Tag Archives: CAIR

Boycott of the International Jihads institutional arm: No good can come of the OIC meeting in Chicago

The Center for Security Policy today called on the Obama administration to withdraw from a meeting taking place in Chicago from September 28-30 that will be sponsored by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – the anti-Constitution, anti-human rights, anti-Israel organization claiming to speak on behalf of 56 Muslim nations (plus “Palestine”).  On this occasion, U.S. government officials would not only be meeting with the senior leadership of the OIC.  They would also be interacting with leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.  The FBI formally halted its “outreach” to CAIR almost two years ago, a long-overdue policy shift that the Obama administration would effectively reverse were it to attend the conference next week in Chicago.

Among the senior U.S. government officials advertized as participating in such (renewed) “outreach” are: the White House Deputy Counsel whom Mr. Obama designated as “his” Special Envoy to the OIC, Rashad Hussain;  Dalia Mogahed, an advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; and Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the State Department.

The insidious role being played by the OIC and the Muslim Brotherhood in spreading the supremacist politico-military-legal program authorities of Islam call “shariah” is the subject of the just-released, ground-breaking report by a group of prominent national security experts:  Shariah: The Threat To America (www.ShariahtheThreat.com).  This study is slated to be profiled in the “Week in Review” section in Sunday’s New York Times.

Known as Team B II (a reference to a similar “second opinion” provided during the Cold War) and sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, the panel determined that these and other organizations involved in a stealthy “civilization” jihad are as dangerous to free societies as the overtly violent jihadists like al Qaeda.  That is particularly true insofar as the former exploit – and even foment – the latter to advance their shared goals: the triumph of shariah world-wide and the reestablishment of a Caliphate to rule pursuant to it.

Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney Jr. observed that:

“Obama’s outreach to the OIC and Muslim Brotherhood Chicago meeting is, unfortunately, just the latest example of the administration’s abject failure to understand and oppose the threat posed by shariah.  Its legitimating and accommodation of such stealthy, pre-violent jihadist entities can only be interpreted by our enemies as acts of submission, the response to which – according to shariah – is a resort to violence to secure the ultimate victory over the United States and other parts of the infidel dar al-Harb (House of War).

Gaffney underscored a primary recommendation of the Team B II report: “U.S. government agencies and organizations should cease their outreach to Muslim communities through Muslim Brotherhood fronts.”

According to a newsletter dated September 15, 2010, the Saudi Arabia-based OIC organized the Chicago meeting on “Islam and Muslims in America” to “discuss the possible contributions of the OIC to the Muslims in the U.S. and create ties between OIC, and the Muslims and Islamic organizations there.”  The meeting agenda indicates that the Secretary General of the OIC Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu will speak on September 28.

As noted in Shariah: The Threat to America, Ihsanoglu used the occasion of an earlier speech to an OIC Council of Foreign Ministers’ conclave to declare war on freedom of speech:

In [the OIC’s] confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film “Fitna,” we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues.  They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.

Of late, the Organization of the Islamic Conference has taken to the United Nations its war against expression that gives offense to Islam.  Last September, the Obama administration actually co-sponsored  a resolution with Egypt (representing the OIC) in the UN Human Rights Council, calling on the United Nation’s member states to limit such expression, as part of the OIC’s ongoing campaign to have the UN recognize Islamophobia as a form of racism subject to prosecution under international law.

This effort to establish what it calls “deterrent punishments” for shariah slander is only one example of OIC activity at odds with American interests and the U.S. Constitution.  Other examples include:

  • Disrupting U.S. Efforts in Afghanistan: In the July 2010 edition of the OIC’s “Islamophobia Observatory” Bulletin, the OIC sharply criticized Gen. Petraeus’ counter-insurgency manual as “a manifestation of Islamophobia”;
  • Damaging Middle East Peace Negotiations: Since its founding, the OIC has pursued an aggressive anti-Israel campaign, including creating a fund for the intifada in 2001;
  • Denying Civil Liberties and Freedom to Muslims and Non-Muslims: The OIC for decades has tried to deny American Muslims and others the protections of the UN Convention on Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution, insisting instead that they comply with the shariah apartheid doctrine formally adopted by the OIC’s members as the so-called “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights.”

According to the conference agenda published by the OIC New York UN Permanent Mission, the executive director of the Chicago franchise of the Hamas-linked CAIR, Ahmed Rehab, will moderate a panel entitled: “The Role of the OIC and the Scope for its Relation with American Muslims.”

In yet another ominous move, the Organization of the Islamic Conference has announced that it will meet on September 30 with American Muslim leaders – many of whose groups the federal government has identified in court as Muslim Brotherhood fronts – for the purpose of creating the “American Muslim Liaison Council to the OIC.”  It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will be represented at this organizational meeting, as well.

Shariah: The Threat to America will be available as a book in October 2010, and can be downloaded and free reproduced at www.shariahthethreat.com.  It is based on the statements of the following world’s leading Shariah authorities and Shariah academic scholars including: Yousuf al-Qaradawi, Muhammad Taqi Usmani, Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Majid Khadduri, Shamin A. Siddiqi, Asaf A.A. Fyzee, Abdur Rahman I. Doi, Mohammed Hashim Kamali, Mohammed ibn Isma’il Bukhari, Burhan al-Din al-Farghani al-Marghinani, Abu al-Walid Mohammed ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd (a.k.a. Averroes), Mohammed ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, Sayyid Qutb, The Reliance of the Traveller (‘Umdat al-Salik:  A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law), as well as the Quran, and other texts.

 

Friend of the Brotherhood?

A new Pew Center poll says nearly one-in-five Americans think Barack Obama is a Muslim.  Perhaps that is because of reports like the one blared on the cover of the September 6 edition of the tabloid, The Globe, replete with photos of Mr. Obama in Muslim garb:  It found "shocking proof" in a Nile TV interview given earlier this year by the Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, disclosing that "the American President told me in confidence that he is a Muslim."

A better explanation is that more Americans are taking note of the accumulating series of statements and actions by the President that display favoritism, or worse, towards Muslims.  That would be troubling enough; after all, no chief executive is supposed to support one subset of us over others. 

Growing numbers of our countrymen may be on to something else about the Obama presidency, however, that is even more alarming:  In instance after instance, Mr. Obama has seemingly bent over backwards to accommodate not just Muslim-Americans, but a deeply problematic organization – the Muslim Brotherhood (or Ikhwan) – that purports to represent their interests here. 

In fact, the Brotherhood seeks to do something most Muslims in this country – and needless to say, the rest of us – do not want:  According to the organization’s mission statement, it is waging "a kind of grand jihad eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions." 

One need not believe that the President of the United States has actually embraced this radical goal to be concerned.  It is enough that he has repeatedly said and done things that conform to, or otherwise advance, the Ikhwan’s agenda as articulated by the Brotherhood’s myriad front organizations in the United States. 

Consider the following, necessarily partial listing of actions – some symbolic, some substantive – that can legitimately be seen by the Muslim Brothers as evidence of our President’s submission (the literally meaning of "Islam" and the goal of all those who, like the Ikhwan, seek to impose shariah worldwide):

  • Mr. Obama declared in his inaugural address that, "The United States is a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers."  The ordering of "Muslims" before "Jews" was clearly deliberate, since the latter have been and are in the United States in far larger numbers than the former and have played a much more important role in the nation’s history from its founding.  Subsequently, he went even further, describing (inaccurately) America as "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
  • In his much-ballyhooed address to "the Muslim world" delivered in Cairo in June 2009, Mr. Obama signaled his determination not only to "reach out" to followers of Islam.  He also committed himself to an initiative – clearing the way for Muslims to "fulfill their zakat (tithing for charity) obligations" – that would have the practical effect of giving Brotherhood operatives (whose representatives he insisted be in the audience) more latitude to engage in material support for terrorism and, thereby, wage their "civilization jihad" in and from America. 
  • In September 2009, the Obama administration co-sponsored a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution eagerly sought by the Muslim Brotherhood and its friends.  The resolution called on member nations to "prohibit and criminalize" speech that offends Islam and its followers.  Such an accommodation would clearly violate the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression.
  • Speaking of the Constitution, the Obama administration is arguing in federal court that the U.S. government’s ownership of AIG, which happens to be the largest purveyor of shariah-compliant insurance products in the world, does not violate the Establishment Clause’s separation of church and state. 
  • We recently learned that, according to President Obama, the NASA Administrator’s "foremost" priority is to make Muslims feel better about themselves and their history.  Job 1 is not assuring U.S. supremacy in space, or even assured access to it; it’s Muslim outreach and therapy.
  • Then, last month, President Obama endorsed the megamosque near Ground Zero in a White House Iftar dinner attended by prominent Muslim Brotherhood operatives. Subsequent efforts to distance himself from that stance, in the face of intense criticism from the public and politicians of both parties, has only put into even sharper focus his pandering to this community.
  • Now, my Center for Security Policy colleague Christine Brim has broken the story of a major new Obama initiative in that vein.  In the words of the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), "A phenomenal next step has been made where government Iftars become coupled with workshops to provide resources and benefit the Muslim community. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA) and the [Muslim Brotherhood-associated] Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO) have paired the first of such events, scheduled for August 31, 2010." 

The latest poll suggests that most Americans do not believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.  And for the vast majority of us, it would not matter even if he were – provided he does not subscribe to the Brotherhood’s creed: "God is our objective; the Koran is our law; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations." 

Still, the public is clearly increasingly, and rightly, concerned about Mr. Obama’s policies of favoritism and submission towards the worst elements in Islam.  Before tax-dollars are spent to that end, we need a national debate about such policies, and the grave dangers posed by their seeming principal beneficiary: the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

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 WTNT 570 AM.

The Ground Zero Mosque’s Conservative Supporter

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and proponents of his plan to build a 13-story Islamic center near Ground Zero are now being helped by Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform and conservative Republican activist. Norquist and his associates are calling on the Republican Party to drop its opposition to the plan, arguing that the GOP is threatening the rights of Muslims and that its criticism will backfire politically.

Norquist and his friends are distributing a letter saying that the Republicans fighting Imam Rauf’s plan are infringing upon religious freedom and are “alienating millions of Arab American and Muslim American voters who believe, as we do, in the principles of our party—individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law.”

Among those signing the letter are Suhail A. Khan, listed as the Chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition and Norquist’s wife, Samah, listed as a Senior Advisor to Arab and Muslim Outreach for the U.S. Agency for International Development under the Bush Administration.

Norquist is trying to convince Republicans that attacking Rauf’s plan will cost them in the November elections, even though nearly 70 percent of Americans agree with them. He describes it as a “distraction” that will cause the party to lose support among non-Christians.

“You’re not just going to lose Muslim votes. You’re going to lose Jewish votes, Indian votes, Buddhist votes. Every member of a minority group looks at a situation like this and says, oh, the people hitting this minority will eventually start hitting me,” he said.

Norquist’s criticism gives the impression that a fissure exists in the Republican ranks and helps frame the critics of the project as simply being against permitting the practicing of Islam. Yet again, Norquist has aligned himself with the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. that is supporting Imam Rauf and accusing his opponents of having “Islamophobia” and having an anti-Muslim bias.

To understand Norquist’s role in the campaign to aid Rauf, we must look at his history. He founded the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998 with financing from Abdulrahman Alamoudi, a Brotherhood activist supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah that was later convicted on terrorism-related charges. Norquist’s group was also funded by the International Institute of Islamic Thought, listed as a front in the Brotherhood’s own documents.

Using his connections in the conservative movement, Norquist was able to help his Brotherhood associates develop a relationship with the Bush Administration, particularly after the attacks of September 11 when the government sought to assure the American-Muslim community that the war on terror was not a war on Islam. In November 2001, John Zogby said Norquist was “central to the White House outreach.”

Norquist is likely a convert to Islam himself. His wife, Samah, is a devout Muslim and it is unthinkable that she would marry a non-Muslim if she takes her faith seriously. In 2008, they adopted a baby from the now-Muslim city of Bethlehem. When Norquist was asked by Paul Sperry if he had converted to Islam, he said it was “personal” and left it at that.

Another signatory of the letter is Suhail Khan, a long-time associate of Norquist’s. Khan’s father served as Vice President of the Muslim Students Association, founded by the Brotherhood. His father also served as an official of the Islamic Society of North America, another Brotherhood-tied group currently listed by the government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a designation shared with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Khan’s mother served on the board of CAIR’s California branch and Khan accused critics of CAIR of exploiting the Fort Hood shooting for their “political partisan and worse, for their racist ends.” Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, told me that an FBI Special Agent involved in terrorism investigations informed him that Khan is indeed a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khan was also intimately involved in Norquist’s efforts to help these groups develop a partnership with the Bush Administration. He was reported as being the one at the White House responsible for managing the outreach to the Brotherhood-tied groups whose events he has a history of speaking for.

Norquist’s support of Imam Rauf is just the latest episode in a pattern of involvement in Brotherhood campaigns. CAIR and ISNA are endorsing Imam Rauf and attacking his opponents. Rauf and his staff have hidden websites that refer to their Shariah Index Project to rate the compliance of each country with Shariah law. The Brotherhood’s International Institute for Islamic Thought was deeply involved in the project, as was a high-level Iranian government official named Mohammad Javad Larijani. His brother ran for President of Iran in 2005 and is a top loyalist of Ayatollah Khamenei. A photo of Imam Rauf meeting with Larijani has been removed.

In June 2009, Imam Rauf wrote in support of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and argued that the Iranian protestors did not oppose the Iranian regime’s foundations. He called on President Obama to “say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution — to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faqih, that establishes the rule of law.”

In addition, Imam Rauf refuses to call Hamas a “terrorist group” and has a position in the Perdana Global Peace Organization, which is the largest donor to the Free Gaza Movement behind the flotilla to Gaza. Those trying to raise the $100 million needed for Rauf’s project have not ruled out raising money from Iran or Saudi Arabia.

This is who Norquist is supporting. Some American-Muslims are speaking out against the Ground Zero Islamic center proposal, such as M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American-Islamic Forum on Democracy and Rima Fakih, the first Muslim to become Miss USA. The director of Al-Arabiya TV is standing against it, as are Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism and Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Influential Muslim scholars at Al-Azhar University oppose it as well, with some seeing it as so harmful to Islam and Muslims that it must be part of a Zionist conspiracy. Yet, Norquist hasn’t sided with these Muslims. He’s sided with the Muslim Brotherhood and their friends.

“What we see, at the very minimum, is his role in serving the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood, whether it’s intentional or not, but I happen to think it is,” Frank Gaffney told FrontPage. He said the “Muslim Brotherhood is all over the Ground Zero mosque” and that Norquist’s activism on their behalf is a “classic influence operation.”

Contrary to what Norquist, CAIR and ISNA say, most critics of the Ground Zero mosque do not seek to strip away Muslims’ freedom of religion. They believe that those who lived through 9/11 deserve the most say in the matter and they are concerned about Imam Rauf’s questionable ties. The Brotherhood wants to attack the integrity of the mosque’s critics and it can count on Grover Norquist for help.

Obama’s ‘Teachable’ Shariah Moment

On Friday night, Barack Obama gave his full-throated endorsement to a mosque and "cultural center" on private property that has been purchased in Lower Manhattan adjacent to the site where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood.  By Saturday, however, he wanted the American people to know that he was not commenting on "the wisdom" of putting such a mosque by that hallowed ground – just "the right" of its backers like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to do it, pursuant to the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom.

Unfortunately for the President – but fortunately for the country – it is too late for such ludicrous contortions and dissembling.  However much Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats now regret his original White House statement, it has created a "teachable moment."  Not just about the Ground Zero mosque but about the larger enterprise it is intended to serve: bringing the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, shariah, to America.

Imam Rauf makes no bones about that being his purpose.  So do some of his most prominent backers, like the Muslim Brotherhood front, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise, the designated terrorist group Hamas.  In fact, according to the New York Post, on Sunday, Mahmoud al-Zahar, an Hamas co-founder and leader in Gaza, told WABC Radio host Aaron Klein: "We have to build the mosque [at Ground Zero].  We have to build everywhere. In every area we have [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray and this mosque is the only site of prayer."

Al-Zahar also enthused about shariah, calling it the "tradition of Islam" which "is controlling every source of our life as regards to marriage, divorce, our commercial relations."  He added ominously that, "Even the Islamic people or Muslims in [the United States] are living now in the tradition of Islam."

What else have we learned so far from Mr. Obama’s teachable shariah moment?  We now know that the President is willing to associate with members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), not just in Cairo – where he insisted they be invited to hear his famous paean to Islam last year – but in the White House.  For example, leaders of known MB front groups like Ingrid Mattson of the Islamic Society of North America and Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council were in the company at the Iftar dinner Friday when Mr. Obama fervently embraced the Ground Zero mosque.

This is an important insight since we know from uncontested evidence submitted by the government in the largest terrorism finance trial in U.S. history – the Holy Land Foundation case – that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in America is "destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions." 

What on earth is the President of the United States doing fraternizing with, and thereby legitimating, operatives of an organization with such a seditious mission – to say nothing of endorsing their most immediate priority: the Ground Zero Mosque?

We have also learned that the Obama administration insists that Imam Rauf, another Brotherhood apparatchik, is a "moderate."  Never mind the abundant evidence to the contrary – not least his statement that he wants to bring shariah to America.  Believing him to be a good "ambassador" for the United States, the Obama-Hillary Clinton State Department has gone so far as to send Rauf on a taxpayer-funded trip to Arab capitals. While there, he will surely try to parlay the President of the United States’ explicit endorsement of his Ground Zero project and sponsorship of his travels into funding from oil-rich promoters of shariah to build his 13-story, $100 million megamosque within spitting distance of some of America’s most hallowed real estate.

There is much more yet to be learned, of course.  For example: Why is the U.S. government promoting the Brotherhood’s effort to penetrate our capital markets via "shariah-compliant finance," including its direct ownership of a huge player in that field, AIG?  Which other shariah-adherent Muslims are getting their expenses paid by the State Department as they network around the globe on behalf of their seditious agenda?  How much is this outrageous program costing, and what does Foggy Bottom have to show for it?  Why did Team Obama cosponsor a UN resolution last Fall imposing "shariah blasphemy" laws that utterly conflict with the First Amendment’s protection of free speech?

As he hosted the Ramadan fast-breaking dinner at the White House on Friday, President Obama showed his true colors on shariah.  Trying to dress up the Ground Zero mosque or any other aspect of this brutally repressive, totalitarian and inherently unconstitutional program as a matter of "religious freedom" does not pass the giggle test.  Shariah is about power, not faith, and no amount of Obama subsidies, solidarity or spin on behalf of that agenda will persuade the American people to allow the so-called "tradition of Islam" to supplant our civil liberties, form of government and way of life.

 

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 WTNT 570 AM.

 

Change we must believe in

Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world’s top weapons systems.
Syria is Iran’s junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
Last September, as Turkey’s Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.
"We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems," Davutoglu proclaimed.
And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.
On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.
The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.
There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.
Al-Arabiya also claimed that the Syrian campaign is being supported by the Turkish military.
Turkish military advisers are reportedly using the same intelligence tool for tracking Kurds in Syria as they have used against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq: Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.
Even if the Al-Arabiya report is untrue, and Turkey is not currently using Israeli-manufactured weapons in the service of Syria, the very fact that Syria has military cooperation of any kind with Turkey is dangerous for Israel. Over the past 20 years, as its alliance with Turkey expanded, Israel sold Turkey some of the most sensitive intelligence- gathering systems and other weapons platforms it has developed. With Turkey’s rapid integration into the Iranian axis, Israel must now assume that if Turkey is not currently sharing those Israeli military and intelligence technologies and tools with its enemies, Ankara is likely to share them with Israel’s enemies in the future.
OBVIOUSLY, THE least Israel could be expected to do in this situation is to cut off all military ties to Turkey. But amazingly and distressingly, Israel’s leaders seem not to have recognized this. To the contrary, Israel is scheduled to deliver four additional Heron drones to Turkey next month.
Even more discouragingly, both the statements and actions of senior officials lead to the conclusion that our leaders still embrace the delusion that all is not lost with Turkey. Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told lawmakers, "What happens in Turkey is not always done with the agreement of the Turkish military. Relations with the Turkish army are important and they need to be preserved. I am personally in touch with the Turkish chief of staff."
As Turkish columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week in Today’s Zaman, Ashkenazi’s claim that there is a distinction between Turkish government policies and Turkish military policies is "simply wishful thinking and do[es] not correspond with the hard facts on the ground."
Bozkurt explained, "Ashkenazi may be misreading the signals based on a personal relationship he has built with outgoing Turkish military Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The force commanders are much more worried about the rise in terror in the southeastern part of the country, and pretty much occupied with the legal problems confronting them after some of their officers, including high-ranking ones, were accused of illegal activities. The last thing the top brass wants is to give an impression that they are cozying up with Israelis…"
As described by Michael Rubin in the current issue of Commentary, those "legal problems" Bozkurt referred to are part of a government campaign to crush Turkey’s secular establishment.
As the constitutionally appointed guarantors of Turkey’s secular republic, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government has targeted the military high command for destruction.
Two years ago, a state prosecutor indicted 86 senior Turkish figures including retired generals, prominent journalists, professors and other pillars of Turkey’s former secular leadership for supposedly plotting a coup against the Islamist regime.
By all accounts the 2,455-page indictment was frivolous. But its impact on Turkey’s once allpowerful military has been dramatic.
As Rubin writes, "Bashed from the religious Right and the progressive Left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish General Staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties."
And yet, rather than come to terms with this situation, and work to minimize the dangers that an Iranian- and Syrian-allied Turkey poses, Israel’s government and our senior military leaders are still trying to bring the alliance with Turkey back from the dead. Last month’s disastrous "top secret" meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Davutoglu is case in point.
Far from ameliorating the situation, these sorts of gambits only compound the damage. By denying the truth that Turkey has joined the enemy camp, Israel provides Turkey with credibility it patently does not deserve. Israel also fails to take diplomatic and other steps to minimize the threat posed by the NATO member in the Iranian axis.
OUR LEADERS’ apparent aversion to accepting that our alliance with Turkey has ended is troubling not only for what it tells us about the government’s ability to craft policies relevant to the challenges now facing us from Turkey. It bespeaks a general difficulty that plagues our top echelons in contending with harsh and unwanted change.
Take Egypt for example. Over the past week, a number of reports were published about the approaching end of the Mubarak era. The Washington Times reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is terminally ill and likely will die within the year. The Economist featured a 15- page retrospective on the Mubarak era in advance of its expected conclusion.
There are many differences between the situation in Egypt today and the situation that existed in Turkey before the Islamists took over in 2002.
For instance, unlike Turkey, Egypt has never been Israel’s strategic ally. In recent years however, Egypt’s interests have converged with Israel’s regarding the threat posed by Iran and its terror proxies Hizbullah and Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Mubarak regime’s nemesis, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. These shared interests have paved the way for security cooperation between the two countries on several issues.
All of this is liable to change after Mubarak exits the stage. In all likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will have greater influence and power than it enjoys today. And this means that a successor regime in Egypt will likely have closer ties to the Iranian axis. Despite the Sunni-Shi’ite split, joined by a common enmity toward the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has strengthened its ties to Iran and Hizbullah of late.
Recognizing the shifting winds, presidential hopefuls are cultivating ties with the Brotherhood.
For instance, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and current Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei has been wooing the Brotherhood for months. And in recent weeks, they have been getting on his bandwagon. Apparently, El-Baradei’s support for Iran’s nuclear program won him credibility with the jihadist group even though he is not an Islamic fanatic.
If and when the Brotherhood gains power and influence in Egypt, it is likely that Egypt will begin sponsoring the likes of Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. And the more powerful the Brotherhood becomes in Egypt, the more likely it is that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel.
It is due to that peace treaty that today Egypt fields a conventional military force armed with sophisticated US weaponry. The Egyptian military that Israel fought in four wars was armed with inferior Soviet weapons. Were Egypt to abrogate the treaty, a conventional war between Egypt and Israel would become a tangible prospect for the first time since 1973.
Despite the flood of stories indicating that the end of the Mubarak era is upon us, publicly Israel’s leaders behave as though nothing is the matter. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s routine fawning pilgrimage to Mubarak this week seemed to demonstrate that our leaders are not thinking about the storm that is brewing just over the horizon in Cairo.
TURKEY’S TRANSFORMATION from friend to foe and the looming change in Egypt demonstrate important lessons that Israel’s leaders must take to heart. First, Israel has only a very limited capacity to influence events in neighboring countries.
What happened in Turkey has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the fact that Erdogan and his government are Islamist revolutionaries. So, too, the changes that Egypt will undergo after Mubarak dies will have everything to do with the pathologies of Egyptian society and politics, and nothing to do with Israel. Our leaders must recognize this and exercise humility when they assess Israel’s options for contending with our neighbors.
Developments in both Turkey and Egypt are proof that in the Middle East there is no such thing as a permanent alliance. Everything is subject to change. Turkey once looked like a stable place. Its military was constitutionally empowered – and required – to safeguard the country as a secular democracy. But seven years into the AKP revolution the army cannot even defend itself.
So, too, for nearly 30 years Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. But as Israel saw no distinction between Mubarak and Egypt, the hostile forces he repressed multiplied under his jackboot.
Once he is gone, they will rise to the surface once more.
Moving forward, Israel must learn to hedge its bets. Just because a government embraces Israel one day does not mean that its military should be given open access to Israeli military technology the next day. So, too, just because a regime is anti-Israel one day doesn’t mean that Israel cannot develop ties with it that are based on shared interests.
Whether it is pleasant or harsh, change is a fact of our lives. The side that copes best with change will be the side that prospers from it.
Our leaders must recognize this truth and shape their policies accordingly.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Farewell to space

Just when you thought Barack Obama’s toadying to Islam could not get any worse, now comes this:  The President directed the new administrator of NASA, retired Marine Major General Charles Bolden, as "perhaps [his] foremost" charge to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage more dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science…and math and engineering."

This comment came in an interview the NASA chief conducted with al-Jazeera while touring the Middle East to mark the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s much-ballyhooed Cairo paean to Muslims. Bolden elaborated, "It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations)."

In an address to the American University in Cairo, Bolden added that Mr. Obama has "asked NASA to change…by reaching out to ‘nontraditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations."  He declared that "NASA is not only a space exploration agency, but also an Earth improvement agency."

Now, when one thinks of the "contributions" to our space program that are possible from Muslim nations, the one that comes to mind is the literal kind – recycled petrodollars – since their "contributions to science, math and engineering" for several hundreds of years have been, to put it charitably, underwhelming.

As it happens, the NASA Administrator made it pretty clear in his remarks to al-Jazeera that the U.S. space program is not going anywhere without foreign help.  That will soon be literally true since, with the retirement of the last space shuttle this Fall, we will be entirely dependent on Russian launchers to put people into space. 

Such a state of affairs will persist unless and until experimental American rockets being developed by private American concerns pan out.  Or the Chinese offer us a ride.

Unfortunately, the prospect of America’s space program relying – like a fading superpower version of A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche DuBois – on the "kindness of strangers" is the inevitable result of programmatic decisions being taken by the Obama administration.  

The most obvious one was the cancellation earlier this year of NASA’s Constellation program, which was intended to provide a "man-rated" expendable rocket to replace the shuttle as America’s means of putting humans into space.  The national security and commercial implications of this decision have been exacerbated, however, by two other, seemingly unrelated actions: President Obama’s decision to stop producing long-range missile defense interceptors and to defer indefinitely any replacement of our aging nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile force.

As a result, real concerns are beginning to be expressed about the viability of the U.S. industrial base for solid-fuel rocket motors.  Without government procurements in one or more of these areas – possibly for years to come, America will see at a minimum the continuing attrition of domestic suppliers for vital components and the steady erosion of the skills required to manufacture boosters capable of reliably lofting large payloads.

Matters would be made worse when one combines this reality with another Obama priority: relaxing export controls on sensitive dual-use technologies.  The argument usually made is that such steps are necessary to ensure that American producers can compete in world markets and that "higher fences around fewer technologies" can safeguard what absolutely must be protected, and allow easier transfer of products that need not be.

In practice, it is predictable that the result of this policy will be that manufacturing jobs associated with presently controlled technologies will move offshore, where production can take place at lower cost.  And the price that will surely be extracted by Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Muslim nations from whom NASA will be seeking "contributions" will be access to know-how and possibly space-launch-related production capabilities currently deemed too sensitive to transfer.

It would be bad enough if the results of such initiatives would be simply to build up America’s commercial competitors.  Given that many of the relevant technologies are inherently applicable to military uses – notably, delivering nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction over long distances via ballistic missiles – these steps will ineluctably result in greater threats to American citizens, interests and allies, as well.

Worse yet, in a recently unveiled policy pronouncement, President Obama has expressed an openness to exploring Russian and Chinese ideas for new, multilateral space arms control negotiations.  As Moscow and Beijing have long appreciated, unavoidable verification and definitional problems ensure that, as a practical matter, any treaty likely to emerge from such talks would further weaken America’s ability to protect its interests in space and on the ground – without denying such advantages to our potential adversaries.

As in so many areas, it seems President Obama’s space policies and programs are designed to "fundamentally transform" America from a preeminent world power to just another nation, dependent on the good will and assistance of others to safeguard its interests.  To the extent that such reliance is placed on sources like the Russians, the Chinese and "the Muslim world" that have made little secret of their ambition to weaken, if not destroy, the United States, it is likely to end badly, as it did for poor Blanche DuBois.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

Hamas rises in the West

Since the navy’s May 31 takeover of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his advisors have deliberated around the clock about how to contend with the US-led international stampede against Israel. But their ultimate decision to form an investigatory committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice and overseen by foreign observers indicates that they failed to recognize the nature of the international campaign facing Israel today.

Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas against Israel.

It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama’s friends, former Weatherman Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is former US senator from South Dakota James Abourezk.

All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself.

Obama has made his sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood clear several times since entering office. The Muslim Brotherhood’s progeny include Hamas, al Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, among others. Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo. His administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counter-terror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of their support for radical Islam.

Given Obama’s attitude towards jihadists and the radical leftists who support them his decision to support Hamas against Israel makes sense. What is alarming however is how leaders of the free world are now all siding with Hamas. That support has become ever more apparent since the Mossad’s alleged killing of Hamas terror master Mahmoud al Mabhouh at his hotel in Dubai in January.

In the aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, both Britain and Australia joined the Dubai-initiated bandwagon in striking out against Israel. Israel considers both countries allies, or at least friendly and has close intelligence ties with both. Yet despite their close ties with Israel, Australia and Britain expelled Israeli diplomats who supposedly had either a hand in the alleged operation or who work for the Mossad.
It should be noted that neither country takes steps against outspoken terror supporters who call for Israel to be destroyed and call for the murder of individual Israelis.

For instance, in an interview last month with the Australian, Ali Kazak, the former PLO ambassador to Australia effectively solicited the murder of the Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. Kazak told the newspaper, "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor."

Allowing that many Palestinians have been murdered for such accusations, Kazak excused those extrajudicial murders saying, "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere."

Not only did Australia not expel Kazak or open a criminal investigation against him. As a consequence of his smear campaign against Abu Toameh, several Australians cancelled their scheduled meetings with him.

AND OF course, this week we have the actions of Germany and Poland. Germany and Poland are considered Israel’s best friends in Europe today, and yet acting on a German arrest warrant, Poland has arrested a suspected Mossad officer named Uri Brodsky for his alleged involvement in the alleged Mossad operation against master Hamas terrorist Mabhouh. Israel is now caught in a diplomatic disaster zone where its two closest allies – who again are only too happy to receive regular intelligence updates from the Mossad – are siding with Hamas against it.

And then of course we have the EU’s call for Israel to cancel its lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the official position of the EU is that Israel should allow an Iranian proxy terrorist organization to gain control over a Mediterranean port and through it, provide Iran with yet another venue from which it can launch attacks against Europe.

For their part, the Sunni Arabs are forced to go along with this. The Egyptian regime considers the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood took over Gaza a threat to its very survival and has been assiduously sealing its border with Gaza for some time. And yet, unable to be more anti-Hamas than the US, Australia and Europe, Mubarak is opening the border. Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa’s unprecedented visit to Gaza this week should be seen as a last ditch attempt by Egypt to convince Hamas to unify its ranks with Fatah. Predictably, the ascendant Hamas refused his entreaties.

As for Fatah, it is hard not to feel sorry for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas these days. In what was supposed to be a triumphant visit to the White House, Abbas was forced to smile last week as Obama announced the US will provide $450 million in aid to his sworn enemies who three years ago ran him and his Fatah henchmen out of Gaza.

So too, Abbas is forced to cheer as Obama pressures Israel to give Hamas an outlet to the sea. Such a sea outlet will render it impossible for Fatah to ever unseat Hamas either by force or at the ballot box. Hamas’s international clout demonstrates to the Palestinians that jihad pays.

THERE ARE three plausible explanations for the West’s decision to back Hamas. All of them say something deeply disturbing about the state of the world today. The first plausible explanation is that the Americans and the rest of the West are simply naïve. They believe that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are advancing the cause of Middle East peace.

If this is in fact what the likes of Obama and his European and Australian counterparts think, then apparently, no one in the West is thinking very hard these days. The fact is that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are backing Hamas against Fatah and they are backing Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hamas and Hizbullah against Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia as well as against Israel. They are backing the most radical actors in the region – and arguably in the world – against states and regimes they have a shared strategic interest in strengthening.

There is absolutely no way this behavior advances the cause of peace.

The second plausible explanation is that the West’s support for Hamas against Israel is motivated by hatred of Israel. As Helen Thomas’s recent remarks demonstrated, there is certainly a lot of that going around.

The final plausible explanation for the West’s support for Hamas against Israel is that the leaders of the West have been led to believe that by acting as they are, they will buy themselves immunity from attack by Hamas and its fellow Iranian axis members.

As former Italian President Francesco Cossiga first exposed in a letter to Corriere della Serra in August 2008, in the early 1970s then Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed a deal with Yassir Arafat that gave the PLO and its affiliated organizations the freedom to operate terror bases in Italy. In exchange the Palestinians agreed to limit their attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets. Italy maintained its allegiance to the deal – and the PLO against Israel – even when Italian targets were hit.

Cossiga told the newspaper that the August 1980 bombings at the Bologna train station – which Italy blamed on Italian fascists — was actually the work of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Eighty-five people were murdered in the attack, and still Italy maintained its agreement with the PLO to the point where it prosecuted and imprisoned the wrong people for the worst terrorist attack in Italian history.

Cossiga alleged that the deal is still in place today and that Italian forces in UNIFIL have expanded the deal to include Hamas’s fellow Iranian proxy Hizbullah. It isn’t much of a stretch to consider the possibility that Italy and the rest of the Western powers have made a similar deal with Hamas. And it is no stretch at all to believe that they will benefit from it as greatly as the Italian railroad passengers in Bologna did on August 2, 1980.

True, no one has come out an admitted that they support Hamas against Israel. So too, no one has expressed anything by love for Israel and the Jewish people. But the actions of the governments of the West tell a different tale. Without one or more of the explanations above, it is hard to understand their current policies.

Since the flotilla incident, Netanyahu and his ministers have held marathon deliberations on how to respond to US pressure to accept an international inquisition of the IDF’s lawful enforcement of Israel’s legal blockade of the Gaza coast. Their deliberations went on at the same time as Netanyahu and his envoys attempted to convince Obama to stop his mad rush to give Hamas an outlet to the sea and deny Israel even the most passive right of self defense.

It remains to be seen if their decision to form an investigative panel with international "observers" was a wise move or yet another ill-advised concession to an unappeasable administration. What is certain however is that it will not end the West’s budding romance with Hamas.

The West’s decision to side with Hamas against Israel is devastating. But whatever the reasons for it, it is a fact of life. It is Netanyahu’s duty to swallow this bitter pill and devise a strategy to protect Israel from their madness.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Netanyahu, Obama’s newest prop

The Democratic Party is feeling the heat for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. In an interview with Channel 10 earlier this month, Democratic Party mega-donor Haim Saban characterized the Obama administration as ideologically aligned with the radical Left and harshly criticized its treatment of Israel.

Both Ma’ariv and Yediot Aharonot reported this week that Democratic congressmen and senators are deeply concerned that the administration’s harsh treatment of Israel has convinced many American Jews not to contribute to their campaigns or to the Democratic Party ahead of November 2’s mid-term elections. They also fear that American Jews will vote for Republican challengers in large numbers.

It is these concerns, rather than a decision to alter his positions on Israel specifically and the Middle East generally, that now drive Obama’s relentless courtship of the American Jewish community. His latest move in this sphere was his sudden invitation to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to visit him at the White House for a "warm reception" in front of television cameras next Tuesday.

It is clear that electoral worries rather than policy concerns are behind what the White House has described as a "charm offensive," because since launching this offensive a few weeks ago, Obama not changed any of his policies towards Israel and the wider Middle East. In fact, he has ratcheted up these policies to Israel’s detriment.

TAKE HIS goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. On Friday, the UN’s monthlong Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is scheduled to adopt a consensual resolution before adjourning. According to multiple media reports, Israel is set to be the focus of the draft resolution that will likely be adopted.

The draft resolutions being circulated by both Egypt and the US adopt Egypt’s demand for a nuclear-free Middle East. They call for a conference involving all countries in the region to discuss denuclearization. The only difference between the Egyptian draft and the US draft on the issue is that the Egyptians call for the conference to be held in 2011 while the US calls for the convening of the conference in 2012-2013. The draft resolution also calls for all states that are not members of the NPT – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – to join the NPT as non-nuclear powers.

So while Iran is not mentioned in the draft resolution – which must be adopted by consensus – in two separate places, Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal is the target of an international diplomatic stampede.

In 2005, Egypt circulated a draft resolution that was substantively identical to its current draft. But in stark contrast to today’s conclave, the NPT review conference in 2005 ended without agreement, because the Bush administration refused to go along with Egypt’s assault on Israel.

Particularly in light of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the Iranian regime’s expressed goal of destroying Israel, the Bush administration preferred to scuttle the conference rather than give any credence to the view that Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal is a greater threat to global security than Iran’s nuclear program – which, as in today’s draft, wasn’t mentioned in Egypt’s resolution five years ago. The Obama administration has no problem going along with Cairo.

Obama’s willingness to place Israel’s nuclear program on the international agenda next to Iran’s is par for the course of his utterly failed policy for contending with Iran’s nuclear program. After his diplomatic open hand policy towards Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was met with a clenched fist, Obama’s attempt to convince the UN Security Council to pass "smart sanctions" against Iran has been checkmated by Iran’s nuclear deal with its newest strategic allies, Turkey and Brazil.

That deal, which facilitates rather than impedes Teheran’s nuclear weapons program, has ended any prospect that the Security Council will pass an additional sanctions resolution against Iran in the near future. But then, in order to secure the now weakened Russian support for his sanctions resolution, Obama exempted Russia from the sanctions and turned a blind eye to continued Russian and Chinese nuclear proliferation activities in Syria, Turkey and Pakistan. Furthermore, Obama agreed to make most of the remaining provisions non-binding.
In the meantime, and in spite of the fact that his sanctions bid is in shambles, Obama has asked congressional Democrats to stall their sanctions bills for another month. So, too, Obama prevailed on his Democratic colleagues in Congress to exempt Russia and China from their sanctions bills.

AS PART of the administration’s attempt to woo American Jews back into the Democratic Party fold despite its anti-Israel policies, last week a group of pre-selected pro-Obama rabbis was invited to the White House for talks with Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and with Dan Shapiro and Dennis Ross, who hold the Palestinian and Iran dossiers on Obama’s National Security Council, respectively. According to a report of the meeting by Rabbi Jack Moline that has not been refuted by the White House, the three men told the Democratic rabbis that the administration has three priorities in the Middle East. First Obama seeks to isolate Iran.

Second, he seeks to significantly reduce the US military presence in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. And third, he seeks to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

These priorities are disturbing for a number of reasons. First, isolating Iran is not the same as preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. By characterizing its goal as "isolating" Iran, the administration makes clear that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is not its goal. Moreover, as Iran’s deal with Brazil and Turkey makes abundantly clear, Iran is not isolated. Indeed, its foreign relations have prospered since Obama took office.

In his write-up of the meeting, Moline indicated that Ross and Emanuel view Obama’s rejection of Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem as motivated by his goal of isolating Iran. So in the view of Obama’s Jewish advisers, his preferred method of isolating Iran is to attack Israel.

Add that to his third priority of establishing a Palestinian state by the end of next year and you have a US president for whom bashing Israel is his first and third priority in the Middle East.
When one factors in his willingness to put Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal on the international chopping block, it is clear that there is no precedent for Obama’s hostility towards Israel in the history of US-Israel relations.

THIS BRINGS us to Obama’s meeting next Tuesday with Netanyahu. Obama’s continued commitment to his anti-Israel policies indicates that there are two possible scenarios for next week’s meeting. In the best case, the meeting will have no substance whatsoever. It will be nothing more than a public display of presidential affection for the Israeli premier.

The more likely scenario is that Obama will use the meeting as an opportunity to pressure Netanyahu not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations; not to attack Hizbullah’s and Syria’s missile depots, launchers and silos; and to extend the prohibition on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria beyond its September deadline and expand the prohibition to Jewish home construction in Jerusalem.

Regarding the latter scenario, it can only be hoped that Netanyahu has learned from his previous experiences with Obama. In December, in the hopes of alleviating US pressure, Netanyahu announced an unprecedented 10-month ban on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. For his efforts, Netanyahu was rewarded with an escalation of American pressure against Israel.

After he pocketed Netanyahu’s concession on Judea and Samaria, Obama immediately launched his poisonous assault on Israeli rights to Jerusalem.

Likewise, Netanyahu’s willingness to outwardly support both Obama’s effort to appease Iran and his efforts to pass anti-Iran sanctions in the Security Council gained Obama a year and a half of quiet from Jerusalem. During that time, Iran has moved within months of the bomb and the US has abandoned its goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This experience has one clear lesson: If Obama seeks policy concessions from Israel during their meeting, Netanyahu must reject his entreaties. In fact, it may even be counterproductive for Netanyahu to abstain from responding in the hopes of buying time.

If on the other hand, Obama avoids discussion of substantive issues and devotes his meeting with Netanyahu to a discussion of Michelle Obama’s war on obesity, Netanyahu should consider what Obama did to the family of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl while the president signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act last week.

Pearl was decapitated in 2002 by jihadists in Pakistan. Among other things, his killers claimed he had no right to live because he was Jewish. At the ceremony, Obama barred Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl, from speaking. In so doing Obama reduced Daniel Pearl’s family to the status of mere props as Obama vapidly and reprehensibly proclaimed, "Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is."

This appropriation of Pearl’s murder and denial of what it represented served Obama’s purpose of pretending that there is no jihad and that radical Islam is not a threat to the US. And by silencing Pearl’s father, the president turned him into an unwilling accomplice.

Netanyahu should take two lessons from Obama’s behavior at the ceremony. First, Netanyahu must do everything he can to avoid being used as a prop. This means that he should insist on having a joint press briefing with Obama. He must also insist on having a say regarding which journalists will be included in the press pool and who will be permitted to ask the two leaders questions.

Second, Netanyahu must not become Obama’s spokesman. As part of his unsuccessful bid to convince Obama to change his policies towards Israel, Netanyahu and his advisers have gone on record praising Obama for his support for Israel. These statements have stymied attempts by Israel’s US supporters to pressure Obama to change those policies.

The Israeli official who has been most outspoken in his praise for Obama and his denial that Obama’s policies are hostile towards Israel has been Ambassador Michael Oren. Oren has repeatedly praised Obama for his supposedly firm support for Israel and commitment to Israel’s security – most recently in an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday. Moreover, according to eyewitness reports, in a recent closed-door meeting with American Jews, Oren criticized the Republican Party for attacking Obama for his animosity towards Israel.

This quite simply has to end. As foreign officials, Israeli diplomats should not be involved in US partisan politics. Not only should Israeli officials not give Obama undeserved praise, they should not give Republicans undeserved criticism.

At the end of the day, American Jews have the luxury of choosing between their loyalty to the Democratic Party and their support for Israel. And in the coming months, they will choose.
The government of Israel has no such luxury. The government’s only duty is to secure Israel and advance Israel’s national interests in every way possible. Netanyahu must not permit Obama’s public relations campaign to divert him from this mission.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Israel the strong horse

What does Jordan’s King Abdullah want from Israel? This week Abdullah gave a long and much cited interview to the Wall Street Journal. There he appeared to be begging US President Barack Obama to turn up the heat still further on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. As he has on a number of occasions, Abdullah argued that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the cause or the justification of all the violence and emerging threats in the region. By his telling, all of these threats, including Iran’s nuclear threat, will all but disappear if Israel accepts all of the Palestinian, (and Syrian), demands for land.

Abdullah’s criticism of Netanyahu dominated the news in Israel for much of the week. Commentators and reporters piled on, attacking Netanyahu for destroying whatever remains of Israel’s good name. In their rush to attack the premier, none of them stopped to consider that perhaps they were missing something fundamental about Abdullah’s interview.

But they were missing something. For there is another way to interpret Abdullah’s complaints. To understand it however, it is necessary to consider the strategic constraints under which Abdullah operates. And the Israeli media, like the Western media as a whole, are incapable of recognizing that Abdullah has constraints that make it impossible for him to say what he means directly.

Abdullah is a Hashemite who leads a predominantly Palestinian country. His country was carved out by the British as a consolation prize for his great-grandfather after the Hashemites lost Syria to the French. As a demographic minority and ethnic transplant, the Hashemites have never been in a position to defend themselves or their kingdom against either their domestic or foreign foes. Consequently they have always been dependent out outside powers – first Britain, and then Israel, and to a lesser degree the US – for their survival.

When Abdullah’s strategic predicament is borne in mind, his statements to the Journal begin to sound less like a diatribe against Israel and more like a plea to Israel to be strong. For instance, his statement, "In a way, I think North Korea has better international relations than Israel," can be interpreted as a lament.

Abdullah fears war and he recognizes that the Iranian axis – which includes Syria, Lebanon, and elements of the Palestinian Authority and elements of Iraq – is the biggest threat to his regime. Syria, which dispatched the al Qaida bombers that blew up the hotels in Amman in 2005, threatens Jordan today almost as menacingly as it did in 1970, when it supported the PLO in its bid to overthrow Abdullah’s father. Back then, Israel stepped in and saved the Hashemites.

Abdullah’s preoccupation with Iran was clear throughout the interview. Indeed, much of his criticism of Israel needs to be viewed through the prism of his obvious fear that Iran’s race to regional dominance will not be thwarted.

The reason that Israel’s media – like the American and European media – failed to consider what was motivating Abdullah to speak as he did is because both Israelis and Westerners suffer from an acute narcissism that prevents them from noticing anything but themselves. So rather than view events from Abdullah’s perspective and consider what might be motivating him to speak, they interpret his statements to serve their own ideological purposes. In the case of the leftist dominated media, Abdullah’s statements were pounced upon as further proof that Israel, and particularly Netanyahu, are to blame for all the pathologies of the Arabs and all the threats in the Middle East. If Israel could only be coerced into giving up land, everything would be fine.

Much of what the West misses about the Arab world is spelled out for us in a new and masterful book. The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith, is a unique and vital addition to the current debate on the Middle East because rather than interpret the Arabs through the ideological lenses of the West, Smith describes them, their cultural and political motivations as the Arabs — in all their ethnic, religious, ideological, national and tribal variations — themselves perceive these things.

Smith, a native New Yorker, was the literary editor of The Village Voice when Arab hijackers brought down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Propelled by the attacks, he headed to the Middle East to try to understand what had just hit his city. Smith moved to Cairo where he studied Arabic and drank in the cultural and political forces surrounding him. After a year, he moved to Beirut where he remained for another three years.

The Strong Horse speaks to two Western audiences, the Left, or the self-proclaimed "realists," who ascribe to the belief that the Arabs have no particular interests but are rather all motivated to act by external forces and specifically by the US and Israel; and the neo-conservatives who believe that at heart, the Arabs all yearn for Western-style liberal democracy.

Smith rejects both these notions out of hand. Instead, by recounting the stories of men and women he met during his sojourn in the region, and weaving them into the tales of Arab cultural, religious and political leaders that have risen and fallen since the dawn of Islam 1,400 years ago Smith presents a few basic understandings of the Arab world that place the actions of everyone from Osama bin Laden to Jordan’s King Abdullah in regional and local contexts. The localization of these understandings in turn opens up a whole new set of options for Westerners and particularly for Israelis in seeking ways to contend with the region’s pathologies that involve policies less sweeping than grand, yet futile designs of peace making, or fundamental restructuring of the social compacts of Arab societies.

Smith develops six central insights in his book.

Arab political history is a history of the powerful ruling the weak through violence.

Islamic terror and governmental tyranny are the two sides of the coin of Arab political pathology.

Liberal democratic principles are unattractive to the vast majority of Arabs who believe that politics is and by rights ought to remain a violent enterprise and prefer the narrative of resistance to the narrative of liberty.

Liberal Arab reformers are unwilling to fight for their principles.

The 1,400 year period of Sunni dominance over non-Sunni minorities is now threatened seriously for the first time by the Iranian-controlled Shiite alliance which includes Syria, Lebanon, and Hamas.

And finally, that it is intra-Arab rivalries and the desire to rule and be recognized as the strong horse that motivates jihadists to wage continuous wars against Israel and the West and against regimes in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia alike.

As Smith explains, today, Arab leaders view Israel as a possible strong horse that could defeat the rising Shiite axis that threatens them. And now, as the US under Obama abdicates its leadership role in world affairs by turning on its allies and attempting to appease its foes while scaling back America’s own military strength, Israel is the Sunnis’ only hope for beating back the Shiite alliance. If Israel does not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, then the likes of Kings Abdullah of Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak are going to be forced to accept Iran as the regional hegemon.

When seen against the backdrop of Smith’s analysis, it is clear that as his father did when he supported Saddam Hussein against Saudi Arabia in the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War, Abdullah was hedging his bets in his interview with the Journal. If Israel fails to act, he wants to be on record expressing his animosity towards the Jewish state and blaming it for all the region’s problems. On the other hand, he used the interview as an opportunity to again send a message to anyone willing to listen that he wants Israel to assert itself and continue to protect his kingdom.

The recognition that a strong Israel is the most stabilizing force in the region is perhaps the main casualty of the Left’s land for peace narrative and the two-state solution paradigm which wrongly promote the weakness of Israel as the foremost potential contributor to stability in the region. Because Israel is everyone’s convenient bogeyman, it cannot form permanent alliances with any of its neighbors and as a consequence, it cannot gang up against another state. Because it will always be the first target of the most radical actors in the region, Israel has a permanent interest in defeating them or, at a minimum denying those actors the means to cause catastrophic harm. Finally, although no one will admit it, everyone knows that Israel has neither the ability nor desire to acquire and rule over Arab lands and therefore there is no reason for anyone to fear its strength. For the past 62 years, Israel has only used force to protect itself when it was convinced it had no other option and it holds only territories designated for the Jewish homeland by the League of Nations 90 years ago and lands vital for its self-defense.

Smith was living in Beirut when Hizbullah launched its war against Israel in July 2006. As he tells the story, "When the government of Ehud Olmert decided to make war against Hizbullah in the summer of 2006, all of Washington’s Arab allies…were overjoyed. With the Americans having taken down a Sunni security pillar – Saddam – and then getting tied down in Iraq, Riyadh, Cairo and the rest sensed the Iranians were gaining ground and that they were vulnerable. Even though they were incapable of doing anything about it themselves, the Sunni powers…wanted to see the [Iranian] bloc rolled back."

Unfortunately for them, Olmert and his government were incompetent to lead Israel in war and within weeks showed that they had no idea how to accomplish their stated aim of crushing Hizbullah. When this reality sunk in, and the Arab masses rallied behind Iran, Hizbullah and Syria against their own governments, "the Sunni regimes could abide no longer and demanded the United States move to a ceasefire immediately."

No doubt, in part as a consequence of their disappointment with Israel’s military performance in Lebanon and subsequently in Gaza, today leaders like Abdullah of Jordan are pessimistic about the future. But there is also no doubt who they are rooting for. And this has profound significance for Israel, not only as it prepares its plans to contend with Iran but also as it considers it national priorities.

For too long, Israel’s leaders have believed that to thrive regionally, it needs to convince the West to support it politically. But the fact is that Israel is in Asia, not in Europe or North America. To survive and thrive, Israel needs to rebuild the faith of the likes of Jordan’s Abdullah that it is the strong horse in the region. And once it does that, with or without formal peace treaties, and with or without democracies flourishing region-wide, Israel will facilitate regional peace and stability for the benefit of all.  

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

New ‘CAIR Observatory’ connects the dots on CAIRs foreign funding and lobbying

March 17, 2010: WASHINGTON, DC – The Center for Security Policy announces the launch of the website CAIR Observatory at www.cairobservatory.org. The website presents comprehensive open-source evidence and analysis alleging that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has acted as a foreign agent on behalf of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.  The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires any agent of a foreign principal – including agents of foreign states, political parties, corporations, non-governmental organizations and even individuals – to register with the U.S. Department of Justice as a foreign agent.

The centerpiece of the website is the report “CAIR and the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” which details the foreign funding, foreign direction and domestic political influence operations of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the United States.
The report documents these CAIR activities as a foreign agent:

  • CAIR received at least $2,192,203 in Contributions, Income and Money from foreign principals in the form of 10 distinct transactionsReceived a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for their Washington, D.C. headquarters
  • CAIR secured the promise of at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals
  • CAIR met and coordinated with foreign principals on at least 30 occasions
  • CAIR engaged in at least 50 political influence operations on behalf of foreign principals in the United States

The Center has additional evidence that cannot be made public at this time documenting an additional $2.4 million in foreign donations and loans given to CAIR since 2000.
The goal of the “CAIR Observatory” (http://www.cairobservatory.org/) is to build a model for researching and compiling evidence of illegal behavior by Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, with a focus on organizations operating in the United States as unregistered foreign agents for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its member states.

The website’s name – “CAIR Observatory” – is a direct counter to the so-called “Islamophobia Observatory” maintained by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).  The Jeddah, Saudi Arabia-based OIC has been a contributor to CAIR, and the two have a history of coordinated meetings, methodologies and goals.  The website will be updated regularly with new evidence on CAIR’s ongoing activities as a currently unregistered foreign agent.

 

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