy Quran in Florida, USA on 20 March 2011, publication of offensive caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), all abhorrent and irresponsible statements about Islam and its sacred personalities, and screening of defamatory documentary about the Holy Quran [Wilders’ Fitna] and dissemination of this hate material under the pretext of freedom of expression and opinion[.]

Subsequent sections in the same document stress "the need to prevent the abuse of freedom of expression and press for insulting Islam and other divine religions" and to reaffirm "that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or group." It furthermore:

[c]alls upon all States to prevent any advocacy of religious discrimination, hostility or violence and defamation of Islam by incorporating legal and administrative measures which render defamation illegal and punishable by law, and also urges all Member States to adopt specific and relevant educational measures at all levels[.]

It may be recalled that the Obama administration claimed, obviously incorrectly, that defamation was no longer part of these agreements.  The language of these resolutions instead stresses "the importance of expediting the implementation process of its decision on developing a legally binding international instrument to prevent intolerance, discrimination, prejudice and hatred on the grounds of religion, and defamation of religions[.]"

The Department of State is not the only U.S. government agency committed to achieving compliance with the OIC’s "Islamophobia" censorship agenda.  The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security both have committed publicly to an overhaul of their training materials to ensure that nothing in the curriculum gives "offense" to Muslim Brotherhood affiliates such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) or the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), with which both departments maintain close relationships.  Instructors who previously taught the intrinsic connection among Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture and Islamic terrorism henceforth will be blacklisted by the U.S. government.  As documented by the intrepid columnist and author Diana West, the Department of Defense also has made its obeisance to Islam, with troop instructions on how to handle the Qur’an and avoid spitting, urinating, or sleeping with feet pointed in the direction of Mecca.

Capping the administration’s campaign to align U.S. national security policy within the parameters of Islamic law, the White House published "Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States" in December 2011.  The plan makes clear that "violent extremism," not Islamic terrorism, is the primary national security threat to the homeland.  According to this "strategy," the solution is partnership with "local communities" — the term used for the administration’s favored Muslim Brotherhood front groups, which already are using such relationships to silence their critics, both inside and outside government.  These new rules of censorship state that the term "violent extremism" can no longer be used in combination with terms like "jihad," "Islam," "Islamist," or "sharia."  And these new rules are already being taught to U.S. law enforcement, homeland security offices, and the military nationwide.

The agenda of this week’s Department of State/OIC meetings may mark an important "milestone," as Sayyed Qutb might put it, on the pathway to sharia in America.  If — under the "test of consequences" — those who speak truth about Islam, sharia, and jihad may be held criminally responsible for the violent actions of those who say they find such truth "offensive," then, in the future, "violent extremists" could be just about anyone…anyone the government, in obedience to the sharia dictates of the OIC, decides they are.

Further, if the rubric is to be based on this "test of consequence," then it creates a real temptation to any administration so inclined to "create" consequences that will justify a change in America’s free speech rights.  By way of example, analysts have suggested that the motive for the Department of Justice’s "Fast and Furious" scandal, now under congressional investigation, may have been to create a "crisis" — a "consequence" — caused by U.S. guns shipped across the border to Mexican drug-dealers (and used in multiple homicides, including an American Border Protection officer) to "nudge" public consensus to expand gun control laws.

Even if Obama’s State Department seems fully enamored with a "test of consequences" on speech critical of Islam, most Americans across the political spectrum will realize that this perverts the traditional understanding of the First Amendment.  It is to be hoped that dedication to the Constitution — rather than to the OIC’s definition of "slander" of Islam or the "test of consequences" — will prevail among the ranks of our national leadership.  Regardless of what’s going on behind closed doors at the State Department this week, Americans should be aware — and outraged.  An informed citizenry, as always, remains the final defense of the Republic.

Clare M. Lopez is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and also at The Clarion Fund.

The Real EMP Threat

On the front page, Monday’s New York Times provides a slanted and insidious "news" item on Newt Gingrich’s warnings about the danger of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. The author of the piece, William Broad, clearly sought to convey the impression that the former House Speaker is scaremongering about a nonexistent, or at least much exaggerated, threat. This piece is seriously ill-informed, misleading, and dangerous insofar as it serves to perpetuate what is already a serious vulnerability to EMP attacks.

Among the remarkable defects in Broad’s reporting are the following:

The Times failed to mention the fact that a blue-ribbon, congressionally mandated EMP Threat Commission produced a number of studies confirming the reality of a scenario in which ballistic-missile-delivered high-altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks could occur, with "catastrophic" effects on the United States.

The Times reports that some of those who dismiss the EMP threat claim that missile defense is the answer. One cannot help but observe an irony: Sources such as Philip Coyle and the Union of Concerned Scientists – and, for that matter, William Broad and his newspaper – have been relentlessly hostile to American deployments of anti-missile systems.

Those of us who actually support U.S. missile defense believe it can and must be part of the answer – and would be, had the critics and the Obama administration not done everything possible to defund, dumb down, and otherwise constrain such systems.

The Times also promotes the meme that, even if EMP could be a threat, it isn’t at the moment, since the nations that we might worry about are at the "kindergarten stage" of obtaining the long-range missiles and nuclear arms they would need to engage in such attacks against the United States. This misses a couple of key points:

Among the nations that understand America’s vulnerability to EMP are Russia and China. They are certainly capable of exploiting it at any time.

In addition, an enemy need not have long-range missiles; short-range missiles launched off a ship would suffice to deliver a strategic EMP attack. Virtually all the world’s bad guys – including not only North Korea and Iran, but the Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah as well – have Scud missiles that could perform this mission. What is more, Iran has already test-launched ballistic missiles off of ships and launched another, the Shahab-3, in a manner that seemed to simulate a detonation at apogee. In other words, as soon as a nuclear weapon is available, Iran could be capable of waging an EMP attack.

The prospect of relatively short-range missiles being used to mount an EMP strike compounds the challenge to our modest anti-missile systems. They may or may not be able to contend with missiles launched from the sea close in to our shores. The determining factor would primarily be the location and readiness of the Navy’s missile-defense-equipped Aegis ships. Our west-coast-deployed, ground-based interceptors will be unable to do the job against short-range missiles fired off our east or Gulf coasts. (On this, see a recent article on NRO, co-authored by a former director of Pres. George H. W. Bush’s missile-defense program, Amb. Henry Cooper, and Dr. Robert Pfaltzgraff.)

Finally, the Times‘s report ignores another, particularly ominous fact: Even if there were no danger of what the Obama administration calls "man-caused disasters" involving electromagnetic pulse attacks, there is the imminent problem that Mother Nature will unleash what amounts to the same thing, via cyclically occurring and intense solar flaring that is expected to occur within the next few years.

The result will be to expose large swaths of the northern hemisphere to high levels of electromagnetic energy. Missile defenses obviously provide no protection against such an effect. Only hardening of our electrical grid and other critical infrastructure will prevent a similar kind of disruption and possible destruction of both – with truly calamitous consequences for our country and its people.

In short, Newt Gingrich is absolutely right, and the New York Times shamefully wrong. The EMP threat to America is real and potentially catastrophic. Our enemies know this, and either have obtained the means to inflict such devastation or are well along in the process of acquiring them. Even if they do not execute such a strike, we must be prepared to contend with a naturally occurring phenomenon that may be every bit as devastating.

If the Times‘s mischaracterization of this danger contributes to our continued vulnerability, it will represent more than journalistic malpractice. It may help exacerbate a looming disaster.

Gingrich’s fresh hope

Last Friday, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, "who are in fact Arabs."

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the "Palestinian people" was artificially carved out of the Arab population of "Greater Syria." "Greater Syria" included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term "Palestinian people" only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic "Palestinian" identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism.

Since Gingrich spoke out on Friday, his factually accurate statement has been under assault from three directions. First, it has been attacked by Palestinian apologists in the postmodernist camp. Speaking to CNN, Hussein Ibish from the American Task Force on Palestine argued that Gingrich’s statement was an outrage because while he was right about the Palestinians being an artificial people, in Ibish’s view, Israelis were just as artificial. That is, he equated the Palestinians’ 91-year-old nationalism with the Jews’ 3,500-year-old nationalism.

In his words, "To call the Palestinians ‘an invented people’ in an obvious effort to undermine their national identity is outrageous, especially since there was no such thing as an ‘Israeli’ before 1948."

Ibish’s nonsense is easily dispatched by a simple reading of the Hebrew Bible. As anyone semi-literate in Hebrew recognizes, the Israelis were not created in 1948. Three thousand years ago, the Israelis were led by a king named David. The Israelis had an independent commonwealth in the Land of Israel, and their capital city was Jerusalem.

The fact that 500 years ago King James renamed the Israelis "Israelites" is irrelevant to the basic truth that there is nothing new or artificial about the Israeli people. And Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, did not arise in competition with Arab nationalism. Zionism has been a central feature of Jewish identity for 3,500 years.

THE SECOND line of attack against Gingrich denies the veracity of his claim. Palestinian luminaries like the PA’s unelected Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told CNN, "The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history."

Fayyad’s historically unsubstantiated claim was further expounded on by Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dmitri Diliani in an interview with CNN. "The Palestinian people [are] descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 BCE," Diliani asserted, 

The Land of Israel has the greatest density of archeological sites in the world. Judea, Samaria, the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan Heights and other areas of the country are packed with archeological evidence of the Jewish commonwealths. As for Jerusalem, literally every inch of the city holds physical proof of the Jewish people’s historical claims to the city.

To date, no archeological or other evidence has been found linking the Palestinians to the city or the Jebusites.

From a US domestic political perspective, the third line of attack against Gingrich’s factual statement has been the most significant. The attacks involve conservative Washington insiders, many of whom are outspoken supporters of Gingrich’s principal rival for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

To date, the attackers’ most outspoken representative has been Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. These insiders argue that although Gingrich spoke the truth, it was irresponsible and unstatesmanlike for him to have done so.

As Rubin put it on Monday, "Do conservatives really think it is a good idea for their nominee to reverse decades of US policy and deny there is a Palestinian national identity?"

In their view, Gingrich is an irresponsible flamethrower because he is turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus. That consensus is based on ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are an artificial people whose identity sprang not from any shared historical experience, but from opposition to Jewish nationalism.

The policy goal of the consensus is to establish an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that will live at peace with Israel.

This policy was obsessively advanced throughout the 1990s until it failed completely in 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s and then US president Bill Clinton’s offer of Palestinian statehood and began the Palestinian terror war against Israel.

BUT RATHER than acknowledge that the policy – and the embrace of Palestinian national identity at its heart – had failed, and consider other options, the US policy establishment in Washington clung to it for dear life. Republicans like Rubin’s mentor, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, went on to support enthusiastically Israel’s surrender of Gaza in 2005, and to push for Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections. That withdrawal and those elections catapulted the jihadist terror group to power.

The consensus that Gingrich rejected by telling the truth about the artificial nature of Palestinian nationalism was based on an attempt to square popular support for Israel with the elite’s penchant for appeasement. On the one hand, due to overwhelming public support for a strong US alliance with Israel, most US policy-makers have not dared to abandon Israel as a US ally.

On the other hand, American policy-makers have been historically uncomfortable having to champion Israel to their anti-Israel European colleagues and to their Arab interlocutors who share the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

The policy of seeking to meld an anti-Israel Arab appeasement policy with a pro-Israel anti-appeasement policy was embraced by successive US administrations until it was summarily discarded by President Barack Obama three years ago. Obama replaced the two-headed policy with one of pure Arab appeasement.

Obama was able to justify his move because the two-pronged policy had failed. There was no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The price of oil had skyrocketed, and US interests throughout the region were increasingly threatened.

For its part, Israel was far more vulnerable to terror and war than it had been in years. And its diplomatic isolation was acute and rising.

Unfortunately for both the US and Israel, Obama’s break with the consensus has destabilized the region, endangered Israel and imperiled US interests to a far greater degree than they had been under the failed dual-track policy of his predecessors. Throughout the Arab world, Islamist forces are on the rise.

Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.

The US is no longer seen as a credible regional power as it pulls its forces out of Iraq without victory, hamstrings its forces in Afghanistan, dooming them to attrition and defeat, and abandons its allies in country after country.

The stark contrast between Obama’s rejection of the failed consensus on the one hand and Gingrich’s rejection of the failed consensus on the other hand indicates that Gingrich may well be the perfect foil for Obama.

Gingrich’s willingness to state and defend the truth about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the perfect response to Obama’s disastrous speech "to the Muslim world" in Cairo in June 2009. It was in that speech that Obama officially abandoned the bipartisan consensus, abandoned Israel and the truth about Zionism and Jewish national rights, and embraced completely the lie of Palestinian nationalism and national rights.

Both Rubin and Abrams, as well as Romney, justified their attacks on Gingrich and their defense of the failed consensus by noting that no Israeli leaders are saying what Gingrich said. Rubin went so far as to allege that Gingrich’s words of truth about the Palestinians hurt Israel.

This is of course absurd. What many Americans fail to recognize is that Israeli leaders are not as free to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict as American leaders are. Rather than look to Israel for leadership on this issue, American leaders would do well to view Israel as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War. With half of Berlin occupied by the Red Army and West Berlin serving as the tripwire for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, West German leaders were not as free to tell the truth about the Soviet Union as American leaders were.

Today, with Jerusalem under constant political and terror threat, with all of Israel increasingly encircled by Islamist regimes, and with the Obama administration abandoning traditional US support for Israel, it is becoming less and less reasonable to expect Israel to take the rhetorical lead in telling important and difficult truths about the nature of its neighbors.

When Romney criticized Gingrich’s statement as unhelpful to Israel, Gingrich replied, "I feel quite confident that an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of, and the casualties they are taking and the people around them who say, ‘They do not have a right to exist and we want to destroy them.’" 

And he is absolutely right. It was more than nice. It was heartening.

Thirty years of pre-Obama American lying about the nature of the conflict in an attempt to balance support for Israel with appeasement of the Arabs did not make the US safer or the Middle East more peaceful. A return to that policy under a new Republican president will not be sufficient to restore stability and security to the region.

And the need for such a restoration is acute. Under Obama, the last three years of US abandonment of the truth about Israel for Palestinian lies has made the region less stable, Israel more vulnerable, the US less respected and US interests more threatened.

Gingrich’s statement of truth was not an act of irresponsible flame throwing. It was the beginning of an antidote to Obama’s abandonment of truth and reason in favor of lies and appeasement. And as such, it was not a cause for anger. It was a cause for hope.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

The Center Fact Checks the New York Times on the Danger of EMP Attack

In response to a New York Times article titled “Among Gingrich’s Passions, a Doomsday Vision,” the Center for Security Policy offered the following fact check outlining the true threat an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack would pose.

“The EMP threat to America is real and potentially horrific damaging,” Center President Frank Gaffney said. “Our enemies know it and either have or are working hard to obtain the means to inflict such devastation.  Even if they do not execute such a strike, we must be prepared to contend with a naturally occurring phenomenon that may be every bit as devastating.  If the Times mischaracterization of this danger contributes to our continued vulnerability, it will represent more than journalistic malpractice.  It may help exacerbate a looming disaster.”

The New York Times’ Facts and Fallacies on the EMP Threat

 

Fallacy: The Times reports “Electromagnetic pulse is a real phenomenon, though many scientists consider it yesteryear’s concern.”

Fact: The Times failed to mention the fact that a blue-ribbon, congressionally mandated EMP Threat Commission had produced a number of studies confirming the reality of ballistic missile-delivered electro-magnetic pulse attacks and concluding that, should it happen, the effect on this country would be “catastrophic.”

 ***

Fallacy: Missile defense is the answer to the EMP threat.

Fact: Sources such as Philip Coyle and the Union of Concerned Scientists have been relentlessly hostile to American deployments of anti-missile systems.

The prospect of relatively short-range missiles being used to mount an EMP strike compounds the challenge to our modest anti-missile systems. The determining factor would be primarily the location and readiness of our missile defense-equipped Aegis ships.  Our West Coast-deployed, Ground-Based Interceptors will be unable to do the job against short-range missiles fired off our East or Gulf Coasts.

***

Fallacy: Even if EMP could be a threat, it isn’t at the moment since the nations that we might worry about are at the “kindergarten stage” of obtaining the long-range missiles and nuclear arms they would need to engage in such attacks against the United States.

Fact: Among the nations who understand America’s vulnerability to EMP are Russia and China, both of whom possess advanced nuclear arsenals.An enemy need not have long-range missiles. Short-range missiles launched of a ship would suffice to deliver a strategic EMP attack. Virtually all the world’s bad actors – including not only North Korea and Iran but the Islamist terrorist group, Hezbollah – have SCUD missiles that could perform this mission.  What is more, Iran has test-launched ballistic missiles off of ships and flown another, the Shahab-3, that simulated a detonation at apogee.

Furthermore, an enemy need not have long-range missiles. Short-range missiles launched of a ship would suffice to deliver a strategic EMP attack. Virtually all the world’s bad actors – including not only North Korea and Iran but the Islamist terrorist group, Hezbollah – have SCUD missiles that could perform this mission.  What is more, Iran has test-launched ballistic missiles off of ships and flown another, the Shahab-3, that simulated a detonation at apogee.

***

Fallacy: The Times article solely focuses on the EMP threat in light of what the Obama administration calls “man-caused disasters.”

Fact: The sun possesses the capability to unleash what amounts to the same thing via cyclically occurring and intense solar flaring that is expected to occur within the next few years. We are overdue for a so-called “Carrington Event,” which last happened in the 19th century.

The result will be to expose large swaths of the northern hemisphere to high-levels of electro-magnetic energy.  Missile defenses provide no protection against such an effect.  Only hardening of our electrical grid and other critical infrastructure will prevent a similar kind of disruption and possible destruction of both – with truly catastrophic consequences for our country and its people.

Silencing the Watchdogs of Religious Freedom: Durbin’s War on the USCIRF

We have been hearing a lot about the Muslim Brotherhood lately – and none of it is good news.  Get used to it.  With the Brotherhood’s ascendancy in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and beyond, the world is going to be subjected to a crash course in Islamist supremacism – and what it means for the rest of us.

We were on notice even before the Egyptian elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and their allies secured upwards of sixty percent of the votes in that country’s new, post-Mubarak parliament – and the murderous violence towards Coptic Christians that preceded them.  A reminder came on December 7th when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed convictions ofleaders of the MB-associated Holy Land Foundation.  The earlier trial in 2008 did much to expose the totalitarian, supremacist nature and seditious objectives of that group, elsewhere and here in the United States.

Notably, evidence introduced (uncontested by the defense) in that case by federal prosecutors established that the Brotherhood has established myriad front organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the North American IslamicTrust (NAIT), to pursue what it calls “civilization jihad.”  This is a stealthy form of holy war, designed to “eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within…by their hands [i.e., those of the infidels].”

The Obama administration has greatly facilitated the efforts of such organizations to penetrate and influence the government of the United States.  To cite but one example, on December 12-14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is convening a meeting with representatives of theBrotherhood’s multinational official counterpart, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).  As Phyllis Chesler points out in a brilliant essay published by PJMedia () entitled “The End of Religious Freedom,” the OIC’s stated purpose for this meeting is to counter: “media campaigns and fabrications made by some quarters in non-member states regarding the mistreatment of non-Muslim minorities and communities in the OIC member states under the slogans of religious freedoms and so on.”

Put simply, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other adherents to the Islamist politico-military-legal doctrine of shariah seek to impose their practice of “blasphemy” laws worldwide.  Accordingly, they seek to suppress information that “offends Muslims” or otherwise puts them, their agenda or their behavior in a negative light – no matter how accurately.

In recent years, the U.S. government has increasingly conformed to what amount to  shariah blasphemy laws.  A singular exception has been the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).  Since its inception by act of Congress in 1998, the unpaid commissioners have rendered incalculably important servicemonitoring and reporting on threats to freedom of religion emanating from Islamist and other sources.

USCIRF has, for example, documented the plight of Copts in Egypt and Christians and Jews inother parts of the Middle East.  They have exposed how non-shariah-adherent Muslims and “apostates” from Islam have been raped, tortured and killed for deviating from what is deemed to be the true faith by Brotherhood, OIC and like-minded forces.

The Commission has also helped expose how Saudi government-supplied textbooks used, among other places, in American madrassas, extol violent jihadism and intolerance for people of other faiths.  Interestingly, such texts explain three different ways homosexuals can be executed in conformity with shariah’s treatment of their behavior as a capital offense.

Now that Team Obama has made promoting the radical lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender agenda whatMrs. Clinton calls a U.S. foreign policy priority,” one would think the administration would be grateful for the work the Religious Freedom Commission has done, among other things, to expose and demand changes in such Saudi textbooks.

To the contrary, the Obama administration has been working behind the scenes to do as its Islamist friends have demanded by shutting down the USCIRF.  It has enlisted for this purpose Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate’s Number 2 Democrat.  Sen. Durbin is not only perfectly placed to do the deed stealthily.  He has his own close associations with a number of the Brotherhood’s top fronts and operatives in his home state of Illinois, in Washington and elsewhere across the country.

As it happens, in addition to serving as the Majority Whip, Sen. Durbin is a member of both the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees – the panels responsible for reauthorizing and funding the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  He has used his leadership and committee positions to place what amount to secret “holds” on legislation that would extend the life of the commission.

Consequently, unless something changes before the current government funding bill expires, our nation’s sole official, independent and still-effective watchdog for religious liberty – and the most trusted and important American voice for those being denied it – will go out of business on December 16th.

The Majority Whip’s role in this stealthy jihad against an agency that still dares to speak thetruth to the Islamists’ power is all the more reprehensible since Senator Durbin frequently excoriates his colleagues’ use of secret holds.  In fact, he has cosponsored legislation to bar the practice.  Such rank hypocrisy simply adds to the venality of Sen. Durbin’s conduct in this matter.

So does the reported reason for the hold Senator Durbin has yet to acknowledge he is exercising against the USCIRF.  Evidently, he is trying to euchre members of the House of Representatives into earmarking funds for the federal government to purchase a state prison in Thompson, Illinois that his home state can no longer afford to operate.

When the idea of a federal takeover of this facility was first floated last year, it ran into strenuous opposition on both sides of Capitol Hill.  Not only was the deal deemed to be unaffordable at a time of yawning federal deficits.  It turned out that the Obama administration and its allies in Illinois’ Democratic machine in Washington and Springfield state had in mind another, even more outrageous motivation: the Thompson prison could serve as the place to relocate terrorists currently held offshore at Guantanamo Bay, allowing Gitmo’s closure.

In other words, Sen. Durbin is seeking to secure by stealth an earmark that would overturn existing legislation barring the relocation of such detainees inside the United States – and the real risk that they would, thereby, be granted constitutional rights, access to civilian U.S. courts and perhaps be set loose in our country by irresponsible federal judges.  How many more reasons do the American people need to oppose and condemn Dick Durbin’s shenanigans?

Voters in Illinois and elsewhere need to call out Senator Durbin’s contribution to the stealth jihad – both with his office and, in the case of other Senators’ constituents, those of their own representatives.  America needs to safeguard religious freedoms against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  To that end, we must strengthen, not garrote, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom – the one official entity still doing that vital mission.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.