The Iran Deal smells to high heaven as Obama and Kerry go into their first gear cover up and denial!
How many lies does it take before people wake up to reality?
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Mort Zuckerman chimes in regarding The Iran Deal (See 1 below.)
Pass it to find out what is in it again. (See 1a and 1b below.)
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My friend and courageous Arab Israeli reporter, Khaled Abu Toameh, writes: 'many Palestinians embrace ISIS and the Islam State. '
As Golda once observed, Palestinians have a tendency to make poor choices but the world finances them anyway so they pay no price other than the one that accompanies self-destruction. (See 2 below.)
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ISIS foresees Armageddon. The world remains blind. (See 3 below.)
Meanwhile, I am happy to be standing in the "crazies" camp and not with Obama and Reid. (See 3a and 3b below.)
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From time to time random non-sequiturs pop into my head. Perhaps they are triggered by a conversation or something I cannot place my finger on but this one relates to a conversation I had with a friend today.
We were talking about Hillarious and the Clinton Foundation and I observed that Hillarious and "Ole Bill" were the white equivalent of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but differed in one regard. The Clinton's shake down nations and Al and Jesse limit their shakedown's mostly to corporate America.
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this from a dear friend and fellow memo reader: "An interesting letter from a past edition of the Australian Shooter Magazine, which was quoted:
==="If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.The firearm death rate in Washington, DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same period.That means you are about 25 per cent more likely to be shot and killed in the US capital, (which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S.,) than you are in Iraq .Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington."
Dick
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1)
Over the Rainbow – Here are 10 ways Obama's Iran nuclear daydream fails.
By Mortimer Zuckerman
“I’m always chasing rainbows, watching clouds drifting by. My schemes are just like all my dreams, ending in the sky.”
The vaudeville song by Caroll and McCarthy, popularized over the years by stars from Judy Garland to Barbra Streisand, is all too appropriate for this stage of the gravest threat to all our dreams: the prospect of mushroom clouds over the Middle East. The rainbow President Barack Obama has been chasing in his negotiations with Iran can more and more be seen for the dangerous illusion it is. He has forsaken decades of pledges from presidents of both parties speaking on behalf of the civilized world. He has misled the American people in affirming over and over that never would revolutionary Iran be able to acquire nuclear weaponry, a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by Iran and a guarantee of a nuclear arms race. In fact, one has already started. There are credible reports that Pakistan is ready to ship an atomic package to Saudi Arabia, the Sunni nation that sees Shiite Iran engaging, without restraint, in violence and subversion throughout the region.
Iran is so hell-bent on domination of the Middle East and the destruction of Israel, it is working across religious lines, according to intelligence reported in the Wall Street journal by Con Coughlin, the defense editor of Britain’s The Telegraph. Though Hamas is a Sunni Islamist terror group, Shiite Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have in the last few months sent Hamas al-Qassam brigades into Gaza on top of millions of dollars to help rebuild the network of tunnels the Israeli Defence Forces found and destroyed last summer. Imagine the amount of blackmail and bullying a nuclear Iran would do.
How far Obama is prepared to chase after rainbows is sadly illustrated by the candor of his Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, who has been a party to the multistate negotiations with Iran. Look back first to Oct. 5, 2013 at the start of Obama’s second term. He answered questions about the U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons in these words:
“Our assessment continues to be a year or more away, and in fact, actually our estimate is probably more conservative than the estimates of Israeli intelligence services.”
But this is not what Moniz said, according to Eli Lake in a Bloomberg News meeting in Washington this last Monday, April 20. The administration, he said, had estimated “for several years” that Iran was at most three months from enriching enough fissile material for a bomb. He added: “They are now, right now spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly 19,000 plus all the … R&D work. If you put that together, it’s very, very little time to go forward. That’s two to three months.”
This stunning casual remark was based on information apparently declassified on April 1. What is Obama up to? Why did his administration say reassuringly what it did in October 2013 when he knew it was misleading? Has he now allowed the declassification so as to create a false sense of urgency that his rainbow will vanish unless we reach out for it now?
Just compare where we are today with the conditions Obama laid down in 2013. Referring to Iran’s smiling new President Hassan Rouhani, the president recently said: “If in fact he [Rouhani] is able to present a credible plan that says Iran is pursuing peaceful nuclear energy but we’re not pursuing nuclear weapons, and we are willing to be part of an internationally verified structure so that all other countries in the world know they are not pursuing nuclear weapons, then, in fact, they can improve relations, improve their economy. And we should test that,” the president said.
Well, we have sucked the lemons. The taste is sourer than we feared:
1. Enrichment. Before the talks began, the Obama administration and the U.N. Security Council insisted for years that Iran stop all uranium enrichment. Now it allows Iran to continue enriching uranium.
2. Stockpile. In February 2015, Iran had 10,000 kilograms of enriched uranium due to be reduced to 300 kilograms through export to Russia, which would return it as rods for use in peaceful energy. It was an achievement for which Obama had legitimate pride. It reduced the risk the fuel could be diverted to a weapons program. But the risk remains. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nabas Araqchi has told the Iranian media there is no question of sending the uranium abroad. It is another demonstration of how dealing with Iran is even dicier than with Russia. Ronald Reagan’s motto was “trust but verify.” With Iran, Obama’s is just: don’t trust. Yet he has agreed the fuel may stay inside the country – and there is no mechanism for reducing the stockpile.
3. Centrifuges. We wanted to cut back the number of installed centrifuges by about two-thirds. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from the beginning of the negotiations to almost 20,000 today. The U.S. initially called for limiting the number of Iranian enriching centrifuges from 500 to 1,500. The agreement now allows Iran a stunning 6,104 centrifuges. According to Iran’s foreign minister, they are able to use their advanced IR-8 centrifuges as soon as the nuclear deal with the world powers goes into effect, contrary to what the U.S. asserted. This would dramatically accelerate Iran’s potential progress, for the IR-8 centrifuges enrich uranium 20 times faster than the current IR-1 centrifuges.
4. Infrastructure. The closure of nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan, Natanz and Arak has been a key goal of the U.S. and its allies for the past decade or so. They at least wanted to limit the productivity of enriched uranium at the Natanz facility.
The 40 megawatt heavy-water nuclear plant at Arak produces plutonium that would be used to make a couple of bombs a year. Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, has correctly said that the Iranians do not need a heavy-water reactor at Arak in order to have a peaceful nuclear program. And yet it is to remain, albeit with reduced plutonium, we are assured. It should be shut down and its 100 tons of heavy water exported.
In December 2013, Obama similarly said that Iran had no need for the giant nuclear enrichment facility at Fordow. It is buried in a mountain fortress designed to withstand aerial attack. Now Iran is allowed to keep roughly 1,000 centrifuges there, we are told, to convert Fordow into a center for “peaceful purposes” and forego enriching uranium there for at least 15 years. But there is much unknown about the nature of the “research” and what might be achieved with new types of centrifuges and how soon they produce the material for a bomb after the expiration of the 10 years. The breakout time to a bomb could change significantly in the final years and may well have shrunk to zero as the Israelis assert.
5. Missiles. Iran has been stonewalling about answering outstanding International Atomic Energy Agency concerns about the possible military dimension of its nuclear program. The U.S. negotiators dropped demands that Iran restrict development of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver the warheads.
6. Duration. Initially the U.S. pushed for a framework transaction that would last over 20 years. Now the deal’s key terms sunset in 10 to 15 years. Former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz contend that the expiration of the framework agreement “will enable Iran to become a significant nuclear, industrial and military power.” That’s in a country with 80 million people and imperial appetite. “Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there – on complex new terms,” the secretaries wrote.
7. Enforcement. President Obama argues: “if Iran cheats, the world will know it” and “if we see something suspicious, we will inspect it.” But, as Michael Makovsky notes in the Weekly Standard, these inspections will not be intrusive enough to detect Iranian cheating or to thwart any breakout attempts in time. Quite the opposite. Iran has a long record of cheating on its international nuclear agreements. It has violated international agreements at least three times in the last year alone. Last November, the IAEA caught Iran operating a new advanced IR-5 centrifuge. Secretary Moniz has said IAEA inspectors must have “anywhere, anytime” access. Ayatollah Ali Khameini and his military say “no way.”
8. Sanctions. The proposed deal gives Iran precisely what it wanted – relief from economic sanctions in exchange for limited restraints on Iranian behavior. This makes the whole project vulnerable to evasion by Iran. They are past masters at that.
Obama talks about being able to “snap back” sanctions. That is just another color in the rainbow. You can get an idea of how easy it will be to restore the pressure by observing the attitude since our sellout on the lake in Lausanne of two of the big powers in the so-called 5+1 talks. China’s press refers to peaceful Iran as if it were Switzerland and Iran says it looks to China to help oil-rich Iran with nuclear power. Russia now says it is ready to sell Iran S-300 air defense missiles that will make much more risky, if not infeasible, any U.S., Israeli or Saudi attempt at aerial demolition of a nuclear threat. If the West does discover a violation, restoring the sanctions in place today will be almost impossible.
We should have waited to give the sanctions more time. These sanctions have already caused significant damage to Iran’s economy and brought the Iranians to the table in the first place. For they know that if the sanctions remain, the radical Iranian regime might not survive.
9. Good behavior. Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei is denouncing the United States as the Great Satan, making it clear that Iran does not expect to normalize relations with us anytime soon. His speeches indicate that Iran still sees itself in a holy war with the West.
10. Here is what is at the end of the rainbow. A U.S. seemingly willing to concede nuclear military capacity to the country our Mideast allies consider their principal threat. No wonder Saudi Arabia and others are insisting on at least an equivalent nuclear capability, for otherwise they face an even more dangerous and threatening environment. America’s traditional allies have concluded that the U.S. has traded temporary nuclear cooperation with Iran for acquiescence to Iran’s ultimate hegemony. When the U.N. Security Council approves the final draft, the sanctions against Iran would be lifted. Much of what Iran has already done in violation of its past treaty commitments may well now be legalized, which would free the Iranians of the sanctions imposed due to those violations.
The negative reaction to the inadequate safeguards in Obama’s deal has now forced him to acquiesce to Congress some power of review, reinforced by a 19-0 vote of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Its intervention will be critical, for Obama seems to be willfully ignoring Iran’s belligerent behavior and its growing influence over events in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sanaa. Freed from sanctions, Iran may become even more aggressive.
Dennis Ross is perhaps our leading government authority in terms of experience and knowledge of the Middle East. He doesn’t see any rainbows, only the storm clouds gathering: “At some point, the Obama administration changed its objective from one of transforming the Iranian nuclear program to one of ensuring that Iran could not have a breakout time of less than one year,“ Ross wrote in Politico. This change, Ross notes, comes from a decision that the U.S. could not alter Iran’s plans, “so instead we needed to focus on constraining their capabilities.
Mortimer Zuckerman is the chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report and the publisher of the New York Daily News.
1a) Deroy Murdock : Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal: Trust, but Don’t Verify
1a) Deroy Murdock : Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal: Trust, but Don’t Verify
As with Obamacare, Congress will have to pass the ObamaNuke deal to find out what’s in it. Literally.
When many in Congress apparently failed to read the 2,409-page Obamacare legislation, it was mainly their fault. Although Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi jammed the final bill through the Senate and House with little time for their colleagues to absorb it, scores of lawmakers otherwise failed to consume that heaping helping of mind-numbing, nausea-inducing prose — nearly twice the length of War and Peace. Yes, every member of Congress should have devoured it. But what unappetizing reading.
The ObamaNuke deal with Iran is something entirely different. Congress cannot read key details of the agreement. They are secret, and America’s duly elected representatives are forbidden to see the entirety of what Obama is pressuring them to approve.
Case in point: the recently exposed provision that allows Iran to self-inspect its Parchin military site, south of Tehran, long feared to be a nuclear-research facility. This is as absurd as having allowed the Nazis to self-inspect the Peenemünde Army Research Center in the late 1930s. “Nein, meine Herren. There never has been any anti-British rocket activity at Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde,” officials in Berlin would have assured the League of Nations. “In fact, our inspectors confirm that our National Socialist researchers there are developing consumer appliances to improve the lives of the hardworking deutsche Volk.”
As George Jahn of the Associated Press observes, “The document on Parchin . . . will let the Iranians themselves look for signs of the very activity they deny — past work on nuclear weapons.” The details of this side deal offer a stunning contrast to Ronald Reagan’s guiding principle on controlling Soviet weapons. Obama’s approach is, in essence, “Trust, but don’t verify.” Dated July 11, the clandestine deal states: “Iran will provide to the Agency photos of the locations,” mutually agreed upon by Iran and the IAEA. Iran also will provide the IAEA with videos of those sites, along with only “7 environmental samples taken from points inside one building already identified by the Agency and agreed by Iran, and 2 points outside of the Parchin complex which would be agreed between Iran and the Agency.”
In addition, “activities will be carried out using Iran’s authenticated equipment, consistent with technical specifications provided by the Agency.” Congress cannot read key details of the agreement. They are secret, and America’s duly elected representatives are forbidden to see the entirety of what Obama is pressuring them to approve. Rather than allow IAEA inspectors to walk around Parchin, see what they want to see, and gather as many samples from as many spots as they deem appropriate, the farcical procedures above would precede a “public visit of the Director General, as a dignitary guest of the Government of Iran, accompanied by his deputy for safeguards.” Last but not least, “Iran and the Agency will organize a one-day technical roundtable on issues relevant to Parchin.” Iranian self-inspection, a ceremonial photo-op, and a panel discussion are light years from “anytime, anywhere” scrutiny of the ayatollahs’ atomic laboratory.
The Obama administration has refused to share this information with Congress, claiming that the IAEA prevents it. However, Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director general for safeguards, told Business Insider, “According to the IAEA rules and practices, such documents could be made available to the members of the IAEA Board.” The United States is on the IAEA board and could get these secret documents that way, or perhaps ask Great Britain, France, or Canada to make that request. Instead, Obama’s game could be summarized as “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
This ancillary measure, the Associated Press revealed, is titled “Separate Agreement II.” Presumably, there is a Separate Agreement I. If so, what’s in it? How about a Separate Agreement III? As a monument to Obama’s reckless disregard for the law and his desperation to squeeze this legacy project through Congress, the concealment of this side deal violates the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (42 U.S. Code §2160e). Obama cannot denounce this statute as an ugly relic from the George Bush years, worthy of contempt and disregard. No such luck. This law passed 98 to 1 in the Senate, and 415 to 0 in the House. It was signed on May 22 by none other than Obama himself. The law says that all documents that compose ObamaNuke must be transmitted to Congress, including any “entered into or made between Iran and any other parties . . . including annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements.” This would include the IAEA and the covered-up text. What other secret deals are attached to ObamaNuke, basically in invisible ink? What do they compel America to do?
What do they liberate Iran to perpetrate? House members and senators should know every page of the documents on which they are voting. To expect anyone to agree to any deal (e.g., a used-car sales contract) without reading it — and, indeed, when prohibited from doing so — is a terminal departure from common sense. As the Wall Street Journal opined on Thursday, “Congress should insist on seeing every such side deal or else pass a resolution of disapproval on the principle that it can’t possibly approve a deal whose complete terms it hasn’t even been allowed to inspect.” Senator Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) said he would vote for ObamaNuke “unless there is an unexpected change in the conditions and facts before the vote is called in September.” This comically ridiculous Iranian self-inspection certainly is such an unexpected change.
So is the fact that this fiasco was concealed from Congress in a naked breach of federal law. On this basis alone, Senator Nelson should evolve his Yes vote to a No. So should many other senators and representatives who have backed this pact while Separate Agreement II was hidden from them. In light of Obama’s institutional assault on this separate and co-equal branch of the federal government, Democratic support for ObamaNuke deserves to crumble.
Every lawmaker should demand that Obama stop trying to bamboozle Congress. He must live by the law that he signed and show legislators every page of the agreement whose adoption he craves. Buying a pig in a poke is one thing. Enacting an atomic-bomb agreement, partially sight unseen, is far deeper folly. —
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
1b)
Kerry’s Invisible Bridge
The Secretary takes a leap of faith on Iran’s self-inspections.
Maybe we’ve been unduly harsh with John Kerry when it comes to the Iran deal. We’ve tried to judge the agreement according to the likelihood that it will thwart Tehran’s bid to get nuclear weapons. The Secretary of State, for his part, seems to be acting out the leap-of-faith scene from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
You know the one: Indy, standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss, sticks out his leg to discover an invisible bridge that will get him to the other side. On the other edge of the abyss lies—what else?—the Holy Grail.
In the Administration’s version of the scene, that invisible bridge is the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is supposed to provide the “unprecedented verification” that Mr. Kerry and President Obama insist is the key to the deal’s reliability. So total is the Secretary’s faith in the agency that he agreed to let it reach its own side deals with Iran over how to inspect the regime’s military sites, without him knowing the particulars of the arrangements.
Last week the Associated Press got hold of a near-final draft of one of the side deals, which revealed that the agency would allow Iran to do its own inspections—with its own personnel and equipment—of the military site at Parchin, where the regime is suspected to have previously carried out illicit work on weaponizing a nuclear
device.
That includes providing the agency with a total of nine environmental samples. The closest IAEA personnel will get to Parchin is a courtesy visit to the site by the IAEA’s director general, followed by a “one-day technical roundtable.”
Defenders of the deal initially tried to claim the AP’s reporting was misleading, until the AP released the text of the agreement. Now the company line is that this is all no big deal. The issues “in some cases date back more than a decade,” says National Security Council spokesman Ned Price, as if it’s merely a matter of balancing some old books.
But knowing what Iran might have done at Parchin is crucial to determining how much time Iran would need to build a bomb. That’s a point on which Mr. Kerry was once unequivocal, as in the following April 2014 exchange with the PBS News Hour’s Judy Woodruff.
Ms. Woodruff: “Still, another issue: the International Atomic Energy Agency has said for a long time that it wants Iran to disclose past military-related nuclear activities. Iran is increasingly looking like it’s not going to do this. Is the U.S. prepared to accept that?”
Mr. Kerry: “No. They have to do it. It will be done. If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done. . . . It will be part of a final agreement. It has to be.”
So much for that. As for the IAEA, Director General Yukiya Amano insists the arrangements “are technically sound and consistent with our-long established practices.” We’re not sure what practices he has in mind; Olli Heinonen, a former senior agency official, told AP he “could thing of no similar concession with any other country.” Weaponization work also does not necessarily involve radioactive substances, so soil-sampling won’t be of much use to finding out exactly what Iran has done at Parchin.
We’ll cut Mr. Amano some slack since his agency must accept whatever mandate it is given by the countries that negotiated the overall deal. Nor does it have any power to enforce the side agreements deals it has reached with Iran, other than to issue periodic reports. Tehran is already warning the agency that it will “not accept” any leaks of its agreements. That shows how dependent the agency will be on the mullahs’ acquiescence to get anything done, insofar as the IAEA doesn’t have the backing of the United States and other Western powers to demand full access to the regime’s sites.
The Obama Administration is required by the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, passed with overwhelming majorities in May, to provide Congress with a complete accounting of all of the terms of the deal, including “annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements.”
A bipartisan Congress fought hard last spring to require President Obama to sign that law. Now Congress should insist that the President abide by the law and release the other side deal—or deals. It the Administration is so proud of the agreement it struck with Iran, it should be willing to disclose its full terms.
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2)
Palestinians Flock to Islamic State
By Khaled Abu Toameh
- The terror group Islamic State has become extremely popular among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Four recent public opinion polls show that at least one million Palestinians support the Islamic State.
- The Palestinians' two governments, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), have good reason to be worried about the Islamic State. In recent weeks, Islamic State spokesmen have issued threats against both the PA and Hamas, accusing them of “collaboration” with the “Zionist entity.”
- Christian activist Sam Butrous noted that the widespread support for Islamic State among Palestinians is a sign of increased extremism and a denial of Christians' rights in the Holy Land.
- The PA and Hamas can only blame themselves for the surge of Palestinians joining the Islamic State. The two governments allow anti-Western incitement in their mosques and media outlets. Their leaders regularly glorify and endorse Palestinians who carry out terror attacks against Israelis, encouraging others to follow suit. If these Palestinians are unable to attack Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they travel to Syria and Iraq to join the jihad against Israel's allies, namely the U.S. and other Western countries.
- Palestinian leaders cannot evade responsibility for inspiring dozens of Palestinians to join the Islamic State. The fiery rhetoric of these leaders and ongoing incitement against Israel and the West are further radicalizing Palestinians and driving them into the Islamic State's open arms.
Hardly a week passes without another report of a Palestinian killed while fighting for the Islamic State terror group.
The reports have raised deep concern among many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A recent report estimated that some 100 Palestinians have already joined Islamic State. Other reports claim that the number is much higher.
According to the report, most of the Palestinians who joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are from the Gaza Strip. Another 1000 Palestinian men are believed to be preparing to join Islamic State, but have been unable to fulfill their dream for various reasons, the report revealed.
It is no surprise that most of the Palestinians who have joined the Islamic State are from the Gaza Strip, which has been under the control of Hamas since 2007.
In the past year, various reports have suggested that Islamic State and its supporters have managed to infiltrate the Gaza Strip, where they pose a major threat to Hamas's rule over the area, home to some 1.6 million Palestinians.
Earlier this year, Islamic State supporters organized their first public appearance on the streets of Gaza City, where they called for an Islamic army to destroy Israel and the “enemies of Islam.”
Palestinians waving Islamic State flags attempt to storm the French Cultural Center in Gaza City, in January 2015.(Image: ehna tv YouTube screenshot)
Earlier this week, the Islamic State informed the Yehia family from the West Bank city of Jenin that their son, Said, had been killed while fighting for the terror group near Aleppo in Syria.
The family was told that Said had joined the Islamic State seven months ago. Said's family members said he told them he was travelling to Europe to look for work. Later, however, they learned that he had headed to Syria to fight for the Islamic State.
The two strangers who arrived at the family's home even provided Said's parents and brothers with a photograph of Said's dead body.
In recent months, at least four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were also reportedly killed while fighting for the Islamic State.
One of them, Abed al-Elah Kishta, 29, of the southern town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, was killed while fighting for the Islamic State in eastern Libya. Weeks before he was killed, Kishta contacted his family to inform them that he had joined the group.
The second Palestinian from the Gaza Strip was identified as Musa Hijazi, 23. His father, Hassan, said that his son was killed while fighting for the Islamic State in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The Islamic State later mourned Hijazi as one of its martyrs, referring to him by his nickname Abu Mu'men al-Maqdisi.
A third Palestinian was identified as Wadi Washah, 21, from the Jebalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Washah's family said they were shocked to hear about his death while fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. The family said their son had previously joined Palestinian Islamic Jihad before escaping the Gaza Strip through a smuggling tunnel along the border with Egypt. Wadi's father said that his son had travelled to Syria on instructions from Islamic State-affiliated salafi-jihadi leaders in Gaza. According to the father, Wadi had told him that he had managed to kill dozens of Iranians in Syria.
The fourth Palestinian was identified as Ahmed Badwan, 26, nicknamed Abu Tarek al-Ghazawi, of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Sources close to the family said that Badwan had left the Gaza Strip through a smuggling tunnel run by Hamas, and had first joined the Islamic State in Syria, before moving to the group's branch in Iraq. He was killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike on an Islamic State base in Iraq, the sources said.
Although the number of Palestinians who have joined the Islamic State remains relatively low, it is evident that the terror group has become extremely popular among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Four public opinion polls published a few weeks ago showed that at least a million Palestinians support the Islamic State.
The polls found that 24% of the Palestinians hold positive views about the Islamic State. Given that there are 1.8 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and another 2.7 million in the West Bank, this means that there are more than one million Palestinians who support Islamic State.
Commenting on the results of the polls, Christian activist Sam Butrous noted that the widespread support for the Islamic State among Palestinians is a sign of increased extremism and a denial of Christians' rights in the Holy Land. “Apparently, 20% of the Palestinians have no problem with expelling their Christian brothers and destroying their churches and turning them into mosques,” he wrote. “This is what the Islamic State terror group is already doing in areas under its control.”
Christians are not the only ones who should be worried about the Islamic State's growing influence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians' two governments, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), also have good reason to be worried. In recent weeks, Islamic State spokesmen have issued threats against both the PA and Hamas, accusing them of “collaboration” with the “Zionist entity.”
But the PA and Hamas can only blame themselves for the surge of Palestinians joining the Islamic State. The two governments allow anti-Western incitement in their mosques and media outlets. Their leaders regularly glorify and endorse Palestinians who carry out terror attacks against Israelis, thus encouraging other Palestinians to follow suit. And if these Palestinians are unable to carry out attacks against Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they travel to Syria and Iraq to join the jihad against Israel's allies, namely the U.S. and other Western countries.
Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot evade responsibility for inspiring dozens of Palestinians to join the Islamic State. The fiery rhetoric of these leaders, in addition to the ongoing incitement against Israel and the West, is further radicalizing Palestinians and driving them into the Islamic State's open arms.
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3)
ISIS Document Reveals Vision of Armageddon
ISIS combatants
A 32-page ISIS document calling for open warfare against non-Muslims has been uncovered in Pakistan and authenticated by retired US Defense Intelligence Agency Director General Michael Flynn and other intelligence officials. The document has been compared to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, the political manifesto in which the Nazi leader outlined his plan for the future of Germany and its Jews.
The ISIS document places the blame for the appearance of jihadi organizations like ISIS on the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The document declares, “No sooner had the British government relinquished control of Israel, Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jews, declared the independence of the State of Israel, triggering a global migration of Jews to the Jewish State, and launching the systematic persecution of Palestinian Muslims who had to abandon their homes and migrate.”
The document, titled A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC): The Caliphate According to the Prophet, contains a six stage plan for the development of the Islamic State and for conquering the entire world.
In a blog post written by Geoffrey Grinder in Now the End Begins, the phases are laid out. The establishment of the Islamic State has already passed through four of its planned six phases and is currently in Phase 5. These are the stages according to Grinder:
Phase 1 “Awakening” 2000-2003: Islamic State calls for “a major operation against the U.S….to provoke a crusade against Islam.” [September 11, 2001]
Phase 2 “Shock and Awe” 2004 – 2006: Islamic State will lure US into multiple theatres of war, including cyber-attacks and establish charities across the Muslim and Arab world to support terrorism.
Phase 3 “Self-reliance” 2007-2010: Islamic State will create “interference” with Iraq’s neighboring states with particular focus on Syria.
Phase 4 “Reaping/extortion/receiving” 2010-2013: Islamic State will attack “U.S. and Western interests” to destroy their economy and replace the dollar with silver and gold and expose Muslim governments’ relations with Israel and the US.
Phase 5 Declaring the Caliphate 2013-2016: Not much details offered here. The document just says, “The Caliphate According to The Prophet.”
Phase 6 Open Warfare 2017-2020: Islamic State predicts faith will clash with non-believers and “Allah will grant victory to the believers after which peace will reign on earth.”
Phase 6 calls for open, worldwide warfare against all non-Muslims followed by a messianic vision of a peaceful era. The messianic vision of the document paints a picture of a world in which only believing Muslims remain alive.
The document’s author uses harsh words to make his point. “Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah. This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”
Breaking Israel News asked Rabbi Nachman Kahana, author and Torah scholar who lives and works in the Old City of Jerusalem, to comment on the discovery of this document and the threat it represents to Israel.
In a related story, this brief, threatening video was recently released. Reminiscent of the Crusades, it shows thousands of Muslim soldiers suiting up to do battle with Jerusalem.
Kahana responded that the Talmud, one of Judaism’s core texts, states that God “will eventually send to the world a leader whose decrees will be as drastic as those of Haman, the villain from the Book of Esther who intended to wipe out all the Jews, in order that we, the Jewish people, will do teshuva (repent) and then the final geula (redemption) will arrive.”
3a)
Opponents of his fatally flawed nuclear deal with Iran aren't just making "common cause" with 'death-to-America' Iranian zealots, President Obama magnanimously informs us, but also "crazies." Politico has the report from Obama's Nevada love fest with Harry Reid:
In Obama'
there is no such thing as legitimate, principled opposition to him or his agenda. Dissent is unhinged, reflexively partisan, phony, and sometimes racist. This from a man who campaigned as a hopeful, unifying pragmatist. In the case of the Iran deal, the intense criticism is substantive and bipartisan. Reid's likely successor as the Senate Democratic leader is against the agreement, as is the Democratic former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in addition to an active Democratic presidential candidateand a number of sitting House Democrats. Indeed, the 'crazies' are ubiquitous:
3b)The Flaw In The Iran Deal That Even A Child Can See
President Obama’s agreement with Iran over its nuclear program will likely remain viable even though he’s lost Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ). But now that the Associated Press is reporting on one of those secret side deals that not even the Congress is allowed to see (apparently neither is Secretary John Kerry), Obama will lose the public relations battle for good as well as his hope of being seen as a great foreign policy president.
3b)The Flaw In The Iran Deal That Even A Child Can See
Obama’s idea is that a cowed and bowed America will induce good behavior from its enemies.
By Paul Bonicelli
President Obama’s agreement with Iran over its nuclear program will likely remain viable even though he’s lost Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ). But now that the Associated Press is reporting on one of those secret side deals that not even the Congress is allowed to see (apparently neither is Secretary John Kerry), Obama will lose the public relations battle for good as well as his hope of being seen as a great foreign policy president.
Paul Bonicelli serves as professor of government at Regent University. His career includes a presidential appointment (with Senate confirmation) as assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development; as a professional staff member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives; and as an official delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.
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