Tag Archives: Lebanon

Patriots and false patriots

Two years ago, the North was a war zone. Fields and forests, homes and hospitals were set ablaze by Hizbullah missiles. But on Sunday afternoon, as a tireless patriot was laid to rest in the Jezreel Valley, the ground was not burning with missile fire, it was exploding with fecundity. It filled the air with the aroma of its promise of spring harvests.

A multitude of mourners from all over the country crowded into Moshav Moledet’s small cemetery to pay their final respects to 53-year-old Tzafrir Ronen, who died of a heart attack on Friday night. The man they mourned had dedicated his life to defending the country. In recent years, Tzafrir spent nearly every waking moment fighting for its soul. He sought to educate his fellow Israelis about the threats facing the country generally, and specifically about the existential danger to its viability presented by the Left’s defeatist and post-Zionist narrative.

For this son of the Jezreel Valley, who grew up with the land, that narrative – which argues that Israel has neither the ability nor the right to defeat its enemies and to settle its land – was the single greatest threat to the long-term well-being of the country. Over the years, as Tzafrir’s frustration at the direction the country was taking grew, his message became angrier and more urgent. As each of his successive warnings – about the fraudulent Oslo peace process, the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the criminalization of Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, the refusal to enforce laws in the Israeli Arab sector, the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria and the establishment of the Hamas terror state in Gaza – were ignored by successive governments, by the media and, inevitably, by voters, Tzafrir, like so many others in his position felt he was shouting into the wind.

MARGINALIZING AND silencing voices like Tzafrir’s is one of the Israeli Left’s greatest achievements. By consistently ignoring or demonizing voices like Tzafrir’s – who have been correct about every major strategic issue facing the country – while steadfastly legitimizing and lionizing men and women like Amos Oz, Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Beilin and Haim Ramon – who not only have been wrong about every major issue in the past generation, but have also often taken leading roles in our enemies’ propaganda campaigns – the Left has managed to remove our most vibrant thinkers and bravest builders and fighters from the national debate.

But the hundreds who crowded into the cemetery on Sunday are proof that the Left’s success has been far from complete. The mourners at his funeral included Israelis from all walks of life — religious, secular, farmers, city dwellers, Jews, non-Jews, new olim and sabras. The fact that people from such diverse backgrounds and traditions have found the way to work with one another shows that in spite of the demonization of the Right, people are still interested in defending and building the country. They are still are drawn to voices in the wilderness, like Tzafrir’s, which say that we must fight, and win, and that we deserve to win and should feel privileged to fight for what is right.

On the face of it, Tzafrir, his colleagues and friends could feel vindicated by the Olmert-Livni-Barak government’s decision to launch Operation Cast Lead against Hamas’s regime in Gaza. Since Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni first began advocating the surrender of Gaza in late 2003, Tzafrir and his colleagues were at the forefront of the protest movement against the giveaway. Not only did they argue that the forcible expulsion and destruction of communities in Gaza was a moral outrage, they warned that a withdrawal would transform Gaza into the jihadist hub it has become.

AND OF course, they were right. Far from bringing peace and stability, as they warned the likes of Olmert and Livni, withdrawal from Gaza started the countdown to the war we are now fighting. And as they warned would happen, withdrawal from Gaza allowed Hamas to become an Iranian proxy and build the Iranian-supplied army that now assaults the South with missiles and rockets.

Moreover, the international outcry which has greeted the IDF operation, and the tepid US support it has enjoyed, shows clearly that by "ending the occupation" of Gaza, (which actually ended with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994), Israel weakened rather than strengthened its international supporters. Today Israel is being condemned more harshly than it was in 2004 when the IDF nearly destroyed Hamas in Gaza by decapitating its leadership.

On the face of it, Tzafrir and his colleagues could pat themselves on the backs and say that by waging Operation Cast Lead, Livni and Olmert and the architect of unilateral surrenders of land to terrorists himself – Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who handed South Lebanon to Hizbullah in 2000 – have finally seen the light. They understand that terrorists have to be defeated and that the country is better off controlling hostile territories than allowing its enemies to control them.

BUT THIS is not the case. Olmert, Livni and Barak have made clear that they haven’t changed their defeatist and post-Zionist view of Israel’s prospects at all. Their current operation in Gaza is not aimed at defeating Hamas. They have uttered no call for victory. To the contrary, as Olmert made clear in his speech on Saturday evening, the goal of the current campaign is simply to "change the situation" in the South. The question is what "change" they have in mind.

For her part, Livni has called for installing the Fatah terror group in Gaza instead of Hamas. But Fatah has been rejected not only by Gazans, but by the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria as well. Bringing Fatah into Gaza would do nothing to stabilize the situation. It would simply be an invitation for Fatah to conduct war against Israel and seek an accommodation with Hamas and Iran.

Barak has claimed that we can no more negotiate a settlement with Hamas than the US can negotiate a settlement with al-Qaida. And this is true in principle. Just as al-Qaida will never live at peace with America, so Hamas will never accept peaceful coexistence with Israel. But Barak has never been one to abide by principles.

He didn’t adhere to that principle six months ago when he convinced Livni and Olmert to accept a cease-fire that enabled Hamas to build its army and its missile arsenal without fear of IDF attack. And Barak did not adhere to this principle when as late as last Tuesday he was calling for a renewal of the failed, one-sided cease-fire.

THE FACT of the matter is that the change that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government seeks today has more to do with the public’s perception of its competence than with any interest in changing the situation in Gaza in any fundamental way. During the Second Lebanon War, the government showed that it could not be trusted with the defense of the country and with the proper deployment of IDF soldiers. And in the aftermath of that war, the government lost its moral right to send its forces into battle.

Now it uses its campaign in Gaza as a means of winning back its moral authority. But the problem is that despite its protestations of cunning competence, the government’s aims today are the same as they were in 2006. As was the case with Hizbullah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is signaling that it seeks a new negotiated settlement with Hamas. The hoped-for settlement, which has been telegraphed to the public through the pro-government media, will leave Hamas in power in Gaza. Although the government claims that the postwar Hamas will be more peaceful than the prewar Hamas, there is no reason to believe this will be the case.

Just as has been the case with Hizbullah since the government failed to destroy the terror army in 2006, so if Hamas remains in control of Gaza after the current war, no matter what its condition, it will be perceived as the winner.

HERE IT is important to make a sharp distinction between the IDF’s clear military successes in Gaza and the political leadership’s problematic management of this campaign. In the former case, it is inarguable that by destroying Hamas’s military installations, killing its military commanders and incapacitating its weapons smuggling infrastructure, the IDF is weakening Hamas as a military organization. And this is a great and long-awaited achievement.

In contrast, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government’s refusal to reconsider its defeatist political philosophy makes it apparent that in the longer term, any strategic advantage enjoyed from the IDF’s success will be marginal. Like Hizbullah, Hamas – which enjoys Iranian and Syrian state sponsorship and authentic popularity throughout the Islamic world – does not have to defeat Israel to be perceived as the victor. It merely needs to survive. That is the great difference between jihadist organizations and Western democracies. And by surviving, it will expand its international cachet.

JUST AS the Bush administration seeks to accommodate Hizbullah by selling advanced weapons to the Lebanese government it dominates, so too, in the aftermath of the current campaign, Hamas will be accepted by the West.

Tzafrir Ronen, and his colleagues whose strategic wisdom caused them to be banished from the public square, can always depend on hapless, defeatist governments like that of Olmert, Livni, and Barak to remember them in times of crisis. Like a Swiss clock, whenever leaders who preach nothing but defeat and retreat to their countrymen find themselves in a position of having to fight our enemies, they know they can count on men like Tzafrir to fight for them. And to date, men like Tzafrir, who served in the IDF’s elite combat units, and whose sons and daughters continue to bear the greatest burdens in our defense, have answered their calls without hesitation.

Looking at the faces of the mourners on Sunday afternoon and listening to the many eulogies of Tzafrir that repeatedly praised his Zionism, there was no room for doubt that again today these people will answer the call. But how long will this state of affairs continue? How long can failed and strategically blind politicians continue to expect the men and women they demonize to save the country after they fail, and then hand it back to them to endanger again?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The ‘realist’ fantasy

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed.

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas’s endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn’t feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

While Hamas joyously renewed its jihad against Jews and Christians, its overlords in Iran also basked in jihadist triumphalism. The source of Teheran’s sense of ascendancy this week was Britain’s Channel 4 network’s decision to request that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad give a special Christmas Day address to the British people. Ahmadinejad’s speech was supposed to be a response to Queen Elizabeth II’s traditional Christmas Day address to her subjects. That is, Channel 4 presented his message as a reasonable counterpoint to the Christmas greetings of the head of the Church of England.

Channel 4 justified its move by proclaiming that it was providing a public service. As a spokesman told The Jerusalem Post, "We’re offering [Ahmadinejad] the chance to speak for himself, which people in the West don’t often get the chance to see."

While that sounds reasonable, the fact is that Westerners see Ahmadinejad speaking for himself all the time. They saw him at the UN two years in a row as he called for the countries of the world to submit to Islam; claimed that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is divinely inspired; and castigated Jews as subhuman menaces to humanity.

They saw him gather leading anti-Semites from all over the world at his Holocaust denial conference.

They heard him speak in his own words when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

And of course, over the years Ahmadinejad has often communicated directly to the British people. For instance, in 2007 he received unlimited airtime on UK television as he paraded kidnapped British sailors and marines in front of television cameras; forced them to make videotaped "confessions" of their "crime" of entering Iranian territorial waters; and compelled them to grovel at his knee and thank him for "forgiving" them.

The British people listened to Ahmadinejad as he condemned Britain as a warmongering nation after its leaders had surrendered Basra to Iranian proxies. They heard him – speaking in his own voice – when he announced that in a gesture of Islamic mercy, he was freeing their humiliated sailors and marines in honor of Muhammad’s birthday and Easter, and then called on all Britons to convert to Islam.

Yet as far as Channel 4 is concerned, Ahmadinejad is still an unknown quantity for most Britons. So they asked him to address the nation on Christmas. And not surprisingly, in his address, he attacked their way of life and co-opted their Jewish savior, Jesus, saying, "If Christ was on earth today, undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers."

He then reiterated his call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam saying, "The solution to today’s problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine prophets."

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn’t their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West’s leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West’s leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

The "realist" view was given clear expression this week by one of the "realist" clique’s most prominent members. In an op-ed published Tuesday in Canada’s Globe and Mail titled, "We must talk Iran out of the bomb," Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that given the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the dangers of a US or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear installations, the incoming Obama administration must hold direct negotiations with the mullahs to convince them to end their nuclear weapons program.

In making this argument, Haass ignores the fact that this has been the Bush administration’s policy for the past five years. He also ignores the fact that President George W. Bush adopted this policy at the urging of Haass’s "realist" colleagues and at the urging of Haass himself.

Moreover, Haass bizarrely contends that in negotiating with the mullahs, the Obama administration should offer Iran the same package of economic and political payoffs that the Bush administration and the EU have been offering, and Teheran has been rejecting, since 2003.

Even more disturbingly, Haass ignores the fact that Teheran made its greatest leaps forward in its uranium enrichment capabilities while it was engaged in these talks with the West.

So in making his recommendation to the Obama administration – which has already announced its intention to negotiate with the mullahs – Haass has chosen to ignore Iran’s statements, its actions, and known facts about the West’s inability to steer it from its course of war by showering it with pay-offs.

Haass and his colleagues in the US, Europe and on the Israeli Left are similarly unwilling to pay attention to Hamas. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Haass and his colleague Martin Indyk from the Brookings Institute call on the Obama administration to either ignore Hamas, or, if it abides by a cease-fire with Israel, they suggest that the Obama administration should support a joint Hamas-Fatah government and "authorize low-level contact between US officials and Hamas." The fact that Hamas itself is wholly dedicated to Israel’s destruction and Islamic global domination is irrelevant.

Similarly, Haass and Indyk assume that Damascus can be appeased into abandoning its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, and its strategic alliance with Iran. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s views of how his interests are best served are unimportant. Both Assad’s statements of eternal friendship with Iran and his active involvement in Iran’s war effort against the US and its allies in Israel, Iraq and Lebanon are meaningless. The "realists" know what he really wants.

MUSLIMS AREN’T the only ones whose views and actions are dismissed as irrelevant by these foreign policy wise men. The "realists" ignore just about every non-Western actor. Take Iran’s principal Asian ally, North Korea, for example.

This week North Korea’s official news agency threatened to destroy South Korea in a "sea of fire," and "reduce everything treacherous and anti-reunification to debris and build an independent, reunified country on it," if any country dares to attack its nuclear installations.

North Korea made its threat two weeks after Kim Jung Il’s regime disengaged from its fraudulent disarmament talks with the Bush administration. Those talks – the brainchild of foreign policy "realists" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill – were based on the "realist" belief that the US can appease North Korea into giving up its nuclear arsenal. (That would be the same nuclear arsenal that the North Koreans built while engaged in fraudulent disarmament talks with the Clinton administration.)

After Pyongyang agreed in February 2007 to eventually come clean on its plutonium installations (but not its uranium enrichment programs), and to account for its nuclear arsenal (but not for its proliferation activities), Rice convinced President Bush to remove North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror and to end its subjection to the US’s Trading with the Enemy Act this past October. And then, after securing those massive US concessions, on December 11 Pyongyang renounced its commitments, walked away from the table and now threatens to destroy South Korea if anyone takes any action against it.

North Korea’s behavior is of no interest to the "realists," however. As far as they are concerned, the US has no option other than to continue the failed appeasement policy that has enabled North Korea to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As the Council on Foreign Relations’ Gary Samore said, "I think we’re sort of condemned to that process, because we don’t really have any alternative."

Samore and his colleagues believe there are no other options because all other options involve placing responsibility for contending with North Korea on non-Western powers like China, South Korea and Japan. More radically, they involve holding North Korea accountable for its actions and making it pay a price for its poor behavior.

As the "realists" claim that the US has no option other than their failed appeasement policies, back in the real world, this week military officials from the US’s Pacific Command warned that North Korea may supply Iran with intercontinental ballistic missiles. These warnings are credible given that North Korea has been the primary supplier of ballistic missiles and missile technology to Iran and Syria and has played a major role in both countries’ nuclear weapons programs.

Defending Channel 4’s invitation to Ahmadinejad, Dorothy Byrne, the network’s head of news and current affairs, said, "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad’s views are enormously influential. As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."

When you think about it, broadcasting Ahmadinejad really would have been a public service if Byrne or any of the delusional "realists" calling the shots were remotely interested in listening to what he has to say. But they aren’t. So far from a public service for Britain, it was a service for those who, unbeknownst to most Britons, are dedicated to destroying their country.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Netanyahu’s grand coalition

The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration’s policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, US president-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime minister used his prize ceremony to call on Obama to make contending with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his first year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded that the West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.

People who have been in close contact with Obama’s foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month’s US elections, Obama’s people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

The source reports that Gen. Jim Jones, Obama’s designated national security adviser, is Israel’s most outspoken critic. The source, who held a two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates that Jones is keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US troops, to Judea and Samaria.

Jones’s plan, which is vociferously opposed by the IDF, would make it impossible for the IDF to carry out counterterror operations in the areas. As a practical matter, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who live in the areas would be imperiled. Just as Hizbullah has used UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon as a shield from the IDF behind which it has rearmed and reasserted control over the border zone, so too a NATO force would facilitate an empowerment of Hamas and Fatah, which would unify, arm and organize free from the threat of IDF counterterror operations.

Jones’s plan is not new. In a 2002 interview, Samantha Power – who has been one of Obama’s closest foreign affairs advisers for years and now serves as a member of his transition team for the State Department – called for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria as "a mammoth protection force" to protect the Palestinians from Israel, which she claimed was guilty of "major human rights abuses."

Obama’s team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls that show that Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, is favored to win February 10’s general elections by a wide margin.

In anticipation of Likud’s expected electoral victory, they have been piling on against Netanyahu and the party. This was most recently evident at last week’s Middle East policy conclave in Washington organized by the pro-Obama and post-Zionist Saban Middle East Forum at the Brookings Institute. There, both secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton’s surrogate, former president Bill Clinton, and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice castigated Netanyahu’s assertion that peace must be built from the bottom up through the liberalization of Palestinian society, rather than from the top down by giving land to terrorists.

Netanyahu foresees Palestinian liberalization coming through economic development in an "economic peace process."

Both the former US president and Rice attacked his plan, claiming that it is antithetical to the sacrosanct "two-state solution."

As far as they and their many colleagues are concerned, the only thing that remains to be discussed is when Israel will vacate Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The fact that there is no significant Palestinian constituency willing to peacefully coexist with Israel is irrelevant.

In light of the incoming Obama administration’s palpable hostility toward Israel, and particularly toward Israel’s political realists, the results of the Likud primary this past Monday were especially significant. In selecting the party’s slate of candidates for Knesset, Likud members favored sober-minded politicians who use their common sense to guide them over those with records of support for the fraudulent "peace processes" so favored by the local media, Kadima, Labor and the international jet set.

Likud politicians who warned of the dangers of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza and expel some 10,000 Israelis from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria were elected to the top of the Knesset slate. Those who supported Sharon’s withdrawal and expulsion plan – which is now widely recognized to have been Israel’s most disastrous strategic move in recent history – were either rejected out of hand, or demoted.

The men and women selected by Likud’s voters will provide Netanyahu with the political strength to stand up to pressure from the Obama White House. They will support him when he is forced to reject US demands that Israel give away vital territory to Fatah and Hamas militias and to Syria’s Iranian-sponsored regime. They will support him when he is compelled to refuse US demands to deploy NATO forces to Judea and Samaria. They will back him when he says that Fatah is not a peace partner for Israel but Hamas’s partner for war against Israel.

That the general public shares the sensibilities exhibited by Likud primary voters is made clear by the fact that Likud’s standing in the polls has not significantly diminished since the primary. If, as the media warned, the public would reject a list comprised of sober-minded realists, one would have expected that support to drop. Instead, it remains steady even as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni castigates Likudniks as naysayers and opponents of peace and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scandalously invites the nations of the world to turn against Israel if Likud wins the elections.

One might have intuited that the striking contrast between the sober-minded Likud party and the delusional and defeatist Kadima and Labor parties that was brought so prominently to the fore by the Likud primary would have been the central message that Netanyahu chose to convey in the days that have followed Monday’s vote. But sadly, one would be wrong to think that.

Disturbingly, rather than drawing distinctions between his party and its rivals, Netanyahu has spent the days since the primary drawing distinctions between himself and a minor player in his own party. Both ahead of the primary and in the days since, Netanyahu has devoted the majority of his time to attacking his sharpest critic within the party – Moshe Feiglin, who heads the far-right Jewish Leadership Forum in Likud and won the not-particularly-senior 20th position on Likud’s Knesset slate. On Thursday, Netanyahu succeeded in pushing Feiglin down to the 36th spot.

Feiglin has more in common with the Left he abhors than with his party members. Like the Left, Feiglin bases his strategic and economic notions on a complete denial of reality. Whereas the Left ignores the Arabs, Feiglin ignores the West. Feiglin’s religious adherence to his views has made him few friends in Likud or elsewhere in Israeli politics. The threat he constitutes to Netanyahu is negligible.

Given Feiglin’s inherent weakness, Netanyahu’s post-primary focus on him is shocking. Netanyahu has argued that Feiglin will lose votes for Likud. But assuming that is true, the last thing Netanyahu should be doing is placing a spotlight on Feiglin. Rather, Netanyahu should be emphasizing his strongest suit: the clear distinction between Likud on the one hand and Kadima and Labor on the other hand.

In focusing the public’s attention on Feiglin, Netanyahu appears to be reacting to foreign pressures rather than domestic ones. One of Netanyahu’s most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was handling his relations with the hostile Clinton administration. From the moment Netanyahu was elected until the moment he left office, the Clinton administration’s Israel policy was devoted entirely to bringing down his government. In close collusion with Netanyahu’s political opponents and the local media, for three years Clinton worked steadily to overthrow him. Clinton’s assault culminated in the 1999 elections when he sent his own campaign managers to Israel to lead the Labor Party’s campaign against Netanyahu and Likud.

No doubt, it is in the hopes of building better relations with the incoming Obama administration that Netanyahu now seeks to distance himself from Feiglin and advocates forming a broad governing coalition with his political foes in Kadima and Labor. Apparently, in his view only such a broad coalition will insulate him from a US presidential assault. In the interests of forming such a coalition, while highlighting his disputes with Feiglin, Netanyahu has sought to obfuscate his ideological differences with Kadima and Labor.

Although Netanyahu’s motivations are understandable, his mode of operation will bring him results exactly opposed to the ones he seeks. It is true that to withstand pressures and even an all-out assault by the Obama administration Netanyahu will need a broad coalition. But that coalition cannot be based on a simple will to power, as Olmert’s coalition and previous leftist coalitions have been. To survive a hostile White House, Netanyahu will require a broad coalition founded on support for his ideas and his party’s policies, not a broad coalition populated by political and ideological opponents dedicated to undermining his ideas and policies.

Rather than obfuscate the differences between Likud and Kadima/Labor, Netanyahu must highlight them. He must convince the Israeli electorate to vote for Likud on the basis of these distinctions. Likud must be perceived as the party of commonsense ideas and clear-minded policies that inspire, attract and convince the Israeli public to support it. And Netanyahu and Likud have those ideas and policies.

On a strategic level, Netanyahu and Likud have made clear that they stand for three main principles. First, they are committed to establishing defensible borders for Israel by securing Israeli sovereignty over all of greater Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the Samarian Hills and the Golan Heights.

Second, they recognize that the Palestinian society that elected a terror group to lead it is a society that is uninterested in peace with Israel. Consequently, any future negotiations must be preceded by a full reorganization and reform of Palestinian society.

Third, they reject the Kadima/Labor fantasy that foreign militaries and international forces can be expected to protect Israel in place of the IDF.

If Netanyahu runs on these policies, he will not merely win the elections. He will win a clear mandate to govern. And only if Netanyahu runs on these policies will he have a chance of blunting the pressure that will certainly be brought to bear by the Obama administration. For although it is clear that like Clinton, Obama will have no problem opposing the will of an Israeli government, he will be hard pressed to oppose the will of the Israeli people.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Victory for Chavez in Panama?

It is no secret that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is mobilizing politically and militarily to create an anti-U.S. climate in Latin America.   Chavez has now turned his attention to the upcoming elections in Panama; a small but strategically placed country connecting Central and South America. Panama is vital to U. S. economic and military interests. As stated in the August 14th edition of the Americas Report, "the United States is the largest user of the Panama Canal and 15-20% of U.S. trade including 40% of grain exports and 670,000 barrels of oil a day come through the canal." [i]   At present, the favored winner of the Panamanian presidential elections in May, 2009 is Balbina Herrera of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).   What we know of Herrera bodes poorly for the U.S.   Her behavior, which bears a striking resemblance to that of Chavez, combined with past ties to Noriega, casts a potentially dark shadow on the future of the United States- Panamanian relationship.

Herrera represents the left wing of the PRD.   She is clearly comfortable with dictatorial rule, remaining loyal to her party through two modern dictators; Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega. Herrera used to refer to herself as a "Torrejista de Verdad" or true Torrejista.   Yet, she perhaps owes more of her political success to Manuel Noriega. [ii]   Noriega, himself, claims to have hidden in her house during the 1989 U.S. invasion.   As a professional politician educated in Cuba, she has served as head of the National Assembly and as Housing Administrator in the current government of Martin Torrijos, the moderate son of the late dictator Omar Torrijos. As mayor of San Miguelito, during the Noriega years, she became known for threatening to kill protesters on sight using the catch phrase, "protesters seen, and protesters dead." [iii]  

The name "Manuel Noriega" conjures dark memories for most Panamanians.  One of his political opponents was savagely tortured and beheaded.   Noriega’s rule was characterized by violence, corruption, and poverty for those not in the military elite.   Most Panamanians would rather forget him.   Some might like to see him returned to stand trial for crimes against humanity. He has been tried and convicted in Panama for murder, embezzlement, and corruption in absentia.   Political science professor, Miguel Antonio Bernal, believes that there are small pockets among Panama’s political elite who remain sympathetic, if not loyal, and who hope to learn something of Noriega’s fabled hidden fortunes.   According to him, "If Noriega returns to Panama, it’s certain the great number of ‘Noriegists’ that are in the government disguised as ministers, lawmakers, judges, and prosecutors will want to do everything possible to ensure that Noriega doesn’t go to jail,". [iv]   Whether Noriega returns to Panama or not, former friend, Balbina Herrera, has secured her parties nomination despite allegations that she has received money from Hugo Chavez for her campaign.   

Like Hugo Chavez, Herrera won her parties’ primary by drawing an overwhelming number of votes from poor communities.   She told Reuters that, "We are reaching levels of growth of 10 percent, but we need to generate wealth, as well as employment, so we can redistribute it." [v]   Chavez was able to consolidate and build power with the same promises long before he began to deliver results in the form of his now questionable poverty programs.   Thus far, Herrera has distanced herself from Chavez and most likely will continue do so.  Herrera wants to appear as a moderate towards the U.S. given the benefit of Panamanian/U.S. economic relations. Since she needs the support of Panama’s business class, she has vowed to choose a young businessman for her running mate.  As a career politician, Herrera has never participated in the business community and must now create a semblance of economic credibility.

[More]During the primary it was easy for Herrera’s camp to dismiss insinuations of a Chavez connection.   It was obvious that her competition would try to tie her to Venezuela’s leader.   Now, evidence of a money trail is emerging.  Opponents of Chavez in Venezuela are reporting that Chavez is selling oil to Panamanian businessmen well below market price, who in turn, sell it in Panama for huge profits. 

These profits, in turn, have found their way to finance the Herrera campaign. The source of these reports, Mega TV, promises that more details are to come. [vi]   Those who write off concerns of Balbina Herrera’s Chavez like behavior should be reminded that the state of Panama’s democratic institutions are most likely not strong enough to withstand a leader determined to follow the Chavez model.   USAID describes Panamanian democracy as follows:

Panama’s constitution grants strong executive powers to the central government, and gives considerable immunity to legislators, judges, and high-ranking executive branch officials. There are no clear or accessible points of entry for citizens or civil society organizations to influence decision making. Concepts of conflict of interest and transparency are virtually absent from political discourse and practices. Corruption is prevalent and public opinion surveys place corruption as a primary concern, second only to unemployment. In the meantime, press gag laws remain in effect while leadership of the judiciary reform movement falls to a nascent civil society. [vii]

Though a multi-party system, executive power has only been shared among two parties since 1990.   Power is brokered by political elites of which Herrera has been a part for the duration of Panama’s struggle for democracy.   In a best case scenario, electoral realities might keep Herrera moderate and pragmatic for a time.   Due to the popularity of her opponent for the presidency, Ricardo Martinelli, Herrera may be forced to forge some kind of alliance with him in order to win the election. Yet, Herrera has two major advantages.   The PRD party membership makes up almost exactly 20% of the 3.3 million population.   Further, the PRD holds 47 of 78 seats in the unicameral National Assembly.   Martinelli, of the Democratic Change party, rivals her in the polls but comes from a very small party with only 3 seats in the National Assembly.   His differences with important potential allies in the Panamenista Party make an alliance unlikely.   With 47 of 78 seats in the National Parliament, election cycle alliances will not hold much sway over a Herrera administration.

There are three issues of concern that tie Panama to U. S. national security. The first and most vital is the Panama Canal which is now under the control of the Chinese shipping company, Hutchinson Whampoa.  With their close ties to the Chinese military, Hutchinson Whampoa has fifty year leases which give them control over both ends of the Canal.   A strategic Chinese advantage at a global choke point is ominous and in times of conflict could put the U.S. at a serious military disadvantage.   For example:

Admiral Moore, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claims that in case of military conflict in the Pacific, a large number of logistic ships need uninterrupted access to the canal to support deployed forces.    If the use of the canal were denied, those ships would need to travel an extra 9,000 miles around South America and would not be able to sustain combat effectiveness in the Pacific.   "It is not ‘managing traffic’ under normal circumstances with which I am concerned," said Moore, "it is the ability of a potential enemy to disrupt traffic so as to block military supply, which in times of conflict is 80 to 90 percent dependent upon sea lift capability for there to be any sustained forward effort. [viii]

The strategic importance of the Panama Canal is a clear indication of the seriousness of Panama’s coming May 3rd 2009 election.   In the almost ten years that Hugo Chavez has been in power he has actively forged strong economic and military alliances with China, Russia and Iran.   Even without the flamboyant anti-American rhetoric of Chavez, a Chavista-like leader in Panama could further strengthen the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in a region vital to our economic and military interests.

Secondly, Panama has become fertile ground for drug trafficking, money laundering and gang activity both on land and at sea and could potentially provide a haven for terrorist groups.   If this doesn’t seem urgent, reconsider the implications of Chavez’s fast growing military and economic relationship with Iran.   With Iranian ties comes the same terrorist trade craft and networks that Iran uses in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq to provide terrorists with training and equipment to wage war on Israel and on American soldiers.   Now consider these executives of terror working together in a synergistic relationship with the FARC and a host of other associates that Chavez is financing throughout the hemisphere.

Finally, the Panamanian/U.S. economic relationship is significant and should be nurtured.   According to current information:

Between 2003 and 2007, U.S. exports of merchandise to Panama grew 102 percent from $1.8 billion in 2003 to $3.7 billion in 2007, outperforming overall U.S. merchandise export growth, which was 60 percent for the same period. The market access and trade disciplines provided by the Agreement offer an opportunity to further expand U.S. exports to a region that is already seeing high export growth rates. In 2007, U.S. – Panama total trade amounted to $4.1 billion with the United States registering a sizable trade surplus of $3.4 billion. U.S. exports in 2007 were $3.7 billion, up 38 percent from the previous year. [ix]

U.S. business leaders with strong ties to Panama should be apprehensive about dealing with someone whose political rhetoric obligates her to fulfill anti-capitalist campaign promises.   Furthermore, US/Panamanian relations have been strained by the delayed ratification of the bilateral Trade Promotion Agreement that President Bush negotiated with Panama which was signed last year.  The agreement stands to greatly improve relations by encouraging greater transparency, accountability, property rights, and customs enforcement.   While the possibility of ratification has been put off until the next U.S. administration, Panama, in the meantime, will likely strengthen ties with Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala.   

Thus far, Herrera has been politically expedient in her quest to gain power.   In order to ally fears, she has distanced herself from Chavez and Noriega.   She is reassuring the business class with her promises of a business-friendly vice-presidential nominee while at the same time promising wealth redistribution to the poor.   With all necessary parties satisfied, the way to the Presidency is opening.   Yet, on what basis should we try to predict how Herrera will behave in office?   Any politician is better judged by past behavior and ideological tendencies than campaign season rhetoric.   The former betrays what a candidate truly wants.   An ideological twin of Chavez and the political child of an aggressor like Noriega will not be friendly to free market principles or to the United States.   Balbina Herrera will join Venezuela’s strategic alliance with China, Russia, and Iran against the United States while continuing to give lip service to the pro-business, U.S. friendly electorate in Panama.

 

Nicholas Hanlon is an intern at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Georgia State University and has a BA in Political Science with a concentration in International Affairs and a Minor in French.

 

NOTES

[i] The Americas Report China’s Control of the Panama Canal Revisited  Yojiro Konno with Nancy Menges Vol. Nº 4 – Issue 33–August 14, 2008  

[iv] CNN.com/world, Panama braces for Noriega release Associated Press, 08/14/2007
[v] www.boston.com, Early Panama election favorite has anti-U.S. past   Andrew Beatty, 0527/2008
[vii] USAID Budget Panama 06/16/20005
[viii] The Americas Report China’s Control of the Panama Canal Revisited  Yojiro Konno with Nancy Menges Vol. Nº 4 – Issue 33–August 14, 2008
[ix] www.export.gov expanded economic opportunities U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

 

The jihadist-multicultural alliance

Doctors at the Mumbai hospital who treated the victims of the past week’s jihadist attacks were rendered nearly speechless by the carnage. As two doctors explained to the Indian news Web site rediff.com, violent gang wars and previous terror attacks didn’t hold a candle to what happened.

The bodies of the victims showed clear signs of preexecution torture. The worst tortured, they said, were the Jewish victims. As one doctor put it, "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the [first day of the assault]. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again." India’s Intelligence Bureau revealed that a captured jihadist explained that they were instructed to seek out foreign and especially Israeli victims.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it is hard to imagine that there is anything as pernicious as the jihadists who sought out and murdered non-Muslims with such cruelty. But there is. Their multicultural apologists, who enable them to continue to kill by preventing their victims from fighting back, are just as evil.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts throughout the world, were motivated to kill by their adherence to totalitarian Islam. Totalitarian Islam calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of all other non-Muslims.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts from Gaza to Baghdad to Guantanamo Bay, have been defended, and their acts and motivations have been explained away, by their allies and loyal apologists: Western multiculturalists. Multiculturalism is a quasi-religion predicated on both moral relativism and a basic belief in the inherent avarice of the West – particularly of the US and Israel. Multiculturalists assert that Westerners – or, in the case of India, Hindus – are to blame for all acts of violence carried out against them by non-Westerners.

IN THE case of the Mumbai massacres, the jihadists’ multicultural defenders began justifying their actions while they were still in the midst of their torture and murder spree. In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria hinted that Indian Hindus had it coming.

"One of the untold stories of India," he explained, "is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

[More]Then too, the multicultural media suppressed the fact that the jihadists were targeting Jews. Outside of Israel, it took the media nearly two days to report that the Chabad House had even been taken over by the jihadists. And once they did finally report that Jews were being targeted, they made every effort to downplay the strategic significance of the jihadists’ decision to send a team off the beaten path simply to butcher Jews.

Emblematic of the Western media’s attempts to play down the story was The New York Times. Two days into the hostage drama, the Times opined, "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

JEWS WERE not the only ones who had their identity obscured. The jihadists did too. For almost an entire day, major news networks in the West suppressed the fact that the murderers were Muslim jihadists, claiming oddly, that they could also be Hindu terrorists. This was odd not because there are no Hindu terrorists, but because the perpetrators referred to themselves from the outset as "mujahideen," or Islamic warriors.

Once the jig was up on their attempts to hide the identities of the perpetrators and their victims alike, the jihadists’ multicultural enablers started blaming the victims. For instance, on Sunday, The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum attacking Indian Hindus. After blithely dismissing the atrocities that were still under way while she wrote as "probably funded from outside India, in connection with the ongoing conflict over Kashmir," Nussbaum focused her ire against India’s Hindus. Recalling the gruesome and apparently state-sanctioned violence against Muslims in India’s Gujarat state in 2002, Nussbaum cast the jihadists as nothing more than victims of a Hindu terror state which has been victimizing Muslims for no reason since the 1930s.

Nussbaum’s essay was a patent example of selective multicultural memory. She apparently forgot about the Islamic conquests of India from the seventh through the 16th centuries in which India’s Buddhists were wiped out and 70 million-80 million Hindus were slaughtered by Muslim overlords. She also forgot about the thousands of Indian Hindus who have been murdered by jihadists since the 1990s.

After ignoring India’s long and recent history of jihad, Nussbaum condemned an imaginary double standard which she claimed labels all Muslims as terrorists and gives Hindus a free ride in subjugating them. Of course, thanks to multiculturalists like Nussbaum, the double standard we suffer from is the exact opposite of what she described: Muslim terrorists, we are told, are victims of persecution and represent a teensy-tiny fraction of Muslims. On the other hand, all non-Muslims involved in even marginally violent activities against Muslims are murderers, fanatics, extremists. Moreover, they are representative of their non-Muslim societies.

THE ATTACKS in Mumbai and the multiculturalists’ rush to minimize their significance exposed two disturbing truths about the global jihad. First, they showed that the jihadists are quick studies. With each passing day, their capacity to attack grows larger.

The attacks in Mumbai were exceedingly sophisticated in design and execution. There were echoes of previous attacks, including the al-Qaida bombing of Mike’s Place café in Tel Aviv in 2003, and its execution of Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001. But there was also a clear implementation of the lessons learned from those and other attacks carried out by al-Qaida and other terror groups.

By making clear their ability to improve their skills by drawing on lessons from past operations, the jihadists in Mumbai were similar to their counterparts in Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and every other place where jihadists have safe operational bases. Their obvious knowledge of their enemies’ weaknesses also calls to mind the sophisticated modes of operation of Islamic terrorists in the West and in Israel.

In all places where jihadist forces operate in secure bases, they are becoming more sophisticated in their tactics, training and doctrine. Their weapons are increasingly advanced.

Jihadist regimes, like their terror proxies and allies, are not only increasing their direct support for jihadist terrorists. Regimes, and particularly Iran, are matching their increased support for terror groups with their own nonconventional weapons programs. So, in the case of Iran, its takeover of Lebanon and Gaza through Hizbullah and Hamas is being made even more dangerous by its progress in its nuclear weapons program. So too, nuclear-armed Pakistan’s military and ISI are expanding their support for al-Qaida and the Taliban at the same time they are facilitating jihadist attacks in Pakistan’s large cities as well as in India.

This progressive improvement in the capabilities and tightened coordination between jihadist regimes and jihadist groups lends credence to the view that the probability increases with each passing day that a jihadist regime will arm jihadist groups with nuclear weapons.

THE SECOND truth about the global jihad that the Mumbai attacks exposed is that there is nothing that jihadists can do to make the multiculturalists stop defending them. And there is nothing effective that democratic governments can do to defend against the jihadists that multiculturalists will deem acceptable. This is the case because multiculturalists cannot accept the fact that the jihadists are waging war against the West without disavowing multiculturalism itself. And since they will not disavow what has become their religion, they will never be convinced that they must stop defending jihadists. In line with this basic fact, it is worth returning for a moment to Nussbaum.

The only advice she offered the Indian government that had just absorbed a coordinated attack, launched and planned by domestic as well as foreign operatives on sea and on land, was to treat terrorists like regular criminals. As she put it, "Let’s go after criminals with determination, good evidence and fair trials, and let’s stop targeting people based on their religious affiliation."

And of course, Nussbaum herself is little different in her refusal to acknowledge the fact of the global jihad than many of the governments principally targeted by jihadist regimes and terror armies. Take the incoming Obama administration for example.

Iran daily threatens to destroy the US, annihilate Israel, close the Straits of Hormuz, use nuclear weapons and proliferate nuclear weapons to other states. It controls Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It is the primary sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and, with Pakistan, the major sponsor of the insurgency in Afghanistan. It has cultivated strategic ties with US foes in the Western Hemisphere like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

Yet one of the first foreign policy initiatives promised by the incoming Obama administration is to attempt to diplomatically engage Iran with the aim of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs.

Or take Israel. The outgoing Olmert government may well lead the Western world in its attempts to deny the existence of the global jihad which has marked Israel as its central battlefield. During his visit to the White House last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was confronted by an incredulous US President George W. Bush who simply couldn’t understand his strange enthusiasm for the prospect of giving Syria the Golan Heights. Bush couldn’t fathom Olmert’s fervent, if rationally unsupportable belief that if Israel gives Syria the Golan Heights, Syria will happily abandon its best friend and overlord in Teheran.

What he apparently didn’t realize is that Olmert’s championing of an Israeli surrender to Syria stems from his devout adherence to multiculturalism. If Syria can’t be peeled away from Iran, that means that Israel can’t be blamed for Syrian aggression. And that is a prospect that Olmert simply cannot abide by.

SOME COMMENTATORS dismiss the danger emanating from the global jihad by noting that its global designs are not matched by global capabilities. They argue that when the West finally decides to defeat the jihadists, they will be utterly vanquished.

Unfortunately, this view ignores two things. It ignores the fact that the jihadists are devoting all of their energies to improving and expanding their capacity to fight their war. And it ignores the fact that the multiculturalists’ influence is growing steadily and has repeatedly stymied Western attempts to confront the jihadist threat head-on. Unless something changes soon, the consequences of the jihadist-multicultural alliance will be suffered by millions and millions of people.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Will the real Bush finally stand up?

US President George W. Bush has six weeks left in power. If he acts fast, that may be enough time to secure his place in history – at least in terms of the Middle East.

Bush’s initial reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks were a rare display of political and intellectual courage. Gazing at the rubble of the World Trade Center, Bush recognized that the primary failure of US policy towards the Arab and Islamic world until that day was found in the predisposition of his predecessors to slavishly maintain a Faustian bargain with tyrannical Arab regimes in the interest of maintaining "stability." That bargain committed the US to providing military assistance and political backing to authoritarian regimes throughout the Arab and Islamic world in exchange for cheap oil for the West.

What Sept. 11 showed Bush was that the "stability" the US had purchased was an illusion. As the US propped up dictators, their subjects fumed under the chains of state terror and economic privation. For millions of frustrated young men, the only outlet for resistance open to them is the mosque. There they are indoctrinated in the ways of jihad and mobilized to fight for Islamic global domination.

In the months that followed the attacks, Bush radically changed the course of US Middle East policy by pledging American support for the democratization of the Arab and Islamic world. Bush announced that from then on, the US would no longer blindly follow its duplicitous client states but would support voices of democracy and freedom in the Middle East no matter where they came from.

Bush’s message did nothing to endear him to the likes of the Saudis and the Egyptians. The Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference attacked Bush’s freedom agenda and indignantly argued that it would be impossible for them to reform their ways for as long as the US maintained its support for Israel – the sole democracy in the region.

[More]THEN THERE was Europe. Until Bush came around, Europeans had delighted in showing off their false multicultural and humanitarian credentials built on buying off terrorists, attacking Israel and giving the Palestinians billions of euros in foreign aid. Bush’s freedom agenda exposed their deceit and their cowardice. They were appalled.

Implicit in Bush’s view was the understanding that the US’s most stable allies – and indeed only stable allies – are fellow democracies. And this understanding necessarily led Bush to the conclusion that Israel is the US’s most dependable and valuable ally in the Middle East.

Bush’s views were nothing short of sacrilege not only for the Arabs and the Europeans, but for Washington’s foreign policy establishment, headquartered at the State Department and the CIA. For the men and women of these bureaucracies, Bush’s recognition that the Arab regimes they championed were the primary source of regional instability and anti-Americanism was a repudiation of everything they worked for. More disgraceful, in their view, was his open embrace of Israel – the mortal foe of all their Arab friends – as the US’s most trustworthy and strategically vital ally in the region.

All these forces joined together almost immediately to scuttle Bush’s freedom agenda for the Arab world. In country after country, Bush’s message of democracy was watered down to nothingness.

In post-Saddam Iraq, rather than embrace democratic champions like Ahmed Chalabi, the foreign policy bureaucracy in Washington foisted strongman and former Ba’athist Ayad Allawi on the newly liberated country. The State Department and the CIA allowed Iran and Syria to freely subvert Bush’s freedom agenda by buying politicians, building militias and fomenting the insurgency.

Iraq was Bush’s central foreign policy initiative. And it is for his work in Iraq that he will chiefly be remembered. Today the battle for Iraq is all but won. But it was only won after Bush realized in 2006 that if he continued following the advice of those who rejected his goal of a free Middle East, the US would be forced from Iraq in defeat.

IN LEBANON in March 2005, when more than a million pro-democracy Lebanese citizens staged the Cedar Revolution and ousted Syrian forces from their country, Bush’s battle for freedom was finally joined by the Arabs themselves. To secure the gains of the Cedar Revolution, Bush needed to work with Israel to protect the pro-Western Siniora government.

As Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006, and as the US’s championing of the UN ceasefire resolution which facilitated Hizbullah’s takeover of Lebanon showed, neither Israel nor the US was willing to protect Lebanon’s democrats. Today, with the forces of democracy defeated after Hizbullah’s violent takeover of the government in May, rather than decry this state of affairs and work to undo it, Bush has chosen to deny it. And not only does he deny it, he exacerbates it. Bush welcomed the "stability" that Hizbullah’s takeover has facilitated. And today he is arming the Hizbullah-dominated Lebanese army with tanks and other heavy arms. That is, in Lebanon, Bush has adopted the very same Faustian bargain he rejected in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Bush’s confused and self-defeating policies towards Lebanon are a direct consequence of his policies towards Israel and the Palestinians. In 2002, Bush recognized that the root of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is not Israel’s continued control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem but the absence of Palestinian leadership willing to live at peace with Israel. Moreover, he recognized that the US’s primary role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was not to mediate a dispute the Palestinians are unwilling to reconcile, but to stand by Israel as America’s main ally in the region.

Bush’s views earned him the enmity of the Arabs, the Europeans, the Washington elites and the Israeli Left. And together they undermined his policies and isolated him until less that a year later, he abandoned his positions. In mid-2003 he set aside his demand for a reordering of Palestinian society and his decision to side with Israel. In their place, Bush joined the Arabs, the Europeans, the UN and the Israeli Left in making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his Middle East agenda. As with Lebanon, here too Bush’s acceptance of the establishment’s position came at the cost of eschewing Israel as a US ally.

BUSH’S UNWILLINGNESS to carry through on his freedom agenda in the face of unrelenting opposition from Europe, the Arabs and his foreign policy establishment is what has prevented him throughout his presidency from contending with the greatest source of volatility and danger in the region – Iran. Largely as a consequence of the ambiguity and weakness of his policies on Iran, it is likely that one of the most prominent legacies of Bush’s Middle East policies will be a nuclear-armed Iran.

With just six weeks remaining to his tenure in office, much of what Bush will leave behind him has already been determined. But there are two things he can still do that will impact greatly both the world he leaves behind and how he is judged by history: He can take action against Iran’s nuclear program, and he can embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists.

On the surface, these two agenda items couldn’t be more disparate. By neutralizing Iran’s nuclear installations Bush would save the lives of millions of people. By pardoning Jonathan Pollard, Larry Franklin, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, he would save the lives of four people.

But the fact of the matter is that the two issues present Bush with the same challenge. They both require him to find the courage to embrace the vision that he tried but failed to realize in the early years of his presidency.

By attacking Iran’s nuclear installations – or by permitting Israel to fly over Iraq to attack Iran’s nuclear installations – Bush will do two things. He will bolster the US-Israel alliance. And he will demonstrate that the stability engendered by the status quo is antithetical to US interests.

Until now, Bush has been prevented from taking action in Iran by those who insist that the status quo in Iran and throughout the region is preferable to every other alternative. This was the view that propelled Washington’s foreign policy establishment to oppose Israel’s independence 60 years ago and has caused them to continue to oppose accepting Israel as an ally to this day.

To maintain the predominance of this view, over the years its proponents have persecuted individuals who reject it. In 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested for transferring classified information to Israel, he was not treated like a man who had transferred secrets to a US ally. He was treated like a man who had transferred secrets to al-Qaida. His sentence of life in prison was meant to serve as a deterrent for anyone who dared question the view that Israel is nothing more than an albatross placed around the US’s neck by a powerful American Jewish lobby and by dimwitted politicians.

Whereas Pollard’s fate was sealed long before Bush entered the White House, Franklin, Rosen and Weissman’s nightmare began under his watch.

In 2006, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seeking the assistance of two AIPAC lobbyists – Rosen and Weissman – in bringing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons program to Bush’s attention. By speaking with Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was behaving as countless government employees behave. He was prosecuted not for sharing information with the men, but for mistakenly assuming that his view of Israel as a US ally was shared by the powers-that-be in Washington.

Weissman and Rosen are in the midst of a long, costly, drawn-out trial and stand charged with mishandling classified information under a statute that has not been enforced since World War I. For more than four years they have been treated as criminals for doing nothing more than their job as lobbyists – for a lobby that was founded on the understanding that the US and Israel are strategic allies.

The Bush who understood that a stable tyranny is a threat to a vibrant democracy knew that Iran had to be defeated and its regime overthrown. The Bush who celebrated the shared values on which both the US and Israel are founded knew that those who seek Israel’s destruction will also never peacefully coexist with the US. If that Bush is still around, the time has come for him to act on those understandings. Before he leaves office he should embrace Israel as an ally and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Not only will he secure the lives of millions of people. He will also secure his place in history.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The perils ahead

US President-elect Barack Obama has properly sought to maintain a low profile in foreign affairs in this transition period ahead of his January inauguration. But while Obama has stipulated that the US can have only one president at a time, his aides and advisers are signaling that he intends to move US foreign policy in a sharply different direction from its current trajectory once he assumes office.

And they are signaling that this new direction will be applied most immediately and directly to US policy toward the Middle East.

Early in the Democratic Party’s primary season, the Obama campaign released a list of the now-president-elect’s foreign policy advisers to The Washington Post. The list raised a great deal of concern in policy circles, particularly among supporters of the US-Israel alliance. It included outspoken critics of Israel such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser under president Jimmy Carter, and Robert Malley, who served as a junior Middle East aide to president Bill Clinton. Both men are deeply hostile to Israel and both have called repeatedly for the US to end its strategic alliance with Israel.

In the months that followed the list’s publication, the Obama campaign sought to distance itself from both men as the president-elect’s advisers worked to position Obama as a centrist candidate.

[More]Brzezinski was cast aside in February when he headed a delegation to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad. The purpose of his "fact-finding" mission was to castigate the Bush administration for its refusal to pursue Syria as an ally, and to decry Damascus’s international isolation caused by its support for the insurgency in Iraq, its strategic alliance with Iran, its support for Hizbullah as well as Hamas and al-Qaida, its illicit nuclear program and its subversion of the pro-Western Lebanese government.

To Brzezinski’s dismay, his mission was overtaken by events. The depth of Syria’s support for terror was graphically displayed during his visit when arch-Iranian/Lebanese terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus the day after he called on Assad.

Although he was a junior staffer in Clinton’s National Security Council, since 2000 Malley has used his Clinton administration credentials to pave his emergence as one of America’s most outspoken apologists for Palestinian terrorism against Israel. Immediately after the failed July 2000 Camp David peace summit, Malley invented the Palestinian "narrative" of the summit’s proceedings. While Clinton, then-prime minister Ehud Barak, and Ambassador Dennis Ross, who served as Clinton’s chief negotiator, have all concurred that Yasser Arafat torpedoed the prospects of peace when he refused Barak’s offer of Palestinian statehood, Malley claimed falsely that Israel was to blame for the failure of the talks.

In succeeding years, he has expanded his condemnation of Israel. He insists that not only Palestinian aggression, but Syrian, Lebanese and Iranian attacks against Israel are all Israel’s fault. The Obama campaign distanced itself from Malley in May after the Times of London reported that he was meeting regularly with Hamas terror leaders.

As the election drew closer, the Obama campaign expanded its efforts to present its candidate as a foreign policy moderate. Moderate foreign policy advisers such as Ross were paraded before reporters. Both Obama and his surrogates insisted that he supports a strong American alliance with Israel. Obama abandoned his earlier pledge to withdraw all US forces from Iraq by 2010. He attempted to temper and later deny his public pledge to hold direct negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions.

Due in large part to media credulousness, Obama’s new image as a centrist was widely accepted by the public. And it is likely that he owes a significant portion of his support in the American Jewish community to the campaign’s success in distancing Obama from men like Brzezinski and Malley.

BUT NOW that the campaign is over, it appears that as his critics warned, Obama’s moves toward the center on issues relating to the Middle East were little more than campaign tactics to obscure his true policy preferences.

Two days after his election, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius gave a sense of the direction in which Obama will likely take US foreign policy. And, apparently directed by Obama’s campaign staff, Ignatius based much of his column on his belief that Obama’s foreign policy views have been shaped by his "informal" adviser, Brzezinski.

Based on what Brzezinski and Obama’s "official" campaign told him, Ignatius wrote that the two major issues where Obama’s foreign policy is likely to diverge from Bush’s right off the bat are Israel and Iran. Obama, he claimed, will want to push hard to force Israel to come to an agreement with the Palestinians as soon as he comes into office. As for Iran, Obama plans to move immediately to improve US relations with the nuclear-weapons-building ayatollahs.

As for Malley, an aide of his told Frontpage magazine this week that acting on Obama’s instructions, Malley traveled to Cairo and Damascus after Obama’s electoral victory to tell Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Assad that "the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests."

In a related story, Hamas terror operative Ahmad Youssef told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that in the months leading up to his election, Obama’s advisers held steady contacts with the leaders of the terror group in Gaza, and had asked that Hamas keep the meetings secret in order not to harm Obama’s chances of being elected.

Both Obama’s transition team and Hamas leaders were quick to deny Youssef’s statements. Yet, together with the earlier Times of London story about Malley’s contacts with Hamas and the new revelations about Malley serving as Obama’s unofficial Middle East envoy, the Al-Hayat report has the ring of truth.

Even more foreboding than these reports are statements by Obama’s foreign policy advisers regarding his plans to open direct contacts with Iran. On Wednesday The Washington Post reported that Obama intends to move quickly to seek an accommodation with Iran regarding Afghanistan. Obama’s advisers assert that such a deal is possible because as far as they are concerned, the Shi’ite Iranians oppose Sunni jihadists just as much as the US does.

But the facts do not support this view. Top US and British military commanders have asserted repeatedly that Iran is a major sponsor of the Taliban and al-Qaida in their war against the Afghan government and NATO forces in the country. Since 2006, Iran has provided advanced weapons, money and political support to the Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in the country.

The Obama team’s rejection of the demonstrated reality of Iran’s support for the Taliban and al-Qaida in favor of a policy based on the fantasy that it is possible to cut a deal with the ayatollahs will undoubtedly not be his last move in the mullahs’ direction. It will likely be quickly followed by an offer to conduct direct, high level talks with Iran’s leaders about their nuclear weapons program.

What is most disturbing about Obama’s emerging foreign policy is not simply that it ignores the reality on the ground – a reality that clearly demonstrates that Iran and its Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese surrogates are implacable foes of Israel and America and therefore not interested in being appeased. It is also not just the fact that it sends a signal of American weakness to Iran and its proxies just as Iran reaches the nuclear threshold. And Obama’s emerging foreign policy is not merely disconcerting because by speaking with Iran and its proxies, Obama will be legitimizing the genocidal regime in Teheran.

WHAT IS most alarming about Obama’s emerging foreign policy toward Iran and its proxies on the one hand and Israel on the other is that it will cause actual harm to the Jewish state.

By pressuring Israel to cede land to Syria and the Palestinians, Obama’s apparent foreign policy will provide Iran with still more territory from which to attack Israel both through its terror proxies and with its expanding ballistic missile arsenal. By embracing the Syrian regime in spite of its support for terrorism, its nuclear proliferation activities and its subversion of Lebanon, the incoming Obama administration will embolden Syria to increase its subversion of Lebanon and Iraq, while strengthening its ties to Iran still further.

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn’t already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

Over the past few years, Obama’s top nuclear nonproliferation adviser, Joe Cirincione, has repeatedly advocated placing Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table and offering it up in exchange for an Iranian pledge to end its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates – whom Obama is considering retaining – insinuated in his 2006 confirmation hearings that Iran is only building nuclear weapons to defend itself against Israel. Gates, it should be recalled, has been instrumental in convincing Bush not only not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, but not to support an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.

What is profoundly distressing about statements by men like Cirincione and Gates is what they tell us about the strategic reasoning informing the incoming Obama administration. Their views echo those voiced by advocates of American abandonment of Israel such as Professors Steve Walt and John Mearshimer. Walt and Mearshimer argue that Iran is not a threat to US interests or to global security because in the event that the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons, they are likely to view them merely as a deterrent against Iran’s enemies. And as a result, Iran will respond as the Soviet Union did to a deterrent model based on mutually assured destruction.

This view is contradicted by Iran’s open advocacy of Israel’s destruction, and its declared willingness to absorb a nuclear attack in return for destroying Israel. But assuming that this is how the Obama team views Iran, they should be the last ones advocating Israeli disarmament. Because if this is their view, then by their own reasoning, Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal is necessary to deter Teheran from attacking. And if as Cirincione advocates, Obama intends to place Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table, he will effectively be giving Iran a green light to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.

All of the Obama team’s post-election/pre-inaugural foreign policy signals place Israel’s next government – which will only be elected on February 10 – in an extraordinarily difficult position.

It is not just that their positions make clear that the Obama administration will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Obama team’s pre-inaugural signals indicate strongly that Israel’s next government will need to strike Iran’s nuclear installations before two rapidly approaching deadlines.

The strike will have to occur before the mullahs enrich sufficient quantities of highly enriched uranium to produce nuclear bombs. And Israel will need to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program before the Obama administration begins implementing America’s new foreign policy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Is Shariah consistent with the US Constitution?

The following is a transcript of a debate sponsored by The Harbour League on the subject, "Islam: a Religion of Peace? Is Islamic Law ("Shariah") Consistent With A Religion Of Peace – And The U.S. Constitution?" Eli Gold, president of The Harbour League, introduced the participants. Moderating was Mark Hyman; for the affirmative was Suhail Khan and presenting the negative was Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy.
 
The Harbour League was founded in 2005 as an organization to promote conservative and free market dialogue on the state level. In looking at this question, "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?" the League wanted specifically to look at whether Islamic law, Shariah, is consistent with a religion of peace and with the US Constitution.
 
To listen to the audio, click here.
MARK HYMAN: Thank you, Eli. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to The Harbour League’s debate. Islam: A Religion of Peace. Is Islamic law consistent with a religion of peace and the U.S. Constitution. I first wanted just to offer a couple of words before we get into the actual debate. I was flattered when I was asked earlier this year to join the board of trustees at the Harbour [League] and that’s primarily because of the mission of the organization itself – that’s to research, analyze and promote conservative public policies related to Maryland and the nation. And it’s work grounded in intellectual discussion and debate. Which is refreshing when you consider the silliness we see in today’s cable news shows, the national news networks, or in the daily pages of the newspapers and the weekly news magazines that treat conservatism with ridicule and derision.Tonight is an example of the type of program that the Harbour League offers. Two gentlemen, informed, impassioned about their respective positions take center stage tonight in front of a standing room only audience. It is a topic worthy of debate, evidenced by the fact that we have media presence. This is why I ask of you tonight, each of you found on your chair an application form. We certainly encourage all of you to join the Harbour League. We also encourage all of you to make a charitable, tax-deductible contribution to the Harbour League. Two weeks ago, we’d have gladly accepted your stock offers. [LAUGHTER] Tonight, that’s all up in the air.
This is the format for tonight’s debate. Mr. Frank Gaffney, Mr. Suhail Khan will each have ten minutes for their opening remarks. Each will have five minutes for rebuttal. Then, there will be opportunity for Q and A. I may or may not ask any questions. But I certainly as the moderator reserve the right to ask follow [up] questions for the audience if they ask. After the Q and A session is done, each individual will have five minutes for closing remarks.
Now, this is the very important part for you, the audience. I will recognize people for Q and A one at a time. And when you ask your question, the first thing I want to see is a little thought bubble forming over your head and it will be filled with no more than two sentences and a question mark at the end of it. No statements, no arguments, no debate, no soliloquy, simply a question. If you fail to follow the rules, we’ll pass you by and go to someone else. I also ask the audience to refrain from applause or outbursts. Unless it’s applause and outbursts of adulation for the moderator, for that’s acceptable. [LAUGHTER]
In the interest of time, I will give a brief biography for each of our speakers for this evening. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Suhail Khan graduated with a BA in political science at the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. He received his JA from the University of Iowa in 1995. He is a veteran Capitol Hill staffer and is currently serving as assistant to the secretary for policy under US Secretary Mary Peters at the US Department of Transportation where he was awarded the Secretary’s Team Award for 2005 and the Secretary’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 2007. He served on the Board of the American Conservative Union, Indian-American Republican Council, and the Islamic Free Market Institute.
Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He holds a Master of Arts degree in international studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. And he has a bachelor of science in foreign service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. From August of 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Rich Pearl. He is the lead author of the book War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take To Prevail In The War For The Free World.
And now for our debate. Islam: A Religion of Peace? Mr. Suhail Khan, will start with the affirmative.

SUHAIL KHAN: Thank you, Mark, for the introduction and I want to say I’m very grateful to all of you at the Harbour League and to my friend, Eli Gold, for the opportunity to speak to you this evening.

My name is Suhail Khan. I’m a Reagan conservative, a Muslim, and I’m an American. I believe that every American has a right to live their life as they see fit. Free from government interference or dictators. I believe the government should not discriminate against anyone because of their color of their skin, because of their ethnic heritage, or their faith or their religious beliefs. Last May, Eli kindly invited me to attend an event featuring Herb London. And while the evening’s topic was America’s Secular Challenge, regrettably, Mr. London attacked Islam and Muslims using the very argument the secular left uses to attack religion in general.
After the lecture, Eli suggested I give a talk about Islam and Muslims and we both agreed a debate would generate the most interest and open discussion. But I was disappointed that so many were unwilling to participate in our honest debate. A local radio show host who rants for hours on how Islam is evil backed out on participating in a discussion, admitting he didn’t know enough about the subject. He knew enough to hate, but not enough to learn. Funny enough, he offered to moderate the discussion. Robert Spencer, who has written hate-filled screed after screed on Islam and Muslims, after initially agreeing to debate, soon backed out.
When I spoke at the Council for National Policy last year, a woman asked me whether my religious beliefs and practice was consistent with our Constitution. Her question was sad. The first amendment is quite clear, that all Americans are free to worship as they wish. No one is disqualified from citizenship or high office because they are Catholics, Jews, Muslims, or Mormons. During the great immigrant waves of 1900, a rabbi once said of our melting pot, all names are American names. How wonderfully true. So, too, are all faiths. All are American faiths. Every faith in the world is found in our nation. All are protected by the constitution. Bigotry is un-American. Racism is un-American. America is made up of men and women of all faiths. Women have lived in America–Muslims have lived in America before we were America. More than one in ten African slaves brought to the colonies were Muslim. Alex Haley’s Roots tells the story of Kunta Kinte, a Muslim slave brought to Maryland in 1767. Morocco, a Muslim nation, was the first country in the world to recognize American independence from Britain. Muslim doctors, scientists, businessmen and farmers have immigrated to the United States over the past two hundred years. Many like me have been blessed to have been born here.
The founding fathers excluded religious texts from the constitution, knowing fully that one day, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and even atheists could conceivably secure a good office. Indeed, when the first Muslim was elected to Congress last November, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a descendant of slaves, he swore his Oath of Office on a copy of the Koran, the Muslim scripture that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Today, more than six million Muslim-Americans are proud to live, work and serve our country. And like their fellow Americans, they serve in uniform. Both in the armed forces and as first responders. Arab and Muslim-Americans have served their country in every war since the American Revolution. And over six thousand serve today and have done so with honor. In the audience, I want to recognize company first sergeant Jamal Bidahi [SPELLED PHONETICALLY] who has served over twenty years in the US Marines and has done so with distinction, defending our country in missions from Beirut in 1983 through Enduring Freedom.
American-Muslims share much in common with their fellow Americans of the Jewish and Christian faith, people who are honored as people of the book in the Koran, having received divine revelation, including the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel and answering all to the same God, the God of Abraham. The late Pope John Paul the Second and Pope Benedict have reached out to the Muslim world to condemn religious bigotry. So have the National Association of Evangelicals. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews and others on issues of shared concern, including free religious expression, education, and national security.
Is Islam a religion of peace? For the vast majority of the faithful in the Muslim mainstream, living their lives, raising their families, going to work, serving the uniform, starting small businesses, paying their taxes, playing by the rules, the answer is a resounding yes. In recent years, and especially since the horrifying events of 9-11, racists have falsely claimed that my faith commands its followers to violence. Some, like Spencer, have taken [UNCLEAR] and out-of-context quotations from the Koran to suggest that Islam sanctions violence or terrorism. Certainly Bin-Laden has tried to make the same claim.
The good news is that there are over a billion Muslims and a relatively small number of extremists. In my faith, as in the Jewish tradition, the taking of even one innocent life is akin to the murder of all humanity. Suicide, as in Christianity, is strictly forbidden. Some Americans believe that the Muslims did not condemn the terrorism of 9/11. In fact, there were many strong condemnations. But you won’t find them on the websites that promote hate against Muslims. That would muddle their message. I have passed out a compilation of a series of denunciations of terrorism by Muslims.
Sadly, demonizing Muslim-Americans is a threat to our national security and indeed our American way of life. Some have questioned the loyalty of Muslim-Americans. Some have called for the barring of all Muslim-Americans from public service. And others have even proposed that we criminalize the practice of Islam with twenty years in prison.
This has affected me in a very personal way. For some years now, these racists have tried to invade, to publish outright lies and falsehoods about me, my family, and other Muslim-Americans serving in our country. Not [UNCLEAR] attacked my father’s memory, for example, had the decency to even try and call me and get the facts straight. They wanted their hate. Not the truth. While honest journalists have dismissed this smear campaign, some have been fooled into publishing these lies. And in most instances have published retractions or simply removed the falsehoods outright from their webpages.
But we’ve seen this before. The same things that are being said about Muslims were said about Catholics. About people of the Jewish faith. And about Mormons. Anti-Catholic sentiment became so bad in the 1840s and 50s that the Davidist movement of the time whipped anti-Catholic mobs to violence. The burning of Catholic businesses and the killing of Catholics. As recently as even 1950, Paul Branchard wrote American Freedom and Catholic Power, a book where he ominously warns of a Catholic plan to take over America and the world. The oldest hatred, of course anti-Semitism has been present since the Roman Empire and we’ve seen anti-Semitism, as well.
And now the haters are attacking Muslims and Islam. Like those who warned against a nefarious plot by Papists to control American schools, banks and the government, the haters ominously warn us of the dangers of Shariah law. Or a cultural jihad where, God forbid, if you let Muslim TSA employees wear skirts, the next thing you know, we’ll be stoning adulterers. I’ve handed out a column where Robert Spencer says exactly that. I guess we must protect the constitution from women wearing pantsuits.
I think it’s good that America accommodates all faiths. Yesterday’s bigots objected to a New York school giving students Jewish holidays off. Today’s bigots object to Muslims working with employers to trade holidays to take Muslim holidays off. You can only imagine what the haters think of Congress taking two days off last week for Rosh Hashanah.
The newest target of hate is Islamic finance. Islam, like Catholicism, objects to usury or interest on loans. Europe and the U.S. have allowed Muslims to enter voluntary agreements where they pay the same taxes as everyone else, no special favors, the taxes are the same, but the haters don’t like it because Muslims do it. The guy leading the charge is David Yerushalmi – a guy who hates Muslims, blacks, women, Asians and liberal Jews. Objecting to Islamic finance has nothing to do with terrorism or anything, but it has everything to do with hate.
And in their zeal to attack Muslims, some of them attack others. Spencer, for example, has said that Muhammad was betrothed to a girl when she was nine. Eli points out that Isaac was betrothed to Rebecca when she was three. Spencer’s bigotry easily morphs into anti-Semitism. Spencer has written in celebration of the Crusades. [During] the first Crusade, you will recall, the Jews of Europe and the Middle East were murdered by the thousands. The fourth Crusade, the followers of the Greek Orthodox faith were killed along with the Muslims. Cal Thomas, in a recent column, asked how can the president say that we all worship the same god when Muslims deny the divinity of Jesus? In seeking to divide Muslims and Christians, Thomas attacks Jews as worshipping a different god.

MARK HYMAN: One minute.

SUHAIL KHAN: And after claiming we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity when referring to Muslims, Ann Coulter declared Jews need to be perfected by becoming Christians. Anti-Muslim bigotry is simply anti-Semitism on training wheels and we’ve seen this time and time again. And it should be no surprise that after a flood of books criticizing Islam, we now see a flood of books criticizing religion in general. Christopher Hitchens when asked, after 9-11, whether Islam was the enemy, said yes. And Judaism and Christianity are the others. And this anti-Muslim rhetoric leads to real violence. Time and time again, in California, in Texas, in Dallas, Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims have been attacked and many times because of some of the anti-Muslim rhetoric they’ve read in newspapers and columns. Such bigotry – and this is bigotry, plain and simply – is giving in to our terrorists, demonstrating to our enemies that we are willing to respond to their hate with hate of our own and giving in to the fear, succumbing, and succumbing into prejudice.

We should be thankful that our president has stood against this and may take to heart the words of President George Washington when he wrote in the 1790s to a Jewish congregation, that Americans would give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution, no assistance.

MARK HYMAN: Thank you, Suhail. [APPLAUSE] And the negative, Mr. Gaffney.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Good evening. Well, that certainly set the predicate for tonight’s conversation. I was one of those who jumped at the chance to debate Suhail, so I hope I will do an adequate stand-in for those who were unable to make it. I come at [this topic], I’ll be frank with you, from a national security perspective. I’m not a Koranic scholar. I doubt there are any Koranic scholars in this room. But I’m not one.

But I am one who I think has studied the subject enough to be able to identify a very significant nexus between the texts, the traditions, the practices of authoritative Islam and our national security interests and, yes, the constitution of the United States. The nexus comes about in the form of something Suhail touched on. A program that’s theo-political-legal in character, that the authorities – the recognized authorities – in Islam call Shariah.
I am here to discuss the implications of Shariah for both our security and our Constitution which [as Slide 2 shows] makes very clear that it is the supreme law of the land in the United States. It does not countenance having other laws that supplant it or displace it, to say nothing of [any] that would have the effect of its violent overthrow.
The origins of Shariah are to be found in the Koran which Muslims regard as the word of God, or Allah – although much of it is, in fact, the product of scholars and caliphs who generated it hundreds of years after Muhammad’s death.
Of particular importance to this debate is a principle found in the Koran and embedded in Shariah law. The principle called "abrogation." [Slide 3] According to the recognized Islamic authorities, Allah made plain in the verse of the Koran known as Sura 2:106, the earlier passages of his revelations to Mohammed would be replaced by "something better." Hence, the chronology of the Koran is all-important.
[Slide 4] This is a generally accepted breakout of the chronology of the Koran. There are four periods represented by these columns – early Meccan, middle Meccan, late Meccan and Medina. These periods, broadly speaking, are captured in the experience of Mohammed in Mecca for the first three and in Medina for the last. And it’s interesting that in almost every case the texts that are referred to – Suhail mentioned some of them, at least in passing – that are peaceable, that are tolerant, that refer favorably to People of the
Book, fall into the three periods of the early part, the Meccan part.
But the problem is, according to the principle of abrogation, what counts is what came after. Namely, the Medina period. And by and large, the texts from the Medina period are not tolerant, are not peaceable and are not favorable or accommodating [to others], certainly to People of the Book.
Specifically, I’d like for the purposes of this brief overview to talk a little bit about the last two according to this generally accepted chronological breakout. [Sura] 9 and 5. Number 9 talks about something called "jihad." [Slide 5] Note that [Sura] 3 talks about whoever seeks a religion other than Islam will never have it accepted of him which results in [Sura] nine, it’s a directive which says "fight and slay unbelievers wherever ye find them and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war." And "fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day be that if they are People of the Book." That’s the last word of the Koran on the subject of jihad.  
[What] about interfaith relations? This speaks to is there compulsion [in religion.] According to [Sura] 2 at the beginning of the Medina period, "Let there be no compulsion in religion." Sounds okay. [Slide 6] [But Sura 5 says] "But whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, will never have it accepted of him." "Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other and he amongst you that turns to them for friendship is of them." "Verily, Allah guideth not the unjust."
[That is] the last word on interfaith relations. So as these slides make clear, the earlier passages that are often cited as evidence of Islam being a religion of peace and tolerant of other faiths, in particular those of People of the Book, [namely,] Christians and Jews, have in both cases been abrogated in favor of what are believed to be divine directives to use violent means where necessary to assure the triumph of Islam over other faiths and, indeed, the world.
This is not selected quotation of passages of the book. This is according to Shariah. According to the adherents to Shariah, according to the recognized authorities of Islam, all of them. All four schools of Sunni Islam and the one or two, depending on who’s counting, of Shia Islam, all of them, agree on the principle of abrogation and its definitive, final words having been "something better" than the more peaceable stuff that was said [by Allah] under very different circumstances to Mohammed back in Mecca.
Those schools all agree on the following points:
One, that it is God’s will that Islam will rule the world.
Second, that jihad is an obligation of all Muslims, whose purpose is to achieve the global governance of a caliph (or ayatollah in the cases of the Shia) pursuant to Shariah. Those who don’t adhere to Shariah, to the Muslim community, are apostates. A crime punishable by death.
[Third,] where possible, jihad is to be pursued with terror-inducing violence. Where it is not practical, "soft" or "stealth" jihad is to be employed, backed where possible by the threat of violence – or, in fact, the use of it elsewhere.

MARK HYMAN: One minute, please.

FRANK GAFFNEY: I’m not going to get through all of this. But let me conclude with a key piece.

In 1928, an Egyptian by the name of Hussan al-Banna created an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood for the purpose of promoting on an international basis soft or stealthy jihad until such time as the conditions were ripe for violence.
His purpose was memorialized in a 1991 memorandum introduced into evidence by the U.S. government in the Holy Land Foundation trial. It’s entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group – the Brotherhood – in North America." It was written by a senior operative of the group. The essence of it is in this quote. "The Muslim Brotherhood must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and 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 Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions."

MARK HYMAN: Time, please.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Interestingly enough, this memorandum identifies virtually every one of the prominent Muslim-American organizations in America as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations or friendly organizations. It is an enemy within, a Fifth Column, that is promoting an explicitly jihadist program aimed at the destruction, the seditious destruction, of the Constitution of the United States and its replacement by Islamic rule that we are up against, ladies and gentlemen, and we best be alive to that danger. Thank you.

MARK HYMAN: And this will be the five minute rebuttal.
SUHAIL KHAN: Thanks, Mark. I’ll say a few things in response. First of all, you know, I thought it was telling that Frank admitted that he’s not an expert on Islam or Shariah and yet he proceeded to tell me what Islam and Shariah are all about. It was interesting, first I’ll say that the important thing about the theory of abrogation is that only Frank and the anti-Muslim crowd seems to believe in. There are scholars in the United States that do know about Islam and the Muslim faith but don’t in any way subscribe to the teaching that Frank has, uh, has proposed here this evening. The only people I know that, that believe in that are the terrorists. And Frank Gaffney and his cohorts.
Anybody can go to any of the holy books and as a friend of mine said, each religion has its issues, and pick out selectively different verses and try to make them sound horrible. In Numbers, for example, we read in, in Verse 31, "Behold, these call the sons of Israel through the counsel of [UNCLEAR] to trespass against the Lord to the matter of [UNCLEAR] the plague was among the congregation. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known men intimately, spare them. Spare it for yourselves." And again, in Joshua, we read, in Verse 21, "They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey with the edge of a sword." And of course, the Bible, the Old Testament is replete with verses that, in some cases explicitly, are very violent and some would say exhort the followers of either faith to violence.
The verses that Frank points out in the Koran, first of all, as he noted by his own chart, were during a time of war, and the Prophet, peace be upon him, was commanding his followers, in a time of war for those that were making war on Muslims to defend themselves. That was very specific to a specific timeframe. It was not that all Muslims should kill all Christians and Jews or all pagans or whatever religion there might be.
If that were the case, when India was ruled by Muslim rulers for centuries, then you would have had all the Hindus and all the Christians there killed, which they weren’t. India, still to this day remains, a predominately Hindu country and the Muslims are in the minority. So either they weren’t going to Sunday school or that is not the case when it comes to Islam and its treatment of other Muslims.
Now, are there some extremists who believe that theory? Yes, and we need to defeat them. We need to stop them. But generally speaking, the vast number of mainstream Muslims do not subscribe to any type of belief like that. Because when they read the Koran, like I do, you read the entire context and you know those verses were specific to a time of war.
Secondly, when it comes to Shariah, Frank called it a black box, which somehow some mysterious scholars out there who are trying to define Islam for everybody else and [make] people, whether they’re Muslim or otherwise, follow it blindly. That’s not the case. Shariah means "the way" in Arabic. And it’s an interpretive law that governs the protection of religion, life and property for Muslims. And it’s specific to Muslims. There is no strict static set of laws in Shariah. Sharia is a system of law that is interpretive. And my friends in the Jewish community will appreciate this because, much as in the Jewish faith, you have an interpretive law, there’s the old saying, that when you have two rabbis, you have three scholars, you have three opinions. Well, the same thing goes for imams.
For example, Islamic finance. The experts on Shariah who do know about Islam and Shariah got together in the United States and said Muslims can buy their homes with interest, no problem, because you need, you need to buy a home to live in. You need something, you need to put a roof over your heads for your family, and the American society is based on interest and so it’s, therefore, we have no problem with that. Interpretive law. Not the draconian type of law part, that interpretation of law that Frank wants to make it out to be. Now are there people in Afghanistan who do that? Absolutely, and we need to stop them. But that, I would argue, is the minority. The vast majority of the world’s billion Muslims who live peaceably, live peaceably with their neighbors, whether Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, do not subscribe to these violent precepts or beliefs.
MARK HYMAN: One minute, please.
SUHAIL KHAN: The last thing I want to say in closing out on this issue is going to terminology. Terminology is so important. And you heard Frank use terms like the Islamic terrorists or the jihadists, etc. These terms are very nefarious and they conflate religion with a political movement. And the [UNCLEAR] we, we certainly know that Bin-Laden and other types of terrorists are trying to do that. But they want to take Islam. They want Islam to be theirs. They want to have these medieval, narrow interpretations of Islam. And the only people who believe it are not the Muslims. The Gallup organization did a poll of over a thousand Muslims around the world and when they came to terrorism, the vast majority of people who actually supported terrorism did so for political reasons. Those who opposed it did so for religious reasons.
The [Muslim] people who know their religion are against terrorism. And terms like jihadist or Islamist only validate the actions of the terrorists. And they do not in any way describe the religion. And that’s why the President and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and people in the military stand against using terms like Islamist or jihadist because they don’t want to validate the enemy – like bin Laden wants us to do. So that’s why we call terrorists, terrorists or murderers because that’s exactly what they are. I don’t want to give one inch of my religion to people that murder in the name of faith. And no one else should. Thank you.
FRANK GAFFNEY: I’m actually going to finish my [opening] remarks and then I’ll rebut in the Q and A and closing comments.
The focus of the soft jihad being perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood has three purposes. [The first] is to dominate the Muslim population. Particularly in societies like America where, as Suhail says, most Muslims do not want to live under Shariah, do not want to have to live under the repressive, brutal regime that’s imposed upon Muslims in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. And the Sudan. And in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.
The strategy is to segregate the Muslims; to promote a sense of victimhood — this idea, as Suhail said, that there are many of them [in America] that are being attacked – [is] a laughable proposition; radicalize them; and recruit them to jihad. [It’s] a classic totalitarian strategy [that] is being promulgated in; mosques; prisons; the military; schools and campuses; unions – [Suhail] mentioned switching out Labor Day for Eid in Shelbyville, Tennessee, a hotbed of Muslim activism; our government; and most recently what’s left of Wall Street. There are serious questions about Shariah-compliant finance, because I believe this is very much part of the stealth jihad [the Islamists] wage against our country.
A second focus is intimidating opponents. We’ve heard much about bigotry and racism. There’s not been a single rebuttal [tonight] of the scholarly work that Robert Spencer has done. There hasn’t even been a rebuttal of what I’ve just said. Except to suggest that [Suhail] knows more about his religion than somebody who is serious about it and has worked hard to understand it using the recognized authorities and their texts. Which [Suhail] has not done. Because if he had, he would be laughed out of your average mosque – even the non-Wahhabi ones – when he purports to say nobody believes in this abrogation principle. That’s simply preposterous. Simply preposterous.
And I would ask anyone, our friends in al-Jazeera most especially, who is interested in getting to the bottom of this, to check out the Reliance of the Traveler, for example. One of the most authoritative, if not the most authoritative reference work on the Muslim faith. There’s no question about my being correct on this and him being wrong.
Thirdly, the idea, the objective here of these Brotherhood types in America and in other Western societies is to create parallel societies. [Their] society, for example, that would have its own set of laws, [namely,] Sharia. Notwithstanding the Constitution of the United States. Notwithstanding [the] solemn requirement [in] Article 6 that it [is] the supreme, the only law of the land.
This is done through establishing preferential arrangements for Muslims in the name of religious accommodations: a [separate] legal code [and] courts, territorial no-go zones and political benefits. None of which in the beginning seem terribly dramatic. [For example,] we’ve got a Muslim dress code – pantsuits for TSA. Who could object to that? Except that it’s about Shariah, folks. It’s about insinuating Shariah by creating separate arrangements, which then are extended inexorably as their beachheads grow further and further.
This is, in short, utterly at odds, with the Constitution of the United States, its precepts, freedoms, and institutions. The good news is that most Muslims, at least here, still don’t want to go there. But they are being inexorably encouraged, and in some cases intimidated, into following the line of the Brotherhood. And to the extent that we have government officials who have taken a solemn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, some of whom are Muslims, I submit they have a special responsibility to reject Shariah and the Muslim Brotherhood organizations [that are] stealthily trying to impose it on all of us. To do otherwise, to fail, to act in the face of seditious behavior
MARK HYMAN: One minute.
FRANK GAFFNEY: which is a felony offense under the US Constitution and code. It is a felony offense known as "misprision of treason."
We need the help of all patriotic, law-abiding, tolerant Americans who are Muslims in fighting our mutual enemy, Shariah-adherent Islamists in this country and elsewhere. A key test of which camp they are in is whether they acknowledge the true nature of authoritative Islam Shariah and the threat it represents to our country and Constitution and work against, not with, the groups seeking to impose it, this seditious agenda, on us and undoing our Constitution. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
MARK HYMAN: Thank you, Mr. Khan and Mr. Gaffney. One hour from now, I only hope that Barack Obama and John McCain have the same passion that these two have shown tonight. Anybody who watched that debate ten days ago, what a sleeper. So hopefully you guys can inject some passion into the folks in the Belmont University tonight.
SUHAIL KHAN: I’ll try.
MARK HYMAN: All right, first of all, by a show of hands, who anticipates or would like to ask a question? See that makes my job easy. Cause I have a whole list of questions I don’t need to go to. So
why don’t I go ahead and start off if you raise your hands and remember my rules – I want to see a thought bubble over your heads with no more than two sentences and question mark at the end or else we’re going to move on. So I’ll start off up front.

WOMAN: Okay. Do you want me to come up there, Mark, or–

MARK HYMAN: Or just, you can stand up, we can, just speak loud.

WOMAN: I have a, a question for Frank. Talking about numbers. And I’m bad at math, too. Could you help me out here?

FRANK GAFFNEY: [UNCLEAR]

WOMAN: That’s exactly right. So if there are roughly four to six million Muslims in our country, arguably, let’s just pretend that’s a good number and twenty-five percent of those are African-America, roughly thirty percent are Asians, so you end up with about twenty-five percent Arab in our, in Muslims. Most of them go to mosques. So we’re talking about eight hundred thousand people. If they’re all, you mentioned the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the other organizations, where are these guys? I mean, how come we’ve not been blown up here? How come we haven’t had, if there are that many of them and they’re that angry and they’re that anti-American, where are they all?

And, and my other question is, you did a study on, you looked at a hundred mosques out of the two thousand, which is roughly five percent. Extrapolated that three quarters of the people were what you would term as Islamists. How do you get to that number? I mean, did you go into the mosque and ask them? I mean, how do you come up with this number of this many people that you claim have this attitude? So number one, you know, where are they and why aren’t they doing anything? And number two, how could you, how does anybody possibly know what’s in their heads and how did you get that information for your report?

FRANK GAFFNEY: Thank you. Good questions both. Could everybody hear them?

MARK HYMAN: Cause we’re not repeating that question. [LAUGHTER]

FRANK GAFFNEY: If I’m right, and first of all, that’s ridiculous that there’s six million Muslims in America. I don’t believe that for a moment. I think it’s, by the census, probably [closer to] 2 million. So your numbers shrink even further from what you suggested. The problem is, those of us who live in this corridor of the United States may remember what two guys with a sniper rifle and a weird car did to millions of Americans.

If you want to do harm here, if you want to blow things up, we are the most open, the most vulnerable society in the world. So your question is a good one. Why haven’t more things been blown up since 9/11?
Well, in fact, there have been a number of efforts to do that. Fortunately, the government has, using powers that were generally resisted by the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, been able to stop them. I suggest something else is at work here, though. Robert Spencer, who has been mentioned here several times by Suhail in a very defamatory way and by me in a complimentary way, has a new book coming out shortly called Stealth Jihad, which I hope everyone will read. Whether you’re on Suhail’s side or on my side, it’s a very important insight into why the Brotherhood [believes] that they can, for the moment, make more progress using stealthy techniques, soft jihad techniques, than they can by blowing things up. They blow things up here, we tend to blow things up over there. That’s netted out not-positive for a lot of these bad guys. So that’s my answer to the first question.
On the mosques, the report that you refer to has not been fully and finally released. It’s still a work in progress. There have been about two hundred of these mosques that have had on-site inspections done. The advantage of using the methodology that’s been used is, if you’re looking for Shariah adherence, it’s very evident. People dress in a certain way, people carry themselves with their beards and their jewelry, and their clothes in a certain way. They follow, in other words, what is a very strict regimen – though Suhail doesn’t seem to be familiar with it – a very strict regimen that is being [followed] in approximately seventy-five percent of the mosques in the United States, based on this sample. More are being investigated every day. We hope to have an even more full sample set. But let’s just say that it’s off by a factor of two. It’s only thirty-five percent of the mosques in America that are practicing a virulent form of Shariah and seem to have a pretty high correlation – as Shariah dictates – of support for jihad. That’s a problem all by itself. And it [gets back] ultimately to the [first] part of your question which is, at some point, the stealth jihad gets sufficiently far advanced that violence is accepted as workable again. And that’s what we need to prevent from happening.

MARK HYMAN: Can you stand up please?

WOMAN: Okay. You were saying that we shouldn’t use the words like jihad, too different, I’m not a, I’m not an Islamic scholar and, no offense, but I’m not really particularly interested in the proper interpretation of Islam or any other religion, to tell you the truth. I really, you know, the 9-11 survivors that [UNCLEAR] blowing things up–

SUHAIL KHAN: Absolutely.

WOMAN: And all that kind of thing, but I wanted to know if you’re saying Islam is [never] a religion of peace, because I’m not going to doubt that. But if you’re saying that it [always] is, it seems to me that the terrorists who are claiming to use your faith to support their acts – even if they’re doing it wrongly – the people who are using the words are just doing it to acknowledge that this is happening and it sounds like you’re suggesting that we not use any words, saying like "Islamic terrorism" and then we see no connection. We see no connection

MARK HYMAN: And your question

WOMAN: like it’s all random.

MARK HYMAN: Your question is?

WOMAN: Can you acknowledge a) that it sometimes is not a religion of peace and b) when people [UNCLEAR] use it for violence, I mean, don’t you think that the people you should be criticizing are the Muslims doing that and not the people making the observations? Those are my questions.

SUHAIL KHAN: Okay, okay, I got it. [A] couple of comments. First, I would never say that some have not misinterpreted Islam in the call for violence. Absolutely. The terrorists are doing that right now. The terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, they attacked all of us. They attacked me. I was in the White House that day, they attacked my country. I stand against that. But I don’t want to give them my religion. Just as terrorists in the past have attacked in the name of other faiths, whether they be Christian or Jewish or whomever, I don’t want to give them [my] faith. Faith is something that is interpreted by their followers and my argument is that the vast majority of mainstream Muslims in the United States and in the world, do not follow that extreme interpretation of Islam that bin Laden and his cohorts do. They are the extremists. They are the minority.

But the vast majority of Muslims that Frank conflates as engaging in this soft jihad, uh, just because they want to wear a headscarf or dress in traditional clothing or want to go to church on Friday just as people go to synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, that somehow because they’re strict in the adherence to their faith, that that somehow makes them suspect. That is what I call anti-Semitism with training wheels. Because really what they’re saying is that anybody who practices their faith is, is suspect. And in this case, today it’s Muslims. Yesterday it was Jews. The day before that it was Catholics. Right here I have a whole book, published in 1950, about the plan for the Catholic takeover of our country. It’s a very well-written book. Very reasonable, smart guy, Paul Blanchard, he spends a lot of time saying he’s not a bigot. I bet most Catholics are good people. But he spends a lot of time in the book saying that Catholics have a secret pernicious plan to take over our country through the banks and the school educational, uh, system, etceteras. And now this is laughable. And a few years from now, Frank’s theory about the soft jihad and the vast majority of Muslims that live in this country who have peaceably served their country like Jamal in the back there are not engaged in a soft jihad. They’re living their life under the Constitution like all of us.

WOMAN: But the word, my question was about the word–

MARK HYMAN: No, no, we’ll, actually I’m a practicing Roman Catholic, I’d like to borrow the book afterwards. [LAUGHTER] Uh, can we get some geographic diversity here? Uh, uh, looking for another
question for Frank. You had a question? All the way in the back, yes sir?

MAN: Yeah–

MARK HYMAN: Please.

MAN: Hi, my question is, if Shariah is so contrary to the Constitution cause it supplants the law of the land, do you share, do you also believe that the Catholic ecclesiastical courts, the Jewish courts, and even the Methodist ecclesiastical courts are also contrary to the Constitution cause they’re [UNCLEAR] contrary [UNCLEAR]

FRANK GAFFNEY: This is one of the efforts at moral equivalence that we often hear from apologists for Shariah. I think there’s no equivalence, to be perfectly honest with you. Catholics,
whenever the defamation of them in the past, Jews, Methodists, Baptists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, I believe without exception, acknowledge that there is a supreme authority, a national authority within which they practice their faiths. That is not true of Sharia.

And I just have to say that this isn’t a matter of conflating. There is a tradition within Islam – authoritative Islam. And when you hear Suhail continue to say things that are simply not true, [about] his faith, it raises the question of whether he simply doesn’t know his faith as he professes to do and I have to assume he’s studied it seriously, but none of what he’s just said is true. The recognized authorities of Islam, all of the schools, all of the schools – he may find a person in this country who has no standing within the community. [But] his father, for example, would not have said what he just said.
SUHAIL KAHN: Thanks, Frank.
FRANK GAFFNEY: His father’s successor in [their] Wahhabi mosque out in California would not have said what he just said. They understand the authoritative teachings of the faith [that] involve supplanting any laws other than Islam. They involve placing a religious authority the world-over. Now, I can’t be accused of defaming the faith if this is what the faith says itself. It’s not bigotry to point it out. It’s taqiyaa to suggest it is bigotry. And I submit to you that we’ve got to have in this country at least [the latitude to discuss this]. It’s going away in Britain, it’s going away in France, it’s going away elsewhere in the world under the Brotherhood’s efforts, the Organization of Islamic Conference’s efforts, to ban free speech whenever a guy like, well, maybe Suhail, takes offense at what is said about Islam. That would be the end of the Constitution of the United States. Certainly it’s freedom of speech protections on which I think everything else is built. And I personally am not going to go quietly if they’re going to try to impose that upon us in this country. Especially under excuses that this is in fact just sort of like Jewish courts and Catholic ecclesiastical law. It’s simply not.
MARK HYMAN: Question for Suhail? Hands. Gentlemen standing all the way in the back.
MAN: This is for Suhail. My question is this. The questions being asked are asked as if they are [subjective] when the fact is these are issues of fact. Almost all Islamic law is translated into English for over thirty years and all you’ve ever had to do was read it. Would you suggest that you were basically saying [UNCLEAR] written by Muslims or are you [UNCLEAR] get it anywhere, in any mosque, go get them and go read them and find out what the answer is. My question is, do you think that’s a fair thing to do? Seven years into the war on terror, asking questions, they are simply an indication of mindless institutional endeavor, seven years into it decided [UNCLEAR]
SUHAIL KAHN: Yeah. No, that’s a good, that’s a good question. To answer your question, if you were to read a text on Islamic law, it’s an interpretive law. So if, [UNCLEAR] if you read a text on Islamic law, I think that’s a great idea. People should do it, just as you would read a text on Christian law or Jewish law to learn. But you would never have a definitive answer on Islamic law as you would on Christian law or Jewish law because it’s, it’s interpretive. It’s interpretive.
So for example, if you read a book on medieval Christian law, you would probably take umbrage at some of the things said in that book. Likewise if you read, because it’s contextual. It’s contextual. Islamic law is interpretive. And if you, if you, as you do have Muslim scholars in this country who interpret the law, they interpret it for the land that you live in. Now, you have to remember that having said that, that Islamic law in any way, shape or form, whether it’s for buying your home, or what you’re going to wear, when you, you know, when you go to church or things like that, that’s going to apply to people in their personal lives.
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme land of our country. And we have an establishment clause that clearly says the U.S. government will never establish any one faith over the other. That is the protection. So that’s what we need to remember, that, as Americans, we don’t want to establish any one faith. At different times, at different times in history, Judaism was interpreted violently, Christianity was interpreted violently, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers who engage in suicide bombing interpret their faith against majorities in Sri Lanka in a violent way.
It’s sad that God has been called down in every side of a fight and I’m sure God wearies of it. But we as human beings should remember that we live in a country of laws under the U.S. Constitution where no religion or religious law is going to take precedence over another.
Number two, the last thing I want to say [is] about taqiyaa. Taqiyaa is brought up by people who want to say basically that Muslims can say anything they want in defense of their religion, even if they have to lie. Taqiyaa was not a principle that is accepted by all Muslim scholars, number one, definitely not by all Muslim schools of thought. Taqiyaa was a concept that was developed by Shia scholars which are the vast [minority] of the Muslim faith because of the persecution they faced at the hands of the majority Sunnis. And they said that you can’t, if you’re being persecuted, at times of death, you can say I’m not a Muslim, I’m not a Shia, whatever to defend yourself. That same principle was also espoused by Mamonides in Spain. When Jews were being persecuted by the Christians, he had the concept of a Jewish taqiyaa, the same type of concept that, if you’re Jewish and you’re going to be put to death because you’re Jewish, by Christian inquisitors, you can say, I’m not Jewish. God knows the truth. And that was a very limited type of response for people that are being persecuted and Islam is not unique, even the minority opinion to have that type of theology.
FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, this is not a matter of interpretation. This again suggests either an ignorance of the faith or the practice of taqiyaa and I’d like to [note Suhail’s] acknowledge[ment] that at least it is an accepted practice by some in the faith. I believe it is an accepted practice by Sunnis, as well as Shia. It’s certainly being practiced. But the point is, the interpretation of this faith stopped about twelve hundred years ago. There was a consensus of the scholars, the "gates of ijthahad" are closed. And I don’t know where you’ve been, but that’s the authoritative view. I’ve got to stop reading your faith’s authoritative texts. That’s what you’re suggesting. Believe me, I appear to have read more than you have, Suhail, and that’s what really is astonishing to me.
SUHAIL KHAN: [OVERLAP] –Frank.

FRANK GAFFNEY: I’ve got to get on The Reliance of the Traveler, which is recognized as an authoritative text by al-Azhar and the Saudi clerics and many of the Brotherhood organizations that [Suhail has] been associated with for many years. This isn’t me making it up. This is [what] was mentioned by the questioner, [things] anybody can get their hands on, anytime they want to. And the people who keep telling you otherwise, don’t want you to know the truth.
I’m not going to assign any particular motivation to that, maybe [Suhail] can clarify it. But all I’m telling you is, when you hear that this is "interpretive," and it’s all sort of special cases depending on the nation and its rules, [that’s] simply not true.
Under Islam, the beauty of Shariah, the beauty of [its] program is that [it is] going to be a source of world peace because it is absolutely monolithic. It is going to be imposed and everyone will submit to it either by becoming practitioners of the faith if they choose to or by having to accept a "Dhimmi" status, or by dying. Those are the three choices that all of the schools [endorse] and that’s where this leads us if we don’t recognize it as such and counter [it]. 
[One] last point. The establishment clause is just one of the pieces of the Constitution that clearly is incompatible with Shariah. My point is they’re trying to impose Shariah in a way that is inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States. Don’t tell me the Constitution is going to protect us against it unless we actually use it to protect us against it – and prevent this seditious program from being insinuated in our country.
MARK HYMAN: Amazingly, Frank and Suhail actually carpooled together. [LAUGHTER]
SUHAIL KHAN: That’s why we were late.

MARK HYMAN: Actually, this gentlemen’s been so patient here. Question for. . .?
MAN: For Frank.

MARK HYMAN: Please.

MAN: I’m not an expert in the Koran either but I’ve spoken with a number of theologians and missionaries who are and they seemed in agreement, at least the ones I’ve spoken with, the passages you labeled as latter Meccan are actually –

FRANK GAFFNEY: Medina.
MAN: Medina, I’m sorry – are actually denouncements of sort of a quasi-Christian cult known as the [UNCLEAR] and that the interpretation that you’re reading becomes not so much from the Koran but from [UNCLEAR] and the Wahabbi doctrine. With that in mind, don’t you at least see a glimmer of hope that the recent announcement that the Turkish scholars are going to be editing the Medina?

FRANK GAFFNEY: Look, I can find hope in all kinds of things. But I’m reluctant to find hope in the suspension of fact and its pursuit. And I don’t believe for a moment – and Suhail continues to insist, as do most people who are promoting this lie – that it’s just al-Qaeda and minority [of Muslims] on a tear. That they’ve got this whacked interpretation of a religion and there’s no talking to them because they’re crazy and they’re terrorists and we don’t want to complete them, as you say, with having something to do with Islam.
But what I’m telling you – and he’s not – is that they are actually reflecting authoritative Islam. The people who are the guys who run the faith, who run its institutions, who hold sacred its interpretations, its texts, its practices are indistinguishable from the people that he’s describing now as terrorists who somehow have some lunatic ideas [about] Islam. With the greatest of respect for the interfaith dialogers, and their numbers are legion, I don’t believe they are studying up on this either. And to the extent that they’re seeking desperately to find some ray of hope in the gloom of the factual evidence that I’m talking about here, I think they’re mistaken and frankly they’re misleading you.
MARK HYMAN: We’re running out of time here. But we have a question over here for Suhail. Gentleman on the left.

MAN: I think that the question should be just a little bit different. Instead of "Is Islam a religion of peace?", the question should be: "Is Islam possibly compatible with the modern world?" It’s not just the Christians and Jews, there is nowhere in the world that you can reconcile Islam with modern practices and modern lives there. And this is leading to what’s really a clash of civilizations. And short of complete separation, I mean apartheid; you’re going to have war.

SUHAIL KHAN: I would agree with that. I don’t agree that there’s a clash of civilizations, I believe that it’s a clash of civilization with those against civilization. The terrorists are against civilization. Malaysia is a majority Muslim country. In Malaysia, women are equal to men and they are practicing Muslims. The women wear their headscarves, they go to the mosque, but they are the most educated, even better than men, in Malaysia. When I was in Malaysia, they complained that the men tend to be a little lazy. Women are leading institutions.
In the Muslim world, we’ve had three, at least three Muslim countries that have elected Muslim women leaders. Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan. So there are countries that have medieval interpretations of their faith, including Afghanistan. But the vast majority of Muslims again are very compatible with modernism and with democracy. Iraq, for example, is a predominately Muslim country that instituted Shariah law there, even though the U.S. is there. But that’s what that means. Shariah law means that they [UNCLEAR] for people to eat kosher-types of food, what we call halal, women can wear scarves in public, etceteras. They don’t have a draconian interpretation of Islamic law like say Afghanistan does. There they have integrated their Islamic principles with democracy. They have a parliament, they have a president, they have a prime minister. And it’s completely cohesive, it’s completely cohesive. The same goes for Malaysia, the same goes for other countries.
So Shariah itself is not antithetical to democracy or modernism, because, again, it’s interpretive. Frank seems to be reading all these whack-job websites put up by terrorists and/or people who hate Muslims, saying this is what Muslims are saying. and no matter how much Muslims like me say that’s not the truth, he says, I don’t know my faith. Or he seems to say that my dad, you know, would know better. Who, my dad, a high-tech engineer, very modern, came to this country with his freedom, well, of course, Frank decided he must be a Wahhabi because he goes to mosque, God forbid, on Friday.
And I promised I would answer the issue about terminology. I said about terminology that to call terrorists, because they do something in the name of their faith, it only validates them, I think is wrong, it’s because it gives them the religion that we don’t want to give them. And we’ve heard it before, remember when people were against communism in the 20s and 30s, many misguidedly called it Jewish bolshevism. Winston Churchill called it Jewish bolshevism in order to conflate Judaism with communism. He was wrong then and those that say Islamic terrorists now are Jihadists are wrong now. That’s the simple answer there. That they are doing it in the name of their faith, we shouldn’t give it to them because they are not manifesting true religious belief.
MARK HYMAN: Now, I’m told we’re running out of time, but I’m a dangerous man. I’m a television personality with a microphone. So I’m going to squeeze in one more question for each of our guests. And this gentlemen is about to explode. Okay, your question is for, for. . .?
MAN: Suhail. Very short question. Telling people that Shariah law is peaceful, I believe, the only way to do that is to provide one example [that clearly and unambiguously of Shariah law text for Islam that clearly and unambiguously stands against any of the following concepts: a) death for apostates, b) beating women and stoning them to death, c) calling Jews pigs and monkeys and d) declaring jihad or wars against non-Muslims to subjugate them to Islam, e) enslavement of female war prisoners and raping them as in Darfur, f) fighting Jews before the end-days and killing of all of them and g) killing gays. Provide one single evidence, by one single book, not two, believe me, one single Shariah book that stands clearly and unambiguously against these concepts, I will come with you and say Shariah law is peaceful.
SUHAIL KHAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me comment. There are, there are several Islamic scholars, first of all, you’re a little [UNCLEAR] again, these medieval interpretations of [OVERLAPPING VOICES] Absolutely, absolutely. And there are modern ones: Khaled Abou el-Fadl, a graduate of Yale University, University of Pennsylvania Law School and a PhD. graduate of Princeton University, currently at UCLA, is developing a book on Shariah. And Sheik Hamza Yusef, whom Frank called a Wahabbi. He is developing a book on Shariah and he also has a seminary —
MAN: They don’t exist.

SUHAIL KHAN: They do exist. And they have Shariah and they have developed Shariah specific to the American context. They are graduates of the schools in the Muslim world and they’re graduates of schools here in the United States. And just as I said, they have taken the interpretation of Islamic texts, the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, and they have integrated that into a Shariah-compliant, constitutionally compliant program for American Muslims to live their lives under the Constitution, in no way abrogating the Constitution, and in no way running up against the Constitution, but just living their lives under the free principle that all of us Americans can do to practice our faith freely. That is what their principles are.
I always want to remember that you can always take negative quotes from the Koran and put, the quotation that Frank, you know, when I went to Sunday school I would see them there every weekend, we learned do not contend with the People of the Book, Christians and Jews, except in the fairest way. Those are the controlling verses. "Be they Muslims, Jews, Christians, those who believe in God in the last day and who do good deeds have their reward with the Lord. They have nothing to fear and they will not sorrow." Which is why, when the Jews are being persecuted in Spain at the hands of the Catholic church at the time, where did they go? Muslim countries, Morocco, Iran. And to this day, there are Jewish communities living in those countries. Now, have they been persecuted subsequently? Absolutely. In the name of politics. People might use religion to do it, but again, it’s not something that represents the faith, it represents the ugliness of politics.
FRANK GAFFNEY: None of the people you mentioned have any standing.
SUHAIL KHAN: They absolutely do.
FRANK GAFFNEY: They turn to the authoritative practices of the faith. They do. If what you say is true – and these are books that haven’t been written yet.
SUHAIL KHAN: They have been written. They have been written.
FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, they haven’t been published yet. They haven’t been authoritatively affirmed yet.

SUHAIL KHAN: They have.
FRANK GAFFNEY: They are not going to be anything other than apostates if they actually –
SUHAIL KHAN: To you, to you they will be.
FRANK GAFFNEY: [are exposed] within your Muslim
SUHAIL KHAN: Look, al Qaeda maybe. But not to everybody else.
FRANK GAFFNEY: I’m talking about Al Azhar in Egypt. I’m talking about the grand muftis of Palestine. I’m talking about the Wahabbis in [Saudi Arabia]. And, by the way, just so we’re clear. It is absolutely the case that there are lots of Muslims, I said it in my remarks, who don’t want to live under Shariah. Many of them are lucky enough to live in places where the Arab influence has not yet become dominant.
But you look at Malaysia. It is in the throes of being taken over by the Wahhabis. And it will be the case when that happens, as it is happening in Turkey, as it is happening in Indonesia, as it is happening in the Philippines – [where] the moderate practice of the faith, which bears some resemblance to what he’s talking about, not any resemblance to the authoritative practice, but nonetheless the way hundreds of millions of Muslims have practiced the faith – it will be extinguished. Because it is not consistent with Shariah and when the Wahhabis are done with [them], and the Brotherhood is done with them, they will all be compliant with Shariah.
MARK HYMAN: Methinks it’s going to be a really quiet car ride home for the guys [LAUGHTER] And I need one more question to balance it out for Mr. Gaffney. Yes, please sir.
MAN: Yeah, Frank, I mean, dialing back to this issue, and I promise, Mark, I will make it very quick and there is a question here. You know, it just seems to me that there’s a flaw in your logic inasmuch as, you know, you equate the extreme views of certain scholars with their approach to religion with pushing out the moderates in that religion. I mean, according to my own faith, I’m not really Jewish because I don’t practice the same way as the Lubavichers in New York. And so I want you to comment on that aspect of it which is the fact that there are extremists in any faith who study the faith quite a bit more than anybody else, but they’re not controlling everybody else. And I wonder how you sort of equate that. Number two, jumping back to this issue of constitutionality, again there are extremists in every faith who would do things that would subvert, there are extremist evangelicals who would subvert what the high court has said is a fourth amendment right to privacy in terms of blowing up abortion clinics. Do you think that they’re – the Evangelical Christians who want to blow up abortion clinics – are subverting the constitution?
FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, there you go again. [LAUGHTER] The moral equivalence between lunatics who are blowing up big abortion clinics in the name of their faith and a faith that is waging jihad against the world, I mean, it’s not even apples and oranges. [OVERLAPPING VOICES]
SUHAIL KHAN: Cause you’re not, Frank. In the end, your, cause they would say, the people who are blowing up these clinics would say that it is their faith and they are being taught, by, by certain scholars who know more about the Bible than you and I do. Who are interpreting this – wait, that’s what you’re getting at here. That’s the —
FRANK GAFFNEY: No. The reason I would be able to answer your question, and then you tell me whether I am or not is, I disagree with your proposition. You’re suggesting, as Suhail is doing, as in fact Islamists do all over the world, that for the purposes of waging soft jihad, it’s just extremists. You don’t need to worry about the mainstream. But what I’m saying to you, and I apologize that this hasn’t been sufficiently clear, what I’m saying to you is the "mainstream" adheres to these views. It is the authoritative version of the faith. And you can listen to Brotherhood folks, you can listen to pathologists, you can listen to interfaith dialogers till the cows come home. And it doesn’t alter the very fundamental fact that the gentlemen at the back of the room pointed out and that is, this is something that lends itself to absolute proof. Just look at the authoritative texts.
Don’t take [Suhail’s] word for it, because either he’s dissembling or he doesn’t know. And I’ll let you be the judge. And I’m telling you, not on the basis of some whack-job’s website but on the basis of his faith’s authoritative texts. And authoritative practices as they have been settled in all of the schools. I don’t know if this means anything to the non-Muslims in the room, but these are the guys who determine the faith in all of the schools of Sunni Islam and all of the schools of Shia Islam.
SUHAIL KHAN: Not so.
FRANK GAFFNEY: So, when he says not true.
SUHAIL KHAN: It’s not true.
FRANK GAFFNEY: Again, find out, folks. You can do this. And I’m simply saying to you, your country is on the line. If you don’t do it and you listen to this siren song, you will wake up some fine day and discover that you’re a dhimmi. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll have the chance to convert. Or worse, you’ll just be dead. And that’s not a pretty picture and I’m not a racist or a bigot for saying it, though he and his friends have often said so.
MARK HYMAN: All right, we’re going to wrap it up with five minute closing comments. We’ll start off with Suhail.
SUHAIL KHAN: Thank you, Mark. Basically what you’ve heard tonight is that there are two world views.
Resembling two world views, and you have a choice to decide which world view you want to follow. One wishes to protect America, her people, her values, her land, her Constitution, her reason for being. Those of us who adhere to that world view, we have opposed any and all attacks on America and Americans and we will defend our country to the death. We defend Americans of all faiths for their freedom, in their freedom. We oppose murderers who attack us and whatever, whatever their claimed religions or reasons they might have, we will defend our country. That’s one world view.
And there’s another world view. A different world view. That’s bin Laden’s. He wants to divide America and the Muslim world. He believes America and Islam should be at war. There is a fifth column in the United States that agrees with bin-Laden. They share this world view. They join in this unholy desire to foster hatred between Muslims and all Americans. We must stand united against bin-Laden, as I said, and we need to stand against the racists who share that same world view. They are wrong and they will be defeated.
There’s a book I’ll recommend. Who Speaks For Islam? Frank seems to be the one who wants to interpret who that is. Let’s, let’s read the people who’ve actually done the study. There was an extensive Gallup poll throughout the Muslim world and they pointed out that for Muslims overseas who support violence, they do so for secular or political reasons. The vast majority, over 91%. Those Muslims most opposed to violence and terror cite their faith as the reason for opposing violence. It is religion that is the answer, not the problem.
Robert Pate in his study of terrorism in the world, Dying To Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, the central fact is that overwhelmingly, suicide terrorist attacks, he cites ninety-five percent are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective to compel the withdrawal of military forces from a territory. He cites Lebanon, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Chechnya and the West Bank. Years ago, we saw the kamikaze pilots. It’s politics people, not faith.
These facts are known to the United States government and this is why our president and military leaders opposed confusing fighting a political foe with promoting hatred for an entire faith. These facts are known to the bigots. And they have their own agenda which does not include protecting or strengthening America.
Americans of all faiths, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, Hindu, bring strength to America and are protected by our constitution, included in our national fabric. The historian Gerald Early once said that there are three things that are uniquely American: Jazz, the Constitution and baseball. Well, baseball is a great metaphor for what we’re talking about today.
Our national pastime only truly became so when all Americans regardless of race or faith were allowed to participate freely. Hank Greenberg, in 1930, began playing for the Detroit Tigers. And despite virulent anti-Semitism from other players and fans, he became one of the game’s all-time greats and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. And on April 15th, 1947, Jackie Robinson, the grandson of slaves, stood on the shoulders of greats like Greenberg and broke the color barrier when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. That evening, at 1574 50th Street, in Borough Park, Brooklyn, a family gathered for the seder, a feast of Passover, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" asked the youngest male in the centuries old tradition. And before the father could respond, the boy answered his own question. Because a black man is in the major leagues.
Today, I tell you we are at a similar crossroad. We’ll continue to be a shining city on a hill as Ronald Reagan called us when all Americans may feely – freely – participate in our democracy. And I’m confident [UNCLEAR] will prevail. Why? Because America is a great nation. We’re a beacon of hope. And time and time again, we’ve overcome hate and ignorance to welcome new Americans into our great national fabric. And despite the organized campaign of hate, I’m proud the same is happening for Muslim-Americans everyday.
MARK HYMAN: One minute, please.
SUHAIL KAHN: Even after 9/11 and all the lies and hysteria, true Muslims have been elected by their fellow Americans to serve in Congress, both from majority non-Muslim districts. President Bush appointed Americans like me and, despite all the lying and the shameful attacks, the president has stood with me and not with the racists who attacked me.
I’m an American, an American who is optimistic, Frank, about our future. A future where all Americans, regardless of race, ethnic origin and faith – or no faith at all – can join and work together to promote our right of free expression, a political vision of shared concern and of personal faith. Our forefathers boldly proclaimed, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." As people of faith, Jews, Christians, Muslims, as Americans, we should join together to promote life and liberty – political, religious, economic liberty – for all people.
This is what I had hoped Mr. [UNCLEAR] would have discussed when he was here and those of us who wish us harm must be defeated, no doubt about it. But in doing so, we should work with all freedom-loving people in this important cause. Likewise, we should resist the call to respond to the hate of our enemies with the bigoted hatred of our own making. We are Americans and we take great pride in the fact that regardless of ethnic or religious heritage, we stand united as one people. As Americans. As Americans, we are united in defending our cherished liberty in the many long days ahead. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]

FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, that’s a very elegant closing comment, And I actually agree with much of it.
I agree that we are in fact confronting, in the form bin Laden and his ilk, a radical, a totalitarian, a
dangerous ideology that is bent on our destruction.
I agree that there a Fifth Column, Suhail’s term, inside the United States, [only it’s] working to advance exactly that agenda.
I agree that they must be fought ruthlessly and successfully because everything we hold dear, and I take Suhail at his word that he holds dear all the things that I hold dear, we ought to want to see survive.
And that won’t survive if this ideology, which embraces explicitly, by its terms – not mine, not Robert Spencer’s, not whack-job websites’ – by its terms, Shariah law and accepts as its express purpose establishing that law over the whole world. Not just here. Not just in Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines or Western Europe. But the whole world.
Don’t take my word for it, that’s what they say. And it’s not just bin Laden who says it.
And I must say, I would feel infinitely better about our conversation tonight, infinitely more encouraged by particularly that wonderful rousing patriotic, love-America closing if Suhail hadn’t spent the entire evening denying what I am saying about Shariah.
Because that’s kind of a test, folks. If you don’t acknowledge what this Fifth Column is animated by, if you don’t recognize that it’s not just bin Laden and whack jobs on that side, terrorists who don’t really, according to Suhail, have anything to do with Islam – except they have everything to do with Islam. They wrap themselves in the mantle of Islam. And rightly or wrongly, so do the authoritative interpreters and practitioners of this faith.
Now there are many in this room, I recognize them from past associations, who have developed a friendship for Suhail. And he’s a likable fellow. He articulates beautifully what we all hope to see and obtain from patriotic, law-abiding, tolerant Muslims in this country. But you will not find such people denying the reality of Shariah as defined by the authorities, and practiced, sadly, by millions of their co-religionists. Not all of them. Certainly not all of them in this country.
And as I said in my opening remarks, our only hope – especially if this gentleman [in the audience] is correct that we’re in a clash of civilizations – our only hope is that we are able to enlist those Muslims who are genuinely tolerant or genuinely law-abiding, who genuinely want to live side-by-side with People of the Book, who genuinely appreciate the uniqueness, the extraordinariness of our Constitution, and the form of government and the opportunities that it has presented us. [We need] those Muslims [to] join us in defending everything we hold dear, against those who adhere to Shariah and who have stated in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 directive, in al-Banna’s writings and in the authoritative texts that their duty, their obligation as Muslims is to destroy everything that I’ve just talked about.
MARK HYMAN: One minute, please.
FRANK GAFFNEY: So you, ladies and gentlemen, have troubled yourself to come out and listen to this. You can walk out of here tonight saying, well, the guy who was Muslim says the guy who wasn’t is all wet. And you can let it go at that. Or you can do what al-Jazeera may do and you can take my quotes and you can [construe me as] some sort of rabid hatemonger.
Or you can go do what your civic duty requires. And that is to go study up on this. Go expose yourself to these facts, which are knowable, which are readily available. If you want to, get them from Robert Spencer, because he’s [readily accessible]. If you don’t, go to the [Islamic authorities], go to the texts that they themselves use, translated conveniently, by the Saudi government, into English. For your edification. Actually, for your submission.
But this is the moment, ladies and gentlemen, because the soft jihad is progressing inexorably. And it can be dismissed and people like me who are pointing it out can be called racists and bigots. But it’s up to you to decide. It is your civic duty, if you love this Constitution, as I’m sure you do, if you care enough about finding out what the truth is to not only bestir yourself to get out to wherever the hell it is we are today, [LAUGHTER] but to find out what the truth is, then I urge you to do so. And if you do, I will bet you dollars to donuts, you will come out recognizing that I’m right and [Suhail’s] wrong. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]

MARK HYMAN: This much I can promise you. Tonight’s presidential debate will be anticlimactic in contrast to what we have witnessed tonight. Please give a round of applause to both of our debaters. [APPLAUSE] I’d like to thank Suhail Kahn and Frank Gaffney for their participation not only in their remarks, but also in the Q and A session. I’d like to thank the Harbour League for hosting such an important event. I’d like to remind all of you, again, the Harbour League would love to have you as members, certainly welcome your tax-deductible contribution. The web address is theharbourleague.org. And on behalf of the Harbour League, thanks for coming this evening. Have a good night. And please travel safely. Thank you.

Venezuelas Tarek El-Aissami

Since our inception two years ago, we have been following the growing relationship between Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although most of the information available in the media states that this relationship started in 2005, it actually began as soon as Chavez started his mandate in 1999. In fact, on November 19, 2007, the Iranian reformist newspaper, E’temad-e-Melli, published an article claiming that relations between Tehran and Caracas began with the formation of the (Iranian) Reformist government when former President Muhammed Khatami visited Venezuela during his time in office. They became so close that in 2005 Chavez presented the Iranian leader with the highest decoration, the Order of the Liberator, as a symbol of their strong ties.[1] The Venezuelan President then encouraged Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega to develop ties with Iranian President Ahmadinejad which they did. All four of these countries now have strong ties to Iran and have signed treaties in diverse areas of the economy. In exchange, Iran has received many benefits including a strong presence in the Hemisphere as well as support from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador against UN sanctions. Although insiders claim that Iran had no interest in developing relationships with Caracas, per se, Khatami’s regime was under international pressure to make new alliances among non-aligned countries. In the Middle East, Tehran had strong ties with Syria and Qatar, but it did not have any base from where they could actually threaten the United States and that is when Caracas became of interest.[2] After learning of Chavez’s leadership in the Hemisphere, Tehran planned a strategy to establish itself in nations under the Venezuelan leader’s influence.

Manuchehr Honarmand was a witness to the developing Iranian-Venezuelan relationship. Mr. Honarmand is a Dutch citizen who used to write columns for the opposition daily Kayhan International, based in London. An Iranian dissident journalist, Honarmand decided to go to the US to expand the newspaper’s distribution. In December 2002 he visited South America for tourism and while in transit at the Caracas airport, waiting for a connecting flight, he was approached by two Iranians who asked him to provide information about himself. They were soon joined by two Venezuelan policemen.[3]

After learning who he was, they handcuffed him and brought him to an office behind the transit area where he was beaten and forced to sign papers in Spanish, which he did not understand. A few hours later, Honarmand was thrown into a cell where he was told that he had been charged with drug trafficking.

Furthermore, he was refused contact with the Dutch Embassy. A Venezuelan National Guard report stated that his "drug – filled suitcase" was found in a Copa Airlines flight even though Honarmand had been traveling on KLM.[4]

Mr. Honarmand’s luggage, money and papers were stolen and his Dutch passport was confiscated by the Venezuelan police. While he was in jail, he was able to contact Houshang Vaziri, his editor in chief, who promised to help but soon disappeared and was later found dead in Paris. Honarmand was freed in 2005, thanks to the Dutch government’s pressures. During his time in Caracas he spoke with discontented insiders of Chavez’s regime who informed him about the presence of Iranian officials in every sector of the economy and that they occupied high positions in the National Guard and the police. They also told Honarmand that Iranian officials are actually proselytizing in the poorest sectors of Venezuelan society to attract followers.[5] However, what has many insiders worried is the possibility of radicals holding government positions. The recent designation of Tarek El – Aissami as Minster of Interior and Justice of Venezuela has raised concerns because of his connections with extremist groups.

Mr. El – Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek’s great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and assistant to the party’s secretary general in Baghdad during the Saddam Hussein regime.[6]

It was discovered that in 2003 El Aissami was appointed, along with another radical student leader from the University of the Andes in the city of Mérida, Hugo Cabezas, to head the country’s passport and naturalization service, the Onidex (Identification and Immigration Office).  The choice came as a surprise precisely because of their ties with guerrilla movements at Universidad de Los Andes (ULA). Evidence has surfaced that during this time both men illegally issued Venezuelan passports and identity documents to members of Hezbollah and Hamas. Mr. Cabezas is now the government candidate for governor of the Andean state of Trujillo in elections due to be held on November 23, 2008 and is a founding member of Utopia, an armed group that has connections with the Bolivarian Liberation Front.[7]

While a student leader at ULA, Aissami had political control of the university residences (dorms), which were used to hide stolen vehicles and conduct drug deals and had managed to get members of the guerillas into the dorms. According to reports, of the 1,122 people living in one of the University’s residences, only 387 were active students and more than 600 had nothing to do with the university.[8]

Venezuelan investigative journalist, Patricia Poleo, who escaped Venezuela and currently lives in Miami says that Mr. Aissami together with others affiliated with Hezbollah, such as Lebanon-born Gahzi Nasserddine, currently the Business Liaison at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus, and his brother, Ghasan Atef Salameh Nasserddi, are in charge of recruiting young Venezuelan Arabs affiliated with the ‘Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela’ or  PSUV (Chavez’s Socialist Party), to be sent to South Lebanon for combat training in Hezbollah camps preparing them for ‘asymmetrical war’ against the United States. Once back in Venezuela, they are greeted by radical members of the Venezuelan Socialist Party affiliated with UNEFA (the university run by the Armed Forces) and the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (Venezuelan Bolivarian University) and continue with their training in firearms, explosives and munitions. The training camps are located in the states of Monagas, Miranda, el Páramo, Falcon, Yaracuy, Yumare, and Trujillo and the districts of Maturin, Los Teques, El Jari, Churuguara and Sierra de San Luis. These groups and individuals are supervised by the Hezbollah Organization in Venezuela, along with al-Qaeda Iraqis currently living in the country and by the Palestinian Democratic Front, headed by Salid Ahmed Rahman, whose office is located in Caracas’s Central Park.[9]

Since Chavez assumed the Presidency, Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda have used Venezuela as their bridge to other Latin American countries. There is information that a group of Iraqi activists belonging to al-Qaeda are currently in Caracas. Their names are: Mohammed Adnan Yasin, Falah Amin Taha and Muhi Alwan Mohammed Al Qaisi. They all arrived in Caracas with temporary visas granted and approved by the heads of Onidex (Cabezas and Aissami) and are believed to be very dangerous. They oversee the activities of these terrorist organizations in the tri – border region, and in Nicaragua and Argentina.[10]

Other Hezbollah members in Venezuela with these same visas are: explosives expert Lebanese Abdul Ghani Suleiman Wanked, Hassan Nasrallah’s right-hand man.; Rada Ramel Assad, born in Barranquilla, Colombia and Abouchanab Daichoum Dani who is the organizer of the group.[11]

We have to be very careful about what is going on in Venezuela. Independent media outlets have warned that the Chávez regime was issuing ID documents to Islamic radicals, enabling them to operate and move freely to other countries. It is extremely worrisome and dangerous to appoint a radical such as Aissami as the official in charge of issuing identity cards and passports but this serves the goals of the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents in their joint efforts to radicalize the region and build terrorist networks.

 

Other articles written by the staff of The America’s Report that can be referenced to in relation with this story are: "The Iranian threat already in the US’ backyard" (February 14, 2008 by Nicole M. Ferrand); "Latin America’s radical grassroots" (Parts 1, 2 and 3 by Luis Fleischman and Nicole M. Ferrand)

 

Nicole M. Ferrand is the editor of "The Americas Report" of the Menges Hemispheric Security Project. She is a graduate of Columbia University in Economics and Political Science with a background in Law from Peruvian University, UNIFE and in Corporate Finance from Georgetown University.

 NOTES

[1] Unholy alliance between Caracas and Tehran. January 13, 2008. Al Arabiya News.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Iran-Venezuela Connection. February 14, 2008. Memri.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Al Arabiya – Ibid.

[7] Jihad in Venezuela. November 29, 2003. Jihad Watch.

[8] Memri – Ibid.

[9] Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in Venezuela. June 12, 2008 The Jungle Hut.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid,

A road paved on reality

Listening to the news in Israel these days, it is hard to escape the feeling that the Israeli political discourse has become dangerously irrelevant.

Take Iran for example. On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states, "The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed – for the benefit of humanity. For these remarks, he received enthusiastic applause from the world leaders assembled at the UN General Assembly.

And how has Israel responded? It hasn’t done anything in particular. And it has no intention of doing anything in particular.

This point was made clear to the public on Wednesday when Israel’s new UN Ambassador, Gavriela Shalev gave an interview to Army Radio. While bemoaning Ahmadinejad’s warm reception, she said that the world leaders were probably just being diplomatic. She noted that many of their ambassadors say nice things about Israel to her in private.

Israel’s woman at the UN devoted most of her interview to defending the UN. In fact, she said she believes it is her duty not simply to defend Israel to the world body, but to defend the UN to Israelis. As she put it, her job is "correcting the UN’s image in the eyes of the people of Israel."

Shalev’s appointment to the UN was the work of Foreign Minister – and would-be prime minister – Tzipi Livni. And her view of her role as Israel’s ambassador is strictly in keeping with what Livni perceives as the job of Israel’s top diplomats. They are the world’s emissaries to Israel.

Livni has spent the better part of the past three years at the Foreign Ministry telling us that the UN is our friend, the Europeans are our friends and that the Americans and Europeans and the UN will take care of Iran for us. The Palestinians are also our friends.

As anti-Semitic forces grow throughout the world, Livni has not communicated one single policy for defending Israel abroad that doesn’t involve the kindness of strangers. Her response to Ahmadinejad’s speech was case in point.

The one thing the woman who believes that she has the right to lead the country without being elected by anyone thinks that Israel should do in response to Ahmadinejad’s call for our physical destruction is to object to Iran’s bid to join the UN Security Council. Livni’s only concrete response to Ahmadinejad’s promise to annihilate us was to issue a directive to Israel’s embassies abroad telling our diplomats to ask their host governments not to support Iran’s bid for Security Council membership.

Livni doesn’t actually think Iran is Israel’s greatest challenge. The Palestinians are. And as far as she is concerned, giving the Palestinians a state by handing over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, although she never says it outright), as quickly as possible is Israel’s most urgent task. We need a two-state-solution and we need it NOW, she says.

Neither Livni nor her colleagues in Kadima, Labor and Meretz, nor her supporters in the Israeli media ever bother to acknowledge the troublesome, inconvenient fact that the Palestinians don’t want a state. They want to destroy our state.

This basic fact was made clear – yet again – on Tuesday. Tuesday Livni took time out of her busy schedule of political meetings with Labor, Shas and Meretz leaders with whom she is attempting to build a government without being elected by anyone, to meet with Fatah’s chief negotiator Ahmad Qurei. Although Livni refused to tell us what she talked about, she promised that progress was made towards the urgent imperative of forming a Palestinian state.

But Qurei was not so enthusiastic. In fact, he was contemptuous of Livni and of the very notion of peaceful coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel. After the negotiating session Qurei told Reuters that if the talks towards an Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem collapse, the Palestinians will renew their terror war against Israel. In his words, "If the talks reached a dead end, what do we do? Capitulate? Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right."

Just to make sure he understood Qurei properly, the reporter asked whether that meant that the Palestinians would renew their suicide bombing campaign against Israelis. Qurei responded, "All forms of resistance."

We have been here of course, a million times before. This is the same threat that Yassir Arafat and his men have made – and implemented – repeatedly since signing the Oslo accord with Israel 15 years ago. They use terror and negotiations in tandem to squeeze Israel into giving away more and more of its land. And it works.

When Livni heard about Qurei’s remarks, she called him and reportedly told him that they were unacceptable. So he said he was taken out of context. No skin off his back.

He knew Livni wouldn’t do anything. At the same time that Livni said his remarks were unacceptable, she pledged to continue negotiating Israel’s surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with him for as long as she remains in power.

Today Livni and her colleagues in Kadima, Labor, Meretz and Shas are working fervently towards forming a new government that will continue holding irrelevant but dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians and pretending that Iran’s nuclear weapons are not going to be used against Israel. They argue that we need the "political stability" that they can provide us in this dangerous time.

The Israeli media gives these fantasies their full support. Indeed, anyone who notices that the world is sitting back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or points out that the Palestinians don’t want a state is immediately shot down as an alarmist and an extremist.

This national discourse – which has been the only one permitted in the country since the advent of the "peace process" with the PLO 15 years ago — is Israel’s Achilles heel. Until the general public is set clear on the reality of the world confronting the country, there is no chance that Israel will take the necessary steps to defend itself and ensure that it survives.

Understanding this basic fact, former IDF chief of general staff Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon has taken it upon himself to tell the Israeli public the truth about the world we live in. Ya’alon is a rare bird among Israel’s pantheon of current luminaries. He is an honest man who lives by his principles, and he doesn’t bend them, ever.

Last week Ya’alon published a book called The Longer Shorter Road in Hebrew. Ya’alon, whose tour of duty as chief of staff was unceremoniously cut short by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in June 2005 due to his trenchant opposition to Sharon’s planned withdrawal of IDF forces and Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, has written a book that sets out the facts of life clearly, credibly and passionately.

The book’s title is derived from a speech that Ya’alon’s commander Yoram Ya’ir gave to his officers during the first Lebanon War. Ya’ir explained that short-cuts are not necessarily better than long roads. In fact, it is often better to take the longest route. As Ya’ir put it, "There is a long road that is short and there are short roads that are long."

Ya’alon uses Ya’ir’s point to demonstrate that the Israeli Left’s insistence on peace "now" and a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict "now," has placed Israel on a strategic trajectory that has brought it, and will continue to bring it only bloodshed and danger. Israel’s enemies in the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria and Iran view Israel’s insistence on finding immediate solutions to the threats it faces as a sign that Israeli society is collapsing. As a consequence, every step that Israel has made towards appeasing its neighbors -from recognizing the PLO and bringing Arafat and his legions into Judea, Samaria and Gaza; to retreating from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005; to failing to properly prosecute the Second Lebanon War in 2006; to doing nothing to combat Hamas’s regime in Gaza since 2007; to embracing the false paradigm of peace at Annapolis last November – has strengthened their conviction that Israel can and will be destroyed.

Ya’alon also dwells on the moral collapse of Israel’s political and media elite and that collapse’s adverse impact on the senior command echelons of the IDF. The abandonment of Zionist values and public and private integrity by our politicians and media has cast and kept Israel on a path of self-delusion where the only thing that matters is immediate gratification. Politicians promise the public "hope" based on illusions of peace-around-the-corner to win their votes. The media support the politicians’ lies both because of the media’s post-Zionist ideological uniformity and due to their refusal to acknowledge that their populist demands for peace "now" have brought Israel only war and danger.

Ya’alon’s book is part memoir and part polemic. He reminds Israelis of what it is about us that makes us a great people worthy of our land and privileged to defend it. At the same time, he chastises our failed leaders who have tricked the public into following a strategic path that endangers us. His book’s greatest contribution is not in providing a set path forward, but in courageously and unrelentingly explaining the reality that surrounds us today and in showing the public how it is that we have arrived in our current predicament.

In exposing himself, his values and his beliefs to the public, and juxtaposing his own leadership experience and personal integrity with the corruption and weakness of our political and intellectual leaders, Ya’alon is telling the public in a very clear way that there is an alternative to defeatism and self-delusion, and that he – and we the public — represent that alternative, that "longer shorter road."

Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and their colleagues on the Left in the Knesset and the media insist that we not take that longer road to security and peace. In fact, they deny that it even exists. They attempt to convince us that elections are unnecessary by arguing that there is no difference between political parties today because their short cut to defeat is the only path available to us.

It must be fervently hoped that Ya’alon will soon enter the political fray. Like the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, Ya’alon is proof positive that Livni and her cronies are lying. There are great differences between those that would lead us and the paths they would take.

And the only road to safety is the long road that is paved on reality.