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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Hezbollah</title>
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		<title>The Presbyterian Church USA&#8217;s Terrorist Ties</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-presbyterian-church-usas-terrorist-ties/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-presbyterian-church-usas-terrorist-ties</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-presbyterian-church-usas-terrorist-ties/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:02:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[meeting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[presbyterian church usa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247057</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Hezbollah-allied church could soon lose its tax-exempt status. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/pcusa.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-247061" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/pcusa.gif" alt="pcusa" width="233" height="235" /></a>On April 18, 1983, an explosive laden truck driven by a Hezbollah terrorist slammed into the U.S. embassy in Beirut killing 63 people, including 17 Americans, some of whom were CIA operatives. According to the CIA, it was the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2014-featured-story-archive/flashback-april-18-1983-u-s-embassy-bombed-in-beirut.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">most lethal</span></a> attack ever against the Agency. Just six months later, Hezbollah terrorists struck again, this time hitting the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/world/meast/beirut-marine-barracks-bombing-fast-facts/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">U.S. Marine compound</span></a> in Beirut.  In a repeat of the embassy bombing, a Hezbollah homicide bomber crashed his explosive laden truck into the barracks killing 220 marines and another 21 U.S. service personnel. It was the largest single-day loss of life sustained by the marines since Iwo Jima.</p>
<p>Hezbollah’s atrocities against the United States and its allies did not cease with the embassy and marine compound outrages and have in fact, continued unabated in intensity and scope since that time. Hezbollah has recently carried out a global campaign of terror spanning five continents including an attack and bombing of a civilian tourist bus in Bulgaria that resulted in the deaths of six civilians.</p>
<p>Despite Hezbollah’s involvement in international terrorism and its designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the United States, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) has had extensive contacts with the organization according to a federal complaint filed by the legal advocacy group, Shurat HaDin, Israel Law center.</p>
<p>The 38-page complaint filed with the Internal Revenue Service alleges that PCUSA has engaged in “a range of activities prohibited under U.S. tax law” which are wholly inconsistent with PCUSA’s stated aims when it filed for tax exempt status in 1964.</p>
<p>In its 1964 filing with the IRS, PCUSA posed as a religious body whose purpose was to engage in “peaceful relationships with individuals of all faiths and wholly unengaged in political activities.” But the federal complaint filed by Shurat HaDin paints a completely different picture and alleges that PCUSA has repeatedly met and established dialogue with Hezbollah terrorist officials.</p>
<p>The complaint also alleges that PCUSA violated its tax-exempt status by “publishing anti-Semitic materials, enacting a racist policy to divest from American companies doing business with Israel, lobbying the U.S. Congress, and distributing political advocacy materials&#8230;”</p>
<p>Indeed, as far back as 2004 PCUSA officials met with Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon with one PCUSA official, perhaps in an attempt to endear himself to his Hezbollah hosts, making crude <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/294.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">anti-Jewish</span></a> remarks. Though PCUSA subsequently disavowed itself from the remarks as well as the meeting, PCUSA sanctioned meetings with Hezbollah continued.</p>
<p>In October 2005, a PCUSA delegation headed by Robert Morley and Father Nihad Tomeh <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1535.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">met with</span></a> Nabil Qaouk, a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon. During the exchange, Qaouk complained that U.S. policies in the region were dictated by Israel. It is the same banal complaint often regurgitated by an assortment anti-Semitic groups and conspiracy types. Nevertheless, the delegation, rather than challenging Qaouk, concurred with him stating that PCUSA was blameless because its members had voted for the Democratic Party and the organization was under pressure from U.S. Jewish groups due to its divestment efforts against Israel.</p>
<p>The Israel-Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA has been engaged in a relentless effort to delegitimize Israel. As <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&amp;x_issue=37&amp;x_article=2712"><span style="color: #0433ff;">detailed</span></a> by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), the IPMN has been linked to a number of anti-Israel initiatives the most notorious of which is a malevolent publication called “Zionism Unsettled.”</p>
<p>“Zionism Unsettled” adopts a viscerally anti-Israel narrative, in line with the views of Hamas and has won praise from the who’s who of Judeophobes including former KKK “Grand Wizard” David Duke.  Among its many pernicious lies is that Jews had “harmonious relations” with Muslims prior to the ascendancy of Zionism and that Zionism is the sole cause for Palestinian suffering. The screed was peddled and offered for sale on PCUSA’s website and was taken down only after encountering extremely negative feedback and intense public pressure.</p>
<p>PCUSA took its anti-Israel political advocacy to new levels when in June 2014, its General Assembly <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/presbyterian-shame-article-1.1844099"><span style="color: #0433ff;">voted</span></a> by a narrow margin to attack Israel’s legitimacy by divesting itself from three companies doing business with Israel. A similar resolution in 2012 failed but remains testament to the relentless effort PCUSA places on political advocacy when it comes to harming relations with the Jewish State.</p>
<p>PCUSA, by both word and deed, has made itself out to be a leading purveyor of anti-Semitism. Its divestment initiatives hold Israel to a standard expected of no other nation. By peddling an anti-Semitic screed on its website, it becomes an integral party to anti-Semitism. By meeting and maintaining dialogue with Hezbollah, a Foreign Terrorist Organization that next to al-Qaida was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist group, it provides aid and comfort to the enemy.</p>
<p>In 1964, PCUSA presented itself to the IRS as a benign religious organization with an apolitical agenda. The facts however, prove otherwise. As Shurat HaDin’s founder, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner accurately summed it up in an email to me; “The Presbyterian church long ago abounded any claim that they are not a political organization with ties to terror groups and an Israel-bashing agenda.  The IRS is obligated to investigate PCUSA and strip it from its tax free status. The PCUSA would need to decide ultimately whether they are a church or a political group.”</p>
<p>Given the PCUSA’s aggressive political agenda and its anti-Israel machinations, it is patently clear that they’ve already made that decision.</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>Saudi Oil Price War Forces Iran to Cut Hezbollah Aid</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/saudi-oil-price-war-forces-iran-to-cut-hezbollah-aid/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saudi-oil-price-war-forces-iran-to-cut-hezbollah-aid</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 22 Nov 2014 18:23:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245765</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Iranian regime has slashed its funding of terrorist groups]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-070209.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-245766" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/khamenei-070209.jpg" alt="khamenei-070209" width="400" height="296" /></a></p>
<p>How bad are things under Obama? So bad that the Saudis are taking the lead in dealing with Iran. Their particular<a href="http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/terrorism-fundamentalism/17546-cash-strapped-iranian-regime-slashes-funding-to-terror-groups-report"> form of Iran sanctions are a bit roundabout</a> but sit well with anyone who drives a car.</p>
<p>The Saudis are using cheap oil to wreck Iran&#8217;s economy and discourage American energy exploration. The latter doesn&#8217;t seem to be working too well, but the former sure is. <a href="http://thereligionofpeace.com/">(via Religion of Peace</a>)</p>
<blockquote><p>The Iranian regime has slashed its funding of terrorist groups in the Middle East after its budget was hit by a plunge in oil prices.</p>
<p>The regime is now allocating 25 per cent less to Lebanese Hezbollah and other paramilitary groups dependent on the clerical regime for their cash-flow, Kuwaiti newspaper al Qabas said.</p>
<p>A sharp drop in oil prices from $140 a barrel to around $75 a barrel was cited as the main reason for the cut in spending on groups that Iran pays to meddle in the region.</p>
<p>Experts now predict that plunging oil prices could send the Iranian economy spiralling into even deeper debt next year.</p></blockquote>
<p>Unlike Obama&#8217;s useless sanctions, the Saudi approach is cleverer because it devalues Iranian exports. Unlike sanctions, there&#8217;s no point in smuggling out anything when you&#8217;ve devalued the entire product. The Saudis have the resources, the deep pockets and the network to do something like this and while it won&#8217;t stop Iran&#8217;s nuclear program, it will cause assorted problems, not least by making the whole empty spectacle of negotiations appear worthless.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Time to Part Ways with Erdogan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/time-to-part-ways-with-erdogan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=time-to-part-ways-with-erdogan</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2014 04:36:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ankara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NATO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238980</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The death of a "moderate" Muslim state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/erdogan.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238981" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/erdogan.jpg" alt="erdogan" width="249" height="187" /></a>There is no question that Turkey, because of its size and geo-strategic location maintains a pivotal role in NATO. Its armed forces are NATO’s second largest and its troops had acquitted themselves well during the Korean War. Turkey had also played a constructive role in bridging relations between Israel and the Muslim world acting as an effective interlocutor. But with the ascent of the Islamist Justice and Development party in 2002 and the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as party boss, things have taken a stark turn for the worse.</p>
<p>Under the stewardship of an increasingly unbalanced Erdogan, Turkey has renounced secularism in favor of Islamist dogma and <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/28/turkey-alcohol/2366649/?siteID=je6NUbpObpQ-r1.FCsJcmGWrVqecMqACzg"><span style="color: #0433ff;">creeping <i>sharia</i></span></a>. Turkey’s new <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/turks-cast-votes-in-presidential-election-with-erdogan-primed-for-win-1407658125"><span style="color: #0433ff;">president elect</span></a> has, through intimidation and strong-arm tactics, usurped control of Turkey’s judiciary and press. Indeed, Turkey holds the dubious distinction of being the world’s <a href="http://cpj.org/reports/2013/12/second-worst-year-on-record-for-jailed-journalists.php"><span style="color: #0433ff;">largest incarcerator of journalists</span></a> followed only by Iran and China.</p>
<p>An increasingly paranoid Erdogan has also declared war on social media and in March <a href="http://www.euronews.com/2014/03/07/turkey-pm-erdogan-in-threat-to-ban-facebook-and-youtube-over-immorality-and-/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">threatened to ban</span></a> Facebook and YouTube, accusing the sites of “every kind of immorality and espionage for their own ends.” Erdogan had already banned YouTube for two years though the restriction was lifted in 2010.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s disloyalty to the United States and NATO began early in his term of office as prime minister but his betrayals have only increased in recent years.</p>
<p>In March 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Turkey <a href="http://www.cfr.org/iraq/iraq-us-turkey-relations/p7795"><span style="color: #0433ff;">refused to allow</span></a> the deployment of US troops on Turkish soil which would have enabled the US to open a second front against Saddam Hussein. Turkey also refused to allow the US to utilize Turkish airspace and airbases to launch strikes against Iraqi forces.</p>
<p>In 2010, Turkey was one of only two nations in the UN Security Council (the other being Brazil) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/middleeast/10sanctions.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">that voted against</span></a> imposing sanctions against Iran in connection with its nuclear proliferation activities. Turkey (along with China) is currently taking a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9091736/Turkey-and-China-helping-Iran-evade-UN-sanctions.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lead role</span></a> in helping the Islamic Republic circumvent sanctions, often fronting for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and instituting <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/28/turkey-and-iran-accused-of-oil-for-cash-sanctions-scheme.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">various other schemes</span></a> to bypass legal obstacles.  Turkey’s stance on Iran has even <a href="http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/12/23/341544/turkey-rejects-unilateral-iran-sanctions/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">drawn praise</span></a> from mullah’s official propaganda outlet, Press TV.</p>
<p>It is clear that Turkey, acting as Iran’s conduit to Europe has become the Islamic Republic’s premier enabler. Turkey’s outreach to Iran represents a disturbing pattern by Erdogan to curry favor with nations and entities whose interests substantially diverge from Washington’s. Turkey has established itself as the world’s foremost supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United States.  Turkey has also <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/turkeys-erdogan-quietly-wooing-americas-enemies-2846"><span style="color: #0433ff;">opted to purchase</span></a> air defense platforms from a Chinese firm already on a designated sanctions list for violating embargoes against Iran and North Korea. Moreover, the Chinese systems are incompatible with NATO platforms but to Erdogan, NATO’s defense needs play second fiddle to his disconcerting policy of thumbing his nose at the West.</p>
<p>Central to any defense pact and cooperation between allies is trust. But Erdogan has proven that he is anything but trustworthy. In fact, he has established himself as the premier betrayer of trust when, in violation of all norms and protocol within the intelligence community, he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-turkey-blows-israels-cover-for-iranian-spy-ring/2013/10/16/7d9c1eb2-3686-11e3-be86-6aeaa439845b_story.html?hpid=z4"><span style="color: #0433ff;">betrayed a network of spies</span></a> working to compile data on Iran’s proliferation activities.</p>
<p>Israel and Turkey have had numerous understandings and agreements with respect to intelligence sharing dating back to the 1950s and it was thought that despite strained ties between Ankara and Jerusalem, the intelligence protocols which had withstood the test of time, would remain intact. Erdogan’s perfidious actions torpedoed those assumptions. Intelligence and security officials from across the political spectrum termed Turkey’s act of betrayal, “despicable” and intimated that Turkey could no longer be trusted with sensitive data.</p>
<p>With every passing day, Erdogan appears more irrational and unbalanced. Protests against his authoritarian style are met with cryptic claims that the unrest was sparked by the “<a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-06-27/erdogan-s-paranoia-and-turkey-s-economy"><span style="color: #0433ff;">interest rate lobby</span></a>” and just in case anyone had any doubts about what he meant, his deputy prime minister, Besir Atalay put them to rest when he blamed the “<a href="http://forward.com/articles/179717/turkish-official-blames-jews-for-stoking-street-pr/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jewish Diaspora</span></a>” for the strife.</p>
<p>The Turkish leader’s vitriolic hate toward Israel has veered uncomfortably close to outright Jew-hatred. In September 2011, he absurdly claimed that Israel had killed “<a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=1278"><span style="color: #0433ff;">hundreds of thousands</span></a>” of Palestinians in Gaza and adopting a classic anti-Semitic canard, boorishly stated that Israel used the Holocaust as a mechanism to gain world sympathy. In February 2013 Erdogan compared Zionism to fascism and further declared Zionism to be a “<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-calls-zionism-a-crime-against-humanity/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">crime against humanity</span></a>.” He also bizarrely accused Israel of <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/bernard-henri-levy-conspiracy-theories/2013/09/11/id/525134/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">engineering the coup</span></a> that deposed Erdogan’s Muslim Brotherhood ally, Mohammed Morsi prompting the State Department to issue a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/20/us-turkey-egypt-israel-usa-idUSBRE97J0S820130820"><span style="color: #0433ff;">stern rebuke</span></a> terming Erdogan’s histrionics, “offensive, unsubstantiated, and wrong.”</p>
<p>During Israel’s recent counter-insurgency efforts against the Hamas terrorist group, Erdogan accused the Jewish State of committing genocide, lamented the fact that not enough Jews had been killed during the conflict and compared Israelis to Adolph Hitler.</p>
<p>These examples just scratch the surface when it comes to Erdogan’s Judeophobia. His hatred of Jews is ingrained and is inspired by a convoluted and radical interpretation of Islam, an interpretation with roots firmly embedded in the teachings of the fascist Muslim Brotherhood. But where there is hatred of Jews, there invariably is hatred of other minorities and misogynistic proclivities. In August, Erdogan <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183857"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lashed out</span></a> at a female journalist telling her that she “should know [her] place.” That very month, he made <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-pm-erdogan-under-fire-over-ugly-called-154221717.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pejorative and deprecatory</span></a> references to Armenians.</p>
<p>There can no longer be any doubt that Erdogan is rabidly xenophobic. His war against social media and cryptic references to international conspiracies to dethrone him are indicative of a delusional mind, one wracked by extreme paranoia and fantasy. His efforts to distance Turkey from the West and undermine American foreign policy are demonstrative of a nefarious agenda. His betrayal of intelligence agents crystalizes the fact that so long as Erdogan maintains the reins of power, Turkey cannot be trusted as a reliable NATO partner. It is time for the United States to reevaluate Turkey’s role in NATO and make clear to Erdogan that there are consequences for his actions.</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>Hezbollah and Israel’s Lawyers-in-Chief</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/hezbollah-and-israels-lawyers-in-chief/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hezbollah-and-israels-lawyers-in-chief</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2014 04:51:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[judge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[legal system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233985</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Israeli civilian interests are being subordinated to the interests of their enemies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/0205-Lebanon-Bulgaria-Attack-Hezbollah-fighters_full_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-233988 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/0205-Lebanon-Bulgaria-Attack-Hezbollah-fighters_full_600-450x300.jpg" alt="0205-Lebanon-Bulgaria-Attack-Hezbollah-fighters_full_600" width="270" height="180" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Hezbollah-and-Israels-lawyers-in-chief-358212">Jerusalem Post</a>.</em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The Middle East is rapidly changing. Indeed, it is convulsing. After generations of stasis, where strong, despotic central governments ruled with an iron fist and everyone knew who he was and who he was not, today everything – borders, regimes, identities – is in flux.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Take Iraq. Last week, residents of Mosul lived under Iraqi government control. On Tuesday, they lived under al-Qaida control.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today national governments throughout the Islamic world are incapable of defeating strategically minded and aggressive jihadist militias like al-Qaida and proxy forces for the likes of Iran.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The most prominent example of an organization that is strategically flexible and capable of evolving and learning is Hezbollah. Since Iran founded the Shi’ite terrorist organization in 1982, Hezbollah has operated on multiple levels simultaneously.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today it is an international terrorist organization with cells throughout the world. It is Iran’s foreign legion. It is a member of the Lebanese government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It controls south Lebanon. And it fields its own formidable military force that now serves as the core of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s military forces in the Syrian civil war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">All of these disparate tasks require an enormous capacity for organizational flexibility and learning.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This brings us to Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Leaving aside Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Hezbollah is the greatest looming threat Israel faces. In his address this week before the Herzliya Conference, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz said that Hezbollah has the sixth most powerful military in the world.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only does it have a missile arsenal capable of destroying strategic targets in Israel including air force bases and electrical stations, Hezbollah’s experience in Syria has provided its commanders with the capacity to carry out sophisticated ground operations unlike any Israel has seen.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Yet according to an article published in the latest issue of the IDF’s journal Ma’arachot by IDF intelligence officer Lt.-Col. N., the IDF’s assessment of Hezbollah’s war-fighting strategy remains frozen in time.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to N., Israel’s preparations for a future war with Hezbollah have been focused on improving its responses to Hezbollah’s operations in the Second Lebanon War eight years ago. In that war, Hezbollah was unfettered by military commitments in Syria or elsewhere. It had all the time in the world. And so, its goal was to wait Israel out and maintain the capacity to continue attacking it with missiles and rockets until the last moment of the fighting. That is, Hezbollah’s aim was to win the war by not losing it.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And as N. explains, Hezbollah accomplished its mission.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Since then, Israel has focused its efforts and resources on preventing Hezbollah from repeating its achievement by developing the means to destroy hundreds of targets at the same time.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The problem, N. explains, is that Hezbollah has moved on. Hezbollah is not the same organization it was eight years ago. It has new capabilities and new responsibilities. There is no reason for Israel to assume that Hezbollah will operate by the same playbook today that it used in 2006.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Based on speeches by Hezbollah commanders in recent years in which they called for a conquest of the Galilee, and given their expanded responsibilities and capabilities in Lebanon and Syria, N. argues that Hezbollah may prefer a short war involving a combination of missile assaults on military targets and a ground invasion of the Galilee.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">N. pointed to a number of vulnerabilities in Israel’s defenses that owe to some degree to our leadership’s focus on winning the last war rather than adapting to our to enemies’ changing capabilities and developing a full spectrum of options for defeating them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">His article has received wide attention. But it is far from clear that his wake-up call will be heeded.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Adapting the IDF’s strategic concept to one capable of confronting Hezbollah today requires the IDF’s senior commanders to be flexible and willing to take risks. Yet Israel’s General Staff is conservative, rigid and, most importantly, risk averse.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">N. wrote that most IDF officers and soldiers were deeply disappointed and distressed about Israel’s performance in the 2006 war with Hezbollah, because they recognized that the IDF’s failure to defeat Hezbollah rendered the jihadist force the victor.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But one faction of Israeli society viewed the war as an out-and-out victory. That faction is the legal fraternity.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to the widespread outrage over the war’s progression, then-prime minister Ehud Olmert was compelled to form the Winograd Commission to study the military and political leadership’s stewardship of the war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In testimony before the Winograd Commission, then-attorney-general Menahem Mazuz extolled the war as “the most ‘lawyerly’ in the history of the State of Israel, and perhaps ever.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It wasn’t that IDF commanders put legal considerations ahead of operational and strategic goals. It was worse than that. </span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to Mazuz, the generals and the political leaders limited their goals from the outset to what they hoped would conform with perceived legal restrictions. This restraint, he bragged, was “the result of a sort of education and internalization that have taken place over the years.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">“I remember periods when there was a great deal of friction with the senior military level regarding what is allowed and what is prohibited. But today I think there is more or less an understanding of the rules of the game, and I can’t identify any confrontation… or… demands to ‘let the IDF win.’” According to then-IDF military advocate-general Brig.-Gen. Avi Mandelblit and Mazuz, legal advisers were present at all levels of command in all the relevant service arms and in the security cabinet.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At each level the lawyers were asked to judge the legality of all the proposed targets and planned operations before they were carried out. And as the two explained, in their decisions, these lawyers were informed not by the goal of winning the war but by their interpretation of international law.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Law professor Ruth Gavison, who was a member of the commission, found their testimony deeply disturbing.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">“I find this analysis harsh,” she chided. “I think that you have ignored the fact that international law is plagued with problems of selective enforcement and that the application and use of international law in the context of international conflicts is very biased and very political…. Therefore, [reliance on international law] seems to me to be a position that is possible to argue on a rhetorical level, but to internalize it as a real position, that looks to me like a strategic danger.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately, Gavison’s warning fell on deaf ears. Not only has the power of radicalized lawyers with a distorted view of the laws of war not been rolled back in the intervening years. It has expanded, to the point where today, staff officers in the military refuse to carry out lawful instructions from the government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For instance, according to Haaretz, on Sunday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with the heads of the military government’s Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria to consider ways of sanctioning the Palestinian Authority, which is now led by a Fatah- Hamas government in material breach of the agreements the PLO signed with Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The civil administration was supposed to present recommendations for such sanctions for Netanyahu’s approval. But last Thursday, the civil administration’s staff officers rebelled. At a preparatory meeting, they decided to offer the prime minister no recommendations. According to Haaretz, among other things, they said they couldn’t sanction the Palestinians because it is their duty to help them. They further argued that sanctions “will be difficult to defend from a legal standpoint.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, radicalized staff levels of the IDF openly defy the government when it tries to provide for the common defense by taking action against Israel’s enemies. They then justify their actions by hiding behind amorphous and contrived legal restrictions.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider the long-term consequences of the Mavi Marmara incident.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In May 2010, IDF naval commandos boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara to prevent it from unlawfully breaching Israel’s maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Terrorists aboard the ship attacked the soldiers with knives, clubs and other weapons with the intent of killing them. The soldiers defended themselves and killed nine terrorists.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The blame-Israel-first crowd, otherwise known as the international community, accused Israel of committing war crimes.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Rather than simply reject the slanderous accusation, led by the legal fraternity, Israel played along.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As a consequence, Israel formed the Turkel Commission charged with determining whether Israel’s system of investigating charges of war crimes meets the requirement of international law.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the event, in February the commission submitted a 1,000-page report to Netanyahu. It concluded that Israel’s system does abide by the requirements of international law.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Yet, despite this fact, it recommended removing the authority to investigate war crimes allegations from the IDF and transferring it to the attorney- general and the military advocate-general who would no longer be subordinate to the IDF chief of General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Moreover, the commission recommended that Israel’s political leadership and General Staff be held criminally culpable “for violations committed by their subordinates, if they do not take all reasonable measures to prevent these violations or do not bring those responsible to justice when they find out about violations after the fact.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The strategic implications of the Turkel Commission’s recommendations are earth shattering.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">They mean that from now on, when defending Israel from its enemies, both government ministers and generals will be at the mercy of a self-appointed, radical, unaccountable legal fraternity whose interpretation of the laws of war has but a glancing relationship with the laws of war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Mazuz explained its interpretation back in 2007, “The laws of war, or international humanitarian law doesn’t concern itself with relations between two states, but with the relationship between civilians and states. That is, it places the two warring states on one side of the divide and the citizens of the two states on the other side, and the goal of international law is to protect the citizens of the two states and to say: You’re big kids. You want to fight, go fight, you have rules… and the rules aim to minimize as much as possible the consequences of the war.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, just as the civil administration officers argued, following international law means caring more about enemy populations than you care about your own. Civilian and military leaders who seek to secure Israel are now being subordinated to lawyers whose primary concern is the enemy.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This is a recipe for disaster.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At a time when the threats against us quickly change, grow and change again, we need political and military leaders who are courageous, creative and willing to take calculated risks. But due to our leaders’ unwillingness to challenge our imperial legal guild, we find ourselves at this dangerous juncture with no means of adjusting to strategic shifts.</span></p>
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		<title>What Happened to Marine Deserter Wassef Ali Hassoun?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/what-happened-to-marine-deserter-wassef-ali-hassoun/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-happened-to-marine-deserter-wassef-ali-hassoun</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Jun 2014 04:00:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deserter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wassef Ali Hassoun]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233570</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A terrorist sympathizer with military training is on the run. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/missing-marine.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233571" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/missing-marine.jpg" alt="missing-marine" width="263" height="263" /></a>Ten years ago this month, U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared from Camp Fallujah in Iraq. After a five-month military investigation, he was charged with desertion and theft, brought back to Virginia&#8217;s Quantico Marine base and then transferred to North Carolina&#8217;s Camp Lejeune for trial.</p>
<p>Yet, a full decade later, Hassoun is as free as a bird.</p>
<p>The accused deserter&#8217;s whereabouts are unknown. No trial ever began. No punishment ensued. And our leaders in Washington don&#8217;t seem to be doing a thing about this.</p>
<p>Hassoun was born in Lebanon and immigrated with his family to Utah in 1999. A few years later, he joined the Marines as an Arabic translator. On June 20, 2004, Hassoun bailed on guard duty at his base in Fallujah. He took his military-issued gun and his Muslim prayer rug. Military records obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune showed that he was &#8220;torn between military loyalty and his Muslim beliefs.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the internal probe, he undermined intelligence-gathering operations by refusing to translate questions about Islam. He balked at raising his voice to suspected jihadi imams and sheiks. He openly threatened to &#8220;walk out the front gate and leave.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Muslim Marine told his colleagues he supported Hezbollah terrorist attacks on Israel. Members of his unit told investigators he was &#8220;anti-American&#8221; and listened to jihad sermons on propaganda CDs. Hassoun had received spiritual counseling from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Abuhena Saifulislam, a Muslim military chaplain tied to a radical Wahhabist outfit under federal investigation, according to Hoover Institution fellow and journalist Paul Sperry.</p>
<p>A bizarre video by Hassoun&#8217;s Islamist &#8220;kidnappers&#8221; showed him blindfolded with a sword above his head. But his fellow Marines suspected it was all staged and the &#8220;abduction&#8221; a collaborative fake. What did the purported hostage-takers want in return for the shady, disgruntled American serviceman? The release of jihadists in &#8220;U.S.-led occupation prisons.&#8221; Translation: Gitmo detainees. (Americans would never negotiate such a reckless trade, right? Oh, wait.)</p>
<p>In an even weirder twist, Hassoun somehow resurfaced at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon a few weeks after he walked away from his base. His family was rumored to have enlisted the aid of an Islamist group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Hassoun denied desertion charges, came back to the U.S. for trial and then deserted a second time after failing to return to Camp Lejeune after visiting family in Utah. In 2011, Hassoun&#8217;s family sought a $1 million book and movie deal in Hollywood. One of his brothers said the fugitive Marine was with family in Lebanon.</p>
<p>Ten summers after he abandoned his post, double-deserting Hassoun is still on the run and has yet to be held accountable.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth reminding Americans about Hassoun&#8217;s story in light of President Obama&#8217;s exploding Bowe Bergdahl scandal. By all appearances, this administration has no intention of taking action on longstanding allegations that Bergdahl, like Hassoun before him, deliberately abandoned his post in 2009. Defiant Obama said he makes &#8220;no apologies&#8221; for the treacherous deal, even as reports of Bergdahl&#8217;s renunciation of U.S. citizenship and conversion to Islam have surfaced in the past 48 hours.</p>
<p>Soldiers on the ground have described how Bergdahl&#8217;s disappearance catalyzed deadly coordinated attacks by the Taliban on numerous U.S. outposts in Afghanistan. The response has been breathtaking. One of Obama&#8217;s minions, former Veterans Affairs bureaucrat and now Housing and Urban Development flack Brandon Friedman defended his boss by suggesting that Bergdahl&#8217;s colleagues were &#8220;psychopaths.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s daughter, Alexandra, sneered that Bergdahl&#8217;s critics inside the military are &#8220;dysfunctional.&#8221; Harry Reid invoked Hillary Clinton&#8217;s &#8220;What difference does it make?&#8221; retort. The president himself sniffed that swelling anger among the families of the fallen was &#8220;whipped up.&#8221;</p>
<p>Islamist sympathizers inside our military walk away, and the Obama White House turns a blind eye. The Fort Hood jihad attack by Nidal Hasan, who invoked Hassoun in PowerPoint presentations to his military supervisors, is &#8220;workplace violence.&#8221; Gitmo recidivist Abu Sufian bin Qumu, lead suspect in the Benghazi attack, roams free despite the president&#8217;s promise to make &#8220;justice&#8221; his &#8220;biggest priority.&#8221;</p>
<p>Our commander in chief empties Gitmo of the worst of the worst jihadists and shrugs at the recidivists targeting American soldiers and civilians. And in a desperate attempt to deflect from the rising death toll of the Veterans Affairs book-cooking scandal, Obama gave Bob Bergdahl a Rose Garden stage to invoke Allah in Arabic.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re not &#8220;whipped up&#8221; into Category 5 disgust, you&#8217;re not paying attention.</p>
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		<title>State Dept. Targets &#8216;Extremist Jewish&#8217; Settlers in Terrorism Report</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/state-dept-targets-extremist-jewish-settlers-in-terrorism-report/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=state-dept-targets-extremist-jewish-settlers-in-terrorism-report</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 02 May 2014 04:50:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[price tag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Settlers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vandalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224649</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama administration puts Israeli petty vandals on par with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/oooi.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-224657" alt="oooi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/oooi.jpg" width="318" height="245" /></a>The U.S. State Department has just released its </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224823.htm">2013 report on terrorism</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> around the globe, including a whole section devoted to &#8220;Israel, West Bank, and Gaza&#8221; as part of a broader chapter on the Middle East and North Africa. Coming on the heels of Secretary of State John Kerry’s despicable claim that Israel could turn into an apartheid state, his State Department’s report treated random criminal acts, mostly vandalism, by some Jewish settlers as being on the same level as rocket launchings, suicide bombing and other acts of real terrorism by Hamas, Hezbollah and other jihadist groups. For the Obama administration, Jewish settler attacks that damage Palestinian property are morally equivalent with jihadist attacks aimed at killing Jews and Christians.</span></p>
<p>Israel’s minister of communications and home front defense, Gilad Erdan, got it right when he said that the State Department report was making “a gross, incorrect generalization” in essentially equating acts of vandalism with murder. “We are not talking about acts of murder; this is graffiti. There is a difference between murder and destruction of property,” he said.</p>
<p>The small minority of Jewish settlers who drew the ire of the State Department have participated in what has become known as &#8220;price tag&#8221; attacks. The State Department report defined “price tag” attacks as “property crimes and violent acts by extremist Jewish individuals and groups in retaliation for activity they deemed to be anti-settlement.” The report expressly linked the words “extremist” and “Jewish” to describe the group of settlers involved in the attacks, while the Obama administration considers it too politically incorrect to identify those committing acts of terror in the name of jihad as Muslims.</p>
<p>The report conceded that Israeli police had set up special units to pursue the price tag cases and that the government had given authorities broader powers to act against the perpetrators. However, relying on the United Nations and unnamed non-governmental organizations as its sources, the report charged that the attacks by settlers “were largely unprosecuted.”</p>
<p>The report identified two specific examples of such attacks – both aimed at Christians, not Muslims. They involved graffiti on gravestones in a Christian Orthodox cemetery and the firebombing of a monastery.  The report then cited the pro-Palestinian United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs as the source for claiming that there were “399 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage.” The report added that “Violent extremists, including Israeli settlers, vandalized five mosques and three churches in Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to data compiled by the UN.” There was no analysis of the data compiled by the UN or explanation of where the data came from.</p>
<p>With Christians being murdered and persecuted by Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the chapter of the State Department report dealing with that violence-prone part of the world chose to emphasize alleged Jewish settler price tag attacks against Christian, as well as Muslim, targets. The only other anti-Christian incident highlighted by the report involved assaults on Christian Coptic Churches in Benghazi, Libya and damage to a major Sufi shrine. The report actually went out of its way to praise Jordan for hosting conferences “highlighting challenges facing Arab Christians and the importance of religious tolerance.”</p>
<p>Why no highlighting of the <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/largest-massacre-of-christians-in-syria-ignored-109566/">gunmen who seized the Christian village of Sadad in Syria</a> and murdered 46 people, including 14 women and two children? How about the attacks on <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/video-coptic-church-set-aflame-by-muslim-brotherhood-supporters/">Egypt’s Coptic Christians and their churches</a> by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, including <a href="https://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/November/Egypt-Copts-Still-Threatened-by-Islamic-Insurgency/">the murder of a ten year old girl</a> as she was leaving church and an eight year old girl at a Christian wedding? Why didn’t these murders of little children leaving a church and attending a Christian wedding make the State Department report, but some graffiti allegedly placed on gravestones in an Orthodox Christian cemetery by Jewish settlers did manage to make the cut?</p>
<p>Why is the Muslim Brotherhood mentioned only a couple of times in the chapter of the report dealing with the Middle East and North Africa, and then only as a victim of the post-Morsi Egyptian government crack-down? The State Department report said there was no proof presented that substantiated the Muslim Brotherhood’s direct involvement in the terrorist attacks that followed Morsi’s removal. Is the State Department under President Obama so much in the Muslim Brotherhood camp that they ignore evidence right under their noses showing a spike in acts of violence against Coptic Christians after Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood took power, and then even more so after Morsi was removed and his supporters called for revenge? Or are they simply incapable of putting 2 and 2 together?</p>
<p>What do you expect from an administration whose ambassador to Egypt spoke favorably last year about the Muslim Brotherhood?  The Obama administration’s love fest with the Muslim Brotherhood continued earlier this year when a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood was a guest at a meeting in the White House with President Obama.</p>
<p>It’s easy for the Obama administration to pick on Jewish settlers for committing isolated acts of vandalism and destruction, including of Christian sites.  However, Muslim atrocities that spill the blood of Christians get hardly a mention at all.  Instead, we are spoon-fed taquia (lies) by the State Department about Muslim concern for the “challenges facing Arab Christians and the importance of religious tolerance,” and the further lie that the Palestinian Authority “has taken significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank that fall under its control do not create content that leads to incitement to violence.” Did anyone at the State Department bother to review any of the hateful content broadcast on official Palestinian Authority outlets, <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=11322">including children’s programs</a>, before writing such pro-Palestinian propaganda?</p>
<p>None of this discussion is intended to excuse the settlers’ price tag attacks. Such crimes committed by anyone, against anyone, are inexcusable and should be punished. Israel itself has not shied away from branding price tag attacks as a form of terrorism. Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said that such attacks constitute acts “<i>against</i> Israel and Zionism.” (Emphasis added) She added that “As a society we must marginalize them, and as a country, we must deal with them seriously and severely and bring them to justice.”</p>
<p>However, there needs to be some sense of proportion, which is sorely lacking in the State Department’s 2013 terrorism report. Price tag attacks against primarily property are not on par with the targeting of innocent civilians for death, as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other shadowy jihadist groups do as a matter of course with rocket and mortar fire and bombings. The Obama administration apparently does not see the difference, which is consistent with its anti-Israel, pro-Islam and pro-Palestinian bias.</p>
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		<title>Iran Honors Bin Laden Mentor and Murderer of 220 US Marines</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/iran-honors-osama-mentor-and-murderer-of-220-us-marines/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-honors-osama-mentor-and-murderer-of-220-us-marines</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:57:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[barack hussein obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beirut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216604</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mughniyeh killed more Americans than any other terrorist until 9/11.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1389782727769.cached.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216605" alt="1389782727769.cached" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1389782727769.cached-450x281.jpg" width="450" height="281" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/15/iranian-minister-honors-al-qaeda-mentor-hezbollah-s-imad-mugniyah.html">But we better listen to Obama, John Kerry</a>, Diane Feinstein and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and really cling to this wonderful deal that will let Iran keep its nukes.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no way letting a country that is one of the world&#8217;s leading sponsors of terror go nuclear will ever backfire.</p>
<blockquote><p>During his visit to Lebanon on January 13, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif Khonsari placed a wreath at the tomb of Imad Mugniyah and then bowed his head in reverence. Zarif’s move was sure to raise eyebrows as Mugniyah was, until his demise in Damascus in 2008, a longtime Hezbollah commander and an innovator in anti-American terrorism.</p>
<p>Indeed, the White House chastised the Iranian official in a statement pointing out that Mugniyah was “responsible for heinous acts of terrorism that killed hundreds of innocent people, including Americans.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The condemnation however doesn&#8217;t mean that the billions going to Iran will stop or <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7021">that Obama will drop his objections </a>to Iran sanctions.</p>
<blockquote><p>Mughniyeh was the Hezbollah terrorist who had killed more Americans than any other man until the attack on 9/11. Mughniyeh was involved in bombing the Marine barracks in Beirut, the bombings of U.S. embassies, the torture and killing of CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem, among other acts of terror.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here<a href="https://bangordailynews.com/2013/10/22/news/bangor/the-worst-part-for-me-is-that-nobody-remembers-retired-carmel-marine-recalls-1983-beirut-bombings/"> are a few recollections</a> from the terrible anniversary of the baracks bombing last year.</p>
<blockquote><p>“I grabbed my gear and ran to the barracks,” Nevells, who was 21 and a lance corporal with what was then the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit’s service support group during the terrorist attack, recalled Friday. “We watched as the building dropped then we went over for the recovery mission. There were so many people in that building and we just wanted to get them out.”</p>
<p>The explosion was so violent that it created an 8-foot crater and buried Nevells’ friends and brothers-in-arms under 15 feet of the building’s rubble. He and other Marines spent five days digging for survivors and freeing the bodies of the men they served with during the multinational peacekeeping mission.</p>
<p>“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Nevells said while wearing a black Beirut veteran’s hat honoring those who perished during the bombing. “We just did what we had to do.”</p>
<p>The only time before that the Marine Corps had suffered a larger loss of life in a single day was during the historic 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.</p>
<p>“The worst part for me is that nobody remembers [Beirut],” Nevells said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama certainly doesn&#8217;t. And <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/11/engaging-hezbollah-or-hezbollah-controlled-lebanon/">now the brutal death of William Buckley</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>On Monday morning, May 7, 1984, the United States embassy in Athens received a video posted in the city… It showed William Buckley undergoing torture… The camera zoomed in and out of Buckley’s nude and damaged body. He held before his genitalia a document marked “MOST SECRET”… Casey later remembered how “… They had done more than ruin his body. His eyes made it clear his mind had been played with. It was horrific, medieval and barbarous”… Buckley showed symptoms of being drugged; his eyes were dull and his lips slack.</p>
<p>On Friday, October 26, 1984, 224 days since Buckley was kidnapped, a third video arrived at the CIA. The tape was even more harrowing. Buckley was close to a gibbering wretch. His words were often incoherent; he slobbered and drooled and, most unnerving of all, he would suddenly scream in terror, his eyes rolling helplessly and his body shaking. From time to time he held up documents, which had been in his burn-bag, to the camera.</p></blockquote>
<p>And <a href="http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/twa-flight-847/">now the murder of Robert Stethem</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>He was blindfolded,bounded and gagged,then repeatedly tortured throughout the next several hours. Stethem was pistol whipped ,as he was being kicked and punched on the floor mercilessly for a prolonged period of time. However,testimonies by several passengers,and John Testrake, Stethem never uttered out a cry of pain. “He (Stethem) was probably the bravest man I’ve ever seen in my life” the pilot said of the Navy seabee in a interview after his release. Stethem was kicked in the face and the knee caps and was repeatedly stomped and kicked until they(hijackers) had broken all of his ribs. Another navy diver who was on TWA 847 gave a graphic detail when he saw his commrade beaten severely that “there was blood all over his(Stethem) face and his head’ that his shirt was torn and there was blood all over his chest; that his ribs were bruised,red and inflamed; and that he was limping and dragging one foot.”</p>
<p>“He said how it may be better that he died” Henderson testified in Hummadi’s trial “He believed that someone would die on the plane,someone from the navy men(there were five other divers on the plane) and he said that because he was the only one who wasn’t married,that he should be the one to die. He spoke with a clear mind…he didn’t believe that all of us could get out alive. He felt it was fair that he dies so the rest of us could live.”</p>
<p>Then they drag him to the cockpit door and they are beating Robert Stethem with the armrest they ripped off the flight engineer’s seat. They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken. I was sitting only 15 feet away. I couldn’t listen to it. I put my fingers in my ears. I will never forget. I could still hear. They put the mike up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world. When they were finished, one of the hijackers picked him up like a cat picks up its kitten and dragged him over to a seat.</p>
<p>…Now I’m telling . . . I’m telling Bob — Robert Stethem — to hang on. He was in tremendous pain. His arms had lost all feeling. I kept saying to this German-speaking hijacker, “Can I not untie his hands? We’re cooperating with you. Why are you doing this to those people?” He said, “No. Leave him alone. He’s just an American pig.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This is what Barack Hussein Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, John Kerry, Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats who stand with Iran are getting into bed with.</p>
<p>But we better not risk offending Iran with sanctions or they&#8217;ll walk away from the negotiations. Meanwhile Iran boasts of humiliating Obama just to see how much more he can take.</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" align="left"><span>It is obvious that while we are supposed to freeze any congressional action lest we upset the sensitive Iranians, they plan to mock the president and indeed the United States. We are to walk on eggshells, while they honor a terrorist who murdered hundreds of Americans. (And more: Last week Iran shipped weapons to rebels in Bahrain.) The administration&#8217;s reaction to all this is to insist with greater and greater heat that Congress must not act, and to cast aspersions on those members who back the legislation.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr" align="left"><span>This dishonors those whose lives were taken by Mughniyeh, but it does more: It suggests to Iran that the administration is now hostage to the nuclear negotiations. For the Obama administration, the talks must succeed and nothing will be permitted to get us off that track. This is dangerous, freeing Iran not only to honor a terrorist who murdered Americans and to give greater backing to terrorism today, but ultimately to cheat on the nuclear deal as well &#8212; under the logical assumption that the Obama administration will not see evidence it does not want to see and that would turn its diplomatic achievement into dust.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" align="left">That&#8217;s the whole goal. It&#8217;s the same trick that Hitler pulled on Chamberlain and that the Russians pulled during the Cold War and it&#8217;s how Israel got into its current mess. Once you prioritize negotiations above everything else, because they are the only alternative to war, you choose, as Churchill said, dishonor and you get war anyway.</p>
<p dir="ltr" align="left">And with Mughniyeh, you also get Osama.</p>
<blockquote><p>Mugniyah’s alleged role as the mastermind of the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, as well as a string of other attacks against American interests, has long been known. Iran’s “financial and material support” for Mughniyah and Hezbollah, as noted by the White House, is also  well documented. But the influence that Mugniyah’s operations had on other terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, remains underappreciated even to this day.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, al-Qaeda had not yet been transformed into an international terrorist network capable of launching spectacular mass casualty attacks. Bin Laden, who was living in the Sudan at the time, sought out the expertise of seasoned terrorists who could train al-Qaeda’s operatives. Mugniyah and Hezbollah, despite their theological differences with bin Laden, were natural choices.</p>
<p>Al-Qaeda terrorists have explained the logic behind Mugniyah’s relationship with al-Qaeda during testimony before an American court&#8230;</p>
<p>“I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mughniyah, Hezbollah&#8217;s chief, and bin Laden.” Mohamed went on to explain that “Hezbollah provided explosives training for al-Qaeda” and the EIJ, while Iran supplied them with weapons.</p>
<p>According to Mohamed, al-Qaeda sought to replicate Hezbollah’s successful attacks. “Based on the Marine explosion in Beirut in [1983] and the American pull-out from Beirut,” Mohamed explained.</p>
<p>The 9/11 Commission found that al-Qaeda “had begun developing the tactical expertise” utilized in the embassy bombings when some of its terrorists, including “top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell,” were “sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This is what Barack Hussein Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, John Kerry, Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats who stand with Iran are defending.</p>
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		<title>Jihadists Flock to Israel’s Borders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/jihadists-flocking-to-israels-borders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jihadists-flocking-to-israels-borders</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 31 Dec 2013 05:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocket fire]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214229</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kerry: let’s undermine the only border that’s stable.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jihg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214234" alt="jihg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/jihg-450x304.jpg" width="315" height="213" /></a>On Sunday morning five Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel. They did not hit anything, but one landed near the town of Kiryat Shmona. Israel responded with a volley of tank shells toward the source of the fire.</p>
<p>When one thinks of rocket fire from Lebanon into Israel, one may well think of Hizballah. According to Israeli assessments, though, Hizballah was not the source of the Katyushas. The Shiite organization is heavily involved in the fighting in Syria, and considered unlikely to open an additional front with Israel.</p>
<p>Instead, it’s believed the rockets were fired by global jihadists of the Sunni variety. Amid the chaos wrought by what was once called the Arab spring, they’ve been infiltrating the area by the thousands lately. That includes Sinai, where Egypt’s control has been weakened by the turmoil in the country; Syria, where the jihadists are fighting the regime head-on; and Lebanon, where they hope to challenge Hizballah’s hegemony and are probably behind a <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.563950">recent wave of attacks on its strongholds</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, Israeli military analyst Yoav Limor <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6849">responded pessimistically</a> to Sunday’s Katyusha incident, saying it was</p>
<blockquote><p><i>most likely a preview of the future security reality along Israel&#8217;s borders, entailing surprise terror attacks by an unknown and undeterred enemy, leaving Israel with only a limited ability to respond.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>As for what motivated the Katyusha-firers, Limor cites two views among Israeli defense experts. Some believe they “sought to create an escalation that would force Hezbollah’s hand in the matter”—that is, get it pounded by Israel. However,</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Other experts believe reality may be simpler: world jihad groups seek to eradicate all those they deem as infidels, be they Muslim, Christians or Jews. Once an opportunity to strike Israel presented itself—just like it did earlier this month when explosives were planted near the border—there was no reason to hesitate.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Sunday’s incident, in any case, comes in the wake of the killing last week of an Israeli worker by <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/IDF-employee-seriously-injured-in-Gaza-border-shooting-335979">sniper fire from Gaza</a>, and an incident earlier this month of <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4460317,00.html">mortar fire into Israel from Syria</a>. For Israel, Middle Eastern developments do not occur in some abstract world of speculation but have real, direct consequences.</p>
<p>There is, though, one border—and one only—that has been quiet: Israel’s Jordan Valley border with the Hashemite Kingdom. Israel and Jordan share an interest in containing the radicals and engage in quiet, effective security cooperation.</p>
<p>In light of that, it is hard to look forward to Secretary of State John Kerry’s next visit to Israel, set for later this week. Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” now centers on the Jordan Valley—which can only mean undermining the current stability and replacing it with something worse.</p>
<p>According to various reports, that “worse” could mean diluting the Israeli presence with Palestinian, American, or other foreign forces, or dismantling the Israeli civilian communities in the valley. Israel’s defense minister Moshe Yaalon <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-plan-said-to-include-dismantling-all-jordan-valley-settlements/">opposes that idea on security grounds</a>, viewing those communities as “critical” to maintaining control.</p>
<p>But Yaalon is, after all, merely an elected Israeli official and a general with decades of experience, inferior in expertise to diplomats from Washington who plan Israel’s future for it.</p>
<p>And there is also the time factor, with, again according to various reports, Israel supposed to abandon the valley five, ten, or fifteen years after the signing of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.</p>
<p>Defense Minister Yaalon is not the only Israeli who doesn’t like these ideas. A recent <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Poll-Most-Israelis-reject-Jordan-Valley-withdrawal-by-IDF-330128">poll</a> found 63 percent of Israelis opposed to a pullout from the Jordan Valley even if international forces were deployed there, and 74 percent opposed to international forces replacing the Israeli army there.</p>
<p>And on Sunday, in a symbolic but important vote, Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Legislation <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=14389">voted 8-3</a> to apply Israeli law to the valley.</p>
<p>With firing incidents from Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria and Secretary Kerry once again on his way, it is hard not to feel beleaguered. The United States has an old habit of strengthening Israel with one hand and weakening and threatening it with the other. Under Obama and Kerry, it’s become an obsession.</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>Obama Negotiating with Hezbollah Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-negotiating-with-hezbollah-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-negotiating-with-hezbollah-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Nov 2013 14:41:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["The US is willing to “warm up to a direct relationship in the future.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Beirut_Marine_Barracks_Bombing_25.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-211855" alt="Beirut_Marine_Barracks_Bombing_25" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Beirut_Marine_Barracks_Bombing_25.jpg" width="400" height="269" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-London-is-mediating-indirect-secret-talks-between-US-and-Hezbollah-333245">Hope, Change and Jihad</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The US and Hezbollah are in secret indirect talks managed by London dealing with the fight against Al-Qaida, regional stability and other Lebanese political issues.</p></blockquote>
<p>Except that Hezbollah is fighting Al Qaeda in Syria. While Obama is backing the Sunni side, which includes Al Qaeda.</p>
<blockquote><p>The discussions “are aimed at keeping tabs on the changes in the region and the world, and prepare for the upcoming return of Iran to the international community,” according to diplomatic sources in Washington.</p></blockquote>
<p>So not only is Obama legitimizing Iran&#8217;s nuclear weapons programs, but he&#8217;s also legitimizing one of the world&#8217;s nastiest terrorist groups&#8230; that was responsible for the 1983 Beirut bombing which killed 220 marines.</p>
<blockquote><p> Because the US, unlike the UK, recognizes both the political and military wings of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and refuses to distinguish between them, US officials cannot legally meet with any member of the party. But according to the sources, the US is willing to hear the views of the party and “warm up to a direct relationship in the future.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Just wait till Obama and Nasrallah go to a Beirut couscous joint on their first date.</p>
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		<title>Hezbollah Wants Iran Deal Almost as Much as Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/hezbollah-wants-iran-deal-almost-as-much-as-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hezbollah-wants-iran-deal-almost-as-much-as-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[France]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210716</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[U.S. foreign policy turns the world on its head. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/image1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210746" alt="image" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/image1.jpg" width="266" height="209" /></a>On Wednesday, Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Nasrallah-Failure-to-strike-deal-with-Iran-will-result-in-regional-war-331673">announced</a> (from a secret location) that the P5 + 1 group’s failure to reach an agreement with the Islamic Republic on sanctions will result in a regional war. Clearly, Nasrallah wants and, in fact, needs a deal. Sanctions have already cost Iran <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/sanctions-have-cost-iran-130-billion-in-two-years/">130 billion</a> dollars. That amount not only puts a serious dent into Iran’s economy, sowing discontent among the masses, it adversely affects Iran’s ability to wage war via its proxies, Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas. A cash infusion, the byproduct of sanctions relief, will enable Iran and Hezbollah to carry on with their pillaging.</p>
<p>Strangely, Nasrallah’s “anti-war,” pro-deal stance puts him in the same corner as the Obama administration. Administration officials have even adopted Nasrallah’s rhetoric, claiming that the imposition of stiffer sanctions on Iran, as contemplated by congress, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-iran-sanctions-will-lead-to-war-white-house-warns/">would lead to war</a>.</p>
<p>Reeling from record low favorability ratings, the healthcare fiasco and various <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ari-lieberman/obamas-foreign-policy-theatre-of-the-absurd/">foreign policy failures</a>, the administration is desperate for a deal, any deal. According to published reports, however, the French <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173996#.UoTlb9K-pAY">nixed a prospective deal</a> on sanctions for not being tough enough, placing the current state of world affairs clearly within the depths of Twilight Zone territory.</p>
<p>France is not a nation well known for its backbone and its history is <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ari-lieberman/the-french-connection-to-anti-semitism/">replete with examples</a> of French perfidy and spinelessness. From its collaborationist Vichy past to its fiascos in Indochina and Algeria, the French have a rich history of cutting and running. Now, however, the French have suddenly turned into saviors, preventing a deal that would have allowed the mullahs to continue enriching uranium without dismantling any nuclear infrastructure or reducing existing stockpiles of enriched uranium.</p>
<p>So we are now confronted with a bizarre situation where Hezbollah and the United States are advocating the same cause and using the same panicky language, while the French, the traditional authority figures on appeasement, are showing some backbone. If that isn’t strange enough, the leadership void created by the administration’s vacillation and appeasement has generated a peculiar realignment of realpolitik whereby the Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris and other Gulf nations are looking to their traditional enemy, the Israelis, to protect their security interests.</p>
<p>All the regional players are acutely cognizant of Iran’s pernicious objectives. They are keenly aware that Iran lied about its enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz. That it lied about its heavy water plutonium facility at Arak. That it kept its uranium enrichment activities underground away from prying eyes and that it conducted nuclear implosion experiments and attempted to conceal this from International Atomic Energy Inspectors. The Gulf nations are nervous and with good justification but lacking credible military strength, they are helpless. Abandoned by the administration, they naturally turned to Israel, something that would have been unheard of in times past.</p>
<p>U.S. foreign policy is turning the world on its head in other theaters as well. On August 21, Syria’s serial killer head of state and chief warlord, Bashar Assad, emboldened by a sheepish U.S. president, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/world/meast/syria-civil-war/?hpt=hp_c3">used chemical weapons</a> against his own people killing at least 1,300, many of them children. The Obama administration hooted and hollered but in the end, it was Russia’s ex-KGB strongman, Vladimir Putin, who came to the rescue and defused the situation in a manner that suited the interests of the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis. In the age of Obama, an ex-KGB thug is suddenly transformed into a peacemaker.</p>
<p>The administration claims to seek regional stability but they’re doing their damnedest to create regional conflagration. Administration officials deliberately leaked information that implicated Israel in an <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/satellite-photos-reveal-advanced-russian-arms-on-morning-of-syria-strike/">October 31 strike</a> against advanced Russian made Syrian anti-aircraft missiles and related equipment near Latakia. The disclosures threatened to back Assad into a corner leaving him no recourse but avenge “Arab honor” and offer some form of military response.</p>
<p>Israeli officials <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-us-syria-raid-leak-endangers-our-national-security/">were furious</a> and called the leaks “scandalous.” Israeli protests to the White House were met with muted response and the Israelis were at a loss to describe the administration’s inexplicable behavior, which at best amounted to gross negligence and endangered the security interests of its closest Mideast ally.</p>
<p>This isn’t the first occasion where administration officials leaked damaging information about Israel’s strategic and tactical initiatives. In March 2012 administration officials disclosed damaging information concerning the <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/04/03/administration-leak-israel-azerbaijan-story/">burgeoning alliance</a> between Israel and Azerbaijan. The disclosure served no purpose except to damage the close relationship carefully cultivated between the two nations and jeopardize Israel’s strategic initiatives. Allies don’t treat each other that way but this administration has a knack for upsetting allies; <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704416904575121710380216280">Honduras, Columbia, Poland and the Czech Republic</a> just to name a few.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most inexplicable behavior of all is the manner in which Secretary of State John Kerry torpedoed any chance of a negotiated settlement between Israel and its duplicitous “peace partner,” The Palestinian Authority. In a <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-warns-of-3rd-intifada-isolation-of-israel-if-talks-fail/">scathing commentary last week</a>, one marked by vitriol characteristic of the radical left, Kerry launched into a diatribe blaming Israel exclusively for stalled talks while giving the Palestinian Authority a free pass and even gave implicit recognition to terrorism as a legitimate means to obtain concessions. The net result of his malevolent screed was to harden already implausible and unrealistic Arab demands, diminishing any hope for a peaceful resolution. For an administration besotted by establishing <i>Judenrein</i> in Judea and Samaria, Kerry’s nonsensical talk likely had the opposite effect.</p>
<p>So there you have it. John Kerry and Hassan Nasrallah have teamed up to urge capitulation to the Islamic Republic while the French, historically known as the jellyfish of Europe, are suddenly developing a skeletal structure. The Saudis and the Gulf countries are looking to the Jews for protection and an ex-KGB man has been transformed into a peculiar combination of rainmaker and peacemaker. To top it off the administration is treating its closest regional ally like an adversary and is systematically sabotaging its security interests while providing political cover to its sworn enemies.</p>
<p>We are indeed living in strange times, a product of the leadership void created by the Obama administration. Rod Serling in his finest hour couldn’t conjure up a more convoluted scenario.</p>
<p>In other news, North Korea recently <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/12/80-people-publicly-executed-across-n-korea-films-b/">executed 80 people</a> for possessing bibles and watching South Korean films with no protest from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Oh well. It’s good to know that some things will always remain predictable.</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>The Leftist Enablers of Hezbollah and Hamas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/the-leftist-enablers-of-hezbollah-and-hamas-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-leftist-enablers-of-hezbollah-and-hamas-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 04:45:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[judith butler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206921</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Professor Judith Butler's "progressive" terrorists.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Judith.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206925" alt="Judith" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Judith.jpg" width="300" height="228" /></a>“Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important,“ proclaimed leftist Columbia University visiting professor Judith Butler, who is also an executive member of the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in the United States and The Jenin Theatre in Palestine. Then, in a disclaimer so typical of the leftist apologists for terrorist organizations cloaked as “resistance fighters,” Professor Butler assured us that she does not favor violence.</p>
<p>Hezbollah and Hamas, like all terrorist organizations, are defined by the violence they regularly commit against innocent civilians.  Both have called for the destruction of Israel by any means necessary. Not only do they aim rockets and arm suicide bombers to deliberately target women and children. They use their own women and children as human shields and human bombs. Indeed, they glorify the “martyrdom” of young girls.</p>
<p>For example, here is an excerpt from an Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) phone interview broadcast on January 22, 2010 on Hamas TV kids&#8217; program, Tomorrow&#8217;s Pioneers:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Host to girl on phone:</strong> &#8220;How was it for you during the [Gaza] war [2009]? Were you afraid that you would die, that you would leave this world?&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Girl:</strong> &#8220;No. I wasn&#8217;t afraid. I wished for Shahada (Martyrdom) &#8212; Shahada for Allah.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Host:</strong> &#8220;How wonderful. Even this little girl &#8211; how old are you?&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Girl:</strong> &#8220;Ten.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Host:</strong> &#8220;[She] is not more than ten years old, and wants to die as a Shahida (Martyr) for Allah. We all wish for this [Shahada].&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Is this really what self-declared feminists such as Judith Butler wish for little Palestinian girls? To die violently as a “martyr” reciting a memorized script?  No, she would likely say, but she would nevertheless insist that Hamas and Hezbollah are still worth supporting for their non-violent “political” and “charitable” activities.</p>
<p>In reality, their “political” and “charitable” arms feed their militant operations, much as tumor blood vessels bring the nutrients to cancer cells that those cells need to grow. They are all part of one indivisible whole. But leftists like Butler pretend that such “anti-imperialist” groups, as they call them, can compartmentalize their “progressive” deeds from their armed activities.</p>
<p>Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah demonstrated what his organization is really all about when he proclaimed on the last day of the twentieth century that “we will write our history with blood.&#8221; He was aiming his remarks against Israelis, whom he promised “will see more suicide attacks.” But his hatred is not reserved just for Israel.</p>
<p>During a February, 2006 speech he led a crowd in chants, &#8220;America, America you are the Great Satan … America, America, the enemy of the Muslims.” At the time, he was hosting radical professor Noam Chomsky, a great admirer of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and reviler of his home country, the United States. And, going further than Butler, Chomsky said that he had no problem supporting Hezbollah’s use of arms.  After all, he rationalized, they were fighting “imperialistic forces.”  Lebanese observers who heard Chomsky’s unequivocal support for Hezbollah were not impressed. One such observer, quoted in the Lebanese weblog Ya Libnan, said: &#8220;Chomsky needs to live here for a while to understand what happened during the past 30 years and why most Lebanese are against the Hezbollah arms.&#8221;</p>
<p>Chomsky and his comrades on the Left couldn’t care less what happens to real people as a result of the actions of terrorist groups like Hezbollah. Any group that hates the “Great Satan” has got to be alright for the Chomskyites, who meanwhile seek comfort and security in the land they so glibly condemn.</p>
<p>Such willful moral inversion is not confined to academia, of course. For example, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Gaza flotilla spokesman Edward Peck said after meeting with a group of Hamas leaders, including Hamas&#8217;s leader, Khaled Mashaal: “These guys were entirely rational.&#8221; Peck added that he found Mashaal to be &#8220;moderate in many senses.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mashaal projects a moderate image to Westerners when it serves Hamas’s interests, much as its parent the Muslim Brotherhood does. But it is all taqiyya – a bunch of lies – meant to deceive the gullible like Peck.</p>
<p>For example, in interviews with Western journalists, Mashaal said that Hamas would be open to a long-term hudna (truce) with Israel so long as Israel ended its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and agreed to the right of return of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps or exile.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are ready to resort to a peaceful way, purely peaceful way without blood and weapons, as long as we obtain our Palestinian demands,&#8221; Mashaal told CNN in an interview last November. In other words, if Israel concedes away its Jewish identity and capitulates to all of the Palestinian jihadists’ demands, there need not be any bloodshed. But only a month later, emerging from a door built into a large-scale model of a rocket fired at Israel, Mashaal whipped up the masses in Gaza celebrating Hamas’s 25th anniversary:  “We are not giving up any inch of Palestine. It will remain Islamic and Arab for us and nobody else. Jihad and armed resistance is the only way. We cannot recognize Israel’s legitimacy.”</p>
<p>“Resistance” is the code word used by groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and their supporters, meant to justify their violence and distinguish it from terrorism. Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights and avid apologist for jihadist violence, illustrated this perverse logic when he wrote in Al Jazeera last December:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It gives perspective to imagine the situation being reversed as it was during the Nazi occupation of France or the Netherlands during World War II. Resistance fighters were uniformly perceived in the liberal West as unconditional heroes, and no critical attention was given as to whether the tactics used unduly imperiled innocent civilian lives. Those who lost their lives in such a resistance were honoured as martyrs. Meshaal and other Hamas leaders have made similar arguments on several occasions, in effect asking what are Palestinians supposed to do in the exercise of resistance given their circumstances, which have persisted for so long, given the failures of traditional diplomacy and the UN to secure their rights under international law.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is an idea for what Palestinians could be doing. How about negotiating in good faith for a two-state solution that recognizes Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state living in peace and security alongside an independent Palestinian state? For more than six decades Palestinians leaders have refused multiple opportunities for just such an outcome. Instead, as Hamas’s leader continues to demonstrate, they hide behind the nice-sounding but false narrative of victimhood and “resistance” to “neo-colonialists” in order to justify their all-or-nothing campaign of jihadism to the death. Perhaps the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations now underway will lead to a more positive outcome, but don’t bet on it.</p>
<p>The United Nations, for which Falk is a Special Rapporteur, enables such behavior by failing to come to agreement on a definition of “terrorism,” let alone apply the term to Hamas and Hezbollah where it belongs. These jihadist groups and their supporters use the United Nations as the stage where they act out their fictions of Zionist and Western crimes against them.  Zionist Israel and its “Great Satan” protector, the United States, are cast as arch villains conspiring to control the world. Any human rights violations alleged to have been committed by Hamas or Hezbollah are either denied altogether or shrugged off in comparison to the supposed inhumanity of Israel and Western democratic societies. Suicide bombers are morphed into heroic resistance fighters.</p>
<p>These groups count on Western guilt and ambivalence to advance their cause. The European Union provides a perfect example of a Western organization that took far too long to arrive at what ended up being only a half-way measure in dealing with Hezbollah’s record of global terrorism.</p>
<p>On July 22, 2013, the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union finally, after years of malignant neglect, agreed to add Hezbollah&#8217;s military wing to its list of terrorist organizations. This should have been a no-brainer, but it was made possible only after confirmation by Bulgarian government officials that Hezbollah had been responsible for conducting a terrorist attack there in July 2012 and after a Hezbollah operative was caught in Cyprus while preparing for a similar attack in February 2013. Hezbollah’s military support for the Assad regime in Syria also helped push the reluctant EU to do what it should have done years ago. And even so, it still tries to thread the needle between Hezbollah&#8217;s military wing and its political wing, instead of flatly declaring the entire organization a terrorist entity as the United States did in 1995. In fact, as discussed above, Hezbollah’s military and political operations are intertwined, making any distinction between them completely artificial.  Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah mocked the EU decision, &#8220;Soak your terrorist list in water and drink it…I will propose the appointment of members of the party’s military wing in the prospective government.&#8221;</p>
<p>Downplaying the danger of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas is a recipe for disaster. Stop the deception and call them out for what they truly are – jihadists who use terrorism as their tactic of choice to realize their malignant intentions. Israel is merely the canary in the coal mine. The ultimate target is all infidels, especially those with Western secular democratic values.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s </strong>video interview with <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about the Left&#8217;s Unholy Alliance with Radical Islam (beginning at 5:00 mark):  </em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></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>Hezbollah Begins Pullout from Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/hezbollah-begins-pullout-from-syria/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hezbollah-begins-pullout-from-syria</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/hezbollah-begins-pullout-from-syria/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Oct 2013 13:26:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syrian Civil War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206428</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia is thrilled at the idea of giving Iran its own Vietnam]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_206430" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ap_hezbollah_parade_630x420_111213.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-206430" alt="Hezbollah, Now with 30% more corpses" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ap_hezbollah_parade_630x420_111213-450x300.jpg" width="450" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Hezbollah, Now with 30% more corpses</p></div>
<p>That&#8217;s bad news for Assad and Iran which had been relying on the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group to bring it up to par with Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. But Hezbollah&#8217;s image proved to be mostly hype.</p>
<p>Hezbollah took a severe beating in Syria. Its full losses are unknown, but the war is unpopular among Lebanese Shiites. Last year, Hezbollah chief <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/hezbollah-leader-begs-al-qaeda-for-a-truce/">Nasrallah was already begging Al Qaeda</a> for a truce.</p>
<p>Considering how much Al Qaeda hates Shiites (a lot), that was a doomed prospect. Iran has tried to befriend Al Qaeda before, but Al Qaeda treats it just like America, its people are willing to use Iran as a temporary base, but then they just go back to killing Shiites. Nasrallah&#8217;s outreach efforts sounded pathetic.</p>
<p>Now <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172462#.UlGTGhCMljg">Hezbollah is beginning its pullout f</a>rom Syria. Its men helped Assad push back against Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood, but mostly they got their asses kicked.</p>
<blockquote><p>According to Arabic media outlets, Hezbollah is withdrawing roughly 1,200 troops from Syria. The fighters were sent in to help Assad retake the city of Qusair, near the border with Lebanon, which they did in early June. They were accused of murdering women and children during the fighting, which exacted a heavy toll on both sides.</p>
<p>Hebollah then redirected its efforts towards Homs, to help Assad’s troops retake that area, and intended to move on afterward to Aleppo.</p>
<p>However, instead of quickly retaking the area, the Hezbollah and Syrian soldiers, and their Iranian advisors, found themselves increasingly trapped in endless bloody skirmishes in the region. Not only did they not retake land from the rebels, but they found themselves suffering heavy losses.</p>
<p>The losses lead to increasing division within Hezbollah, with many criticizing the group’s head, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, for spending Hezbollah lives in a foreign country. Nasrallah&#8217;s own brother Khader was among the dead.</p>
<p>&#8230;</p>
<p>Those who have been called back to Lebanon will apparently be replaced by Iranian “volunteers” from the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, reports say, as part of the increasingly direct involvement of Iranian troops fighting on the ground in Syria on behalf of  Assad.</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s good news for those who want to see more Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorists getting shot up for a change. The Iranization of the Syrian Civil War pulls the Shiite terrorist regime deeper into a hopeless fight with Al Qaeda in which no one is likely to emerge victorious.</p>
<p>Every Iranian terrorist agent who gets bogged down fighting ISIS or the Free Syrian Army isn&#8217;t out there planting bombs in Thailand or smuggling drugs into America.</p>
<p>Saudi Arabia is thrilled at the idea of giving Iran its own Vietnam, which Syria may easily turn into, if it hasn&#8217;t already. Iran meanwhile is still stuck as the odd Islamists out in a region where Sunni Islamists increasingly dominate. Iran had less of a problem with the Arab Socialists than it did with the Islamists, despite its bloody war with Saddam. And it lacks the same class of fanatics it had back during that war. Most of its people are sick and tired of the Islamic regimes and the endless fighting. Its wealthier elites want the good life. The rest just want to be able to afford chicken.</p>
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		<title>Who are the Occupiers? Hezbollah and Palestinians Now Killing Each Other</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/who-are-the-occupiers-hezbollah-and-palestinians-now-killing-each-other/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=who-are-the-occupiers-hezbollah-and-palestinians-now-killing-each-other</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/who-are-the-occupiers-hezbollah-and-palestinians-now-killing-each-other/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 21 Sep 2013 17:51:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204010</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hezbollah has absurdly found itself in the same position as Israel]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/infejar-fe-daheya-3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-204012" alt="infejar-fe-daheya-3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/infejar-fe-daheya-3-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>While you might think that this is part of the Syrian Civil War between Sunnis and Shiites as most Palestinian Muslims are Sunnis and Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamist terror group, <a href="http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/09/09/hezbollah-palestinians-clash-in-beirut-1-killed/">the truth appears to be even more ironic</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>A Palestinian was killed and five others wounded in a clash between Hezbollah members and Palestinians in Burj al-Barajneh, south of the capital Beirut, the Al Jadeed TV reported.</p>
<p>The report said that a number of Palestinians refused to be searched, and then opened fire on a Hezbollah checkpoint near the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp.</p>
<p>Local media said the skirmish broke out between Hezbollah and a group of Palestinians celebrating a wedding.</p>
<p>They said the brawl quickly developed into an armed clash when the wedding convoy refused to be searched by Hezbollah.</p>
<p>LBCI TV reported that protesters burned tires at the camp’s entrance and shouted anti-Hizbullah slogans in the wake of the clash.</p>
<p>Hezbollah had beefed up its security measures in and around Beirut’s southern suburbs in the wake of a powerful car bombing that rocked the Rweiss neighborhood in Dahieh and left 27 people dead and around 300 wounded.</p>
<p>Hezbollah security measures angered many Lebanese leaders.</p></blockquote>
<p>Hezbollah set up checkpoints and security measures after being targeted by Sunni Jihadists over its role in the Syrian Civil War. Palestinian wedding parties, which like a lot of wedding parties in the Middle East, involve lots of celebratory gunfire.</p>
<p>The irony here is that Hezbollah is acting like an occupying power and its checkpoints carry obvious echoes of Israel. Hezbollah has absurdly found itself in the same position as Israel, now that it all but runs Lebanon, and is forced to engage in the same security measures and the same firefights.</p>
<p>But who are the occupiers in this scenario? Are the Palestinian Muslims the foreign settlers in Lebanon or is Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, the occupiers?</p>
<p>Someone forward the question to Noam Chomsky so his brain can explode.</p>
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		<title>Video Evidence: Iran Fighting in Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/video-evidence-iran-fighting-in-syria/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-evidence-iran-fighting-in-syria</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Sep 2013 04:25:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[training]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weapons]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204796</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Inside the fanatical mindset of the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Picture-13.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-204820" alt="Picture 13" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Picture-13-450x333.png" width="270" height="200" /></a>While the Obama administration has been struggling to articulate a precise foreign policy agenda towards Syria, another country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a non-state actor, Hezbollah, have become emboldened and empowered in their clear support for the Assad regime militarily, financially, through intelligence, and in an advisory role to garner a victory for Islam against those they call “the Pagans.”</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Iran— with the help of Hezbollah— has been operating militarily in the region for in recent years, supporting the Assad regime financially and sending military advisers to the country to train Syrian officers, Mukhabarat (the Syrian intelligence agency), and army ever since the popular uprising first began.  For example, Iranian leaders have reportedly made the forceful military decision to send 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Damascus. This support is intended to threaten Tel Aviv, suppress the uprising and rebellion, as well as to strengthen Assad’s Alawite-based police state.</p>
<p>In addition, the Islamic Republic of Iran— with the help of Russia and China—signed an agreement with Assad to supply Damascus with $3.6 billion in oil in exchange for Tehran to have the right to invest in Syrian cities. Syria&#8217;s state news agency (SANA) reported on Tuesday that “[a]n agreement (on Monday) was signed in Tehran by the Iranian and Syrian central banks, granting Syria a credit line worth $3.6 billion.” The agreement stipulates that the Syrian government will have to pay back the cost of the Iranian oil loan ”through Iranian investments of various kinds in Syria,” as SANA stated. However, Syrian and Iranian authorities have not clarified what specific type of “investments” will be implemented.</p>
<p>This $3.6 billion in oil is part of a package to extend Iranian aid to President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s government – Iran’s major regional political and strategic ally. In addition to the $3.6 billion aid in oil, another $1 billion credit line to Damascus has already been extended. Moreover, Iran has previously signed a free trade deal that granted Syrian exports as low as 4 percent in customs tariffs. These moves have been taken in an attempt to allow Syrian authorities to buy Iranian power-generating products and other goods in a framework of barter arrangements.</p>
<p>Although Iran has been implicitly and covertly delivering assistance to Assad and his apparatuses since the eruption of the Syrian uprising, there has been no concrete or tangible proof of these military, advisory and financial moves.  Iranian leaders have continued to deny all these claims, maintaining the stance that they are not engaged with any side in Syria.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, all this changed, when just this week a cameraman— who lost his life because he filmed the truth on the ground in Syria— released the following video showing how Syrian troops and militia are being trained by Persian-speaking advisers. The cameraman was able to capture footage of the Iranians with their fighting unit, showing the ideology of the Islamist clerics of Iran.</p>
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/z2J02DutU2c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>The Iranian officer publicly announces that he is fighting Western countries, Tel Aviv, the United States, and pagans. Through the interview, it is evident that he is implying that the uprising in Syria did not erupt as a protest against the dictator, but as a battle between Islam and the bad, a battle between good and evil. The evil here being the West: Israel and the United States.</p>
<p>The war in Syria, he explained, “is that of Islam versus the nonbelievers. Good versus evil.”</p>
<p>The officer believes that he represents good, while his opponents are the evil, because he believes that he is on the side of God due to the fact that he is on the side of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khameini. The Iranian officer believes that he is with the right and the good, the Islamist party fighting evil and atheism because that is what the Supreme Leader has instructed.</p>
<p>There are many people who become brainwashed, blindly and truly believing in whatever their Imam and Supreme Leader has said. These are the types of people who will kill, slaughter, commit suicide, torture men, women, and children, while still believing that they are doing the right thing.</p>
<p>These believers act because their Supreme Leader and Imams not only support them in this world, but also promise them support in the next world, including (most infamously) 72 virgins.</p>
<p>When I lived in Iran, I came to realize that there is a specific group of militia, extremely loyal to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamist value system. They believe that the twelfth Imam, called Mehdi, would one day resurrect and would come to kill all of the pagans on Earth with his sword while riding a horse, resulting in only a few (less than 1,000) loyal Islamists left alive from the billions alive today. The devout followers deeply believe that they will indeed be the few survivors because they support the Iranian leader Khamenei.</p>
<p>Those who believe in this to a fanatic extent become dangerous, as they would go to extreme lengths to please their Imam and Supreme Leader. Some would even argue that they would self-harm and self-sacrifice if the Imam ordered it, as a sign of loyalty and as supporters of what they see as true Islam.</p>
<p>While the Obama administration has yet to articulate a clear foreign policy goal for Syria, Iranian loyalists and Islamists, Hezbollah, and other groups are dominating the country, the region, and threatening the existence of Christians and Jewish minorities, Israelis, and other non-Muslim groups.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Shiite Coalition and Obama&#8217;s Impotence</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/the-shiite-coalition-and-obamas-disaster/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-shiite-coalition-and-obamas-disaster</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2013 04:03:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[red lines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran, Hezbollah and Assad get the message.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/2349077637.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203992" alt="2349077637" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/2349077637-450x348.jpg" width="315" height="244" /></a>The hesitant, premature, indecisive, inconsistent, and uninformed foreign policy initiatives of President Barack Obama on the Assad regime are working towards undermining American credibility, power, prestige, and legitimacy in the international community and the Middle East. From the perspective of Russian and Chinese leaders, the Obama administration has projected a crucially weak geopolitical position.  These undetermined and ambiguous foreign policy moves toward the Middle East and Syria are significantly contributing to emboldening the Shiite-Islamist coalition of Iranian clerics, Ayatollahs, Hezbollah, and Assad’s regime.</p>
<p>Firstly, President Obama has not yet articulated a concrete foreign policy plan for Syria as the conflict enters its third year, with the Islamists beginning to emerge as the more coordinated, and organized, battlefield winners.  For the first 15 months of the Syrian uprising, the Obama administration preferred to act as a bystander, merely reacting as events unfolded in Syria while Russia, Iran, China, and Hezbollah led. Afterwards, when regional and international pressures to act began to pile up— and when American legitimacy and values were questioned—the Obama administration issued a red line for the use of chemical weapons.  More precisely, Obama stated, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus… That would change my equation… We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans.”</p>
<p>A central principle of international affairs— directly linked to credibility, legitimacy, and the global image of a state— is warning, issuing a red line, declaring an ultimatum, and delivering definitive statements to the international community or other states. Geopolitical and geostrategic foreign policies of ruling nations generally indicate that a state should not warn other states of serious repercussions, unless it fully intends to implement its demanded policies if the drawn red line is crossed.</p>
<p>After President Barack Obama issued his warning, 13 reports on the use of chemical weapons came out from Israeli, French, and British intelligence. Due to the fact that the Obama administration did not have any particular foreign policy plan towards Syria from the beginning, the administration first began by dodging questions related to these reports. In addition, the administration’s argument for not following up on its own political warning focused on several notions: pointing out that they were not cognizant of who indeed used the chemical weapons, where the weapons were precisely utilized, and whether the rebels were in possession of the chemical weapons or the Assad regime. The Obama administration then changed positions, stating that chemical weapons where used in “varying degrees,” which would not qualify as crossing the red line. Apparently, the red line meant using chemical weapons in large amounts.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, after Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)—a credible international organization— presented a report on the use of chemical weapons, the Obama administration was further pushed to address the red line that was issued almost over a year ago.</p>
<p>While there were no specific foreign policy goals on the Syrian issue, President Obama warned that America would conduct limited military strikes. Geopolitically and geostrategically speaking, what was the purpose of such policy? There does not seem to have been any sort of national security plan that this military operation would have accomplished. This strike would not even have worked towards fundamentally altering the balance of power on the ground in Syria. Besides spending millions of dollars, the objectives of such military strikes are not at all clear. It would be difficult to refer to any definite geopolitical, national, and economic interests that these limited military strikes would bring about. Additionally, the overwhelming majority of UN member states and European countries have opposed it.</p>
<p>As the Obama administration saw the reactions from other ally states towards its ambiguous and “wait and see” foreign policy plan, President Obama attempted to defer the case to the Congress and avoid responsibility for two reasons. Primarily, this move was intended to throw blame on Congress in case of another catastrophic event occurring in Syria and in the region. Second, by deferring the case to Congress, President Obama could project the picture that he is not taking unilateral military action, but rather seeking congressional authorization as a fundamental part of the democratic system. As a result, President Obama will seek credit for himself in both these scenarios, being a political winner in any case.</p>
<p>Finally, the indeterminate and indecisive foreign policies of the Obama administration have fundamentally contributed to emboldening the Shiite coalition of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime. As President Obama keeps issuing red lines and changing his rhetoric, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad’s regime have received a clear and formidable message about the Obama administration’s weak position. This has also contributed to damaging America&#8217;s global image and diplomatic prestige.</p>
<p>These countries and non-state actors— supported by Moscow and Beijing— have been empowered to the extent that their lawmakers and leaders are explicitly undermining the U.S., threatening it and its ally Israel.</p>
<p>For example, according to Hussein Sheikholeslam, the director general of the Iranian parliament’s International Affairs bureau and a senior Iranian lawmaker, the United States would not dare attack Syria, but if it does, “the Zionist regime will be the first victim.” On Monday, Sheikholeslam was quoted on Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency saying: “No military attack will be waged against Syria… Yet, if such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack on Syria.” Contrastingly, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Republican Guards’ elite Basij paramilitary force, shrugged off any potential Western military response, stating that “[the Americans] are incapable of starting a new war in the region, because of their lacking economic capabilities and their lack of morale.”</p>
<p>More fundamentally, Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi solidified Iran’s stance under Hassan Rowhani’s presidency by emphasizing that Iran is resolved and determined to defend Syria and Assad’s apparatuses. Araghchi stated in a news conference in Tehran: “We want to strongly warn against any military attack in Syria. There will definitely be perilous consequences for the region,” adding, “these complications and consequences will not be restricted to Syria. It will engulf the whole region.”</p>
<p>Considering international politics, the lack of a clear foreign policy agenda and issuing an ambiguous and vague red line, are more detrimental to national security and global geopolitical status than implementing many other, more real and physical, foreign policy gaffs.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas Aggressively Trying to Infiltrate the CIA</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/al-qaeda-hezbollah-and-hamas-aggressively-trying-to-infiltrate-the-cia/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-qaeda-hezbollah-and-hamas-aggressively-trying-to-infiltrate-the-cia</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:24:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202924</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-202925" alt="3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/3-450x293.jpg" width="450" height="293" /></a></p>
<p>Why not? The CIA has <a href="http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/cia-launches-muslim-recruitment-drive/">been aggressively trying to recruit Muslims</a>. A sizable percentage of the young college grads with a background in international affairs studies that they would like are politically active and usually Muslim Students Association members, which is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/09/1-in-5-flagged-cia-applicants-have-ties-to-hezbollah-hamas-and-al-qaeda/">We know the number that were flagged</a>. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/2/cia-finds-1-5-job-applicants-hail-hamas-hezbollah-/">How many went unflagged</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s collection revealed Monday.</p>
<p>Terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states</p>
<p>The specifics of those ties were not revealed, but the groups most often cited as attempting to infiltrate the U.S. intelligence network were al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.</p></blockquote>
<p>Al Qaeda would probably have a harder time making it in. But I imagine there are any number of people affiliated with Hamas or Hezbollah on the payroll by now.</p>
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		<title>Hezbollah Kidnaps Turkish Pilots to Trade for Shiite Terrorists Captured by Syrian Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/hezbollah-kidnaps-turkish-pilots-to-trade-for-shiite-terrorists-captured-by-syrian-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hezbollah-kidnaps-turkish-pilots-to-trade-for-shiite-terrorists-captured-by-syrian-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:23:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syrian Civil War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200622</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The simplest solution to a hostage crisis in the region is to take someone else hostage. If the US understood this better, the Iranian hostage crisis would have been over in a week.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-and-Hassan-Nasrallah.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-200623" alt="Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Nasrallah" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-and-Hassan-Nasrallah.jpg" width="378" height="222" /></a></p>
<p>Now that the soap commercials are over, let&#8217;s get back to the great soap opera that is the Syrian Civil War.</p>
<p>The Northern Storm Brigade, an Islamist militia that is part of the Free Syrian Army and operates rather close to the Turkish border, kidnapped 11 Shiite Lebanese men. The Lebanese claim that they were pilgrims. The rebels claim that they were top Hezbollah officials who thought they were headed to a meeting with Syrian government officials.</p>
<p>The Brigade offered to release the men on the condition that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah apologizes for participating on Assad&#8217;s side in the civil war. Nasrallah neglected to take up the FSA on this offer.</p>
<p>The simplest solution to a hostage crisis in the region is to take someone else hostage. If the US understood this better, the Iranian hostage crisis would have been over in a week.</p>
<p>So one of the sons of the men, and apparently a bunch of others, kidnapped two Turkish airline pilots in Lebanon. Turkey&#8217;s Islamist regime is furious since, for some arrogant reason, it didn&#8217;t think that it support for terrorism in Syria would backfire against it.</p>
<p>Suddenly frightened, Turkey is pulling its troops out of the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon and telling its citizens to leave the country before they get kidnapped. That&#8217;s probably a good idea since Hezbollah runs Lebanon.</p>
<p>Officially Hezbollah is claiming that they had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Pretending to go along with that,<a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Aug-14/227312-turkish-military-delegation-in-beirut.ashx#axzz2bxBiQfvI"> Turkish officials met with </a>Hezbollah politicians and asked for their &#8220;help&#8221;.</p>
<p>And the Syrian National Council, which is run by the Muslim Brotherhood, but may or may not run anything on the ground in Syria, is saying that a <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/swap-deal-for-turkish-pilots-possible-syrian-national-councils-turkey-representative.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52488&amp;NewsCatID=352">hostage swap might be considered</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Khoja said he did not have any concrete information about such a deal but added that it could mirror a previous deal in which two of the pilgrims were released in exchange for two businessmen captured by Hezbollah. He also said there could be negotiations with the Northern Storm Brigades over the issue.</p></blockquote>
<p>Clearly last time around not enough Turkish hostages were taken. So maybe next time Hezbollah will find seven Turks to kidnap and put an end to this soap opera.</p>
<blockquote><p>“Any Turkish citizen in the southern suburbs and the city of Beirut is a target for [kidnapping] by the families of the Lebanese hostages,” Hayat Awali, a spokesperson for the families of the hostages, told reporters Aug. 12.</p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m sure this will do wonders for tourism.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-requested-irans-assistance-to-release-kidnapped-pilots.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52443&amp;NewsCatID=352">Turkey has also reached out to Iran</a>, which has the same relationship to Hezbollah as Turkey has to the Free Syrian Army.</p>
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		<title>The Obama Administration’s Iran Delusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/the-obama-administrations-iran-delusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obama-administrations-iran-delusions</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Aug 2013 04:01:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[centrifuge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tehran]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200123</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Iranian masters of buying time have just gained even more from the U.S. president.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Hassan-Rouhani.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200128" alt="Hassan-Rouhani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Hassan-Rouhani.jpg" width="255" height="206" /></a>While the Senate has recently urged the Obama administration to pass a new round of sanctions on the Islamic State of Iran as a result of Iran’s nuclear defiance and human rights abuses, the Obama administration is insisting on using dialogue, Track II diplomacy, and negotiations with Iran’s recently inaugurated president, Hassan Rouhani.  President Barack Obama and his advisors argue that Hassan Rouhani is a “moderate,” and as such, dialogue can now yield fruitful results. This move by the Obama administration is intriguing and it raises questions of whether the Islamist state of Iran is politically shrewd and Machiavellian enough to fool the United States or whether the Obama’s administration is suffering from political and ideological delusions about Iran.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic of Iran has masterfully bought itself three decades of time since the revolution in 1979. These tactics have been utilized not only to pursue its nuclear enrichment program but also to maintain its grip on power, threaten the existence if Israel, assist global terror groups, including Hizballah and Hamas, execute political prisoners and human rights activists, and repress its population with backward, medieval-style, Islamic rule, and Muhammad-style of 1400 years ago.</p>
<p>Ideologically, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been using the Islamic strategy of taqyyia (where it is acceptable to lie and commit illegal acts) and it has also applied the Machiavellian tactic of exploiting these “civilized dialogues,” negotiations, US Track II diplomacy, in order to buy the time that it needs to get the nuclear bomb and nuclear arsenal. Recently the Senate wrote a letter to President Obama that stated that the time for diplomacy is over and that “Iran has used negotiations in the past to stall for time.&#8221; The letter continued: “Mr. President, we urge you to bring a renewed sense of urgency to the process. We need to understand quickly whether Tehran is at last ready to negotiate seriously. Iran needs to understand that the time for diplomacy is nearing its end.&#8221;  In addition, the overwhelming majority of the members of the House of Representatives voted (400 to 20) in favor of ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic state of Iran and its Ayatollahs. These sanctions are intended to target Tehran’s most significant source of income and most important economic lifeline &#8212; oil.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the President and his advisors (some of Middle Eastern origin) have so far refrained from passing the bill, which has been endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the Senate and House of Representatives. This is the first bill that can potentially bring the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Ayatollah to the negotiating table. Iran has been capable of diverting all previous, internationally-endorsed sanctions through its sale of oil and the soaring prices of crude oil in the last few decades.</p>
<p>The Obama administration points out that Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new president is a “moderate” who might be capable of making a breakthrough in the nuclear talks. Any person, who studies Iran’s political structure closely, would be cognizant of the fact that there is no such thing as a “moderate” in Iran’s cleric system. Rouhani’s recent statements and political activities are evidence of this claim. Hassan Rouhani was one of the closest companions of Khomeini, the founder of this theocratic regime. Hassan Rouhani has repeatedly stated in his books that Israel has no right to be a country and state. Hassan Rouhani has been the Supreme Leader’s main advisor in Iran’s Supreme National Security Council where almost every policy that passes through it gets approved. While Iran has been enriching its nuclear program for the past years, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator has been Hassan Rouhani. He even stated in one of his campaign interviews that he actually “completed the nuclear program.” He clearly said that he made the West and international community buy his argument that Tehran has halted its nuclear program for two years, while Iran continued spinning its centrifuges.  Rouhani climbed the political ladder with the help of the Supreme Leader who has publicly announced his hostility and antagonism towards not only the governments of Israel and the United States but also towards the Israeli and American people. In a sermon during Friday prayers in Tehran, Khamenei stated that &#8220;it is incorrect, irrational, pointless and nonsense to say that we are friends of Israeli people.&#8221;</p>
<p>It goes without saying that Hassan Rouhani is a regime insider. Everything about his political ideology, writings, political career speaks loudly for itself &#8212; that he is not a “reformist” or “moderate.” Upon analysis of Iran’s political structure since the Islamic revolution, it is not a stretch to argue there has been no such thing as “moderate” president in Iranian politics. All presidents have expressed antagonism towards Israel, repressed their own people (particularly minority Christians and Bahai&#8217;s) and continued Tehran’s nuclear program. It is fascinating to observe that US president Barack Obama and his advisors are hoping and waiting until Iran’s new president makes a “breakthrough” in nuclear talks. Iran is clearly buying time.</p>
<p>It is an intriguing dilemma to ponder whether the Iranian clerics are so masterful in deceiving the Obama administration, or whether the Obama’s administration is delusional about Iran &#8212; considering the perseverance of Tehran’s defiance, as well as the overwhelming support for increased sanctions on Tehran coming from both US houses.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Muslim Country Deports US Liberal for Liking Terrorism Too Much</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/muslim-country-deports-us-liberal-for-liking-terrorism-too-much/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-country-deports-us-liberal-for-liking-terrorism-too-much</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/muslim-country-deports-us-liberal-for-liking-terrorism-too-much/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Aug 2013 14:45:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bahrain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Like being kicked out of a biker bar for having too many tattoos, being expelled from a Muslim country for liking terrorism too much is a real achievement.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/BRUKzeQCQAEtQjb.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-200085" alt="BRUKzeQCQAEtQjb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/BRUKzeQCQAEtQjb-450x335.jpg" width="450" height="335" /></a></p>
<p>Like being kicked out of a biker bar for having too many tattoos, being expelled from a Muslim country for liking terrorism too much is a real achievement. It&#8217;s <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2013/08/hezbollah-lovin-gender-studies-major.html">just the bad kind of achievement</a>.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s what <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/10/bahrain-deports-u-s-teacher-for-radical-writing-hezbollah-flag-reportedly-seen-in-her-bedroom/">Erin Kilbride managed to accomplish in Bahrain</a>. Unlike most American women kicked out of a Muslim country, she did not name a teddy bear Mohammed.</p>
<blockquote><p>Bahrain deported a U.S. citizen working as a teacher in the gulf kingdom over what it described Saturday as her “radical” writings on Twitter and websites as the government cracks down on dissent the country.</p>
<p>Erin Kilbride, of Portland, Maine, left the kingdom and was to arrive back in the U.S. later Saturday, officials at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said.</p>
<p>The ministry also said her landlord apparently reported Kilbride for having a flag of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim political party and militant group in Lebanon. The official Twitter feed of Bahrain’s Minister of State Communications, Fawaz Al Khalifa, posted images Saturday that it described as a yellow Hezbollah flag in Kilbride’s bedroom.</p>
<p>Kilbride was “using Twitter and a number of websites to publish articles on Bahrain that were deemed to incite hatred against the government and members of the royal family,” the ministry said. It did not offer specifics about what she wrote, though it did say she wrote for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.</p></blockquote>
<p>Bahrain has a Shiite majority and a Sunni ruling class. Kilbride&#8217;s anti-Israel terrorist fetishism had the unfortunate problem of being Shiite.</p>
<p>So the problem may not be that Erin Kilbride liked terrorists. It&#8217;s that she liked Shiite terrorists.</p>
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		<title>How to Respond to EU Sanctions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/how-to-respond-to-eu-sanctions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-to-respond-to-eu-sanctions</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Jul 2013 04:48:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1948]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1967]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Borders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boycott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezbollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=198365</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Europe's economic warfare against Israel must receive a serious answer. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/holland-loves-labeling-jews.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-198368" alt="holland-loves-labeling-jews" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/holland-loves-labeling-jews-450x345.jpg" width="270" height="207" /></a>Originally published in <a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=321086">The Jerusalem Post. </a></i></p>
<p>THIS WEEK the EU took three steps that together prove Europe&#8217;s ill-intentions toward the Jewish state.</p>
<p>First, last Friday the EU announced it is imposing economic sanctions on Israel. The sanctions deny EU funds to Israeli entities with an address beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines. They also deny EU funds to Israeli entities countrywide that carry out activities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.</p>
<p>The areas beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines delineated by the EU directive include the Gaza Strip, which Israel abandoned eight years ago; the Golan Heights, which has been under Israeli sovereignty since 1981; eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem, which have been under Israeli sovereignty since 1967; and Judea and Samaria, over which Israel has shared governance with the PLO since 1994 in accordance with signed agreements witnessed by EU representatives.</p>
<p>The EU&#8217;s second action was the publication Tuesday of EU foreign policy commissioner Catherine Ashton&#8217;s letter to her fellow commissioners informing them that by the end of the year, the EU will publish binding requirements for specially labeling Israeli goods produced by Jews beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines exported to EU member states.</p>
<p>This act is potentially more damaging for Israel than the ban on transferring EU monies to Israeli entities with &#8220;bad&#8221; addresses. Labeling Israeli products is a means of signaling Europeans consumers that they should view all Israeli exports as morally inferior to other goods and wage a consumer boycott of Israeli products. Indeed, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius described the proposed labeling as an alternative to a broader boycott of all Israeli goods.</p>
<p>The EU&#8217;s third act was its decision to define Hezbollah&#8217;s &#8220;military wing&#8221; as a terrorist organization, but leave all the other Hezbollah-related institutions untouched. While the move has been applauded by Israeli politicians desperate to deny Europe&#8217;s animosity, Europe&#8217;s partial designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist entity is another act of aggression against Israel.</p>
<p>By pretending that Hezbollah has a legitimate &#8220;political wing&#8221; &#8211; a transparent lie that even Hezbollah has denied &#8211; the EU ensures that Hezbollah personnel and Hezbollah institutions can continue to find safe haven in Europe so long as they avoid attacking non-Jewish Europeans.</p>
<p>Hezbollah agents can continue raising money, planning attacks, and recruiting terrorists in Europe, as long as Hezbollah labels the activities &#8220;political.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, all Hezbollah operations directed against Israel and Jews will remain lawful in Europe.</p>
<p>Beyond exposing the EU&#8217;s fundamental and obsessive hostility toward the Jewish state, these three actions put paid to the EU&#8217;s protestations of allegiance to international law and commitment to bringing about peace between the Palestinians and Israel.</p>
<p>As ambassador Alan Baker, the former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, wrote in an article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the EU&#8217;s actions against Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are unsupported by international law. The EU&#8217;s claim that Israel&#8217;s presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines is unlawful is not supported by any treaties or customs. Indeed, it is explicitly refuted by treaties and customs.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s legal rights to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem are recognized under the law of nations through the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which also called for &#8220;close Jewish settlement&#8221; of these areas. The Mandate&#8217;s allocation of sovereign rights over all of these areas to the Jewish people, and its recognition of the Jews as the indigenous people of the areas, has not been abrogated by any subsequent treaty. To the contrary, they were reinforced by Article 80 of the UN Charter.</p>
<p>Moreover, as Baker noted, the EU wrongly claims that Jewish communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949. But authoritative interpretations of Article 49 make clear that Article 49 does not apply to such communities.</p>
<p>The lines the EU points to as Israel&#8217;s legal border were never borders and never legal. The 1949 Armistice Lines, which the EU falsely refers to as the 1967 borders, represent nothing more than the lines at which Israeli forces halted the invading armies of Arab states that illegally assaulted the nascent Jewish state at its birth on May 15, 1948.</p>
<p>The armistice agreements explicitly stated that the armistice lines lack all legal significance in terms of claims of parties to lands beyond the lines.</p>
<p>Finally, as Baker noted, the EU itself repeatedly supported UN resolutions and international agreements that recognize the legality of Israel&#8217;s continued control and civilian presence in the areas. As a consequence, its own actions contradict its claim that Israel&#8217;s presence and the presence of Israeli civilian communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are illegal.</p>
<p>Beyond its unsubstantiated legal claims against Israel, both in its intention to label Israeli products and in its actions related to Hezbollah, the EU is acting in violation of international law. The EU&#8217;s intention to label Israeli products involves the imposition of trade barriers in contravention of the World Trade Organization&#8217;s legally binding rules.</p>
<p>By allowing Hezbollah to continue to operate in the EU, the EU is in violation of binding UN Security Council Resolution 1373 from 2001 that prohibits the use of member states&#8217; territory for the benefit of terrorist groups.</p>
<p>Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called the EU&#8217;s imposition of economic sanctions a &#8220;resounding wake-up call,&#8221; adding, &#8220;I hope that now all those who thought it is possible to continue with the freeze [in the peace talks with the PLO] will understand that we have to act to open negotiations, because this is the only way to protect Israel&#8217;s general interests.&#8221;</p>
<p>This view, which is the official view of the Left, is based on a complete denial of reality.</p>
<p>The EU announced its sanctions on the very same day US Secretary of State John Kerry announced he had convinced the PLO to return to peace talks with Israel. The confluence of these events could not demonstrate more clearly that the EU&#8217;s diplomatic onslaught against Israel has nothing to do with the conduct of negotiations with the PLO. If the EU&#8217;s chief interest was bringing Israel and the PLO to the negotiating table, Brussels would be sanctioning the Palestinians who have refused to negotiate with Israel since 2008.</p>
<p>By levying sanctions the EU does not seek to advance the cause of peace. It hopes to coerce Israel into abandoning its legitimate historic claims as the indigenous people of the Land of Israel to the lands allocated to the Jewish people under international law by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. It hopes to coerce Israel into surrendering its right to defensible borders and voluntarily transform itself into an indefensible strategic basket case wholly dependent on the goodwill of outside powers for its survival.</p>
<p>The question is what can Israel do about it? Were Israel to fight fire with fire and levy counter sanctions on European goods it would be entering an economic war that it would lose and therefore has every interest in avoiding. But Israel&#8217;s inability to respond in kind to European aggression does not mean it is without options.</p>
<p>Europe is using economic sanctions to expand its political power over Israeli decision-makers. So Israel should act to diminish Europe&#8217;s political power in Israel.</p>
<p>The EU itself told Israel how to go about doing this in Paragraph 15 of the sanctions directive. It reads, &#8220;The requirements [banning the transfer of EU funds to Israeli entities operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines]&#8230; do not apply to activities which, although carried out in the territories&#8230;</p>
<p>aim at benefiting protected persons under the terms of international humanitarian law who live in these territories [i.e., the Palestinians] and/or at promoting the Middle East peace process in line with EU policy.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, Israeli NGOs that receive EU assistance are exempt from the financing ban if they commit to undermining Israel&#8217;s rights in the area. As the EU sees it, NGOs who receive EU money are EU agents, advancing European goals in the domestic Israeli arena, and as such should be exempted from the EU&#8217;s economic sanctions.</p>
<p>In a 2010 meeting with US diplomats leaked by WikiLeaks, Jessica Montell, the executive director of the Israeli-registered pro-Palestinian pressure group B&#8217;Tselem, effectively admitted that her organization would cease to exist without European funding.</p>
<p>According to the protocol of the meeting, Montell &#8220;estimated her NIS 9 million ($2.4 million) budget is 95 percent funded from abroad, mostly from European countries.&#8221;</p>
<p>TO STEM THE momentum of Europe&#8217;s new economic war, Israel&#8217;s first response to the EU&#8217;s sanctions must be swift passage in the Knesset of a law requiring all Israeli entities that agree to operate under the EU&#8217;s funding guidelines to register as foreign agents and report all EU contributions.</p>
<p>Those contributions should be taxed at the highest corporate tax rate.</p>
<p>EU officials have stated repeatedly that they seek to undermine Israeli control over Area C. Area C is the area of Judea and Samaria where, in accordance with agreements signed between the PLO and Israel, Israel exercises most civil and military authorities. The EU is funding projects in Area C whose stated goal is to make it impossible over time for Israel to assert its authority over the area.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s second response to the EU&#8217;s announcement of economic sanctions on Israeli economic activity in Judea and Samaria should be to suspend all EU projects in Area C. Future EU projects should be subject to intense scrutiny by the civil administration. Israel&#8217;s default position should be to reject, rather than approve, such requests, given their hostile intent.</p>
<p>Finally, EU peacekeeping forces from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria have repeatedly proven not only their cowardice, but their willingness to act in ways that endanger Israel in order to protect themselves.</p>
<p>In Gaza, EU border guards fled to Israel following Hamas&#8217;s takeover of the area in 2007.</p>
<p>Along the border with Syria, Austrian peacekeepers fled at the first sign of trouble, leaving Israel to deal with Syrian breaches of the European-sanctioned 1974 disengagement agreement by itself.</p>
<p>European forces in UNIFIL in Lebanon have signed protection agreements with Hezbollah where in exchange for European forces&#8217; turning a blind eye to Hezbollah&#8217;s illegal use of civilian infrastructures as military installations, Hezbollah has promised not to murder European forces.</p>
<p>Given this track record, Israel should bar European forces from further participation in armed forces in Israel. To this end, Israel should allow the mandate of the European-dominated Temporary International Presence in Hebron to expire when it next comes up for review. The TIPH, which has been deployed to the city since 1994, is composed of forces from Denmark, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.</p>
<p>Israel has for years been operating under the misguided belief that the EU would eventually come around and side with Israel against its enemies.</p>
<p>This belief has been informed by equal doses of innocence and wishful thinking. The EU&#8217;s decision to initiate an economic war against the Jewish state forces Israel to abandon its long-held illusions.</p>
<p>Israel has options for responding forcefully to Europe&#8217;s aggression. If judiciously and firmly employed, these responses can diminish the Europeans&#8217; interest in escalating this economic war, by denying them the political victory they seek.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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