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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Noah Beck</title>
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		<title>Obama Helps Terror Go Nuclear</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/obama-helps-terror-go-nuclear/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-helps-terror-go-nuclear</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/obama-helps-terror-go-nuclear/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245719</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's desperate drive to achieve a deal with Iran at any price. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/hi-obama-iran-852-03932845.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245720" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/hi-obama-iran-852-03932845.jpg" alt="hi-obama-iran-852-03932845" width="354" height="286" /></a>Last Tuesday’s terror attack on a Jerusalem synagogue killed five people: four rabbis (including three born in the USA) and a Druze police officer. Two Palestinians entered during morning prayers and attacked worshipers with knives, meat cleavers, and a handgun. <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-washington-terror-attack-focuses-lens-on-pa-incitement/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Congress showed moral clarity when blaming the horrors on Hamas and Palestinian Authority incitement</span></a>, but Obama’s statements were perfunctorily “balanced.” <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?322810-2/president-obama-remarks-jerusalem-synagogue-attack-ebola"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Obama warned of a “spiral” of violence</span></a> – an obtuse refrain of those suggesting <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/dershowitz-rips-obama-on-synagogue-slaughter/">moral equivalency</a> between terrorism and the fight against it. Obama also misleadingly claimed that “President Abbas&#8230;strongly condemned the attacks” omitting that <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Analysis-Abbas-forced-by-Kerry-condemns-attack-382225"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Abbas did so only after pressure from the administration and with equivocation</span></a> (Abbas suggested a link between recent terrorism and visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, as if to justify the attacks). It’s also worth noting that <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=21571"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Palestinians celebrated the massacre</span></a> (as they did <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/palestinians-cheer-while-america-mourns/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">after the 2013 Boston bombing</span></a> and <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&amp;x_issue=17&amp;x_article=265"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the 9/11 attacks</span></a>).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama’s weak reaction is consistent with his mostly <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/10/president_obama_s_campaign_against_isis_lacks_a_strategy_the_united_states.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">impotent response to ISIS terrorists who behead Americans</span></a> and <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/isis-beheads-7-men-and-3-women-in-syria-us-led-airstrikes-hit-stronghold-127367/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Mideast Christians</span></a> and grow their Islamist empire by the day. Frighteningly, his approach to Iranian nukes follows the same meek pattern, but the stakes are exponentially higher, because when Iran goes nuclear, so does terrorism.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/sites/default/files/Iranian-Support-For-Terrorism.pdf">Iran is already the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism</a></span>, without nuclear weapons. <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/07/10/day-of-bombardment-in-israel-nears-nuclear-reactor/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Iran-supported Hamas has already tried to commit nuclear terror</span></a>: last summer, Hamas launched rockets at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. How much more dangerous will Iran become when it has nukes? Even if Iran doesn’t directly commit nuclear terrorism, an Iranian nuclear umbrella will embolden the regime and the terrorist organizations it sponsors.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama has a long record of weakness towards Iran. In 2009, when Iran’s Basij paramilitary force brutalized demonstrators protesting Iran’s fraudulent presidential election, <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/10063438/the_iranian_election_barack_obamaas_cowardly_silence/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Obama kept his response irrelevantly mild</span></a> for the sake of “engaging” Iran. That surely helped Iranian voters understand the risks of protesting the “free” election of 2012 (<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113324/iran-elections-2013-khameneis-engineered-elections-become-reality"><span style="color: #1255cc;">involving eight regime-picked candidates</span></a>). It was indeed a very orderly rubberstamp.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">In 2011, when a U.S. <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/12/13/iran-mocks-obama-after-he-asks-for-downed-drone-back-says-he-begs-to-give-him-back-his-toy-plane/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">drone went down on Iranian soil</span></a>, Obama cordially requested it back. The regime recently scoffed at such impotence by <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/iran-claims-video-shows-reverse-engineered-us-drone/story?id=26858830">showcasing its knock-off based on that drone</a> <span style="color: #222222;"><span style="color: #333333;">and some <a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-firm-displays-us-made-helicopters-103647430.html" target="_blank">U.S.-made helicopters that it purchased</a>, highlighting just how useless sanctions have become</span></span></span>.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">President Hassan Rouhani’s election vastly improved the public face of Iran’s nuclear program, and Obama was charmed too. Obama has <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/08/obama-is-lying-about-iran-sanctions/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">been unilaterally weakening the sanctions against Iran</span></a> by not enforcing them. He has threatened to thwart any Congressional attempt to limit his nuclear generosity by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/us/politics/obama-sees-an-iran-deal-that-could-avoid-congress-.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">simply lifting sanctions without Congressional approval</span></a>. Yet despite these concessions and Rouhani&#8217;s smiles, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360775656/after-acid-attacks-and-execution-iran-defends-human-rights-record"><span style="color: #1255cc;">human rights abuses in Iran have actually worsened.</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama declared in 2012 (while running for reelection) that <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/obama-to-iran-and-israel-as-president-of-the-united-states-i-dont-bluff/253875/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">he doesn’t bluff when it comes to stopping Iranian nukes</span></a>, and that containment was not an option, unlike military force. But the credibility of that statement collapsed after Obama shrunk away from his “red line” against Syrian chemical weapons use. In 2013, Basher Assad gassed his own people and Obama took no military action. So if Obama cowers against a disintegrating state, what are the chances that he’ll militarily prevent Iranian nukes?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">And Obama has dangerously undermined the only military threat to Iranian nukes that anyone still takes seriously: Israel. On the Iranian nuclear issue, Obama has <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-denies-israel-and-us-disagree-on-iran-bomb-timeline/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">isolated Israel on how close Iran is to a nuclear capability</span></a> with estimates that are far laxer. And as long as Obama continues negotiating (even if Iran is clearly playing for time as <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/20/gop-rejects-obama-s-creative-iran-nuclear-compromises.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the U.S. offers ever more desperate proposals</span></a>) or reaches a deal allowing Iran to become a threshold nuclear weapons state, an Israeli military option to defang Iranian nukes appears less legitimate.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://tabletmag.com/scroll/185121/former-ap-reporter-confirms-matti-friedman-account">The media’s anti-Israel bias</a></span> is well known (they <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/A-Dose-of-Nuance-Can-we-please-stop-talking-about-hasbara-381004"><span style="color: #1255cc;">can’t even get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct</span></a> (compare how <i>The Guardian</i> writes accurate headlines when <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/21/canada-soldier-convert-islam-hit-and-run-quebec"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Canada suffers an Islamist car attack</span></a> but <a href="http://honestreporting.com/the-guardians-car-crash-headline/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">not when Israel does</span></a>). So if Obama accepts Iran’s nuclear program and Israel then attacks it, the media will be even harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Downgrading US-Israel relations seems to be part of Obama’s détente with Iran. Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei recently <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-supreme-leader-touts-9-point-plan-to-destroy-israel/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tweeted his plan for destroying Israel</span></a>, but Obama grows even more determined to reach an accord that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program. And the Obama administration’s diplomatic abuse of America’s closest Mideast ally is unprecedented – from <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/president-allegedly-dumps-israeli-prime-minister-dinner/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">his humiliation of Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2010</span></a>, to Secretary of State <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/john-kerry-the-betrayal/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">John Kerry’s betrayal of Israel during Operation Protective Edge</span></a>, to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/29/weinstein-5-takeaways-from-top-obama-official-calling-netanyahu-chickenst/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit”</span></a> a few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/10/29/white-house-distances-itself-from-chickenshit-insult-leveled-at-netanyahu-stops-short-of-apology/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">without even apologizing later</span></a> (note the irony of calling Netanyahu a coward anonymously). Obama seems far more concerned by <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-rejects-netanyahus-dismissal-of-e-jerusalem-housing-criticism/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israeli construction of apartments in Jerusalem</span></a> than a nuclear Iran. And he has been pressuring Israel to retreat from more disputed territory, effectively rewarding Palestinians for launching the third missile war against Israel from Gaza in five years last summer and now <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/third-intifada-jerusalem-violence-temple-mount-religious-war.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the third Intifidah inside Israel</span></a> in 17 years. That puts Obama just behind <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.626383"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the European appeasers who think Palestinian bellicosity merits statehood</span></a>. They all naively think &#8212; at Israel&#8217;s peril &#8212; that peace is possible with <a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/jerusalems-new-holy-war" target="_blank">raw hatred</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Obama indeed appears desperate to get a nuclear accord with Iran at any price. He has written <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/11/13/iran-responds-to-barack-obamas-letter-about-fight-against-isis-and-tehrans-nuclear-ambitions/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">letters</span></a> asking for Iran’s help against ISIS after they <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/26/iran-hints-at-interest-in-nuclear-trade-off-for-isis-help/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hinted at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange</span></a>, and has pursued an agreement at all costs. Obama’s top aide, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-coming-detente-with-iran/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Ben Rhodes, was caught saying how a nuclear accord is as important to Obama as “healthcare”</span></a>; at least there’s a fitting slogan to sell the deal to Americans: “If you like your nukes, you can keep them.”</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Russia, the serial spoiler, suggested extending <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/13/us-russia-iran-nuclear-idUSKCN0IX1H420141113"><span style="color: #1255cc;">nuclear talks past the November 24th deadline</span></a>. Iran will undoubtedly agree to more enrichment time (while it keeps <a href="http://www.thetower.org/1097oc-western-officials-iran-stonewalling-iaea-investigation-endangering-talks/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">stonewalling the IAEA’s investigations into it nukes</span></a>), as it did last July. For Obama, a bad agreement or an extension looks far better than concluding that talks have failed and issuing more empty threats to stop Iran militarily. And so U.S. foreign policy will continue its freefall, as the world’s bad actors will want to see what they can extort from a leader even weaker than President Carter. While Carter permitted Iran to hold 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days, Obama may allow Iran to hold the world hostage with nuclear terrorism. It&#8217;s now dreadfully obvious: without massive public pressure, Obama will help Iran get nukes; anyone concerned about nuclear terrorism should sign this petition: <a href="http://www.nobombforiran.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">http://www.nobombforiran.com</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></span></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>ISIS Beheadings Rouse the West</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/isis-beheadings-rouse-the-west/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-beheadings-rouse-the-west</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:30:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[parallel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240197</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gaza remains the West's blind spot, even though the Hamas-ISIS parallels are glaringly obvious.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/terrorism-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240212" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/terrorism-2-450x337.jpg" alt="terrorism-2" width="279" height="209" /></a>The ISIS beheadings of two U.S. journalists within two weeks &#8212; first James Foley and now Steven Satloff &#8212; have raised alarm bells in the West about Islamist threats. But Israel has been facing this specter for decades and – given Israel’s proximity to the Islamist threat – the Jewish state is the canary in the coal mine for the West. But Gaza seems to be the Western blind spot, even though the Hamas-ISIS parallels are glaringly obvious.</p>
<p>Since beheadings are the current media focus, and ISIS has beheaded infants, it’s worth noting that <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5110.htm">Hamas praised the 2011 Itamar murders</a>, which involved <a href="http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/62769/fogel-murderers-family-praises-hero-killer">the decapitation of a baby</a>. Islamist beheadings should surprise no one, given that they’ve been happening for much of (and despite) modernity – perhaps because “Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited…to legitimize beheadings,” <a href="http://www.meforum.org/713/beheading-in-the-name-of-islam">according to this study.</a></p>
<p>While there have been no reported Hamas beheadings of journalists, the similarities between Hamas and ISIS are more important than their differences.</p>
<p>Both would like to establish a Caliphate. Hamas Interior Minister declared as much in <a href="http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4063.htm">this 2013 speech</a>.</p>
<p>Both gain and keep power through savagery and fear. Hamas rose to power in Gaza thanks to its violent, 2007 coup, and<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-foiled-hamas-plan-for-coup-against-pa-in-west-bank/"> recently planned a second putsch (in the West Bank)</a>. Hamas famously <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/palestinian-horror-2-thrown-death-article-1.222464">threw its political opponents off rooftops</a>.</p>
<p>Like ISIS, Hamas uses <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/teaching-terror-how-hamas-radicalizes-palestinian-society">clinics, schools, mosques, and charities to gain legitimacy</a>, and <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=455">inculcates children with the values of jihadi terror</a>. A Vice documentary exposed how <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vice-isis-video-child-indoctrination-2014-8">ISIS indoctrinates and uses children for war</a>, but Hamas has been doing so for years, educating <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=846">children to worship death</a> and <a href="http://www.thetower.org/hamas-training-tens-of-thousands-of-child-soldiers/">using child soldiers</a>.</p>
<p>Hamas’ use of human shields has been widely documented (and proven very effective in <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/public-support-israel-shifting-amid-gaza-war-britain-warns-n168366">turning public opinion against Israel</a> by exponentially increasing Gazan civilian casualties). ISIS used <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20140806040459.htm">500 Yazidi captives</a> and <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/iraqonthebrink/isis-may-use-39-indian-hostages-as-human-shields-fears-govt/article1-1232180.aspx">39 abducted Indians</a> as human shields.</p>
<p>ISIS is known for its expulsion of Christians from Mosul and its genocidal <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/19/us-iraq-security-yazidis-survivor-idUSKBN0GJ1A620140819?irpc=932">murder of Yazidis</a> and<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/19/world/meast/christians-flee-mosul-iraq/"> Christians who refuse to convert to Islam or pay the jizyah</a>. Hamas would undoubtedly behave the same way towards the religious minorities within its reach, if Israeli Jews didn’t have the protection of a superior military, and if Hamas didn’t depend on international donations to Gaza that might dry up after a wholesale slaughter of the tiny Christian community there. But even with these checks on Hamas’ brutality, Hamas regularly practices and preaches religious hatred. For years, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126388#.U_Gb7vldXHQ">Hamas has attacked Christians</a>, including <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2009/December/Rights-Group-Hamas-Desecrated-Christian-Graves-/">defiling Christian graves, abducting and murdering Christians</a>, and more recently <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2014/august/gaza-bishop-hamas-used-church-to-fire-rockets-/">using a Gazan church to launch rockets at Israel</a>. Hamas preaches <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=8091">hateful incitement against Jews</a>, has <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2008/09/74666/">desecrated Jewish holy sites</a>, and has <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/palestinian/pages/hamas%20terror%20attacks%2022-mar-2004.aspx">murdered hundreds of Jews in terrorist attacks</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vanessa-thevathasan/the-modus-operandi-of-isi_b_5680968.html">ISIS uses Sharia to justify its barbaric treatment of women</a>. Also enamored with Sharia, Hamas treats women as<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-cancels-gaza-marathon-over-hamas-ban-on-women/"> second-class citizens</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/upsurge-palestinian-honour-killings-gaza-201432372831899701.html">endorses honor killings</a>.</p>
<p>Like ISIS, Hamas <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5296.htm">advocates the death penalty for homosexuals</a>, lets <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/24/gaza-theme-park-attack-arson">Islamic morality police govern</a> economic activity, and <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127508">punishes crime with lashings, amputations, and executions</a>. There have been no broadcast beheadings of homosexuals by ISIS yet, but such horrors can’t be far off, given that ISIS fighters <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702701/British-ISIS-fighter-Syria-told-Panorama-wants-suicide-bomber-convicted-twice-spreading-hatred-against-gay-people.html">include gay-hating Westerners</a>.</p>
<p>Hamas <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/middleeast/03gaza.html">condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden</a> and ISIS aspires to surpass him.</p>
<p>Yet, astonishingly, <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2014/07/09/as-hamas-attacks-israel-with-rockets-the-obama-administration-and-the-liberals-call-for-israeli-restraint/">President Obama and liberals have continually called for restraint</a> when Israel’s military has confronted Hamas (after Hamas’ countless attacks against Israeli civilians) and Obama has pressed Israel to negotiate with Hamas (as if the U.S. would ever negotiate with ISIS). Worse still, the Obama administration <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/john-kerry-the-betrayal/">tried to advance Hamas’ negotiating position</a> and recently <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-secretly-agreed-on-gradual-easing-of-gaza-blockade/">pressured Israel into letting Hamas keep its military capabilities</a>. Given the opportunity to obliterate ISIS’ terrorist infrastructure, would the U.S. ever spare any part of it?</p>
<p>Even more troubling – in terms of the perils involved – is Obama’s feckless strategy towards the Iranian regime, which is the world’s chief sponsor of Islamist terrorist groups (including Hamas and Hezbollah). Like so many Islamist terrorist organizations, Iran <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/12/iran-s-new-gay-executions.html">executes homosexuals</a>; <a href="http://www.awid.org/Library/The-Status-of-Violence-Against-Women-in-Islamic-Republic-of-Iran">mistreats women</a>; <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/21/irans-regime-targets-evangelical-christians-as-national-security-threat/">persecutes religious minorities</a>; employs barbaric, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/05/embracing-stone-age-iran-retains-medieval-penalty-for-adultery/">Sharia-law punishments</a> (like amputation and stoning); and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-devito/post_2729_b_1140289.html">brutalizes political dissenters (among myriad other human rights violations)</a>. But unlike the terrorist organizations, Iran could theoretically acquire a nuclear weapons capability <a href="http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable">in under two months</a>. Imagine an Islamist state, which openly supports Islamist terrorists, possessing nukes. Alarmingly, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-negotiations-extended-deadline-obama-boxed-in-2014-7">Obama’s overall approach and eagerness to negotiate any deal he can get</a> with Iran have signaled weakness in a region that respects only strength. As if to laugh at Obama’s naiveté, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/18/despite-less-sanctions-iran-backs-hamas/">the Iranian regime has continued supporting Hamas despite the sanctions relief that Obama delivered</a> to the Islamic Republic. Obama’s meek and misguided policy has only emboldened the Iranian regime, improved its economic condition, and given diplomatic cover to Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Islamist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah, all seek the destruction of Western values and civilization. The pursuit of nukes by the Islamist state of Iran – which could eventually enable nuclear terrorism by Iran’s jihadi proxies – poses the greatest threat of all. The West ignores these facts at its peril, and should therefore support Israel’s war against Hamas, and its efforts against Iranian nukes, just as the U.S. has rightly (albeit tardily and minimally) supported the Kurds in their fight against ISIS.</p>
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		<title>Hamas’ Love Letter to ISIS (with Ten Tips)</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/hamas-love-letter-to-isis-with-ten-tips/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-love-letter-to-isis-with-ten-tips</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:30:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239119</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How to manipulate the media to support the jihadist cause. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239121" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l.jpg" alt="hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l" width="316" height="253" /></a>Dear Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our leadership felt bad about all of the tough press you’ve been getting lately and – given our talent for ruining Gaza while enjoying endless love from the media – we thought we’d share some pointers with you.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">We’ve been at this Islamist terrorism thing for decades now, so we can offer some helpful tips for your war to establish a Caliphate – <a href="http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4063.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">a goal we LOVE</span></a>. After all, if you overrun Jordan, we could even become allied forces in the West Bank, from which we can jointly conquer Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So, during one of our tunnel-side chats, our most seasoned jihadists compiled this list of best practices, in the hope that these suggestions can improve your performance:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">1)      If the U.S. ever insists that you participate in elections when there are no democratic traditions or institutions in place, say YES (we won over half of the legislature in Gaza’s 2006 election).</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">2)      But if power-sharing arrangements eventually cramp your style, try a violent coup. We did that with our 2007 takeover of Gaza, and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-foiled-hamas-plan-for-coup-against-pa-in-west-bank/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">were recently planning a second putsch (in the West Bank) and mega-terror attacks until those pesky Israelis foiled our plot</span></a>. But gaining and keeping power through violence and fear is KEY. In 2007, we even <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/palestinian-horror-2-thrown-death-article-1.222464"><span style="color: #1255cc;">threw our political opponents off rooftops for good measure</span></a>. When in doubt, use brutality to quell any inconvenient dissent. Actually, you’re doing just fine on this point – keep it up!</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">3)      If you’re lucky enough to have peace-loving idealists hoping for your success and giving you income-generating resources, destroy their gifts to solidify your poverty credentials. <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9331863/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/looters-strip-gaza-greenhouses/#.U_Lh7_ldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Looters ruined more than 3,000 greenhouses that Israel left us in 2005</span></a> and this strengthened our image as economic victims that much sooner. And we attacked Israel so many times (including our tunnel-assisted abduction of Gilad Shalit and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19068807/ns/msnbc/t/gaza-summers-lebanon/#.U_Lm6_ldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sometimes 30 rocket attacks per day on Sderot</span></a>) that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1554916/Israel-orders-blockade-of-Gaza-Strip.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israel had to seal Gaza&#8217;s borders to limit our weapons imports from Iran</span></a>. But Israel’s silly desire to limit how we can kill Israelis did wonders for our victimhood because the media forgot all about the cause of the blockade and focused only on the hardship it causes us. It gets better: when Israel opens the blockade to send us humanitarian aid, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorist-shell-gaza-crossing-used-to-transfer-supplies/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we even bomb the crossing</span></a> and NOBODY cares (or wonders if maybe we’re responsible for the blockade or Gazan misery generally). Pretty cool, right?</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">4)      We use <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/teaching-terror-how-hamas-radicalizes-palestinian-society"><span style="color: #1255cc;">clinics, schools, mosques and charities to gain legitimacy</span></a> among our people and <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=455"><span style="color: #1255cc;">inculcate them with the values of jihadi terror</span></a>. Oh wait, you do that too. Good job!</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">5)      But you should definitely use more human shields to protect yourselves from U.S. airstrikes. <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/hamas-manual-details-civilian-death-plan-israel/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">We LOVE human shields</span></a> – they’re cheap and effective. <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=12117"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Just remember to tell mourners how you fast-tracked the victims to heaven</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">6)      You WANT dead babies. This is HUGE. The ever-shortening attention span fueled by social media is awesome because it relieves everyone of intellectual hassles like historical context, nuanced moral judgment, deeper analysis of cause and effect, etc. Just show that the people you’re trying to kill have caused baby deaths while defending themselves, and you win. It’s that simple.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">7)      Another technique that we HIGHLY recommend is offending every rule of decency. That means:</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">a)      <a href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Pages/Protective-Edge-Hamas-violations-of-ceasefires-chronology.aspx"><span style="color: #1255cc;">requesting cease-fires and then violating them</span></a>,</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">b)      using <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/28/hamas-uses-hospitals-ambulances-military-purposes/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hospitals and ambulances for military purposes,</span></a></span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">c)      bombing your own people and then blaming your enemy (we killed nine Gazans and scared the media into faulting Israel; <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/italian-journalist-defies-hamas-out-of-gaza-far-from-hamas-retaliation-misfired-rocket-killed-children-in-shati/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">when an Italian journalist revealed the truth after he was safe from our threats</span></a>, nobody cared),</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">d)      using child labor to build your terror tunnels (<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/At-least-160-children-died-digging-tunnels-for-Hamas-369138"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we killed about 160 in the process and nobody cared</span></a>),</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">e)      <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=846"><span style="color: #1255cc;">teaching children to worship death</span></a> and <a href="http://www.thetower.org/hamas-training-tens-of-thousands-of-child-soldiers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">using child soldiers</span></a> (props on your <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vice-isis-video-child-indoctrination-2014-8"><span style="color: #1255cc;">great work with kids, ISIS</span></a>!),</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">f)       <a href="http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-hamas-diverted-internationally.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">diverting humanitarian resources for terrorist use</span></a> (we could have built at least<a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180007/concrete-facts-about-hamas"><span style="color: #1255cc;"> seven skyscrapers</span></a> with the concrete expropriated for our terror tunnels) while protesting your poverty <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0707-while-gazans-suffer-in-poverty-leaders-of-hamas-live-in-luxury/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">even as your leadership lives well</span></a>,</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">g)      <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-admits-intimidating-foreign-press-who-reported-wrong-message/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">intimidating</span></a> and <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/21/hamas-teaches-gazas-facebook-users-secret-spinning-terror/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">deceiving the press</span></a> into promoting your narrative (if they don’t do so on their own, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/08/WATCH-BBC-Admits-Gaza-Under-Attack-Images-Fabricated"><span style="color: #1255cc;">like when the BBC disseminated inaccurate photos of Gaza</span></a>)</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">h)      using cease-fires <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0897-hamas-exploits-ceasefire-to-make-more-rockets/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">to rearm</span></a> (rather than rebuild) <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/27/report-hamas-used-ceasefire-to-execute-25-gazans-accused-of-treachery-blamed-israel-for-deaths/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">while executing your domestic critics</span></a> and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-have-executed-dozens-of-tunnel-diggers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">your tunnel-diggers</span></a>.</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">8)      </span><span style="color: #000000;">We also have some positive feedback for you, ISIS. You have impressively excelled at championing</span><span style="color: #232323;"> our core values! We&#8217;re all for <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=8091"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hateful incitement against religious minorities</span></a>, treating women as<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-cancels-gaza-marathon-over-hamas-ban-on-women/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"> second-class citizens</span></a>, giving <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5296.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">homosexuals the death penalty</span></a></span><span style="color: #323333;">, letting <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/24/gaza-theme-park-attack-arson"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Islamic morality police govern</span></a> economic activity, <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7852.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">teaching war</span></a> rather than human rights, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126388#.U_Gb7vldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attacking Christians</span></a> (or just <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2014/august/gaza-bishop-hamas-used-church-to-fire-rockets-/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">using their church to launch rockets</span></a>), and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/upsurge-palestinian-honour-killings-gaza-201432372831899701.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">endorsing honor killings</span></a>. </span><span style="color: #232323;">You’re awesome!</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">9)      <span style="color: #000000;">We <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/middleeast/03gaza.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden</span></a> as much as you aspire to surpass him. But</span> PLEASE stop trying to involve the West (as you did with your <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/muslims-demand-breakaway-islamic-nation-norway-or-another-9-11-threatened"><span style="color: #1255cc;">threats against Norway</span></a>, <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4616/islamic-state-spain"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Spain</span></a>, and especially <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/18/isis-threatens-america-again-we-will-drown-all-of-you-in-blood/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the US</span></a> – Obama just <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-secretly-agreed-on-gradual-easing-of-gaza-blockade/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">pressured Israel into letting us keep our military capabilities</span></a>, so be nice!). The key here is to complete your domination of the Middle East by first eradicating its only democracy (Israel) and its moderate Arab states. You want to lull Europe and the U.S. into spineless passivity by reinforcing their naïve assumption that we’ll be appeased enough to stop at the Middle East. We need Western “powers” to cower away from our region long enough for Iran to get nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that you, our fellow Sunnis, have a thing against Shiites, but the Iranian regime hates Western infidels as much as we do, so we can all work together in the service of Jihad. Indeed, Iran is our main sponsor (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/hamas-rocket-arsenal-2014-7"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we get our best missiles from them!</span></a>). And once Iran has nukes, THEN we can go after the EU and U.S. But this game takes patience, guys – not that much because Iran (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-negotiations-extended-deadline-obama-boxed-in-2014-7"><span style="color: #1255cc;">thanks to Obama’s “strategy”</span></a>) could have <a href="http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable"><span style="color: #1255cc;">nukes in two months</span></a>. But until that happens (or you somehow help us to destroy Jordan and Israel beforehand), you really need to chill out on the rhetoric against the West.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">10)  If you want to skyrocket your international popularity, you should attack Israel ASAP. You may hear some perfunctory condemnations but you’ll be secretly admired. Better still: compel Israel to defend itself militarily – that’s when you can literally surf a tidal wave of global support. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of having Israel as your opponent — anyone else really won’t do. Why do you think we rarely attack Egypt (which also blockades Gaza)? Because they’d flatten Gaza and nobody would care. Remember Ansar Dine? Our fellow Islamists in Mali were thousands of miles from France, but nobody cared when the French started bombing them in 2013 without any threat against France&#8217;s security. To guarantee world support for your Islamist ways, your enemy must be Israel. But DON’T use donkeys (<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/hamas-sends-bomb-covered-donkey-hit-israeli-troops/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">as we do</span></a>) to blow up Israelis because <a href="http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000239.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">this will upset the animal-rights group PETA</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Destroying Western civilization is far easier than building it, but still requires a disciplined strategy, so we hope these pointers come in handy. Feel free to get in touch with any questions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">With love and support,</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hamas</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Israel’s Disproportionate Decency</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/israels-disproportionate-decency/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-disproportionate-decency</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:45:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[casualties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disproportionate]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238472</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Israel sacrifices its own well-being for the sake of its enemy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/tensions-remain-high-at-israeli-gaza-border-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238473" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/tensions-remain-high-at-israeli-gaza-border-1-450x299.jpg" alt="tensions-remain-high-at-israeli-gaza-border-1" width="310" height="206" /></a>When observers describe or denounce Israeli military actions as “disproportionate,” they glibly assume sweeping legal conclusions without sufficient proof or analysis. But the evidence shows that Israel has acted with disproportionate decency while Hamas has committed war crimes.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket and missile attacks – which now total <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/after-29-days-operation-protective-edge-by-the-numbers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">about 3,500 in the last month</span></a> – target primarily Israeli civilians. The effects of Hamas’ attacks have been serious (contrary to what most media reports suggest):</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">a) <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/preemie-births-rise-during-gaza-op"><span style="color: #1255cc;">increasing premature births</span></a>,</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">b) shutting down Israel’s biggest airport, <a href="http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/07/flight-ban-wont-hurt-israeli-economy-for-now/374870/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">blocking 90 percent of incoming and outgoing passengers</span></a>,</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">c) forcing about 8 million people to live on the edge 24/7, fearing that if their missile defense system or scramble to shelters falters, they could die,</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">d) constant interruptions throughout the day and night, with as little as ten seconds to find shelter,</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">e) <a href="http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2014/8/6/operation-protective-edge-cost-israel-43-billion"><span style="color: #1255cc;">billions of dollars in economic damage</span></a>.<br />
</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The principle of distinction requires belligerents to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Hamas’ violations of this principle amount to a double war crime: first by targeting Israeli civilians, and second by using Gazan civilians as human shields for these attacks, thereby making it much harder for the IDF military response to distinguish Gazan combatants from noncombatants. <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/14/hamas-use-human-shields-war-crime/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Hamas exhorts Gazans to act as human shields</span></a> and <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/08/04/captured-hamas-combat-manual-explains-benefits-human-shields/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">its combat manual encourages this war crime</span></a> while admitting that Israel avoids civilian casualties – an avoidance that Hamas exploits for tactical advantage. <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4580/gaza-population-density"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Alan Dershowitz deftly highlights yet another proof of Hamas war crimes</span></a>: Hamas chooses to locate its military efforts in the most densely populated parts of Gaza, instead of in the far less populated areas nearby – a decision calculated to maximize Gazan civilian deaths. Cynically breaking all rules, <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/28/hamas-uses-hospitals-ambulances-military-purposes/">Hamas even uses ambulances to transport fighters and converts Gaza’s hospitals into command centers, weapons depots, and rocket-launch sites.</a></span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.shabak.gov.il/ENGLISH/ENTERRORDATA/REVIEWS/Pages/Hamas%E2%80%93sum.aspx">Hamas perfected suicide bombing</a></span> and is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and Europe, so its war crimes are unsurprising, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119046/gaza-war-media-coverage-lacked-reporting-hamas-fighters-tactics"><span style="color: #1255cc;">even if the media concealed Hamas’ barbarism for the last month</span></a>. But what of the oft repeated but seldom questioned claim that Israeli military actions are “excessive” or “disproportionate?”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The first duty of any state is to provide security to its citizens. Adjusting for size differences (the US has about 473 times Israel’s land mass, and 40 times Israel’s population), what would be the US military response if Al-Qaeda took over Mexico and launched about 47,300 projectiles per day at the US mainland, killing 120 US civilians and 2,560 soldiers and causing significant property damage, widespread insecurity, and travel shutdowns? Such a comparative context supports those proclaiming that <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/07/22/israeli_ambassador_to_u_s_says_idf_deserves_nobel_peace_prize_for_unimaginable_restraint/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the IDF</span></a> and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=19195"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Bibi Netanyahu deserve a Nobel Peace Prize</span></a> for their restraint during such a challenging war.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As of August 9, Israel’s military has attacked about 5,000 targets in Gaza (<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/after-29-days-operation-protective-edge-by-the-numbers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">4,762 during the first 29 days of Operation Protective Edge</span></a> and a few hundred since) resulting in <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-trade-fire-as-gaza-death-toll-mounts-1407579399"><span style="color: #1255cc;">1,915 deaths (according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health</span></a>). Even if this total were accurate and represented entirely civilian deaths, the strike-to-kill ratio absurdly implies that Israel’s military needs about 2.5 attacks to kill one person. But if Israel’s goal were just to kill Gazans, it could kill well over 1,915 with a single airstrike. Why spend so much on intelligence gathering and precision-guided bombs (or force Israeli citizens to endure so many costly weeks of war) when the IDF could raze half of Gaza in an hour? The fact that the IDF has struck so many times with so few casualties shows the extent of its restraint and precision while destroying the terrorist infrastructure threatening Israelis.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israel has made extraordinary efforts to minimize civilian casualties – despite Hamas’ plan to maximize them. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/IDF-releases-video-of-aborted-strikes-in-Gaza-to-prevent-civilian-casualties-362733"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israel aborts airstrikes that will result in excessive civilian casualties,</span></a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/09/roof-knocking-the-israeli-mjilitarys-tactic-of-phoning-palestinians-it-is-about-to-bomb"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warns civilians to clear areas that will be targeted</span></a>, and <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183117#.U-kUcvldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">loses ground troops in densely populated areas like Shejaiya</span></a> to avoid airstrikes that would kill far more Gaza civilians. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/30/cruz-a-tale-of-two-hospitals/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israel chose not to target Gaza City’s main Shifa Hospital</span></a>, even though it knew that Hamas leaders were cynically hiding there and an airstrike could have substantially harmed Hamas’ military leadership.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-israeli-soldiers-who-died-protecting-palestinians/">As this article explains</a></span>, Israel sacrifices blood and treasure to minimize harm to Gaza civilians. And yet somehow Israel is still accused of deliberately targeting civilians even <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=4755"><span style="color: #1255cc;">when Hamas’ misfired rockets are responsible</span></a> or when an IDF mistake happens. But as <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4570/gaza-civilian-casualties"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Colonel Richard Kemp argues,</span></a> “mistakes and malfunctions happen in all fighting armies and in all conflicts…Do those who condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians as deliberate acts by the IDF suggest that…incidents in Gaza [in which the IDF accidentally kills Israeli soldiers] are also intentional?”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Some of the same media outlets that rushed to portray Israel as using disproportionate force have <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-indiscriminately-killing-in-gaza-data-says-no/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">belatedly acknowledged that fighting-age men are vastly overrepresented among Gaza’s dead</span></a>, strengthening Israel’s claims all along that it has done its best to target combatants and avoid civilians.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israel’s restraint is all the more remarkable given the genocidal intent of its enemy, as clearly stated in the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp"><span style="color: #1255cc;">preamble to Hamas’ covenant</span></a> and demonstrated by Hamas’ genocidal missile attacks on <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/07/10/day-of-bombardment-in-israel-nears-nuclear-reactor/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israel’s nuclear reactor</span></a> (for more on Hamas’ genocidal plans, see this <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/what-would-hamas-do-if-it-could-do-whatever-it-wanted/375545/?single_page=true"><span style="color: #1255cc;">article by Jeffrey Goldberg</span></a>). Would the US military be as careful as Israel has been to avoid civilian casualties when confronting an enemy trying to kill millions of Americans and destroy the US?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The knee-jerk assumption that Israel uses disproportionate force oversimplifies <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/hamas-israel-confrontation-legal-points/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">complex situations requiring deeper analysis</span></a> and overlooks the powerful factors limiting Israel’s military: 1) internally, Israeli democracy subjects leaders to checks and balances from a vigorous political opposition, independent investigations (like the Winograd Commission), and a defiantly free press and protest culture (including <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Tel-Aviv-anti-war-protest-canceled-by-police-due-to-public-safety-risk-370569"><span style="color: #1255cc;">anti-war protests in Tel-aviv</span></a>); so when <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israelis-support-netanyahu-and-gaza-war-despite-rising-deaths-on-both-sides/2014/07/29/0d562c44-1748-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html?hpid=z1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">about 90% of a normally fractious democracy supports military action</span></a>, the country clearly faces very serious and legitimate threats; 2) externally, the military actions of Israel are more scrutinized than those of any other country (as <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124027104509836989"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Bret Stephens brilliantly highlighted in 2009</span></a>), and therefore always carry a greater risk of war crimes accusations, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/25/europe-s-jews-blamed-for-israel-s-war.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">anti-Semitic attacks abroad</span></a>, and unprovoked attacks from neighboring countries (<a href="http://time.com/3001569/rockets-attacks-from-lebanon-in-israel-hizballah/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">over a dozen rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon during the current conflict in Gaza</span></a>). Such realities compel Israel to use force judiciously.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the end, Israel must protect its citizens from an Iran-backed terrorist army that is disproportionately willing to kill Israeli and Gazan civilians, while facing disproportionate blame despite Israel’s disproportionate efforts to defend its population more humanely than any state in history has. Only if Israel decisively defeats Hamas can real peace come to Gaza – one more reason to let Israel’s soldiers finish the job, before granting them the Nobel Peace Prize.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><b>The Last Israelis</b></span></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
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		<title>A Thank You Letter From Hamas to the Media</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/a-thank-you-letter-from-hamas-to-the-media/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-thank-you-letter-from-hamas-to-the-media</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/a-thank-you-letter-from-hamas-to-the-media/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:51:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237059</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Please keep up the good work. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hamas_lebanon_0224.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-237060 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hamas_lebanon_0224.jpg" alt="hamas_lebanon_0224" width="270" height="223" /></a>Dear Members of the Mainstream Media,</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">You&#8217;ve been awesome! Everyone knows that we start unwinnable wars with Israel because the real victory happens when you predictably side with us each time. And you&#8217;ve been so supportive of our strategy that we really want to acknowledge your helpfulness. In particular, we thank you for:</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-<a href="http://notquant.com/the-israel-palestinian-conflict-do-we-care-about-it-too-much/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Focusing so much more on our suffering than anyone else&#8217;s</span></a>. Nigerians must die in far greater numbers before you take notice, so we&#8217;re glad that you value our lives so much more.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Minimizing your coverage, if any, of our attacks that led up to Israel&#8217;s military response and generally providing so little context that outsiders think that Israelis kill Palestinians just for fun. We&#8217;re especially grateful to the French media for this. Their distortions of the conflict are so one-sided that they incite Muslims across France to attack Jews and synagogues, and that is welcomed by <a href="http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/muslim-arab-world/c/hamas-in-their-own-words.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">our anti-Semitic worldview</span></a> (although, unfortunately, such attacks remind everyone why Jews need a state).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Emphasizing our civilian death toll without explaining that (1) <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-doesnt-israel-publish-figures-and-details-of-gaza-casualties/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">our casualty reports are hasty and inflated</span></a>, and (2) we maximize that total by using Palestinians to shield our weapons and by urging them to stay in the very areas that the IDF &#8212; in its annoying effort to minimize our civilian deaths &#8212; warns Gazans to evacuate.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Never mentioning the fact that if we could kill millions of Israelis, we would (after all, <a href="http://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">our charter calls for Israel&#8217;s destruction</span></a>). Just as the 9/11 hijackers made the most of what they had but would have liked to kill far more Americans (for example, with the help of WMD), we too would love to kill far more Israelis. Indeed, we have purposely targeted Israel&#8217;s nuclear reactor on several occasions, with that very goal in mind. Fortunately, you never highlight the genocidal intent behind our attacks when mentioning Israel&#8217;s &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; response.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Never calling us jihadists even though <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3181/gaza-christians"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we persecute Christians</span></a> (like the ISIS, which just <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/22/isis-robs-christians-fleeing-its-edict-in-mosul-convert-leave-or-die.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">compelled Mosul&#8217;s Christians to convert to Islam</span></a>). The forced conversion, expulsion, or murder of Christians and other religious minorities by Islamists has been happening for millennia, as assiduously documented in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATL9ZZQ/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00ATL9ZZQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thelasisr-20"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Crucified Again</span></a>, but such historical context is thankfully absent from your reporting on our conflict with Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #323333;">-Downplaying how bad we are for Gazans by not reporting on, for example, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Gazan-rocket-knocks-out-power-for-70000-Gazans-362682"><span style="color: #1255cc;">our attack on the very Israeli power station that provides electricity to 70,000 Gazans</span></a>. Thankfully, you also ignored how the <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/15/israel-electric-corp-workers-brave-rockets-restore-power-to-gaza/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israelis &#8212; in their stupid display of goodwill &#8212; exposed their workers to the perils of our rockets so that they could restore power to Gaza</span></a>.</span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Minimally reporting on our <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Hamass-corruption"><span style="color: #1255cc;">corruption</span></a>, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4543634,00.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">unfair wealth</span></a>, or <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2014/07/hamas-gaza-tunnels-israel-palestinians-rockets/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">vast expenditures on tunnels to attack Israel</span></a> while ordinary Palestinians grew poorer.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Overlooking how &#8212; to maximize Palestinian deaths &#8212; we store our missiles in an UNWRA-run school and how, when UNWRA finds out, they <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-agency-handed-rockets-back-to-hamas-israel-says/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">just hand us back our missiles</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Disregarding Arabs who have the courage to critique us &#8212; like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2trFcUqTH8"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Dr. Tawfik Hamid</span></a>, an Islamist-turned-reformer who blames Palestinian suffering entirely on us.</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #323333;">-Ignoring Israelis&#8217; humanitarian folly in providing <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/16-year-old-gaza-terrorist-treated-in-israeli-hospital/#ixzz38D2BaSMa"><span style="color: #1255cc;">medical aid to the very terrorists trying to kill them</span></a>.</span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Failing to acknowledge Israel&#8217;s immense restraint. Had we been fighting Syria&#8217;s Assad regime, by now Gaza would have been flattened &#8212; devastated by barrel bombs, poison gas, and other attacks that are far more indiscriminate than Israel&#8217;s intelligence-directed strikes. And of course, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2013/03/over-1000-palestinian-arabs-killed-in.html#.U9BS-vldVrU"><span style="color: #1255cc;">if Syria were killing us, you&#8217;d hardly care.</span></a> But luckily, we&#8217;re dealing with Israel &#8212; that country that everyone loves to hate &#8212; so we can count on your helpful coverage here.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Omitting how Israel chose to sacrifice dozens of IDF soldiers when destroying our tunnels and weapons in densely populated areas like Shejaiya because doing so with airstrikes (which risks no soldiers) would have killed many thousands of Palestinians. Your friendly omission of such crucial facts reminds us of how wonderfully you covered Jenin in 2002, when (again) &#8212; rather than praise Israel&#8217;s humane but costly decision to use ground troops rather than airstrikes &#8211; <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/218vnicq.asp"><span style="color: #1255cc;">you very helpfully and falsely accused Israel of a massacre</span></a> during another IDF operation to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Not sharing with your English readers what we openly say in Arabic: that we view any truce as just an opportunity to rearm for our next war against Israel (as our spokesman, Musheer Al Masri, recently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwRpNPnR_Ec"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declared on TV</span></a>).</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Not underscoring that Israel can do nothing to make peace with us (after all, Israelis ended their occupation of Gaza in 2005 and we&#8217;ve been rocketing them ever since). It&#8217;s a bit nervy of Israel to use its border controls to limit our ability to rearm and rebuild cross-border attack tunnels, but &#8212; with your help &#8212; maybe the next cease-fire will remove Israel&#8217;s blockade so that we can more easily replenish our weapons and restore our tunnels for our next attack. And yes, we&#8217;re embarrassed that our fellow Arab Muslims in Egypt also choose to blockade us because of the problems that we&#8217;ve caused them.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">-Not reminding readers, when you mention potential truce arrangements, that world powers are no more capable of ensuring a demilitarized Gaza than they were capable of disarming Hezbollah in south Lebanon.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Seriously, you&#8217;ve been AMAZING. Please keep it up!</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Love,</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Hamas</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">p.s. Many thanks also to the countless protesters around the world who follow your lead, embolden us, and make us look legit!</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></span></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
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		<title>Obama, Iran and World War III</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/obama-iran-and-world-war-iii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-iran-and-world-war-iii</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:51:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211107</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The price of appeasement. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/iran20a.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211133" alt="iran20a" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/iran20a.jpg" width="261" height="219" /></a>According to <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-and-us-held-secret-talks-for-over-a-year/">a recent news report</a>, President Barack Obama has for over a year secretly conducted negotiations with Iran (through his adviser Valerie Jarrett) and the Geneva talks on Iranian nukes now appear to be just a facade providing international legitimacy for Obama&#8217;s secret deal with Iran.</span></b></p>
<p><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/obamas-fight-with-israel-99964.html">Secretary of State John Kerry&#8217;s contradictory criticism of Israeli objections to that deal only suggests more bad faith</a> by the Obama administration. Kerry claims that Israel has been kept fully apprised of the negotiations with Iran but then argues that Israel has never seen the terms of the proposed deal with Iran and therefore shouldn&#8217;t question it. The Obama administration apparently wants to present the nuclear deal as a fait accompli that Israel must simply accept as is.</p>
<p>In what is becoming a familiar pattern, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/11/18/russia-steps-in-as-egypt-sours-on-us/">Russia is readily moving in to the Mideast areas</a> where U.S. influence has waned because of Obama&#8217;s many fumbles in the region. Last August, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-vows-to-back-egypts-rulers.html?_r=0">Saudi Arabia made it clear that it would happily replace US aid to Egypt</a> (highlighting one of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/22/six-reasons-the-u-s-and-saudi-arabia-are-moving-apart/">many issues straining U.S. relations with yet another Mideast ally</a>).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/17/us-israel-usa-kerry-idUSBRE9AG06720131117">On the issue of Iranian nukes, France has effectively replaced the U.S. as Israel&#8217;s strongest ally</a> and as the most sober-minded advocate of caution when negotiating over the single greatest threat to global security. Incredibly, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-be-working-with-saudi-arabia-on-iran-strike-plan/">Saudi Arabia is reportedly replacing the US in providing logistical support for an Israeli strike on Iranian nukes</a>.</p>
<p>Yaakov Amidror, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, recently indicated that the Israeli Air Force has been preparing for a potential strike on Iran. <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-can-strike-iran-alone-say-former-top-security-adviser-to-pm/">According to Amidror, such a strike could set back Iran&#8217;s nuclear program “for a very long time</a>.&#8221; So Israel can go it alone, if it must, although the results will be far messier than those produced by a stronger U.S. approach.</p>
<p>While the Obama administration has suggested that critics of the current Geneva deal are &#8220;<a href="http://www.thetower.org/bipartisan-calls-new-sanctions/">on a march to war</a>,&#8221; it is that very deal &#8212; which gives Iran a nuclear breakout capacity &#8212; that will force the states most threatened by Iran to take preemptive military action.</p>
<p>Even if one accepts Obama&#8217;s apparent view that decades-long alliances matter no more than do U.S. assurances, there are other compelling reasons for Obama to reverse his disastrous Iran policy before its too late.  Granting an Iranian nuclear weapons breakout capability will produce catastrophic consequences  (many of which Obama himself acknowledged, in <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/04/remarks-president-aipac-policy-conference-0">his March 2012 speech</a>):</p>
<p>1) The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will effectively be finished. The world&#8217;s most volatile region will become even more explosive as other regional players scramble to establish their own nuclear arsenals to counter Iran&#8217;s. And rogue nations will realize that by following Iran&#8217;s deceptive playbook, they too can develop a nuclear capability.</p>
<p>2)  The force of U.N. Security Council Resolutions will be further diluted, as Iran will continue flouting six of them with impunity.</p>
<p>3) Iran-backed terrorist organizations &#8212; including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah &#8212; will grow emboldened by the nuclear umbrella of their patron.</p>
<p>4) Terrorism could go nuclear, should Iran share some of its nuclear materials with the terrorist groups that it supports.</p>
<p>5) U.S. influence in the Middle East will erode even more, as Obama further damages U.S. relationships and influence in the region.</p>
<p>6) U.S. credibility throughout the world will plummet. If the U.S. cannot be trusted to provide strong leadership on the national security issue of greatest concern to the free world, where U.S. interests are directly at stake, what does that mean for U.S. credibility more generally?</p>
<p>7) Global instability and oil prices will skyrocket. If Israel, with Saudi assistance, strikes Iran&#8217;s nuclear program, the Iranian retaliation that follows could spark World War III. Will Iran attack Saudi oil fields or otherwise pour more fuel onto the Sunni-Shia fire in Syria? Will Iran and Iran-backed Hezbollah (<a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2013/10/22/Israel-worried-about-US-Iran-deal-mulls-hitting-Hezbollah/UPI-46661382471401/#ixzz2l4Glp92k">estimated to have at least 45,000 missiles</a>) launch a massive attack killing thousands of Israeli civilians? Will some of the Syrian chemical weapons held by Assad (another Iranian ally) end up hitting Israel? How would Israel respond? Is this how Armageddon happens?</p>
<p>8) U.S. interests will be attacked. Obama may think that his policy of appeasement will shield the U.S. from Iranian reprisals, but the opposite is true. When the U.S. appears so weak and ready to abandon allies (as with Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia), Iran has less fear of attacking the U.S. and more reasons to do so, as a way to exacerbate U.S. tensions with Israel.</p>
<p>Will attacking U.S. interests be yet another Obama &#8220;red line&#8221; that gets crossed with impunity? If so, then whatever is left of U.S. deterrence and credibility will have been destroyed. If not, then the U.S. will get sucked into another Mideast war but on terms dictated by the adversary, and without any first-strike advantage.</p>
<p>The catastrophic consequences outlined above would all directly result from Obama&#8217;s disastrously weak &#8212; but still reversible &#8212; policies on the Iranian nuclear threat.</p>
<p>The Jewish people have a long memory, and it pervades the thinking of Israeli civilians and top brass alike. Thus, Israel&#8217;s brief history is replete with daring military operations to protect its security. In <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.550012">Netanyahu&#8217;s speech at the last UN General Assembly</a>, in what may have been Israel&#8217;s final warning to the world to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat before Israel must, the Prime Minister summed up &#8212; from his personal family history &#8212; the collective experience that guides Israel on fateful decisions:</p>
<p>&#8220;[O]ne cold day in the late 19th century, my grandfather Nathan and his younger brother Judah were standing in a railway station in the heart of Europe. They were seen by a group of anti-Semitic hoodlums who ran towards them waving clubs, screaming &#8216;Death to the Jews.&#8217; My grandfather shouted to his younger brother to flee and save himself, and he then stood alone against the raging mob to slow it down. They beat him senseless, they left him for dead, and before he passed out, covered in his own blood, he said to himself &#8216;What a disgrace, what a disgrace. The descendants of the Macabees lie in the mud powerless to defend themselves.&#8217; He promised himself then that if he lived, he would take his family to the Jewish homeland and help build a future for the Jewish people. I stand here today as Israel&#8217;s prime minister because my grandfather kept that promise.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama should know by now that if he forces Israel&#8217;s hand, then Israel alone will neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, regardless of how messy the aftermath may be. Netanyahu &#8212; like any other responsible Israeli leader &#8212; would rather bring about World War III than the last Israelis.</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Can Israel Survive Obama?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/can-israel-survive-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-israel-survive-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/can-israel-survive-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2013 04:30:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210380</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president is actively hindering Israel's ability to neutralize the Iranian threat. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210391" alt="gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gty_obama_netanyahu_press_conference_ll_130320_wg-438x350.jpg" width="307" height="245" /></a>In the spring of 2012, when I wrote &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008HEFVI2/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B008HEFVI2&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thelasisr-20"><i>The Last Israelis</i></a>,&#8221; I thought that the pessimistic premise of my cautionary tale on Iranian nukes was grounded in realism. I had imagined a U.S. president who passively and impotently reacted to Iran&#8217;s nuclear ambitions, leaving it to tiny Israel to deal with the threat. But something far worse is happening: the Obama administration is actively making it harder for Israel to neutralize Iran&#8217;s nukes, and more likely that Iran will develop a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>A few months after my apocalyptic thriller was published, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/world/iran-said-ready-to-talk-to-us-about-nuclear-program.html?_r=0">New York Times reported that &#8220;intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials</a> [dating] almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term&#8221; resulted in an agreement to conduct one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. In those secret talks, did Obama long ago concede to Iran a nuclear capability? If so, then the current Geneva negotiations merely provide the international imprimatur for what Iran and the US have already privately agreed. That might explain why <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20131110-iran-nuclear-talks-france-john-mccain-usa-republican">France (of all countries) had to reject a Geneva deal that would have left Iran with a nuclear breakout capability</a>.</p>
<p>An investigation by <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/08/exclusive-obama-s-secret-iran-d-tente.html">the Daily Beast also reveals that the &#8220;Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after the election of Iran’s new president</a> last June, months before the current round of nuclear talks in Geneva&#8230;&#8221; The report notes that Treasury Department notices show &#8220;that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.&#8221;Obama&#8217;s desperately eager posture towards the smiling Mullahs has doomed any negotiation to failure by signaling that the U.S. fears confrontation more than anything else. Obama&#8217;s pathetic approach to the world&#8217;s most pressing national security threat also makes U.S. military action virtually impossible from a public relations and diplomatic standpoint because it promotes the naive idea that more diplomacy will resolve what a decade of talking hasn&#8217;t. And as long as the Iranians are &#8220;talking,&#8221; world opinion will also oppose an Israeli military strike, so naturally Iran will find ways to keep talking until it&#8217;s too late for Israel to act.</p>
<p>Obama has been downright duplicitous towards key Mideast allies. When <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/25/us-un-assembly-obama-excerpts-idUSBRE88O0F520120925">in campaign mode</a> or <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/04/remarks-president-aipac-policy-conference-0">speaking to Israel supporters</a>, Obama emphatically rejected containment as a policy option for dealing with Iranian nukes but he&#8217;s now taking steps that effectively make containment the only option available (while repeating the same empty <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/middleeast/prime-minister-netanyahu-on-iranian-president-rouhani.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">reassurance that he has Israel&#8217;s back</a> and won&#8217;t be duped by the smiling Iranians).</p>
<p>Despite his repeated reassurances, Obama rejected Israel&#8217;s estimates for how much more time Iran needs to develop its nuclear capability, and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/05/us-usa-iran-obama-idUSBRE99406Q20131005">accepted overly optimistic timetables</a> that assumed at least a year for more talking. Soon afterwards, <a href="http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Breakout_Study_Summary_24October2013.pdf">the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) confirmed</a> Israel&#8217;s estimates that Iran could be just weeks away from the critical nuclear threshold. Ignoring these critical facts, Obama has given diplomatic cover to Iran&#8217;s nuclear program by seizing on the cosmetic changes presented by the Iranian regime&#8217;s Ahmadinejad-to-Rouhani facelift.</p>
<p>That this makeover is just a ruse becomes obvious from <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/rouhani-on-iranian-tv-in-may-detailed-how-he-broke-nuclear-pledge/">this video, in which Rouhani boasts about masterfully manipulating</a> diplomacy to achieve Iran&#8217;s nuclear objectives. So Obama must have known all along that &#8220;talks&#8221; are a fool&#8217;s errand that allow him to &#8220;fall back to&#8221; what has been his position all along: containment.</p>
<p>And despite repeated assurances from Secretary of State John Kerry that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/israel-netanyahu-iran-nuclear-deal_n_4149088.html">&#8220;no deal is better than a bad deal,&#8221;</a> the current Geneva talks appear headed towards precisely that: <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4450982,00.html">a bad deal that leaves Iran with the very nuclear breakout capability that a diplomatic &#8220;solution&#8221; was supposed to prevent</a>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, after Obama&#8217;s weak response to Syria&#8217;s crossing of his &#8220;red line&#8221; against the use of chemical weapons, the threat of U.S. force against Iranian nukes lost all credibility, making it even harder to change Iranian nuclear behavior without force. So containing the mess produced by weak negotiations is really all that&#8217;s left of Obama&#8217;s Iran &#8220;strategy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Only epic ineptitude or anti-Israel hostility no longer checked by reelection considerations can explain Obama&#8217;s moves on Iran. And the stakes couldn&#8217;t be higher for the rest of the world. After all, if Iran is the world&#8217;s biggest state sponsor of terrorism without nuclear weapons, what will terrorism look like once Iran goes nuclear? And there are already hints of the nuclear proliferation nightmare that will follow Iran&#8217;s nuclearization: <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/7/pakistan-built-nuclear-weapons-saudi-arabia-report/">Saudi Arabia has Pakistani nukes already lined up for purchase</a>. Remarkably, Obama has known this since 2009 and apparently doesn&#8217;t care about that consequence any more than he does about Israel&#8217;s security. How else to explain his acceptance of the dreadful Geneva proposal granting Iran a nuclear weapons capability?</p>
<p>Exacerbating an existential threat against Israel is bad enough, but Obama has been an abysmal ally in other respects. Despite being history&#8217;s most aggressive president to punish leakers (<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/300981-president-obama-loves-leaks-despises-whistleblowers">except when they make him look good</a>), <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-furious-with-white-house-for-leak-on-syria-strike/">Obama&#8217;s administration has repeatedly leaked sensitive Israeli information</a> that could have easily provoked a Syrian-Israeli war. Obama summarily dumped a decades-long alliance with Egypt (that is also key to Israeli security) over some Egyptian state violence that is dwarfed by the decades-long brutality and terrorism of the Iranian regime now enjoying Obama&#8217;s overzealous courtship. And Obama&#8217;s image as a multi-lateralist who subordinates U.S. interests to higher principles has been exposed as a fraud following reports that <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/27/obama-knew-nsa-spying-on-merkel-and-approved-it-report-says-944692234/">he knew that the U.S. was spying on close European allies</a> (contrary to his denials).</p>
<p>Add to that list <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6255">Kerry&#8217;s increasing hostility to Israel</a> and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13091">reports that the U.S. plans to impose its undoubtedly risky vision of peace on Israel</a> in a few months, and you have Israel&#8217;s worst nightmare in the White House. The irony is that the less Israel feels secure because of Obama&#8217;s betrayals, the less likely it is to behave as Obama would like. Why humor Obama&#8217;s requests and take unrequited risks for peace with the Palestinians or indulge yet another round of counter-productive &#8220;talks&#8221; about Iran&#8217;s nuclear program when Obama has apparently abandoned Israel anyway?</p>
<p>As if Israel didn&#8217;t face enough threats and challenges, it must now survive the Obama nightmare until he&#8217;s out of office in 38 months. Isolated like never before thanks to Obama, the stark choices facing Israel&#8217;s leadership are unimaginably difficult. With roughly 75 times more territory, 10 times as many people, and two times as big an economy, Iran is a Goliath compared to Israel, and has repeatedly threatened to destroy it. So what does David (Israel) do now that Obama&#8217;s perfidy has been exposed? If the neighborhood bully is bigger than you, has threatened you, and is reaching for a bat, do you preemptively attack him before he gets the bat and becomes even more dangerous?</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>CNN&#8217;s Iran Coverage: Biased, Inept, or Corrupt?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/cnns-iran-coverage-biased-inept-or-corrupt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cnns-iran-coverage-biased-inept-or-corrupt</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:24:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christiane Amanpour]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CNN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coverage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hassan Rouhani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206140</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Promoting a biased, re-branded image of a murderous regime. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Christiane_Amanpour1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206158" alt="Christiane_Amanpour1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Christiane_Amanpour1.jpg" width="207" height="312" /></a>Al-Jazeera bought access to US public opinion when it purchased Current TV from Al Gore, but it faces stiff competition from CNN when it comes to misleading viewers about the Middle East. Over the last week, CNN has promoted a biased, re-branded image of the Iranian regime on at least three major programs.</p>
<p>CNN&#8217;s positive spin on Iran is collectively staggering. Did the Iranian regime secure such favorable coverage with payments? Or was CNN just so inept and/or biased that it inadvertently promoted the Iranian regime at every opportunity? Consider each program.</p>
<p>CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR</p>
<p>When Christiane Amanpour interviewed Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, she asked him about his views on the Holocaust. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, frequently doubted the Nazi genocide against the Jews, so Rouhani&#8217;s views on the issue might indicate whether the Iranian regime, under a more palatable facade, has substantively improved. The title of a <a href="http://camera.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8b7948e93d155a16f6202c669&amp;id=d13094cd71&amp;e=23ef708ae0" target="_blank">post</a> on Amanpour’s blog reports “Iran&#8217;s new president: Yes, the Holocaust happened.”</p>
<p>But, as <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&amp;x_outlet=2&amp;x_article=2553" target="_blank">CAMERA noted</a>, multiple independent translations by Farsi speakers conflict with CNN’s translation and agree with Fars News Agency&#8217;s conclusion that CNN mistranslated Rouhani&#8217;s vague reference to &#8220;historical events&#8221; as &#8220;the Holocaust.&#8221; Indeed, the fact that Fars &#8212; which <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.protests/" target="_blank">CNN itself considers a &#8220;semi-official&#8221; news agency</a> with ties to the Iranian government &#8212; rejects any conclusion that &#8220;the Holocaust&#8221; was explicitly acknowledged should have caused CNN to question its conclusions and issue a correction.</p>
<p>But despite being challenged also by a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303796404579097491626493058.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal editorial</a>, Newsweek&#8217;s <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/26/what-hassan-rouhani-really-said-about-the-holocaust.html" target="_blank">The Daily Beast</a>, and <a href="http://iranpulse.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/09/2894/rouhanis-holocaust-comments-on-cnn-spark-controversy/" target="_blank">Al Monitor</a>, Amanpour has stood by the accuracy of CNN’s translation (which reportedly came from a translator hired by the Iranian government), and has refused to issue any corrections. CNN apparently wants to convince viewers that the new Iranian president does not share the anti-Jewish, ahistorical, and extremist sensibilities that have defined the Iranian regime for the last few decades.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, <a href="http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/24/iran-president-rouhanis-english-language-message-to-the-american-people/" target="_blank">CNN’s written summary of the interview</a> excludes a highly objectionable part of Rouhani&#8217;s answer. In the same breath that Rouhani supposedly acknowledges the Holocaust, he suggests that the Jewish claim to the land of Israel is based only on the Holocaust, and — in equally twisted moral and historical logic — suggests an equivalence between the Holocaust and the Israeli “occupation” of Palestinians. Indeed, a far more accurate headline for Amanpour’s CNN blog would read: “Iran&#8217;s New President: Any Holocaust Is No Justification For Israel&#8217;s Existence And Was Like Israel&#8217;s Occupation Of Palestine.&#8221;</p>
<p>Worse still, CNN has continuously replayed the clip of Rouhani&#8217;s purported Holocaust &#8220;condemnation&#8221; to promote Christiane Amanpour&#8217;s program. This brainwashing-style repetition reinforces the inference that CNN naturally wants to promote the repackaged Iran and/or was handsomely paid to do so.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, CNN&#8217;s biased Iran reporting and distortions continued on two other programs. Both programs featured Ciamak Morsadegh, Iran&#8217;s only Jewish Member of Parliament, as their &#8220;star witness&#8221; testifying to how Iran is Disneyland for Jews. Neither program questioned whether Morsadegh might be a shill for the Iranian regime or how free any Iranian parliamentarian (much less the token Jewish one) is to criticize Iranian policy. No dissenting views, fact-checking, or context were included to correct or balance Morsadegh&#8217;s far-fetched claims.</p>
<p>FAREED ZAKARIA</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/29/ciamak-morsadegh-mp-on-life-as-a-religious-minority-in-iran/" target="_blank">Zakaria interview</a>, Morsadegh claims that &#8220;there were some problems in Iranian Jewish society&#8221; in the early days of Ahmadinejad&#8217;s presidency &#8220;but after that, there was no problem.&#8221; But Morsadegh contradicts that dubious claim &#8212; and the rosier statements he makes about Jewish life in Iran &#8212; when he states that Iran&#8217;s Jewish minority does &#8220;have some problems.&#8221; Of course, Zakaria doesn&#8217;t note the contradiction or explore what those &#8220;problems&#8221; might be.</p>
<p>Morsadegh also misrepresents reality when he states that &#8220;For religious freedom, Iran is one of the most free countries.&#8221; Try telling that to Iran&#8217;s Bahai or Christian minorities. Or just consult the <a href="http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/ir0108a.pdf" target="_blank">International Federation of Human Rights report</a>, which details the severe discrimination against Iran&#8217;s religious minorities. Shouldn&#8217;t Zakaria know such basic facts? Why didn&#8217;t he follow up with Morsadegh or at least provide some balancing information from another source after the interview?</p>
<p>Morsadegh also says that he is not a Zionist and rejects the behavior of the Israeli government and army. But in a televised interview, was he really free to say &#8220;I am a Zionist&#8221; or &#8220;I condemn my country&#8217;s threats to destroy Israel and its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah?&#8221; Could any Iranian public official say such things and survive? Zakaria never points this out.</p>
<p>REZA SAYAH</p>
<p>In <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/30/ctw.01.html" target="_blank">CNN&#8217;s &#8220;Connect the World</a>,&#8221; Reza Sayah also failed basic journalistic duties, allowing Morsadegh&#8217;s misrepresentations to go unchallenged, while adding a few of his own. Morsadegh claims that &#8220;In the history of Iran&#8230;[there was never any] organized anti-Semitic phenomenon.&#8221; What about the thirteen Iranian Jews who were executed for alleged connections to Israel (including Habib Elghanian, the former head of the Iranian Jewish community)? More generally, if life is so great for the Jews of Iran, why did their population drop from over 100,000 (in 1948) to under 20,000 today?</p>
<p>Sayah&#8217;s report touts the fact that Iran has Jewish schools, kosher restaurants, and a charity hospital founded and run by Jews, and preposterously suggests that Jewish life in Iran could somehow compare to Jewish life in Israel (&#8220;Sure, it may seem like we&#8217;re in Israel, but in fact we&#8217;re in the Islamic Republic of Iran.&#8221;). Seriously?</p>
<p>Sayah&#8217;s report continues with glowing reviews for Jewish life in Iran: &#8220;&#8216;Here they show a lot of respect for Judaism,&#8217; says Shahnose Rahanian. It&#8217;s better than many other places.&#8217;&#8221; Which places? Egypt, where there are just a few dozen Jews left? Compared to Jewish life in any non-Muslim country with a significant Jewish population, Jewish life in Iran is pathetic and doomed to the same extinction that has occurred in nearly all of the Muslim world. Sayah never questions the truthfulness of his interviewees, who are from a tiny and extremely vulnerable minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim country where criticism of Islam &#8212; or the regime &#8212; can leave the critic dead. Nor does he mention reports that <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6065" target="_blank">Iranian Jews live in fear that their telephones are tapped.</a></p>
<p>Sayah reports that &#8220;some Jews here say they&#8217;ve traveled to Israel, but home remains Iran,&#8221; but he fails to mention that the majority of Iranian Jews are elderly and speak only Persian, making emigration much harder (as observed by Iranian-American activist Sam Kermanian).</p>
<p>Sayah mentions that Jews have lived in Persia/Iran since the sixth century BC, when Persia&#8217;s King Cyrus liberated Jews from Babylonian captivity, but Sayah never discusses the persecution of Jews in Persia/Iran since then, or the likely explanations for their massive &#8220;migration.&#8221;</p>
<p>Both Zakaria and Sayah could have easily interviewed some Iranian-American Jews, many of whom have family still living in Iran, to get alternative perspectives.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, CNN has a long history of anti-Israel bias, as documented by <a href="http://honestreporting.com/search/?cx=008933639011795058321%3Av1i1e0c9w1w&amp;cof=FORID%3A11%3BNB%3A1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=cnn&amp;sa=Search" target="_blank">Honest Reporting</a> and <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&amp;x_outlet=14" target="_blank">CAMERA</a>. Are the above issues part of that problem? Or were Iranian payments involved? CNN must come clean about its Iran &#8220;reporting&#8221; or lose even more of its already damaged credibility.</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Mullahs&#8217; Charm Offensive</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/the-mullahs-charm-offensive/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-mullahs-charm-offensive</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Sep 2013 04:47:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hassan Rouhani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=205340</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran's deadly siren song of "peace." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/0924-ROUHANI-UN-GENERAL-ASSEMBLY-IRAN_full_380.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-205405" alt="0924-ROUHANI-UN-GENERAL-ASSEMBLY-IRAN_full_380" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/0924-ROUHANI-UN-GENERAL-ASSEMBLY-IRAN_full_380.jpg" width="212" height="172" /></a>With starry-eyed optimism, Western leaders and members of the media have recently fawned all over the new Iranian president, Hasan Rouhani, as if he had taken any meaningful steps to reverse Iran&#8217;s illicit nuclear program, abysmal human rights abuses, or support for Hezbollah terrorism and Basher Assad&#8217;s murderous regime in Syria. Rouhani can thank his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for being so repugnant that virtually anyone succeeding him would be welcomed with relief. But the West&#8217;s premature exuberance over Rouhani undermines efforts to curb Iran&#8217;s nuclear ambitions and dangerously signals to rogue states that a few weeks of charm can quickly compensate for decades of terrorism, genocidal incitement, and human rights abuses.</p>
<p>On the core issues, Iran&#8217;s behavior is the same, but with a more PR-savvy face. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/04/rouhani-supports-assad_n_3704830.html" target="_blank">Rouhani has continued Iran&#8217;s support for the Syrian regime</a> and Iran&#8217;s <a href="http://www.theisraelproject.org/wp-content/uploads/UNGA/tip_fopo_israel.pdf" target="_blank">anti-Israel rhetoric and policies</a>. About a month into Rouhani&#8217;s term, <a href="http://is.gd/TUzoey" target="_blank">the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared that Iran’s nuclear program includes “strong indicators of possible nuclear weapon development</a>.&#8221;  The program includes developing plutonium-based capabilities for building nukes, installing advanced uranium enrichment equipment that enables Iran quickly to weaponize its nuclear materials without detection by IAEA inspections, enriching uranium in defiance of UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions, and developing nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them.</p>
<p>These facts completely discredit Rouhani&#8217;s repeated claims that Iran&#8217;s nuclear program exists only for &#8220;peaceful&#8221; purposes. <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB5.pdf" target="_blank">His boasts about playing for time (in a 2004 speech) when he served as Iran&#8217;s chief nuclear negotiator</a> further undermine his credibility on this issue (in his words: “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the [nuclear conversion] facility in Isfahan&#8221;). Moreover, Iran has consistently deceived the international community about its nuclear activities, like when the Islamic Republic concealed its nuclear facility in Qom (which was uncovered by Western intelligence agencies).</p>
<p>But these facts don&#8217;t seem to matter because when Rouhani repeatedly drops the word &#8220;peace&#8221; in his speeches, Western media and diplomats swoon. &#8220;At the cost of thoughtful reporting&#8221; (as media watchdog CAMERA aptly summarized), <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&amp;x_context=2&amp;x_outlet=55&amp;x_article=2541" target="_blank">Western media have also fallen for the &#8220;Twitter charms&#8221; reportedly sent by members of the Iranian regime</a>.</p>
<div>
<p>And this same naive crowd celebrates the release of 80 Iranian political prisoners &#8212; timed for maximum PR effect &#8212; while forgetting that <a href="http://is.gd/f8BqZN" target="_blank">Iran has executed more than 170 political prisoners since Rouhani’s election and continues to imprison close to 800</a> (including <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/president-rouhani-comes-to-town.html" target="_blank">U.S. citizen and former Marine Amir Hekmati</a>, despite requests to release him from top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry). Indeed, <a href="http://www.majzooban.org/en/news-and-exclusive-content/4473-weekly-report-on-human-right-violation-in-iran-24-08-2013.html" target="_blank">a web site documenting Iran&#8217;s human rights abuses</a> confirms that &#8212; under Rouhani&#8217;s rule &#8212; it&#8217;s very much business as usual in Iran, with public hangings, religious persecution, abuse of women, arbitrary arrests, and suppression of dissent. But why spoil the party with such details when Rouhani speechifies about &#8220;peace&#8221; and &#8220;friendship?&#8221;</p>
<p>Desperate for a sign of progress, delusional optimists point out that Rouhani hasn&#8217;t actively denied the Holocaust. That this could be considered a sign of Iranian &#8220;progress&#8221; shows just how pathetically low the bar has dropped (thanks, again, to Ahmadinejad&#8217;s fine work). But even by this measure, Rouhani just looks more sophisticated (opting to say that &#8220;he&#8217;s not a historian&#8221; instead of unequivocally denying the Holocaust). <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/iran-hassan-rouhani-steps-away-from-holocaust-denial.html#ixzz2fq4oFYIm" target="_blank">One Iran expert explained Rouhani&#8217;s shameful response as a result of</a><a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/iran-hassan-rouhani-steps-away-from-holocaust-denial.html#ixzz2fq4oFYIm" target="_blank"> local politics</a>, but if Rouhani&#8217;s not even free to acknowledge a historical fact, how can he possibly change Iran&#8217;s nuclear policy? Rouhani may have subsequently realized that his media strategy required improving upon his initial answer, but the clarification he attempted in his recent interview with Christiane Amanpour <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.548926" target="_blank">left him plenty of room for Holocaust denial and revisionism</a>. Equally troubling, <a href="http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/24/iran-president-rouhanis-english-language-message-to-the-american-people/" target="_blank">starting around 4:00 of this video</a> (which part was suspiciously excluded from CNN&#8217;s written interview summary), Rouhani goes on to suggest that the Jewish claim to the land of Israel is based only on the Holocaust, and &#8212; in equally twisted moral and historical logic &#8212; suggests an equivalence between the Holocaust and the Israeli &#8220;occupation&#8221; of Palestinians.</p>
<p>Only the credible threat of force has ever worked in stopping Iran&#8217;s nuclear ambitions, and after Obama&#8217;s feckless and spineless approach to a far weaker adversary (Syria), the Iranians have all the more reason to doubt any U.S. military threat &#8212; particularly if Obama can be stalled by a diplomatic process that seems to offer progress now that the Iranian wolf has been redressed as a sheep.</p>
<p>While Obama likes to boast that his economic sanctions have brought Iran to the table, the only measure of success is whether Iran is closer to a nuclear weapons capability, and on that score Obama is a complete failure: Iran has been inching closer to nukes every day that Obama has been in office.</p>
<p>Moreover, the dynamics of Obama&#8217;s diplomatic efforts reveal who&#8217;s actually winning: <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-snubbed-us-offer-of-obama-rouhani-meeting/" target="_blank">Obama asked Rouhani for a meeting at the UN, only to be rejected</a>. So the U.S. looks like the eager party here, making it that much easier for Iran to manipulate any eventual talks in its favor. Indeed, the more the West appears desperate to welcome Rouhani&#8217;s new tune, the less Iran has to make any meaningful concessions. In this way, Ahmadinejad&#8217;s revolting persona and style made it that much easier for his successor to succeed at playing the &#8220;good cop&#8221; in any negotiations. And it is actually Iran&#8217;s hardline supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iranian policy, so the Rouhani theatrics are ultimately meaningless anyway. While the country&#8217;s dictator recently said that Iran can show &#8220;<a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-khamenei-new-flexibility/25109379.html" target="_blank">heroic flexibility</a>,&#8221; he&#8217;s not actually beholden to anyone, so he can easily change his mind after buying another 6-12 months of nuclear enrichment time by &#8220;negotiating&#8221; with the West through Rouhani.</p>
<p>To resolve a crisis that could otherwise end up as a massive regional war in the near future, Iran must: 1) stop all nuclear enrichment, 2) dismantle the illicit underground nuclear facility near Qom and the second-generation centrifuges in Natanz, 3) remove all enriched material from Iranian territory, and 4) stop the construction of the heavy water reactor in Arak. If the international community hopes to stop Iran&#8217;s nuclear program before it&#8217;s too late, any deal with Iran must ensure that the above four steps are verifiably taken. Any lesser deal would allow Iran to continue developing nuclear weapons capabilities behind a smokescreen of promises, as the North Koreans have done. Will the West be charmed all the way to Armageddon?</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>India and Israel: The Ties That Bind</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/india-and-israel-the-ties-that-bind/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=india-and-israel-the-ties-that-bind</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Aug 2013 04:19:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alliance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friendship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201959</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why two great democracies should deepen their friendship.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/india-israel-flag.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-202006" alt="india-israel-flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/india-israel-flag.jpg" width="250" height="175" /></a>At first glance, Hindu-majority India, with approximately 1.2 billion people and an entire subcontinent, would seem to have little in common with Jewish-majority Israel, which has only about eight million people living on territory that&#8217;s just roughly 15 times the size of India&#8217;s capital city. While full diplomatic relations were established between Jerusalem and New Delhi only in 1992, the two countries actually have much in common.</p>
<p>Both countries are homelands for ancient peoples who gained their independence from the British in the 1940s. Both states have gone on to create vibrant, multicultural democracies that have experienced dynamic, technology-driven economic growth. India and Israel each also has a large Muslim minority population, and each faces an ongoing terrorism threat from foreign and domestic Islamic extremists; indeed, both Israelis and Indians were targeted and killed in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Even more serious, India and Israel each faces ballistic missile threats from at least one close, hostile Muslim state. India already faces the nuclear threat posed by Pakistan, and Israel may soon confront the same threat from Iran, if Iranian nukes aren&#8217;t stopped.</p>
<p>There is also a blossoming military and commercial relationship between India and Israel. Israel is India’s second largest arms supplier after Russia, and Israeli-Indian military cooperation extends to technology upgrades, joint research, intelligence cooperation, and even space (in 2008, India launched a 300-kilogram Israeli satellite into orbit). Israel has upgraded India&#8217;s Soviet-era armor and aircraft and provided India with sea-to-sea missiles, radar and other surveillance systems, border monitoring equipment, night vision devices, and other military support. Bilateral trade reached US $6 billion last year and negotiations began this year for a free trade agreement.</p>
<p>Israeli-Indian cooperation in agriculture and water technology is growing both through government-sponsored initiatives and private business deals. Last year, Israeli and Indian government institutions jointly launched an online network that provides real-time communications between Indian farmers and Israeli agricultural technology experts, and Israel is in the process of setting up 28 agricultural training centers throughout India. Israeli Professor Yoram Oren has been studying the potential use of nano-filtration to filter out harmful textile dyes from India&#8217;s polluted Noyyal River. Last June, a delegation of 16 high-ranking Indian officials from the water authorities of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa and Haryana traveled to Israel to visit waste-water treatment plants and meet with some of Israel’s leading environmentalists and agronomists to learn about the desert country&#8217;s newest green technologies.</p>
<p>Tata Industries, the multi-billion-dollar Indian company, recently invested $5 million to kick-start the Technology Innovation Momentum Fund at Tel Aviv University’s Ramot technology transfer company. Tata Industries hopes to capitalize on future Israeli innovation, like the algorithm for error correction in flash memory (which is one of the patents filed by Ramot and now inside billions of dollars worth of SanDisk products).</p>
<p>These are but a few examples of the remarkable cooperation between India and Israel. Such a synergistic relationship is unsurprising, given the historically harmonious relations between the peoples of Israel and India.</p>
<p>Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to come to India: the Cochin Jews arrived about 2,500 years ago and settled in the city of Kerala, where they flourished as traders. In addition to the few thousand Jews who live in major Indian cities like Mumbai, there are also some larger Indian communities, like the 8,000 &#8220;Bnai Menashe&#8221; (from the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur) who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. While Jews have always been a minuscule religious minority in India, they have historically encountered very little antisemitism. In Israel, about 1% of the Jewish population has Indian ancestry.</p>
<p>In addition to the many historic and economic reasons for India and Israel to strengthen their ties, there are also strong geopolitical motivators. Israel&#8217;s tiny land mass (about 21,000 square kilometers) makes the Jewish state particularly vulnerable and compels it to make strategic use of seaborne offensive and defensive military capabilities. A vital component of those capabilities is Israel&#8217;s submarine force, which requires friendly waters in which to deploy and maintain such a force &#8212; something that the Indian Navy can provide with its dominance of South Asian waters.</p>
<p>With the ongoing security threats posed by India&#8217;s nuclear-armed rival, Pakistan, the Kashmir conflict (which recently claimed five Indian soldiers), and potential conflict with the other Asian heavyweight (China), India needs the kind of military edge that Israel can help it to obtain. Insofar as India provides an Asian counterweight to Chinese dominance, a powerful India bolstered by Israeli technological expertise is also in the interest of smaller Asian countries and the United States.</p>
<p>One area where India could deepen its alliance with both Israel and the U.S. is on the issue of Iranian nukes. India, the second largest importer of Iranian crude oil after China, won its third 180-day waiver from U.S. sanctions last June after reducing its oil purchases from Iran. But in 2012, Iran and India agreed to trade in rupees for shipments of oil, rice, sugar and soybeans, to circumvent U.S. financial sanctions on Iranian oil shipments. And Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals is now reportedly receiving a cargo of Iranian crude, after a 4-month hiatus, with Hindostan Petroleum also restarting imports soon. Iran may also become the top buyer of soybean meal from India for a second straight year, as Iran turns to Asia&#8217;s biggest exporter to replace imports disrupted by Western sanctions.</p>
<p>While India has its own commercial interests, India also has a strong interest in a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. India&#8217;s economic and diplomatic clout can help to pressure Iran into a compromise that prevents a catastrophic Middle East war. Such a regional conflagration could spread beyond the Middle East and, in any case, would send India&#8217;s energy costs skyrocketing, disrupt global trade, and dangerously destabilize India&#8217;s geopolitical backyard.</p>
<p>India&#8217;s history of religious tolerance stands in stark contrast to that of Iran&#8217;s. Indeed, one of India&#8217;s religious minorities, the Zoroastrians, have been fleeing persecution in the territory that is today Iran (Persia) for about 1,200 years. Since Iran&#8217;s Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been regarded as one of the world&#8217;s worst offenders against freedom of religion. Iran&#8217;s vicious human rights abuses and undemocratic political system are also well known. Would India want such a country to have nuclear weapons? Isn&#8217;t Pakistan enough?</p>
<p>As a responsible member of the nuclear club, a fellow democracy, and one of the greatest rising world powers, India should approach the Iranian nuclear issue as an opportunity to demonstrate how growing Indian clout can promote global security and curb extremist, undemocratic regimes like the Islamic Republic. By deepening India&#8217;s ties with other innovative and economically advanced democracies like the United States and Israel, India can better secure its own interests and position itself for continued growth and leadership in a more stable world.<br />
<b><br />
</b><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, a war novel about </b><b><b>Iranian nukes and </b>an Israeli submarine </b><b><b>with an Indian Jew on board.</b></b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Christians: On the Front Lines of Muslim Violence</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/christians-on-the-front-lines-of-muslim-violence/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=christians-on-the-front-lines-of-muslim-violence</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 04:56:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The global religious genocide the West refuses to acknowledge. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/christians.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-201279" alt="christians" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/christians.jpg" width="278" height="181" /></a>As Egypt’s Islamists blame Christians for the ouster of Mohammed Morsi, anti-Christian violence has reached epidemic levels, with <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20130818125428.htm" target="_blank">an estimated 82 churches across Egypt attacked and heavily damaged by Morsi supporters in a mere 48 hours.</a></p>
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<p>Unfortunately, the persecution of Christians is nothing new in Egypt or other Muslim-majority countries. But thanks to the mainstream media, few Westerners understand the true scale or nature of the horrors involved.</p>
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<p>As you read this, Christians around the world are being murdered, raped, plundered, abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, or otherwise oppressed by Muslims. Christians in Muslim-majority areas are some of the most vulnerable and horribly oppressed people on Earth; they live at the mercy of the mob and receive little or no protection from the police or other government institutions.</p>
<p>The reach of this silent tragedy is sweeping – a global religious genocide on “slow burn” with occasional conflagrations that make it into the mainstream media. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/08/us-religion-christianity-persecution-idUSBRE9070TB20130108" target="_blank">There are an estimated 100 million persecuted Christians.</a></p>
<p>This massive crime is documented in shocking and painstaking detail in Raymond Ibrahim’s new book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATL9ZZQ/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00ATL9ZZQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thelasisr-20" target="_blank">Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</a></i>. The book is required reading for anyone who cares about religious freedom, human rights, and/or the survival of Christians in their ancestral lands.</p>
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<p>In <i>Crucified Again</i>, Ibrahim methodically presents overwhelming evidence of Muslim persecution of Christians (documented with about 700 footnotes). His exhaustive, scholarly, and compelling study uses many news and historical sources, and statements by contemporary Muslim clerics. The evidentiary details are far too numerous to summarize here, but a few examples stand out.</p>
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<p>Ibrahim explains the theological basis for Muslim persecution of Christians. He notes the Islamic belief that Koranic verses from later in Muhammad’s career abrogate contradictory verses from earlier. The hostile verses naming Christians “infidels” occur towards the end of his career, so they override any tolerance for Christians in earlier verses. Ibrahim writes: “The Koran’s final word on the fate of Christians and Jews is found in Koran 9:29 [where] Allah commands believers, [to fight them]&#8230;&#8217;until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.&#8217;”</p>
<p>Ibrahim cites the writing of renowned Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun [1332-1406]:</p>
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<blockquote><p>[Jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force &#8230; The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them…But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.</p></blockquote>
<p>Ibrahim explains: “The <i>Conditions of Omar</i>…[details] exactly how [Christians and Jews] are to feel themselves subdued.” The laws applicable to “dhimmis” (non-Muslims treated as second-class citizens under Islamic hegemony) made life so miserable for Christians over the millennia that these rules gradually transformed thousands of miles of formerly Christian territory into what is today the “Arab world.” Ibrahim also highlights a tragic historical absurdity: many of the Muslims persecuting Christians today are themselves descendants of Christians who converted because of persecution.</p>
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<p>Having established the theological basis for Muslim oppression of Christians, Ibrahim reviews the endless historical examples of these crimes. He cites one medieval Muslim historian reporting that &#8220;30,000 churches were burned or pillaged in Egypt and Syria alone&#8221; in just two years. During the Abbasid rule (in 936), “the Muslims in Jerusalem…burnt down the Church of the Resurrection [believed to be built atop the tomb of Christ].&#8221; Ibrahim notes the &#8220;1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans and the subsequent attack on&#8230;the Hagia Sophia and its transformation into a mosque.&#8221;</p>
<p>After reviewing the more notable examples from history, Ibrahim catalogs the extent to which such Muslim persecution of Christians continues today across the entire Muslim world, “from Afghanistan to Zanzibar” – regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or language. <i>Crucified Again</i> details how these anti-Christian crimes are often incited by governments and/or religious leaders of Muslim countries. Ibrahim “broke news” in 2012 merely by translating into English that Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority declared it “necessary to destroy all the churches” in the Arabian Peninsula. The shocking statement by Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, was widely reported by Arabic-language media, but the Western mainstream media avoided coverage of the outrage. As Ibrahim argues, the media willfully ignore such news because it contradicts their narrative that all Muslim violence is motivated by some socio-economic or political grievance.</p>
<p>But the West risks its own demise by ignoring four truths: 1) a hateful, absolutist ideology drives Islamist violence against non-Muslims; 2) sharia’s draconian penalties for apostasy and blasphemy maximize Muslim demographic growth because nobody can safely criticize or leave Islam (including those converted under duress); 3) sharia destroys the rights and freedoms cherished by the West; 4) sharia creates a Muslim monopoly on the marketplace of ideas – something antithetical to any free society. To survive, the West cannot let sharia laws take root in Muslim-majority communities of Europe and North America.</p>
<p>With documented examples, <i>Crucified Again</i> also debunks the myth of the “moderate” Muslim state. So-called “moderate” states like Turkey or the Maldives may not be as atrociously violent towards their Christian minorities as countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Egypt, but they follow the same patterns of anti-Christian persecution and are far from Western standards when it comes to treating their non-Muslim minorities with equal rights, justice, and dignity.</p>
<p>Ibrahim has argued <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2159/are-judaism-and-christianity-as-violent-as-islam" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> that the Koran’s violent verses, unlike “their Old Testament counterparts…[use] language that transcends time and space, inciting believers to&#8230;slay nonbelievers today no less than yesterday.” According to Ibrahim, Old Testament violent verses are fundamentally different because they are merely a descriptive account of historical incidents – not a prescriptive exhortation to attack non-believers in the future.</p>
<p>Ibrahim shows how the Western media, academia, and the Obama administration have all whitewashed Muslim oppression of Christians and/or supported Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood to the point of enabling anti-Christian persecution and obscuring it from the public. Indeed, of Ibrahim’s 680+ cited news sources reporting on Muslim abuse of Christians, only about 6% were from the mainstream media. Biased media coverage of the Middle East deserves a book of its own, but to cite one powerful example (not mentioned in <i>Crucified Again</i>), consider <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&amp;x_outlet=13&amp;x_article=2226" target="_blank">how CBS&#8217;s “news” program, <i>Sixty Minutes</i>, defamed the only Mideast country where Christians are actually safe (Israel) while missing the real story of Mideast Christian persecution so thoroughly documented in </a><a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&amp;x_outlet=13&amp;x_article=2226" target="_blank"><i>Crucified Again</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<p>Western passivity over the maltreatment of minority Christians has only encouraged Islamists to attack them for any perceived wrong by the West – whether it’s offensive cartoons, movies, or any other grievance. Worse, the apathetic West has forgotten that the Islamic prohibitions (against apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism) used to justify Muslim oppression of Christians completely negate Western values like freedom of speech and religion.</p>
<p>Ibrahim <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/how-dare-you-the-supremacist-nature-of-muslim-grievances/" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> makes an excellent point about Muslim animus towards Israel: “if grievances&#8230;were really about justice and displaced Palestinians, Muslims – and their Western appeasers – would be aggrieved by the fact that millions of Christians are currently being displaced by Muslim invaders.” Indeed, the truer explanation for Muslim hostility towards Israel is that it&#8217;s the only non-Muslim state in the entire Middle East and North Africa. As long as Israel thrives as a strong, non-Muslim state, the Islamist mission of global jihad has failed in that region where Muslims are strongest. But if Israel were ever to fall, one can only imagine the genocide that would descend upon Israeli Jews – and the Israeli religious minorities sheltered in Israel (Christians, Bahá&#8217;ís, etc.).</p>
<p>Despite the grim signs for the West, it’s worth noting that there is a tiny but brave reform movement within Islam that should be robustly supported. Courageous humanists like Irshad Manji, who questions received doctrines with critical-thinking and a preference for tolerance over conquest, are the best hope for a reformed Islam that builds on its virtues, fixes its problems, and is at peace with itself (regarding the Sunni-Shia divide) and the non-Muslim world. Of course, anyone who reads <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATL9ZZQ/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00ATL9ZZQ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thelasisr-20" target="_blank"><i>Crucified Again</i></a> will be unsurprised that Irshad Manji lives in the West.</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of </b><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank"><b><i>The Last Israelis</i></b></a><b>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and an Israeli submarine with a diverse crew, including a Christian Israeli.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>A Middle East Without Christians</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/a-middle-east-without-christians/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-middle-east-without-christians</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Aug 2013 04:15:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[But in one small enclave the future is bright. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200327" alt="Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mideast-Egypt-Anxious_Horo.jpg" width="280" height="210" /></a>Islamist terrorists have exploited the lawless Sinai to perpetrate vicious attacks on Egyptian Christians there, as reported earlier this week in the New York Times. Indeed, throughout Egypt, the Copts continue to be targeted and scapegoated for the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>As defenseless and abandoned as Mideast Christians seem today, it is worth remembering their historical roots, and recognizing just how much the plight of Middle East Christians has deteriorated. Over 2,000 years ago, Christianity was born as a religion and spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Levant, including territories in modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The Christian faith flourished as one of the major religions in the Middle East until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.</p>
<p>Despite Muslim domination of the region, Christians comprised an estimated 20% of the Middle East population until the early 20th century. Today, however, Christians make up a mere 2-5% of the Middle East and their numbers are fast dwindling. Writing in the Winter 2001 issue of Middle East Quarterly, scholar Daniel Pipes estimated that Middle East Christians would &#8220;likely drop to&#8221; half of their numbers &#8220;by the year 2020&#8243; because of declining birth rates, and a pattern of &#8220;exclusion and persecution&#8221; leading to emigration.</p>
<p>The &#8220;Arab Spring&#8221; has only worsened conditions for the indigenous Christians of the Middle East. Like the Kurds, Middle East Christians are a stateless minority, struggling to survive in the world&#8217;s toughest neighborhood. But the Kurds at least have enjoyed partial autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991 and most of them are Sunni Muslim, making it easier for them to survive in the Muslim-dominated Middle East. Christians, on the other hand, are a religious minority that controls no territory and is entirely subject to the whims of their hosts. These host countries – with the exception of Israel – offer a grim future to Middle East Christians. Home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East, totaling 8-12 million people. But because Christian Copts make up only about 10-15% of Egypt&#8217;s estimated 80 million people, they have for decades lived in fear as second-class citizens, subjected to attacks on churches, villages, homes, and shops; mob killings; and the abduction and forced Islamic conversion of Christian women compelled to marry Muslim men. Such abuse took place under the staunchly secular regime of Hosni Mubarak, but grew much worse under the rule of Mohammed Morsi, the jailed Muslim Brotherhood activist who succeeded Mubarak, and they are now being blamed for Morsi&#8217;s ouster.</p>
<p>In Lebanon, Christians represent a bigger portion of the population, so their fate is for now less precarious than that of their Egyptian coreligionists, but their long-term prospects are worrisome. The Christian population is estimated to have dropped from over 50% (according to a 1932 census) to about 40%. Over the last few years, the de facto governing power in Lebanon has become Hezbollah, the radical and heavily-armed Shiite movement sponsored by Iran. With all of the spillover violence and instability produced by the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah&#8217;s open involvement in it, and/or the next war that Hezbollah decides to start with Israel, the emigration of Christians out of Lebanon will probably only increase in the coming years, leaving those who stay increasingly vulnerable.</p>
<p>In Syria, 2.5 million Christians comprised about 10% of the population and enjoyed some protection under the secular and often brutal regimes of the Assad dynasty. But as jihadi groups fighting Assad extend their territorial control, the past protection of Christians is often the cause of their current persecution by resentful Sunnis who revile the Assad regime and seek to impose Sharia law wherever they can. Christians have been regularly targeted and killed by rebels, and the sectarian chaos and violence that will likely prevail in Assad&#8217;s wake will only increase the number of Christians fleeing Syria.</p>
<p>In Iraq, the bloody aftermath of the 2003 invasion demonstrated how dangerous life can become for a Christian minority when a multicultural society in the Middle East explodes into sectarian violence. By 2008, half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians were estimated to have left, rendering those remaining even more insecure. In 2010, Salafist extremists attacked a Baghdad church during Sunday Mass, killing or wounding nearly the whole congregation. Such incidents turn any communal gathering into a potential massacre, forcing Christians across the Middle East to ask the ultimate question of faith: &#8220;Am I prepared to die for Christian worship?&#8221;</p>
<p>The so-called &#8220;Arab Spring&#8221; threatens to exacerbate matters in much of the Middle East, as Islamists now either control the government or influence it enough to persecute Christians with impunity. As new Islamist regimes in the Middle East condone religious intolerance and introduce Sharia and blasphemy laws, the long-term trend for Christians in their ancestral lands will only grow bleaker.</p>
<p>The one bright spot is the state of Israel – &#8220;the only place in the Middle East [where] Christians are really safe,&#8221; according to the Vicar of St. George&#8217;s Church in Baghdad, Canon Andrew White. Home to Christianity&#8217;s holiest sites and to a colorful array of Christian denominations, Israel has the only growing Christian community in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Because Israel is the only non-Muslim state in all of the Middle East and North Africa, it represents a small victory for religious minorities in the region, and serves as the last protector of freedom and security for Jews, Christians, Bahai, Druze, and others. Without Israel, how much more vulnerable would Christians in the Middle East become?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Mideast Peace Talks and &#8216;Land for War&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/mideast-peace-talks-and-land-for-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mideast-peace-talks-and-land-for-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:23:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Golan Heights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199807</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What history tells us about Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/golan-heights-isra_2488672b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199832" alt="golan-heights-isra_2488672b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/golan-heights-isra_2488672b-444x350.jpg" width="311" height="245" /></a>The current peace process is predicated on the conventional wisdom that if Israel just relinquishes enough territory to its enemies, peace will arrive. But on most of Israel’s borders, history has revealed the naïve folly behind an idea that could just as aptly be called “land-for-war.”</span></b></p>
<p>Consider Syria. From 1948 to 1967, the Syrians regularly fired artillery shells from their dominant positions on the Golan Heights down at Israeli border communities and Fatah used the territory to launch terrorist raids into Israel, until Israel captured it in 1967. But since the US-brokered talks between Israel and Syria began in 1999, peaceniks have posited that a full withdrawal by Israel from the strategic plateau in exchange for peace with Syria involved a risk worth taking. Their rationale was that – in an era dominated more by aerial threats (jets and missiles) than terrestrial ones (soldiers and tanks) – the territory was no longer vital to Israeli security and could be traded for a double boon: peace with Syria and elimination of Iran&#8217;s greatest strategic ally.</p>
<p>Current events reveal the deeply flawed assumptions underpinning the land-for-peace-with-Syria paradigm. No Israeli territorial concession is needed for Iran to lose its only Arab ally; the Syrian civil war will ultimately accomplish that. Basher Assad’s regime will eventually fall because the daily slaughter of one’s own people (with over 100,000 dead) is unsustainable when each atrocity can be instantly uploaded to the Internet. Whoever replaces Assad will be no friend to those who armed, funded, and prolonged his massacres: Iran and Russia. Iran and its proxy Hezbollah have also been substantially involved in fighting the rebels on the ground, and thus will be distanced from post-war Syria far more than any Israeli-Syrian peace could have separated Iran and Syria.</p>
<p>More importantly, the land-for-peace formula with Syria would have transferred the strategic territory from Israel to an Alawite-led regime reviled by the mostly Sunni rebels who will eventually overthrow it and likely disavow its commitments – including any peace deal with Israel. Indeed, the Syrian rebels already control much of the 200 square miles comprising the Syrian side of the Golan Heights (where they recently kidnapped 21 UN peacekeepers stationed there) and have openly threatened to attack Israel next. Israel comprises about 8,000 square miles. If those same rebels were on the 500 square miles constituting the Israeli-side of the plateau thanks to an earlier “peace deal,” Israel would be that much closer to the errant projectiles of Syria’s civil war, and that much more exposed to whatever terrorist attacks on Israel the Syrian jihadist fighters plan after finishing Assad. Hence, Israel’s tangible security asset (earned with the blood of over 2,100 IDF soldiers who died in Israel&#8217;s 1967 and 1973 wars with Syria) would have been traded for “peace” with Assad, but land-for-war with Syrian Islamists is what Israel may have received just a few years later.</p>
<p>Indeed, “land-for-war” has a compelling record. In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and in 2006 was attacked from there by Hezbollah. It was only the force of Israel’s military response in the war that followed – rather than any territorial concession – that prevented any subsequent cross-border attacks by Hezbollah, although the terrorist group still pursues murderous plots abroad, including in Europe (which still cowers from labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization).</p>
<p>Since Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinian terrorists have launched about 10,000 rockets from there at Israeli civilians (including during Obama&#8217;s only visit to Israel as president, violating yet another cease-fire agreement). Since the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord requiring Israel to hand over parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorist attacks have killed over 1,000 Israelis.</p>
<p>The 1994 Jordan-Israel peace involved very little land (and heavily depends on survival of the Hashemite Kingdom), so the best precedent supporting the land-for-peace model is Egypt, which agreed to peace with Israel for return of the Sinai Peninsula. That cold peace has held since 1979 mostly thanks to over $60 billion of US aid to Egypt and an unpopular, secular autocrat (Hosni Mubarak). With all of the chaos plaguing Egypt now, particularly in the Sinai (from which a single, high-casualty attack on Israel could provoke an Israeli response), the future of the Egypt-Israel peace is hardly certain.</p>
<p>The spoils of war normally go to the victor. In 1848, the US captured much of its western territory (including California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) from Mexico in the Mexican-American war. Sometimes – as with Southern Lebanon, Gaza, or the 1938 Munich Agreement transferring the Sudetenland to the Nazis – land-for-peace turns out to be an illusory promise that only encourages military aggression.</p>
<p>Given the many more urgent (and far bloodier) problems in the Middle East that have nothing to do with Israel, why has Obama invested so much more in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process than in any other Mideast issue? And, more importantly, why is Obama so convinced that, if Israelis withdraw from the West Bank (thanks to the current peace process underway), this time they will get land-for-peace instead of land-for-war?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Five Flaws of Kerry&#8217;s Mideast Peace Process</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/the-five-flaws-of-kerrys-mideast-peace-process/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-five-flaws-of-kerrys-mideast-peace-process</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Aug 2013 04:27:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[failure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[myths]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Washington pushes its most reliable Mideast ally into perilous waters. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/kerry.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199082" alt="kerry" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/kerry.jpg" width="269" height="151" /></a><b></b></p>
<p>Here is a list of reasons why Secretary Kerry&#8217;s Mideast peace process is unfairly flawed in ways that endanger Israel.</p>
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<p><b>1) No Palestinian reciprocity at the outset.</b> Israel agreed to release 104 convicted terrorists just to get the Palestinians to talk peace. Would the U.S. agree to release 104 Guantanamo prisoners for talks with anyone?</p>
<p>Israel will undoubtedly be blamed if negotiations fail, so it&#8217;s unlikely that fair judgment by the international community motivated the release. Perhaps it was the price that Israel had to pay for a U.S. promise to prevent Iranian nukes and/or support Israel&#8217;s efforts to stop them. If so, is the U.S. good for its word (despite Obama&#8217;s repeated demonstrations that his Mideast &#8220;red lines&#8221; are meaningless)?</p>
<p>Whatever the explanation for Israel&#8217;s good-faith opening, there were plenty of ways for the Palestinians to reciprocate: removing anti-Israel incitement from their textbooks and/or official media, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, promising to &#8220;freeze&#8221; their anti-Israel diplomatic offensives, etc. But Secretary of State John Kerry preferred to establish that Palestinian reciprocity is optional: if Israel isn&#8217;t volunteering what the Palestinians demand, they need only threaten to leave the talks and Kerry will compel the Israelis to comply.</p>
<p><b>2) No Palestinian good faith.</b> The Palestinians will be represented by Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dr.Shtayyah" target="_blank">Shtayyeh’s Facebook page</a> displays a map of Israel&#8217;s internationally recognized borders, plus the West Bank and Gaza – all emblazoned with the Arabic letters for “Palestine.&#8221; So the person entrusted with negotiating a &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; openly admits that his Mideast map has room for only a Palestinian state. Just as alarming, during a recent sermon attended by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and broadcast on Palestinian television, Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud al-Habbash <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=Q86jQX6GJKA#at=85" target="_blank">compared the PA&#8217;s decision to negotiate with Israel</a> to the Prophet Muhammad&#8217;s Treaty of Hudaibiya (in the year 628 CE): “in less than two years, based on this treaty, the Prophet returned and conquered Mecca. This is the example. It is the model.”</p>
<p><b>3) No religious freedom in a future Palestinian state.</b> Palestinians insist (ironically) that &#8220;peaceful coexistence&#8221; means no Jewish settlers in their state. But, on principle, why should Jews be banned from living in a future Palestinian state &#8212; particularly when Muslims constitute over 17% of Israel&#8217;s population? Will the future Palestinian state be as hostile to religious minorities as other Muslim majority states are? Unfortunately, recent history gives little reason to hope otherwise. Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning, Arab journalist <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3181/gaza-christians" target="_blank">reported the following about a year ago</a>:</p>
<div><i>According to the Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip, at least five Christians have been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam in recent weeks&#8230;Church leaders&#8230;accused a prominent Hamas man of being behind the kidnapping and forced conversion of a Christian woman, Huda Abu Daoud, and her three daughters. Radical Islam, and not checkpoints or a security fence, remains the main threat to defenseless Christians not only in the Palestinians territories, but in the entire Middle East as well.</i></div>
<p>While Gaza is ruled by Islamists, the PA has also shown its hostility to Christians. <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/03/13/exclusive-baptist-church-in-bethlehem-declared-illegitimate-by-palestinian-authority/" target="_blank">On March 12, 2012, Algemeiner reported</a> that</p>
<p><i>&#8220;A week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an [international] audience of Evangelical Protestants&#8230;that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, [PA] officials&#8230;informed Bethlehem pastor Rev. Naim Khoury that his church lacked the authority to function as a religious institution under the PA&#8230;[T]here is a sense among Christians in Bethlehem that anti-Christian animus has gotten worse in the city&#8230;Khoury said.”</i></p>
<p>A few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/169886#.Ufk6dpJwrng" target="_blank">Palestinians vandalized the Cave of the Patriarchs</a>, Judaism&#8217;s second holiest site. How safe will non-Muslim holy sites be if there is no more Israeli presence in the West Bank? Will a future peace agreement specifically guarantee protection of and Israeli access to Jewish holy sites?</p>
<p>If Israel&#8217;s presence in the West Bank has helped to moderate Muslim rule there, will Israel&#8217;s complete departure mean that West Bank Christians can expect their persecution to worsen to Gazan levels (with abductions and forced conversions)? Palestinian insistence that their future West Bank state be &#8220;Judenrein&#8221; doesn&#8217;t bode well for the indigenous Christians there (or for religious freedom).</p>
<p><b>4) No Palestinian mandate to negotiate peace.</b> There are about 2.1 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and 1.7 million in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas-ruled Gaza vehemently opposes peace negotiations and denies Israel&#8217;s right to exist. <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-jihad-hamas-lash-out-at-pa-negotiators/" target="_blank">Islamic Jihad and Hamas recently lambasted PA leaders</a> for meeting with Israelis to talk peace. The last time that the PA announced direct talks with Israel, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Hamas-to-launch-more-effective-attacks-on-Israel" target="_blank">Hamas announced plans to launch terrorist attacks at Israel</a>, in coordination with 12 other Gaza terrorist organizations.</p>
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<p>And it&#8217;s not even clear that West Bank Palestinians favor these talks. Last Sunday, they rallied against peace until PA police violently suppressed the protest. Human Rights Watch has urged the Palestinian government <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/rights-group-wants-probe-of-ramallah-anti-peace-talk-violence/" target="_blank">to investigate the police beatings.</a><b> </b>Moreover, Abbas himself has no legal mandate, as his term of political office expired long ago yet he continues to rule with no elections in sight.</p>
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<p>At best, the PA can deliver only half of any peace that it promises, which lets Palestinians have their cake and eat it too: the PA can extract painful territorial concessions from Israel at the negotiating table, while Hamas can continue terrorist attacks to achieve the one-state solution embraced on Facebook by PA &#8220;peace negotiator&#8221; Mohammad Shtayyeh.</p>
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<p><b>5) Transferring the West Bank could be Israel&#8217;s geostrategic undoing.</b> Jordan could collapse any day from a flood of about 500,000 Syrian refugees (and growing daily); severe poverty; popular discontent over corruption, inequality, and lack of freedom; acute water shortages; and/or Muslim Brotherhood action to overthrow King Abdullah&#8217;s monarchy. These factors make the Abdullah regime&#8217;s survival increasingly uncertain. After Israel militarily withdraws from the West Bank, will Hamas topple the PA there as it did in Gaza (two years after Israel&#8217;s 2005 Gaza withdrawal)? What if the Hamas-allied Muslim Brotherhood then takes over Jordan? If Jordanian-Palestinians &#8212; the largest ethnic group in Jordan &#8212; create a Palestinian state there (<a href="http://www.meforum.org/3121/jordan-is-palestinian" target="_blank">as advocated by this Jordanian-Palestinian writer</a>), would Palestinians effectively have two states? The range and severity of threats to Israel from the combination of a post-Abdullah Jordan and a Palestinian West Bank state are considerable. Is it even possible to address these Israeli security concerns in a way that leaves Palestinian negotiators satisfied enough to sign a peace treaty?</p>
<p>With so many inherent defects in the current peace talks, why would the U.S. push its most reliable Mideast ally (and the only Middle East democracy) into such perilous waters or inevitable blame? One explanation is the increasingly fashionable idea (promoted by Arab governments) that settlements are blocking a peace deal that would produce Mideast stability. But inconvenient facts completely contradict this idea: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen (etc.) would remain the same conflict-torn mess as they are now after any Israeli-Palestinian peace.</p>
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<div id=":15e" tabindex="0" role="button" data-tooltip="Show trimmed content"><img alt="" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" /><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></div>
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<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The EU&#8217;s Broken Mideast Compass</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jul 2013 04:30:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Boycotting Israel while giving Hezbollah a free pass. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/eu.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-197220" alt="eu" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/eu.jpg" width="184" height="274" /></a>The European Union recently sent out a directive barring its 28 members from cooperating with Israeli entities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The boycott includes “all funding, cooperation, and the granting of scholarships, research grants and prizes” to Israeli entities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.</p>
<p>If this is how the EU chooses to spend its limited diplomatic and political resources &#8220;to help&#8221; the Middle East, then its moral compass is badly broken. The EU still hasn&#8217;t even mustered the clarity or courage to join the USA, Canada, and six Gulf states (led by Bahrain) in designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization, even though Hezbollah has committed terrorist acts on EU soil that have killed an EU citizen, and has supported Basher Assad&#8217;s butchery in Syria. The EU has also failed to take any decisive action to address the urgent crises in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran (which marches ever closer to nukes and imports ore &#8212; for armor and missile production &#8212; from Germany and France). And where is the EU&#8217;s boycott of Mideast governments that persecute women, execute homosexuals, and condone the slaughter of Christians?</p>
<p>If the EU wants to wield its economic clout to impose peace on disputing parties, why not boycott China for its brutal occupation of Tibet? Clearly that occupation doesn&#8217;t matter because the EU is China&#8217;s largest trading partner. And why isn&#8217;t the EU boycotting Northern Cyprus, which is under foreign military occupation by Turkey (against the wishes of the EU)?</p>
<p>The hypocrisy is even more flagrant because some EU states are themselves occupying disputed territories on various continents. One of the most notorious examples is the Falkland Islands. What exactly is the UK&#8217;s burning security interest in occupying a Latin American island nearly 8,000 miles away? Maybe the EU should boycott the UK as well.<sup><br />
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In the end, an EU boycott of Israel is just a cheap way to score political points with the oil-producing Arab states and the growing Muslim population on European soil. Indeed, the EU&#8217;s anti-Israel directive resembles Stephen Hawking&#8217;s ill-fated attempt to inject himself into the Israeli-Palestinian controversy. Just as he absurdly chose to boycott the country largely responsible for the technology that enables him to communicate, the EU shamelessly targets the only country in the Middle East that actually shares the EU&#8217;s democratic values, respect for human rights, pluralism, and the rule of law (not to mention shared interests like curbing Iranian nukes, developing natural gas resources in the Mediterranean Sea, and seeing moderates prevail in the volatile Middle East).</p>
<p>Putting aside the EU&#8217;s abundant hypocrisy, trying to strong-arm Israel into unilateral concessions has already proved to be an abysmal failure when it comes to promoting peace. Just ask President Obama, who in 2009 pressured Israel into a 10-month settlement freeze in the West Bank without requiring any reciprocal gestures from the Palestinians. They quickly realized that they need not negotiate with Israel because Obama was doing that for them. One can hardly blame Palestinians for trying to maximize their negotiating posture, even if it lacks good faith. Thus, peace talks have remained stalled for Obama&#8217;s entire presidency, even though Secretary of State John Kerry is now making his sixth peace-pushing trip (in as many months) to the region.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s also worth noting that the real obstacle to peace &#8212; Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism &#8212; existed before any of Israel&#8217;s settlement-building. Palestinian terrorism and rejectionism from Gaza also continued despite the removal of Israeli settlements (from Gaza in 2005). So Israeli settlements did not create Palestinian extremism and their removal doesn&#8217;t necessarily end it.</p>
<p>History has also demonstrated that Israeli settlement building has not prevented Israel from making painful territorial compromises for peace: Menachem Begin evacuated the Sinai, Ehud Barak ended Israel&#8217;s presence in Southern Lebanon, Ariel Sharon left Gaza, and Benjamin Netanyahu handed over West Bank territories under the Wye Accords.</p>
<p>Moreover, the EU seems to have forgotten that Jews have a historical and legal right to be in the West Bank. The &#8220;Mandate for Palestine&#8221; confirmed by the League of Nations recognized the &#8220;historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine&#8221; and &#8220;the grounds for reconstituting their National Home in that country.&#8221; Under Article 6, the Mandate encouraged &#8220;close settlement by Jews, on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.&#8221; The EU&#8217;s boycott falsely implies that Jews have no right to live in the West Bank, and is thus disturbingly reminiscent of the &#8220;Judenrein&#8221; policies of Nazi Germany, which banned Jews from certain spheres of life only because they were Jews.</p>
<p>Lastly, the EU (and US) position on Israeli West Bank construction lacks balance because Palestinian construction is never limited. As Eli Hertz notes:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Oslo Accords do not forbid Israeli or Arab settlement activity. Charging that further Jewish settlement activity preempts final negotiations by establishing realities, requires reciprocity. If Jews were forcibly expelled from the West Bank in 1948 during a war of aggression aimed at them [but then recaptured the West Bank in the defensive war of 1967], then these Territories must be considered disputed Territories, at the least&#8230;According to David Bar-Ilan, a former policy planning official, the tempo of Arab construction is “more than 10 times the number of buildings under construction [in the Territory] than those approved [by the Israeli government] for the [Jewish] settlers.</p></blockquote>
<p>If the EU wants to ignore international law and history, the many more pressing Mideast issues, and its own hypocrisy, all for the sake of promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace, then it should at least recognize that unilateral pressure on Israel has only reinforced Palestinian inflexibility. Indeed, it is only the Palestinians who have refused to negotiate peace without preconditions. The EU has pressured the wrong party because its Mideast compass is badly broken.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Iranian Nukes on the Horizon</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:52:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama's weakness and its potentially apocalyptic consequences.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iran.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-197033" alt="iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iran.jpg" width="265" height="180" /></a>President Obama&#8217;s Middle East policy has been an ever-worsening train wreck because it lacks credibility and strategy, as Egypt, Libya, and particularly Syria, have shown. And the region is about to get much worse, unless Obama exercises resolute leadership on the most important global security issue of this generation: Iran&#8217;s pursuit of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>In a commerce-critical region where “might makes right” and only the strong survive, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond. The resulting dangers potentially include: (i) nuclear proliferation, as other Mideast countries feel threatened into pursuing their own nuclear programs; (ii) the transfer of nuclear materials from Iran – the world&#8217;s chief sponsor of terrorism – to terrorist organizations and/or rogue states; (iii) bolder attacks by Iranian terror proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, etc.) protected by Iran’s nuclear umbrella; and (iv) an even more belligerent Iran that flexes its nuclear arsenal to: export its radical Islamic ideology, acquire disputed territories and resources from neighboring countries, and/or undertake actions like blocking the Strait of Hormuz to increase the price of oil.</p>
<p>As Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently told CBS News’s <i>Face the Nation</i>, the Islamic Republic is now dangerously close to a nuclear capability. Because Iran has stockpiled about 190 pounds of 20% enriched uranium, Iran is just 60 kilograms – potentially just weeks – short of crossing the nuclear “red line” that Netanyahu set in his speech before the UN last September.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Obama has signaled no urgency over Iranian nukes. Perhaps he hopes for a negotiated settlement to the issue, now that Hassan Rouhani, a so-called “moderate,” was elected to assume Iran’s presidency next month. But hope is not a strategy with the Iranian regime. Rouhani has been linked to the 1994 terrorist bombing of an Argentine Jewish community center that killed 85 people, and has boasted about how he manipulated nuclear talks with the West about a decade ago to expand Iran’s nuclear program. More importantly, Iran&#8217;s foreign policy is set by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has banned concessions to the West. Indeed, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/28/us-iran-nuclear-idUSBRE95R0G020130628" target="_blank">made it clear last Friday that Rouhani&#8217;s election will have no impact on Iran&#8217;s nuclear enrichment activities</a>.</p>
<p>Obama must also recognize that the sanctions against Iran have demonstrably failed. The Islamic Republic has skillfully outmaneuvered them, as shown <a href="http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/17/heres_how_iran_dodges_nuclear_watchdogs_from_shady_front_companies_to_false_ids" target="_blank">in a leaked U.N. report detailing 11 instances of Iran violating sanctions</a>, including attempts to acquire materials for its atomic program. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/02/us-iran-alumina-weapons-idUSBRE9610F520130702" target="_blank">Reuters published an expose</a> outlining how Iran exploits sanctions loopholes to import ore from Germany and France that could be used for making armor and missiles. More importantly, the Iranian nuclear weapons program has never once stopped because of sanctions. The only time that Iran ever suspended its nuclear program was after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when Iran briefly feared that a U.S. attack was imminent.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s Iran policy has thus far failed to produce any credible deterrent. It&#8217;s time for Obama to build on the lead of Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, who <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/canadian-fm-iran-has-2-3-months-to-prove-its-resolving-nuclear-crisis/" target="_blank">warned last month that Iran only has only a few months to demonstrate to the West that it is serious about a negotiated solution to the standoff.</a></p>
<p>Israel doesn&#8217;t have the luxury of treating its red lines the way Obama has treated the one he set for Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons; that means that the volatile Middle East of today could become far more engulfed in war and instability. Netanyahu&#8217;s latest message may be the canary in the coalmine giving its final warning, so Obama should provide bold leadership on this critical issue before it&#8217;s too late. New Jersey-sized Israel survives only by the strength of the military force that it projects. Critical to that deterrent is making good on its threats, as Israel did with its destruction of the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs, in 1981 and 2007, respectively, and its ongoing surgical airstrikes to prevent Syria from transferring game-changing weapons to Hezbollah.</p>
<p>Given such exploits, isolationists might wonder why the U.S. should bother; let Israel bear all of the costs and risks of eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat for us, goes the thinking. But the nuclear program in Iran is far more dispersed, hardened, and distant than what Israel neutralized in Iraq and Syria. Iranian nukes are truly vulnerable only to U.S. military capabilities. Expecting Israel to do the job is like a heavyweight-boxing champion asking his featherweight friend to defend him against the approaching middleweight champion. Such cowardly tactics needlessly endanger the featherweight ally, but – more importantly – there is a good chance that the middleweight won&#8217;t be fully neutralized and will feel far more emboldened to attack the heavyweight after he concludes (alongside the rest of the world) that the heavyweight is just a paper tiger.</p>
<p>Iran can already attack U.S. interests across the Middle East and Europe. And as early as 2015, Iran could develop and test ballistic missiles that could strike the continental U.S., according to a Pentagon report released last week (<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2013/missile-threat-nasic-1031-0985-13.pdf" target="_blank">&#8220;2013 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat Assessment&#8221;</a>). Obama can wait for the U.S. to be drawn into war with a nuclear-armed Iran, or he can proactively address the threat before Iran acquires nukes. But he cannot hide from the threat or hope it away. Obama must lead – before Iran’s nuclear recalcitrance forces Israel&#8217;s hand, with potentially apocalyptic consequences.</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and current geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Mending the Morsi Mistake</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Jul 2013 04:32:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Kudos to Egypt....now the next necessary steps.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sup.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195817" alt="sup" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sup-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Critics who call the recent coup by the Egyptian army &#8220;undemocratic&#8221; are placing form over substance and forgetting that the election of Mohamed Morsi was itself arguably undemocratic. Because his Muslim Brotherhood party was the only organized political force running for office, there was little chance of meaningful political competition emerging in the mere six months between Hosni Mubarak&#8217;s overthrow and Egypt&#8217;s first free elections. That fact might have mattered much less had Morsi used his presidency to promote individual freedoms and build democratic, power-sharing institutions. But Morsi reverted to the same undemocratic policies that he was elected to change. In effect, Morsi simply replaced a secular autocratic rule with an Islamist one.</p>
<div>Unsurprisingly, persecution of Egypt&#8217;s Christian minority worsened under Morsi. <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-proxy-war-on-mideast-christians/?singlepage=true" target="_blank">According to Mideast expert Raymond Ibrahim:</a></div>
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<blockquote><p>&#8220;the persecution of Copts [was] practically&#8230;legalized, as unprecedented numbers of Christians&#8230;[were] arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they &#8216;blasphemed&#8217; Islam and/or its prophet.  It was also under Morsi’s reign that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral—holiest site of Coptic Christianity and headquarters to the Pope Tawadros himself—was besieged in broad daylight by Islamic rioters.  When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral.  And the targeting of Christian children—for abduction, ransom, rape, and/or forced conversion—has also reached unprecedented levels under Morsi.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Also under Morsi, the Egyptian currency lost more than a tenth of its value, making it harder for Egypt to import fuel and food. Morsi shunned the tough decisions needed to reform the Egyptian economy and gain the confidence of the IMF and foreign investors. No economy has prospered because of Muslim Brotherhood leadership and Morsi&#8217;s ties to the group almost guaranteed economic failure, given how bad Islamist policies are for beach tourism (which needs bikinis and beer).</p>
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<div style="text-align: left;">Morsi&#8217;s Islamist leanings were also bad for non-beach tourism: last month Morsi decided that the new governor of the ancient city of Luxor would be Adel Mohamed al-Khayat, a man with ties to the Islamist group that massacred around 60 tourists in that same tourist destination in 1997. That decision might have solidified Morsi&#8217;s political power, but how could it possibly have benefited Egypt?In August 2012, when Morsi became the first Egyptian leader to host an Iranian president since the 1979 revolution imposed an Islamic theocracy on Iranians, what signal did that send to Egyptians (and the rest of the world)? When Morsi attended a June 15 rally packed with fellow Islamists calling for jihad in Syria, how could that possibly serve Egypt, which can barely stay afloat much less enter foreign wars? With so little time to solve Egypt&#8217;s colossal problems, Morsi&#8217;s Islamist ineptitude quickly worsened virtually everything.</div>
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<p>To the credit of Egypt&#8217;s people (and army), they swiftly reclaimed the power they had given to Morsi before he could take them any further down a dangerous path that was all too familiar for its autocratic ways, but far worse for its instability and rudderless economic descent.</p>
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<div>As the most populous Arab state, Egypt&#8217;s single greatest challenge has for years been employing its population (now at 85 million). That problem intensified when tourism and foreign investment dropped precipitously after 2011, when the decades-long stability of Mubarak&#8217;s rule was replaced by the unknown.</div>
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<div>Unemployment for the first quarter of 2013 was an estimated 13.2%. The country&#8217;s next leader &#8212; Adly Mansour, who was just sworn in as Egypt&#8217;s interim president, and whoever ultimately succeeds him &#8212; will need tremendous skill to restore the stability, security, tourism, and investor confidence needed to revive the economy.</div>
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<div>Any leader facing this daunting challenge should also realize that without better family planning policies, the country&#8217;s chronic overpopulation will continue aggravating Egypt&#8217;s many related problems: poverty, pollution, overcrowding, power outages, and illiteracy.</div>
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<p>To help restore domestic peace and foreign confidence in Egypt&#8217;s commitment to religious freedom, full protection and equal treatment must be given to Egypt&#8217;s Christians &#8212; the largest religious minority and a vital and ancient part of Egypt. Given how important Copts are to the history of Christianity, their community and holy sites should be a source of Egyptian pride and can even help to revitalize Egyptian tourism by attracting Christian tourists, provided that the Copts&#8217; legitimate political and security concerns are adequately addressed.The taboo of dealing with Israel should also be overcome, if only for the economic benefits that could result. Israel&#8217;s successful transition from an agricultural, low-tech economy, to one based on entrepreneurial innovation can provide some guidance/inspiration and opportunities for joint ventures in tourism, textiles, cleantech, and other sectors. Scandalous as it may seem to Egyptians, their northern neighbor&#8217;s 65-year democracy may even have some useful experience with separating religion and state, keeping the peace among an ethnically and religiously diverse population, protecting individual liberties, and developing democratic and power-sharing institutions. But to realize the full potential of the 1979 treaty, Egypt&#8217;s media and politicians must start treating the Israeli-Egyptian peace as a blessing rather than a curse.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Egypt&#8217;s recent coup establishes a problematic precedent for checking presidential power: militarily topple the president before his second year in office. Egypt&#8217;s problems are so deep and numerous that even the best leader will probably disappoint &#8220;the street&#8221; one year into office. But some historical perspective may be useful here: the French Revolution was sparked by a fiscal crisis and demands for individual liberties that ultimately overthrew the absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries. That revolution involved about a decade of turmoil and killed tens of thousands before Napolean Bonaparte assumed power in 1799.</p>
<p>Fixing Egypt could be a long and bumpy road, but at least the repairs have started.</p>
<p><strong>Noah Beck is the author of <a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and current geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</strong></p>
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		<title>Jews From Muslim Lands: The Forgotten Refugees</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/jews-from-muslim-lands-the-forgotten-refugees/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jews-from-muslim-lands-the-forgotten-refugees</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/jews-from-muslim-lands-the-forgotten-refugees/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2013 04:14:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1948]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194928</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Middle East's shameful expulsion of Judaism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jewishrefugees.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195002" alt="jewishrefugees" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jewishrefugees.jpg" width="263" height="201" /></a>June 20 was World Refugee Day, dedicated to nearly 60 million people worldwide who were forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution. One group of refugees rarely acknowledged is the Jews who were indigenous to Muslim lands but compelled to flee around the time that the State of Israel was established.</span></b></p>
<p>A Google search for “1948 refugees” produces about 6 million results. All but a few (at least through page six) are about the Palestinian Arab refugees, as if they were the only refugees of 1948. But it is estimated that from the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War through the early 1970s, up to 1,000,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their ancestral homes in Muslim countries. 260,000 of those refugees reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and comprised 56% of all immigration to the fledgling state. By 1972, their numbers had reached 600,000.</p>
<p>In 1948, Middle East and North African countries had considerable Jewish populations: Morocco (250,000), Algeria (140,000), Iraq (140,000), Iran (120,000), Egypt (75,000), Tunisia (50,000), Yemen (50,000), Libya (35,000), and Syria (20,000). Today, the indigenous Jews of those countries are virtually extinct (although Morocco and Iran each still has under 10,000 Jews). In most cases, the Jewish population had lived there for millennia.</p>
<p>Few know this history because the Jewish refugees of 1948 were granted citizenship by the countries to which they fled, including Israel. By contrast, many Muslim countries refused to integrate the Palestinian refugees, preferring to leave them as second-class citizens in order to maintain a domestic demographic balance and/or a political problem for Israel.</p>
<p>Media bias also explains why so few people know about the 1948 Jewish refugees from Muslim lands. A search for “1948 refugees” on the BBC news site generates 41 articles (going back to 1999); 40 discuss the Palestinian Arab refugees of 1948. Only three of those 40 (dated 9/22/11, 9/2/10, and 4/15/04) even mention the Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, and two do so only in a single, superficial sentence that presents the issue as a claim rather than a historical fact.</p>
<p>A search for “1948 refugees Jews from Arab lands” on the New York Times site produces 497 results (replacing “Arab” with “Muslim” halves the results), while “1948 Palestinian refugees” yields 1,050 results. Consider a comparison using Sri Lanka, another war-torn, multi-ethnic country that gained its independence from Britain in 1948. The nearly 26-year ethnic conflict there began in 1983 and claimed 80,000–100,000 lives, many multiples of the total casualties from the nearly 100-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sri Lanka’s conflict also produced hundreds of thousands of refugees, including at least 200,000 Tamil refugees in Western Europe alone. Yet a search for “Tamil refugees” generates only 531 articles – less than 5% of the 11,300 results for “Palestinian Arab refugees.”</p>
<p>Institutionalized favoritism at the UN has also enabled the Palestinians to monopolize the refugee issue, which undoubtedly reinforces the media’s bias. All non-Palestinian refugees around the world (nearly 55 million) are cared for by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which works under the guidelines of the Convention on Refugees of 1951. But Palestinian refugees (whose original population was under one million) have a UN agency dedicated exclusively to them (UNRWA).</p>
<p>UNRWA’s unique definition of “refugee” includes anyone “whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” So, in addition to families who lived in the area for generations, UNRWA’s definition includes any migrants who arrived as recently as 1946 but were then displaced. And because the definition includes “descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition,” UNRWA’s refugee population has grown from 750,000 in 1950 to 5,300,000 today (making resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue even harder). Despite these problems, the United States continues to support UNRWA (with over 4.1 billion dollars since 1950).</p>
<p>The rest of the world’s refugees are assisted by the High Commission, which is mandated to help refugees rapidly rebuild their lives, usually outside the countries that they fled. Jewish refugees from Muslim lands did just that: they rebuilt their lives in Israel and elsewhere. But the fact that they quietly adapted and Israel granted them full citizenship doesn&#8217;t lessen the wrongs committed by their countries of origin. These Jewish refugees from Muslim lands suffered legal and often violent persecution that resulted in immeasurable emotional and physical loss. They lost billions in property and endured huge socioeconomic disadvantages when forced to rebuild their lives from scratch. Israel was unfairly burdened with the colossal social and economic cost of suddenly absorbing so many refugees. So any suggestion that Jewish refugees from Muslim lands don&#8217;t deserve compensation is resoundingly wrong.</p>
<p>On the recent World Refugee Day, the Israeli Knesset member Shimon Ohayon, whose family fled Morocco in 1956, called on the Arab League to “accept their great responsibility for driving out almost a million Jews from lands [in] which they had lived for millennia.” He explained that “In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League drafted a law that&#8230;called for the freezing of bank accounts of Jews, their internment and [the confiscation of their assets]. Various other discriminatory measures were taken by Arab nations and subsequent meetings reportedly called for the expulsion of Jews from member states of the Arab League.” Ohayon challenged the League to accept responsibility for “the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population from most of the Middle East and North Africa&#8230;[and] to provide redress to the Jewish refugees.”</p>
<p>A just and comprehensive Mideast peace is possible only when Muslim states recognize their role in two historic wrongs: 1) displacing one million indigenous people only because they were Jews, and 2) perpetuating the plight of Palestinian refugees by denying them citizenship. The first wrong requires financial compensation to the families of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands, which reparation can be administered by the states that absorbed them. The second wrong should be remedied by granting full citizenship to Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) who have resettled in Muslim lands. Both wrongs have festered for too many decades.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>. </strong></p>
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