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This memo will largely be devoted to a lecture my wife and I attended last night. The speaker was Brigette Gabriel . It was held at one of the largest Baptist Churches in the city and was well attended.
It was a somewhat Kafkaesque setting in that, though open to the public, there were few Jews, the minister was black, offered a prayer, as one would expect, in the name of Jesus and, as I said, it was a magnificent Southern Baptist Church and the speaker was a former Lebanese Christian speaking about the terror threat radical Islam and Muslims pose to our nation.
First, a little background on the speaker. Gabriel was born in Lebanon, her parents were Lebanese Christians and when she was 10 the entire Christian community was attacked by radical Islamists. Her home was destroyed and for the next 8 years she and her family, along with neighbors, lived in a bomb shelter.
She and her family eventually escaped to Israel (their town was in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border).
Gabriel told the audience she was deprived of a large part of her youth and her experience has been emblazoned into her soul. The Christian World Community did not lift a finger to help her people and it was not until Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon, in his understandable but ill conceived occupation, that anyone responded to the plight of the Christian Lebanese. Again a fact that Gabriel say she will never forget.
She then moved to America and after 9/11 began her "ACTforAMERICA.ORG" organization which is now the largest grass roots one of its kind. Gabriel may be diminutive in size but she is a stem winder of a speaker and has a story to tell that is compelling and based on facts.
I have written. on occasion. about a similar meeting we attended in Orlando, some 10 or more years ago when we heard Prof. Ellen Cannon tell the audience about the coming Islamic threat to our nation. Gabriel's talk last night documented the fact that what Cannon.predicted has, not only begun. but also is well advanced
So what did Gabriel talk about.
a) She outlined the enormous sums of Saudi money that has helped to establish Islamic study programs on the campuses, not only of our Ivy league Universities, but has also filtered down to regional colleges as well.
These Islamic Study Programs serve as petri dishes for presenting a distorted and sympathetic version of Islam as well as serving as an opportunity to inoculate naive students in the merit of converting to Islam and , in many cases,subsequently going to the Middle East for terror training.
She showed a video of the father of one such student who returned to America and killed an Army Recruiter in Arkansas. The student had attended a Technical College near Nashville which, incidentally is a hot bed of Islamist influence, particularly on the campus of the very liberal Vanderbilt University. (Losing our Sons DVD)
b) Saudi money has also built a lot of madrases in our country where Islamist go to pray and where a lot of anti-American speeches are given and protected by our Constitution.
We all know the FBI and other government agencies have infiltrated these facilities and keep tabs on what is going on but the average citizen is unaware of how deeply embedded this radical Islamist undercurrent is in our nation.
Gabriel pointed out that many students who attend these Islamic Study Programs become news broadcasters, etc. and thus, have developed an animus towards America having been told/taught our nation has a history of abusing Arabs and Muslims etc.
Many of these students also eventually get involved in local politics and serve on school boards etc.
Though she did not discuss the Islamic influence among our prison population there is strong evidence that many serving time already have a chip on their shoulder towards society and are easy prey when approached to convert to Islam.
c) Gabriel told the audience that the success of the college programs led to Islamic courses being taught to 7 and 8 years olds in all of our nation's school systems and these text books and courses were being funded largely by tax payers. In other words, we are financing the destruction of our own society. She quoted Hitler who said: 'Give me your youth and in ten years I will change your society.'
Once again Gabriel read from one such text and challenged parents to go to their local schools and check and confirm what she was telling them.
The bottom line is that our youth, at various educational levels, are being subjected to a large and unhealthy dose of orchestrated lies and false claims when it comes to Islam and that these programs and texts are being sold on the basis that they simply involve the study of another great religion.
Prof. Cannon warned us ten years ago that this would happen. Gabriel has simply confirmed what Cannon predicted is now actually happening and yet, Americans are clueless or have succumbed to claims of being racist if they protest. PC'ism has won out again.
When it comes to "Act For America", Gabriel pointed to some state legislative victories the organization has achieved regarding courts where a mud slide of foreign laws have crept in as the basis for determining verdicts. Four states have now passed legislation stipulating only the American Constitution obtains and not Sharia or other foreign laws.
She pointed out to a cheering crowd that we must become energy independent and suggested President Obama had dragged his feet in allowing us to become so. Whether Obama is obeisant to Greens and/or is sympathetic to Muslims, it is evident he has made speeches abroad critical of our nation's history, has, in fact, stood in opposition to pipeline development and fracking and most recently authorized sophisticated weaponry sold to a nation (Egypt) that has become totally dominated by The Muslim Brotherhood.
Suffice it to say, Gabriel made accusations about the threat radical Islam poses to our nation and backed them up with factual material and events and it behooves every citizen who cherishes their freedoms to speak out, to contact their legislators and to band together because in unity their is strength.
I am not being an alarmist because I have been , more or less, plugged into this problem for many years. We have now gone from the theoretical to implementation and execution. Many of our children/students are being impregnated with misinformation designed to shape and influence their views. It is hoped that as adults, they will come to see our nation in a false and negative light and be more sympathetic to Muslim causes and thinking.
Throughout her talk she was quick to remind the audience that Muslims claim the tiny nation of Israel is to blame for all the world's ills and that 9/11 was not the first instance when radical Islamists sought to attack our nation. She reminded the audience of the first Tower bombings by the blind Sheikh, the Marine Barracks in Lebanon etc.
Last night was a chilling experience but no less than I was expecting because I read one of her earlier books ("They Must be Stopped") and knew here she was and would be coming from. She is clear eyed when it comes to the threat we face from within and where the money source is also coming from.
She reminded the audience her issues transcended politics and were not a right versus left one.
It is obvious, to me, we have a president whose misguided sympathies often lie with Muslims and who is naive enough to believe radicals among them pose no threat when in fact there is mounting evidence the threat is spreading externally and internally.
If you are interested in what Gabriel had to say I urge you to go to the Act for America site and read about the organization. You can also purchase her books and a tape about some of the episodes I have referred to above. (See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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This is very ironic. I seems many of the wanton killings are by registered Democrats and/or liberals. (See 2 below.)
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My friend, Yisreal Ne'eman, writes about Netanyahu's dilemma. (See 3 below)
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The government and Obama have a solution. Punish the productive, kill the spirit and create more and more dependency. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Morsi's Anti-semitism Reveals More About Us Than Him
By Ben Cohen
It’s a story that began with an eagle-eyed Jewish blogger who writes under the pseudonym “Challah Hu Akbar” and progressed all the way to the White House. In the process, it has reignited the debate as to whether Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, is really the pragmatic moderate many believe him to be.
On Jan. 3, Challah Hu Akbar tweeted an item from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in which Morsi, in a 2010 speech, uttered what is a standard Islamist anti-Semitic slander, namely that Zionists are descended from “apes and pigs.” A little more than a week later, noticing that Morsi’s statement had barely registered with the wider media, The Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a blog post with the headline, “Egyptian President Calls Jews ‘Sons of Apes and Pigs;’ World Yawns.” At Forbes magazine, Richard Behar made an identical point, adding that in the same set of remarks, Morsi had called for a boycott of the United States – whose taxpayers have provided Egypt with billions of dollars in aid – because of its support for Israel.
Eventually, the Morsi story found its way into The New York Times, which felt duty-bound to point out that “Mr. Morsi and other political and Brotherhood leaders typically restrict their inflammatory comments to the more ambiguous category of ‘Zionists.’ ”
Actually, it’s not ambiguous at all. Especially since the Second World War, the word “Zionist” has always been code for “Jew” in the capitals of the Muslim world, as well as in the capitals of the late, unlamented communist bloc of states. And in case there were any lingering doubt, a subsequent Morsi item posted by MEMRI, also from 2010, showed the Muslim Brotherhood leader helpfully urging his people “not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred toward those Zionists and Jews.”
Unusually, given the prevailing view that accusations of anti-Semitism are a smear cooked up by an unscrupulous Jewish – sorry, I mean Israel – Lobby, condemnation of Morsi did follow. The New York Times published an editorial urging President Obama to directly convey to Morsi that such offensive comments ran counter to the goal of peace. White House spokesman Jay Carney also issued a statement, declaring, “President Morsi should make clear that he respects people of all faiths, and that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable or productive in a democratic Egypt.”
Of course, no apology from the Egyptians was forthcoming. Instead, Yasser Ali, Morsi’s spokesman, claimed his boss’s comments had been taken “out of context,” and were really directed at Israeli “aggression” in Gaza. In fact, Ali’s statement is far less stupid than initially appears; anti-Semites in the Arab world know there is a strong current of opinion in the West that regards their fulminations against Jews as justified, if unfortunately-worded, anger towards Israel. Ali was playing to that particular gallery.
And that leads to a broader, far more important observation. In its editorial, the Times asked, “Does Mr. Morsi really believe what he said in 2010? Has becoming president made him think differently about the need to respect and work with all people?” Disgracefully, the Times also argued, “Israelis are not immune to responding in kind either” (a sentence that appeared to have been overlooked by establishment Jewish groups like the American Jewish Committee, which rushed to welcome the editorial.)
As for the White House’s Carney, his statement categorized Morsi’s remarks as “religious hatred,” a term that barely scratches the surface of what is really at issue here.
For the Morsi affair tells us much more about how anti-Semitism is understood in the West than it does about the nature of Islamist anti-Semitism. If the Times is to be believed, the episode is merely a depressing example of how both sides dehumanize each other with nasty rhetoric. Similarly, the White House wants us to think Morsi’s offense was religious intolerance.
Anti-Semitism isn’t just another form of bigotry. It is a method of explaining why the world is as it is; incendiary rhetoric against Jews, therefore, isn’t just an afterthought, but the natural consequence of the genuinely held belief that our planet is in the grips of a Jewish conspiracy. One has to assume the Times would not have questioned whether the anti-Semitic outlooks of Hitler and Stalin were genuinely held, so why do so with Morsi?
There are two reasons. First, the misguided view that anti-Semitism is essentially a European phenomenon and thus an alien import into the Muslim world that will disappear once the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. That reflects, second, an enormous ignorance about the origins of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world and its centrality to the Muslim Brotherhood’s worldview.
In his book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman quotes Sayid Qutb, the leading theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formed in 1928, as writing that “most evil theories which try to destroy all values and all that is sacred to mankind are advocated by Jews.” Berman painstakingly documents Qutb’s frankly Hitlerian view of the Jewish role in world history, including his repeated assertions that Jews had conspired against Muslims from the dawn of Islam.
These were the ideological foundations of the Muslim Brotherhood then, and they remain firmly in place now. Any compromise with the Jews, such as a peace treaty with Israel, would therefore be another twist in the same conspiracy. According to Qutb and his followers, the only honorable path is to vanquish the Jews entirely.
These are the same beliefs of Mohamed Morsi. They may be insidious, but they are authentically held. Asking him to recant them, as the White House did, is like asking Hitler to apologize for Mein Kampf.
A far more productive approach would be to integrate the persistence of Islamist anti-Semitism into policy analysis of our relationship with Egypt. Critically, we need to ask whether someone who really believes there is a hidden Jewish conspiracy at work – and that, consequently, political relationships are camouflage for that – can be a partner in any sense of that term.
Going by their reactions to Morsi’s remarks, neither this White House nor its supporters in the commentariat are up to that task.
Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org. His articles on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, Jewish Ideas Daily and many other publications.
1a)A Lib Dem MP gives voice to Britain's national sickness
ByMelanie Phillips
People have been expressing severe shock and revulsion at the ugly remarks by Lib Dem MP David Ward about Israel and the Holocaust.
As The Commentator reported, to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day Ward said the following:
‘Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.’
He dug himself further into the hole with this interview with Sky News. As far as he is concerned, it appears he believes he has said nothing wrong.
The Liberal Democrat party has denounced his statements as ‘unacceptable’ and is reportedly considering stripping him of the Lib Dem whip. Such an action would nevertheless be merely cosmetic. For these ‘unacceptable’ attitudes are widespread in the Liberal Democrat party -- as illustrated by both the report on the furore and readers’ comments here on Liberal Democrat Voice.
Moreover, much of the shock and outrage has missed the point. Ward’s offence, it would appear, was to have repeatedly blamed ‘the Jews’ for failing to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and inflicting atrocities upon the Palestinians. Apparently – as even the Sky interviewer seemed at one point to imply-- if he had blamed ‘the Israelis’ there wouldn’t have been a problem.
This is not just to fail to grasp the real obscenity of Ward’s comments, but to reveal that many of those expressing revulsion at his comments actually suffer from the same prejudice.
For the really terrible thing here is not the grotesque misuse of the Holocaust, nor the vicious suggestion that ‘the Jews’ are guilty of behaviour that is somehow analogous to the Nazi genocide inflicted upon them, nor even the sickening insult that they have to ‘learn the lessons’ of their own suffering.
No, the true venom of these remarks is the way they reverse the position of today’sJewish victims – the Israeli survivors of the Holocaust and their children and grandchildren -- and their current would-be exterminators – the descendants of Hitler’s Nazi collaborators in Palestine during the Holocaust.
For the fact is that Israel is not trying to exterminate the Palestinians – indeed how could this possibly be the case, since the Palestinian population has more than quadrupled since the rebirth of Israel in 1948. Nor are the Israelis oppressing the Palestinians, who have benefited from some of the highest rises in GDP and lowest child mortality ratios in the Middle East.
Nor are the Israelis behaving inhumanely; it is the Palestinians who are committing crimes against humanity by targeting Israeli innocents for mass murder without remission, both from Gaza and from the West Bank. It is the Palestinians, in the West Bank as well as Gaza, who are brainwashed from the cradle to hate Jews and to believe that murdering Israelis is their highest glory. Which they have been doing in Israel and before that in Palestine for more than a century – despite the fact that, as the international community laid down in binding treaty in 1920, the Jews alone had the inalienable and historic right to settle throughout Palestine, including not just present-day Israel but also the West Bank and Gaza.
Moreover, while the Jews accepted proposals for a Palestinian state first made in the 1930s and then in 1947, and while the Israelis offered them more than 95 per cent of the possible land for a state in 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians responded merely by murdering more Jews.
Despite all this, Israel behaves towards its genocidal Palestinian attackers with a humanity that is seen in no other conflict on the planet. Despite the rocket attacks and constant smuggling of ever more fearsome weapons to be aimed at its civilians, it allows humanitarian supplies into Gaza; despite the constant plotting in the West Bank to kill more Israelis, it allows Palestinians to work in Israel, and treats Palestinians from both the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israelis in Israeli hospitals. Yes of course there is Palestinian hardship caused by the checkpoints and security barrier. But the only reason these exist is to prevent Palestinians killing yet more Israelis. If the Palestinians and their Arab and Iranian backers stopped trying to wipe Israel off the map, there would be peace tomorrow.
The really appalling thing about Ward’s remarks is his hijacking of the Holocaust to reverse the position of Arab aggressors and their Jewish victims. But he also goes further than accusing Israel of such crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. He accuses it of
‘Inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel.’
He thus appears to be accusing Israel of committing atrocities against its own Arab citizens. But this is just plain hallucinatory. There is nothing that could possibly be considered to be such. Arab Israelis have full civil rights in Israel; they serve as MPs, judges, even serve in the army; every day Arab Israelis peacefully go about their everyday lives.
The really chilling thing is this. Leave aside Ward’s particular offensiveness and idiocies. The insane belief that Israel is trying to wipe out the Palestinians or at the very least that it behaves savagely towards them, subjects them to ‘apartheid’ and ensures through its behaviour that there is no peace in the Middle East is now common currency in British progressive circles. While most would not use the Holocaust analogy and are careful to damn Israelis rather than ‘the Jews’, the entirely false belief that the Israelis have supplanted the indigenous people of Palestine and towards whom they are now behaving in an unconscionable way is now the default position amongst liberals and the left, and has also made serious inroads amongst the more isolationist and ignorant British conservatives.
The belief that, in Israel, the victims of one of the greatest crimes against humanity are themselves now guilty of crimes against humanity is the collective libel that has become the default position amongst the British intelligentsia. And as Ward suggested in his remarks on Sky, only those Jews who themselves endorse this libel by denouncing Israel are to be considered free of this taint. British Jews who support Israel and try to counter these Big Lies are quite simply treated as pariahs by baying mobs whose obsession with Israel has brought about nothing less than a mass derangement in British public debate.
The full, monstrous obscenity of both Ward’s remarks and the widespread British attitude to which he has given voice is no less than this: accusing the people who were the victims of genocide entirely falsely of committing crimes against humanity -- simply because they are trying to defend themselves from being wiped out again by those for whom the Holocaust is unfinished business. Self-defence against extermination is now considered a crime against humanity.
David Ward may have been particularly clumsy – but he has merely given voice to Britain’s national sickness and shame
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM — A Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization has partnered with the U.S. Department of Education and the State Department to facilitate an online program aiming to connect all U.S. schools with classrooms abroad by 2016.
Vartan Gregorian, a board member of the organization in question, the Qatar Foundation International, was appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission.
WND previously exposed how Gregorian served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in start up capital to an education-reform project founded by Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.
Documentation shows Gregorian was central in Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.
Obama also later touted his job at the project as qualifying him to run for public office, as WND previously reported.
Connecting schools to fulfil Obama pledge to Arab world
The Qatar Foundation International, or QFI, in 2011 partnered with the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate matchmaking between classrooms in the U.S. and international schools through something called the “Connect All Schools” project.
QFI, funded by the Qatari government, explains on its website the online initiative was founded in response to Obama’s call to “create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo,” during his June 2009 speech to the Arab world from Cairo, Egypt.
QFI relates how more than 100 U.S. schools and organizations have already connected on the interactive website, www.connectallschools.org.
The stated goal of the online intiative is to “connect every school in the US with the world by 2016.”
This is not the QFI’s first foray into the U.S. education system.
WND reported last May how the Qatar-based foundation awarded “Curriculum Grants” to seven U.S. schools and language organizations to “develop comprehensive and innovative curricula and teaching materials to be used in any Arabic language classroom.”
QFI, based in Washington, D.C., is the U.S. branch of the Qatar Foundation, founded in 1995 by Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani.
Thani is still the group’s vice-chairman, while his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairs the organization’s board.
Thani also launched Al Jazeera in 1996 and served as the television network’s chairman.
The Qatar foundation is close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last January, it launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics under the guidance of Tariq Ramadan, who serves as the center’s director.
Ramadan is the grandson of the notorious founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Ramadan was banned from the U.S. until 2010 when the Obama administration issued him a visa to give a lecture at a New York school.
QFI, meanwhile, named several institutions after Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many regard Qaradawi as the de facto spiritual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
The foundation instituted the Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi Scholarships and in 2009 established a research center named the Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal.
Qaradawi has personally attended scores of foundation events, including conferences at which he served as a keynote speaker.
Qaradawi achieved star status because of his regular sermons and interviews on Al Jazeera.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism documents how Qardawi openly permitted the killing of American troops in Iraq and praised the “heroic deeds” of “Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades and others.”
Obama, Ayers connection
Vartan Gregorian is a board member of QFI.
Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corp. charitable foundation, was appointed by Obama in 2009 as a White House fellow. Born in Tabriz, Iran, Gregorian served for eight years as president of the New York Public Library and was also president of Brown University.
In his role as Brown president, Gregorian served on the selection committee of the Annenberg Foundation, which funded Ayers’ Chicago Annenberg Challenge with a $49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge grant over five years. Ayers was one of five founding members of the Challenge who wrote to the Annenberg Foundation for the initial funding.
Steve Diamond, a political-science and law professor and a blogger who has posted on Obama, previously posted a letter from Nov. 18, 1994, in which Gregorian, serving as the point man on Annenberg’s selection committee, asked Ayers to “compose the governing board” of the Challenge’s collaborative project with “people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago.”
Ayers and other founding Challenge members then recruited Obama to serve as the project chairman.
WND was first to expose that Obama and Ayers used the project grant money to fund organizations run by radicals tied to Ayers, including Mike Klonsky, a former top communist activist who was a senior leader in the Students for a Democratic Society group, a major leftist student organization in the 1960s, from which the Weathermen terror group later splintered.
National Review Online writer Stanley Kurtz examined the project archives housed at the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago, finding Obama and Ayers worked closely at the project.
The documents obtained by Kurtz showed Ayers served as an ex-officio member of the board that Obama chaired through the project’s first year. Ayers also served on the board’s governance committee with Obama and worked with him to craft project bylaws, according to the documents.
Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Obama. Ayers also spoke for the Chicago School Reform Collaborative before Obama’s board, while Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the collaborative, the project documents reviewed by Kurtz show.
WND reported Obama and Ayers also served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a liberal Chicago nonprofit that granted money to far-left causes.
One of the groups funded by the Woods Fund was the Midwest Academy, an activist organization modeled after Marxist community organizer Saul Alinsky and described as teaching tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation.
WND reported Jackie Kendall, executive director of the Midwest Academy, was on the team that developed and delivered the first Camp Obama training for volunteers aiding Obama’s campaign through the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.
Camp Obama was a two- to four-day intensive course run in conjunction with Obama’s campaign aimed at training volunteers to become activists to help Obama win the presidential election.
Obama scholar linked to ‘Ground Zero’ imam
Meanwhile, WND reported Gregorian is closely tied to the Muslim leaders behind the controversial Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gregorian also serves on the board of the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum. The museum is reportedly working with the American Society for Muslim Advancement, whose leaders are behind the mosque, to ensure the future museum will represent the voices of American Muslims.
“[The Sept. 11 museum will represent the] voices of American Muslims in particular, and it will honor members of other communities who came together in support and collaboration with the Muslim community on September 11 and its aftermath,” stated Daisy Khan, executive director of the society.
The Sept. 11 museum’s oral historian, Jenny Pachucki, is collaborating with the society to ensure the perspective of American Muslims is woven into the overall experience of the museum, according to the museum’s blog.
Khan’s husband, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the founder of the society as well as chairman of Cordoba Initiative, which is behind the proposed mosque to be built about two blocks from the area referred to as Ground Zero.
With Gregorian at its helm, Carnegie Corp. is at the top of the list of society supporters on the Islamic group’s website.
Carnegie is also listed as a funder of both of the society’s partner organizations, Search for Common Ground and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Gregorian was a participant in the U.N. body’s first forum, as was Rauf.
Rauf is vice chairman on the board of the Interfaith Center of New York, which honored Gregorian at an awards dinner in 2008.
World domination
Gregorian is the author of “Islam: A Mosaic, Not A Monolith.” According to a book review by the Middle East Forum, his book “establishes the Islamist goal of world domination.”
A chapter of the book, “Islamism: Liberation Politics,” quotes Ayatollah Khomeini: “Islam does not conquer. Islam wants all countries to become Muslim, of themselves.” Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is quoted stating it “is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
Gregorian himself recommends for Muslims a system he calls “theo-democracy,” which he defines as “a divine democratic government” that, according to the book review, “would have a limited popular sovereignty under the suzerainty of Allah.”
With additional research by Danette Clark and Brenda J. Elliott
1c)Shifting alliances in the Middle East
Pinhas Inbari - WJC ANALYSIS, January 24th, 2013
A week ago, Hamas’ weekly newspaper ‘a-Risala’ published an analysis of the incoming US administration which focused on the implications of the appointment of Chuck Hagel as the new secretary of defense. While the article realistically suggested that Hagel would not cut off America’s strategic relations with Israel, it raised the hope that this eventuality would happen one day.
Hamas believes Hagel would not permit Israel to launch another attack on Gaza, similar to Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defense, and would also stop Israel short of attacking Iran. In the article’s concluding sentence, the writer expresses his hope that the Israeli-American alliance will disintegrate as a result of Hamas’ policy.
The source of Hamas’ expectations from the new administration is its conviction that President Obama will not abandon his belief in Political Islam, i.e. allying with the Muslim Brotherhood against the Salafists and al-Qaeda. Furthermore, Hagel’s past declarations tell Hamas that he will bring a more favorable approach to the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran. As Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood movement and an ally of Iran, these two characteristics of the incoming defense secretary give its leaders a hopeful outlook on the future of US policy in the Middle East.
That is also the reason why anti-Muslim Brotherhood regimes in the region may negatively evaluate the incoming administration. The outgoing administration has already ruffled feathers in the region by privileging the Muslim Brotherhood over Salafist and al-Qaeda actors. In Syria, Secretary Clinton, as a reaction to the assassination of the American ambassador in Libya, quickly began to lend support to rebuild the Syrian opposition leadership in the form of a new ‘coalition’, which installed a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Muadh al-Khatib, at its head, and, at the same time, distanced all Salafists/al-Qaeda elements from the leadership echelon.
However, seeing that al-Qaeda’s Nusra forces in Syria have become a de facto military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Clinton stated that the United States should consider re-shifting its focus away from the Middle East and toward the Far East. A few days ago, the administration declared it would support Japan in its dispute with China.
While Far East nations are receiving some support from the United States, the Gulf States are in an actual state of panic. Two weeks ago, the United Arab Emirates uncovered two Muslim Brotherhood terror cells that were planning a takeover of the oil-rich State. The emirates blamed the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for orchestrating the plot. The Persian Gulf states suspect that Egypt, instead of focusing on reforming its economy, will try and overtake the Gulf’s finances in order to climb out of the financial abyss.
With the United States sticking to the pro-Brotherhood Political Islam policy, the UAE is left to wonder how to defend itself against this newly formed alliance. Zahi Khalfan, Dubai security chief, has already suggested that the Gulf would create an alternative alliance with Russia and Chin
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2)Liberals With Guns!"
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2)Liberals With Guns!"
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3)
Netanyahu's Election Dilemmas 2013
By Yisrael Ne'eman
In Israel's January 22, 2013 elections PM Benyamin Netanyahu's Likud Betainu Party were the victors, but lost much ground to the middle and left in the Israeli political spectrum. Netanyahu will continue as prime minister but it is doubtful he will push forward with the same right wing – religious coalition. Technically he can, but such a move would be interpreted as defying the "people's will" for change. Israel's 120 member Knesset (parliament) is elected proportionally. Citizens vote for a political party running a list of candidates and the percentage of votes acquired entitles each party to a certain number of Knesset representatives. For instance with 10% of the vote Party A' would get 12 MKs (members of Knesset), while 15% would constitute 18 MKs for party B'. Last time (2009) the Likud had 27 MKs or 22.5% of the vote. This time in alliance with the Yisrael Betainu faction they took 31 seats or almost 26% of the vote.
So how are the Likud and secular right weakened, and what are Netanyahu's options? In 2009 the former foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman's Yisrael Betainu took 15 seats or 42 MKs when counted together with the Likud. In 2013 they ran on a unified list but polling 11 seats less as compared to four years ago. The ultra orthodox (haredi) Shas and United Torah Judaism parties had 17 seats last time and 18 at present (Shas 11, UTJ 7). In 2009 the national religious representatives totaled 7 (Jewish Home 3 and National Union 4). Today under the youthful rising star Naftali Bennet the Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) took 12 after unifying most of the national religious camp. The 2009 right/religious bloc numbered 66 while today they total 61 still enough for a coalition out of 120 MKs but a shaky one at that especially since there are special interests among the smaller factions and any singular MK can hold the government hostage to his demands since the coalition (and government) majority will be dependent on every individual.
Last time the left polled 16 seats total – quite a dismal showing. Labor under Ehud Barak took 13 and the staunch left wing Meretz faction managed 3. The situation only got worse when the Labor party split and Barak carried 5 of the 13 into the now defunct Independence group which remained in the government when the other 8 in Labor pulled out. Today under party chairwoman Shelly Yachimovitch Labor totals 15 and Zahava Galon's Meretz doubled to 6. A still not impressive 21 but greatly improved over last time. Labor and Meretz have sworn themselves to the opposition citing irreconcilable differences with the Likud. They also realize that for the left to ever regain power they must continue rebuilding in the opposition.
The big story concerns the Israeli center. Kadima, originally formed under PM Ariel Sharon in 2005 and led by Tzippi Livni in 2009 garnered 28 mandates but shattered after non-stop infighting prior to the recent elections. Former army chief of staff Shaul Mofaz sank the party to 2 seats in one of Israel's greatest election disasters ever. The centrist vote did not disappear but went mostly to two other factions. Livni lost control of Kadima but formed her own following in Hatnuah and polled 6 seats while the upstart Yair Lapid took 19 mandates in his newly formed Yesh Atid (There is a Future) faction. Having tapped into secular middle class discontent Lapid is the biggest story of these elections especially since the 2011 social protest movement was accused of being cover for the left wing opposition to attack the government. Many would claim that adding up the mandates of the three center parties results in 27 MKs vs. Kadima's 28 from the 2009 elections does not really show a shift in perspective. The difference is that Livni and Mofaz emphasized foreign policy and security accordingly while Lapid pitched on domestic issues. A dashingly handsome former journalist and news broadcaster with a black belt in karate Lapid is respected for his astute analysis of the Israeli political scene. He is also the son of the ardently secular late Tommy Lapid who built the Shinui faction into 15 seats in 2003, joined Ariel Sharon's second government and was instrumental in revamping Israel's economy in wake of the Low Intensity Conflict with the Palestinians (Second Intifada) from 2000-04.
Tommy Lapid was the bane of the haredi factions, Shas and UTJ. Not only did they remain in the opposition from 2003-06 but much of their funding was cut, thanks not only to the elder Lapid's Shinui but let's not forget that Netanyahu was finance minister. Today's PM prefers to smooth things over with these two ultra orthodox coalition partners while Yair Lapid owes them nothing and ran on a platform of "equality for all with everyone pulling their weight" meaning the haredi populations will be expected to work, pay taxes and serve in the army. As opposed to his father Tommy he is willing to take a more gradual approach but not one that advocates "some time in the future".
To round out the picture there are the Arab factions, very much representing Arab world politics and the specific predicament of Israeli Arabs or as many refer to themselves "Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship". The veteran Communist party polled 4 seats, the United Arab/Arab National list (RAM/TAL) took another 4 and Balad 3. The veteran secular Communists believe in a two-state solution and advocate socialism. RAM/TAL unifies Islamists with secular Arab nationalists, two very different factions in today's Arab world but in Israel they have more in common than not when opposing Israel as a Jewish State. Former Arafat advisor Ahmed Tibi is their most well known MK. Balad (Land) represents secular Ba'ath pan-Arab thinking and at times takes an even harsher stance against the State of Israel. Their most infamous daughter is Hanin Zuabi who accompanied theMavi Marmara Islamists who attempted to break the Gaza blockade in May 2010. The Arab factions totaled 11 in 2009 and again in 2013.
So the victorious Netanyahu faces a dilemma. Should he continue with the right/religious coalition or break towards the center? The former would prove much easier but leave him in the clutches of the haredi parties with their continual demands for army draft deferments by the tens of thousands, continued mass government support for yeshiva education (no secular or Zionist narrative), major housing subsidies and as far as UTJ is concerned – a still questionable alliance with a party that does not fully recognize the State of Israel. The Jewish Home or in essence national religious party demands partial annexation of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), opposes a Palestinian State and advocates expanding settlements and construction new ones. Such stances are a foreign policy disaster when confronting Europe and the Obama administration in Washington.
Should Netanyahu take in Yesh Atid and Lapid? He is said to be leaning in that direction but such a move only brings him to 50 MKs. Even Livni's Hatnuah and Mofaz's Kadima do not put him over the top at 61. It is said he can take in the Jewish Home party (12) and he has 62 or Shas (11) and arrive at 61. In both cases he could add Kadima (2) but that does not get him far enough. Livni's party is far too small to help and she demands a diplomatic initiative with PA President Mahmoud Abbas to arrive at the long awaited two-state solution. She is already signed on much of the solution secretly negotiated up until 2009, making an alliance here quite difficult. But the problem is now inside the Likud. The 2013 list is far more hawkish and settlement oriented than the outgoing Likud MKs. Livni is a direct challenge to Netanyahu and the party she left when Kadima was established.
On the domestic policy front everyone knows unemployment is rising well above the 7% mark (not including another close to 2% of haredi men who study as a full time profession and are supported by the state) and the state deficit is some 40 billion shekels, NIS 14 billion needing to be cut immediately in 2013. Israel was riding a wave of 4 – 5% annual growth in 2011 which has slowed dramatically. 40% of Israel's exports are high tech now being badly battered by the euro zone and American fiscal crises. The world recession is washing up on Israel's shores. Lapid will demand monies be cut from the haredim but altogether we could arrive at a billion shekel or so if the ultra orthodox are fully squeezed. Other funds come from raising taxes (Value Added and income tax), something he is loathe to support as Israel's pressured middle class will once again bear the burden and he could be signing off on his own demise. The 2012 state budget was 365.9 billion shekels ($97.5 billion) of which the defense establishment took NIS 50.6 billion. This is the place to cut but everyone is afraid of Iran, another Palestinian uprising/border clash with Gaza or a spillover of the increasingly anarchical Islamic Awakening (Arab Spring) across Israel's borders – most probably from Syria/Hezbollah either with Tehran's blessings or without. And let us not forget that if the Jihadis win in Syria, Israel will be confronted by a new Hamas on the Golan front but quite possibly with chemical weapons.
The betting is that Netanyahu and Lapid will form the next government but there is less agreement as to who else will join. Netanyahu needs either Shas or Jewish Home (national religious) but in either case major disagreements arise either over the haredi agenda or settlements. It is said he prefers Shas as they will be more pliable. But Yesh Atid and Lapid cannot compromise on subsidies for the haredim and survive with their constituency.
It will be extremely difficult to construct a coalition but in the end it will be done. Compromises will involve major disappointments but with the 2013 state budget to pass, economic downturn on its way and continuing external threats, this next year in Israel will be anything but boring.
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4)Subject: Fw: When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America's Welfare State
Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article "In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year." In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."
We realize that this is a painful topic in a country in which the issue of welfare benefits, and cutting (or not) the spending side of the fiscal cliff, have become the two most sensitive social topics. Alas, none of that changes the matrix of incentives for most Americans who find themselves in a comparable situation: either being on the left side of minimum US wage, and relying on benefits, or move to the right side at far greater personal investment of work, and energy, and... have the same disposable income at the end of the day.
Naturally, the topic of wealth redistribution is paramount one now that America is entering the terminal phase of its out of control spending, and whose response to hike taxes in a globalized, easily fungible world, will merely force more of the uber-wealthy to find offshore tax jurisdictions, avoid US taxation altogether, and thus result to even lower budget revenues for the US. It explains why the cluelessly incompetent but supposedly impartial Congressional Budget Office just released a key paper titled "Share of Returns Filed by Low- and Moderate-Income Workers, by Marginal Tax Rate, Under 2012 Law" which carries a chart of disposable income by net income comparable to the one above.
But perhaps the scariest chart in the entire presentation is the following summarizing the unsustainable welfare burden on current taxpayers:
The punchline: 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly.
And since nothing has changed in the past two years, and in fact the situation has gotten progressively worse, here is our conclusion on this topic from two years ago:
We have been writing for over a year, how the very top of America's social order steals from the middle class each and every day. Now we finally know that the very bottom of the entitlement food chain also makes out like a bandit compared to that idiot American who actually works and pays their taxes. One can only also hope that in addition to seeing their disposable income be eaten away by a kleptocratic entitlement state, that the disappearing middle class is also selling off its weaponry. Because if it isn't, and if it finally decides it has had enough, the outcome will not be surprising at all: it will be the same old that has occurred in virtually every revolution in the history of the world to date.
But for now, just stick head in sand, and pretend all is good. Self-deception is now the only thing left for the entire insolvent entitlement-addicted world.
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