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This is the world scene from my perspective at the present time and this is what Obama left for Trump.
a) Russia/Putin are expanding their influence in The Middle East and threatening to spread terror and destruction beyond Syria. (See 1 below.)
b) N Korea is preparing its missiles to become more accurate and only God knows what else.
b) Iran is doing likewise and sending troops into the Golan area in preparation for a challenge to Israel. (See 1a below.)
c) The unresolved issues pertaining to the PLO have been made worse because Obama kept rewarding Abbas for his intransigence and undercutting Israel (See 1b below.)
I will stop there and not even discuss the threat China poses as it seeks to expand military bases to challenge sea routes in the Pacific area.
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A safe environment combined with a college education for Jewish Students takes on an ugly and menacing face in America. (See 2 and 2a below.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
Political discourse in the United States is at a boiling point, and nowhere is the reaction more heightened than on campuses like Middlebury.
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Over the years I have discussed how tiny Israel has emerged as a technology giant and reviewed the book: "Israel: The Start Up Nation." A few memos ago I wrote about my friend, Avi Jorisch's, soon to be published book about the state of Israeli technology etc.
Yesterday Intel purchased an Israeli technology company to assist it in its involvement in driverless autos and paid $15 billion.
From an agriculture based economy to a technology based one, Israel has made an amazing transition and is breaking new ground in virtually every major area of the application of technology in extending life, making life better etc. and Iran wants to destroy this country, Europe hates Israel and, as noted earlier, anti-Semitism has flooded American College Campuses.
We truly live in a sick world inhabited by people who have lost their ability to think and act rationally. These trends have been building for decades. I see nothing on the horizon which will alter the pattern until another confrontation, maybe even a nuclear one, occurs.
Sad indeed. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)RUSSIA DIGS ITS TENTACLES FURTHER INTO THE MIDDLE EAST
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been busy in the Middle East this month. On March 9, he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The next day he met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and on March 14, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met Libyan general Khalifa Haftar’s envoy in Moscow.
Since Libya fell into civil conflict after 2011, Haftar has emerged as the most powerful leader in eastern Libya. Reports have emerged that Russia has sent special forces to Egypt, eyeing a Libya role. The decisions by Russia represent an increase of its influence in the region. The Kremlin is already the key powerbroker in Syria, so what is Moscow up to in Libya?
The Russian Foreign Minister, according to an article published by RIA Novosti, says it is only supporting an “inclusive dialogue” in Libya that will lead to a “stable arrangement, designed to bring the country out of a prolonged political crisis.” Russia recently hosted a delegation from the Government of National Accord (GNA), the UN recognized government of Libya that is stronger in the west of the country.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also met the Chairman of the Presidential Council of the GNA Fayez al-Sarraj in September of last year. At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscored “its commitment to Libya’s independence, unity and territorial integrity, as well as the need to involve representatives of the major political groups, tribes and country’s regions in the formation of the national unity government.” Translation: Include General Haftar and his supporters in Benghazi and Tobruk.
In February the Guardian reported that “European diplomats fear that [Haftar] could join what has been described as Vladimir Putin’s axis of secular authoritarians in the Middle East alongside Syrian president Bashar Assad and Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.”
The EU diplomats supposedly worried that Haftar, with Russian backing, could take over much of Libya. A map of Libya’s various armed groups shows why that’s not realistic. Like Syria, the country has been driven by six years of conflict that has devolved into regional power-centers. In December Libyan GNA re-took Sirte from Islamic State after the extremists held it for a year and a half. Similarly Haftar is bogged down in a battle with Islamist Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB).
Alex Grinberg, a Research Associate at the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs at IDC Herzliya, says Russia’s recent moves are a “preventive measure to help out Haftar and also prop-up Sisi.” Grinberg argues it is wrong to see Haftar as a “real ally” like Assad has been to the Kremlin. The reason Haftar has appeal is because of his relations with Egypt’s Sisi and his hostility toward Islamists, a loathing Russia shares.
“Do the Russians support Haftar because they want him to be the strongman and power broker, or he is the strongman and powerbroker and that’s why they support him,” asks Grinberg. Since Russia’s declared goal is stability, Grinberg says the real calculus may be ensuring Haftar moral support. “They can help here and there, but to remove the BDB from the oil crescent [oil ports along the coast] would require serious massing of forces.”
On March 3 the BDB rolled into oil ports Ras Lanuf and Es Sidr on the coast, undermining Haftar. In Haftar’s favor is the fact that he is a trained military officer and that although the GNA is internationally recognized, “it is completely impotent and incapable of reining in the anarchy of militias in Tripoli,” says Grinberg. But he cautions that we should not see the conflict as solely between secular generals and Islamists, but rather as a series of tribal feuds and “horrendous crime rates” making Libya unstable.
There is no simple story in Libya. Some see oil as being a principle driver of relations and conflict. Others point out that EU hands in Libya are trying to forestall a migration wave of African migrants, who have attempted to take advantage of the chaos there as a jumping-off point for a sea voyage that has killed thousands in past years.
If the Russians had wanted to intervene more, they could have done so in January when their aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov was off the Libyan coast and Haftar paid a visit, speaking via phone with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Russia is officially devoted to international law, and through that lens it will not intervene except with a veneer of legality. Putin condemned the US-led intervention in 2011 as a “crusade.” In Syria, Russia was invited by Assad to assist in the war. In Libya, the UN stands by the GNA and Haftar is seen as a renegade. Thus arms cannot flow and neither can warplanes support him.
The US is paying close attention. Africa Command Marine General Thomas Waldhauser told Senators on March 10 that the situation was concerning. “Russia is trying to exert influence on the ultimate decision of who becomes and what entity becomes, in charge of the government inside Libya.” It was comparable to Syria.
Support for Haftar dovetails with Russia’s cultivating closer ties in Cairo. Sisi has expressed concern over the 1,000 km. Libyan border with Egypt since he became head of the armed forces in 2012. In the long-term Haftar, who is 73 years old, is not a solution to Libya and Russian interests there may only serve to prod the EU and US to take a new interest in Libya’s problems.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also met the Chairman of the Presidential Council of the GNA Fayez al-Sarraj in September of last year. At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscored “its commitment to Libya’s independence, unity and territorial integrity, as well as the need to involve representatives of the major political groups, tribes and country’s regions in the formation of the national unity government.” Translation: Include General Haftar and his supporters in Benghazi and Tobruk.
In February the Guardian reported that “European diplomats fear that [Haftar] could join what has been described as Vladimir Putin’s axis of secular authoritarians in the Middle East alongside Syrian president Bashar Assad and Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.”
The EU diplomats supposedly worried that Haftar, with Russian backing, could take over much of Libya. A map of Libya’s various armed groups shows why that’s not realistic. Like Syria, the country has been driven by six years of conflict that has devolved into regional power-centers. In December Libyan GNA re-took Sirte from Islamic State after the extremists held it for a year and a half. Similarly Haftar is bogged down in a battle with Islamist Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB).
Alex Grinberg, a Research Associate at the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs at IDC Herzliya, says Russia’s recent moves are a “preventive measure to help out Haftar and also prop-up Sisi.” Grinberg argues it is wrong to see Haftar as a “real ally” like Assad has been to the Kremlin. The reason Haftar has appeal is because of his relations with Egypt’s Sisi and his hostility toward Islamists, a loathing Russia shares.
“Do the Russians support Haftar because they want him to be the strongman and power broker, or he is the strongman and powerbroker and that’s why they support him,” asks Grinberg. Since Russia’s declared goal is stability, Grinberg says the real calculus may be ensuring Haftar moral support. “They can help here and there, but to remove the BDB from the oil crescent [oil ports along the coast] would require serious massing of forces.”
On March 3 the BDB rolled into oil ports Ras Lanuf and Es Sidr on the coast, undermining Haftar. In Haftar’s favor is the fact that he is a trained military officer and that although the GNA is internationally recognized, “it is completely impotent and incapable of reining in the anarchy of militias in Tripoli,” says Grinberg. But he cautions that we should not see the conflict as solely between secular generals and Islamists, but rather as a series of tribal feuds and “horrendous crime rates” making Libya unstable.
There is no simple story in Libya. Some see oil as being a principle driver of relations and conflict. Others point out that EU hands in Libya are trying to forestall a migration wave of African migrants, who have attempted to take advantage of the chaos there as a jumping-off point for a sea voyage that has killed thousands in past years.
1a) The Iran Deal Can’t Be Enforced
The agreement’s entire basis is appeasement. It merely ‘calls upon’ Tehran not to test missiles.
By John Bolton
Iran’s continued missile testing on Saturday has given President Trump one more reason to tear up his predecessor’s deal with the regime in Tehran. After Iran’s Jan. 29 ballistic-missile launch, the Trump administration responded with new sanctions and tough talk. But these alone won’t have a material effect on Tehran or its decades-long effort to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons.
The real issue is whether America will abrogate Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, recognizing it as a strategic debacle, a result of the last president’s misguided worldview and diplomatic malpractice. Terminating the agreement would underline that Iran is already violating it, clearly intends to continue pursuing nuclear arms, works closely with North Korea in seeking deliverable nuclear weapons, and continues to support international terrorism and provocative military actions. Escaping from the Serbonian Bog that Obama’s negotiations created would restore the resolute leadership and moral clarity the U.S. has lacked for eight years.
But those who supported the Iran deal, along with even many who had opposed it, argue against abrogation. Instead they say that America should “strictly enforce” the deal’s terms and hope that Iran pulls out. This would be a mistake for two reasons. First, the strategic miscalculations embodied in the deal endanger the U.S. and its allies, not least by lending legitimacy to the ayatollahs, the world’s central bankers for terrorism.
Second, “strictly enforcing” the deal is as likely to succeed as nailing Jell-O to a wall. Not only does the entire agreement reflect appeasement, but President Obama’s diplomacy produced weak, ambiguous and confusing language in many specific provisions. These drafting failures created huge loopholes, and Iran is now driving its missile and nuclear programs straight through them.
Take Tehran’s recent ballistic-missile tests. The Trump administration sees them as violating the deal. Iran disagrees. Let’s see what “strict enforcement” would really mean, bearing in mind that the misbegotten deal is 104 pages long, consisting of Security Council Resolution 2231 and two attachments: Annex A, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the main nuclear deal, known by the acronym JCPOA); and Annex B, covering other matters including ballistic missiles.
Annex B isn’t actually an agreement. Iran is not a party to it. Instead it is a statement by the Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany, intended to “improve transparency” and “create an atmosphere conducive” to implementing the deal. The key paragraph of Annex B says: “Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons” for eight years.
Note the language I’ve italicized. Iran is not forbidden from engaging in all ballistic-missile activity, merely “called upon” to do so. The range of proscribed activity is distinctly limited, applying only to missiles “designed to be capable” of carrying nuclear weapons. Implementation is left to the Security Council.
The loopholes are larger than the activity supposedly barred. Iran simply denies that its missiles are “designed” for nuclear payloads—because, after all, it does not have a nuclear-weapons program. This is a palpable lie, but both the JCPOA and a unanimous Security Council accepted it. Resolution 2231 includes a paragraph: “Welcoming Iran’s reaffirmation in the JCPOA that it will under no circumstances ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” The ayatollahs have been doing precisely that ever since their 1979 revolution.
Finally, Resolution 2231 itself also merely “calls upon” Iran to comply with Annex B’s ballistic-missile limits, even as the same sentence says that all states “shall comply” with other provisions. When the Security Council wants to “prohibit” or “demand” or even “decide,” it knows how to say so. It did not here.
The upshot is very simple: Iran can’t violate the ballistic-missile language because it has reaffirmed that it doesn’t have a nuclear-weapons program. Really, what could go wrong?
These are weasel words of the highest order, coupled with flat-out misrepresentation by Iran and willful blindness by the United States. The Jell-O will not stick to the wall. The deal cannot be “strictly enforced.” And this is only one example of the slippery language found throughout the deal.
Pentagon sources have said that the missile Iran recently tested failed while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. This is telling. If the missile program were, as Iran claims, only for launching weather and communications satellites, there would be no need to test re-entry vehicles. The goal would be to put satellites in orbit and keep them there. But nuclear warheads obviously have to re-enter the atmosphere to reach their targets. The recent tests provide even more evidence of what Iran’s ballistic-missile program has always been about, namely supplying delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons.
Time always works on the side of nuclear proliferators, and the Iran deal is providing the ayatollahs with protective camouflage. Every day Washington lets pass without ripping the deal up is a day of danger for America and its friends. We proceed slowly at our peril.
1b) Our World: Trump embraces the PLO fantasy
| By CAROLINE B. GLICK |
US President Donald Trump is losing his focus. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he will fail to make America great again or safe again in the Middle East.
After holding out for a month, last week Trump indicated he is adopting his predecessors’ obsession with empowering the PLO .
This is a strategic error.
There are many actors and conflicts in the Middle East that challenge and threaten US national interests and US national security. Iran’s rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon; the war in Syria; Turkey’s abandonment of the West; and Russia’s regional power play all pose major threats to US power, security and interests. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hamas and other Sunni jihadist movements all threaten the US, Europe and the US’s Sunni allies in the region in a manner that is strategically significant to America.
None of these issues, none of these actors and none of these threats are in any way related to or caused by the PLO and its interminable, European-supported hybrid terror and political war against Israel. None of these pressing concerns will be advanced by a US embrace of the PLO or a renewed obsession with empowering the PLO and its mafia-terrorist bosses.
To the contrary, all of these pressing concerns will be sidelined – and so made more pressing and dangerous – by a US reengagement with the PLO .
And yet, over the past week, Trump has indicated that the PLO is now his focus.
Last Friday, Trump spoke on the telephone with Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is head of the PLO and the unelected dictator of the corrupt, terrorism-sponsoring, PLO -controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
According to media reports, Trump told Abbas – whose legal term in office ended eight years ago – that he views him as a legitimate leader. According to the official White House report of the conversation, Trump also reportedly told Abbas that he supports reaching a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Such a deal, to the extent it is ever reached, involves expanding PLO control over Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem at Israel’s expense.
Trump also invited Abbas for an official visit to Washington. And the day after they spoke, the Trump administration moved $250 million in US taxpayer dollars to Abbas’s police state where for the past 25 years, Abbas and his cronies have enriched themselves while feeding a steady diet of antisemitic, anti-American jihadist bile to their impoverished subjects.
To build up his credibility with the PLO , Trump put his electoral pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem on ice. The real estate mogul ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny Jews the right to their property and their legal right to use state lands in Judea and Samaria.
And swift on the heels of that conversation with Abbas, Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt was dispatched to Jerusalem to begin empowering the PLO at Israel’s expense.
According to media reports, Greenblatt intended to use his meeting Monday with Netanyahu to reject Netanyahu’s commitment to build a new Israeli town in Samaria. Greenblatt was also reportedly intending to dictate the parameters for yet another round of negotiations with the PLO.
After meeting with Netanyahu, Greenblatt continued on to Ramallah to embrace Abbas.
Also during his stay, Greenblatt is scheduled to meet with IDF generals who are responsible for giving money and providing services to the PLO.
And Greenblatt doesn’t have the Palestinians to himself.
Following Trump’s conversation with Abbas, plans were suddenly afloat for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to visit Israel and spend an afternoon with Abbas in Ramallah.
If things develop as reported, then Trump is serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen. If that is the case, then Trump is setting himself, his advisers, his daughter and the US up to fail and be humiliated.
The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations. It is to the PLO that America’s top envoys have eagerly flown, gotten hooked on the attention of the demented, anti-Israel press corps, and forgotten their purpose: to advance US national interests.
If Trump is serious about repeating this practice, then rather than repair the massive damage done to the US and the Middle East by his two predecessors, the 45th president will repeat their mistakes. Like them, he will leave office in a blaze of failure.
To understand why this is the case, three things must be clear.
First, the PLO will never make peace with Israel. There will never be a Palestinian state.
There will never be a peace or a Palestinian state because the PLO wants neither. This is the lesson of the past 25 years. Both Abbas and his predecessor Arafat rejected peace and statehood multiple times and opted instead to expand their terrorist and political war against Israel.
Why did they do that? Because they are interested in two things: personal enrichment – which they achieve by stealing donor funds and emptying the pockets of their own people; and weakening, with the goal of destroying Israel – which they achieve through their hybrid war of terrorism and political warfare.
The second thing that needs to be clear is that the Palestinians are irrelevant to the rest of the problems – the real problems that impact US interests – in the region. If anything, the Palestinians are pawns on the larger chessboard. America’s enemies use them to distract the Americans from the larger realities so that the US will not pay attention to the real game.
Iran will not be appeased or defeated if Trump empowers the PLO in its war against Israel and continues feeding PLO leaders’ insatiable appetite for other people’s money.
The Sunni jihadists will not beat their swords into plowshares if the US coerces Israel to cough up land to the PLO . To the contrary, they will be emboldened.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not move his forces out of Syria or stop giving nuclear technologies to Iran if the US turns the screws on Israel. Putin will come to the conclusion that Trump is either weak or stupid to damage Israel, the US’s most serious ally.
And of course, Israel will not be better off if Trump decides to push it back onto the peace train which has caused it nothing but harm for the past quarter century.
Trump’s election opened up the possibility, for the first time in decades, that the US would end its destructive obsession with the PLO. For three months, Israelis have been free for the first time to discuss seriously the possibilities of applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria. And a massive majority of Israelis support doing just that.
On the Palestinian side as well, Trump’s election empowered the people who have been living under the jackboot of Abbas and his cronies to think about the possibility of living at peace with Israel in a post-PLO era. Polling results indicate that they too are eager to move beyond the Palestinian statehood chimera.
But now, it appears that Trump has been convinced to embrace the PLO obsession. The same entrenched bureaucrats at the State Department and the same foreign policy establishment in Washington that brought the US nothing but failure in the Middle East for a generation appear to have captivated Trump’s foreign policy. They have convinced him it is better to devote his top advisers to repeating the mistakes of his predecessors than to devote his energies and theirs to fixing the mess that Obama and George W. Bush left him with. They have gotten him to believe that it is better to empower the PLO than develop coherent strategies and plans for dealing with the problems of the region that actually endanger US interests and imperil the security and safety of the American people.
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2)
My Search for a Safe College for Jews
By Sruli Fruchter
As I began my research into choosing a college, I was repeatedly told that colleges are tolerant and accepting environments for every individual, regardless of his or her identity and beliefs. My meetings with high school guidance counselors and my experiences on campus tours, so far, have only seemed to affirm this impression. I was thus quite excited by the idea that, when I got to college, to a diverse community where freedom of speech is paramount, I could openly practice my religion and advocate for my beliefs without fear of intimidation or backlash from my fellow students.
Unfortunately, what I have been reading about lately suggests otherwise.
Since the beginning of 2016, the number of antisemitic incidents on college campuses has surged, increasing by 45 percent compared to 2015, according to a study by AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating campus antisemitism. The AMCHA report includes every type of incident, from swastikas being engraved in bathrooms or on dorm doors to students being verbally and physically harassed. I was astonished at just how ubiquitous antisemitism has become, occurring at so many universities.
Even a school as prominent and prestigious as New York University did not escape the scourge: Last November, four NYU students awoke to find large, dark swastikas scrawled on their doors. When I saw the online photos, my heart tightened and my stomach constricted. Questions and concerns raced through my head: What if that were my door? How would I cope with the realization that my identity, my religion, made me a target of abuse? How could a diverse and tolerant campus such as NYU be home to such hostility, and in the dorms in particular? Can the school remain a viable college choice for me?
These questions circled through my mind without any answers. And of course it wasn’t just NYU.
In recent months, many other prominent colleges — such as the University of Maryland, Hunter College, Georgetown University, Swarthmore College — have been the sites of similar heinous attacks. At Northwestern University in November, a Jewish Studies lecturer was asked if he was Jewish by a man in a vehicle. When the professor said yes, the unidentified man raised his arm in a Nazi salute and yelled “Heil Hitler.” Shockingly, the mainstream media barely covered the story.
In fact, AMCHA reported over 600 hate crimes against Jews on college campuses in 2016, yet there was, and has been, no national outrage. Except for news outlets that focus on Jewish matters, such as The Algemeiner, most of these episodes received only minimal local coverage at best.
If the assailants at NYU had scrawled anti-Muslim threats on the doors of NYU students, the story would have received national attention. If that lecturer were a man of Muslim faith who was attacked with hateful, religion-based slurs, there would have been universal outrage — including on the relevant campus itself. When it comes to Jews, however, these offenses are largely tolerated. The university president may utter general words of condemnation, but the bottom line is this: the general public, and the campus community, do not truly stand with the Jews among them. Jewish students are more or less defenseless in the face of hate.
The fact that colleges have evolved into arenas where antisemitism doesn’t merely occur but seems actively tolerated, shakes me to my core. Becoming a victim of antisemitism on campus has become a serious fear for me, a worry that haunts me as I continue my research into schools, trying to find an institution that could offer me not merely a good education, but safety and security. What awaits me, when I begin college? Swastikas on my door? Racial slurs from other students? Physical assaults?
Can this truly be how things are — in the United States, in the year 2017?
2a)The moral dry rot in academia — and beyond — goes far deeper than student storm troopers at one college
By Thomas Sowell
Many people seem shocked at the recent savagery of a mob of students at Middlebury College, who rioted to prevent Charles Murray from addressing a student group who had invited him to speak. They also inflicted injuries requiring hospitalization on a woman from the faculty who was with him.
Where have all these shocked people been all these years? What happened at Middlebury College has been happening for decades, all across the country, from Berkeley to Harvard. Moreover, even critics of the Middlebury College rioters betray some of the same irresponsible mindset as that of the young rioters.
The moral dry rot in academia — and beyond — goes far deeper than student storm troopers at one college.
Frank Bruni of the New York Times, for example, while criticizing the rioters, lent credence to the claim that Charles Murray was "a white nationalist." Similar — and worse — things have been said, in supposedly reputable publications, by people who could not cite one statement from any of Dr. Murray's books that bears any resemblance to their smears.
Academia, however, is ground zero in the war against people whose ideas go against the current political correctness. The virtual monopoly of the political left, on campuses across the country, allows all sorts of things to be attributed to people the left disagrees with, irrespective of whether those people have ever said anything resembling what they are alleged to have said.
The professors don't usually riot against people whose ideas they disagree with, because they can just dismiss those ideas, with some characterization that there is no one on hand to challenge
Professor William Julius Wilson of Harvard, for example, said of Justice Clarence Thomas, "He'll say he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. I say I was in the right place at the right time."
Just where did Justice Thomas say that he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps? The central theme of his autobiography, titled "My Grandfather's Son," credits the wisdom of the grandfather who raised him as what saved him.
Nuns who taught him in school were brought to Washington, at his expense, to be present to see him sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court, to see that their dedicated efforts on his behalf had not been in vain.
But has anyone ever asked Professor Wilson on just what he based his claim about Justice Thomas? The central tragedy of academia today is that you don't have to have anything on which to base dismissals of people and ideas you disagree with.
This attitude is not unique to William Julius Wilson or to Harvard. On the west coast, Professor Lanny Ebenstein of the University of California at Santa Barbara has included economists Stephen Moore and Walter Williams, as well as television host John Stossel, among those "committed to the welfare of the top few."
Professor Ebenstein has every right to disagree with these individuals on economic or other issues. But that is very different from attributing to them a commitment to "the welfare of the top few."
It so happens that I have read books by all three, without finding any preoccupation with the welfare of the affluent or the rich. I have known Walter Williams for more than 40 years. When we both lived on the east coast, we and our wives often met socially.
In all that time, neither in public nor in private did I ever hear Walter Williams express the slightest concern for the welfare of the affluent or the rich. Innumerable times I heard him focus his concern on the well-being of people like himself, from a poverty background. That concern was also expressed in deeds as well as words.
But who is going to ask Professor Ebenstein to cite the basis for his claim?
Why should we expect students to welcome debate about differences of opinion, when so many of their professors seem to think cheap shot dismissals are all you need? Lacking their professors' verbal dexterity or aura of authority, students use cruder methods of dismissing things they disagree with.
So long as academia talks demographic "diversity" and practices groupthink when it comes to ideas, we have little reason to expect better of student mobs that riot with impunity.
Thomas Sowell, a National Humanities Medal winner, is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author. He is currently Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
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3)
How Hamas is winning hearts and minds in Europe
Via conferences and through hierarchies linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Gaza-based terror group is building global infrastructure to challenge PLO’s standing as Palestinians’ sole legitimate representative
At the end of February, in Istanbul, the Palestinians Abroad Conference convened with the purported goal of promoting global support for the Palestinians. Its actual purpose was to bolster the status of Hamas in the international arena.
Many of the organizers of the conference, which was attended by thousands of Arabs and Palestinians from all over the world, are of Palestinian origin. But to those who closely followed what happened in Istanbul, it became clear that many of the organizers and attendees had something else in common: they are known to have been members — for decades — of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated networks all over Europe.
This was not the first conference of its kind. Many like it have taken place in recent years. Many of the same faces are present — including current and past members of the Muslim Brotherhood, at a more or less official level, and current and past members of Hamas.
Their shared goal is to promote international legitimacy for Hamas — in Europe, Africa, the Middle East (of course) and even in Latin America — in a bid to challenge the PLO’s international standing as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
Hamas, in this way, is slowly but surely establishing a global infrastructure of supporters who are providing not only encouragement and legitimacy, but also quite a bit of financial assistance.
Tracing the outlines of this infrastructure lends some surprising insights. For example, Britain turns out to be hosting more of this semi-official activity by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood than any other country in Europe.
One almost quintessential example of such activity under innocent-seeming cover is the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign.
“This group was established in 2003 in Saudi Arabia,” said Dr. Ehud Rosen, an expert on political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood who assisted Steven Merley, another expert, in writing a comprehensive study on the topic. Merley started a website, Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, which reports on Muslim Brotherhood activity all over the world.
“It was initiated by two former members of al-Qaeda, both from Saudi Arabia, who tried to brand the new organization as ‘non-violent,’” Rosen said. “The organization was rebooted in Qatar in 2005 [following the Saudi government’s objections to hosting it on Saudi soil]. Its founding group from 2005 includes high-ranking Hamas officials, including political leader Khaled Mashaal, alongside representatives of other groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s global organization, Salafists and Salafi jihadists.
“The group has held many conferences and issued fatwas against the West, such as against France after it began military action in Mali.”
The Campaign began focusing on Gaza in 2009, during and after Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli military campaign aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. At a conference held in February 2009, the group decided to turn Gaza into a new front for jihad under the auspices of the “Istanbul Declaration.” The declaration, signed by 90 Muslim clerics from all over the world, including members of Hamas, stated that the Palestinian Authority was not the representative of the Palestinian people, while the “elected government of Hamas,” was in fact the legitimate representative.
The statement attacked the Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative — a proposal that offers normalization of ties between Arab countries and Israel in exchange for Israel pulling out of territories claimed by Palestinians — calling it nothing less than “a proven betrayal of the Islamic Nation and the Palestinian cause, and a blatant betrayal of the Palestinian people.”
“This [Global Anti-Aggression Campaign] group, like some other Muslim groups throughout Europe, does not call itself the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ or a supporter of Hamas. These are networks of groups scattered over nearly the entire world. For their part, Muslim Brotherhood leaders claim their movement is active in 80 countries, but since September 11, 2001, and even before, the groups that are identified with [the Brotherhood] have denied any connection,” Rosen said.
“Take another example: FIOE, the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe,” he said. “Thirty-seven different groups in different countries on the continent operate under that organization, and over the years have created an image for themselves as ‘the legitimate representatives’ — the Islamic mainstream. The group is known as IGD in Germany and UOIF in France. The same thing is going on in Scandinavia and almost everywhere.”
These networks operate according to the long-established model of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. In each country there is a network of civil society organizations — in other words, dawa, a word in Arabic meaning proselytizing or preaching of Islam. These organizations are run by well-known figures who head madrasas, or Muslim schools; mosques; charitable organizations that raise money not only for Muslims in Europe but also for Hamas; and even student associations in every well-known university in Europe. Recently, Muslim “human rights” groups have been established that work to strengthen support for the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Essam Mustafa (Youtube screenshot)
Many prominent figures in these groups, again, operate on British soil. Here are some examples.
• Anas Altikriti, a native of Iraq, is the son of a high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood official. His father fled Saddam Hussein’s regime to Britain. He himself was born in Iraq, but has lived in London since he was two years old. He visited the White House two years ago and met with president Barack Obama. Though he supports its policies, he says he is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Muhammad Sawalha, of Palestinian origin, is very well known to the Israeli security establishment as one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank. He also lives in London.
• Zaher Birawi, a former Hamas operative in the Gaza Strip, was one of the spokesmen of the Mavi Marmara flotilla and has been involved in other flotillas.
• Essam Yusuf Mustafa is a former member of Hamas’s political wing, at least according to the US Treasury Department. Mustafa, one of the organizers of the latest conference in Istanbul, is on the board of trustees of another organization, Interpal, which was declared a terrorism-supporting organization by the United States as far back as 2003. Both Birawi and Mustafa live in Britain.
Mustafa was a leader of a group called the Charity Coalition (also known as the Union of Good), which raised money for Hamas in the early 2000s and gained the spiritual support of Yusuf al-Qardawi, the leading Sunni cleric and Muslim Brotherhood member. The Turkish IHH group, which was one of the organizers of the Marmara flotilla, was also part of the Charity Coalition.
There are others, in and out of Britain: Ismail Patel, head of the Friends of Al-Aqsa group; Daud Abdullah, originally from Grenada, a former member of the Muslim Council of Britain, who helps operate a news site which takes a pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance; Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian who is the CEO of the Alhiwar television station, which operates from London and is considered explicitly pro-Hamas (Zaher Birawi hosts a show on the station); Egyptian-born Ibrahim el-Zayat, currently living in Germany, who is considered a key figure in the financial dealings of these networks; and Ibrahim Munir Mustafa, also Egyptian by birth, who chairs the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and lives in London.
Rosen, who has been tracking these names for quite some time, said there is a distinction between members of the official Muslim Brotherhood, such as those who operate in Egypt, and the networks that are thought to be identified with them.
“These are in effect groups that sprang up from former members of the Muslim Brotherhood who fled Egypt in the 1960s and settled in Europe. These groups were founded without any direct orders [from the Brotherhood], without a centralized command structure or a prominent commander,” he explained.
“But there are definite networks here, with major nexuses, such as London or Germany. They cooperate with the official Muslim Brotherhood and with Hamas.
“Hamas’s place in the enormous organization known as the global Muslim Brotherhood is growing right now,” he said. “Hamas is the movement’s own flesh and blood, and it wants to take control of the PLO. This is why its global activity has taken on a new importance. The Palestinian organization is trying to re-invent itself, with a new platform and a supposedly more moderate direction, but they are still the same organization.
“The whole BDS issue benefits from this Islamist infrastructure and receives assistance from organizations that are identified with Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Rosen. “And there is persistent talk of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, replacing Ibrahim Munir as the chair of the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.”
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