Tag Archives: Hezbollah

Obama’s not-so-hidden agenda

Earlier this year, President Obama drove U.S.-Israeli relations – to use one of President Obama’s oft-employed analogies – into a ditch. Arguably, ties between the two countries were never more strained than last Spring when Mr. Obama serially insulted the elected leader of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vilified his country and tried to euchre it into making territorial, political and other ill-advised concessions to Arabs determined as ever to destroy the Jewish State.  Unfortunately, what the President has in mind for Israel after the election next week will make his previous treatment of the Jewish State look like the good old days.

To be sure, ties between the United States and Israel – far and away America’s most important and loyal friend in the Middle East – have improved lately from the nadir to which Mr. Obama plunged them since he took office.  That has nothing to do, however, with a change of heart or agenda on the part of the President and his administration.

Rather, it is a reflection of a cynical calculation forced upon the Obama White House by its panicked congressional allies.  Already laboring under the backbreaking burden of their association with a president and his agenda that have become huge liabilities, Democrats on Capitol Hill faced wholesale defections of their Jewish constituents and funders if their party’s leader persisted in his assault on Israel.  Public letters and private conversations had the desired effect: Barack Obama began treating his Israeli counterpart with a modicum of respect and the optics of a restarted peace process – however shortlived or doomed – helped conjur up an image of a renewed partnership between the two nations.

Make no mistake about it, though:  Once the 2010 elections are behind him, it is a safe bet that President Obama will revert to form by once again exhibiting an unmistakable and ruthless determination to bend Israel to his will. 

Worse yet, he will be able to take advantage of a vehicle for effecting the so-called "two state solution," no matter how strenuously Israel and its friends in Washington object:  The Palestinians will simply unilaterally declare themselves a state and ask for international recognition – and Mr. Obama will accede to that request.

A number of the particulars involved in this gambit are unclear at the moment.  For example, will the Palestinians announce the borders of their state to be the 1967 cease-fire lines, in which case large Israeli population centers (defiled as "settlements") will be inside a nation that is certain to be, to use Hitler’s phrase, judenrein (free of Jews)?  How will the Hamas-stan of Gaza be connected to the currently PLO-run West Bank – in a way that will make them "contiguous" without bisecting the Jewish state and ensuring that Hamas does not take over the rest of the so-called "Palestinian authority"?

Also unclear is precisely how Mr. Obama will handle the sticky issue of extending U.S. recognition of Palestine.  Will he want to parallel Harry Truman’s direct and immediate endorsement of the establishment of Israel in 1948?  Or will he do it more disingenuously, as former UN Ambassador John Bolton speculated in the Wall Street Journal last week, by having the United States abstain from an approving vote by the United Nations Security Council.  The hope behind the latter would be that Team Obama and its partisans will somehow avoid retribution from Israel’s friends, both Democrats and others, both here and abroad.

The truth is that, either way, Mr. Obama will have dealt Israel a potentially mortal blow.  Without control of the high ground and water aquifers of the West Bank, the Jewish state is simply indefensible and unsustainable.

Some may suggest that international forces (perhaps led by the United States) should be deployed in the areas Jews have historically known as Judea and Samaria so as to ensure that they are not used to harm Israelis in the low-lying areas to the west. 

We have seen how such arrangements work in practice in Lebanon, though– which is to say not well. 

In southern Lebanon, UN "peacekeepers" have merely wound up protecting Israel’s enemies, notably Hezbollah, as such foes of both the Jewish State and our own  have amassed immense amounts of missiles and other arms and prepared to resume hostilities against Israel at a moment of that Iranian-backed terrorist group’s choosing (or, more precisely, that of their sponsors in Tehran.)  The same is certain to eventuate in the West Bank as paramilitary forces the United States has foolishly trained and equipped become a standing army and fall under the sway of Hamas.

Such a "two-state solution" will make another regional war vastly more likely, not prevent it.  Yet, the Obama administration is committed to pursuing that goal as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made excrutiatingly clear in a pandering speech to the Americah Task Force on Palestine last week. 

Among other ominous comments, she declared that "the World Bank recently reported that if the Palestinian Authority maintains its momentum in building institutions and delivering public services, it is, and I quote, ‘well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.’"  She seemed determined in particular to emphasize the last seven words.

Voters need to know now whether President Obama and those in Congress who support his agenda are determined to help Israel’s enemies destroy her – not find out that is the case after the elections.

 

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.

NPR successfully influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood

Overnight, America was greeted with the news that NPR analyst Juan Williams had been fired because he admitted on the Fox News Channel that he sometimes felt uncomfortable on an airplane when Muslim wearing traditional garb were on board. Williams’ feelings are no doubt shared by millions of other Americans, as well as citizens of the West. After all, the vast majority of terrorist incidents in recent years have been carried out by Muslim Jihadists who invoke Islam to justify their actions. No example hits home more than the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Some observers in the West may claim that the 9/11 hijackers were “radicals” or “violent extremists” who had hijacked a peaceful religion. This misses the point. It doesn’t matter at all what motives we assign to our enemies; what matters are the motives that they themselves assign to their actions. In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality-or at least it better, if you want to have a chance at defeating him. As Sun Tzu said, “if ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.”

The fact is, the Jihadists go to great lengths to justify their actions based on Islamic Shariah law, the Quran and the Hadiths.

Williams didn’t say anything unusual; many Americans feel the same way. The only difference is that Williams made his statement on national television and, in the current atmosphere of political correctness, it cost him his job.

But now we also know that this is just part of the story. It appears that NPR came under pressure from a Muslim hate group with ties to Hamas: the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR petitioned NPR to punish Williams for exercising his First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. As it turns out, CAIR and NPR have a pretty cozy relationship, something American taxpayers should be concerned about. Newsbusters’ Tim Graham reported in September:

NPR Compares Palin, Gingrich to Historic Anti-Semites, Sympathizes with Former CAIR Publicist

National Public Radio is strongly urging America to get over its apparently rabid case of Islamophobia. On Sunday night’s All Things Considered newscast, anchor Guy Raz played audio clips of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin opposing the Ground Zero Mosque, and then launched into how much this resembles historic anti-Semitism…

What Raz does not point out is that Rabiah Ahmed is a former publicist and prominent national spokesperson for the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), a group named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorist funding case. Raz didn’t so much conduct a news interview with Rabiah Ahmed as much as he joined her in condemning the sad and bigoted state of America today…

That NPR would act at the behest of CAIR is disturbing, given what we know about CAIR. CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) organization, the Muslim Brotherhood being the original Jihadist organization founded in 1928 in Egypt. The MB is the political wing of the global Jihadist insurgency, with groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Abu Sayyaf, and Jemmah Islamiyah being the military wing of that insurgency. To make an analogy, Al Qaeda is the equivalent of the Waffen SS and the Muslim Brotherhood is the equivalent of the Nazi party.

CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history, the U.S. versus the Holy Land Foundation. CAIR was co-founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, both of whom were working for the now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, which was the Jihadist terrorist group Hamas’ American affiliate.Ahmad is infamous for this quote in a 1998 interview:

Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.

CAIR opened its first office with seed money provided by the Holy Land Foundation, the same Muslim charity later shut down for terrorism financing activity. CAIR is often associated with its spokesman,  Ibrahim Hooper, who once uttered this gem:

I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.

Outrageous quotes from people associated with CAIR are not at all unusual in fact. One of CAIR’s board members, Ihsan Bagby, once said:

Muslims can never be full citizens of this country because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.

But people affiliated with CAIR have done far worse than just say outrageous things. Discover the Networks has documented some of the activities of CAIR’s personnel:

  • In September 2003, CAIR’s former Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi, pled guilty to three federal counts of bank and visa fraud and agreed to be deported to Egypt.Federal investigators said that a group Khafagi founded, the Islamic Assembly of North America, had funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and had published material advocating suicide attacks against the United States. Khafagi’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
  • In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi, a founding Board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, was convicted along with his four brothers of having illegally shipped computers from their Dallas-area business, InfoCom Corporation, to Libya and Syria, two designated state sponsors of terrorism. That same month, Elashi was charged with having provided more than $12.4 million to Hamas while he was running the Holy Land Foundation. In April 2005, Elashi and two of his brothers were also convicted of knowingly doing business with Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook, who was Elashi’s brother-in-law. Elashi’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR, whose Dallas-Fort Worth chapter depicted the Elashis’ indictment as “a war on Islam and Muslims.”
  • FBI wiretap evidence which was introduced during the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation(a trial that explored and proved HLF’s financial ties to Hamas), proved that CAIR co-founder and CEO Nihad Awad had attended a 1993Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and operatives who collaborated on a plan to disguise funding for Hamas as charitable donations.
  • Randall Todd Royer,who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, trained with Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the State Department’s international terror list. He was also indicted on charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda and the Taliban battle American troops in Afghanistan. He later pled guilty to lesser firearm-related charges and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Royer’s illegal activities took place while he was employed by CAIR.
  • Onetime CAIR fundraiser Rabih Haddadwas arrested on terrorism-related charges and was deported from the United States due to his subsequent work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation, which in October 2002 was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
  • Abdurahman Alamoudi, one of CAIR’s former directors, is a supporter of both Hamasand Hezbollah, andis currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for terrorism-related convictions.

Despite all of this baggage, CAIR was able to influence NPR, a quasi-government agency supported by taxpayer dollars, to end the employment of someone who only said something that CAIR did not like – and not even on NPR’s air.

Denial of free speech is a common tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood based in Shariah law. Shariah law does not provide for nor protect free speech.  Criticism of Islam, Allah or Mohammed is a criminal offense.  When Muslims attempt to suppress free speech critiques of Islam they are abiding by shariah law, and insisting that we non-Muslims bow before shariah law as well.  NPR has fallen into line obediently in this case.

Given some other information that we know about NPR, this should come as no surprise. One of the producers of NPR’s morning show is a woman named Asma Khalid.  In 2009, Khalid served on a panel of journalists for ISNA (Islamic Society of North America). For a journalist with a taxpayer-supported entity such as NPR to be cozy with ISNA is worrisome indeed.

ISNA is a Muslim Brotherhood organization and, like CAIR, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. ISNA was co-founded by Sami Al-Arian, the U.S. leader for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 57 months in prison, after which he will be deported. ISNA is largely funded by Saudi Wahhabi money. Through its subsidiary, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), ISNA holds the mortgages of between 27% and 80% of the mosques in the USA.

One of the mosques that ISNA owned was the Islamic Society of Boston, which was founded by someone we already mentioned above, Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi, who was also a Director of CAIR, was the Washington DC regional representative for ISNA.

Today, Alamoudi is serving a 23 year sentence in federal prison after being convicted on terrorism charges.

Finally, this is not the first time that NPR has done CAIR’s bidding.

In the September 26 2001, article entitled “Despite Terror Attacks, NPR maintains blacklist of Leading Terror expert” written by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) they state that Steven Emerson, expert on terrorism and Islamic extremism is that since 1998 publicly funded National Public Radio has blacklisted Mr. Emerson. Ironically enough, NPR’s ban came to light just after US cruise missile strikes against Osama bin Laden’s organization, which had been implicated in suicide bomb attacks on US embassies in Africa.

Covering the strike, NPR’s Talk of the Nation program on August 20, 1998 briefly interviewed Emerson, spurring an immediate and furious reaction from CAIR and its followers. One of those followers, Chicago-based activist Ali Abunimah, had, after a previous Emerson appearance on NPR, received assurances that Mr. Emerson would be banned from the network.

As NPR’s Michael Fields put it, Emerson’s appearance had been a “mistake” and “it won’t happen again.” When, on August 20 Emerson did again appear, Abunimah e-mailed NPR producer Ellen Silva, stating that he was:

shocked and disappointed that TOTN had Steven Emerson on its call in show today as a guest. Mr. Emerson is a well-documented anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racist. … Last time, I accepted the explanation that it had been an innocent error. But how many errors can be innocent? This is a very serious matter and will require an appropriate response…. We will be listening very carefully, and pursuing this matter further. Ali Abunimah.

The next day Ms. Silva sent the following servile reply:

thank you for your letter. our executive producer was in charge of that decision…not me… i take your point and extend an apology to you from the staff of totn. please take care, -ellen

When Abunimah objected that an apology was not enough, NPR’s Silva did not disappoint the pro-Arab activist, assuring him:

… you have my promise he [Emerson] won’t be used again. it is npr policy.

After this correspondence came to light, senior NPR official Jeffrey Dvorkin (now the network’s ombudsman) insisted that Silva misspoke, and that:

… there never was and never will be a policy of banning or blacklisting at NPR… Mr. Emerson is not “banned”, and in fact we anticipate that he will be on NPR again at an appropriate time.

The “appropriate time” apparently has yet to arrive, for, even now, after Emerson’s warnings have come true, and we have seen thousands of Americans killed by Islamic-extremists, NPR’s defacto blacklist is still in effect. In the last few days Emerson has been interviewed by CBS, Fox News, MSNBC and many other media outlets, but not NPR, depriving the publicly-funded network’s listeners of his unique insights into the grave problems that our nation must now confront.

 

Published originally at The Hayride

Center files national security-focused Amicus Brief in support of Arizona Law SB-1070

September 2, 2010: David Yerushalmi, general counsel to the Center for Security Policy, joined forces with Robert Muise, senior trial counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, to file an important amicus curiae brief in the case USA v. Arizona, the Ninth Circuit appeal of the federal district court’s ruling which held that Arizona’s anti-illegal alien law, S.B. 1070, was unconstitutional.

The lower court just last month had ruled that federal law preempted the State of Arizona’s efforts to take affirmative steps to protect its citizens against what the court conceded was an epidemic of violent crimes caused by an immigration system President Obama described as "broken" and that "everybody knows it."

Notwithstanding the fact that the current system is broken and the fact that Arizona is literally under assault, evidenced by the federally-advised no-go zones just miles outside of Arizona’s major metropolitan areas, Obama instructed his attorney general, Eric Holder, to bring this lawsuit challenging the Arizona statute’s constitutionality.

Messrs. Yerushalmi and Muise filed the amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Security Policy, the Thomas More Law Center, and the Society of Americans for National Existence.

The Center for Security Policy is a premier national security think tank in Washington, D.C., founded and led by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who acted under President Ronald Reagan as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control, and U.S.-European defense relations.

The Thomas More Law Center and the Society of Americans for National Existence are public interest law firms litigating in areas to defend the Judeo-Christian foundations of this country and its national sovereignty.

The Center for Security Policy provided this "statement of interest" to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of its filing the brief:

Since before 9/11, Mr. Gaffney has directed CSP in focusing much of its resources on the underlying enemy threat doctrine known to the jihadists as Sharia (i.e., Islamic legal doctrine and system).  In turn, this work has led CSP to investigate the narco-terrorism connection between Middle East arms dealers, Hezbollah, and Central American drug traffickers such as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia ("FARC"). See, e.g., United States v. Jamal Yousef, No. S3 08 Cr. 1213 (JFK), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86281, (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2010). 

As set out in the government’s indictment in the Yousef prosecution, there is a working conspiracy between the U.S. State Department-designated Hezbollah jihadist group and militaristic drug traffickers who routinely use the Mexican-American border to transport drugs, money, arms, and personnel between the two countries. 

This jihad presence on our southern border turns an out-of-control immigration problem into an existential security threat beyond measure for individual border states, such as Arizona, and the nation at large.  From a national security policy perspective, it makes no sense for the federal government to prevent Arizona from providing a first layer of defense for itself and the Nation.

CSP’s specific interest in this case is on behalf of policy and national security professionals who call upon CSP to assist in crafting policy initiatives and other tools to counter the threat from Islamic terrorists who would exploit the federal government’s failure to defend our borders. 

What makes this case all the more important is that the same federal government in charge of carrying out congressional legislation requiring secure borders chooses instead to litigate against State governments along our borders which dare to take minimal steps to act in accordance with their responsibilities to protect and defend their own residents.

Mr. Gaffney commented:

What is especially egregious about this lawsuit against Arizona by the Obama administration is that it has absolutely nothing to do with any abuse of personal liberty as we have been led to believe by the president and the main stream media.  Instead, the argument the president effectively made in the government’s complaint is that the federal agencies in charge of immigration have chosen not to enforce the immigration laws passed by Congress and this bureaucratic decision to ignore the law should preempt Arizona’s decision to protect its law abiding citizens who are assaulted daily by the violent crime that has followed illegal immigration.

The amicus brief filed in the federal appeal is available here.

 

David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for more than 26 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona and serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy.

Obama’s Misguided Iran Policies

February 14, 2009

Among the topics that President Obama covered in his first news conference on the evening of Monday, February 9th, was Iran.

The president made several troubling statements which is hardly surprising, given that the new administration’s entire approach to Iran is troubling.

President Obama used terms and phrases like “constructive dialogue,” “engage” and “mutual respect and progress.”

None of these expressions has any place in a conversation about Iran.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2526/pub_detail.asp

Sudan, Terror and Radical Islam

16 MAY 2008

Recently Cindy McCain, wife of Senator John McCain, announced that she was divesting the portion of her investment portfolio that was invested in companies doing business in Sudan. This affords us the opportunity to further explore the nature of the regime in Sudan and its role in Jihadist terrorism.

The issue of Sudan is not entirely clear to many Americans. Many do not realize how Sudan is ruled and their role in Jihadist terrorism.

Over the past few years, the Islamic Republic of Sudan has been justifiably targeted by a grassroots divestment movement for the genocide that it has committed against its own people.

Unlike famine and drought, genocide does not simply happen due to forces of nature. Genocide is committed.

And it is no accident that the regime which has committed this genocide is also on the US government’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations and is thus under US economic and political sanctions.

Sudan has committed genocide over a period of many years in an effort by the Islamist government in Khartoum to impose sharia (a brutal legal system stemming from a virulent interpretation of Islam) on its entire population. Genocide first occurred in southern Sudan over a period of years in which the Arab Islamist government systematically killed hundreds of thousands of innocent black Christian and animist civilians. There are documented cases in which defenseless civilians lined up at aid stations set up by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were gunned down by Sudanese Air Force helicopter gunships by the hundreds.

More recently, the genocidal Arab Islamist regime has turned its sights on fellow Muslims—non-Arab blacks—in the Darfur region. These black Muslims do not subscribe to the same brand of militant Islam that the Arab Islamist regime subscribes to, thus they are being attacked in a manner similar to that which occurred in the south of Sudan.

Many Americans are asking, “There are brutal regimes in many areas of the world. Why should I care particularly about Sudan?”

The answer is that Sudan is a terrorist-sponsoring nation that has been involved with terrorist groups that have killed Americans.

http://divestterror.blogspot.com/2008/05/sudan-terror-and-radical-islam.html

Iran: The Islamofascist Terrormasters

Christopher Holton

Date Published: 2006-12-19

The U.S. State Department has for years described Iran as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

However, in recent years, it has suddenly become fashionable in some circles to downplay Iran’s role in Jihadist terrorism. Most notably, Richard Clarke, the former terrorism advisor in the executive branch, has begun insisting that Iran’s support for terrorism is largely something of the past, and as long as we don’t interfere with their nuclear ambitions, Clarke believes they will continue to behave. On the other hand, if we do take a stand against Atomic Ayatollahs, Clarke says we can expect terrorism worse than anything Al Qaeda is capable of from Iran’s favorite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

All of this hogwash was recently detailed and refuted nicely by Thomas Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard, in an article entitled “Iran’s War on the West.”

http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=92513


Lucent-Alcatel: Doing business with states sponsoring terrorism

By Christopher Holton

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Alcatel does a considerable amount of business with countries on our State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, including Iran and Sudan. Worst of all, the services and products that Alcatel provides to Iran can, at least indirectly, help that nation’s military capability. Among its activities in Iran that have relevance to Tehran’s military and terrorism-related activities are contracts signed with state-controlled Iranian companies to provide data transmission and switching network capabilities. The contracts have reportedly included provisions of hardware, software, technologies and training to Iranian companies. It likewise is installing an undersea telecommunications cable for Iran.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2006/ss_holton_04_06.html


A war on whose terms?

We are entering troubling times. The conviction that war is upon us grows with each passing day. What remains to be determined is who will dictate the terms of that war – Iran or Israel.

Iran has good reason to go to war today. The regime is teetering on the brink of collapse. Last week, the bellwether of Iranian politics and the commercial center of the country – the bazaar – abandoned the regime. In 1979, it was only after the bazaar merchants abandoned the shah that the ayatollahs gained the necessary momentum to overthrow the regime.

Last Tuesday the merchants at the all-important Teheran bazaar closed their shops to protest the government’s plan to raise their taxes by 70 percent. Merchants in Tabriz and Isfahan quickly joined the protest. According to the Associated Press, the regime caved in to the merchants demands and cancelled the tax hike. And yet the strike continued.

According to The Los Angeles Times, to hide the fact that the merchants remain on strike, on Sunday the regime announced that the bazaar was officially closed due to the excessive heat. The Times also reported that the head of the fabric traders union in the Teheran bazaar was arrested for organizing an anti-regime protest. The protest was joined by students. Regime goons attacked the protesters with tear gas and arrested and beat a student caught recording the event.

Crucially, the Times reported that by last Thursday the bazaar strike had in many cases become openly revolutionary. Citing an opposition activist, it claimed, "By Thursday, hundreds of students and merchants had gathered in the shoemakers’ quarter of the old bazaar, chanting slogans [such] as, "Death to Ahmadinejad," "Victory is God’s," "Victory is near" and "Death to this deceptive government."

The merchants’ strike is just one indication of the regime’s economic woes. According to AP, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under pressure to carry out his pledge to cut government subsidies for food and fuel. Although he supports the move, he fears the mass protests that would certainly follow its implementation.

FrontPage Magazine’s Ryan Mauro noted earlier this week that there is growing disaffection with the regime in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps itself. A recent documentary produced by the Guardian featured four IRGC defectors speaking of the discord in the ranks. The regime is so frightened of defection among the IRGC that it has removed many older members and replaced them with poor young men from the countryside.

The regime’s fear of its opposition has caused it to crack down on domestic liberties. Last week the regime issued hairstyle guidelines for men. Spiked hair and ponytails are officially banned as decadent.

On Sunday Mohammed Boniadi, the deputy head of Teheran’s school system, announced that starting in the fall, a thousand clerics will descend on the schools to purge Western influence from the halls of learning. As he put it, the clerics’ job will be to make students aware of "opposition plots and arrogance."

These moves to weaken Western influence on Iranian society are of a piece with the regime’s new boycott against "Zionist" products. Late last month Ahmadinejad signed a law outlawing the use of products from such Zionist companies as Intel, Coca Cola, Nestle and IBM.

ALL OF these moves expose a hysterical fear of the Iranian people on the part of their unelected leaders. Regime strongmen themselves acknowledge that they have never faced a greater threat. For instance, the Guardian quoted IRGC commander Maj.-Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari saying recently, "Although last year’s sedition did not last more than around eight months, it was much more dangerous than the [Iran-Iraq] war." As is its wont, the regime has chosen to defend itself against this threat by repressing its internal enemies and attacking its external enemies. In an article last month in Forbes, Reza Kahlili, a former CIA spy in the IRGC who maintains connections inside the regime, claimed that the IRGC has set up concentration camps throughout the country in anticipation of mass arrests in any future opposition campaign against the regime.

As for the outside world, Iran is ratcheting up both its nuclear brinksmanship and its preparations for yet another round of regional war. In an announcement on Sunday, Iran’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the Iranian news agency ISNA that Iran has produced 20 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent. Salehi also said that Iran is building fuel plates to operate a nuclear reactor.

Iran’s nuclear progress has frightened the Arab world so much that for the first time, Arab leaders are giving public voice to the concerns they have expressed behind closed doors. In public remarks last week, UAE Ambassador to the US Youssef al-Otaiba made a series of statements whose bluntness was unprecedented. Otaiba said that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf cannot live with a nuclear Iran, that he supports military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and that if the US fails to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, the Arab states of the Gulf will abandon their alliances with the US in order to appease Iran. Otaiba rejected the notion that a nuclear-armed Iran can be contained stating, "Talk of containment and deterrence really concerns me and makes me very nervous."

Otaiba’s concerns were echoed last Friday by Kahlili in a public lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He asserted that if Iran develops a nuclear arsenal it will use it to attack Israel, the Gulf states and Europe.

IRAN IS seeking to divert international attention away from its internal troubles and limit the possibility of a strike against its nuclear installations by inciting war with Israel. On Sunday the regime announced that Ahmadinejad will soon visit Beirut. Recent activities by Iran’s Hizbullah proxy in Lebanon indicate that if his visit goes through – and even if it doesn’t – the announcement signals that Iran intends to fight another proxy war against Israel through Hizbullah.

As the IDF announced in a press briefing last Wednesday, Iran has tightened its control over Hizbullah forces. It recently sent Hossein Mahadavi, commander of the IRGC’s Jerusalem Force, to Beirut to take over Hizbullah’s operations.

As for Hizbullah, it is poised to launch a witch-hunt against its domestic opponents.

Hizbullah MP Muhammad Ra’ad said earlier this month that the proxy army will "hunt down," collaborators. As MP Sami Gemayel noted in an interview with LBC translated by MEMRI, this that means is that Hizbullah is poised to conduct mass extrajudicial arrests and wholesale terrorization of Lebanese civilians.

Likewise, Hizbullah-allied former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab effectively called for armed attacks against UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon in a recent television interview translated by MEMRI. His remarks followed some 20 Hizbullahordered assaults on UNIFIL forces in Shi’ite villages in recent days. French forces were the victim of two of those assaults and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri travelled to Paris last week in the hopes of convincing the French government not to remove French forces from the country.

And of course, all of these provocations are being carried out as Hizbullah deploys its forces south of the Litani River.

According to the IDF briefing last week, those forces have some 40,000 short- and medium-range missiles at their disposal.

Those missiles have been augmented by hundreds of guided long-range missiles north of the Litani with warheads capable of bringing down skyscrapers in Tel Aviv.

Moreover, they are further augmented by Syria’s massive Scud missile and artillery arsenals and by a frightening potential fifth column among Israeli Arabs in the Galilee. Sunday’s assault on police forces operating in the Syrian-allied Druse village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights is a mild indicator of what is liable to transpire in Israeli Arab villages in the North in the next war.

For its part, the IDF is seeking to deter such an attack. Wednesday’s briefing, in which the IDF made clear that it knows where Hizbullah has hidden its missiles, was aimed at deterring war.

Unfortunately, the IDF’s warnings will likely have no effect on Hizbullah. If Hizbullah goes to war, it will do so not to advance its own interests, but to protect Iran. Here of course, there is nothing new.

Four years ago this week Hizbullah launched its war against Israel and not because doing so served its interests.

Hizbullah launched its war against Israel because Iran ordered it to do so. Then as now, Iran sought a war with Israel in Lebanon to divert international attention from its nuclear weapons program. And now, with the Iranian regime besieged by its own people as never before, and with just a short period required for it to cross the nuclear threshold, Iran has more reason than ever to seek a distraction in Lebanon to buy time for itself.

Four years ago, Israel was taken in by Iran’s Lebanese proxy war. Rather than keeping its eye on Teheran, it swallowed Hizbullah’s bait and waged a war against hapless Lebanon while leaving Iran and its Syrian toady immune from attack. The results were predictably poor and strategically disastrous.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has given Iran every reason to believe that Israel will respond in an identical manner if Hizbullah strikes again today. In repeated statements over the past several months, he has maintained that Israel will blame Lebanon – not Iran or Syria – for any Hizbullah action against it.

Four years ago, Israel was reined in by the Bush administration. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice ordered Israel not to attack Syria despite the fact that without Syrian support for Hizbullah, there could have been no war. Israel obliged her both because its leaders lacked the strategic sense to recognize the folly of Rice’s demands and because the Bush administration was Israel’s firm ally.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just returned from yet another visit with US President Barack Obama. Although the background music was cheerful, from statements by both men it is clear that Obama is not a credible ally. He does not understand or accept the strategic logic behind the US alliance with Israel and will not support Israel in future armed conflicts.

Indeed, in the face of the growing Iranian menace, Obama insists on limiting his interests to the irrelevant faux peace process with Fatah while allowing Iran and its proxies to run wild.

What this means is that for better or for worse, under Obama the US is far less relevant than it was four years ago. And this frees Netanyahu to fight the coming war on Israel’s terms. Iran’s domestic troubles and the Arab world’s genuine fear of a nuclear armed Iran provide Israel with a rare opportunity to radically shift the balance of power in the region for the better. It is time for Netanyahu to lead.

Guatemala: A security challenge

I had a great opportunity to be part of group organized by the Atlas Foundation that participated in a seminar on security and economics that took place in Guatemala late in June.

Interestingly enough the focus of the conference was on the relationship between economic investment and security. Participating in the conference were academics, lawyers and businessmen from Central America as well as economic and security experts from the United States.

There were so many points presented during the conference that summarizing it in a short article is difficult. However, it is possible to have a sense of what countries like Guatemala are experiencing, and this is not good news, not for the country’s citizens and not for the United States.

Guatemala is a country where insecurity prevails and the state is in disarray. Power and order are in the hands of groups and actors outside the state. The law is ineffective. The police are useless and have lost respect of the citizenry.

Indeed, Guatemalans today face a situation where their security is threatened. They can be attacked in the streets, robbed, kidnapped and extorted with minimal or no response from the authorities.  Private security, local and foreign, is being hired to protect the citizens. Likewise, Guatemalans must resort to self-help to counteract the prevailing violence and criminality. At this point there is no condo, neighborhood or business that does not enjoy the protection of private security. People have lost confidence in state institutions and therefore do not even report crimes as they do not expect any response.

Likewise, the uselessness of the authorities has also lead people to take the law in their own hands. Lynching of people and criminals is very common. Talking to a resident of a predominantly indigenous town in the area of Atitlan, he told me that most recently residents of the town captured three people suspected of committing crimes in the town. Instead of handing them to the police, the residents lynched the criminals in front of the local police station by spraying them with gasoline and then setting them on fire. Upon looking at the burned up bodies the police abandoned the area immediately. In many cases local police were expelled by local residents from the town by force due to their clumsiness. These types of events do not only occur in the towns. They have occurred in the center of the capital, Guatemala City, mostly by citizens, angry with crime and criminal impunity.

I was astonished to hear decent people justify these types of actions. They claimed that in light of police ineptness they are left with no choice. As barbaric and unacceptable as this type of punishment appears, I could not avoid appreciating the sincerity and despair of the person speaking to me.

Attending Church is not only a religious act in Guatemala. I could see the people assembling in the House of Worship as if it were a shelter in time of war. The community gathers in acts of solidarity during mass and not only were the words of the priest heard. I could hear members of the community take the pulpit and denounce corruption, bad government, and criminality.

The presence of gangs is also a serious challenge. The majority of the extortion cases, kidnappings and assassinations are carried out by them. As the presence of Mexican drug traffickers increase in Guatemala due to the Mexican government’s heavy pressure on them, the "narcos" hire them as paid assassins. Gangs are mostly in charge of networks of narcotic distribution. They also traffic illegal immigrants (mostly drug traffickers) across the borders.

The government of President Alvaro Colom is widely-viewed as incompetent and indifferent to the fate of Guatemalans.   The people’s plea for more security is ignored by the government. The institutions of government are perceived as being corrupt and easily bribed by drug traffickers. It is no surprise that The International Crisis Group reported that in Guatemala, despite the bitter memories of the bloody civil war (1960-1996), the military remains the second most popular institution after the Catholic Church. Many in Guatemala tend to believe that the military is the only institution capable of restoring order.  Police are feared by society and considered corrupt. The chief of police, himself, was involved in a case of corruption and money laundering. Members of the police have joined gangs in extortion and other criminal activities. A large number of police officers, like the gangs, seem to actively cooperate with drug trafficking organizations. The chair of the United Nations-sanctioned Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIG), and whose mission is to help Guatemala establish and consolidate the rule of law, resigned over the appointment of an attorney general widely perceived as being corrupt.

Against this background of chaos and anarchy, Mexican drug traffickers have inundated Guatemala, and not merely because they are being forced out of Mexico by (Mexican) President Felipe Calderon’s anti-drugs policies.  They are settling in Guatemala precisely because of the general corruption, the easiness with which police are bribed and co-opted, the government’s weakness and the heavy presence of gangs that extend a hand to them.

But this is not just a Guatemalan problem. It is very much an American and regional problem. The collapse of state authority and the rule of thugs and criminals pose a security threat. Guatemala is not the only country facing disintegration. El Salvador and Honduras where gang activity is strong will soon follow the Guatemalan model.   A chaotic environment attracts terrorist groups such as the FARC and Hezbollah.

Last but not least the chaotic Guatemalan environment has already attracted Hugo Chavez. I was told by credible sources that Venezuelan planes have been actively involved in providing transportation of drugs from Guatemala’s airports. The Guatemalan government allowed this to happen. Chavez is interested in destabilizing countries in Latin America as a way to destroy any government in the region that is not pro-Chavez in order to turn it into a pro-Chavez government. This is why criminality is one of the weapons used to achieve this goal.

I was also told that Chavez’s people have been seen in the palace government and he reportedly has connections to President Alvaro Colom. It will not be long until Guatemala becomes another bastion of Hugo Chavez. As we know wherever Chavez goes Iran also follows.

The U.S government needs to pay serious attention to these developments in Central America not only as a criminal problem but as a serious national security challenge. This is only the beginning of the nightmare. The worst is still to come.

 

Luis Fleischman is a Senior Advisor for the Menges Hemispheric Security Project, Center for Security Policy.

NewsReal Interviews Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick has received notoriety for her recent parody, "We Con the World." She considers herself an American-Israeli Jew who is currently a deputy editor for the Jerusalem Post. She was a captain in the Israel Defense Force and from 1997- 1998 served as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. She is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC where she routinely briefs senior administration officials and members of Congress on issues of joint Israeli-American concern. In 2008, she wrote the book, Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad. She commented on the issues facing Israel today. 

NewsRealBlog: Do you understand the criticism you are getting for your video?

Caroline Glick: No. We were just making a parody of "We Are the World."

NRB: Are you upset that Jews like Steven Spielberg are not speaking out in support of Israel?

Glick: Speilberg produced Schindler’s List and Munich. He clearly has a vision of Jews based upon weakness, not strength and upon Jews being protected by non-Jews rather than defending themselves with the tools of power.

NRB: Are you upset with the criticism?

Glick: Not at all. If they or Hamas said they liked me I would be very concerned about what I am doing.

NRB: Why did you make the video?

Glick: Latma is our website. At Latma it is our belief that by exposing the media to ridicule, we will help to change the nature of public discourse. We were planning on doing this parody for only the Israeli domestic audience.

NRB: Why did you change your mind?

Glick: We decided to direct it to the international audience when we saw the international community pile on against Israel and produced it in English.

NRB: Is this the first parody you created?

Glick: No. On the website LATMA we have had lots and lots of parodies. We have produced them with English subtitles for the past several months.

NRB: Do you want to respond to those critics who are calling you a racist?

Glick: The lefts’ favorite method is to call anyone who gives them an argument they can’t contend with a racist. It’s ok that the left call Israel a neo-Nazi or Fascist state. I categorize those attacks against myself and my team as the last refuge of desperate, pathetic, frustrated ideologues that cannot handle reality.

NRB: Has your job at the Jerusalem Post been affected by this outcry to fire you?

Glick: Definitely not.

NRB: What point did you want to get across with the video?

Glick: My team and I wanted to lash out to those people who dared to call our naval commandos murderers for defending their country and themselves from a lynch mob. Calling those on the flotilla "peace activists" is a complete lie. They were just championing the rights of a terrorist organization.

NRB: What do you want to tell your critics?

Glick: 90% of the tens of thousands of responses to this clip were positive. The leftist response to what we did is marginal. We have received an outpouring of support not only from the US but literally from all over the world.

NRB: Do you agree that a lot of the left embrace anti-Semitism?

Glick: Yes. It’s the anti-Semitism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Helen Thomas. They want the destruction of the state of Israel, the third exile. People don’t want to get their arms around the fact that Israel is in existential danger.

NRB: Did you read Andrew McCarthy’s book The Grand Jihad which also talks about the left?

Glick: I haven’t read it yet but I can’t wait to read his book. I read his earlier book. I think he is an excellent and a wonderful supporter of Israel.

NRB: Do you think the left is trying to demonize you?

Glick: They try to personalize everything. They can’t deal with content based upon reality. They can’t deal with the fact that leftism is a recipe for disaster on every level. They attack people who point it out.

NRB: What is your book about?

Glick: My book is a compilation of my columns from 2002 to 2004.

NRB: Can you be more specific?

Glick: I use my columns as a vehicle to explain the basics of Jihad. Israel is on the front lines. There is an onslaught on Western Civilization and the free world. How do we in Israel contend with the challenge that we are being presented with by radical Islam. These are basically the themes I touch on with my column twice a week.

NRB: Do you think America is also on the front lines to fight Jihad?

Glick: The Obama Administration is doing two things. First, they are ignoring and denying the existence of the enemy, the Radical Jihadists. They are pretending there is no such thing. Second, President Obama does not believe the US should have a leadership role in the world. The US should just be a part of the pact. They need to change this policy because the US has a right and a duty to lead the free world in defending itself against radical Islam.

NRB: What do you think of Iran backing down and not sending the supposed aid ship to Gaza?

Glick: A video released around June 18 will have Ahmadinejad in it. If Iran is sending a ship it is not an aid ship. Call it like it is-a war ship. They are basically provoking an act of war with Israel.

NRB: Are you going to make more videos and write more books?

Glick: We will do what is necessary, so yes.