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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; egypt</title>
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		<title>How Western Media Enable Islamic Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/how-western-media-enable-islamic-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-western-media-enable-islamic-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:45:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247768</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The same lies and distortions shielding Islam “over there” have come “over here.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/la-epa-egypt-unrest2-jpg-20130819.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247776" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/la-epa-egypt-unrest2-jpg-20130819-450x300.jpg" alt="la-epa-egypt-unrest2-jpg-20130819" width="315" height="210" /></a>If the West is experiencing a rise in the sort of terror attacks that are endemic to the Islamic world—<a href="http://www.wthr.com/story/26416131/2014/08/31/3-columbus-churches-vandalized-with-graffiti-overnight"><span style="color: #0433ff;">church attacks</span></a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslims-sexually-enslaving-children-a-global-phenomenon/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sex-slavery</span></a> and <a href="http://midnightwatcher.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/isis-plot-to-behead-people-on-uk-streets-disrupted-after-police-arrest-four-islamic-terrorists-in-london/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">beheadings</span></a>—it was only natural that the same mainstream media that habitually conceals such atrocities, especially against Christians and other minorities under Islam, would also conceal the reality of jihadi aspirations on Western soil.</p>
<p>As The <a href="http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5433/australia_tragicomic_west_stresses_danger_of_islamophobia"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Commentator</span></a> reports:</p>
<blockquote><p>[T]he level of the [media] grovelling after the tragic and deadly saga in Sydney Australia over the last 24 hours has been astounding.</p>
<p>At the time of writing, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-30490696"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the lead story on the BBC website</span></a> is of course about that very tragedy, in which an Islamist fanatic took a random group hostage in a cafe, ultimately killing two of them.</p>
<p>He did this in the name of Islam. But you wouldn&#8217;t get that impression if you started to read the BBC&#8217;s lead story, which astoundingly managed to avoid mentioning the words Islam, Islamic, Islamist, Muslim, or any derivations thereof for a full 16 paragraphs. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/world/asia/sydney-australia-hostages.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">The New York Times</span></a>, which led by calling the terrorist, Man Haron Monis an &#8220;armed man&#8221;, waited until paragraph 11.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/15/sydney-siege-ends-police-storm-lindt-cafe-hostages-run-out"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Guardian&#8217;s main story</span></a> &#8211; whose lead paragraph simply referred to a &#8220;gunman&#8221; &#8212; you had to wait until paragraph 24.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;d have blinked, you&#8217;d have missed it.</p>
<p>….</p>
<p>In the wider media, reports about Muslim fears of a &#8220;backlash&#8221; have been all but ubiquitous.</p></blockquote>
<p>If these are the lengths that Western mainstream media go to dissemble about the Islamic-inspired slaughter of Western peoples, it should now be clear why the ubiquitous Muslim persecution of those unfashionable Christian minorities is also practically unknown by those who follow Western mainstream media.</p>
<p>As with the Sydney attack, media headlines say it all. The 2011 New Year’s Eve Coptic church attack that left 28 dead appeared under vague headlines: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“Clashes grow as Egyptians remain angry after attack,”</span></a> was the <i>New York Times</i>’ headline; and “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/01/AR2011010102697.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Christians clash with police in Egypt after attack on churchgoers kills 21</span></a>” was the <i>Washington Post</i>’s—as if frustrated and harried Christians lashing out against their oppressors is the “big news,” not the unprovoked atrocity itself; as if their angry reaction “evens” everything up.</p>
<p>Similarly, the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> partially told the story of an Egyptian off-duty police officer who, after <a href="http://www1.adnkronos.com/IGN/Aki/English/Security/Egypt-Christian-shot-dead-and-several-others-injured-in-train-attack_311526616347.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">identifying Copts by their crosses</span></a> on a train, opened fire on them, killing one, while screaming “Allahu Akbar”—but to exonerate the persecution, as caught by the report’s headline: <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/01/egypt-eyewitness-claims-train-attacker-did-not-target-copts-state-media-say.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">“Eyewitness claims train attacker did not target Copts, state media say.”</span></a></p>
<p>A February 2012 NPR report titled “<a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/02/25/147370689/in-egypt-christian-muslim-tension-is-on-the-rise"><span style="color: #0433ff;">In Egypt, Christian-Muslim Tension is on the Rise</span></a>,” while meant to familiarize readers with the situation of Egypt’s Christians, prompts more questions than answers them: “In Egypt, growing tensions between Muslims and Christians have led to sporadic violence [initiated by whom?]. Many Egyptians blame the interreligious strife on hooligans [who?] taking advantage of absent or weak security forces. Others believe it’s because of a deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the minority Christian community [what are the sources of this “mistrust”?].”</p>
<p>The photo accompanying the story is of angry Christians holding a cross aloft—not Muslims destroying crosses, which is what prompted the former to this display of Christian solidarity.</p>
<p>Blurring the line between victim and oppressor—recall the fear of “<a href="http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2014/12/new-fbi-hate-crime-stats-another-blow-to-islamist"><span style="color: #0433ff;">anti-Muslim backlashes</span></a>” whenever a Muslim terrorizes “infidels” in the West—also applies to the media’s reporting on Muslim persecution of Christians.</p>
<p>A February 2012 <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17169935"><span style="color: #0433ff;">BBC report</span></a> on a church attack in Nigeria that left three Christians dead, including a toddler, objectively states the bare bone facts in one sentence.  Then it jumps to apparently the <i>really</i> big news: that “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…”</p>
<p>The report goes on and on, with an entire section about “very angry” Christians till one confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: nonstop terror attacks on their churches and the slaughter of their women and children.</p>
<p>A <i>New York Times</i> report that appeared on December 25, 2011—the day after Boko Haram bombed several churches during Christmas Eve services, leaving some 40 dead—said that such church bombings threaten “to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims…”  Such an assertion suggests that both Christians and Muslims are equally motivated by religious hostility—even as one seeks in vain for Christian terror organizations that bomb mosques in Nigeria to screams of “Christ is Great!”</p>
<p>Indeed, Boko Haram has <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nigeria-boko-haram-torch-185-churches-captured-towns-borno-adamawa-1468763"><span style="color: #0433ff;">torched 185 churches</span></a>—to say nothing of the countless Christians beheaded—in just the last few months alone.</p>
<p>Continuing to grasp for straws, the same NYT report suggests that the Nigerian government’s “heavy-handed” response to Boko Haram is responsible for its terror, and even manages to invoke another mainstream media favorite: the poverty-causes-terrorism myth.</p>
<p>Whether Muslim mayhem is taking place in the Islamic or Western worlds, the mainstream media shows remarkable consistency in employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.</p>
<p>As such, Western mainstream media keep Western majorities in the dark about the Islamic threat, here and abroad.  Thus the “MSM” protects and enables the Islamic agenda—irrespective of whether its distortions are a product of intent, political correctness, or sheer stupidity.</p>
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		<title>‘Muslim Reformers’: Forever Talking the Talk, Never Walking the Walk</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-reformers-forever-talking-the-talk-never-walking-the-walk-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-reformers-forever-talking-the-talk-never-walking-the-walk-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:29:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sisi]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Al-Azhar won’t denounce ISIS as “un-Islamic.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CP-BTV-21.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247529" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CP-BTV-21-432x350.jpg" alt="CP-BTV-21" width="316" height="256" /></a>Due to its rarity, it’s always notable whenever a top Islamic leader publicly acknowledges the threat of Islamic radicalism and terror.   And yet, such denunciations never seem to go beyond words—and sometimes not even that.</p>
<p>Thus, in “<a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/15286/bahrain-islamists"><span style="color: #0433ff;">An Arab Prince Denounces Islamism</span></a>,” Daniel Pipes highlights “a remarkable but thus-far unnoticed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIBgsazvaOE"><span style="color: #0433ff;">address</span></a> on Dec. 5” by Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain.  In his address, the prince “candidly analyzed the Islamist enemy and suggested important ways to fight it.”</p>
<p>After discussing the positive aspects of this speech, Pipes remarks:</p>
<blockquote><p>So far, perfect. But Salman avoids the bitter reality that the “twisted” and “barbaric” ideology he describes is specifically Islamic and the theocrats are all Muslim: “this war that we are engaged in cannot be against Islam, … Christianity, … Judaism, … Buddhism.” So, when naming this ideology, Salman dithers and generalizes. He proffers an inept neologism (“theo-crism”), then harkens back to World War II for “fascist theocracy.” He implicitly rejects “Islamism,” saying he does not want a “debate about certain political parties, whether they’re Islamist or not.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, this sort of equivocation is typical of ostensibly moderate leaders and institutions throughout the Islamic world.  Consider Egypt.   One of the most appealing characteristics of President Sisi has been his outspokenness concerning the need for a more modern, moderate Islam.<b> </b></p>
<p>For example, months before Sisi was elected president, I <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/gen-sisi-religious-discourse-greatest-challenge-facing-egypt/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported/translated</span></a> the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>During his recent speech at the Dept. of Moral Affairs for the Armed Forces [in January 2014], Gen. Abdul Fateh al-Sisi—the man who ousted former President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in response to the June Revolution and who is seen as the nation’s de facto ruler—declared that “Religious discourse is the greatest battle and challenge facing the Egyptian people, and pointed to the need for a new vision and a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam—rather than relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years.”</p>
<p>Sisi further “called on all who follow the true Islam to improve the image of this religion in front of the world, after Islam has been for decades convicted of violence and destruction around the world, due to the crimes falsely committed in the name of Islam.”</p></blockquote>
<p>As with the pronunciations of Bahrain’s crown prince, so far so good.  Yet what has Sisi actually <i>done</i> about renewing Islamic discourse since becoming president?  “Absolutely nothing,” says one prominent Egyptian journalist.  Speaking recently on his popular TV show, Ibrahim Eissa said:</p>
<blockquote><p>What is the position of the Egyptian government concerning religious radicalization among the religious parties?  And now I specifically refer to the position of President Sisi concerning this matter.  Five months have passed since he became president, after his amazing showing at elections.  Okay: the president has, more than once, indicated the need for a renewal of religious discourse….  But he has not done a single thing, President Sisi, to renew religious discourse.  Nothing at all.</p></blockquote>
<p>Actually, if anything, it appears the Sisi government has done the reverse, for instance, allowing Salafis—those Egyptian Muslims most similar in ideology to ISIS—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/salafis-return-to-egypts-mosques-and-media/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">to return to the podium</span></a>.  One political activist called this move</p>
<blockquote><p>a major setback that will make it that much harder for the government to combat reactionary thinking—and this, after the Egyptian public had made great strides against such thinking….  Permitting the Salafi sheikhs to ascend to the pulpits again revives the bitter experiences of confronting this form of thinking, bringing us back to square one.</p></blockquote>
<p>Individuals aside, what about important Islamic institutions that ostensibly condemn terrorism?  How influential are they?  This last December 5, the embassy of Egypt issued a press release <a href="http://www.egyptembassy.net/news/al-azhar-conference-calls-for-muslims-to-combat-extremist-ideology/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">saying</span></a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Al-Azhar, the oldest center for Islamic learning, pressed for Muslims to combat extremist ideology at an international conference [possibly the same one that the crown prince of Bahrain spoke at] ….  Delegitimizing the ideology of ISIS is an important pillar of the global effort to combat the group. Egypt’s religious leaders play a critical role in that effort.</p></blockquote>
<p>Good words.  Yet, for all its talk about “combatting extremist ideology,” Al Azhar University—perhaps Islam’s most authoritative voice—will <a href="http://www.vetogate.com/1374000"><span style="color: #0433ff;">not</span></a> even denounce the Islamic State as “un-Islamic.”</p>
<p>When pressed on it, an Al Azhar spokesman, Abbas Shouman, recently said: “As an official entity, Al Azhar has never in all its history proclaimed anyone or any organization as un-Islamic …. [B]eing occupied by this question will not lead to anything,” because “Al Azhar <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-islamic-state-and-islam/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">will not judge ISIS or its Islam as un-Islamic</span></a>, for it is not its right, neither concerning ISIS nor anyone else.”</p>
<p>But, as one human rights advocate in Egypt was quick to <a href="http://www.light-dark.net/mobile/post.php?id=198953"><span style="color: #0433ff;">quip</span></a>: “What, didn’t the ulema and sheikhs of Al Azhar denounce as un-Islamic Naguib Mahfouz and Farag Foda and others from among the intellectuals and writers whose activities were stopped and some of whom were assassinated due to Al Azhar’s position?”</p>
<p>Indeed, Farag Foda was a prominent Egyptian professor, writer, and human rights activist who was assassinated after being denounced by none other than Al Azhar.  And although Naguib Mahfouz won the Noble Prize for Literature, his literature was denounced by Al Azhar and, predictably, he was stabbed in the neck with a knife when he was 82-years-old outside his home.</p>
<p>What accounts for this stark double standard—that Al Azhar will vent against secular/humanist Muslims, thus inciting the mob against them, while refusing to denounce the cancerous Islamic State?  Or that it will denounce terrorism, but praise jihad (as in <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/jihad-vs-terrorism-listen-to-what-islams-authorities-say/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">this bizarre article full of twisted logic and semantic quibbling</span></a>)?</p>
<p>Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, <a href="http://www.mcndirect.com/showsubject_ar.aspx?id=58518"><span style="color: #0433ff;">coordinator</span></a> of a group of former Al Azhar graduates who support a civil government, explains:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Islamic State can never denounce the Islamic State as un-Islamic.   For the Islamic State is the working, postgraduate project for graduates from Al Azhar.  And after this statement [refusing to denounce IS as “un-Islamic”], Al Azhar’s mask has fallen….  Everything that the Islamic State does exists in the curriculum of Al Azhar and is taught to students, including apostasy [punishing Muslims who leave Islam], <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islamic-jizya-protection-from-whom/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">payment of jizya</span></a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muhammad-and-islams-sex-slaves/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sex slaves</span></a> and the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslims-sexually-enslaving-children-a-global-phenomenon/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">captivity of women</span></a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>At this late point in the game—as I write, Islamic jihadis are terrorizing Sydney, Australia—all purported Muslim moderates and reformers, individuals and organizations, need to understand—or rather, be made to understand by their Western counterparts—that talking the talk is no longer enough: they must walk the walk before they can ever be taken seriously.</p>
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		<title>Christian Convert Illegally Imprisoned and Tortured, Begins Hunger Strike</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/christian-convert-illegally-imprisoned-and-tortured-begins-hunger-strike/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=christian-convert-illegally-imprisoned-and-tortured-begins-hunger-strike</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:18:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bishoy Armia Boulous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Convert]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Victim of religious persecution vows to starve himself to death. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/egypt-bishoy.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246557" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/egypt-bishoy.jpg" alt="egypt-bishoy" width="319" height="255" /></a>According to attorney Karam Ghobrial (“Gabriel”), his client, Bishoy Armia Boulous, a Muslim convert to Christianity, <a href="http://www.coptstoday.com/Copts-News/Detail.php?Id=91625"><span style="color: #0433ff;">remains</span></a> illegally incarcerated and has “vowed to starve himself to death.”</p>
<p>Bishoy, more notoriously known as Mohammed Hegazy, is the first Egyptian ever to try legally to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his official ID, prompting much shock and outrage in Muslim-majority Egypt.</p>
<p>Ghobrial further cited that Bishoy’s detention—in the execution room no less—is illegal, prompted solely by malicious charges against him, all of which stem from his original attempt to formally change his religious identity.</p>
<p>In the words of his lawyer: “Bishoy is imprisoned in the execution room in violation of the law.  Trumped up charges against him have not been proven and he is being treated even worse.  He has not seen the light [of day] since being released from Minya’s misdemeanor court.”</p>
<p>Bishoy was arrested in July 2014.  Then, the judge in Minya cited “disturbing the peace by broadcasting false information” as the reason for sentencing the apostate, who in the weeks before was documenting political unrest in Egypt brought on by numerous Islamic attacks on Christians.   He was eventually released, but then immediately scooped up again by State Security acting on behalf of Cairo, now under the charge of insulting the Islamic faith.</p>
<p>Bishoy’s lawyer further said that “the [current] judge is behaving in a prejudiced manner in this case because Bishoy had public announced his conversion to Christianity.”  He stressed the “need for attention to this case, and escalating it, so everyone knows what this convert is being exposed to.”</p>
<p>Bishoy has been imprisoned for nearly six months, without any action being done in his case.  He is being held on charges of “contempt to the Islamic religion” and reportedly spreading “false news” about the existence of State Security “torture chambers” where Muslim converts to Christianity are detained and tortured.  Bishoy apparently refuses to recant this claim (quite possibly because he himself is now experiencing it first hand).</p>
<p>As lawyer Karam Ghobrial maintains, it is clear that the real reason his client is being tortured in prison—where he is being held illegally under ever morphing charges—has to do with what made Bishoy Armia, formerly Mohammed Hegazy, notorious in Egypt in the first place: his audacity not only to convert to Christianity, but to try formally to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his ID card, prompting much enmity for him in Egypt.</p>
<p>In short, Bishoy is just another prisoner of conscience, just another born Muslim who wishes to be Christian—but whose actions have been deemed offensive to the state.  His story occurs with great frequency all around the Islamic world.  In nearby Iran, for example, Iranian-American Christian pastor Saeed Abedini—also seen as an apostate agitator—continues to rot in prison.</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>Palestinians Being Evicted in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/palestinians-being-evicted-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-being-evicted-in-gaza</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[eviction]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244699</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Guess why the press isn't talking about it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eviction-notice.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244700" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eviction-notice-428x350.jpg" alt="eviction-notice" width="344" height="281" /></a>Once more, Gaza&#8217;s border is in flames.</p>
<p>Civilians  are being evicted from their homes, a curfew has been imposed, and a crossing that enables Gazans to leave has been closed. Yet the world is silent. Isn&#8217;t that strange?</p>
<p>Hundreds of residents along one of Gaza&#8217;s borders have suddenly been ordered to evacuate, on just two days&#8217; notice. Their homes are to be demolished. There is no talk of compensation. Why isn&#8217;t the United Nations Security Council denouncing this outrage?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Because it is Egypt, and not Israel, that is doing the evicting. (See the New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/middleeast/egypt-orders-evacuation-along-gaza-border-to-thwart-militants.html">October 28 edition</a>.)</p>
<p>The Egyptians have decided they need a buffer zone along their border with Gaza. They don&#8217;t trust the Hamas regime, which they say has been assisting terrorists who have been attacking Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. Apparently Cairo does not accept the Obama Administration scripted fiction that the new Hamas-PA government is run by &#8220;technocrats.&#8221; Egypt understands that a Hamas-appointed &#8220;technocrat&#8221; is, first and foremost, a functionary of Hamas.</p>
<p>So the bulldozers are rumbling in Rafah. As a result of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979, the city of Rafah was split in half. Part of it is on the Gaza side of the border. Residents in the &#8220;Egyptian&#8221; part of town are now being evicted willy-nilly, in order to make room for a buffer zone that will be nine miles long, and with water-filled trenches that will be more than 500 yards wide &#8212; that&#8217;s half a kilometer, or five football fields.</p>
<p>Yet nary a word of protest from the White House, nor any suggestion of delaying any U.S. arms deliveries to Egypt.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not all. In response to the recent attacks in Sinai, the Egyptians have imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew all along the Egypt-Gaza border. In other words, no resident of Rafah can leave his or her home after dark, for any reason.</p>
<p>Yet Thomas Friedman has not written any columns in the New York Times with heart-rending stories about Rafah  women being forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions because they can&#8217;t travel to the local hospital after sundown.</p>
<p>Egypt has also shut down the only crossing along the Egyptian side of the Gaza border. With the passageway closed, no Gazan can get out.</p>
<p>So where are the snarky political cartoonists depicting Gaza as a Holocaust-era ghetto? Nor is Secretary of State John Kerry warning of Egypt becoming ostracized and isolated in the world. Western academics are not threatening to boycott their Egyptian counterparts. J Street is not lobbying for U.S. intervention against this new assault on Arab civilians.</p>
<p>Could the hypocrisy of the international community be any more blatant?</p>
<p>Evidently, if they genuinely cared about the well-being of the residents of Rafah, the White House would be holding up arms to Egypt &#8212; exactly as it held up Hellfire missiles to Israel. If he were sincerely concerned about Arab lives, Thomas Friedman would be blasting the Egyptians on the op-ed page of the New York Times. If they truly wanted to help the evacuees, J Street&#8217;s lobbyists would be working overtime to get the Obama Administration to intervene against Cairo.</p>
<p>But the truth is that they don&#8217;t really care about the welfare of Arab civilians at all, unless there is an opportunity to bash Israel. When Arabs are mistreated by their fellow-Arabs, the State Department and the pundits and the &#8220;peace camp&#8221; fall silent.</p>
<p>So let&#8217;s all learn an important lesson from this experience. Israel and its supporters should stop worrying about the latest Thomas Friedman diatribe or the latest J Street conference or the latest unfriendly remarks by the Obama White House and the State Department. They will go on blaming Israel &#8212; and excusing Egypt and other Arab countries &#8212; no matter what. Nothing Israel does will ever satisfy them &#8212; so there&#8217;s no point in trying.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated. </em></p>
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		<title>ISIS Combines Drug Smuggling w/Terror Attack on Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/isis-combines-drug-smuggling-wterror-attack-on-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=isis-combines-drug-smuggling-wterror-attack-on-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 14:15:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243628</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the Name of Allah, Mohammed and Hashish]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_243629" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/egypt_jihadists.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-243629" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/egypt_jihadists-450x183.jpg" alt="In the Name of Allah, Mohammed and Hashish" width="450" height="183" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">In the Name of Allah, Mohammed and Hashish</p></div>
<p>The courageous warrior-rapists of the Islamic State are ready, willing and able to make war on the Zionist Entity. So long as <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/idf-claims-drug-smugglers-carried-out-sinai-attack/2014/10/22/">it&#8217;s within the course of their drug smuggling</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The IDF has concluded that Wednesday’s attack on two soldiers at the Egyptian border involved a drug smuggling attempt and “was not related to terror.”</p>
<p>“An IDF inquiry suggests the cross-border attack on patrol was a violent drug smuggling attempt, foiled by Caracal Battalion Company Commanders,” military spokesmen said. ”The perpetrators opened fire from three locations including from a car driving along the border. From the attack the Company Commander, Captain Or Ben-Yehuda and another soldier were wounded. IDF responded and killed at least three of the attackers. We are continuing to review the circumstances of the incident.”</p>
<p>The Egyptian version is totally different. Egyptians security forces directly blamed the attack on the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis (ABM) terrorist group.</p></blockquote>
<p>So which version is correct?</p>
<p>Islamic terrorist groups, especially local affiliates, finance their operations through drug smuggling, kidnapping and the usual menu of criminal activities.</p>
<p>Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis is linked to Al Qaeda and ISIS, it acts like a Jihadist group, but it&#8217;s also typical of Jihadist &#8220;water empire&#8221; attempts to monopolize <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4375445,00.html">drug and cigarette smuggling</a> routes. That&#8217;s somewhat more common in Africa.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s part of a chain <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-brotherhood-dealing-drugs-to-fund-terrorism/">that begins with the </a>Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Muslim Brotherhood and its jihadi supporters are the latest terrorists to grow and cultivate illegal drugs in the hills of Sinai, in order to sell them and fund their terrorism campaign with the proceeds—not unlike Afghanistan’s Taliban earlier.</p></blockquote>
<p>At which point it becomes hard to distinguish drug activities from terror activities because they are one and the same. So you have Jihadists killing &#8220;Israeli agents&#8221; who turn out to be rival drug traffickers and terrorist attacks against Israel that are actually drug smuggling efforts.</p>
<p>Since the Jihadists routinely recruit from the criminal element, as they did in Iraq, the difference is that they&#8217;re drug dealers with an ideology.</p>
<blockquote><p>Even the camels are part of the explosive security situation in the Sinai. A herd was seen walking alone in the desert, laden with heavy bags. A local Bedouin guide explained to The Media Line: &#8220;The camels are carrying &#8216;goods&#8217; (drugs) and no one can stop them. There will be a war if these camels don&#8217;t arrive to their destination on time.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>And so it goes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Jihadists play the &#8220;Promotion of Virtue&#8221; game by executing rival drug smugglers to &#8220;protect&#8221; the Sinai Bedouins.</p>
<p>Israel appears to be more willing to highlight the drug factor, it has enough terror issues already, while Egypt doesn&#8217;t want to talk about drug smuggling, but wants to talk about terrorism.</p>
<p>This whole mess has more than a little resemblance to what is going on in America&#8217;s southern border, right down to the human trafficking.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Self-Defeating Fight</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/obamas-self-defeating-fight/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-self-defeating-fight</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:40:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the world thinks America is fighting to lose against Islamic State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #000000;"><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241098" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992-432x350.jpg" alt="WireAP_0bae6af261174ccc93186590385b497b_16x9_992" width="315" height="255" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Obamas-self-defeating-fight-375428">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The United States has a problem with Islamic State. Its problem is that it refuses to acknowledge why Islamic State is a problem.</p>
<p>The problem with Islamic State is not that it is brutal. Plenty of regimes are brutal.</p>
<p>Islamic State poses two challenges for the US. First, unlike the Saudis and even the Iranians, IS actively recruits Americans and other Westerners to join its lines.</p>
<p>This is a problem because these Americans and other Westerners have embraced an ideology that is viciously hostile to every aspect of Western civilization.</p>
<p>Last Friday, Buzz Feed published a compilation of social media posts published by Western women who have left their homes in Chicago and London and other hometowns to join IS in Syria.</p>
<p>As these women’s social media posts demonstrate, the act of leaving the West and joining IS involves rejecting everything the West is and everything it represents and embracing a culture of violence, murder and degradation.</p>
<p>In the first instance, the women who leave the West to join IS have no qualms about entering a society in which they have no rights. They are happy covering themselves in black from head to toe. They have no problem casting their lot with a society that prohibits females from leaving their homes without male escorts.</p>
<p>They have no problem sharing their husband with other wives. They don’t mind because they believe that in doing so, they are advancing the cause of Islam and Allah.</p>
<p>As the women described it, the hardest part about joining the jihad is breaking the news to your parents back home. But, as one recruiter soothed, “As long as you are firm and you know that this is all for the sake of Allah then nothing can shake you inshalah.”</p>
<p>Firm in their belief that they are part of something holy, the British, American and European jihadistas are completely at ease with IS violence. In one post, a woman nonchalantly described seeing a Yazidi slave girl.</p>
<p>“Walked into a room, gave salam to everyone in the room to find out there was a yazidi slave girl there as well.. she replied to my salam.”</p>
<p>Other posts discussed walking past people getting their hands chopped off and seeing dead bodies on the street. Islamic State’s beheadings of American and British hostages are a cause for celebration.</p>
<p>Their pride at the beheadings of James Foley and others is part and parcel of their hatred for the US and the West. As they see it, destroying the US and the West is a central goal of IS.</p>
<p>As one of the women put it, “Know this Cameron/ Obama, you and your countries will be beneath our feet and your kufr will be destroyed, this is a promise from Allah that we have no doubt over&#8230;. This Islamic empire shall be known and feared world wide and we will follow none other than the law of the one and the only ilah!” These women do not feel at all isolated. And they have no reason to. They are surrounded by other Westerners who joined IS for the same reasons they did.</p>
<p>In one recruitment post, Western women were told that not knowing Arabic is no reason to stay home.</p>
<p>“You can still survive if you don’t speak Arabic. You can find almost every race and nationality here.”</p>
<p>The presence of Westerners in IS, indeed, IS’s aggressive efforts to recruit Westerners wouldn’t pose much of a problem for the US if it were willing to secure its borders and recognize the root of the problem.</p>
<p>But as US President Barack Obama made clear over the summer, and indeed since he first took office six years ago, he opposes any effort to secure the US border with Mexico. If these jihadists can get to Mexico, they will, in all likelihood, have no problem coming to America.</p>
<p>But even if the US were to secure its southern border, it would still be unable to prevent these jihadists from returning to attack. The policy of the US government is to deny the existence of a jihadist threat by, among other thing, denying the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad.</p>
<p>When President Barack Obama insisted last Wednesday that Islamic State is not Islamic, he told all the Westerners who are now proud mujihadin that they shouldn’t worry about coming home. They won’t be screened. As far as the US is concerned their Islamic jihad ideology doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>So whereas every passenger arriving in the US from Liberia can be screened for Ebola, no one will be screened for exposure to jihadist thought.</p>
<p>And this brings us to the second problem IS poses to the US.</p>
<p>As a rising force in the Middle East, IS threatens US allies and it threatens global trade. To prevent its allies from being overthrown and to prevent shocks to the international economy, at a minimum, the US needs to contain IS. And given the threat the Westerners joining the terror army constitute, and Washington’s unwillingness to stop them at the border, in all likelihood, the US needs to destroy IS where it stands.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the US is willing or able to either contain or defeat IS.</p>
<p>As US Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales wrote over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal, from a military perspective, IS is little different from all the guerrilla forces the US has faced in battle since the Korean War. Scales argues that in all previous such engagements, the outcomes have been discouraging because the US lacks the will to take the battle to the societies that feed them or use its firepower to its full potential out of fear of killing civilians.</p>
<p>Clearly this remains the case today.</p>
<p>Moreover, as Angelo Codevilla explained last month in The Federalist, to truly dry up the swamp feeding IS, it is necessary to take the war to its state sponsors – first and foremost Turkey and Qatar.</p>
<p>In his words, “The first strike against the IS must be aimed at its sources of material support. Turkey and Qatar are very much part of the global economy&#8230; If&#8230;</p>
<p>the United States decides to kill the IS, it can simply inform Turkey, Qatar, and the world it will have zero economic dealings with these countries and with any country that has any economic dealing with them, unless these countries cease any and all relations with the IS.”</p>
<p>Yet, as we saw on the ground this weekend with US Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed mission to secure Turkish support for the US campaign against IS, the administration has no intention of taking the war to IS’s state sponsors, without which it would be just another jihadi militia jockeying for power in Syria.</p>
<p>And this leaves us with the administration’s plan to assemble a coalition of the willing that will provide the foot soldiers for the US air war against Islamic State.</p>
<p>After a week of talks and shuttle diplomacy, aside from Australia, no one has committed forces. Germany, Britain and France have either refused to participate or have yet to make clear what they are willing to do.</p>
<p>The Kurds will not fight for anything but Kurdistan. The Iraqi Army is a fiction. The Iraqi Sunnis support IS far more than they trust the Americans.</p>
<p>Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan will either cheer the US on from a distance, or in the best-case scenario, provide logistical support for its operations.</p>
<p>It isn’t just that these states have already been burned by Obama whether through his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. And it isn’t simply that they saw that the US left them hanging in Syria.</p>
<p>They see Obama’s “strategy” for fighting IS – ignoring the Islamic belief system that underpins every aspect of its existence, and expecting other armies to fight and die to accomplish the goal while the US turns a blind eye to Turkey’s and Qatar’s continued sponsorship of Islamic State. They see this strategy and they are convinced America is fighting to lose. Why should they go down with it? Islamic State is a challenging foe. To defeat it, the US must be willing to confront Islamism. And it must be willing to fight to win. In the absence of such determination, it will fight and lose, in the region and at home, with no allies at its side.<br />
<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 and the Obama-Qatari Axis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/israel-and-the-obama-qatari-axis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-and-the-obama-qatari-axis</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:01:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239887</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama spurns moderate Arab allies and Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/US-Turkey.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239970" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/US-Turkey.jpg" alt="US-Turkey" width="292" height="219" /></a>When considering the geo-political map of the current Middle East, not everything is negative or alarming, at least from an Israeli point of view. Although the Middle East is more splintered today than ever before, Israel’s political and diplomatic isolation in the region has faded. The Middle East is now composed of three main blocs and Israel is a partner with one major bloc, which also happens to be its immediate neighbors, or the inner circle of moderate-Sunni and hitherto pro-American Arab states: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates.  However, what is counter-intuitive is the Obama administration’s choice of partners in the region. It is not the moderate Sunni-Muslim states and Israel that Washington sought out as mediators for a Hamas-Israel cease-fire, but the Muslim Brotherhood bloc of Turkey and Qatar.</p>
<p>David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and one of the founding fathers of the Jewish State recognized early on that the State of Israel had no chance to develop friendly relations with its neighboring Arab states. Pan-Arab leaders such as Egypt’s president Gamal Abdul Nasser fanned the flames of hatred and revenge against the Jewish state, as did fellow Arab dictators in Syria and elsewhere. As a result, Israel’s leadership sought to develop friendly relations with its outer-circle non-Arab states such as Iran, Ethiopia, and Turkey.</p>
<p>The rise of the Islamic Republic in Iran under Khomeini following the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the departure of the Israel-friendly Shah of Iran ended Israeli-Iranian relations. Iran became the arms supplier of Israel’s Palestinian enemies and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and with its nuclear ambition, it constitutes an existential threat to the Jewish State.</p>
<p>Turkey was the only Muslim state to have a steady and rather friendly relationship with the Jewish state. Until the electoral triumph of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) in 2002, Israel’s trade and military cooperation with Turkey was significant to both countries. The AK Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed all of that. His hostility to Israel intensified with each successive electoral victory. Following his second parliamentary victory in 2007, he began tangling with Israel. In late May 2010, Erdogan gave the green light to a Gaza flotilla headed by the <i>Mavi Marmara.</i> It was a deliberate provocation by Erdogan to break through the Israeli blocade. The subsequent AK victory in the 2011 parliamentary elections increased Erdogan’s arrogance and simultaneously his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic outbursts. His latest 2014 presidential victory and his unmitigated support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood severed the special relations Israel has had with Turkey.</p>
<p>Turkey is, in fact, part of the radical Sunni, pro-Muslim Brotherhood bloc, that includes Qatar and Hamas.</p>
<p>The radical Shia bloc led by Iran, which includes Shiite Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, comprise the third bloc.</p>
<p>The puzzling question is why Washington chose to align itself with the Sunni radical Muslim Brotherhood bloc (Qatar and Turkey), and <b>not</b> with the more moderate bloc led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Both the Egyptian regime under President Abdel Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Saudi royals are upset with the Obama administration. Cairo resents Washington’s support for the deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi. Washington withheld arms delivery to Egypt because it considered Morsi’s removal illegitimate, albeit, over 30 million Egyptians demanded Morsi’s removal because of his gross mismanagement of the economy, his authoritarian style, his promotion of sectorial Brotherhood ideals and the erosion of civil liberties.</p>
<p>The Saudis resent the Obama administration rapprochement with Iran, and its November 24, 2013 nuclear agreement with Iran signed in Geneva.  Israelis are also uncomfortable with the Geneva Agreement, albeit they are more skeptical than resentful. The U.S. “Red Line” against the Assad regimes use of chemical weapons that was never put into force has added to the Saudis sense of betrayal.  Riyadh blames the U.S. for turning Iraq into an</p>
<p>Iranian Shiite satellite, and abandoning the Sunnis. The Saudis are also upset with Obama’s treatment of el-Sisi’s Egypt, whom they support.</p>
<p>The U.S. administration’s reasoning is hard to understand but for the fact that in 2003 Combat Air Operations Center for the Middle East moved from Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia to Qatar’s Al Udeid airbase near its capital of Doha. Qatar currently serves as the host to major U.S. military facilities. The Al Udeid base and other facilities in Qatar serve as the logistics, command and control, and hub for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations.  <i>Al Jazeera</i> (the Qatari regime mouthpiece) reported on July 15, 2014 that “The United States has signed an agreement with Qatar to sell Apache attack helicopters and Patriot and Javelin air-defense systems valued at <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/us-strikes-11bn-arms-deal-with-qatar-2014714223825417442.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">$11bn</span></a>.” Qatar also has the third largest proven natural gas reserves in the world, and is the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, benefitting mainly the Europeans.</p>
<p>America stands for more than multi-billion-dollar defense contracts. Its core values include human rights, religious freedom and democracy for all. The 2012 U.S. State Department Country Report on Human Rights in Qatar has concluded that “Inability of citizens to change their government peacefully, restrictions on fundamental <a href="http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL31718.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">civil liberties</span></a>, and pervasive denial of expatriate workers rights” are just some of the human rights abuses by the Qatari regime. Political parties are not allowed to exist and forced labor is pervasive in Qatar, particularly in the construction and domestic labor sectors. Qatar serves as host to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the radical Muslim Brotherhood ideologue that the Anti-Defamation League has called “<a href="http://archive.adl.org/nr/exeres/788c5421-70e3-4e4d-bff4-9be14e4a2e58,db7611a2-02cd-43af-8147-649e26813571,frameless.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">theologian of terror</span></a>,” and has provided a home base to Khaled Mashal, the Hamas political chief.</p>
<p>Particularly worrisome are the Qatari elites, including the ruling family, who support Al Qaeda and other extremist and violent Islamist groups. Additionally, Qatar’s embrace of Iran as well as Hamas and Hezbollah, deemed by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states as terrorist organizations, requires a great deal of scrutiny by the U.S.  <i>Reuters</i> reported (March 9, 2014) that “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA2806S20140309"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Qatar</span></a> of openly funding the Sunni Muslim insurgents (ISIS) his troops are battling in western Anbar province.” Lebanon’s <i>Daily Star</i> (August 14, 2014) quoted Hezbollah’s Chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as saying “Turkey and Qatar are <a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Aug-14/267252-nasrallah-turkey-and-qatar-supporting-isis.ashx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">supporting</span></a> ISIS (also known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and most recently as the Islamic State.), and I am convinced that Saudi Arabia fears it.”</p>
<p>Qatar, the hub of CENTCOM, and the recipient of top-notch U.S. weaponry, is the same state that enables Hamas’ terror against Israel by providing it with donations to buy its arms from Iran. Therefore, it was a surprise for the Israelis that Secretary of State John Kerry chose to adopt the pro-Hamas track offered by the foreign ministers of Turkey and Qatar. He ignored both the interests of Israel and Egypt who border the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.</p>
<p><i>Al-Monitor</i> (July 29, 2014) summed up the divergence of interests between Israel, the U.S’s only democratic and most reliable ally in the region and the U.S.–Qatar axis. “The Israeli leadership estimates that the cease-fire initiative (regarding the Hamas-Israeli war in Gaza-JP) of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry responds well to the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/netanyahu-abbas-kerry-protective-edge-gaza.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">interests of Qatar</span></a>, Turkey, Hamas, and its own interests with Qatar – but hardly addresses Israel’s security needs.”</p>
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		<title>Understanding the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi Alliance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/understanding-the-israeli-egyptian-saudi-alliance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=understanding-the-israeli-egyptian-saudi-alliance</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:45:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239275</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why erstwhile enemies are joining forces in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239276" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas1-397x350.jpg" alt="Military Ceremony in Gaza" width="271" height="239" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/COLUMN-ONE-Understanding-the-Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi-alliance-371891">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these countries view it as part of a larger axis of Sunni jihad that threatens not only Israel, but them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey, are the key members of this alliance structure. Without their support Hamas would have gone down with the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt last summer. As it stands, all view Hamas’s war with Israel as a means of reinstating the Brotherhood to power in that country.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To achieve a Hamas victory, Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood are using Western support for Hamas against Israel. If the US and the EU are able to coerce Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza, then the Western powers will hand the jihadist axis a strategic victory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The implications of such a victory would be dire.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas is ideologically indistinguishable from Islamic State. Like Islamic State, Hamas has developed mass slaughter and psychological terrorization as the primary tools in its military doctrine. If the US and the EU force Israel and Egypt to open Gaza’s borders, they will enable Hamas to achieve strategic and political stability in Gaza. As a consequence, a post-war Gaza will quickly become a local version of Islamic State-controlled Mosul.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the first instance, such a development will render life in southern Israel too imperiled to sustain. The Western Negev, and perhaps Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod, will become uninhabitable.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Then there is Judea and Samaria. If, as the US demands, Israel allows Gaza to reconnect with Judea and Samaria, in short order Hamas will dominate the areas. Militarily, the transfer of even a few of the thousands of rocket-propelled grenades Hamas has in Gaza will imperil military forces and civilians alike.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">IDF armored vehicles and armored civilian buses will be blown to smithereens.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Whereas operating from Gaza, Hamas needed the assistance of the Obama administration and the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down Ben-Gurion Airport, from Judea and Samaria, all Hamas would require are a couple of hand-held mortars.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Jordan will also be directly threatened.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From Egypt’s perspective, a Hamas victory in the war with Israel that connects Gaza to Sinai will strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic State and other allies. Such a development represents a critical threat to the regime.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And this brings us to Islamic State itself. It couldn’t have grown to its current monstrous proportions without the support of Qatar and Turkey.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Islamic State is obviously interested in expanding its conquests. Since it views itself as a state, its next move must be one that enables it to take over a national economy. The raid on Mosul’s central bank will not suffice to finance its operations for very long.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At this point, Islamic State wishes to avoid an all-out confrontation with Iran, so moving into southern Iraq is probably not in the cards. US forces in Kuwait, and the strength and unity of purpose of the Jordanian military, probably take both kingdoms off Islamic State’s chopping block for now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This leaves Saudi Arabia, or parts of it, as a likely next target for Islamic State expansion.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Islamic State’s current operations in Lebanon, which threaten the Saudi-supported regime there, indicate that Lebanon, at a minimum, is also at grave risk.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Then there is Iran. Iran is not a member of the Sunni jihadist axis. But when it comes to Israel and the non-jihadist regimes, it has cooperated with it.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Iran has funded, trained and armed Hamas for the past decade. It views Hamas’s war with Israel in the same light as it viewed its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah’s war with Israel eight years ago.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Both in Iraq and Syria, Iran and Islamic State have shown little interest in making one another their primary target. Turkey and Qatar have often served as Iran’s supporters in the Sunni world.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This is the context in which Israel is fighting its war with Hamas. And due to this context, two interrelated strategically significant events have occurred since the war began.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The first relates to the US.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Obama administration’s decision to side with the members of the jihadist axis against Israel by adopting their demand to open Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt has served as the final nail in the coffin of America’s strategic credibility among its traditional regional allies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As the US has stood with Hamas, it has also maintained its pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran. The US’s position in these talks is to enable the mullocracy to follow North Korea’s path to a nuclear arsenal. The non-jihadist Sunni states share Israel’s conviction that they cannot survive a nuclear armed Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Finally, President Barack Obama’s refusal to date to take offensive action to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and Syria demonstrates to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states that under Obama, the US would rather allow Islamic State to expand into their territory and destroy them than return US military forces to Iraq.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, Obama’s pro-Hamas-, pro-Iran- and pro-Muslim Brotherhood-axis policies, along with his refusal to date to take effective action in Iraq and Syria to obliterate Islamic State, have convinced the US’s traditional allies that for the next two-and-a-half years, not only can they not rely on the US, they cannot discount the possibility of the US taking actions that harm them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It is in the face of the US’s shift of allegiances under Obama that the non-jihadist Sunni regimes have begun to reevaluate their ties to Israel. Until the Obama presidency, the Saudis and Egyptians felt secure in their alliance with the US. Consequently, they never felt it necessary or even desirable to consider Israel as a strategic partner.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Under the US’s strategic protection, the traditional Sunni regimes had the luxury of maintaining their support for Palestinian terrorists and rejecting the notion of strategic cooperation with Israel, whether against Iran, al-Qaida or any other common foe.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So sequestered by the US, Israel became convinced that the only way it could enjoy any benefit from its shared strategic interests with its neighbors was by first bowing to the US’s long-held obsession with strengthening the PLO. This has involved surrendering land, political legitimacy and money to the terror group still committed to Israel’s destruction.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The war with Hamas has changed all of this.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The partnership that has emerged in this war between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a direct consequence of Obama’s abandonment of the US’s traditional allies. Recognizing the threat that Hamas, as a component part of the Sunni jihadist alliance, constitutes for their own regimes, and in the absence of American support for Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have worked with Israel to defeat Hamas and keep Gaza’s borders sealed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Most Israelis have yet to grasp the strategic significance of this emerging alliance. This owes in large part to the Left’s domination of the public discourse.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Israeli Left sees this new partnership. But it fails to understand its basis or significance. For the Left, all developments lead to the same conclusion: Whatever happens, Israel must strengthen the PLO by strengthening Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Failing to recognize the basis for Israel’s emerging strategic partnership, led by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the Left is advocating using our new ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a means of strengthening Abbas by organizing a regional peace conference.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">What they fail to understand is that such a move would destroy the partnership.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel’s strategic cooperation with Egypt and Saudi Arabia owes to their shared interests. It cannot extend beyond them. And they have no shared interests in regard to the PLO.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Threatened by the axis of jihad, no Muslim government can be seen publicly with Israelis. Asking Egyptian and Saudi leaders to have their pictures taken with Israelis is like asking them to sign their own death warrants.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Moreover, Israel’s required end-state in negotiations with the PLO – defensible borders and recognition of its sovereign rights to Jerusalem – is something that no Muslim regime can publicly accept – especially now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So far from building on our new cooperative relationship, if the government heeds the Left’s advice and uses our incipient ties with the Saudis and Egyptians to strengthen the PLO, it will highlight and exacerbate conflicting interests and so destroy the partnership.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Moreover, the fact is that the PLO can play no constructive role for any of the sides in weakening our common foes. As he has for the past decade, during the current war Abbas has demonstrated that he is utterly worthless in the fight against the forces of jihad – both of the Sunni and Shi’ite variety.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At least for the duration of Obama’s presidency the interests that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel share in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and defeating the Muslim Brotherhood/Islamic State as military and political threats can only be advanced through joint action.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Obama administration would have forced Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands weeks ago if the Egyptians and Saudis hadn’t opposed a Hamas victory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Without Israeli military action, Iran will become a nuclear power. In light of the US’s backing of Iran’s nuclear program, such an Israeli operation is effectively impossible without regional support.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As to Islamic State, right now the US is interested in cooperating with Iran in fighting the barbaric force.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In exchange for Iranian cooperation, the US is liable to cede Basra and the Shatt al-Arab to Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Effective cooperation between Israel, the Kurds and the Sunnis could contain, and perhaps defeat, Islamic State while reducing Iran’s chances of securing the strategically vital waterway.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Since the emerging partnership between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the Obama administration’s destruction of US strategic credibility, it is fairly clear that if properly managed, it can last until January 2017. Until then, in all likelihood, the US will be unwilling and unable to rebuild its reputation.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And until then, the parties are unlikely to find alternative means of securing their interests that are more effective than joint action.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Given the stakes, and the complementary capabilities of the various parties, Israel’s primary task today must be to work quietly and diligently with the Saudis and Egyptians to expand on their joint achievements in Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi alliance can ensure that all members survive the Obama era. And if lasts into the next administration, it will place all of its members on more secure footing with the US, whether or not a new administration decides to rebuild the US alliance structure in the Middle East.</span></p>
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		<title>Egypt Trolls Obama, Urges Restraint in Ferguson</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/egypt-trolls-obama-urges-restraint-in-ferguson/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egypt-trolls-obama-urges-restraint-in-ferguson</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2014 15:15:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama has made America so weak that Egypt is openly mocking us]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2014-06-29-536635131104egypt.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-238959" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2014-06-29-536635131104egypt-450x253.jpg" alt="2014-06-29-536635131104egypt" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s bad enough when Russia acts this way, but Obama has made America so weak that Egypt, a client state<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-urges-us-restraint-over-missouri-unrest-2014-8">, is openly mocking the US</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Egypt on Tuesday urged U.S. authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with racially charged demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri &#8211; echoing language Washington used to caution Egypt as it cracked down on Islamist protesters last year.</p>
<p>It is unusual for Egypt to criticize such a major donor, and it was not immediately clear why the government would have taken such a step.</p></blockquote>
<p>It took the step because Obama is weak and impotent.</p>
<p>Because Egypt resents Obama&#8217;s backing for the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the country and the constant lecturing of the military for suppressing Muslim Brotherhood violence.</p>
<p>And finally, Egypt is pissed all over again because Obama sided with Qatar, Turkey and Hamas over it.</p>
<blockquote><p>Egypt has backed the United Nation’s call for the United States authorities to deal with protests in Ferguson, Missouri “according to the American and international standards”.</p></blockquote>
<p>Note the emphasis on American standards.</p>
<p>This is straight up trolling and Obama is weak and pathetic enough to have put America in a place where even our client states are mocking us.</p>
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		<title>Obama to the Rescue – of Hamas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/obama-to-the-rescue-of-hamas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-to-the-rescue-of-hamas</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:56:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceasefire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[operation defensive edge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tunnels]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236892</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The U.S. pushes for an immediate ceasefire -- before Israel finishes its mission. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/palestinian-rockets-rain-down-on-israel-from-gaza.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236893" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/palestinian-rockets-rain-down-on-israel-from-gaza-444x350.jpg" alt="palestinian-rockets-rain-down-on-israel-from-gaza" width="255" height="201" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Obama-to-the-rescue-of-Hamas-368508">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began Thursday night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">We have known for years that tunnels were a central component of Hamas’s logistical infrastructure.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">What began as the primary means of smuggling weapons, trainers and other war material from Hamas’s sponsors abroad developed rapidly into a strategic tool of offensive warfare against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As we have seen from the heavily armed Hamas commando squads that have infiltrated into Israel from tunnels since the start of the current round of warfare, the first goal of these offensive tunnels is to deploy terrorists into Israel to massacre Israelis.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But the tunnels facilitate other terror missions as well.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel has found tunnels with shafts rigged with bombs located directly under Israeli kindergartens.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If the bombs had gone off, the buildings above would have been destroyed, taking the children down with them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Other exposed shafts showed Hamas’s continued intense interest in hostage taking. In 2006 the terrorists who kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit entered Israel and returned to Gaza through such a tunnel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today the presence of sedatives and multiple sets of handcuffs for neutralizing hostages found in tunnel after tunnel indicate that Hamas intends to abduct several Israelis at once and spirit them back to Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In an interview with Channel 2 Monday evening, Minister Naftali Bennett spoke of a mother at Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara who told him that her children wake her in the middle of the night and tell her that they hear digging beneath their beds.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Bennett said, this state of affairs simply cannot continue. People cannot live in fear that there are terrorists burrowing beneath their homes, digging tunnels to murder or kidnap them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">These tunnels must be found and destroyed not merely because they constitute a physical danger to thousands of Israelis. They must be located and destroyed, and Hamas’s capacity to rebuild them must be eliminated because the very idea that they exist makes a normal life impossible for those immediately threatened.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas’s tunnels are also the key component of their command and control infrastructure inside Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas’s political and military commanders are hiding in them. The reinforced bunkers and tunnel complexes enable Hamas’s senior leadership to move with relative freedom and continue planning and ordering attacks.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The sophistication of the tunnels and the malign intentions of Hamas are not in the least surprising.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But Hamas’s rapid advances in both tunnel and missile technology are deeply worrisome. At a minimum, they indicate that if it is allowed to end the current round of fighting as a coherent, relatively well-armed terrorist army, Hamas will be able to rapidly rebuild and expand its capabilities.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is not a stand-alone terror group. It is part of a much larger web of Islamic jihadist terror groups including al-Qaida and its affiliates as well as the Shi’ite Hezbollah. Like Hamas, all of these threaten several major Sunni Arab states.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to their recognition of the threat Hamas and its allies pose to the survivability of their regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken the unprecedented step of supporting Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">They understand that a decisive Israeli blow against Hamas in Gaza will directly benefit them. Not only will Hamas be weakened, but its state sponsors and terrorist comrades will be weakened as well.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Presently, Hamas’s most outspoken state sponsors are Qatar and Turkey.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Israel’s Calcalist newspaper reported earlier this week, Qatar is Hamas’s biggest and most important financier, a role it plays as well for ISIS, al Nusra, the Muslim Brotherhood and various jihadist groups in Libya.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Turkey for its part is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Like Qatar, Turkey has also been a major supporter of ISIS and al Nusra, as well as Hamas. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slander against Israel has grown so hysterical in recent weeks that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to downplay Turkey’s animosity, called him out on his open anti-Semitism.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By Tuesday morning, IDF forces in Gaza had destroyed 23 tunnels. The number of additional tunnels is still unknown.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">While Israel had killed 183 terrorists, it appeared that most of the terrorists killed were in the low to middle ranks of Hamas’s leadership hierarchy.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas’s senior commanders, as well as its political leadership have hunkered down in hidden tunnel complexes.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, Israel is making good progress.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But it hasn’t completed its missions. It needs several more days of hard fighting.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Recognizing this, Israel’s newfound Muslim allies have not been pushing for a cease-fire.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In contrast, the Obama administration is insisting on concluding a cease-fire immediately.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Israel has uncovered the scope of Hamas’s infrastructure of murder and terror, the US has acted with the UN, Turkey and Qatar to pressure Israel (and Egypt) to agree to a cease-fire and so end IDF operations against Hamas before the mission is completed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To advance this goal, US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Monday night with an aggressive plan to force on Israel a cease-fire Hamas and its state sponsors will accept.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As former ambassador to the US Michael Oren told the media, it is clear that neither Israel nor Egypt invited Kerry to come over. Their avoidance of Kerry signals clearly that the US’s two most important allies in the Middle East do not trust US President Barack Obama’s intentions.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And their distrust is entirely reasonable.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The State Department has openly applauded Turkey and Qatar for their involvement in attempts to achieve a cease-fire. Last week Israeli officials alleged that the US was responsible for Hamas’s rejection of the Egyptian cease-fire proposal. By attempting to coerce Egypt to accept Qatar and Turkey as its partners in mediation, Obama signaled to Hamas’s leaders that they should hold out for a better deal.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to Turkey’s membership in NATO and the glamour of the Qatari royal family, many Westerners find it hard to believe that they are major sponsors of terrorism. But it is true. Turkey and Qatar are playing a double game.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">While sending his ambassador to Brussels for NATO meetings, Erdogan has been transforming Turkey from an open, pro-Western society allied with Israel into a closed, anti-Semitic and anti-American society that sponsors Hamas, ISIL, al Nusra and other terrorists groups.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for Qatar, the tiny natural gas superpower presents itself to Americans as their greatest ally in the Muslim world. The emirate gives hundreds of millions of dollars to US universities to open campuses in Doha and pretends it is a progressive, open society, replete with debating societies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Qatar hosts three major US military bases on its territory. And it is becoming one of the most important clients for US military contractors. Earlier this year Qatar signed an $11.4 billion dollar arms agreement with the US.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At the same time, according to the Calacalist report, Qatar is the major bankroller of ISIS and al Nusra in Syria and Iraq. It gives $50 million a month to jihadists in Libya. It gives Hamas $100m. in annual aid. And in the past two years Doha has provided Hamas with an additional $620m. dollars, including $250m. it transferred to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s personal bank account, and $350m. in military aid to Hamas, transferred after the Egyptian military forced the Muslim Brotherhood government from power last July.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Add to that the $100m. per year that Qatar pours into Al Jazeera’s satellite network – which has dedicated itself to undermining pro-Western Arab regimes while popularizing the likes of al-Qaida and Hamas, and Qatar is the largest financier of international jihad in the world.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Rather than notice that Qatar and Turkey are playing a double game, and treat them with suspicion, the Obama administration has embraced them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Chances that Kerry will secure a cease-fire in the near future are small. In all likelihood, the government will be able to buy the time necessary to complete the mission in whole or large part. But the fact that the US has chosen at this juncture in the operation – with Israel enjoying unprecedented support from the most important Sunni states in the region – to side with Hamas and its state sponsors in their demand for an immediate cease-fire speaks volumes about the transformation of US foreign policy under Obama’s leadership.</span></p>
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		<title>Israel Batters Hamas &#8212;- Kerry to the Rescue</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/israel-batters-hamas-kerry-to-the-rescue/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-batters-hamas-kerry-to-the-rescue</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:39:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[casualties]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236735</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With Israel's enemies watching, the Obama administration undermines the Gaza war effort. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/F140711HP36.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236737" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/F140711HP36-450x335.jpg" alt="." width="250" height="186" /></a>As of Sunday evening, on Day 13 of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas was still fighting on against Israel, although its prospects didn’t look good.</p>
<p>With Hamas’s rocket fire on Israel intensifying two weeks ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with Iran’s nuclear program the main thing on his plate, kept ordering only small-scale retaliatory strikes from the air, hoping to avoid a larger conflict. But Hamas kept firing—more and more. So Israel launched Operation Protective Edge—but still tried to keep it limited, without boots on the ground in Gaza.</p>
<p>On Wednesday morning Netanyahu made an adroit move, publicly accepting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal. Hamas turned it down flat. Netanyahu, who told the Israeli public in a televised address on Sunday evening that he has been in constant contact with the leaders of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Germany, France, and other countries, undoubtedly drove that point home to them.</p>
<p>With Israel’s diplomatic position strengthened, and with Arab media <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8073.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">growing harshly critical of Hamas</span></a>, Hamas responded by…escalating the war. On Thursday at dawn the Israeli army <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/tunnel-infiltration-thwarted-near-kibbutz-sufa/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">spotted and repelled</span></a> a group of 13 Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated into Israel through a tunnel from Gaza, on their way to perpetrate a massacre at nearby Kibbutz Sufa. The near-catastrophe was a pivotal moment that put an end to Israel’s boots-on-the-ground debate.</p>
<p>On Thursday night Israeli infantry, tank, and engineering units entered Gaza. The stated goal was to find the tunnels along the border—in which Hamas has invested vast sums and years of work—and destroy them, removing an intolerable danger of murderous attacks and kidnappings from residents of southern Israel.</p>
<p>In his speech Sunday evening Netanyahu spoke of somewhat broader aims—“an extended period of calm and security” and “inflicting serious damage” on Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza. While the IDF has indeed been finding and destroying tunnels, Sunday also found it locked in heavy fighting in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, a Hamas stronghold.</p>
<p>Which brings one to the issue of casualties.</p>
<p>People who complain of “asymmetry” and “disproportion”—meaning that something has to be wrong because Israelis aren’t dying—could feel somewhat better on Sunday evening, as the IDF <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4547088,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">officially announced</span></a> that the total of soldiers killed since Israel invaded Gaza on Thursday night now stood at 18, 13 of them in the previous 24 hours. As for the Palestinian side, the death toll since the war started <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,l-4547139,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reportedly</span></a> came to over 400, including 65 in the fighting in Shejaia on Sunday.</p>
<p>On the Israeli side, sensitivity to casualties is particularly high, and Netanyahu devoted a good part of his speech to the issue on Sunday evening. But with most of Israel under constant rocket fire for almost two weeks, and ongoing infiltration attempts from Gaza, Israelis will tolerate the casualties because they know the alternative is an Israel that is no longer viable.</p>
<p>Palestinian casualties are, of course, a different matter—the cause célèbre not only of Israel-bashers but also of Western governments that typically start pressuring Israel for a ceasefire as soon as it starts seriously fighting Palestinian terror.</p>
<p>The reasons for the “asymmetry” between Israeli and Palestinian casualties should be clear by now to anyone who is informed and has a conscience. Israel invests vast sums to protect its citizens, particularly with the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-shoots-down-hamas-drone/2014/07/14/991c46da-0b47-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Iron Dome missile-defense system</span></a>; Hamas positions weapons stockpiles and command centers in and under mosques, schools, and hospitals. Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to warn Gazans of impending strikes, and encourages them to leave conflict zones; Hamas <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/182741#.U8wgtECWmSo"><span style="color: #0433ff;">orders them to stay where they are</span></a>.</p>
<p>It gets down to the moral difference between a democratic state with a Jewish ethos and a terror organization with a jihadist ethos. But it’s a distinction to which the world seems particularly resistant.</p>
<p>There were already signs of trouble on Sunday when U.S. secretary of state John Kerry—who has <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10979052/john-kerry-caught-on-open-microphone-discussing-israels-gaza-offensive-in-candid-terms.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">publicly made statements</span></a> supportive of Israel and critical of Hamas—was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10979052/john-kerry-caught-on-open-microphone-discussing-israels-gaza-offensive-in-candid-terms.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">caught in an open-mike moment</span></a> bitterly criticizing Israel for Palestinian casualties and implying that he needed to come to the rescue.</p>
<p>A short time later President Obama chimed in with a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/20/obama-netanyahu-call_n_5603794.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">call in a similar spirit</span></a> to Netanyahu—in which he announced that Kerry was on his way.</p>
<p>Hamas is isolated, despised by most of the Arab world, caught in a vise between Israel and the fiercely anti-Hamas regime of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, inconsequentially supported by Turkey and Qatar, and in serious danger of sustaining a major, lasting blow.</p>
<p>A decisive Israeli win in this war will bolster Israel’s deterrence, discourage its jihadist foe Hizballah to the north, and demonstrate to the region that ideological jihad is a losing proposition and no match for Western military prowess. Obama’s “concern” and Kerry’s impending arrival are, then, very worrying.</p>
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		<title>Ceasefire Goes Up In Flames</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/ceasefire-goes-up-in-flames/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ceasefire-goes-up-in-flames</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2014 04:55:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceasefire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236371</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hamas continues its dance with death. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/palestinians.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236372" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/palestinians-450x340.jpg" alt="palestinians" width="294" height="222" /></a>An attempted ceasefire brokered by Egypt has literally gone up in flames. Right after a ceasefire proposed by Egypt, which Israel accepted, was due to go into effect, Hamas and its co-jihadists gave their answer by firing multiple rockets from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians. Hamas&#8217;s armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, declared that its attacks against Israel would &#8220;increase in ferocity and intensity.&#8221; That is one promise they have managed to keep.</p>
<p>Israel waited six hours after the truce was supposed to have gone into effect before resuming its narrowly targeted air campaign against Hamas’s infrastructure, rocket launching and storage facilities, and Hamas operatives. &#8220;Hamas has fired 47 rockets since we suspended our strikes in Gaza [this morning]. As a result, we have resumed our operation against Hamas,&#8221; an Israeli military statement said.  Scores more rockets were fired by Hamas following that statement, including in the direction of Tel Aviv. Hamas’s continued attacks claimed the first Israeli fatality. Shrapnel from a mortar shell is reported to have killed a rabbi.</p>
<p>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, after Hamas had rejected the Egyptian truce proposal, &#8220;Hamas chose to continue fighting and will pay the price for that decision. When there is no cease-fire, our answer is fire.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Egypt&#8217;s Foreign Ministry, Egypt’s proposal had called for high-level discussions in Cairo to begin within 48 hours, presumably mediated by Egypt in separate sessions with representatives from each party. The objective would have been to reinforce a temporary ceasefire with further confidence-building measures. After Egypt first advanced its proposal for a ceasefire and stepped forward to lead a mediation effort between Israel and Hamas, Secretary of State John Kerry was dispatched to Cairo to take part in the negotiations.  He was ordered to turn around and return to the U.S. before reaching his destination.  DEBKAfile has reported that, according to its sources in Washington, “the real reason the White House pulled Kerry out of another certain fiasco in the nick of time was incoming intelligence that Tehran had ordered its Palestinian pawn Jihad Islami to ignore the ceasefire and keep on shooting from Gaza. This left Hamas no option but to follow suit.”</p>
<p>Israel showed its willingness to halt its military actions to explore the possibility of negotiations. Hamas, under apparent pressure from its state sponsor Iran and other jihadist groups, summarily rejected the ceasefire proposal.</p>
<p>Past ceasefires, such as the one that brought a halt to hostilities between Hamas and Israel in November 2012, have proven to be short-lived. Indeed, Israel finds itself in this position every few years, and it follows the same formula: Hamas attacks, Israel responds militarily to defend itself and protect its civilians, the “international community” condemns Israel, and then a ceasefire is negotiated that solves nothing. Such ceasefires have only served to give Hamas more time and space to rebuild its arsenal with more sophisticated, longer-range rockets. And the international community has further complicated matters by legitimizing Hamas’s role as part of the “unity” Palestinian government.</p>
<p>Hamas and its allies claim that the only way they would agree to halt their rocket attacks this time is if all of their demands are first met, including that Israel unconditionally open all border crossings between Israel and Gaza, re-open Gaza’s sea port and release detained Hamas operative prisoners.  That is not going to happen anytime soon. Opening the borders and lifting the lawful sea blockade of Gaza while Hamas remains in charge of Gaza is tantamount to inviting unrestrained wholesale attacks against Israeli civilians from all directions.</p>
<p>Moreover, Hamas is in no position to insist on anything. Unlike 2012, when Egypt was ruled by the friendly Muslim Brotherhood-aligned government of former President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s current president, Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, considers the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas as terrorist organizations. Thus, Egypt has closed its own border crossing with Gaza and destroyed Hamas’s cross-border smuggling tunnels. Moreover, Hamas, which governs Gaza, is very low on cash. Its Palestinian unity government partner, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to pay 50,000 Gaza government workers.</p>
<p>As for relying on Hamas’s rocket fire and the diplomatic initiatives of the Palestinian Authority to pressure Israel into accepting Hamas’s terms, Hamas is so far striking out. While Israeli civilians have been largely protected by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket campaign is backfiring – literally. Aside from Palestinian civilian casualties caused by Hamas’s deliberate use of its own civilians as human shields, one of Hamas’s rockets managed to knock out the primary electric lines in Israel that deliver electricity into parts of southern Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu is in no hurry to direct Israel’s electricity company to risk the lives of its workmen by going out to fix what Hamas destroyed. As a result, about 70,000 people have been without power in Gaza.</p>
<p>Diplomatically, Hamas’s intransigence is beginning to wear thin even on Abbas and other Palestinian Authority officials, although they have run interference for Hamas at the UN and are said to be seeking judicial remedies against Israel for alleged “war crimes.” Last Friday, even before Hamas’s rejection of the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, Abbas criticized Hamas on a Palestinian TV station for firing rockets at Israel. “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?” he asked. “We prefer to fight with wisdom and politics.”  In an interview with a Lebanese television network, Abbas lamented that “We are the losing side.”</p>
<p>While condemning Israel for alleged “crimes against humanity,” the Palestinian representative at the UN Human Rights Council Ibrahim Khreisheh was actually quoted as saying last week: “The missiles that are now being launched against Israel – each and every missiles (sic) constitutes a crime against humanity whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at a civilian targets.”</p>
<p>For its part, Hamas has lashed out at Abbas, calling him “a criminal” and “a Likud member,” according to the Jerusalem Post.  Hamas is managing to torpedo the fragile Palestinian unity government all by itself.</p>
<p>In order for there to be any possibility of a durable truce going forward, Israel is reportedly insisting first on the establishment of an effective internationally monitored mechanism to remove and destroy all of the rockets and mortar weapons found in Gaza as well as all production facilities for such weapons. Moreover, there must be strong security protections in place at all border crossings before they can be opened for anything other than pure humanitarian relief.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Kerry has reportedly offered to fly to Cairo if that could help advance the prospects for a ceasefire. At the same time, Kerry said that the Obama administration would be open to extending the July 20 deadline for a final nuclear accord with Iran. Both would be a mistake under present circumstances. Kerry would be wasting his time in Egypt. No durable ceasefire will be possible so long as Iran is effectively preventing any successful ceasefire negotiations by continuing to incite Hamas and other jihadists to carry out their war with Israel as proxies for Iran.  Moreover, Iran has no intention of ending its nuclear arms development program and is only using the negotiations as a stall tactic.</p>
<p>Israel tried in good faith to bring an end to the cycle of violence by accepting Egypt’s proposal for an immediate ceasefire. Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged in a statement “Israel&#8217;s readiness to accept the ceasefire proposal.” Hamas, by contrast, relentlessly continued its dance with death. In the same statement, the Secretary General said that he “calls on Hamas to cooperate with the Egyptian initiative.”</p>
<p>It is up to Hamas and its cohorts to stop the rocket attacks immediately and accept the terms of the ceasefire proposal put forth by Egypt. Only then will the suffering that the Palestinian people are now being forced to endure because of the jihadists’ reckless actions have any chance of lessening.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Secret Directive Supporting Global Islamism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/obamas-secret-directive-supporting-global-islamism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-secret-directive-supporting-global-islamism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2014 04:55:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Buried in documents, the facts are all there.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-is-a-terrorist-.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235576" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-is-a-terrorist-.jpg" alt="obama-is-a-terrorist-" width="270" height="237" /></a>A <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/region/libya/us-document-reveals-cooperation-between-washington-and-brotherhood-1.1349207"><span style="color: #0433ff;">recent Gulf News report</span></a> sheds some light on how and why the United States helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies to power, followed by all the subsequent chaos and atrocities in the Mideast region.</p>
<p>Large portions of the report follow with my commentary interspersed for added context:</p>
<blockquote><p>Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.</p>
<p>The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that <i>the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements </i>(italics added for emphasis throughout).</p></blockquote>
<p>And we have certainly witnessed this shift.  Chaos and the Islamic ascendancy in the Middle East and North Africa never flourished as under the Obama administration—and precisely because the administration shifted from supporting stability under secular-minded autocrats.</p>
<p>The most significant example of this is how the Obama administration threw Hosni Mubarak—a U.S. ally for three decades—under the bus in order to support the Islamists, most specifically the Muslim Brotherhood.  And we saw how that ended—with another revolution, hailed as the largest revolution in human history, with the average Egyptian accusing Obama of being a terrorist supporter.</p>
<blockquote><p>To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals <i>an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>“Embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view” is synonymous with the “orthodox and mainstream view pushed forth by Mideast studies professors and academics,” especially those with political influence, such as the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of Georgetown University, in Washington D.C.  Such programs, which I’m only too well acquainted with, begin with false—that is, “embarrassingly naïve and uninformed”—premises, namely: that the source of all the region’s woes are (formerly) U.S.-propped autocrats (reality is that dictators don’t create such societies but rather are the natural outcome of Islamic societies and are the ones most prone to keeping law and order—compare Iraq under Saddam and Iraq now, as a “democracy,” with “ISIS” proclaiming a caliphate).  Mideast academics have also long spearheaded the idea that there are “moderate” Islamists and “radical” Islamists, and that the U.S. should work with the former (in reality they are all radical—to be an Islamist is to be radical—the only difference is that the “moderate” Islamists don’t wear their radicalism on their sleeves, even as they work toward the same goals that the more open “radicals” work for, namely, a Sharia-enforcing caliphate).</p>
<blockquote><p>The revelations were made by Al Hewar centre in Washington, DC, which obtained the documents in question.</p></blockquote>
<p>This too is significant. As Daniel Greenfield writes: “Al-Hewar, which actually got hold of the documents, is linked to the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6180"><span style="color: #0433ff;">International Institute of Islamic Thought</span></a>… which is a Muslim Brotherhood front group.  Figures in the Muslim Brotherhood had threatened to leak understandings with Obama Inc. This is the next best thing. It warns Obama that if he tries to forget about them, they can prove that the relationship was official policy.”</p>
<p>To be sure, after the ousting of the Brotherhood in Egypt, several Brotherhood members made, sometimes not so veiled, threats to the Obama administration if it turned its back on them, including top ranking Brotherhood member, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcD3DyrbkPw"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Khairat al-Shatter’s son</span></a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, thousands of pages of documentation of the US State Department’s dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of being declassified and released to the public.</p></blockquote>
<p>If and when these thousands of pages are released, they should be combed through, as no doubt answers to many of the Obama administration’s hitherto inexplicable policies in the Middle East will be found—to wit:</p>
<blockquote><p>US State Department documents obtained under the FOIA <i>confirm that the Obama administration maintained frequent contact and ties with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood</i>. At one point, in April 2012, US officials arranged for the public relations director of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Gaair, to come to Washington to speak at a conference on “Islamists in Power” hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed, despite the administration’s later insistence that it did not favor the Islamists over other parties, anecdotes implying otherwise were constantly on display.  In Egypt alone, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson, due to her close ties not just to President Morsi, but the Muslim Brotherhood in general, became <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/u-s-ambassador-to-egypt-muslim-brotherhoods-lackey/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">such a hated figure</span></a> in the months before last year’s anti-Brotherhood revolution.</p>
<blockquote><p>A State Department Cable classified “Confidential” report says the following: “Benghazi Meeting With Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: On April 2 [2012] Mission Benghazi met with a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood steering committee, who will speak at the April 5 Carnegie Endowment ‘Islamist in Power’ conference in Washington, D.C. He described the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to form a political party as both an opportunity and an obligation in post-revolution Libya after years of operating underground.</p></blockquote>
<p>These documents on the Obama administration’s connections with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya are especially disturbing in the context of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/behind-benghazi-muslim-brotherhood-and-obama-administration/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">earlier revelations</span></a> made in Arabic media, including that the Brotherhood’s Libyan wing was very much involved in the 9/11 Benghazi U.S. consulate attack.</p>
<blockquote><p>Another State Department paper marked “Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU)” contained talking points for Deputy Secretary of State William Burns’ scheduled July 14, 2012 meeting with Mohammad Sawan, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was also head of the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party. The document is heavily redacted, but <i>nevertheless provides clear indication of Washington’s sympathies for the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a major political force in the post-Gaddafi Libya.</i><b> </b>The talking points recommended that Secretary Burns tell Sawan that<b> </b>the US government entities “share your party’s concerns in ensuring that a comprehensive transitional justice process is undertaken <i>to address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent</i>.”</p></blockquote>
<p>“To address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent” is another way of stating another popular position among Mideast professors, namely that whenever Islamists engage in violence or terrorism, that is proof positive that they have a legitimate grievance, hence the US must “appease” lest it “spark new discontent” (perhaps the true backdrop of Benghazi).</p>
<blockquote><p>The Burns paper described the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: “Prior to last year’s revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood <i>was banned for over three decades and its members were fiercely pursued by the Gaddafi regime</i>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In light of all the chaos the Islamists have been responsible for in Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, et al—is it now obvious why Arab autocrats like Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and currently Bashar Assad have always “banned” and “fiercely pursued” the Brotherhood and its affiliates?</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Dance With Radical Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/daniel-mandel/obamas-dance-with-radical-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-dance-with-radical-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2014 04:34:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Mandel]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235356</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The defining feature of the administration's Mideast policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-grasp.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235437" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-grasp-450x337.jpg" alt="obama-grasp" width="299" height="224" /></a>Last month, President Barack Obama chose to support and fund a Palestinian Authority (PA) government that includes Hamas, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist group that calls in its charter for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7). Also last month, Obama freed five senior Taliban terrorist commanders in exchange for an American serviceman who may have been a deserter.</p>
<p>Obama could have cut funding to the PA, which would have made sense strategically, and could have supported a close, long-standing American ally, Israel. He could have refused any exchange of senior Taliban leaders. Why didn’t he?</p>
<p>Because he supports engagement with radical Islam – not merely moderate Muslims, Arab liberals, or secular reformers. Al-Qaeda notwithstanding, Obama believes radical Muslims are potential allies and friends. This is confirmed by his decisions at every important point in his presidency.</p>
<p>Thus, when Obama addressed the Muslim world in Cairo in June 2009, he insisted on inviting members of the parliamentary bloc of the (then-banned) radical Muslim Brotherhood over the objections of U.S. ally, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak – though the Obama administration later <a href="http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/obamas-muslim-brotherhood-links/">denied</a> that it did so. (A furious Mubarak refused to attend.)</p>
<p>It was no secret that numerous surveys had shown before 2011 that large majorities of Egyptians favor discriminatory <em>sharia</em>, the death penalty for apostates and so on – meaning that it was almost certain that radical Muslims would triumph in elections. Yet, when a groundswell of opposition to Mubarak’s rule arose in February 2011, Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/02/01/president-obama-transition-egypt%23transcript%23transcript">called</a> for Mubarak to step down “now” while his spokesman <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/31/press-briefing-press-secretary-robert-gibbs-1312011">called</a> for early elections involving “non-secular actors.”</p>
<p>When the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was, unsurprisingly, elected president, Obama did not discontinue arming the regime, even though its future policies were as yet entirely unknown. Yet, when in July 2013, Morsi was ousted by the Egyptian military under Field Marshal Abdul el-Sisi, Obama <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/09/obama-cuts-military-aid-egypt">suspended</a> military aid.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime is one whose leaders have called for the destruction of both America and <a href="http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/IransIntent2012b.pdf">Israel</a>. Tehran has been developing a nuclear weapons capacity that would give it the means to act on these designs. Yet, Obama has not sought to undermine or replace the regime. In 2009, when Iranians were brutalized on Tehran’s streets for protesting the rigged re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama did not call for Ahmadinejad to step down – he pointedly <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-and-President-Lee-of-the-Republic-of-Korea-in-Joint-Press-Availability/">refused</a> to get involved, saying “it&#8217;s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.”</p>
<p>For over a year upon becoming President, Obama prevented any new congressional sanctions on Iran coming to a vote. He subsequently <a href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/06/administration_tries_to_water_down_iran_sanctions_legislation">diluted and delayed</a> those that in the end passed. The 2010 UN Security Council sanctions Obama did support did not cover Iran’s vital oil, financial, and insurance sectors, and included huge exemptions for numerous countries like China, which has huge contracts in Iran’s energy sector developing oil refineries, and Russia, which supplies S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran.</p>
<p>Then, in 2013, having at least tightened UN sanctions, Obama agreed to immediately undo them, granting Iran some <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.562824">$20 billion in sanctions relief</a> (not merely $6-7 billion, as the Administration initially claimed) under the terms of the Geneva interim agreement. That agreement permitted Iran to retain intact all the essential elements of its nuclear weapons program – its Arak plutonium plant; continued uranium enrichment; intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programs, even retention of its enriched uranium stocks. (Iran was simply required to reduce them to an oxide which can be restored in weeks to weapons-grade uranium.)</p>
<p>The conclusion is clear: Obama, contrary to his oft-repeated promise to do “everything, everything” to prevent Iran going nuclear, is willing to let Tehran become the next nuclear power. That’s why in July 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-slams-clinton-statement-on-nuclear-iran-1.280505">said</a> that the U.S. would extend a “missile shield” over the Middle East if that occurred. It also explains why Obama in 2013 nominated as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, an outspoken opponent of stopping Iran by military or even economic means.</p>
<p>In Syria, Obama is arming the opposition to Bashar Assad’s Baathist regime. It might indeed be welcome if Assad fell, but some 80% of the forces fighting him are Islamists, including al-Qaeda. Where will that leave Syria and the region should Islamists succeed in replacing Assad?</p>
<p>Turkey long ceased to be a close U.S. ally. In June 2010, it opposed U.S-supported UN sanctions on Iran. In 2012, it excluded Israel from two counter-terrorism conferences in Istanbul, and Madrid. Its Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has called Israel a “terrorist state” and Zionism “a crime against humanity.” He has also a record of <a href="http://zoa.org/2013/03/10192622-erdogan-a-vitriolic-anti-semite-who-is-not-as-pleasant-as-he-sounds/">anti-Semitism</a> that goes back to the 1970s. Yet, by Obama’s own admission, Erdogan is <a href="http://www.todayszaman.com/news-269076-obama-names-turkeys-erdogan-among-top-five-international-friends.html">one of Obama’s closest friends</a> among foreign leaders.</p>
<p>Now, having chosen not to penalize Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah/Palestinian Authority for forming a unity regime with Hamas, a package of $440 million in U.S. aid to the PA is set to proceed, even though we now know that Hamas members kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers.</p>
<p>The record shows that Obama favors accommodation with radical Islam, their regimes and their leaders. He has less interest in traditional U.S. allies and is willing to pick fights with them or abandon them.</p>
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		<title>Rape in Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood ‘Gets Even’</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/rape-in-egypt-the-muslim-brotherhood-gets-even/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rape-in-egypt-the-muslim-brotherhood-gets-even</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2014 04:40:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al-Sisi]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[rape]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why is the media giving Islamists a pass for their atrocities against women and children? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/2014-635383695379805643-980.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234265" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/2014-635383695379805643-980.jpg" alt="2014-635383695379805643-980" width="316" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers recently went on a sexual assault and rape spree in Egypt as a way of “getting even” with those women who dared to celebrate the presidential victory of Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi—the former army chief who overthrew Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt.</p>
<p>On June 8, when tens of thousands of Egyptians congregated in Tahrir Square to celebrate Sisi’s inauguration, dozens of women were sexually assaulted and many more harassed.  According to a statement later released by the Ministry of Interior, seven men between the ages of 15 and 49 were arrested for sexually assaulting “a number of women.”</p>
<p>One 19-year-old female student was especially brutalized—and videotaped as she was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by a throng of men.  (I saw the graphic video on YouTube, though it has since been removed; a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUEGZ878J1o"><span style="color: #0433ff;">much less graphic clip of the initial assault appears here</span></a>.)  A gun-waving police officer eventually managed to rescue the woman from her ordeal, though after sustaining injuries himself.</p>
<p>Sexually harassing or raping those supportive of Sisi by way of “retribution” is not uncommon in Egypt.  Earlier, a <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-brotherhood-rape-boy-for-supporting-anti-brotherhood-revolution/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">six-year-old boy was raped by a Muslim Brotherhood member</span></a> who was “angered” at the child for singing praises to Sisi. He lured the boy into a shed, locked the doors, and proceeded to rape him, while saying, “You’re always holding pictures of this Sisi and singing his praises.  Come, I’ll humiliate and break you—and your Sisi.”</p>
<p>Although Western media never specify who is behind these sexual assaults—often citing “the mob”—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uzopMigE8"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Hala Sarhan</span></a>, a popular TV host in Egypt alluded to the ultimate source that legitimizes sexual harassment and rape in Egypt, namely, Islamist preachers and leaders:</p>
<blockquote><p>What was said to these people [rapists] to brainwash them into think that such violations on the person and body of this young girl [the aforementioned rape victim] were permissible? …  I’ll tell you.  The one in parliament who said this, is the same as the man who did that…  And the one who told that girl that she is an <i>infidel</i>, is the same as the one in parliament who said that it’s permissible to marry a 9-year-old girl [based on the prophet of Islam’s example when he married the girl-child Aisha].   The ones who in the mosques told him that they [women] are in the pits of hell and the lures of Satan—adulteresses, that Satan lives in their bodies…  This is what they tell them in the mosques!  And they’re so upset now [Islamist preachers] because they can no longer continue to preach like this in the mosques! We thank you minister of religious endowments for stopping this mockery!  [The new Egyptian government has cracked down on radical preachers.] Before [under Morsi], every guy that yelled and stomped got himself a pulpit to preach such thoughts into the minds of the youth—and then they went out thinking they are doing jihad.  You see, they have this thing in their mind that says “If we curse or attack an infidel, that is jihad”….  Concerning the previous cases of sexual harassment, they [Islamist authorities] told people, “Why did she [any violated woman] leave her house in the first place?  She deserves what she got!”  They told them, “Your sister needs to be circumcised”; told them, “In the house, beat her and discipline her, break her bones; and if she refuses to have sex with you, saying she’s tired or sick, curse her with the angels till the sun rises.”  We allowed these people to fill their minds with such ideas!</p></blockquote>
<p>Such honesty is reminiscent of an Egyptian op-ed that appeared after a <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-ultimate-source-of-islamic-hate-for-infidels/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">young Coptic woman was murdered by a pro-Brotherhood mob</span></a> because they identified her as a Christian:</p>
<blockquote><p>Those who killed the young and vulnerable Mary Sameh George, for hanging a cross in her car, are not criminals, but rather wretches who follow those who legalized for them murder, lynching, dismemberment, and the stripping bare of young Christian girls—without every saying “kill.”  [Islamic cleric] Yassir Burhami and his colleagues who announce their hate for Christians throughout satellite channels and in mosques—claiming that hatred of Christians is synonymous with love for Allah—they are the true killers who need to be tried and prosecuted.</p></blockquote>
<p>At any rate, using sexual harassment and rape to force people to comply with Islamist agendas has a long history, especially in Egypt.  In 2011, during the “Arab Spring,” when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists were released from prison, legitimized and eventually rose to power, sexual harassment skyrocketed, as <a href="http://harassmap.org/?l=en_US"><span style="color: #0433ff;">one graph</span></a> showed.  Moreover, UN research done in 2013, when Morsi was president, suggested that <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/04/28/99-3-of-egyptian-women-experienced-sexual-harassment-report/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">99.3% of Egyptian women had experienced sexual harassment</span></a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, in February, 2013, hundreds of Egyptian women took to the streets of Tahrir Square to protest this nonstop harassment.  They held slogans like “Silence is unacceptable, my anger will be heard,” and “A safe square for all; Down with sexual harassment.” “Marchers also shouted chants against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails,” wrote <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/1/64191/Egypt/Hundreds-march-against-sexual-harassment-in-downto.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Al Ahram Online</span></a>.</p>
<p>The response was more sexual harassment and rapes.  One woman was gang-raped for approximately 20 minutes and nearly died.  And as Hala Sarhan pointed out, elements from the then Islamist-heavy government under Morsi <a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/shura-council-committee-says-female-protesters-should-take-responsibility-if-harassed"><span style="color: #0433ff;">blamed the women themselves</span></a>, saying that:</p>
<blockquote><p>women taking part in protests bear the responsibility of being sexually harassed, [and] describing what happens in some demonstrators’ tents as “prostitution.” Major General Adel Afify, member of the committee representing the Salafi Asala Party, criticized female protesters, saying that they “know they are among thugs. They should protect themselves before requesting that the Interior Ministry does so. By getting herself involved in such circumstances, the woman has 100 percent responsibility.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Likewise, popular Salafi preacher <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2013/02/07/264982.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Abu Islam</span></a>  sarcastically blamed the victims:</p>
<blockquote><p>“They tell you women are a red line. They tell you that naked women [i.e., not wearing veils or hijabs]—who are going to Tahrir Square because they want to be raped—are a red line! And they ask Morsi and the Brotherhood to leave power!”  Abu Islam added that these women activists are going to Tahrir Square not to protest but to be sexually abused because they had wanted to be raped.  “They have no shame, no fear and not even feminism. Practice your feminism, sheikha! It is a legitimate right for you to be a woman,” he said. “And by the way, 90 percent of them are crusaders [i.e. Christian Copts] and the remaining 10 percent are widows who have no one to control them. You see women talking like monsters,” he added.</p></blockquote>
<p>The only silver lining in this cloud of Islamist rape that hovers over Egypt is that the differences between Morsi and his Brotherhood government, and Sisi and the post-Brotherhood government, are already apparent.  In response to the endemic sexual harassment in Egypt, the new government</p>
<blockquote><p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://egyptianstreets.com/2014/06/09/woman-stripped-beaten-and-sexually-assaulted-at-tahrir-square/">passed a law</a></span> criminalizing all forms of sexual harassment&#8230;  A new article, which has been issued into power, adds a harsh punishment to those found guilty of unwanted sexual contact…. Other amended laws, under article 306, declare that those found guilty of verbal sexual harassment in a private or public place will be sentenced to a minimum of six months in prison and fined no less than EGP 3,000 ($US 420).</p></blockquote>
<p>When I recently asked some analyst colleagues in Egypt if Morsi ever took any such measures against sexual harassment, the quip I received most was along the lines of “Take measures?  He was the one ordering sexual harassment against his female critics.”</p>
<p>Still, and in keeping with Western MSM journalism, Sisi, who at least appears to be trying to take some measures against sexual harassment, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/13/doubts-remain-in-egypt-despite-sisis-action-against-sexual-harassment"><span style="color: #0433ff;">is now being portrayed by the Guardian in a cynical light</span></a>—while Morsi who did nothing and whose Islamist allies were responsible for inciting violence against women got a free pass—just like the New York Times recently tried to blame Sisi for the plight of Egypt’s religious minorities, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/the-new-york-times-propaganda-war-on-egypt/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">without mentioning that it was often Morsi and the Islamists who put them there in the first place</span></a>.</p>
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		<title>Egypt’s New Government Calls for Anti-Christian Measures?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/egypts-new-government-calls-for-anti-christian-measures/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egypts-new-government-calls-for-anti-christian-measures</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:00:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Outgoing president and close ally of Sisi boasts of the anti-Christian “Conditions of Omar”.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/cp.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-233975" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/cp.jpg" alt="cp" width="312" height="162" /></a>Overlooked in the midst of all the celebrations in Egypt concerning the presidential victory of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, his predecessor, President Adly Mansour—who very much shares in Sisi’s worldview and politics—made a strange comment about the place of the nation’s Christian minority, the Copts. (Sisi installed Mansour as acting president of Egypt on July 4, 2013—right after ousting former President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party during the June 30 Revolution, which was supported by the Coptic Church.)</p>
<p>In a televised speech delivered a few days ago, Mansour addressed the Copts in a very inclusive way, one much welcomed and appreciated by Egypt’s Christians. Among other things, he indicated that they were equal citizens, “brothers” to the Muslims; that they have been an integral part of Egypt’s history; that both Copts and Muslims are victims of and enemies to “terrorism” (a reference to the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations).</p>
<p>Then he said:</p>
<blockquote><p>I speak to you [Copts] today through the true spirit of Islam—the spirit whose values appeared in the Pact of Omar, wherein the righteous Caliph, Omar bin al-Khattab, made a covenant with the Christians of Jerusalem, after Medina opened [conquered] it in the year 638; the Pact which preserved for the Christians their churches, monasteries, and crosses, and their religion and possessions. Egypt again renews the spirit of this pact and its principles with you; Egypt, the Muslim state, which takes from the values and principles of the tolerant and true Islamic Sharia for its legislation.</p></blockquote>
<p>To those familiar with the actual text of the Pact of Omar—also known as the <em>shurut</em>, or “the conditions,” of Omar—the above speech is a strange contradiction. After all, whereas Koran 9:29 provides divine sanction to fight the “People of the Book” (namely, Christians and Jews) “until they pay the jizya [monetary tribute] with willing submission and feel themselves subdued,” the <em>Conditions</em> of Omar lay out in detail how Christians are to feel themselves subdued.</p>
<p>Below are excerpts from the <em>Conditions</em> (see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><em>Crucified Again</em> </a> for my complete translation and historical discussion of the text). The conquered Christians appear to be speaking and agree:</p>
<blockquote><p>Not to build a church in our city—nor a monastery, convent, or monk’s cell in the surrounding areas—and not to repair those that fall in ruins or are in Muslim quarters;</p>
<p>Not to clang our cymbals except lightly and from the innermost recesses of our churches;</p>
<p>Not to display a cross on them [churches], nor raise our voices during prayer or readings in our churches anywhere near Muslims;</p>
<p>Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims;</p>
<p>Not to congregate in the open for Easter or Palm Sunday, nor lift our voices [in lamentation] for our dead nor show our firelights with them near the market places of the Muslims;</p>
<p>Not to display any signs of polytheism, nor make our religion appealing, nor call or proselytize anyone to it;</p>
<p>Not to prevent any of our relatives who wish to enter into Islam;</p>
<p>Not to possess or bear any arms whatsoever, nor gird ourselves with swords;</p>
<p>To honor the Muslims, show them the way, and rise up from our seats if they wish to sit down;</p>
<p>We guarantee all this to you upon ourselves, our descendants, our spouses, and our neighbors, and if we change or contradict these conditions imposed upon ourselves in order to receive safety, we forfeit our <em>dhimma</em> [protection], and we become liable to the same treatment you inflict upon the people who resist and cause sedition.</p></blockquote>
<p>To “become liable to the same treatment you inflict upon the people who resist and cause sedition” simply meant that, if any stipulation of the <em>Conditions</em> was broken, the Christians would resume their natural status as non-submitting infidels who “resist and cause sedition” against Islam—becoming, once again, free game for killing or enslavement.</p>
<p>That other Muslims read the <em>Conditions</em> to mean what they plainly say—as opposed to Mansour’s portrayal of them as indicative of Islamic tolerance—consider how just a few months ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) tried to enforce the <em>Conditions</em> to a tee, when it issued a directive calling on “Christians in the city to pay tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold in exchange for their safety.”</p>
<blockquote><p>It [<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26366197">ISIS’ statement</a>] says Christians must not make renovations to churches, display crosses or other religious symbols outside churches, ring church bells or pray in public.  Christians must not carry arms, and must follow other rules imposed by ISIS on their daily lives.  The statement said the group had met Christian representatives and offered them three choices—they could convert to Islam, accept ISIS’ conditions [based on <em>Conditions of Omar</em>], or reject their control and risk being killed.  “If they reject, they are subject to being legitimate targets, and nothing will remain between them and ISIS other than the sword,” the statement said.</p></blockquote>
<p>To be sure, ISIS’s interpretation of the <em>Conditions of Omar</em> is more orthodox than Mansour’s—certainly more in accordance with Islamic history and doctrine. Consider, for instance, the words of Saudi Sheikh Marzouk Salem al-Ghamdi—an Islamic cleric, not a politician like Egypt’s president—once spoken during a Friday mosque sermon:</p>
<blockquote><p>If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet—there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions [reference to <em>Conditions of Omar</em>] are … that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes … that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim…. If they violate these conditions, they have no protection.</p></blockquote>
<p>What, then, do we make of Mansour’s reference to these medieval <em>Conditions</em>—in a speech meant to reassure Egypt’s Christians of their equality as citizens of a modern nation?</p>
<p>What do we make of the fact that Mansour’s views on the Copts—often seen as inclusive and moderate—are shared by Sisi, Egypt’s new president, who is believed to be more of a pious Muslim than his predecessor?</p>
<p>Was Mansour employing a bit of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/tawriya-lying/">Islamic tawriya</a>, mentioning seemingly tolerant aspects of the <em>Conditions</em>—that Christians are allowed to “preserve” their existing churches, monasteries, and crosses—while ignoring the “conditions” Christians must obey in exchange for such “tolerance,” namely, that they not build or repair any churches or monasteries above the ones in existence and to keep their crosses out of sight—otherwise they lose all “protection”?</p>
<p>Through such double-talk, was Mansour trying to placate, on the one hand, the Copts, many of whom do not know much about the <em>Conditions</em>, and, on the other, hardline Salafis who do—with words and references that convey different notions to different people?</p>
<p>Indeed, from a Salafi point of view, Mansour’s declaration to the Copts that “Egypt again renews the spirit of this pact [<em>Conditions</em>] and its principles with you; Egypt, the Muslim state,” is tantamount to telling the Copts to remember their place in a medieval Muslim society and embrace their lot as <em>dhimmis</em>, third-class citizens.</p>
<p>Nor does Mansour’s use of words like “the spirit” or “values and principles” of the <em>Conditions</em> really moderate anything. For however one spins it, the most basic meaning of the <em>Conditions</em> is that Christians—because they are Christians, not Muslims—must uphold certain debilitating, discriminatory, and humiliating “conditions” in order to exist as Christians in an Islamic state.</p>
<p>Then again, could Mansour himself, a judge and former head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, be ignorant or incredulous of the truth concerning the <em>Conditions</em>?</p>
<p>In fact, a few days before Mansour’s speech, I <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/islamic-fatwa-husbands-should-abandon-wives-to-rapists-in-self-interest/">wrote the following</a> words which may be applicable to him:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is the fundamental problem facing all moderate Muslims: despite what they like to believe and due to a variety of historical and epistemological factors, they are heavily influenced by Western thinking … so whenever they come up against Islamic teachings they cannot fathom [such as the discriminatory <em>Conditions</em>], they collectively behave as if such teachings don’t really mean what they mean.</p>
<p>Yet the Salafis know exactly what they mean.</p></blockquote>
<p>At any rate, most Copts—despite Mansour’s disturbing references to a medieval text that historically justified Christian subjugation—believe that Egypt’s government, first under Mansour and now Sisi, is preferable to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>And most remain optimistic about Sisi.</p>
<p>Time will tell if such optimism is warranted, or if Egypt’s Christians will again be fated to watch their nation take one step forward and another one right back—the inevitable outcome of a worldview that always tries to articulate itself through Islamic terms.</p>
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		<title>US Diplomat Accused of Ties to Muslim Brotherhood, Lies to Congress about PA Support for Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/us-diplomat-accused-of-ties-to-muslim-brotherhood-lies-to-congress-about-pa-support-for-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=us-diplomat-accused-of-ties-to-muslim-brotherhood-lies-to-congress-about-pa-support-for-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2014 15:32:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anne W. Patterson]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Anne W. Patterson defended the Palestinian Authority practice of paying salaries to terrorists]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/USEgyptPattersonObama11.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-226583" alt="USEgyptPattersonObama11" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/USEgyptPattersonObama11.png" width="402" height="250" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mideast_Egypt-07bf0.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-226585" alt="Mideast Egypt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Mideast_Egypt-07bf0-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>You may remember Anne Patterson as Obama&#8217;s US Ambassador to Egypt who was forced to leave her post <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3855/us-ambassador-egypt">due to popular outrage in that country </a>over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<blockquote><p>Patterson called on Egyptians not to protest &#8212; including by meeting with the Coptic Pope and asking him specifically to urge the nation&#8217;s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood,</p>
<p>El Fagr reported that, during their most recent phone conversation, Patterson demanded that Egypt&#8217;s recently appointed Supreme Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning: &#8220;And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war, to which Sisi responded violently: &#8216;Neither you nor your country can overcome Egypt and its people.&#8217;&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>True to form in Obama Inc, where doing awful things only nets you a promotion, she became the assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and is continuing <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=11582">her career of lying about and defending terrorists.</p>
<p><iframe width="540" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/As-eWh3VT-s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<blockquote><p>In testimony to Congress, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, defended the Palestinian Authority practice of paying salaries to terrorists in prison saying &#8220;they have to provide for the families.&#8221; </p>
<p>Palestinian Media Watch has documented repeatedly that this is not correct. According to PA law and in practice the PA does not give stipends to terrorist prisoners&#8217; families but salaries to the terrorist prisoners themselves. PMW has already reported that the PA Minister of Prisoners vocally rejected the claim that the payments are social welfare aid to the prisoners&#8217; families, stressing instead that the prisoners receive salaries &#8220;out of esteem.&#8221;</p>
<p>In addition, when challenged by Congressman Weber at the hearing on the Administration&#8217;s Middle East and North Africa Budget Request for 2015 about possibly cutting off US funding because of the PA salary program to terrorists, Assistant Secretary Patterson twice told the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa that she &#8220;knows&#8221; that the PA &#8220;are going to try to phase that out, and we should give them an opportunity to do so.&#8221;</p>
<p>There is nothing in all the activities and statements of the PA to back up that claim. PMW has not encountered any PA statements regarding a &#8220;phasing out&#8221; of the salaries to terrorists. To the contrary, in 2013 and 2014, PA officials have regularly been adding additional regulations and benefits for prisoners. In addition, they have reiterated in government meetings and in public statements to Palestinians that the salaries and other benefits to prisoners is a high priority for the Palestinian Authority and will continue.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>So Anne Patterson has gone on lying in support of Islamic terrorists. Her reward for her egregious behavior in Egypt was the opportunity to continue it in Washington. </p>
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		<title>Unraveling the History of the Israeli Navy, Part II</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-l-schwartzwald/unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-ii</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-l-schwartzwald/unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-ii/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2014 04:20:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack L. Schwartzwald]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Navy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[six day war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yom kippur war]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A world naval power is born. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-226095 alignleft" alt="800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/800px-Israeli_Sea_Corps_Soldiers-450x298.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a><strong>[Read Part I <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-l-schwartzwald/unraveling-the-history-of-the-israeli-navy-part-i/">here]</a>. </strong></p>
<p>While Israel revamped its fleet, Egypt embarked on the so-called War of Attrition (1969-1970) with the intention of breaking Israeli morale by causing a steady stream of casualties through artillery actions along the Suez Canal.  Notwithstanding its new equipment, Israel’s navy fulfilled its role in this conflict not with missile boats but with old-fashioned <i>Palyam</i>-style raids and Navy-IDF combined amphibious operations.  Following its subpar performance in the Six Day War, <i>Flotilla 13</i> had undergone a complete overhaul under the leadership of its new commander, Ze’ev Almog—a converted infantryman who had joined the naval commandos in 1954.<sup>1</sup>  Later to obtain a Master’s Degree at the U.S. Naval War College (1972) and to serve as Israel’s naval Commander-in-Chief (1979-1985), Almog was famous at this juncture for accosting senior officers, map in hand, with an unsolicited plan for a raid.<sup>2</sup>  Under his tutelage naval commandos were trained for combined diving activity/ground raiding and outfitted with specialized webbing gear appropriate for action on land and in the water.  Thanks to Almog’s persistent lobbying, the new gear was finally put to use on June 21, 1969, when <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos swam a third of a mile from rubber dinghies and stormed ashore at Adibiyah, destroying an Egyptian monitoring station and inflicting heavy casualties.  The attack, says Almog, “proved [<i>Flotilla 13’s</i>] ability to execute an infantry assault from the sea.”<sup>3</sup></p>
<p>In July 1969, <i>Flotilla 13</i> and the IDF’s special commando unit <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> undertook<i> </i>a combined operation against heavily garrisoned “Green Island” in the Gulf of Suez—a position so “unassailable” that its Egyptian defenders dubbed it the “Rock of Gibraltar.”<sup>4</sup>  The raid required twenty <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos to arrive simultaneously at the landing site after a half-mile swim—something that had never been done.  To facilitate the task, the swimmers formed a “human centipede”—ten swimmers (swimming one behind the other) on one side of a central cord paired with ten swimmers on the other side.  Each pair of swimmers was attached to the central cord by a contact rope to avoid separation from the group.<sup>5</sup>  Once ashore the commandos successfully secured the assigned “grip area,” from which the <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos were to press forward to subdue all resistance.  As the <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> force had not yet landed, however, the naval commandos pressed ahead with successful attacks on both flanks, with the unfortunate consequence that an Egyptian grenade felled two of their number.<sup>6</sup></p>
<p>Subsequent to this, the twenty <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos stormed ashore from rubber dinghies, accompanied by Commander Almog who promptly established a command post atop the fortress roof.  In a battle lasting just under forty minutes, Green Island was “crushed to smithereens”<sup>7</sup> and <i>Flotilla 13</i> dispelled any and all doubt as to its status as an elite unit.  Even Egyptian sources regard the attack as a crucial turning point whereby Israel seized the initiative in the War of Attrition.<sup>8</sup>  But the 40% casualty rate (six killed and ten seriously wounded out of a 40-man combined force) made a deep impression on the IDF brass.<sup>9</sup>  Consequently, no further raids of this magnitude were attempted during the Attrition War.<sup>10</sup></p>
<p>This is not to say that <i>Flotilla 13 </i>remained inactive.  Just two months later, it achieved another coup with operations<i> Escort</i> and<i> Raviv</i> (September 1969).  In the first of these paired operations, naval commandos driving submerged SDVs mined two Egyptian torpedo boats at Ras Sadat.  They succeeded in destroying the boats, but a self-destruct mine aboard one of the two SDVs malfunctioned and exploded during the return voyage, killing three of its crewmembers.  (A rescue helicopter found the survivor six hours later, treading water and guarding the bodies of his fellows.<sup>11</sup>)  Despite this tragedy, the way was now open for <i>Operation Raviv</i> in which Israeli-manufactured<sup>12</sup> landing craft transported three Egyptian tanks (captured as war booty during the Six Day War) across the Gulf of Suez.  The tanks roamed the Egyptian coastline Trojan-horse style, destroying Egyptian military installations (which took them for friendly vehicles) before successfully rendezvousing with the landing craft for the trip back home.  There were no Israeli casualties in this ten-hour raid, during which 150 Egyptian soldiers were killed.<sup>13</sup></p>
<p>With the coming of the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), naval warfare entered a new era.  The Israeli Navy’s main concern at this time was the possible deployment of enemy missile boats off Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain.  To pre-empt such a strike, Israel deployed its own missile boats in a “forward defense” posture close to its enemies’ bases.  On October 6<sup>th</sup>, Yom Kippur, the first night of the war, the tactic paid high dividends.  The first ship-to-ship missile battle in naval history took place that night at Latakia on the Syrian coast.  Although the first <i>Gabriel</i> missile fired in wartime missed its mark, Israel finished the encounter, with the sinking of 5 Syrian ships—including three Syrian missile boats whose <i>Styx </i>missile proved utterly ineffectual despite their superior range.  Once launched, the <i>Styx </i>relied upon an on-board guidance system to locate its target.  Israel managed to dodge everything that was fired at them by using evasive maneuvers, launching chaff decoys<sup>14</sup> and jamming the <i>Styx’s</i> target acquisition electronically.  In contrast, Israel’s superiorly designed <i>Gabriel</i> could receive continued guidance input from the firing ship throughout its flight to the target, switching to on-board guidance only if the target was definitely locked.  The result was the destruction of a patrol boat, a minesweeper and three Syrian missile boats on October 6<sup>th</sup>, and the sinking of two more missile boats in a second raid five days later.<sup>15</sup></p>
<p>Similar engagements ensued on the Egyptian front.  At Port Said, an Egyptian flotilla reached the safety of its harbor solely because misconnected wiring on the pursuing <i>SA’ARs</i> prevented effective fire.<sup>16</sup>  At the Battle of Damietta, however, the Russian-made <i>Styx</i> again proved ineffectual against Israeli countermeasures—and this time the Egyptians could find no safe harbor.  Three of four Egyptian missile ships were overtaken and destroyed by <i>Gabriel</i> missiles while attempting flight.  The victories at Latakia and Damietta left Israel free to target and destroy naval stations, radar installations, oil refineries and ammunition stores along the Syrian and Egyptian coastlines.<sup>17</sup></p>
<p>In the southern theatre, naval Commander-in-Chief “Bini” Telem had devised an amphibious operation for the Gulf of Suez that would allow for the crossing of tanks, which could then attack Egyptian forces from behind.<sup>18</sup>  As a prerequisite, Israel had to destroy two Egyptian missile boats guarding this theatre.  As the Israeli Navy had no missile boats of its own south of the Canal, <i>Flotilla 13</i> commandos were tasked with the mission.  On the first attempt (October 11), they managed to sink one of the Egyptian missile boats in its harbor with underwater explosives.  An attempt to destroy the second one with a new generation explosive boat on October 19<sup>th</sup> failed when the boat’s rudder jammed after the pilot abandoned ship.  (The boat navigated chaotically in the darkness—menacing the Israeli commandos as much or more than the Egyptians—until it finally self-destructed within the harbor.<sup>19</sup>)  Two nights later, another attempt was carried out with anti-tank missiles fired from speedboats.  The first eight shots with these clumsy weapons missed, whereupon Ze’ev Almog, who had accompanied his commandos on the mission, threatened to fire the weapon himself.  His gunners pleaded for another chance, and with their last two rockets destroyed the target.<sup>20</sup></p>
<p>Nevertheless, there would be no amphibious tank foray across the Gulf of Suez:  Days earlier the IDF had affected its own crossing further north—over the Suez Canal—to threaten the Egyptian 3<sup>rd</sup> Army in Sinai with encirclement.  (Unit 707, the navy’s diving corps, assisted IDF engineers in laying the initial bridge for this otherwise IDF-conducted crossing.<sup>21</sup>)</p>
<p>In contrast to its gross underperformance in the Six Day War, the Israeli Navy’s success in 1973 constituted one of the few untarnished bright spots of the war.  The sole naval limitation to be exposed during the conflict was the navy’s inability to counter Egypt’s closure of the Bab el Mandeb Strait.  Unable to blockade Eilat by closing the Straits of Tiran as it had done prior to the Six Day War,<sup>22</sup> Egypt achieved the same purpose by halting traffic far to the south at Bab el-Mandeb where the Red Sea enters the Gulf of Aden.  Oil shipments from Iran were thus interdicted, although Israel was able to continue importing oil from the deposits it had discovered in the Sinai.<sup>23</sup>  Having foreseen the possibility of such a blockade prior to the war, Israel had augmented its fleet of missile boats with two state-of-the-art <i>SA’AR-4s</i> capable of operating at this distant strait.<sup>24</sup>  Unfortunately, both ships were in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the war and were thus unavailable for their intended mission.  More ominous, however, was the fact that even properly positioned, they would not have been capable of prolonged intervention at Bab el Mandeb since air support—available to the enemy owing to its ties to local nations—would not have been feasible for Israel at this distance.  The Israeli ships might strike, but they would soon have to depart, leaving the enemy once again in control of the strait.  After the IDF surrounded the Egyptian 3<sup>rd</sup> Army in Sinai, Sadat capitalized on his control of Bab el Mandeb—offering to allow a modest number of ships to pass through to Eilat in return for Israel’s allowance of the passage of non-military necessities to the encircled Egyptians.<sup>25</sup></p>
<p>Hence, Israel’s possession of Sharm el-Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula was shown to be insufficient to maintain open sea-lanes to Eilat, Israel’s southern port.  A definitive solution to this puzzle would only come with the signing of the 1979 Camp David Accords establishing peace with Egypt.<sup>26</sup>  The new treaty not only guaranteed navigation in Israel’s southern sea-lanes, but also greatly reduced the likelihood that Israel or her navy would be drawn into a full-scale conflict with her neighbors in the near term.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the 1970s had seen a new naval threat arise in the form of seaborne Palestinian terrorism.  Originating from Lebanon—to which the bulk of the PLO had fled after its ouster from Jordan in 1970—the attacks employed rubber dinghies—some proceeding directly along the coastline from Lebanon, others deployed from “merchant” boats further offshore.<sup>27</sup>  Two of the most infamous anti-Israel terrorist raids in history were carried out in this fashion—namely the 1975 Savoy Hotel attack and the 1978 “Coastal Road Massacre” (which remains the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel to date).  To combat this onslaught Israel relied on its “second line” (i.e., coastal) defense, comprised of patrols by <i>Dabur</i> patrol craft augmented by smaller, commando-driven <i>Snunit</i> (“Swallow”) speedboats.</p>
<p>The navy’s approach, however, was by no means purely defensive.  The missile boats used in the Yom Kippur War were now used to transport Naval and IDF commandos to the Lebanese coast for raids against terrorist facilities and munitions stores.<sup>28</sup>  At times, the disparity in equipment between the Israeli Navy and its terrorist adversaries led to a “theatre of the absurd” as when an Israeli missile boat fired nearly 1,000 shells of varying calibers at a lone terrorist on a small island before finally dispatching him.<sup>29</sup>  But with Ze’ev Almog now in command of the Israeli Navy (1979-1985) there would not be a single successful terrorist strike by sea from Lebanon.<sup>30</sup></p>
<p>During <i>Operation Peace for Galilee</i> (the First Lebanon War, 1982) the Israeli Navy was able to operate unopposed off the coast of Lebanon, supporting the coastal arm of Israel’s infantry advance with flanking fire from the sea.  More significantly, the navy carried out the first large-scale amphibious landings in its history—first at a sandy beach secured in advance by naval commandos just north of Sidon (where ultimately 2,400 troops and 400 tanks and APCs were unloaded),<sup>31</sup> and later at Junieh, north of Beirut.  In both cases, the amphibious forces were able to assist the infantry by approaching PLO positions from the rear.<sup>32</sup></p>
<p>Throughout this period and beyond, the Israeli Navy continued to modernize its arsenal.  After the Yom Kippur War, the <i>Gabriel-II</i> missile with a range of 36 km (comparable to the 40 km range of the Soviet <i>Styx</i>) replaced the 20 km range <i>Gabriel-I</i>.  Soon thereafter, the navy obtained <i>Harpoon</i> class missiles from the U.S. with a stunning 100 km range.  The extended strike capability created a new problem for the Israeli Navy because targets 100 km distant were “beyond the horizon” (i.e., beyond radar range).  Israel solved the quandary with ship-borne helicopters that could take off from the deck and fly forward to assist with targeting.  However, the helicopters proved a poor fit for the navy’s existing missile boats, and a larger version specifically designed to carry helicopters had to be developed.  Although it would not become operational until the late 1990s, the <i>SA’AR-5</i> missile boat would boast a mind-boggling arsenal, including the <i>Gabriel II</i> (for short and medium range targets), the <i>Harpoon</i> (for “beyond the horizon targets”), a helicopter to guide the latter, anti-submarine warfare torpedoes, a 20 mm, six-barrel <i>Phalanx</i> gun which could fire 3,000 rounds per minute to shoot down incoming anti-ship missiles at a range of 1.5 km, and the newly developed, vertically-launched <i>Barak</i> missile which could speed off at Mach 2 to destroy incoming anti-ship missiles up to 10 km away.<sup>33</sup>  As seaborne Palestinian terrorists were now utilizing racing boats which greatly outpaced the navy’s <i>Daburs</i>, Israel also updated its coastal-defense flotilla with new <i>Super Dvora</i>-class patrol boats capable of speeds up to 46 knots.<sup>34</sup></p>
<p>Also requisitioned during the 1990s were two <i>Dolphin</i>-class diesel-electric submarines.  Built by a German contractor, they had an operational range of 8,000 nautical miles making them suitable for deep-sea operations.  But dating to the 1950s, when it obtained its first submarine, the Israeli Navy had used the vessels to deliver underwater naval commandos to the vicinity of their targets.<sup>35</sup>  Hence, the new generation subs were also outfitted for coastal commando operations with large-diameter torpedo tubes capable of transporting swimmer delivery vehicles<sup>36</sup> and blue-green exterior paint for camouflaged near-surface activity.<sup>37</sup></p>
<p>While these various upgrades were taking place, the Israeli Navy maintained a near perfect record in interdicting seaborne terrorism.  Attempted raids from Lebanon using small boats or rubber dinghies were universally unsuccessful.  A more novel attempt came from further away.  In April 1985, a “cargo” vessel sailing towards Israel from Algiers was ordered to stop and identify itself.  Instead, the ship’s crew fired rocket-propelled grenades at an approaching Israeli missile boat.  The missile boat sank the vessel on the spot—learning afterwards from survivors that the ship was bound for Tel Aviv, where terrorists (who were to leave the ship and come ashore in rubber dinghies) intended to raid the Ministry of Defense in order to assassinate then Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.<sup>38</sup> With the Palestinian attacks originating from more distant sites, the Israeli Navy began retaliating against more distant targets (thus letting the involved terrorists know that they were not immune to retribution).  Hence, when PLO terrorist Abu Jihad orchestrated the “Bus of Mothers Massacre”—a deadly bus hijacking in Beersheba during the first <i>Intifada</i> (1987-1993)—the Israeli Navy sent naval and <i>Sayeret Matkal</i> commandos all the way to Tunis by missile boat to kill Abu Jihad in his own home.  The mission (which was aided by Mossad) was a complete success.<sup>39</sup>  A similar type of raid against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1997, however, ended in complete disaster.  Tipped off in advance, Hezbollah laid an ambush in which eleven Israeli commandos were killed.<sup>40</sup></p>
<p>On the High Seas, the Israeli Navy sought to intercept terrorist arms shipments.  In May 2001, during the second <i>Intifada</i> (2000-2005), it seized the <i>Santorini</i>, a cargo vessel loaded with weaponry bound for Gaza.  More celebrated was the January 2002 capture of the <i>Karine A</i> in the Red Sea.  In a lightning raid, naval commandos boarded the ship by ropes lowered from helicopters, while patrol boats raced alongside.<sup>41</sup>  The operation—which recovered a hold full of munitions bound for Gaza from Iran—came off without a hitch.</p>
<p>The Second Lebanon War (2006), launched in retaliation for a deadly cross-border raid by Hezbollah, found the Israeli Navy enforcing a tight blockade of the Lebanese coast.  The only vessels allowed in or out of Lebanese ports were ships participating in the evacuation of foreign nationals from Lebanon to Cyprus.  With Hezbollah lacking a naval arm, the Israeli Navy was able to operate close in to shore, launching commando raids, shelling Hezbollah positions and destroying coastal roads to cut off lines of retreat.  Unfortunately, these lopsided operations led to an act of negligence.  The <i>Hanit</i>, a state-of-the-art <i>SA’AR-5</i> missile ship, confident that it would not face fire from the shore, shut off its anti-missile electronic warning systems so that the signals would not interfere with Israeli jets flying overhead.  While operating in this condition, the ship was struck by a land-based C-802 anti-ship missile and suffered significant damage (although it was rapidly repaired).  Iran had transferred the missile to Hezbollah only one day prior to the attack.<sup>42</sup>  Henceforth, the <i>SA’AR-5s</i> maintained themselves on high alert.<sup>43</sup></p>
<p>Following the war, the Israeli Navy was barred from operating off the Lebanese coast, which was instead patrolled by a UN-mandated Maritime Task Force.  At the coastal border with Lebanon, the Israelis had already erected an underwater barrier with sensor-equipped netting capable of detecting contact with swimmers or boats.  A similar safeguard was now put in place at the coastal border with Gaza.<sup>44</sup>  But here, the Israeli Navy would soon require something more.  In 2007, Hamas illegally seized control of Gaza from the lawful Palestinian Authority.  An escalation in rocket attacks from Gaza followed, leading to the outbreak of an open conflict—<i>Operation Cast Lead</i>—that was fought over a three-week period between December 2008 and January 2009.  The navy supported the land campaign with seaborne artillery fire and amphibious naval commando raids.<sup>45</sup>  Additionally, it enforced a sea blockade as part of a comprehensive effort to halt the flow of rocket-making materials to Gaza.<sup>46</sup> But the most stunning naval exploit of <i>Operation Cast Lead</i> took place far from the main theatre of action—in distant Sudan—where Israeli naval commandos reportedly damaged an Iranian arms ship bound for Gaza while it lay docked at <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3699142,00.html">Port Sudan</a>.</p>
<p>After completion of <i>Operation Cast Lead</i>, persistent arms smuggling mandated continuation of the Gaza blockade.  In May 2010, this led to an international incident when a flotilla of ships from Turkey attempted to run the blockade, purportedly to deliver humanitarian aid.  Ignoring an Israeli offer to <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-gaza-aid-convoy-can-unload-cargo-in-ashdod-for-inspection-1.292560">offload</a> its cargo at Ashdod for inspection and overland transport to Gaza, the six-ship flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, which announced by loudspeaker that it would not be allowed to proceed.  When the flotilla pressed on nonetheless, the navy attempted to reprise the raid it had carried out eight years earlier against the <i>Karine A</i>.  Speedboats lowered by davit from a <i>SA’AR-5</i> came alongside the <i>Mavi Marmara</i> in an effort to board, but were forced to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6sAEYpHF24">break off the attempt</a> when sprayed with water hoses and pelted with chains, boxes of dishes and a stun grenade.  Similarly, Israeli naval commandos attempting to repel onto the deck from helicopters were immediately assaulted with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI">metal clubs</a>.  Not having anticipated this reception, the commandos had come aboard with riot control paint ball guns as their primary weapons.  They also carried holstered pistols, but were told not to employ them except in situations of life and death.  Sadly that was precisely the situation they found themselves in.  By the time order was restored, nine of the Turkish perpetrators had been killed and some 50 more wounded.  Nine Israeli commandos were also wounded, including one who sustained a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/31/israeli-attacks-gaza-flotilla-activists">skull fracture</a> after being thrown from an upper deck to a lower one.</p>
<p>At the present day, Israel faces new naval challenges.  The recent discovery of offshore gas fields has placed novel defense responsibilities on the Israeli Navy at a time when many of its original missile boats are nearing the end of their operational lifespan.  The navy is responding with a new generation of naval vessels and missile systems.  In a back-to-the-future move, it has placed an order in Germany for two <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174888#.U3Y_3_2CbwJ">naval destroyers</a> to patrol its pipeline routes.  Likewise, in October 2013, Israel Aerospace Industries was contracted to build three new <i>Super Dvora</i> patrol boats capable of 50-knot speeds to guard the <a href="http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2013/10/01/Israeli-navy-orders-three-new-warships-to-protect-gas-fields/UPI-61931380644317/">gas fields</a> against seaborne attack.  More impressive is a new stealth-technology-equipped <i>SA’AR-72</i> mini-corvette, which will become operational in 2015.  Capable of deploying two helicopters and a variety of unmanned vehicles, the ships can also transport twenty commandos and a flotilla of inflatable boats in addition to its fifty-man crew.  With a range of 3,000 U.S. nautical miles, the ship boasts an electronic warfare system and an arsenal of advanced weaponry including the vertically launched, 1500 mph <i>Barak-8</i> missile capable of striking aircraft and incoming missiles at a range of 70 kilometers.  The latest <i>Barak</i> arrives <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/israel/2013/11/the-new-israeli-navy-preparing-for-future-terror-threats-2443698.html">just in time</a>, as it is capable of countering the new Russian <i>Yakhont</i> cruise missile reportedly acquired by Hezbollah in 2012 (which can be used to threaten Israel’s gas rigs).  On the submarine front, Israel has received the first of three “advanced” <i>Dolphin</i>-class subs from Germany featuring a hyper-quiet, air-independent propulsion system, which averts the need for surfacing for up to seven days.  Enlarged torpedo tubes can double as housing for swimmer delivery vehicles—the swimmers, themselves, deploying from a wet/dry compartment.  There is also much unconfirmed speculation that the subs can be modified to fire nuclear cruise missiles, thus giving Israel a submarine-based “<a href="http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/israel-submarine-capabilities/">second strike</a>” capability as Iran threatens to go nuclear.</p>
<p>Israel’s tiny navy led the Western world into the naval missile age, and it hasn’t lost its capacity to innovate.  In time, its saga is sure to embrace more chapters, but as the future has yet to unfold we must end our survey just as we began it—with mere glimpses.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">_____________________</span></p>
<p><b>Notes</b></p>
<p><sup>1</sup> Samuel M. Katz, <i>The Night Raiders: Israel’s Naval Commandos at War</i>.  New York:  Pocket Books, 1997, 74.</p>
<p><sup>2</sup> Katz, 150.</p>
<p><sup>3</sup> Rear Admiral Ze’ev Almog, <i>Flotilla 13: Israeli Naval Commandos in the Red Sea, 1967-1973</i>.  Annapolis:  Naval Institute Press, 2010, 7-9, 19-22, 34 [quote].</p>
<p><sup>4</sup> Katz, 163-64.</p>
<p><sup>5</sup> Almog, 41-42.  The cord was invented by Italy’s elite frogman unit, “COMSUBIN.” (<i>Commando Subacquei ed Incursori</i>). Katz, 166.</p>
<p><sup>6 </sup>Almog, 66.</p>
<p><sup>7</sup> Commando Uri Matityahu, quoted in Almog, 95.</p>
<p><sup>8</sup> Almog, 90-91.</p>
<p><sup>9</sup> Ami Ayalon, still fighting despite wounds in the neck and both legs, received Israel’s rare Medal of Valor for his part in the raid.  Afterwards, he eloped from the hospital to rejoin <i>Flotilla 13</i> for its next big mission—<i>Operation Escort </i>(Katz, 186, 196-97).</p>
<p><sup>10</sup> Moshe Tzalel, <i>From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat: The Evolution of Israel’s Naval Strategy</i>.  Contributions in Military Studies, Number 192. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000, 102-03; Klaus Mommsen, <i>60 Years Israel Navy</i>.  Bonn:  Bernard and Graefe, 2011, 158.</p>
<p><sup>11</sup> Almog, 27-28.  The survivor, Aryeh Yitzchak, was partially shielded from the blast by the three who were killed—Oded Nir, Rafi Miloh and Shlomo Eshel (Almog, 121-25).</p>
<p><sup>12</sup> Mommsen, 87.</p>
<p><sup>13</sup> Mommsen, 159-60; Tzalel, 103-04.</p>
<p><sup>14</sup> Two Israeli Navy officers, Titzhak Shoshan and Herut Tsemach, purchased £20 British pounds worth of hand-held chaff dispensers abroad, and proved that the chaff decoys could create enough static to cloak to a torpedo boat (Rabinovich, 181-82).</p>
<p><sup>15</sup> Mommsen, 186-89; Rabinovich, 214-22, 263-66.</p>
<p><sup>16</sup> Rabinovich, 226-28, 252.</p>
<p><sup>17</sup> Mommsen, 191-94; Tzalel, 118-19.</p>
<p><sup>18</sup> Tzalel, 55.</p>
<p><sup>19</sup> Almog, 174-76; Mommsen, 198; Katz, 269; Rabinovich, 294.</p>
<p><sup>20</sup> Israel determined later that this had been the missile boat that sank the <i>Eilat</i> (Almog, 183-84; Mommsen, 199; Katz, 277-79; Rabinovich, 296-98).</p>
<p><sup>21</sup> Mommsen, 201.</p>
<p><sup>22</sup> Sharm el-Sheikh at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula was the critical position from which to implement such a blockade, but like the rest of Sinai, it had been in Israeli hands since Israel’s victory in the Six Day War.</p>
<p><sup>23</sup> Mommsen, 185-86; Rabinovich, 197.</p>
<p><sup>24</sup> Tzalel, 52.</p>
<p><sup>25</sup> Tzalel, 135.</p>
<p><sup>26</sup> Tzalel, 59-60.</p>
<p><sup>27</sup> Mommsen, 237.</p>
<p><sup>28</sup> For examples, see Mommsen, 136-37, 248 and Katz, 216 and 232-44.</p>
<p><sup>29</sup> Tzalel, 75-76.</p>
<p><sup>30</sup> Katz, 295-96.</p>
<p><sup>31</sup> Mommsen, 258.  See also Katz, 303-04.</p>
<p><sup>32</sup> Mommsen, 258-59.</p>
<p><sup>33</sup> Mommsen, 224-25, 229-30, 271-72.</p>
<p><sup>34</sup> Mommsen, 280.</p>
<p><sup>35</sup> Tzalel, 29.</p>
<p><sup>36</sup> Mommsen, 273-75.</p>
<p><sup>37</sup> The decision to purchase the <i>SA’AR-5</i> and the <i>Dolphin</i> from foreign contractors left Israel’s government-owned <i>Israel Shipyards</i> without any large-scale projects.  Consequently, in 1995, the government declared the concern bankrupt (Tzalel, 70).  Today, it thrives under private ownership as the eastern Mediterranean’s most innovative shipbuilding company.  See <a href="http://www.israel-shipyards.com">http://www.israel-shipyards.com</a>.</p>
<p><sup>38</sup> Mommsen, 288, Katz, 305-06.</p>
<p><sup>39</sup> Mommsen, 290; Katz, 309-10.</p>
<p><sup>40</sup> Mommsen, 297; Tzalel, 76.</p>
<p><sup>41</sup> Mommsen, 299-300.</p>
<p><sup>42</sup> Mommsen, 308-10.</p>
<p><sup>43</sup> Later, when Hezbollah proved its ability to reach Haifa with its land-based rocket arsenal, consideration was given to placing missile boats in Haifa harbor to see if their vertically launched <i>Barak</i> missiles could serve as a missile shield (Mommsen, 311).</p>
<p><sup>44</sup> Mommsen, 319.</p>
<p><sup>45</sup> Yanir Yagna, Eli Ashkenazi and Anshel Pfeffer, “Hamas launches first phosphorus rocket at Negev; no injuries reported,” <i>Haaretz.com</i>, 1/15/2009.  Accessed 1/8/2014.</p>
<p><sup>46 </sup>Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Chair.  <i>Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident</i>.  United Nations, September 2011, 39.</p>
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		<title>Will a Rogue General Undo Obama&#8217;s Regime Change in Libya?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/will-a-rogue-general-undo-obamas-regime-change-in-libya/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-a-rogue-general-undo-obamas-regime-change-in-libya</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2014 04:34:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225943</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Say goodbye to the last of the Arab Spring.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gh34.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225948" alt="Khalifa Hifter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gh34.jpg" width="343" height="253" /></a>It didn&#8217;t take Egypt very long to revert back to a military oligarchy. The Arab Spring was trumpeted as a new era in the history of the Middle East. But the Middle East is better at undoing history than the media is at writing it.</p>
<p>In Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi brushed away the Arab Spring. Now in Libya, General Khalifa Hifter is set to undo Obama&#8217;s military intervention which put the Muslim Brotherhood on the road to taking over Libya.</p>
<p>Forty-five years ago a group of officers led by Colonel Gaddafi seized control of Libya. Gaddafi enjoyed support from the military and Federalist opponents of a central government.</p>
<p>Now General Khalifa Hifter is leading another military coup while vowing to free Libya of chaos, instability and corruption. His forces pounded Islamic militias in Benghazi, including those responsible for the murder of four Americans, and seized the parliament in Tripoli.</p>
<p>Hifter, who has spent a long time living in the United States, claims to have American support, but his real support probably comes from the east.</p>
<p>Like Gaddafi, Hifter is supported by the military and the Federalists. However he isn&#8217;t fighting a weak monarchy, but the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other Islamist militias. But like Gaddafi, his takeover was probably inspired by Egypt and possibly even planned out by Egypt.</p>
<p>Egypt&#8217;s new government, which overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, can&#8217;t risk allowing the group to control a bordering country and one of the largest oil reserves in Africa. Gaddafi used Libya&#8217;s oil wealth to fuel his insanity and fund terrorism. The Muslim Brotherhood would funnel it into pursuing its program of regional and global takeovers and the Islamic militias that control much of Libya would become a problem for Egypt.</p>
<p>Egypt&#8217;s immediate security agenda is to control border instability fed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and Sinai. It would only be natural for Egypt&#8217;s new rulers to turn their attention to their country’s large western border with Libya.</p>
<p>When he released a video calling for a change of power, General Hifter appeared marginalized and isolated. Now he has powerful financial, military and tribal allies. And many ordinary Libyans see him as a possible alternative to the unstable brutality of militia rule, of which the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans was just one example, the collapsing governments and the threat that the simmering civil war which never really ended might heat up until the bloodshed becomes as extreme as anything in Syria.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil War is also Hifter’s best asset and greatest threat. The conflict called away many Jihadis who had originally fought in Libya, but if that unholy war collapses and there isn&#8217;t a more appealing conflict waiting in the wings, they may drift back to Libya to fight its military. Al Qaeda has training camps in Libya and the Islamic militias are doing well, but they may not have the numbers to take on General Hifter’s forces. And with Syria and Egypt consuming the energy and attention span of Jihadis worldwide, this may be Libya&#8217;s only chance to beat them.</p>
<p>Even though Hifter is stepping into the slot occupied by Gaddafi, it doesn&#8217;t mean that he is another Gaddafi.</p>
<p>General Hifter had close links to the United States and the CIA. In the Middle East that doesn&#8217;t mean much, but he is less likely to share Gaddafi&#8217;s resentment of the UK or his demented flavor of Socialism. Gaddafi had the same relationship to Egypt as Kim Jong Il did to the People&#8217;s Republic of China. Like China, Egypt thought it was getting a smaller version of its own rulers; instead it got an insane maniac who couldn’t be controlled by anyone including his backers.</p>
<p>This time Egypt may actually get what it wants; a stable Libya under military officers who, like their Egyptian counterparts, are less interested in revolution and more interested in the good life. In the best case scenario, the generals may stabilize Libya. If they don&#8217;t, Libya will wait for a strongman to finally get the job done.</p>
<p>The question is whether General Hifter can get the job done.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s roots in Libya have always been weak. Unlike Egypt, it hasn&#8217;t done too well at straight elections and has been forced to resort to political machinations. It got the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to switch its orientation from Al Qaeda to the Brotherhood long enough for Gaddafi to set them loose and for them to help overthrow him. But that left the Brotherhood dependent on Islamic militias with unstable allegiances and a hunger for power.</p>
<p>That hasn&#8217;t worked too well for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria where its influence has been swamped by Al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is a parasite that depends on a facsimile of civilization even as it works to destroy it. Post-Gaddafi Libya is closer to Syria than to Egypt, its tribal links are more powerful than political slogans and even religion.</p>
<p>If Libya&#8217;s generals can win quickly, the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s hopes of getting its greasy hands on the country&#8217;s oil wealth will go the way of its brief time ruling Egypt. If they can&#8217;t, then Libya may go the way of Syria. The Libyan military was known as a joke under Gaddafi and its performance during the Libyan Civil War didn&#8217;t do much to impress anyone.</p>
<p>And then there is the Obama card.</p>
<p>General Hifter claims American support, but it&#8217;s doubtful that he has anything except maybe a few leftover contacts in the CIA. The Arab Spring was never about democracy, it was about convincing Islamists to pursue their Caliphate dreams through political elections, instead of suicide bombings. Hifter, like Al-Sisi, is upsetting that particular apple cart and the vendors of its sour fruit in Washington and Brussels won&#8217;t thank him for it.</p>
<p>But Al-Sisi also demonstrated that Obama is too weak to be worth fearing. Despite his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama was forced to accept a new Egypt. And, after kicking and screaming, even provide it with military aid. Hifter is gambling that Obama won&#8217;t turn to a second unpopular military intervention in the Middle East and will accept a fait accompli.</p>
<p>Especially if it turns out to have been backed by Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Egypt was meant to be a model for the revolutions of the Arab Spring, but instead it became a counterrevolutionary model. Even if Egypt isn&#8217;t behind Hifter, the general obviously drew inspiration from what the Egyptian military did to a much more powerful Muslim Brotherhood regime. And he also drew inspiration from Obama&#8217;s inability to meaningfully respond to it.</p>
<p>Like Obama, the pundits and talking heads will learn little humility from the swiftness with which the Middle East erased their new era of history from history. They thought that their plans for the region were set in stone. Instead they were writing on sand. The wind has blown across the desert and their plans have blown away with it.</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>Who Is the Future Egyptian President?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/who-is-the-future-egyptian-president/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=who-is-the-future-egyptian-president</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2014 04:05:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al-Sisi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225767</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Abdel Fattah al-Sisi may win in a landslide, but can he end Egypt’s instability?  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Abdel-Fattah.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225769" alt="Abdel-Fattah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Abdel-Fattah.jpg" width="347" height="217" /></a>Egypt will hold presidential elections later this month (May 26-27), and most political pundits believe that Field-Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will win in a landslide.   Al-Sisi (will be 60-years old in November) has formally shed his military uniform and donned civilian clothes, but that has not eased the resentment of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its supporters.  Al-Sisi ousted the former President, Mohammad Morsi, who is languishing in prison along with other MB leaders.  The July 3, 2013 coup carried out by al-Sisi amounted to a second such coup in Egypt within three years.</p>
<p>The enigmatic al-Sisi, who graduated from Egypt’s military academy in 1977, has spent nearly 37 years in the military.  In August 2012, President Morsi appointed al-Sisi as Minister of Defense, and the interim President Adly Mansour promoted him from general to Field Marshal, Egypt’s top military post.  Previously, al-Sisi served as Commander of the Northern Military region headquartered in Alexandria, and then as Director of Military Intelligence and Reconnaissance.  He was later admitted to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF), as its youngest member.  SCAF assumed power in Egypt during the revolution that ended the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak as President of Egypt. In June 2012, SCAF handed over power to the elected president Mohammad Morsi.</p>
<p>In a recent speech al-Sisi characterized the MB as “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/world/middleeast/ex-general-vows-to-end-brotherhood-if-elected.html?_r=0" target="_blank">political stupidity and Religious stupidity”</a>  and vowed to eliminate the MB. Al-Sisi, in a televised interview pointed out that on June 30, 2013 the Egyptian people had called for an end to the MB when huge throngs of Egyptians marched to protest President Morsi rule.  He insisted that there could be no reconciliation with them (MB), because the MB tricked those who voted for them, and were therefore rejected by the Egyptian people.</p>
<p>In explaining his opposition to Islamism and the MB, al Sisi argued that the belief of the MB is that politics should be subservient to Islam.  He maintained that there has never been a state based on religion in Islam. Al-Sisi was quoted by <i>Reuters</i> (May 9, 2014) as saying: “I see that the religious discourse in the entire Islamic world has cost Islam its <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/09/uk-egypt-sisi-religion-idUKKBN0DP0XM20140509" target="_blank">humanity</a>.  This requires us, and for that matter all leaders, to review their positions.”</p>
<p>Al-Sisi’s outward pious appearance reminds many Egyptian pundits of Anwar Sadat, but al-Sisi’s presidential campaign managers seek to present him more like the popular Egyptian revolutionary president Abdul Nasser, who helped depose the monarchy and disbanded the MB. President Sadat on the other hand used the MB against the political Left only to have the MB assassinate him.  Sadat like Sisi was a pious Sunni Muslim.</p>
<p>According to <i>Al-Ahram Weekly</i>, an independent newspaper asked al-Sisi whether he has ever dreamed of becoming head of the Egyptian military.  Then Army chief al-Sisi replied “the armed forces or something <a href="http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Print/6035.aspx" target="_blank">bigger</a>.” The interviewer then asked if he thought he would be at the throne of Egypt. To which al-Sisi replied that he had been inspired by a vision in which he saw himself carrying a sword with the words “No God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” In the same dream, he also received a promise from the late president Anwar Sadat that he would be president of Egypt.</p>
<p>While there is no love lost for al-Sisi by the MB and other Islamists, some secular critics are alarmed by al-Sisi’s refusal to provide a clear answer regarding parliamentary oversight of the powerful military.  All that al-Sisi could say was that the army “is a <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/05/07/al-sisi-says-knew-mb-rule-march-2013/" target="_blank">great institution</a>, and I hope to God that all of Egypt rises to this level.”</p>
<p>The May 7, 2014 report of al-Sisi’s interview in <i>The Daily News of Egypt</i> also touched on a variety of topics including the MB, and foreign and domestic policy.  In discussing Israeli-Palestinian relations, al-Sisi called on the Egyptian people not to allow ill-feelings towards Gaza-based Hamas.  He went on to say that Egypt “<a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/05/07/al-sisi-says-knew-mb-rule-march-2013/" target="_blank">respects all charters</a>,” including peace with Israel, adding that Israel had a “real opportunity to give the Palestinians hope.”  He added that he will visit Israel if the Jewish State will move forward on the Palestinian issue.  Asked if he would be ready to visit Israel or invite an Israeli leader to visit Egypt, al-Sisi replied that all Israel has to do is to agree to Palestinian State with a capital in East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>On other foreign policy issues al-Sisi said that he would make his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia (he served military attaché in Riyadh earlier in his military career).  The Saudis have been al-Sisi staunchest supporters in removing Morsi, and have financed Egypt’s military purchases from Russia.   In the interview, al-Sisi revealed that as Defense Minister he visited Russia, and confirmed that “Military relations with Russia were <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/05/07/al-sisi-says-knew-mb-rule-march-2013/" target="_blank">not interrupted</a> and much of the equipment for the army comes from Russia”</p>
<p>In a May 15, 2014 interview with <i>Reuters</i> al-Sisi asked for US help to combat Jihadi terrorism.  He called for the resumption of $1.3 billion in US military aid, which was partially frozen after his crackdown on the MB.  Asked for his message to Obama al-Sisi said, “We are fighting a war against <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-egypt-sisi-idUSBREA4E07X20140515" target="_blank">terrorism</a>.”</p>
<p>In April 2012, Field Marshal al-Sisi made the headlines by defending “virginity tests” carried out on women detained and beaten by soldiers at an anti-Mubarak protest in Tahrir Square in March 2011.  Asked to respond, al-Sisi said that the “virginity tests” were used “to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19256730" target="_blank">protect</a> the girls from rape, and the soldiers and officers from accusation of rape.”</p>
<p>During the second part of a televised interview which aired on May 6, 2014, al-Sisi alluded to his attitude towards women, saying, “I personally love the Egyptian women.” He pointed out that as president “all the women in Egypt would be my <a href="http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/05/07/al-sisi-says-knew-mb-rule-march-2013/" target="_blank">daughters</a>.”  Stating that he would work to crack down on deep-rooted issues of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt, he encouraged the media to increase awareness of the issue and promote legislation.</p>
<p>Most Egyptians yearn for a strong leader following three years of turmoil that have shattered their economy, especially the tourism sector.  Two coups, endless demonstration, street violence, and the subsequent violent military crackdown, have made the soft spoken but stern former Field Marshal an attractive choice for a leader.  They see in Abdul Fattah al-Sisi the strongman needed to end the instability that has beset Egypt.  At the same time, Egyptian must also realize that they are trading what appeared as a brief moment of democratic will that toppled Mubarak’s dictatorship with another authoritarian leader.  Al- Sisi removed the failed authoritarian and menacing Islamist regime of President Morsi, but will he be able to provide for the needs ordinary Egyptians yearn for – everyday staples and freedom? Only time will tell.</p>
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