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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; talks</title>
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		<title>Hamas: The Terror Elite</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/hamas-the-terror-elite-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-the-terror-elite-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 04:45:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PLO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[talks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238370</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Revealing the truth about a genocidal death cult. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-11-at-4.14.32-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238372" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-11-at-4.14.32-PM-273x350.png" alt="hamas" width="202" height="259" /></a></b><em>To order the following Freedom Center pamphlet written by Steven Plaut, &#8220;Hamas: The Terror Elite,&#8221; click <a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/collections/pamplets/products/hamas-the-terror-elite">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><b>“We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity”</b></p>
<p>&#8212; Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza, January 2, 2009</p>
<p><b>“The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine.”</b></p>
<p>&#8212; Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita in a televised interview, cited in <i>TheWall Street Journal</i>, Dec 30, 08</p>
<p>A new fever has seized the media and the governments of some Western democratic countries— a belief that the world must now hold “talks” with Hamas and seek to reach an “accommodation” with this terrorist group.</p>
<p>Hamas itself has been campaigning1 to be recognized as a legitimate governing body and removed from Western blacklists of terrorist movements. A number of European countries have already responded enthusiastically, thus becoming ventriloquist dummies for the far left, which long ago replaced PLO with the Hamas as the group it considers to be the “legitimate” representative of the Palestinian “people.”</p>
<p>Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Portuguese Jose Saramago (already on record as having compared Israel to Nazi Germany), recently led a petition of hundreds of European and other “intellectuals” demanding that Hamas be delisted as a terrorist organization. 2 Some Eurocrats, while acknowledging that Hamas is indeed involved in terrorism, have still insisted3 that it be “recognized” as a legitimate player and removed from terrorism lists so that it can be “engaged.” Edward McMillan-Scott, a Conservative Member of British Parliament, recently said: “The European Union is right to demand the renunciation by Hamas of violence, and to demand that Hamas recognize Israel. But Europe also has to note that Hamas has stuck to a ceasefire since February 2005.” Eight thousand rockets aimed at Jewish civilians do not count as violating any ceasefire in McMillan-Scott’s opinion. The conservative (and anti-Semitic) BBSNEWS service has editorialized that the continuing regard of the Hamas as a terrorist organization “is probably THE most serious obstacle to peace [emphasis in original].”</p>
<p>France has already conducted “talks” with Hamas,4 in which the terror group has been required to repudiate and concede nothing at all. American officials responded, “We don’t believe it is helpful to the process of bringing peace to the region.” Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called for negotiating with Hamas5 to help the movement “develop politically.” Some British politicians chimed in with a solemn amen, including Tony Blair.6 A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report recommended that lawmakers “urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas.” This of course makes exactly as much sense as seeking an accommodation with the moderate elements within al-Qaeda. Some have argued that EU dealings with Hamas themselves constitute a war crime.7 Ironically, members of the PLO have strongly denounced those Europeans calling for dialogue with its rival, which has now replaced Fatah in their affections.</p>
<p>Nor is the EU content with merely talking. As journalist Caroline Glick writes,8 “&#8230; During the period when they were deployed at the [Rafah] terminal, the EU monitors turned a blind eye to the very terror traffic they were supposed to be preventing. At the same time, they condemned Israel for taking any action to defend itself and downplayed the threat Hamas constitutes for Israel. In short, the EU monitors sided with Hamas against Israel at every turn. The situation is much the same with UNIFIL forces in Lebanon.”</p>
<p>The tenured left in the United States has followed its European allies into embracing Hamas. Ostensibly devoted to secularist socialism, the left cheers the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Hamas as the “genuine” and “authentic” representative of Palestinian opinion. Hamas banners now appear everywhere in “peace” demonstrations in Europe and North America. Leftists openly endorse the Hamas charter, whose central premise is that Israel must be annihilated.</p>
<p>Hamas has become the epitome of radical chic on U.S. campuses. Noam Chomsky has been insisting that Hamas is more seriously interested in peace than is Israel.9 Former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Stanford’s Joel Beinin, has criticized the Ford Foundation for <i>not </i>financing Hamas NGOs.10 Hamas, for its part, refuses to recognize or conduct any talks at all with Jews, even with the leftists in Israeli universities who ape the positions taken by Chomsky, Howard Zinn and other radical American academics.</p>
<p>The attitude of the new American administration appears ambiguous. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently ruled out any American negotiations with the Hamas, but then added an ominous afterthought: “unless it meets certain conditions.”11 Thus she took the first step towards joining the long list of Western diplomats who have backtracked and birdwalked over the past decade. These have methodically dumbed down the changes that Palestinian terrorists must make and the demands they must meet before being proclaimed “statesmen.” Nor is Clinton alone in her incipient revisionism about Hamas. John Kerry, who now heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently paid a high profile visit to the Gaza’s Hamastan, and reportedly carried back a note from the terror organization for President Obama’s eyes only.12</p>
<p>Other Americans have been far less cautious about courting Hamas. Ex-President Jimmy Carter has been one of the leading public figures promoting official recognition of the group. He traveled to Damascus to meet with terrorist chiefs, including Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader. The Bush administration repudiated his efforts,13 as did U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Hillary Clinton’s top Jewish advisor:</p>
<p>“A meeting with the former President of the United States lends credibility to terrorists and Holocaust deniers worldwide. In light of Hamas’ continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision.”</p>
<p>Carter’s pandering to Hamas is not reciprocal. In Hamas leaflets, the organization has expressed its opposition to every possible peace plan that has ever been proposed by anyone.14 In its leaflet #46 (September 1989) it rejected Egypt’s ten-point peace plan and warned Palestinians against any contact at all with the United States. In its leaflet #55 (March 1990) it threatened other Palestinian figures who had met with former U.S. President Carter, and warned threateningly that those trying to revive the Camp David accords do not represent the Palestinian people. A bit more recently, Hamas ruled out any sort of permanent truce with Israel, other than brief ceasefires that can give it time to re- arm.15 “The logic of those who demand that we stop our resistance is absurd,” the terror organization writes in one of its advisories that provide talking points for Western media and politicians. “They absolve the aggressor and occupier &#8211; armed with the deadliest weapons of death and destruction &#8211; of responsibility, while blaming the victim, prisoner and occupied.”16</p>
<p><b>What is Hamas?</b></p>
<p>The word Hamas is an acronym for the Arabic words for “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The organization is an Islamofascist terrorist group, responsible for most of the rocket terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel’s south in recent years. Those attacks triggered Israel’s Operation Cast Lead this past winter. It is estimated that 8000 rockets were fired before Israel at last retaliated.</p>
<p>Hamas is probably the most active Arab terrorist organization in recruiting and dispatching suicide-bombers against Jews. Hamas has converted murder-by-suicide into its highest religious value and goal. The first Hamas suicide bombing took place in Israel in April 1993. Thousands of Hamas terrorists train in Iran.</p>
<p>The Hamas “military” wing calls itself the Izz ad-Din al- Qassam brigades, named after an early Palestinian terrorist, killed by the British Mandatory government troops back when “Palestine” was governed by Britain. The Qassam rocket, the weapon of terror most favored by the Hamas, is also named after that terrorist. Al-Qassam was the sidekick of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at the time Hitler’s chief agent in the Middle East.17</p>
<p>Hamas is officially funded by Islamic fascist groups, by Arab governments, by Iran and Syria, and by “Islamic charities” fromaroundtheworld.18 (TheBushadministrationfamously cracked down on some of these “charities,” including the so- called “Holy Land Foundation.) Hamas steals considerable portions of the aid provided to the Gaza Strip by the EU, the US, the UN, and by others.19 In some cases it then sells the material back to ordinary Gazans for a profit.</p>
<p>Hamas grew out of the Palestinian wing of the violent fundamentalist Islamist movement calling itself the Muslim Brotherhood.20 The latter operated throughout the Muslim world, but was especially strong in Egypt, where it was launched in the 1920s. The Brotherhood served as an anti- British pro-Nazi terror group in Egypt and elsewhere during World War II. It terrorized the Jewish population of Egypt and in other Arab countries. It assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 for daring to sign a peace accord with Israel. It had earlier tried to assassinate Gamal Nasser for not being sufficiently anti-West and anti-Israel for their tastes. The Muslim Brotherhood regularly attacks non-Muslim tourists visiting Egypt and justifies any murder of non-Muslims by Muslims anywhere in the name of jihad.</p>
<p>Groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, now outlawed in Egypt, have operated in the United States since 1960.21 Some of these have ties with al-Qaeda. One of the Brotherhood websites blames the 911 attacks in the US on the Jews. 22</p>
<p>Yassir Arafat joined the Brotherhood as a student at an Egyptian university. His Fatah organization, the main group within the PLO, also was built up initially as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and as an Islamist movement. (The word “Fat’h” means holy crusade for Islam.)</p>
<p>In 1973 a Muslim clergyman named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin established <i>al-Mujamma’ al-Islami </i>(the Islamic Center) as the main Muslim Brotherhood movement in Gaza. In December, 1987, the same Yassin, who was later executed by Israel, founded Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Gazan political arm. A different segment of the Muslim Brotherhood broke away to form the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, an ally of Hamas, in the mid-1980s.23</p>
<p>When Hamas began gathering strength, it was at first misjudged by Israel to be a religious NGO that might develop into a political counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization and to its affiliate terrorist groups. Writing in <i>The Wall Street Journal </i>in January 2009, Andrew Higgins notes:</p>
<p>When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and ‘80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called <i>Mujama Al-Islamiya</i>, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.</p>
<p>It did not take long for Israel to realize that the Hamas was arguably an even worse belligerent than the PLO. When Yassir Arafat and, after his death, Abu Mazen went through the motions of conducting “talks” and negotiations with Israel (as the price for receiving American and European support and financing), Hamas denounced such behavior, even though it was for the most part a diplomatic mime. Unlike the PLO, Hamas always speaks clearly and unambiguously in declaring its aims. Hamas is not even willing to pretend rhetorically that its ambitions can be met without the total annihilation of Israel and of its Jewish population.</p>
<p>Hamas is openly endeavoring to carry out a new genocide of Jews. In one of its earliest proclamations, its Leaflet #65 (October 1990), it called upon Arabs to murder Jews and burn their property: “Every Jew or settler is a target and must be killed. Their blood and their property are forfeit.” Not even the most desperate apologist for the organization can twist such statements to mean anything else. Hamas insists that “the soil of Palestine is sacred,” and that every Muslim must take action to liberate every inch of Palestine from the Jews, by which it means all of Israel. Among the more notorious targets for its bombs have been buses of civilians and the cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.24</p>
<p>The Hamas Charter is a meandering hate document, calling for Israel’s complete annihilation.25 It explicitly cites the czarist forgery, <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i>, about a purported global Jewish conspiracy to control the world, in language resembling that on neo-Nazi websites. Hamas is fond of other nutty conspiracy theories, especially the ones claiming that the freemasons are in cahoots with the Jews in a cabal to control the planet. Among the Charter’s main points are these:</p>
<p>“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”</p>
<p>“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic <i>Waqf </i>[consecrated land held as an Islamic trust] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. “</p>
<p>“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”</p>
<p>“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the <i>‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’</i>, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”26</p>
<p>These are the people to whom the armchair Western peace seekers demand that Israel capitulate.</p>
<p><b>Abuse of Palestinian Arabs by Hamas</b></p>
<p>One of the greatest ironies of the Middle East is that the treatment of Arabs by Arab regimes is so much <b><i>worse </i></b>than the treatment of Arabs by Israel. The only place in the Middle East where the basic human rights of Arabs are respected is, in fact, in Israel. Only there can Arabs vote, freely petition public officials and courts, exercise freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and only there is their property safe and legally protected. (Arabs are starting to enjoy some such freedoms in American-occupied Iraq.)</p>
<p>Moreover, in spite of the faddish mantras about Israeli “apartheid” heard on campuses these days, Israel is in fact the only country in the Middle East that is <b><i>not </i></b>an apartheid regime.</p>
<p>When Syria launched a campaign to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, it killed more than 30,000 people, most of them civilians. Jordan may have killed Palestinians in even greater numbers than that in a massacre conducted by King Hussein’s regime in 1970, in what became known as “Black September.”27 (That term of mourning, ironically, was adopted as an identity by the new terrorist group that conducted the Munich massacre and many other atrocities.) Hamas is squarely in this tradition, routinely murdering large numbers of innocent Palestinians it regards as impediments to its plans. 28</p>
<p>No one knows just how many Palestinians the terror organization has killed. But Hamas is so dedicated to the liquidation of internal opposition that it took time out to murder the Fatah sympathizers in Gaza even while it was trying to fight off Israeli troops in Operation “Cast Lead” in 2008. Members of the PLO’s Fatah are routinely accused by the Hamas of collaborating with Israel and tortured. Fatah members may not hold demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, even against Israel, and if they try to do so they are attacked by Hamas thugs. Even Amnesty International, no friend of Israel’s, has spoken out against Hamas use of torture, although not against Hamas rockets fired at Jews.29 Even Arabs in Gaza hospitals have been tortured.30 The Hamas “parliament” has voted in favor of crucifixion of its opponents and rivals.31 Women deemed to be misbehaving in Gaza have been gang-raped by Hamas members.32</p>
<p>Hamas hates Christians, Bahais, and secular Muslims almost as ferociously as it hates Jews. It has brutalized Gaza Christians and ordered them to wear traditional Islamic dress.33 It has attacked churches in Gaza. In one incident its terrorists “attacked Gaza’s Latin Church and adjacent Rosary Sisters School, reportedly destroying crosses, bibles, pictures of Jesus and furniture and equipment. The attackers also stole a number of computers.” 34 Other church leaders have been ordered at gun point to promote Islam.35 Until recently, about 2000 Arab Christians lived in Gaza, but many have fled for their lives, including the son of a Hamas member of parliament who converted to Christianity.36</p>
<p>Hamas also operates numerous “vice squads” that specialize in murdering unmarried people meeting together and in torturing homosexuals.37 Some persecuted Palestinian homosexuals have sought refuge in Israel. These squads, who sometimes knee-cap their victims,38 haunt internet cafes and music stores where Gazans requiring “re-education” hang out. 39</p>
<p><b>Hamas Rule in Gaza</b></p>
<p>A bit like Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s, Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip “legally” and only after winning an “election.” On January 29, 2006, the organization defeated its rivals in a vote to take over the “Palestinian Authority, which had been set up by Israel in the euphoria of the early “peace process” under Yitzhak Rabin and with the expectation that it would be controlled by the PLO. After vote tallies, Hamas gained 74 out of 132 seats. It was not exactly a free election; for example, no party willing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state was running, and no freedom of speech or of the press was in effect. Nevertheless, the strong showing of the Hamas effectively removed the PLO, the heirs of Yassir Arafat, from control of the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Whether the PLO and Hamas actually represent conflicting ideologies has long been a matter of dispute. They are both terrorist organizations devoted to Israel’s annihilation. Abu Mazen, the “President” of the Palestinian Authority, wrote his “doctoral thesis” in Russia supporting Holocaust denial. The PLO has conducted suicide bombings and rocket firings, especially via its military “Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.”40 Hamas has done the same through its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military.41 Theirideologicaldifferencesmatteraboutasmuch as the differences between warring mafia families and have to do with power and money far more than philosophy.</p>
<p>After the 2006 election the initial expectation on the part of many observers was that Hamas would be content to allow Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen to remain in power or at least to serve as a significant figurehead. But after biding their time a bit, Hamas militias launched a putsch to seize all centers of power in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.42 The Fatah of the PLO put up a weak resistance and quickly fell apart. Many of its members requested that Israel “rescue them” and move them to safety in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip became popularly known as “Hamastan.”43 The PLO retreated to its control of Palestinian institutions in the West Bank from its offices in Ramallah. There Abu Mazen heads an “alternative” Palestinian Authority, without the participation of Hamas, although the organization’s loyalists control some of universities in the West Bank. It is not inconceivable that Hamas could displace the PLO in the West Bank just as it did in Gaza.</p>
<p>One of the first things Hamas did after taking over Gaza was to launch a campaign of unbridled kleptocracy, stealing funds and commodities shipped to the Gaza Strip as humanitarian aid (including that sent by other Arab countries) sent via the UN institutions operating there. A Qatari newspaper claims the theft amounts to billions of dollars.44 This is all a bit ironic, given that Hamas favors the traditional Muslim punishment for theft of chopping off of hands.45</p>
<p>Aid is the main form of income and consumption in the Gaza Strip, where the terrorists have never had much interest in building factories or creating real jobs, other than employment opportunities in terrorism. (Among the items stolen by Hamas was the actual Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Yassir Arafat). Shakedowns by Hamas gunmen have included an attempt to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie,46 the undergraduate American cheerleader of terrorism turned martyr for the left, who was crushed in Gaza in 2003 when she refused to get out of the way of an Israeli bulldozer demolishing terrorist hideouts. When the terrorists realized whom they had grabbed off the Gaza street, they released them, as the anti-Israel Corries represented more valuable propaganda assets for terrorism while free.</p>
<p>Imposing totalitarian power over the residents of Gaza by controlling the supply of food and other basic needs is part of Hamas’ strategy. Intentional economic ruination is, in fact, <i>de facto </i>Hamas domestic policy—the creation of a situation in which every Gazan will be dependent upon Hamas handouts and Hamas control of international aid. The response of most of the world to this has been to escalate calls for providing <b><i>even more </i></b>aid to Gaza, channeled through Hamas.</p>
<p>When Israel balked at providing supplies that would be commandeered by Hamas and used for its aims, especially while Hamas was firing thousands of rockets at Israeli children, the entire world wagged its fingers at the Israeli “oppressors denying food” meant for the poor children of the Gaza Strip. Israel was still denounced as an “occupier” of Gaza, even though it had removed all of its soldiers and civilians, because it was closely monitoring imports of supplies—and, often of arms—by Hamas. Meanwhile, Hamas also took control of the myriad smuggling tunnels that come into Gaza from Egypt, extorting “tolls” from other Gazans trying to use them to bring in supplies.</p>
<p>The result of all this has been the emergence of two <i>de facto </i>separate Palestinian mini-states in the making—Hamistan, a Hamas-controlled Islamofascist state in the Gaza Strip; and a PLO-controlled entity in the West Bank some call Fatahstan.47 At this point the starting position of the Palestinians and their apologists in any negotiations is their demand for in effect <b><i>four different </i></b>Palestinian Arab states&#8211;the two mini-states in the making, as noted; plus Jordan, whose citizens are by and large Palestinians; plus the demand that Israel itself be converted into yet another Palestinian Arab state by allowing unlimited Arab migration to it as fulfillment of the supposed Arab “right of return.”</p>
<p>As soon as Hamas had seized power in the Gaza Strip, the world heard shrill declarations that this was an organization with which Israel and the West can “do business”—pragmatic people interested in jobs and budgets. It was claimed that, despite the group’s lurid rhetoric and slogans and its menacing charter, once in office Hamas would devote all of its energies to praying, ecology, and fixing potholes. This assumption was delusional, as events soon demonstrated, but the love affair between the western left and Hamas persists.</p>
<p><b>Rehabitating Hamas as a “Social Organization” and “Charity”</b></p>
<p><i>The New York Times </i>and other liberal media are always at pains to remind everyone that Hamas also conducts non- military activities and provides some “social services.”48 When the organization won the Gaza “elections” in 2006, many Western talking heads attributed the victory to its provision of such services to Gaza residents. (On BBC radio the morning of the Hamas victory, I heard a commentator attributing the victory to the fact that Hamas is better at fixing potholes and sewers than the PLO. He was serious.)</p>
<p>Hamas does indeed operate social services, but mainly as a tool in asserting its power and control, and in order to finance its terrorism.49 The American State Department has traditionally drawn no distinction between Hamas terrorism and its social services: “As long as Hamas continues to rely on terrorism to achieve its political ends, we should not draw a distinction between its military and humanitarian arms, since funds provided to one can be used to support the other.” Even the normally anti-Israel Human Rights Watch has concluded that Hamas social functions are part and parcel of its terrorist activity: “In the case of Hamas, there is abundant evidence that the military wing is accountable to a political steering committee that includes Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, the group’s acknowledged ‘spiritual leader,’ as well as spokesperson such as Ismail Abu Shanab, ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Rantissi, and Mahmud Zahar. Yassin himself, as well as Salah Shehadah, the late founder and commander of the ‘<i>Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades</i>, have confirmed in public remarks that the military wing implements the policies that are set by the political wing.”50 The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a report with the same findings.51</p>
<p><b>Hamas and al-Qaeda</b></p>
<p>Hamas and al-Qaeda are basically two sides of the same jihad.52 They have squabbled rhetorically on occasion, such as over Hamas’ meeting Putin, which bin Laden regarded as “betraying” the Chechins, but that may have been all for show. Hamas “schools” and other institutions routinely distribute the harangues of bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda materials. Hamas rallies feature posters of bin Laden and of Chechen terror leaders.</p>
<p>Hamas terrorists returning from al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan have been apprehended by Israel. Al-Qaeda emissaries have infiltrated Gaza to coordinate action with Hamas. <i>The San Francisco Chronicle </i>reported, “According to a 2004 FBI affidavit, al-Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States.” In 2006, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, himself claimed that al-Qaeda was operating in the Gaza Strip and also accused Hamas of providing aid to al-Qaeda.53. A group calling itself the “Al-Qaeda Organization Jihad in Palestine” has operated in Gaza since October 2005 with Hamas blessings.</p>
<p>Hamas has long been unabashedly anti-American.54 The FBI has been warning about possible imminent Hamas attacks on America since at least 2005. Saddam Hussein was one of the main funders of Hamas, making grants to the families of Hamas suicide bombers.55 Hamas strongly denounced the arrest and execution of Saddam by the US, calling it a “political assassination.” A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhum, said, “Saddam Hussein was a prisoner of war. [The] hanging &#8230; is a political assassination that violates all international laws that are supposed to protect prisoners of war.”56 Several Hamas operatives have been arrested in the U.S.</p>
<p>Hamas is also one of the most openly anti-Semitic organizations on the planet. It repeats every medieval anti- Jewish libel, down to and including the use of the blood of gentile children to make Passover bread. It recently claimed that a Jewish world cabal had engineered the current collapse of financial markets.57 Hamas’ role in spreading anti-Semitism goes well beyond the Middle East. It has distributed anti-Semitic materials in Russia, including, oddly enough, the old czarist forgery, <i>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.</i>58</p>
<p><b>Hamas, Iran, and Holocaust Denial</b></p>
<p>Hamas owes much of its growth to the support it receives from Iran. Israel’s ex-Prime Minister Olmert recently said, “Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons.”59</p>
<p>The moment Hamas won the Gaza “elections” in 2006, Iran rushed in to compensate for the dismay of the rest of the world. Hamas and Iran had already grown very close in the aftermath of the American-led allied invasion of Iraq in 2003.60 That closeness may seem odd, since Iran today leads the world’s Shi’ite Muslims, with their centuries of grievances against Sunni Muslims, while Hamas is clearly a Sunni entity. But the alliance makes sense when the third leg of this triangle of terror, the Shi’ite Hezbollah in Lebanon, which collaborates openly with Hamas, is factored into the equation.61</p>
<p>The Ahmedinijad regime’s partnership with Hamas has also been reflected in its adopting the Holocaust denial so fashionable in Iran. On Hamas television, numerous “experts,” ranging from Iranian leaders to German Neo- Nazis, insist that the very existence of the Holocaust has “yet to be proven historically.” In the official Hamas weekly <i>Al- Risala</i>, Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, a senior Hamas leader, wrote on August 21, 2003:</p>
<p>“The Zionists &#8230; have succeeded in misleading the West and making it believe in the false Holocaust &#8230; The Zionists were behind the Nazis’ murder of many Jews, and agreed to it, with the aim of intimidating them [the Jews] and forcing them to immigrate to Palestine. Every time they failed to persuade a group of Jews to immigrate [to Palestine], they unhesitatingly sentenced [them] to death. Afterwards, they would organize great propaganda campaigns, to cash in on their blood. The Nazis received tremendous financial aid from the Zionist banks and monopolies, and this contributed to their rise to power &#8230; The crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against humanity, with all their atrocities, are no more than a tiny particle compared to the Zionists’ terror against the Palestinian people.” (Translation courtesy of MEMRI.)</p>
<p>When the Hamas leaders are not busy denying there ever was a Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, they are insisting that the Jews planned the Holocaust themselves.62 A Hamas film made public by the Palestinian Media Watch organization claims that Jewish leaders themselves orchestrated the European Holocaust of Jews, “so the Jews would seem persecuted and try to benefit from international sympathy.” Amin Dabur, head of the “Center for Strategic Research,” is cited in the film explaining that “the Israeli [sic] Holocaust, the whole thing was a joke and part of the perfect show that Ben Gurion put on&#8230;. They were sent [by the Jews to die] so there would be a Holocaust, so Israel could ‘play’ it for world sympathy.”</p>
<p><b>CAIR and Hamas</b></p>
<p>While Hamas cannot operate legally and openly in the United States, it has front groups that will do its work for it, chief among them being the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.</p>
<p>CAIR is an anti-Semitic, anti-American lobby group with intimate ties to Hamas, and is sometimes considered to be an outright subsidiary of Hamas. Americans Against Hate, in fact<i>, </i>has called upon the US government to regard CAIR as an official front for Hamas.63</p>
<p>CAIR itself was established in June, 1994 by three leaders of the now-defunct American propaganda wing of Hamas, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP).64 That group was part of the American Palestine Committee, headed by the global leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In March, 1994 CAIR’s co-founder and current Executive Director, Nihad Awad, stated in broken English, “After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement&#8230;”65</p>
<p>CAIR disseminates Hamas propaganda, including its calls for genocide against Jews. CAIR members have bragged that they plan to become suicide bombers.66 The FBI recently cut off all contact with CAIR, in part because of its intimate ties with Hamas. CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the plot by Islamists in the US, led by Sami al-Arian (a founder of CAIR), to raise funds for Hamas.67 The CAIR Research Director, Mohammad Nimer has ties with terrorists.68 H<b>e </b>also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S. According to his bio at American University, “Just as CAIR uses the facade of being a civil rights group to conduct terror activities, Nimer used the guise of “conflict resolution” expert to facilitate his movements within the al-Qaeda network.”69</p>
<p><b>The Futility of “Talks” with the Hamas</b></p>
<p>The Western fetish about “talking,” which has been analyzed at length by Joshua Muravchik,70 is based on the belief that all international conflicts and wars resemble marital spats. Thus the trick to settling them is to smooth ruffled egos and get the conflicted parties to sit down face to face, socialize over tea, emote, seek catharsis, and otherwise come to empathize with the “Other.” It is postmodernist gibberish and Habermasian “communicative action” gone berserk. It is based on the naïve belief that everyone in the world is reasonable, and so all conflict must be the result simply of misunderstanding. Proponents insist that there are no <b><i>real </i></b>conflicts of interests, just misinterpretations and hurt feelings. Grievances are mere psychological baggage, always ready to be jettisoned.</p>
<p>This fetish for talking cannot be made to conform to the basic character of Hamas. The idea that gestures of good will and frank discussions can wean this organization from its genocidal agenda is so absurd that it is hard to find words to mock it properly.</p>
<p>There is growing recognition by knowledgeable observers (those who do not secretly seek Israel’s destruction) that there is simply no way that Israel can reach any sort of peace accord or compromise solution with Hamas.71 In a recent column in <i>The New York Times </i>(January 13, 2009), Jeffrey Goldberg wrote;</p>
<p>“As the Gaza war moves to a cease-fire, a crucial question will inevitably arise, as it has before: Should Israel (and by extension, the United States) try to engage Hamas in a substantive and sustained manner? It is a fair question, one worth debating, but it is unmoored from certain political and theological realities&#8230;. Periodically, advocates of negotiation suggest that the hostility toward Jews expressed by Hamas is somehow mutable. But in years of listening, I haven’t heard much to suggest that its anti-Semitism is insincere. Like Hezbollah, Hamas believes that God is opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Both groups are rhetorically pitiless, though, again, Hamas sometimes appears to follow the lead of Hezbollah.”</p>
<p>The bottom line is that there is no possibility of reaching any “deals” or even real ceasefires with Hamas, which has violated every single ceasefire agreement it ever signed within minutes. It was the fact that Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel in the first place, while a ceasefire agreement was supposed to be in effect, that led to the recent Gaza war.</p>
<p>No deal is possible because there is nothing Hamas seeks other than war. Therefore there can be no possibility for any tradeoffs or compromises that might be proposed to Hamas as compensation for its giving up or forestalling its genocidal ambitions. Since war is its <i>raison d’etre</i>, there is absolutely nothing constructive that can be gained by offering Hamas dialogue and negotiations. The only real effect of such “talks” would be to strengthen Hamas, strengthening its legitimacy among credulous European and American liberals, and so give it added leeway to continue its quest for a second Holocaust of Jews.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>Endnotes</b></p>
<p>1 See “Hamas Wants Off Terror List,” http://www.jihadwatch.org/ archives/010261.php</p>
<p>2 See “Appeal for the removal of Hamas from the EU terror list!.” http://www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task= view&amp;id=6060&amp;Itemid=229</p>
<p>3 “EU Urged: Take Hamas Off Blacklist,” http://news.sky.com/skynews/ Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200806413500083?f=rss</p>
<p>4 “EU Urged: Take Hamas Off Blacklist,” <i>The New York Times</i>, May 20, 2008.</p>
<p>5 “Hamas pleased with European ‘U-turn,’ <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Aug 15, 2007</p>
<p>6 “At Tufts, Blair says Hamas must be drawn into talks,” <i>Boston Globe</i>, Feb. 3, 2009.</p>
<p>7 “Hamas’ March to Victory ,” by Caroline B. Glick, Jan. 2, 2009, http://townhall.com/columnists/CarolineBGlick/2009/01/02/hamas_ march_to_victory?page=2</p>
<p>8 ibid.</p>
<p>9 “American Linguist Noam Chomsky: Hamas Policies Are More Conducive to a Peaceful Settlement than Those of the U.S. or Israel,” http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/011614.php</p>
<p>10 xi. “Joel Beinin: Apologist for Terrorists,” by David Horowitz, May 19, 2006, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read. aspx?GUID=681F93A4-4EFA-4327-8153-A9961EAB2ACE</p>
<p>11 http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/13/1002220/clinton-no- negotiations-with-hamas</p>
<p>12 CNN, Feb 20, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/ meast/02/20/kerry.letter/index.html</p>
<p>13 “Bush, Obama: No to Carter-Hamas chat,” April 11, 2008, http:// www.cjnews.com/index.php?”option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=14 461&amp;Itemid=86</p>
<p>14 Cited in “Hamas&#8211;The Islamic Resistance Movement In The Territories,” by Boaz Ganor, <a href="http://www.jcpa.org/jl/saa27.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">http://www.jcpa.org/jl/saa27.htm</span></a><br />
15 Cited at http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3368<br />
16 <i>The Guardian</i>, January 6, 2009<br />
17 http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Haj_Amin_El_Husseini.htm</p>
<p>18 “Hamas’s Foreign Benefactors,” by Kenneth Katzman, Middle East Quarterly, June 1995; Israeli Ministry of foreign Affairs, The Financial Sources of the Hamas Terror Organization, July 2003, http://www.mfa. gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/7/The+Financial+Sources+ of+the+Hamas+Terror+Organiza;</p>
<p>19 “Report: Hamas stealing aid supplies to sell to residents,” http:// www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3651783,00.html ; “UN, Hamas meet to discuss stolen Gaza aid,” Haaretz, 08/02/2009; see also ;http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32664_Hamas_Steals_Aid_UN_ Actually_Notices</p>
<p>20 Council on Foreign Relations, “Hamas,” January 7, 2009; “ ; Encyclopedia of the Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood,” http://www. mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/muslim_brotherhood.htm</p>
<p>21 Al Ahram, “Politics in God’s Name,” Nov. 16-22, 1995</p>
<p>22 “Were the 9-11 Hijackers Really Arabs? Maybe Not,” http://www. ummah.com/worldaffairs/viewcafeature1.php?cafid=29&amp;caTopicID=6</p>
<p>23 “Hamas&#8211;The Islamic Resistance Movement In The Territories,” by Boaz Ganor, Survey of Arab Affairs, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1992</p>
<p>24 “Hamas terrorist attacks,” and “Terrorist bombing at Hebrew University cafeteria,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs</p>
<p>25 MidEast Web Historical Documents, “Hamas Charter: The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas),” August 18 1988, http:// www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm</p>
<p>26 ibid</p>
<p>27 “The Middle East’s Apartheid Regime,” by Steven Plaut February 19, 2009 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read. aspx?GUID=864E1EC2-1EC3-4343-A1C3-87D04DE7E4E7</p>
<p>28 “Hamas Murder Campaign In Gaza Exposed: Human Rights Group,” Huffington Post, February 13, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2009/02/13/hamas-murder-campaign-exp_n_166868.html</p>
<p>29 “Amnesty charges Hamas with torture and murder,” http://www. thejc.com/articles/amnesty-charges-hamas-torture-and-murder</p>
<p>30 http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-209234</p>
<p>31 Beliefnet report: http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/12/ hamas-legalizes-crucifixion_comments.html</p>
<p>32 http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2009/01/18/alan-morrison-gang-rape- in-gaza-an-arousing-reverie/</p>
<p>33 “Hamas accused of intimidating Christians,” Nov. 6, 2007, http:// www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58531 ; “Sojourners for Hamas,” July 03, 2007 , http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ Read.aspx?GUID=35537182-EBCE-4CF7-A04D-3795F4857598 ; “Hamas’ Christian convert: I’ve left a society that sanctifies terror,” july</p>
<p>31, 2008, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1007097.html</p>
<p>34 ‘Christians must accept Islamic rule,’ http://www.ynet.co.il/english/ articles/0,7340,L-3414753,00.html</p>
<p>35 ‘Hamas accused of intimidating Christians,’ http://www.wnd.com/ news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58531<br />
36 ibid and ‘Hamas turns on Gaza Christians,’ http://www.israeltoday. co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&amp;nid=13149</p>
<p>37 http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.israel/2006- 06/msg00658.html</p>
<p>38 http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/ Security/?id=3.0.3001523783</p>
<p>39 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=833956</p>
<p>40 “Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,” by Holly Fletcher, April 2, 2008, Council on Foreign Relations, backgrounder, http://www.cfr.org/ publication/9127</p>
<p>41 “Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam,” Encyclopedia of the Middle East, http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/sheikh_izz_ad- din_al-qassam.htm</p>
<p>42 <i>The Guardian</i>, June 15, 2007.<br />
43 “The Specter of ‘Hamastan’: More Must Be Done to Counter Islamist Gains in Gaza,” by Dennis Ross. Washington Post, June 4, 2007</p>
<p>44 http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentaryother.a sp?file=Februarycommentary322006.xml; A sample of other reports: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/160296 ; http:// www.taiwansnews.net/story/462616 ; http://www.jihadwatch.org/ archives/016962.php ; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/952322. html; http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1137605920728&amp;pag ename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull</p>
<p>45 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,385502,00.html<br />
46 ‘Rachel Corrie’s parents endure brush with Gaza kidnappers,’</p>
<p><i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Jan 5, 2006.<br />
47 “Hamastan vs Fatahstan,” By Christoph Schult, <i>Salon</i>, June 19,</p>
<p>2007,</p>
<p>48 “Hamas,” <i>The New York Times</i>, March 9, 2009 ; see also the review of Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, by Matthew Levitt, in <i>New York Sun</i>, May 23, 2006</p>
<p>49 ibid, and see also “ Hamas’s use of charitable societies to fund and support terror,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 Sep 2003</p>
<p>50 “Erased In A Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians,” Human Rights Watch, October, 2002</p>
<p>51 “Unmasking Hamas’ Hydra of Terror,” http://www.wiesenthal.com/ atf/cf/%7bDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7d/ hydraofterror.pdf</p>
<p>52 “Ties between al Qaeda and Hamas in Mideast are long and frequent,” <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, March 5, 2006</p>
<p>53 “Abbas Accuses Hamas of Aid to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, July 11, 2007; “Abbas Links Hamas and Al Qaeda,” New York Times, Jul 10, 2007; “The Strip Club: Al Qaeda and Hamas in Gaza,” by James S. Robbins, National Review Online, March 6, 2006</p>
<p>54 Daniel Pipes, “Hamas vs. America,” <i>New York Sun</i>, May 3, 2005</p>
<p>55 “PalestiniansGetSaddamCharityChecks,”CBSNews,March13,2003</p>
<p>56 “Reactions to Saddam Hussein’s execution,” Middle East Online, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=18985</p>
<p>57 “Hamas: ‘Jewish Lobby’ in U.S. to blame for global financial crisis,” Haaretz, Oct 7, 2008</p>
<p>58 “Hamas distributes Iranian anti-Semitic cartoons to Russia,” http:// www.iranholocaustdenial.com/news/hamas-distributes-iranian- anti-semitic-cartoons-to-russia-3.htm, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion—fuel for bigots,” http://www.iranholocaustdenial.com/education/ protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-fuel-for-bigots-2.htm; “Protocols of the Elders of Zion &#8211; Favorite Classic,” http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/ archives/00000236.html</p>
<p>59 “The Iran-Hamas Alliance: Threat and Folly,” by Hillel Frisch, BESA Center for Strategic Studies, May 1, 2007; Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2009; “Iran pledges to finance Hamas-led Palestinian government,” Haaretz, February 22, 2006</p>
<p>60 ‘Iran Is Building “Hamastan” in Gaza,’ by Shalom Harari , Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 11, 2007</p>
<p>61 “Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran,” by Martin Kramer, http://www. geocities.com/martinkramerorg/HezbollahHamas.pdf ; “Lebanon: The Israel-Hamas-Hezbolah Conflict,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, August 14, 2006; “Palestinians: Hamas, Hezbollah cooperated on Jerusalem terror attack,” Haaretz, March 9, 2008;</p>
<p>62 “ Hamas: Jews planned the Holocaust,” <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, Apr. 30, 2008; “Hamas: Jews planned the Holocaust,” UPI.com, May 1, 2008</p>
<p>63 “CAIR called ‘turnstile’ for terrorist suspects,’ http://www. worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59026 ; “CAIR: Youngest Member of Hamas Family Tree,” http://counterterrorismblog. org/2007/08/cair_youngest_member_of_hamas.php ; http://www. americansagainsthate.org/releases/PR-HamasCAIR.htm</p>
<p>64 “CAIRing for Hamas,” by Joe Kaufman, http://www.frontpagemag. com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7C8D1A60-539A-42A9-AD22- C64E5473CC1</p>
<p>65 “CAIR and Hamas, http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/ misc/113.pdf ;”CAIR director attended Hamas meeting,” http:// www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57003 ; “American-Born Muslims And The Lessons Of The Lackawanna, NY Terrorist Cell,” by Alan Caruba, toogoodreports.com ^ , September 16, 2002 ,</p>
<p>66 “Death of a Hamas Supporter,” by Joe Kaufman http://www. frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=18F94773-705D- 40C5-ACD6-A05D5047B40F ; IPT News, http://www.investigative project.org/985/fbi-cuts-off-cair-over-hamas-questions ; “Hamas and Hizzoner,” by John Perazzo, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ Read.aspx?GUID=5E5F4FCA-2B20-4393-917C-506AC4C756F7</p>
<p>67 “Feds name CAIR in plot to fund Hamas,” http://www.worldnetdaily. com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56009</p>
<p>68 http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2003/06/cairs-legal-tribulations.html 69 http://www.american.edu/manimer/bio/bio.html</p>
<p>70 “Obama’s ‘Talking’ Cure,” September, 2008, http://www. commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/obama-s&#8211;talking&#8211;cure- 12504</p>
<p>71 For example, http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm971. cfm</p>
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		<title>Obama’s New Plan for Hamas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/obamas-new-plan-for-hamas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-new-plan-for-hamas</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:43:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cairo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cease-fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fatah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238170</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president is working to strengthen Israel's enemies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-fatah.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238171" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-fatah-350x350.jpg" alt="Palestinians Continue Peace Talks In Mecca" width="267" height="267" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/COLUMN-ONE-Obamas-new-plan-for-Hamas-370422">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">President Barack Obama has a plan.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He wants to use the cease-fire talks in Cairo to strengthen Fatah.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In remarks Wednesday, Obama said, “I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for some of the work that has been done in cooperation with Israel and the international community by the Palestinian Authority. And they’ve shown themselves to be responsible. They have recognized Israel. They are prepared to move forward to arrive at a two-state solution. I think [PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a.] Abu Mazen is sincere in his desire for peace.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama’s plans for the cease-fire were spelled out in detail the day before in a column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. There Ignatius claimed that Secretary of State John Kerry has abandoned his previous position on the cease-fire. That position was harshly criticized by Israeli leaders and US media heavyweights, including Ignatius himself, for its clear bias in favor of Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In contrast to Kerry’s previous adoption of all of Hamas’s demands as official US positions, Ignatius wrote that “over the past week, [Kerry] has been crafting a cease-fire plan that seeks to stabilize Gaza under the leadership of Abbas and the moderate Palestinian Authority&#8230;. [The PA] (with the support of the international community) would have overall responsibility for the rehabilitation of Gaza.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Ignatius continued, “The thrust of Kerry’s new plan is to leverage Hamas’s unity pact with Fatah and its pledge to transfer authority in Gaza to the [PA]. As a first step, the Palestinian Authority and its US-trained security service would assume responsibility for policing the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt, as well as the passages into Israel.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Fatah, Ignatius said, “would begin paying the salaries of Palestinian civil servants in Gaza, assuming that the details could be worked out. The agreement might also move toward disarmament of all terrorist groups in Gaza.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By empowering Fatah in this way, Ignatius explained, Kerry – and Obama – are “now headed in the right direction – away from strengthening Hamas and toward empowering the moderates on whom hopes for a more stable and secure Gaza depend.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Ignatius then turned to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and challenged him to join with Kerry and agree “to truly open Gaza to the free flow of people and goods in return for disarming the terrorist groups.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">While the administration’s new plan sounds nice in theory, it has one basic problem.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas and Fatah are partners. Hamas’s demands are Fatah’s demands. Hamas’s goals are Fatah’s goals. Giving Fatah control of the borders means giving Hamas control of the borders.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Abbas said himself in a speech broadcast on the PA’s official station in December 2009, as he was trying to form the sort of Fatah-Hamas unity government that he established in April, “There is no disagreement between us [Fatah and Hamas]: About belief? None! About policy? None! About resistance? None!” Earlier this week The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh explained that almost from the outset of the war, Hamas and Fatah have been working in perfect harmony.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Fatah officials have served as Hamas’s spokesmen to the Western media.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As Hamas conducted its terrorist war against Israel, Abbas led the diplomatic war against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Moreover, Abu Toameh reported that during the course of the hostilities, Fatah paid the salaries of Hamas members.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to Hamas’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization, continued funding of the PA is illegal under US counterterror statutes. Fearing that Congress would move to enforce the law and end US aid to the PA, before the war Fatah refused to pay Hamas’s membership.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For whatever reason, Abbas and his comrades are no longer concerned that financing their terrorist partners from their donor-financed budget will endanger the US’s annual gift of $440 million.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From the outset of Hamas’s campaign against Israel, Fatah militias in Gaza participated in the mortar and rocket attacks against Israel. And far from trying to hide this fact, Fatah’s leadership reveled in it. They posted news of Fatah’s mortar attacks on Israel on their official social media sites.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Fatah published a poster on its official Fatah Facebook page on July 9 under the title “Brothers in Arms.” The poster depicted terrorists from Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and read, “One God, on homeland, one enemy, one goal.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for the cease-fire talks, last month Abbas traveled to Qatar where he met with Hamas terror master Khaled Mashaal. The result of the meeting was a coordinated Palestinian position regarding cease-fire demands. Those demands, which require Israel and Egypt to open the borders, are silent on the issue of demilitarizing Gaza. This is the unified position of the Palestinian delegation to the ceasefire talks in Cairo which Obama noted hopefully, is being led by Fatah.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, Obama’s new position on the cease-fire terms is the same position he has held from the outset. He supports Hamas’s extortionist demands from Israel and Egypt to open Gaza’s borders in order to enable the terror group to resupply and rebuild its terror infrastructure.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The only thing that is new about his current stand is that now he supports bringing Hamas’s supposedly moderate partners in Fatah in as window dressing.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For those who have been willing to pay attention to Abbas’s actions and those of his Fatah comrades, nothing in their behavior during the war has been remotely surprising.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Since the PA was established in 1994, Fatah and Hamas have had a cooperative relationship. The only times that Fatah has fought Hamas have been when Fatah felt directly threatened by Hamas. And the moment that perceived threat abated, Fatah ended its operations and restored its cooperation with Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Abu Toameh reported that in the latest war, Abbas instructed his security commanders to suspend their operations against Hamas in Judea and Samaria. After all, they are his partners, not his rivals.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Beyond that, Fatah supports weapons smuggling across the Egyptian border. Having Fatah in charge of the border crossings would not prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad from replenishing their arsenals and rebuilding their tunnels of death. It will enable them to do so.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And again, we know this from the PA/Fatah’s track record.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From the start of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000 until Hamas ejected Fatah from Gaza in June 2007, Fatah was in control of the borders with Israel and Egypt. During this period, it engineered the weapons smuggling operations into Gaza. The Iranian weapons ship Karine-A that Israeli naval commandos intercepted in the Red Sea en route to Gaza in January 2003 was commanded by the deputy head of the PA’s naval force, a member of Fatah. The weapons deal was negotiated with Yasser Arafat’s paymaster Fuad Shubaki.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Tunnel building began during Fatah’s period of control over Gaza. When then Cpl. Gilad Schalit was abducted from Israel to Gaza in June 2006 by terrorists who entered his base from an underground tunnel that traversed the border, Fatah, led by Abbas, still controlled Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for those Fatah military forces trained by the US military, they are no better than the Iraqi military forces the Americans trained.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">When Hamas threw Fatah out of Gaza in 2007, Fatah’s US-trained troops and officers were the first to flee.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The counterterror training US military trainers lavished on them had no impact on their willingness to stand their ground against Hamas. They didn’t even try to fight.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And yet, Obama’s plan is to bring these same Fatah forces back to Gaza. He and Kerry (and Ignatius), want Israel to believe that these Fatah forces will demilitarize Hamas in exchange for open borders, which they will secure and prevent Hamas from using as a means to rebuild its arsenals and replenish its financing.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not that they weren’t clear before, but two things became blindingly obvious during the war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, Hamas is very bad. It really and truly is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. It is willing to engage in Palestinian child sacrifice in order to kill Jews. It used all the aid it received, all the money, all the concrete to build a terror infrastructure and missile arsenal dedicated to killing Jews.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Nothing else matters to Hamas leaders, not Gaza, not Palestine, not their mothers and children.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There is no way for Israel to reach a long term non-aggression pact with Hamas. It can only be defeated through direct military operations and attrition.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The other thing we learned was that Israel simply cannot, under any circumstances, consider withdrawing from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Netanyahu made this point explicitly in his press conference at the outset of the war. He explained, “If we were to pull out of Judea and Samaria like they tell us to there’d be a possibility of thousands of tunnels” being dug to attack Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu noted that the Palestinians dug 1,200 tunnels under Gaza’s 14-kilometer-long border with Egypt.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Judea and Samaria, he continued, are 20 times the size of Gaza, and Israel is not prepared “to create another 20 Gazas.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As soon as the cease-fire began, the Israeli Left reverted to type. The media began pillorying Netanyahu for not viewing the war with Hamas as an opportunity for a diplomatic breakthrough with Abbas and Fatah.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu, they accuse, tricked them. He wasn’t weakening Hamas to strengthen Abbas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He was simply weakening Hamas so that it couldn’t harm Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu’s erred during the fighting when he made the demilitarization of Gaza a declared war aim. By doing so he opened the door for the Left, the White House and the EU to begin spewing their absurd lies about Fatah as a credible, moderate force that can be depended on – with their taxpayer dollars and euros – to demilitarize Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In his remarks, Obama indicated that the world – that is the US and Europe – must be involved in any cease-fire deal related to Gaza. And for the privilege of having them on board, Israel needs to accept Hamas-Fatah’s demand for open borders.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But the truth is that the US and the EU are completely unnecessary. Israel and Egypt can secure the borders. And if the Americans and Europeans are concerned for the welfare of the people of Gaza, they can transfer their aid to Israel, which can distribute it to those who need assistance rather than handing it over to Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The reason Netanyahu isn’t trying to use the war in Gaza to promote a wider peace with Fatah is because Fatah is not interested in peace with Israel. As it showed again during the war, Fatah is Hamas’s partner, not Israel’s. And any deal with Fatah is a deal that strengthens Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Ignatius is wrong. The administration still backs Hamas’s demands against Israel. It just updated the talking points to align with Ignatius’s entirely incorrect preconceived notions about the nature of Fatah.</span></p>
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		<title>Third Round of Nuclear Talks: Ignoring the Threats</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/third-round-of-nuclear-talks-ignoring-the-threats/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=third-round-of-nuclear-talks-ignoring-the-threats</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Jan 2014 05:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The international community abandons all responsibility for holding Iran accountable. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Mideast-Iran-Leader-v_Horo-e1372334994569-635x357.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214370" alt="Mideast-Iran-Leader-v_Horo-e1372334994569-635x357" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Mideast-Iran-Leader-v_Horo-e1372334994569-635x357-450x252.jpg" width="315" height="176" /></a>This week, another agreement was reached between the Ayatollahs, the ruling leaders in Islamic Republic of Iran, and the P5+1 (the US, Russia, France, China, Britain and Germany). Iran and the P5+1 launched the third round of nuclear negotiations with expert-level talks in Geneva in an attempt to discuss the mechanisms and platforms for implementing Tehran’s Joint Plan of Action, the interim and temporary nuclear deal reached in November.</p>
<p>This round of nuclear talks were conducted in one day, and did not address Iran’s clandestine nuclear activities, its underground nuclear site, or the level, scope and sophistication of Tehran’s R&amp;D of advanced centrifuges. These talks also did not discuss Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and its heavy water reactors. A positive image was portrayed to the world though, by the Iranian media and other liberal mainstream outlets.</p>
<p>Several news agencies in Iran, including the Fars news agency, reported this week that Iranian officials claimed to have made progress, reaching an understanding with the six world powers on the details and nuances of how to implement the provisional nuclear deal.</p>
<p>In addition, Iran&#8217;s semi-official ISNA news agency, recently released a report quoting Hamid Baidinejad, a nuclear negotiator, as saying that Iran and the P5+1 had &#8220;achieved mutual understanding on implementation [of] the nuclear deal.&#8221;  According to the report, Baidinejad also said that the deal will likely be implemented in late January. Additionally, Iran&#8217;s lead negotiator Abbas Araqchi made announcements reported by the official news agency IRNA as stating, “The two sides have made good progress on different issues.&#8221; These comments came after the third round of nuclear negotiations that took just one day in Geneva.</p>
<p>From the current political perspective of the ruling clerics, Iranian officials, and liberal leaders, it is crucial to be prompt in depicting these negotiations as positive and progressive, as these types of verbal agreements and projections of advancement are key to Iran’s ability to regain its economic standing, and to strengthen the prospect of political survival of the establishment. For liberal leaders, this will give them the excuse to not take serious action.</p>
<p>It should be optimistic news for the Ayatollahs, that Iran has already gained almost 20 percent of its currency back in just the last seven months (since Hassan Rouhani assumed office). While one US dollar equaled approximately 31,000 Rial a few months ago, the currency exchange is now about 24,100 Rial.  Before Rouhani came to office, the exchange rate had even reached to around 40,500 Rial to the US dollar. Several business sectors are also showing improvement, with increasing sales and profits.</p>
<p>Tehran has also been capable of improving its economy by bolstering its trade ties, particularly regarding its oil industry, with nations such as China and India along with other Asian countries, as a result of the projections of progress from nuclear negotiations.</p>
<p>While the Obama administration attempts to depict the Iranian leaders as trustful players, this week hardliners staged rallies around Iran to reinforce their dominance and power, essentially playing good cop/bad cop. This was conducted in cooperation with the moderates and other Iranian political parties to pressure the P5+1.  This also marks the fourth anniversary of what is considered in Iran as the hardliners&#8217; Islamist victory over other groups regarding Ahmadinejad’s reelection.  The loyalists around the country chanted “death to seditionists,” “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Furthermore, according to local media outlets, this week the hardliner Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami gave a speech in the city of Kerman, stating, “The seditionists should know that the playing arena is not open to them.”</p>
<p>Additionally, in the Majlis (Iranian parliament), lawmakers have proposed a bill to enrich uranium up to 60 percent, going beyond the current level agreed upon between Iran and the P5+1.</p>
<p>This level of nuclear enrichment can produce bomb-grade nuclear material. This bill was introduced by approximately 105 lawmakers, with a &#8220;double urgency&#8221; status that calls for the bill to be discussed in parliament within a week of introduction. According to the website of Iran’s Press TV, hardline lawmaker Mehdi Mousavinejad stated that this bill &#8220;If approved, will oblige the government to&#8230; enrich uranium to 60 percent level in order to provide fuel for submarine engines if the sanctions are tightened and Iran&#8217;s nuclear rights are ignored (by major powers).&#8221;</p>
<p>These acts by Iranian leaders are being overlooked by President Barack Obama, other liberal leaders, and mainstream media outlets. These political moves indicate that no matter how rational and genuine Iranian Mullahs and Ayatollahs are depicted, any nation should be cautious in trusting the underlying infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For the last decades, the fundamentals of the nation have been based on the Ayatollah Khomeini, Khamenei, and other Iranian leaders’ ideals of anti-Americanism.</p>
<p><b>What About the Recent Persecution of Minorities in Iran? </b></p>
<p>Rather than the effort that President Obama is putting forward in Iran, projecting Iran’s nuclear program as trustful, and Iranian leaders as rational actors, it would actually be helpful and humane if President Obama would condemn Iran for its recent intensified campaign to persecute minorities and converts.</p>
<p>Today, the US Senate unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), condemning the Iranian regime’s continued persecution of its Baha’i minority. But what about President Obama? Will he take a stand on this issue?</p>
<p>The bipartisan resolution, which condemns the Iranian regime for its state-sponsored persecution of those who practice Baha’i Faith, urges President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to identify and designate those Iranian officials who are directly responsible for such human rights abuses and egregious violations. The resolution also calls on the Iranian regime to release Baha’i political prisoners.</p>
<p>According to the 2013 U.S. Commission on the International Religious Freedom Report, “During the past year, the already poor religious freedom conditions continued to deteriorate, especially for religious minorities, in particular for Baha’is.” In addition, the UN Special Rapporteur on the condition of human rights in Iran reported in February 2013, that there are 110 Baha’is currently imprisoned in Iran. Incarcerated solely for practicing their faith. The Baha’i faith is the largest non-Muslim minority in Iran. On December 18, 2013, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the Iranian regime to end its persecution of members of the Baha’i Faith.</p>
<p>Yet, the question remains: Will President Obama also take a stand in condemning the Iranian regime for such egregious human rights violation?</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>Western Powers, Iran on Brink of Bad Deal</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/western-powers-iran-on-brink-of-bad-deal/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=western-powers-iran-on-brink-of-bad-deal</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 04:24:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211220</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Israel and Saudi Arabia preparing to act?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Iran.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211224" alt="Iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Iran.jpg" width="307" height="191" /></a>Israel—and Sunni Arab states of the Middle East led by Saudi Arabia—watched with trepidation on Wednesday as the P5+1 countries and Iran reconvened in Geneva for another round of nuclear talks.</p>
<p>British foreign secretary William Hague <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/World-powers-Iran-resume-efforts-to-reach-nuclear-deal-in-Geneva-talks-332400">spoke of narrow differences</a> and a historic deal being in reach. “It is the best chance for a long time,” he told an Istanbul news conference, “to make progress on one of the gravest problems in foreign policy.”</p>
<p>Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov—whose country is not exactly a foe of Iran, having helped it build its Bushehr nuclear reactor—said: “We hope the efforts that are being made will be crowned with success at the meeting that opens today in Geneva.”</p>
<p>In a sort of prelude to this lovefest, on Tuesday Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif released a YouTube video in which he said:</p>
<blockquote><p>For us, nuclear energy is about securing the future of our children, about diversifying our economy, about stopping the burning of our oil, and about generating clean power.</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, meet the new, hip, enlightened Iran, second to none in its concern for clean power and diversity.</p>
<p>Zarif did not explain why, if those are Iran’s innocent aims, it has been spending billions of dollars for decades in developing bomb-grade uranium, a reactor for making plutonium bombs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear triggering devices, and so on. But sometimes diversity and clean power come with certain accoutrements.</p>
<p>The depressing picture that emerges, though, is of an ongoing courtship the Western powers—still with the possible exception of France—cannot resist; while the non-Western members of the P5+1—Russia and China—have been abetting Iran for years anyway.</p>
<p>To the Obama administration and the Europeans an interim agreement at this point, followed by a supposed six-month trial period for further diplomacy, looks enticing indeed. It takes the proverbial military option off the table, at last giving that supposedly heavily weighted table some rest. It puts Israel in a position where, for its part, it cannot exercise a military option without becoming a rogue state responsible for wrecking a peace process. And by relaxing sanctions it opens the gates—very cautiously and reversibly, we’re told—to renewed, lucrative trade with the expansionist, terror-supporting Shiite power which, after all, is a source of good business.</p>
<p>By this time, the objections of Israel—and its not-so-tacit Arab allies on this issue—to the deal said to be taking shape are well known. The deal requires Iran to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily while leaving all 19,000 of its enrichment devices—that is, centrifuges—in place. It requires Iran to stop fueling its Arak plutonium reactor but not to stop building it. And it relaxes what we’re told will be only a few billion dollars’ worth of sanctions, but which Israel says will <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/sanctions-easing-would-save-iran-up-to-40b-israeli-minister-says/">quickly snowball</a> to $20-$40 billion worth and more.</p>
<p>This week Israel’s former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, who stepped down only a few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13395">said in an unusually blunt statement</a> that Israel could set back Iran’s nuclear program “for a very long time,” that its air force has been conducting “very long-range flights &#8230;all around the world,” and that:</p>
<blockquote><p>We are not bluffing. We are very serious, preparing ourselves for the possibility that Israel will have to defend itself by itself. From here to Iran, it is 2,000 kilometers [1,243 miles], and you have to be familiar with such destinations. All those who have radar cover of the Middle East know what we are doing.</p></blockquote>
<p>The coming days may tell whether the U.S. and Europe are eager for a deal at just about any price, whether the supposed sticking point of Iran’s <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Khamenei-says-Iran-will-not-step-back-from-its-nuclear-rights-332364">insistence on a “right” to enrich uranium</a> can be finessed, and whether France is indeed in the Sunni Arabs’ and Israel’s camp and will seriously oppose a bad deal. The first two seem likely, the third more dubious, but time—possibly not much more time—will tell.</p>
<p>If things continue in their downward trend, with a bad, easily-violated deal creating passive satisfaction in Washington, Brussels, London, and Berlin, the sanctions crumbing as Western and Chinese firms leap happily into all sorts of loopholes, and Iran retaining all its capabilities, Israel will be left facing a test.</p>
<p>A few days ago Britain’s <i>Sunday Times</i>—known for sensationalistic stories about Israeli security issues—<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Report-Mossad-working-with-Saudis-on-contingency-plans-for-potential-attack-on-Iran-331961">ran a report claiming</a> that the Mossad and Saudi officials are working together on “contingency plans” for a strike on Iran. Far-fetched? Maybe; but desperation can produce strange friendships.</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>Deals of the Century for Iran: Carter vs. Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/the-deals-of-the-centuries-for-iran-carter-vs-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-deals-of-the-centuries-for-iran-carter-vs-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:26:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why Obama's failure on the Islamic Republic will be far more catastrophic than the 1979 disaster.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ox281268002617471537.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210757" alt="ox281268002617471537" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ox281268002617471537-423x350.jpg" width="254" height="210" /></a>The Obama administration has been so anxious and eager to strike a nuclear deal with Iran— regardless of whether that nuclear deal be detrimental, flimsy, or one-sided— and President Barack Obama has been so fearful of taking other actions or alternatives, that the theocratic and Islamist state of Iran has been mocking the US, playing a game with the American administration by tossing it around in international talks and enjoying how it will soon gets its second deal of the century by announcing itself as &#8220;The Islamist Nuclear-Armed State.&#8221;</p>
<p>The mismanaged and misinformed foreign policies of the Jimmy Carter administration significantly contributed to the first Iranian deal in 1979, the deal that would change the 20<sup>th</sup> century for the nation and for the Islamists, Ayatollah, and Mullahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran. When the Shah— an American ally— was deposed, Carter constantly tried to view the ruling Islamist cleric and Ayatollah Khomeini as a rational and constructive force in government. The soft talks and the weak position that the Carter administration took were a blessing for the Mullahs, who were capable of creating their own Shiite, Islamic, Muhammadian-style state, recreating a 1400-year-old Shiite Shari’a law-based political and social order.</p>
<p>The next deal of the century, the 21<sup>st</sup> century reward, is going to be given to Iran by the Obama administration. Although the first deal assisted Iran in becoming an independent sovereign state, along with implementing their Islamic laws, increasing their influence in the world, and funding terrorist groups with oil revenues from illegal sales on the black market, the second deal is much more pivotal, substantial, and vital.</p>
<p>This Iranian deal will provide the required platform that the Mullah and Ayatollah need to make a weapons-grade nuclear breakthrough in roughly the next few months. According to nuclear experts, the longest period it could take to reach capability will be six months. Meaning during the Obama administration, we will see the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, announce that Iran is armed with nuclear weapons. By that point, nothing can be reverted back. Through this, the Islamist state of Iran would be mocking the international community, efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency, p5+1, etc.</p>
<p>The recent breakdown in the talks revealed that it was the Obama administration’s nuclear team that was armed with packages of deals for the Rouhani nuclear team. As the Obama administration “desperately” looked to make any kind of nuclear deal with the Islamist Iranian leaders, the Iranian leaders proceeded to refuse each of the deals, showing superiority and looking down on the US. The Iranians refused every deal that Secretary of State John Kerry provided.</p>
<p>The reason that I put the word “desperately” in quotation marks is to emphasize that Obama administration has been so frightened to take alternative actions, that it is damaging the American image by almost pleading with, and begging, the Iranian leaders to just sign any deal.</p>
<p>Iranian leaders, including the Supreme Leader Khamenei, President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, have masterfully and shrewdly captured the desperate situation that the Obama administration is in, taking advantage of the weak position of the American government and playing games with the US while waiting for next talks, next talks, and next talks.</p>
<p>The intriguing thing is that the desperate status of the Obama administration has made the Iranian Mullahs, Ayatollahs, and Leaders, so much bolder that they believe they are entitled to their explicit terms. It was the Iranian leaders who have been walking out of the talk because they did not approve the presented deals. The Iranian deal has been made clear to be one that would allow for the enrichment of uranium, processing of plutonium, and for the West to remove economic sanctions on the Mullahs. The Iranians want to have their cake and eat it too, to be offered a deal that they fully agree with, without compromise.</p>
<p>Iran, according to experts on nuclear enrichment, only needs less than a year (roughly 6 months) to achieve their ambition. The country currently possesses near 440 pounds of highly enriched uranium at 20 percent. In order to create a nuclear warhead, nearly 550 pounds of the highly enriched uranium is needed. Secondly, Iran has initiated a reactor to process plutonium. There is no incentive— such as for civilians or for fuel— in processing plutonium other than really developing nuclear weapons-grade material. There are two methods to creating nuclear weapons-grade material, either by enriching uranium at a high percentage or by processing plutonium. The crucial issue is that as this reactor operates, it will be hard to even military damage the installation due to the dangerous material that will be released into the environment, and the danger this material poses to human beings. According to experts, processing plutonium requires approximately a year to turn to a nuclear breakaway capacity.</p>
<p>The major issue comes down to why the Obama administration is so frightened of the prospect of not making a deal with Iran. A crucial reason is that the Obama administration does not want to take action through finding alternatives that would call for the United States to take a true stance. The alternative would be to stop the Mullahs from mocking the international community, taking tough measures. However, President Obama prefers a much more docile approach, using submissive policies in order to prevent the Mullahs from getting upset at him.</p>
<p>It is puzzling to attempt to comprehend what it would take for the Obama administration to accept that the Iranian government will never give up its nuclear program. It is truly confounding that even when the Iranian president and his foreign minister have repeatedly announced in the English language that they will not relinquish their uranium enrichment programs, the Obama administration continues to plead with Iran to sign a deal— no matter how detrimental that deal would be to world security. Iranian leaders have already accomplished their goal to buy time for at least an extra year, and are now a hundred percent confident that the Obama administration is too weak and docile to take any real action.</p>
<p>Yes. Carter gave Iran the first deal, and the second (more fundamental) deal has been given by the Obama administration.</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>Will Obama Give Iran the Deal of the Century?</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Nov 2013 04:55:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The world narrowly avoids surrendering to the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p dir="LTR"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/562885.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210214" alt="562885" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/562885-423x350.jpg" width="254" height="210" /></a>Israeli officials were <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13207" target="_blank">described</a> as “furious at the Obama administration” over what seemed to be an emerging nuclear deal between the P5+1 countries (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany) and Iran.</p>
<p dir="LTR">One official was quoted saying that “the Americans capitulated to Iranian maneuvering…. Kerry wants a deal at all costs and the Iranians are leading the Americans by the nose.”</p>
<p dir="LTR">As for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he was described as being “in shock.” That was evident enough in a <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/netanyahu-bad-deal-very-very-bad-deal_766449.html" target="_blank">statement</a> Netanyahu released Friday morning after seeing off Secretary of State Kerry at the airport, in which Netanyahu dispensed with diplomatic bromides and said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="LTR">I urge Secretary Kerry not to rush to sign, to wait, to reconsider, to get a good deal. But this is a bad deal—a very, very bad deal. It’s the deal of a century for Iran; it’s a very dangerous and bad deal for peace and the international community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="LTR">Kerry’s visit to Israel had already been a rough one, in which he first <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/kerrys-slander-of-illegitimate-israeli-settlements/" target="_blank">stigmatized Israeli communities as “illegitimate”</a> and then, on Israeli TV Thursday night, as The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/frustrated-kerrys-peace-critique-a-heavy-slap-in-netanyahus-face/" target="_blank">aptly put it</a>, “appeared to come perilously close to empathizing with potential Palestinian aggression against Israel.” (Reactions by other Israeli commentators were titled <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4451456,00.html" target="_blank">“Kerry, give it a rest”</a> and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6263" target="_blank">“Kerry: Stay home”</a>.)</p>
<p dir="LTR">But the real stunner came on Friday when Jerusalem apparently got word of the deal that seemed to be taking shape in Geneva. It led to the canceling of a joint media appearance between Netanyahu and Kerry, and prompted, instead, a bitter exchange between them before Kerry headed off to the Swiss city.</p>
<p dir="LTR">The possible deal gravely worries Israel—and others with a realistic view of the situation—because it allows Iran to continue uranium enrichment (albeit at a lower level—now meaningless given Iran’s advanced centrifuges), continue the construction of its heavy-water reactor in Arak (aimed at producing plutonium bombs), while not requiring the dismantling of a single centrifuge.</p>
<p dir="LTR">At the same time, in “reward” essentially for nothing, the deal gives Iran sanctions relief far beyond what Israeli officials had been led to expect, reportedly <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Political-sources-The-US-folded-during-Iran-nuclear-talks-331075" target="_blank">including</a> “the unfreezing of $3 billion of fuel funds, an easing of sanctions on the petrochemical and gold sectors, an easing of sanctions on replacement parts for planes and a loosening of restrictions on the Iranian car industry.”</p>
<p dir="LTR">With Chinese, Italian, German, and other companies champing at the bit to resume doing lucrative business with Iran, it’s believed such an opening will lead to the sanctions regime’s total collapse.</p>
<p dir="LTR">So Israel was relieved when it turned out the deal—for the time being—had fallen through on Saturday. But with the talks set to resume in nine days, trepidation remains high.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Israel’s ally in objecting to the putative deal has turned out to be France. That appeared to validate earlier reports that, among the Western powers, France was the most clear-eyed about the ayatollahs’ regime and the closest to Israel in its perceptions. France has long had tight ties with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and appears to have absorbed some of their realism—and fear—about a nuclear Iran.</p>
<p dir="LTR">Meanwhile, on Sunday morning, Netanyahu’s office issued a press release in which he stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="LTR">Over the weekend I spoke with President Obama, with President Putin, with President Hollande, with Chancellor Merkel and with British Prime Minister Cameron. I told them that according to all the information reaching Israel, the impending deal is bad and dangerous.</p>
<p dir="LTR">It is not only dangerous to us; it is dangerous for them, too. It is dangerous for the peace of the world because in one fell swoop it lowers the pressure of the sanctions which took years to build, and conversely, Iran essentially preserves its nuclear uranium enrichment capabilities as well as the ability to advance on the plutonium enrichment path.</p>
<p dir="LTR">…I asked all the leaders what the rush is. And I suggested that they wait…. It is good that this was ultimately the choice that was made but I am not fooling myself—there is a strong desire to strike a deal….</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="LTR">Iran’s allegedly “moderate” president Hassan Rouhani, for his part, did not sound conciliatory on Sunday when he <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/uk-iran-nuclear-rouhani-idUKBRE9A902R20131110" target="_blank">said</a> Iran’s “red lines” included uranium enrichment and that “We will not answer to any threat, sanction, humiliation or discrimination.” But with Iran’s interlocutors—possibly with the exception of France—already apparently ready to fold on the enrichment issue, Rouhani’s words seemed aimed mainly at Israel.</p>
<p dir="LTR">For Israel, after so many avowals of President Obama’s determination to prevent Iran from going nuclear, the latest turn of events is alarming and disillusioning. Many believe that, as long as diplomatic activity between the P5+1 and Iran is going on, Israel is effectively screened out of taking military action. Netanyahu had that in mind when he also <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13189" target="_blank">said</a> on Friday: “Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and the security of its people.”</p>
<p dir="LTR">If the situation looks desperate and Israel takes that course, it will not be without (tacit) allies in the region.</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>Kerry &amp; Netanyahu Spar in Rome</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2013 04:52:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[With Iran’s nuclear clock running out.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BFD8291D-E3C2-4210-BE9A-1B2F7F47908E_mw1024_n_s.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208510" alt="BFD8291D-E3C2-4210-BE9A-1B2F7F47908E_mw1024_n_s" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BFD8291D-E3C2-4210-BE9A-1B2F7F47908E_mw1024_n_s-414x350.jpg" width="290" height="245" /></a>AP <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_24360867/iran-nuke-overture-more-promise-than-an-offer?source=rss">reported</a> this week that Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi “predicted…the nuclear talks could take as long as a year…with the first milestone coming in three to six months and negotiations concluding within the year.”</p>
<p>That “prediction” should come as no surprise. The same report says “significant gaps remain between what the Iranians offered” in last week’s first round of talks and what the P5+1 countries are seeking “to reduce fears Iran wants to build nuclear weapons.”</p>
<p>In other words, Iran’s strategy is to make an offer it knows even its eagerly “peace”-seeking interlocutors are quite capable of refusing—and then take lots of time seemingly whittling down that offer toward something more acceptable. Meanwhile Israel—if this goes according to plan—gets diplomatically closed out of taking military action and incurring universal wrath by wrecking “peace” and “progress.”</p>
<p>Also this week <i>The New Republic</i> <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115313/amos-yadlin-iran-strike-why-israel-needs-act-soon">posted a long interview</a> with Amos Yadlin, Israel’s previous chief of military intelligence and current head of its leading security think tank.</p>
<p>Interviewer Ben Birnbaum notes that in September 2012, when many thought an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent, Yadlin told an Israeli journalist: “They say that time has almost run out, but I say there is still time. The decisive year is not 2012 but 2013. Maybe even early 2014.”</p>
<p>That is, a direct clash with Araghchi’s assessment of another leisurely year for talks.</p>
<p>Does Yadlin still see it the same way? It emerges that he does:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>…I think 2012 was the wrong year to do it, because in 2012, it was a bright red light from Washington. I would like to emphasize, Israel is not asking for a green light. Israel only doesn’t want to do something that is going 180 degrees against American vital interests as long as it is not a response to a threat that is almost an existential threat. I think in late 2013 or early 2014, especially if America sees that Iran is not serious about reaching an acceptable agreement and only continues to buy time, the U.S. will accept an Israeli attack because a nuclear Iran is absolutely against American vital national security interests.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Yadlin adds later:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The most problematic issue has nothing to do with Israel. It’s nonproliferation in the Middle East. It’s the fact that the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Turks will go for nuclear weapons if Iran gets them, and…miscalculations, unintended escalations, nuclear weapons to terrorists will be multiplied tenfold—it will be a nuclear nightmare.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, in a tour of European capitals this week Secretary of State John Kerry tried to assuage, in particular, Israeli and Saudi concerns about Washington’s Iran policy. According to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/world/middleeast/kerry-reassures-israel-on-iran-but-divisions-remain.html"><i>New York Times</i> report</a><i> </i>on Thursday, Kerry had little success.</p>
<p>The <i>Times</i> notes that “Saudi officials have made it clear they are frustrated with the Obama administration,” which is viewed in the region at large as simply seeking to avoid confrontations and hence quite amenable to Iran’s approach of drawing out the talks and playing for time.</p>
<p>And as for Kerry’s seven-hour-long meeting in Rome on Wednesday with Binyamin Netanyahu, the <i>Times</i> says “Kerry’s comments appeared to do little to persuade” the Israeli prime minister, with “the United States and other world powers…willing to explore a deal that is far less stringent” than any Netanyahu would consider acceptable.</p>
<p>In other words, the picture that emerges is less optimistic than former intelligence chief Yadlin’s expectation of U.S. understanding for a possible Israeli attack in a matter of months.</p>
<p>The next round of talks with Iran on November 7-8 should help clarify whether the U.S. and its European allies are capable, even at this late date, of relating to the danger with a modicum of seriousness.</p>
<p>Israel, for its part, should be thinking about forestalling the nuclear nightmare without even an amber light from Washington.</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>Israel and the New Munich</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:49:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The West prepares to repeat the mistakes of 1938. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/32166D2D967064070F8D4F2A923.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207878" alt="32166D2D967064070F8D4F2A923" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/32166D2D967064070F8D4F2A923-450x350.jpg" width="270" height="210" /></a></p>
<p><em>Originally published by <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-Israel-and-the-new-Munich-329046">The Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz explained Israel’s concerns about the nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva. “We’re worried Geneva 2013 will end up like Munich 1938.”</p>
<p>Well, the time for worrying has passed. The statements from the Obama administration and the EU following the closing of the first round of talks all made clear that Geneva 2013 is Munich 1938.</p>
<p>The White House was unable to restrain its excitement at the prospect of a deal with the genocidal, nuclear weapons-developing mullocracy.</p>
<p>White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “The Iranian proposal was a new proposal with a level of seriousness and substance that we had not seen before.”</p>
<p>EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who led the six-power delegation that faced the Iranians, said that the talks were “the most detailed we have ever had, by a long way.”</p>
<p>Ashton also said that she is committed to making concessions to Iran as quickly as possible. In her words, “When we have been talking and in our discussions in these last days we know that we have to look for a first step, a confidencebuilding step, and we know we have to be clear about the last steps and to do that in the context of the objective overall.”</p>
<p>The stunning talks even included a one-on-one discussion between the chief US negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and the Iranians.</p>
<p>The only problem with all these exciting developments is that all the “serious Iranian proposals” would result in the same outcome: a nuclear-armed Iran. There was nothing in the Iranian proposals that could give anyone any reason whatsoever to believe that Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear weapons development program. Indeed, the only thing we learned this week is that like the Allied powers in 1938, the Obama administration and the Europeans have no stomach for a confrontation and are willing to dress up appeasement of a dangerous foe as “peace” and “progress.”</p>
<p>The Iranians have given no indication that they would be willing to suspend all uranium enrichment.</p>
<p>In his press conference after the current round of talks ended, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif insisted that Iran has the right to continue enriching uranium. The Iranian offer appears to involve suspending its 20 percent uranium enrichment activities and sufficing with enriching uranium to 3.5%.</p>
<p>As everyone from US Sen. Mark Kirk to the Washington Post editorial board to US President Barack Obama’s former chief pointman on Iran’s nuclear program Gary Samore have stated over the past several days, given Iran’s current enrichment capabilities, Iran’s offer is meaningless.</p>
<p>Over the past year, Iran has installed a thousand sophisticated centrifuges at its nuclear installation at Natanz. These new centrifuges allow Iran to transform 3.5% enriched uranium to bomb-grade material (enriched to 90%) as quickly as its old centrifuges were capable of transforming 20% enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels. So today, 3.5% enrichment is as comfortable a jumping-off point for the Iranian weapons program as 20% enrichment was a few years ago. Iran’s “serious proposal” is a joke.</p>
<p>As Samore told The New York Times, “Ending production of 20% enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout, because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines.”</p>
<p>In a conference call with the Israel Project Wednesday, Samore explained, “What they’re offering is really no different than what we’ve heard from the previous government, from [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s government for the last couple of years&#8230;. They continue to reject any physical limits on their enrichment capacity – meaning the number and type of centrifuge machines, the stockpile of enriched material that they have in country. And as far as I can tell, they have continued to reject closing any of their nuclear facilities&#8230; I haven’t heard of any agreement to halt work or to modify the heavy water research reactor that they’re building, and which may be close to operational.”</p>
<p>So the Iranians offered nothing this week that they didn’t offer in the past. And as a senior administration official told the Times, the Iranian program is already so advanced that for there to be time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement, Iran needs to first take steps to halt or even reverse its nuclear program.</p>
<p>And as Samore explained, none of the reports on the conclusion of this week’s round of talks indicated any Iranian willingness to take such actions.</p>
<p>The negotiations in Geneva bear an unsettling resemblance to the negotiations the West held with North Korea as it developed nuclear weapons. There, too, Western negotiators bragged about new, serious and unprecedented North Korean “concessions.”</p>
<p>Pyongyang used the talks to undermine Western resolve to block its nuclear progress.</p>
<p>Just as happened with North Korea, so with Iran, the appeasement-crazed press will bring us endless stories about new, serious negotiations documents that will “ensure the peace.”</p>
<p>The last of the stories will be published the day Iran tests its first atomic bomb.</p>
<p>Since the Iranians are making the same unserious offers they have been making for years, why are the Americans and the Europeans hailing the talks as a new beginning? Why is Ashton talking about confidence-building measures? Why are American commentators and senators talking about various steps the US could take to appease Iran? By midweek, talk was rife in Washington about the prospect of unfreezing some of the $50 billion Iranian funds that have been held in escrow in Western banks. Doing so, we were told, would reward the Iranians for being so “serious,” but it wouldn’t involve directly unraveling the sanctions regime.</p>
<p>All of this is happening because the American and Europeans have changed their game. The only serious development of this week is the revelation of their new game.</p>
<p>The Iranians remain committed to developing nuclear weapons. But the US and Europe have stopped even paying lip service to stopping them. Instead, the US and Europe aim to destroy domestic Western opposition to Iran’s nuclear program. This is the new American/European game plan. This is what stands behind all the nonsensical talk of “serious” Iranian proposals.</p>
<p>Before his reelection, Obama felt constrained to pretend that he was serious about preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He opposed but then grudgingly signed comprehensive sanctions passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress. He told AIPAC that he had Israel’s back.</p>
<p>But now that he’s no longer facing reelection, the jig is up. Obama’s new goal, which is enthusiastically supported by Ashton and her comrades in Brussels, is to use the new negotiations with Iran’s phony baloney “moderate” new president to give himself political cover to open the door to Iran acquiring nuclear bombs. Obama doesn’t want to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. He wants to insulate himself from criticism when it gets the bomb.</p>
<p>Not only do the White House’s lies about Iran’s new “level of seriousness” give Obama the maneuver room to pretend he’s acting responsibly, they trap Israel into inaction. After all, how could Israel possibly bomb Iran’s nuclear installations when Iran is negotiating so seriously, and is “this close” to making a groundbreaking agreement?</p>
<p>We shouldn’t be surprised by this state of affairs. Obama has never acted in good faith with Israel.</p>
<p>Take the latest news on Turkey, for example.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that last year NATO member Turkey gave Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranian agents working for the Mossad after they met with their Israeli case officers in Turkey. Turkey’s action was a shocking betrayal of what was supposed to be a goal it shared with Israel and the US – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey willfully harmed Israeli efforts to achieve this goal by turning in 10 Israeli agents.</p>
<p>Rather than taking action against Turkey, or simply acknowledging that the actions of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan represented a fundamental shift in Turkey’s strategic outlook, Obama shrugged off Turkey’s betrayal. The US didn’t even protest Turkey’s despicable deed. Instead, as Ignatius noted, “Turkish-American relations continued warming last year to the point that Erdogan was among Obama’s key confidants.”</p>
<p>A few months after Turkey colluded with Iran against Israel, Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into apologizing to Erdogan for Israel’s lawful maritime interdiction of the Mavi Marmara as it unlawfully sought to breach Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza coastline.</p>
<p>No doubt, in making this concession Netanyahu believed that he would win Obama’s goodwill. In a similar fashion, in the hope of appeasing Obama, Netanyahu has made concession after concession to the Palestinians – from drastically downgrading Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to releasing Palestinian murderers from prison.</p>
<p>Yet in all of these cases, Obama has pocketed Israel’s concessions and demanded more concessions.</p>
<p>In all these cases, Obama’s allies have used the concessions to present a picture of Israel as both an ungrateful and unhelpful ally, and as a weakling. And in the meantime, Obama has facilitated EU sanctions against Israel. He has leaked top secret Israeli intelligence operations to the media. He has repeatedly threatened to abandon Israel at the UN Security Council. He has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.</p>
<p>And now he is involved in negotiations with Iran that will necessarily lead to Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power.</p>
<p>From Netanyahu’s repeated declarations that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it is unclear whether he realizes what is going on. More than anything else, those statements represent an attempt to negotiate with Obama. Netanyahu is still trying to win Obama over.</p>
<p>If there was ever an argument to be made in favor of Netanyahu’s pleading, their time is long past. In nothing else, the obscene diplomatic theater in Geneva this week made that clear.</p>
<p>Israel is alone. We have no diplomatic option.</p>
<p>No matter what Israel says, no matter what it does, neither the US nor any other Western power is ever going to be convinced to take the only step that would set back Iran’s nuclear program – bombing its nuclear installations. No matter what, neither Obama nor any European leader will ever support an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations.</p>
<p>Israel’s back is to the wall. That is the meaning of the talks in Geneva. If we aren’t prepared to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, we have to stop talking and start acting. And we need to prepare for the diplomatic hell that will break loose thereafter.</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>Two Decades of “Negotiations” and “Talks” with Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/two-decades-of-negotiations-and-talks-with-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=two-decades-of-negotiations-and-talks-with-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207768</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What has been the result? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/017159092_30300.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207770" alt="0,,17159092_303,00" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/017159092_30300-450x253.jpg" width="270" height="152" /></a>The two-day nuclear talks between Iran and the West, which are the first formal negotiations since the election of Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, resumed this week in Geneva. The talks in Geneva, which were held on Tuesday and Wednesday, involved representatives of Iran (primarily  Including  Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and Iran&#8217;s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi) and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany &#8211; the so-called &#8220;P5+1&#8243; group — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany.</p>
<p>The predominant mainstream and liberal media &#8212; which has abandoned professional and nuanced journalism and analysis when it comes to its coverage on US foreign policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran &#8212; has naively projected a “positive” result of meeting with the Iranian nuclear team, showing trust towards the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear enrichment, and revealing assurance of the advancment in the nuclear negotiations. In that regards, the coverage of these two-days talks have been very shallow and rudimentary.</p>
<p>Even the Obama administration’s delegation and the European representatives issued remarks that showed their satisfaction with the path that the Islamist leaders are taking in Tehran regarding spinning centrifuges and enriching uranium.</p>
<p>The US delegate and European representatives were pleased and contend with the presentation of the shrewd Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who used the English language and power points to outline Tehran’s classic position through his presentation titled &#8220;Closing an unnecessary crisis: Opening new horizons.&#8221;  He insisted that Iran has the right to enrich uranium.</p>
<p>According to Reuters news, a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity &#8220;The discussion was useful, and we look forward to continuing our discussions in tomorrow&#8217;s meetings with the full P5+1 (six powers) and Iran&#8221; several Western diplomats and representatives including a US State department official and Michael Mann, a spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy official and the lead negotiator in the talks with Iran, pointed out that the Iranian proposal had been “very useful…. For the first time, very detailed technical discussions continued this afternoon.”</p>
<p>Without doubt, the Iranian Islamist and radical clerics and Ayatollah view this as scoring a significant victory against the West and Israel. Iranian leaders are probably even astonished at how easily it was to delude the West- with some nice words, exchanges of pleasantries, presenting a power point in the English language, and using a softer tone. What the leaders and the Ayatollahs of Islamic Republic of Iran really needs and are anxious bout, is one thing: Buy a little bit more time. Iranian leader are very anxious to have a year or less than year more time to achieve their hegemonic dream.</p>
<p>They have been very successful at achieving this method for over a decade since their clandestine nuclear activities in cities of Natanz and Arak were revelead by a Iranian oppositional group based outside the Islamic Republic of Iran. The meetings this week definitely indicated that Obama’s administration and European Union leaders are more than willing to buy the argument of the Islamic Republic of Iran to do more negotiations and more talks, and to give Tehran want it desires. They have been doing these talks and negotiations for 14 years and no result have been yielded. However, for the theocratic and Islamist leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, many crucial  outcomes have resulted since they started playing around with the negotiations and talks -over its nuclear clandestine activities- with United States and the West 14 years ago.</p>
<p>First of all, by being able to buy time and delude the West, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the West, the Ayatollahs, Islamists, Imams and clerics in the Islamic Republic of Iran have been capable of reaching a 20 percent of Uranium which is considered to be a relatively technical short step from obtaining weapons-grade material and arms. Secondly, only in the last year, Iran’s nuclear abilities have advanced considerably in comparison to 2011-2012.  The Islamic Republic of Iran has increased thousands of advanced centrifuges which are continuing to spin as well as more Iranian engineers have been added to work on a plant that will produce plutonium. Increasingly number of  nuclear experts points out that Tehran is short step from having the capacity to quickly produce a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>The almost two-decades of negotiations, dialogues, sanctions, exchanges of nice words and pleasantries, sending letters to the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and nicely requesting the Islamic  Republic of Iran to slow down or halt its nuclear activities, have not yielded any constructive result. The Iranian regime is getting more and more fundamental, Islamist, abusing minorities, human rights, and threatening other states.</p>
<p>On the other hand, what is more intriguing, puzzling, mind boggling, and enigmatic is that  the  Obama’s administration and the European allies have not learned anything or acquired any experience from the years of failure to diplomatically and “kindly” requesting the Islamic Republic of Iran to slow down, halt its nuclear program, or become more transparent.</p>
<p>Finally, and more fundamentally, the only phenemonon that the Iranian Aytollahs and Islamist are anxious about is having a little bit more time  in order to culminate their over-a-decade of secrecy and clandestine nuclear work into concrete nuclear weapons and bombs and in order to transfer the 20 percent enriched uranium into nuclear warheads. This goal does not seem to be far anymore to achieve.</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>Bibi and the True Believers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/bibi-and-the-true-believers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bibi-and-the-true-believers</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Aug 2013 04:56:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why is Netanyahu going along with the Obama administration's Mideast insanity? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ShowImage.ashx_.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-199245" alt="ShowImage.ashx" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ShowImage.ashx_.jpg" width="310" height="221" /></a>Originally </i><a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=321815"><i>published</i></a><i> in The Jerusalem Post. </i></p>
<p>Standing next to US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday morning, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni gushed that through his indefatigable efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian officials to Washington, Kerry proved that &#8220;nothing can stop true believers.&#8221;</p>
<p>As usual, the cognitively challenged Livni told us something she hadn&#8217;t intended to say. The term &#8220;true believer&#8221; was coined by Eric Hoffer in his classic work <i>The True Believer</i> from 1951, which Livni has obviously not read. Hoffer&#8217;s epic study of the psychological roots of fanaticism described a true believer as a person so fanatically committed to a cause that no amount of reality can make him abandon it.</p>
<p>And that just about sums up Kerry, and the man he works for, US President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Kerry visited Israel six times in the four months leading up to the meetings in Washington this week, during which Americans, Palestinians and Israelis discussed the size of the table they will be sitting around in the coming discussions.</p>
<p>During the same four months, the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its opponents on multiple occasions. Most recently, they gassed Palestinians in Yarmuk refugee camp outside Damascus, killing 22 people.</p>
<p>During those four months, al-Qaida strengthened its control over the Syrian opposition groups fighting the regime.</p>
<p>During those four months, the Syrian civil war became a focal point of a wider Sunni-Shi&#8217;ite religious war that has already spread to Lebanon and Iraq. In its post-US-withdrawal role of Iranian satrapy, Iraq has allowed Iran to use its territory and airspace to transfer war materiel to the Syrian regime.</p>
<p>During those four months, the Obama administration decided to begin arming the al-Qaida dominated rebel forces. It has also deliberately raised the risk of a Syrian-Israeli war by informing the media every time that Israel attacks missile sites in Syria.</p>
<p>Also during the four months that Kerry obsessed over convincing PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas to send his representative to Washington, Egypt experienced its second revolution in which, buffeted by millions of demonstrators who filled the squares of Egypt&#8217;s cities, the Egyptian military overthrew the US-supported Muslim Brotherhood regime.</p>
<p>The Obama administration was quick to jump onto the bandwagon of the first Egyptian revolution in January 2011. That revolution led to the military&#8217;s ouster of then-president Hosni Mubarak, a staunch US ally, and so paved the way for the totalitarian and deeply popular Muslim Brotherhood to rise to power.</p>
<p>When the Brotherhood became subject to its own revolution due to its incompetent handling of Egypt&#8217;s failed economy and its single-minded focus on transforming Egypt into an Islamist state as quickly as possible, the Obama administration was confounded. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal this week, a senior administration official expressed complete befuddlement at events in Egypt. &#8220;None of us can quite figure this out,&#8221; the official said. &#8220;It seems so self-defeating.&#8221;</p>
<p>And that is the thing of it. In its support for the Brotherhood, the administration was implementing its wholly unfounded, dead-wrong ideological belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is a progressive, &#8220;largely secular&#8221; organization that is dedicated to good works. And now that the Egyptian military, supported by about half of the Egyptian people, has rejected the Brotherhood, its actions are incomprehensible to the Obama administration.</p>
<p>In the face of massive documentary evidence, and facts on the ground, (Egypt has run out of food, and rather than get them some, overthrown president Mohamed Morsi rammed through a totalitarian Islamist constitution), the Obama administration still clings to its ideological belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is a positive, progressive, &#8220;largely secular&#8221; organization that is devoted to good works for the poor.</p>
<p>So, too, in Syria. The administration thinks it is okay to fund the Free Syria Army, because its leadership is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Owing to the administration&#8217;s blind faith in its belief that the reason that the US is hated in the Muslim world is because it has opposed populist Islamist forces, Obama and his advisers think it makes sense to arm those forces in Syria now &#8211; so long as the Muslim Brotherhood is able to hide the fact that it is dominated by al-Qaida for a sufficient number of news cycles to sell this fiction to the media.</p>
<p>The administration&#8217;s faith in Islamist reasonableness holds for the Shi&#8217;ite Islamists just as strongly as it does for the Sunni Islamists. This is why it maintains its commitment to negotiating with Iran&#8217;s fanatical regime about its nuclear weapons program, despite overwhelming evidence that the Iranians are using the negotiations as a means to develop their bomb in peace.</p>
<p>This week David Albright and Christina Walrond at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington published a deeply disturbing report. They explained that based on what we know, Iran will reached &#8220;critical capacity&#8221; in its nuclear program by mid-2014. Albright and Walrond defined critical capacity as &#8220;the technical capability to produce sufficient weapongrade uranium from its safeguarded stocks of low enriched uranium for a nuclear explosive, without being detected.&#8221;</p>
<p>Albright and Walrond then explained the many ways Iran can speed up the process, and hide its achievement from the international community for long enough to make it too late to conduct military strikes on their nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.</p>
<p>In other words, they told us politely, and diplomatically, if urgently, that we have arrived at the moment of decision. Will the US or Israel strike Iran&#8217;s nuclear installations to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power, or will Iran become a nuclear power? If we wait much longer, we won&#8217;t have sufficient time to act.</p>
<p>But for Kerry and his fellow true believers the most urgent priority was to convince the Palestinians to sit in the same room as Israelis. And this week they scored a great victory for US foreign policy by achieving their goal.</p>
<p>In her brief remarks, not only did Livni inadvertently tell us that Kerry is a fanatic. She also told us that she is a fanatic.</p>
<p>Livni said, &#8220;[I]t took more than just a plane ticket to be here today. A courageous act of leadership by Prime Minister Netanyahu that was approved by the Israeli government made this visit here and the beginning of the negotiation possible.&#8221;</p>
<p>The &#8220;courageous act&#8221; she referred to was the government&#8217;s decision to release 104 &#8220;Palestinian prisoners&#8221; from Israel&#8217;s prisons. The demand for their freedom was the obstacle Abbas placed in the way of Livni acquiring her long-sought-after plane ticket to peace talks and five star receptions at Kerry&#8217;s Washington mansion.</p>
<p>The 104 &#8220;prisoners&#8221; are made up of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. They are not car thieves or pickpockets. They are monsters with human faces. All 104 are serving life sentences for murder or attempted murder. Their crimes were gruesome acts of barbarism marked by demonic cruelty.</p>
<p>Yusef Said al-Al and Ayman Taleb Abu Sitteh stabbed David Bubil and Haim Weitzman to death and mutilated their bodies, cutting off their ears as souvenirs.</p>
<p>Three other &#8220;Palestinian prisoners&#8221; hacked four teenagers to pieces, killing them with pitchforks, hatchets and knives.</p>
<p>Thirteen-year-old Oren Baharmi was raped and murdered by Amad Mahmad Jamil Shehada.</p>
<p>And the list goes on and on, and on.</p>
<p>There was nothing even vaguely courageous about Netanyahu&#8217;s decision to release these monsters.</p>
<p>There was nothing even vaguely courageous about his cabinet members&#8217; decision to vote for their release. Theirs was an act of utter cravenness. They dishonored the victims, the victims&#8217; families and the nation as a whole.</p>
<p>And they endangered the country. According to the Almagor Victims of Terror organization, from 2000 to 2005, 180 Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists released by Israel in previous &#8220;deals.&#8221; And those terrorists had been imprisoned for non-lethal actions, (i.e., without blood on their hands).</p>
<p>The fact that Netanyahu and his ministers passed this decision simply to provide a sufficient payoff to Abbas for him to send Saeb Erekat to Washington to talk about nothing with Livni, makes their actions, not only craven, but insane.</p>
<p>Livni&#8217;s obscene characterization of this cowardly, life-threatening injustice as a &#8220;courageous act,&#8221; exposes her as well as a true believing fanatic.</p>
<p>Only a fanatic could say such a thing.</p>
<p>In his remarks, Kerry said that the talks about the size of the table are going to bring about a situation where Israel will achieve, &#8220;not just the absence of conflict, but a full and lasting peace with the Arab and Muslim nations.&#8221;</p>
<p>Like Kerry&#8217;s demand that Israel free the terrorists, this statement bespeaks an underlying fanatical dementia. Regarding the &#8220;Arab and Muslim nations,&#8221; in Syria, neither the al-Qaida forces nor the regime have mentioned anything about putting down their weapons if Israel coughs up Jerusalem and Elon Moreh. The same goes for Hezbollah, Iran and their friends and enemies warring for power throughout the region.</p>
<p>As for the Palestinians, if they were interested in &#8220;lasting peace&#8221; with Israel, they wouldn&#8217;t demand freedom for terrorist murderers. Moreover, while Kerry was exulting in his brilliant success, Abbas announced that in his version of &#8220;lasting peace,&#8221; Jews will be wiped off of the map of Palestine.</p>
<p>As Abbas put it, &#8220;In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli &#8211; civilian or soldiers &#8211; on our lands.&#8221;</p>
<p>So again, while Kerry and Livni see rainbows and unicorns, Abbas sees a Jew-free Palestine, with the 600,000 Jews of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria rendered homeless refugees to make room for his anti-Semitic fiefdom.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that Kerry, Obama and Livni are going along with this obscenity. It is not surprising that fanatics who pray to the god of the two-state solution think it is courageous to free Jewish-baby killers. It is not surprising they think the most important thing on the international agenda is to secure Israel&#8217;s surrender of land, our legal rights, and our ability to defend ourselves to a terrorist group that hates Jews so much it requires all of us to be gone before it will do us the favor of accepting sovereignty.</p>
<p>What is surprising &#8211; and frightening &#8211; is that Netanyahu, who is not a true believer, and knows that they are true believers, is going along with this.</p>
<p>Netanyahu knows that Israel cannot survive without Judea and Samaria. He knows what the Muslim Brotherhood is. He knows the nature of the Iranian regime. He knows that the PLO is no different from Hamas. Their goal is the same &#8211; they want to destroy Israel.</p>
<p>Netanyahu knows that Obama is hostile to Israel and that he will not lift a finger to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power.</p>
<p>So why is he going along with their insanity? In bowing to US pressure and approving the release of 104 terrorist murderers from prison, Netanyahu behaved like a coward. In bowing to US pressure not to bomb Iran&#8217;s nuclear installations, Netanyahu is being a coward.</p>
<p>The most important question for Israel today then is whether our leader is capable of being anything else.</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 Illusion of Peace Negotiations</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/the-illusion-of-peace-negotiations/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-illusion-of-peace-negotiations</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jul 2013 04:50:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What the release of 104 Palestinian terrorists won't achieve. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ALeqM5hE7GpW47ZfhgwzwEY3B-PBx54C0A.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-198766" alt="ALeqM5hE7GpW47ZfhgwzwEY3B-PBx54C0A" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ALeqM5hE7GpW47ZfhgwzwEY3B-PBx54C0A.jpg" width="266" height="205" /></a>Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are in Washington this week to meet face to face under State Department auspices. Although the talks are focusing initially on procedural issues rather than any substantive matters, Secretary of State John Kerry hailed their resumption as a major accomplishment.</p>
<p>In announcing the appointment of Martin Indyk, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, as the U.S. Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations during a press briefing Monday morning, Kerry praised “the courageous leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas” and “their willingness to make difficult decisions.”</p>
<p>The Monday evening “negotiation” session, hosted by Kerry, was attended by Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molcho, the Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, and Fatah official Muhammad Shtayyeh. They met over an Iftar dinner at the State Department, flanked by the American, Israeli and Palestinian flags. Before the dinner began, Kerry met with the Israelis and Palestinians separately.</p>
<p>After one more session on Tuesday, the negotiators head home, where further talks will be held at some undisclosed location in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Although details of what was said at the dinner have not yet been disclosed, Kerry was reportedly set to read a statement specifying the pre-1967 lines as the basis for negotiation on Palestinian statehood, with minor one-to-one land swaps. This is the Arab League-Obama administration proposal for a two-state solution, which ignores Israel’s legitimate security concerns. It also asks for no concessions from the Palestinians, who continue to insist on the right to re-locate millions of Palestinian refugees within pre-1967 Israel.</p>
<p>When Kerry visited the United Nations last week, he referred to both Israel and the Palestinians as two “countries” preparing to put into place procedures for resumed talks. He used the term “countries” again in referring to Israel and the Palestinian territories during his Monday morning remarks. In return for the Palestinians’ “difficult” decision to enter into procedural talks with Israel, has Kerry offered the Palestinians some sort of private assurance of tacit support for their quest for statehood recognition at the UN and elsewhere, as his repeated references to two &#8220;countries&#8221; would seem to suggest?</p>
<p>What exactly are the “difficult decisions” made by both sides to kick start the negotiations? The truth is that only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually made a difficult decision.  Against some opposition in his own party and over protests by families of victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks, Netanyahu has decided to release in stages as many as 104 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have served prison terms of two decades or more for murdering Israelis in cold blood.</p>
<p>“This moment is not easy for me,” Netanyahu said. “It is not easy especially for the families, the bereaved families, whose heart I understand. But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the country, and this is one of those moments.”</p>
<p>What tough decision did Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas make other than temporarily putting aside all of his preconditions that would have prejudged the final outcome of any meaningful final status negotiations? He merely promised, according to reports, to put off for a few months seeking expanded membership status at the United Nations and pursuing bogus legal action against Israel in the International Criminal Court.</p>
<p>Back in 2008, Abbas demonstrated his lack of interest in a negotiated peace fair to both sides when he rejected a peace proposal from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that would have given the Palestinians approximately 94% of the West Bank. The Palestinians rejected Israel’s offer because they did not get 100% of what they wanted, including the full “right of return” and every stone of East Jerusalem under Palestinian rule.</p>
<p>Here is what Saëb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator then and now, himself said about the rejected offer during a television appearance in March 2009, as transcribed by MEMRI:</p>
<blockquote><p>Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Abbas] could have accepted a proposal that talked about Jerusalem and almost 100% of the West Bank, but it is not our goal to score points against one another here. Our strategic goal, when we strive for peace, is not to do so at any price. We strive for peace on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 borders, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip geographically connected… There will be no peace whatsoever unless East Jerusalem – with every single stone in it – becomes the capital of Palestine[.]</p></blockquote>
<p>Nothing has changed on the Palestinian side. We have essentially the same cast of characters espousing the same take-it-or-leave it position that would undermine Israel’s future as a Jewish state. Moreover, Abbas is as incapable now, as he was in 2008, of delivering a unified Palestinian proposal for peace. Hamas, which controls Gaza, declared that it “considers the Palestinian Authority’s return to negotiations with the occupation to be at odds with the national consensus.” As if to prove Hamas to be right, hundreds of Palestinians marched on Sunday in the West Bank city of Ramallah to protest the resumption of talks.</p>
<p>Even if a deal could somehow be reached between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, the Palestinian Authority sees negotiations as a mere tactic on the way to reaching their eventual goal of eliminating the Jewish state from the river to sea.</p>
<p>On July 19, 2013, the Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, invoked the actions of Prophet Mohammed as justification for breaking a treaty. He said in a sermon in front of Mahmoud Abbas on Palestinian Authority TV that reaching an agreement with Israel was “exactly like the Prophet [Muhammad] did in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, even though some opposed it.”  Mohammed entered into this treaty with the Quraish Tribe of Mecca, but broke it two years later when his forces attacked and conquered Mecca.</p>
<p>“This is the example, this is the model,&#8221; the Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs proclaimed.</p>
<p>In September 2011, on Al-Jazeera TV, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki was even more explicit on the Palestinians’  true intentions:</p>
<blockquote><p>The agreement is based on the borders of June 4 [1967]. While the agreement is on the borders of June 4, the President [Mahmoud Abbas] understands, we understand, and everyone knows that it is impossible to realize the inspiring idea, or the great goal in one stroke. If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, if Israel uproots the settlements, 650,000 settlers, if Israel removes the (security) fence &#8211; what will be with Israel? Israel will come to an end. If I say that I want to remove it from existence, this will be great, great, [but] it is hard. This is not a [stated] policy. You can&#8217;t say it to the world. You can say it to yourself.</p></blockquote>
<p>The only possible good sign in all of this is Kerry’s appointment of former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk as his Special Envoy to manage U.S. interests in further talks. At least he will bring an understanding of Israel’s hot button issues while at the same time having some credibility with Palestinian negotiators.  However, without a president who can tell the difference between our only true ally in the Middle East and a deceptive Palestinian negotiating team that is not committed to a genuine peace and that does not speak for all Palestinians in any case, these talks will only move forward to a conclusion if Israel is forced to sacrifice its security and future as a Jewish state. Barack Obama is not that president.</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>Peace Is Not at Hand</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/peace-is-not-at-hand/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=peace-is-not-at-hand</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jul 2013 04:56:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[U.S., Israel bow to Palestinian blackmail.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ce40f_w-abbas-netanyahu-cp-930906.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-198513" alt="ce40f_w-abbas-netanyahu-cp-930906" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ce40f_w-abbas-netanyahu-cp-930906-450x317.jpg" width="270" height="190" /></a>American-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace talks—or perhaps, talks supposedly leading up to peace talks—are on for today in Washington. A last-minute hitch was cleared up.</span></b></p>
<p>Last week Israel’s international relations minister Yuval Steinitz had <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Steinitz-Israel-to-free-Palestinian-prisoners-in-peace-talks-renewal-320433">announced</a> that Israel had agreed to a Palestinian demand and would, in the course of the talks, be freeing 84 Palestinian security prisoners from the pre-1993 period, some of them, as he put it, “heavyweights.”</p>
<p>The heavyweights <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170324">include</a>, for instance, Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Harabish and Adam Ibrahim Juma’a-Juma’a, who in 1988 hurled a firebomb at an Israeli civilian bus in the Jordan Valley. Twenty-six-year-old Rachel Weiss, her three children aged three, two, and nine months, and a young soldier who tried to rescue them all burned to death.</p>
<p>For many people, the fact that Abu Harabish, Juma’a-Juma’a, and many others like them will—if the talks progress—be released, in compliance with the Palestinian demand, is perfectly compatible with high hopes for peace and an end to what they call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>Things seemed to be running smoothly, then—except that over the weekend the Palestinian side upped their demand from 84 prisoners to 104. And they made it a flat, brazenly extortionate ultimatum: 104 prisoners, not 84, or we’re not showing up on Monday.</p>
<p>The United States and Israel caved.</p>
<p>To say that the Obama administration caved is probably a misnomer, since there is no indication that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry find the release of the Palestinian prisoners in the least bit troubling. Indeed, Kerry first began <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/kerrys-shocking-demand-to-israel-free-terrorists">heavily pressuring Israel to release them</a> immediately after the Boston Marathon terror attack.</p>
<p>For Israel the pill was a bit harder to swallow.</p>
<p>A poll had already found 84% of Jewish Israelis <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10959">opposing the release of terrorists</a> as a condition for restarting talks with the Palestinians. Seventy-eight percent opposed releasing them even if the talks resumed and releases were required to keep them going, and 73% said that, in any case, the talks would not lead to an agreement that would resolve the conflict.</p>
<p>These numbers contrast sharply with the large majority of Israelis who supported the release of a thousand Palestinian security prisoners, including heinous terrorists, for captive soldier Gilad Shalit in October 2011. In that case, Israelis felt they were getting something precious—the life and freedom of the soldier—in return. In the present case, a large majority feel they’ll be getting nothing in return except sham talks.</p>
<p>Aware of this problem, over the weekend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote an <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10983">open letter to the Israeli public</a> that seeks to explain and justify the prisoner release.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting document, tantalizingly open to interpretation. In its key passage Netanyahu states:</p>
<blockquote><p>At the present time, I believe it is of the utmost importance for the State of Israel to enter a diplomatic process. This is important both to exhaust the possibilities of ending the conflict with the Palestinians and to establish Israel’s position in the complex international reality around us.</p>
<p>The major changes in our region—in Egypt, Syria and in Iran—not only pose challenges for the State of Israel but they also present significant opportunities for us.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here Netanyahu seems to imply that Israel will be in a stronger position, with greater sympathy and diplomatic backing, to attack Iran’s nuclear program if it is perceived to be behaving well by holding talks with the Palestinians. The other possibility is that the words were crafted as a sop to hawkish Israelis who tend to bitterly oppose the prisoner release.</p>
<p>In any case, there has been no indication that the letter mollified the Israeli public’s opposition to the move. On Sunday relatives of victims of the prisoners slated to be released <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4410416,00.html">held an anguished demonstration</a> outside of the government complex in Jerusalem. On Sunday afternoon the Israeli cabinet <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Palestinian-prisoner-release-passes-cabinet-by-wide-13-7-margin-321296">voted 13-7</a> to approve the prisoner release, while also approving a bill to submit any peace agreement to a national referendum.</p>
<p>Peace is not at hand. The demand to free a hundred murderers as a precondition for talking peace is a barbarian demand. It was made by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, a tiny, corrupt, economically tottering, <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/">hate-ridden</a> dictatorship. It was submitted to by the United States and Israel, still the two leading lights of civilization in our time. It is not a pretty sight.</p>
<p>By the most favorable possible interpretation, for Israel the whole charade—including the prospective prisoner releases—is a necessary sacrifice toward larger purposes. But that, too—with so many hints and threats already having been issued regarding Iran—needs to be seen to be believed.</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>North Korea: A Window into the Future on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/north-korea-a-window-into-the-future-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=north-korea-a-window-into-the-future-on-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:50:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Appeasement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=185896</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The consequences of appeasing the Islamic Republic's fanatical designs are clear. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/north-korea-a-window-into-the-future-on-iran/large-12/" rel="attachment wp-att-185905"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-185905" title="large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/large-450x296.png" alt="" width="270" height="178" /></a>Rarely do we get to see the dangerous consequences of appeasing one aggressor unfold at the same time we are appeasing another in exactly the same way. But that’s what we are witnessing today, as our leaders respond to Iran’s push for nuclear weapons with the same appeasement playbook that turned a two-bit failed state like North Korea into a nuclear-armed aggressor.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron">chronology</a> of the U.S.’s dealings with three psychotic Kim regimes makes for depressing reading. Start in 1991, when President George Bush Sr. withdrew 100 nuclear weapons from South Korea as part of a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev. That same year South Korea formally abjured the production or use of nuclear weapons, a deal the North cheerfully went along with, fully intending to violate it. The next year the North signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and allowed in inspectors. A mere two months later the U.S. had to impose sanctions on two companies in the North involved in developing missiles.</p>
<p>In little more than a year, the pattern of North Korea’s defiance and duplicity, and Western appeasement and inaction, had been set. The North would make an announcement promising to let in inspectors in order to head off sanctions, or threaten to withdraw from the NPT to wring concessions from the West, and then would come the revelation that the North had taken yet another step towards creating a nuclear weapon. Then “bilateral talks” would be announced and conducted, “agreed frameworks” and “moratoriums” signed and touted, promises of suspension of forbidden activities made by the North, “appropriate compensation,” i.e. bribes––like food aid, South Korea’s “sunshine policy” of détente and economic cooperation with the North, “economic normalization,” and free light-water nuclear reactors (!)––for such duplicitous concessions delivered by the West, all followed by more sanctions imposed when the North was caught out lying and cheating.</p>
<p>We know the result of this <em>pas de deux</em> of appeasement. North Korea today possesses several atomic weapons, and is preparing to test a missile that can reach America’s bases on Okinawa and Guam. A Defense Intelligence Agency report stated there was “moderate confidence” that North Korea “has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles.” The next step will be nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching the west coast of the United States. This was the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community in a report from 2001, which warned that before 2015 North Korea would have ICBMs that could reach our shores.</p>
<p>In response to this latest iteration of a decades-long pattern of failure, our new Secretary of State John Kerry has gone on a nostalgia tour marked by toothless threats, diplomatic happy-talk, and pathetic begging of China to rein in its pit-bull client. In Beijing, Kerry told the Chinese that the U.S. would pull back deployment of anti-ballistic missile batteries on Guam and on Aegis cruisers in the waters near North Korea if China would restrain Pyongyang. China responded by warning the U.S. against provoking North Korea. Kerry also offered to negotiate directly with Kim Jong Eun over his nuclear arsenal, sanctions on his nation, and food aid. The offer of talks to Kim will likely go nowhere, judging from his rebuff of South Korea’s offer to talk, calling it a “crafty trick.” Like his father, Kim considers such offers as signs of weakness to be met by an escalation of aggression. Last year, after being offered food aid in exchange for international monitoring of his nuclear program, Kim launched a long-range missile in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution.</p>
<p>This repetition of decades of failed attempts to use diplomacy and non-lethal sanctions to change North Korean behavior is depressing enough. North Korea has been the most-sanctioned nation in the world for years, and during that time it has become a nuclear power. Giving food aid to a regime has not been any more useful, given that the regime cares little or nothing for the starving people it brutalizes and imprisons in gulags, and welcomes the opportunity to sell the aid. As bad as all that is, much worse is our current repeating of that failure in dealing with Iran. Outreach, talk, sanctions, and empty bluster, the formula for failure in North Korea, are still the only options the U.S. seems to have.</p>
<p>Obama’s attempts at “outreach” and discussions “without preconditions,” for example, begun as soon as he took office in 2009, have been met with Iranian contempt and aggression. A videotaped greeting for the Persian New Year in March 2009 was followed by Ayatollah Khamenei’s announcement that “the path of Iran’s nuclear progress could not be blocked.” In May 2009, a personal letter sent by Obama to Khamenei calling for “co-operation in regional and bilateral relations” was followed by the brutal crackdown on protests against the rigged presidential election in June, protests Khamenei blamed on American “agents.” Groveling responses to Iranian bad behavior fared not better. After Iran failed to disclose the uranium-enrichment facility in Qom, Obama reassured the mullahs, “We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran.” As for multiple stern “deadlines” set for Iran to change its behavior, all have been ignored with impunity.</p>
<p>Four years later, the same pattern of answering outreach with aggression was repeated earlier this month. After fruitless multilateral talks in Kazakhstan, Iranian president Ahmadinejad announced that Iran was expanding uranium production, and crowed, “Iran has already become a nuclear country and no one is capable of stealing this title.” He also disclosed that Iran had opened two new mines for extracting uranium, and a factory to manufacture yellowcake, semi-refined uranium that can be processed into nuclear fuel. The U.S. response? More sanctions and more bluster from Obama about not allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Sound familiar?</p>
<p>I can’t think of another historical example of a great power appeasing one aggressor at precisely the same time it is appeasing another with exactly the same failed policy. But we shouldn’t be surprised, given the delusional assumptions on which our foreign policy establishment bases its treatment of our geopolitical rivals. A massive failure of imagination keeps them from acknowledging that there are peoples and regimes in the world that value power, prestige, and aggression over peace and cooperation, and that scorn as weakness and fear our Western ideals of rational discussion, give-and-take negotiation, peaceful coexistence, and tolerance for the other side’s perspective. Worse yet, our foreign policy mavens seemingly can’t quite understand that those aggressors <em>know</em> full well that we are hesitant to act and often use diplomacy and negotiation to create the pretense of action when the will is lacking. So our enemies manipulate our ideals and engage in our empty diplomatic rituals in order to misdirect us and buy time for achieving their goals.</p>
<p>But let’s not forget the other factor in this dismal dance of appeasement. Our politicians of all stripes know that the use of force, with all its unforeseen consequences, incalculable risks, and telegenic death and destruction, comes with a high political price. We had enough outrage and anger over 9/11 to start the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but eventually grew weary and impatient enough that Obama could precipitately withdraw from both conflicts without paying a price. The result is an Iraq transforming before our eyes into a satellite of Iran even as sectarian violence continues to tear it apart, and an Afghanistan that most likely after our departure will see the Taliban restored as a major faction and font of terrorist disorder.</p>
<p>No politician either Republican or Democrat has been punished for letting North Korea go nuclear. And Obama hasn’t been punished so far for repeating that blunder with Iran, even though the consequences of a nuclear-armed jihadist regime in the middle of nearly two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves will be vastly more serious. We can blame our leaders and castigate the State Department, but at the end of the day in a democracy it’s the voters who refuse to hold them accountable who must shoulder the blame.</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>October Surprise: Direct Talks with Iran?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/october-surprise-direct-talks-with-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=october-surprise-direct-talks-with-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:45:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Is the Obama administration trying to change the subject from Libya?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/october-surprise-direct-talks-with-iran/iranian-president-ahmadinejad-speaks-during-media-conference-on-the-sidelines-of-the-67th-united-nations-general-assembly-in-new-york/" rel="attachment wp-att-149281"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-149281" title="Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks during media conference on the sidelines of the 67th United Nations General Assembly in New York" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/r.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="230" /></a>On the eve of the third and final presidential debate, which deals with foreign policy, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/world/iran-said-ready-to-talk-to-us-about-nuclear-program.html?hp&amp;_r=1&amp;">the New York Times ran a lead story</a>, citing unnamed Obama administration officials, that the United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran reportedly has insisted that its direct talks with Washington should not begin until after the U.S. presidential election on November 6 and wants to broaden the scope of the discussions beyond just the nuclear enrichment issues.</p>
<p>Denials from both sides quickly followed.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections,&#8221; U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement quoted by Reuters.</p>
<p>Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi denied that any bilateral talks were in the offing. &#8220;We don&#8217;t have any discussions or negotiations with America,&#8221; Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told a news conference according to Reuters. &#8220;The (nuclear) talks are ongoing with the P5+1 group of nations. Other than that, we have no discussions with the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander was quoted as bragging that the recent Hezbollah-launched drone into Israeli territory proved that &#8220;Zionists (Israelis) and Americans must know that no place is safe for them anymore.&#8221;</p>
<p>Could the New York Times story be simply a trial balloon by Obama administration officials to change the subject from Libya?  Although certainly a crass political maneuver, that theory would turn out to be the best scenario.  Of far more concern to the security of the United States and Israel is that there really is a deal &#8211; the October surprise that we have all been waiting for &#8211; that would trade soften sanctions for some temporary limits on Iran&#8217;s further enrichment of uranium.</p>
<p>A former CIA operative inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who goes under the pseudonym <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/obama-cuts-deal-with-iran-over-nukes/">Reza Kahlili, wrote in WND</a> that his highly placed source inside the Iranian regime told him that a deal has in fact been struck. Moreover, once Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei receives a letter from President Obama in the next few days guaranteeing the details of the agreement, there will be a public announcement made before the election. All this was reportedly worked out in a secret meeting held in Qatar earlier this month.  None other than Obama&#8217;s confidante Valerie Jarrett led the U.S. delegation, according to Kahlili&#8217;s Iranian source.</p>
<p>No European countries were reportedly involved in this meeting. Israel, which has the most to lose if the Iranian regime goes for a nuclear weapon despite an agreement with Obama to behave, was left completely in the dark.</p>
<p>Kahlili&#8217;s article is far more specific than what the Times reported:</p>
<blockquote><p>The agreement calls for Iran to announce a temporary halt to partial uranium enrichment after which the U.S. will remove many of its sanctions, including those on the Iranian central bank, no later than by the Iranian New Year in March.</p></blockquote>
<p>Kahlili&#8217;s sources included not only the highly placed Iranian &#8220;who remains anonymous for security reasons.&#8221; He also claimed verification by French intelligence that &#8220;Yukiya Amano, the current director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been given the go-ahead by the U.S. to be ready to travel to Iran and announce the agreement.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Iranian regime knows that it will have a much easier time dealing with the Obama administration than a new Romney administration.  Thus, it would not be surprising at all if Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader were willing to give Obama the opportunity to boast to voters on the eve of the election that his diplomacy-and-sanctions policy has worked after all.</p>
<p>Kahlili reported that, according to his Iranian source, &#8220;the U.S. delegation urged an announcement, even if only on a temporary nuclear deal, before the U.S. elections to help Obama get re-elected.&#8221;  The U.S. delegation also reportedly warned the Iranian negotiator that a Romney presidency &#8220;would surely move more toward Israel if Iran does not stand by Obama&#8221; and that &#8220;if Iran does not stand by Obama, Israel will attack Iran.&#8221;</p>
<p>WND asked for comment on its report from the State Department and the White House.  It got no response from the State Department and a &#8220;no comment&#8221; from the White House.</p>
<p>If Kahlili&#8217;s report turns out to be true, the implications are staggering. To win re-election, Barack Obama is willing to pull a Neville Chamberlain and announce a nice sounding deal with a totally untrustworthy, ruthless regime just in time for the election. Valerie Jarrett will have taken over high stakes diplomacy for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who just took a bullet for the Obama team in accepting responsibility for the Benghazi security disaster.  Israel has once again been thrown under the bus.  And our European allies, who stuck their necks out with very tough sanctions against Iran, have been excluded from the negotiations.</p>
<p>The Iranian regime has used negotiations as a stalling tactic for years.  Only this time, it is for keeps.  Obama has chased his unconditional negotiations dream for four years, allowing Iran to get closer and closer to achieving its goal of nuclear arms. If Reza Kahlili&#8217;s story is true, the Iranian regime will succeed sooner rather than later.</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>Negotiating with a Fantasy of the Iranian Regime</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/world-powers-resume-%e2%80%9ctalks%e2%80%9d-charade-with-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=world-powers-resume-%25e2%2580%259ctalks%25e2%2580%259d-charade-with-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 24 May 2012 04:47:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Baghdad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IAEA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[talks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=132929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[...And playing willingly into Tehran’s hands.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Picture-13.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-132930" title="Picture-13" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Picture-13.gif" alt="" width="375" height="240" /></a>The Iranian regime with which the P5+1 countries launched their second round of nuclear talks on Wednesday in Baghdad is not the real Iranian regime. That is to say, the Western, Russian, and Chinese diplomats will—at best—be negotiating with a fantasy-projection of the Iranian regime, and Tehran’s negotiators will be all too compliant in playing the part assigned to them.</p>
<p>At worst, the P5+1 diplomats will actually be aware of the true nature of the Iranian regime, but will act out the script of “negotiating constructively” with it so as to further certain ancillary goals—like lowering oil prices, boosting political fortunes, and above all, forestalling a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.</p>
<p>This constructive, reasonable Iran, ready to strike a deal and essentially having the same aims as the P5+1 countries except for a few bridgeable areas of disagreement, cannot be the same Iran that just this week <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/20/iran-committed-to-full-annihilation-of-israel-says-top-iranian-military-commander/">called for</a> the “full annihilation of Israel,” that has taken a steady toll of <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/record-number-of-u-s-troops-killed-by-iranian-weapons-20110728">American lives in Iraq</a>, that <a href="http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8101301309">bragged</a> earlier this month of its navy’s ability to threaten New York City, that has been responsible for an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state_terrorism">ongoing string of terrorist atrocities</a> for over three decades, and that continues to <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/ahmadinejad-abu-musa-irans-lengthening-shadow-gulf/">intimidate</a> its Persian Gulf neighbors with subversion and very real threats of conquest.</p>
<p>There is, indeed, a situation in which a regime like Iran’s would sue for reasonable terms and real compromise—if it were truly on the ropes. But, while the sanctions are taking an economic toll, not even the most determined optimists claim that Tehran is anywhere near teetering. Not while its nuclear program <a href="http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=271195">continues at full speed</a>, and while, as Israeli analyst Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael Segall <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/ahmadinejad-abu-musa-irans-lengthening-shadow-gulf/">notes</a>, it has been continuing a policy of strategic “buildup, defiance, and power projection” in the face of all Western blandishments.</p>
<p>IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear-deal-20120523,0,962424.story">claim</a> on Tuesday, then, about an imminent—but still-unsigned—deal with Iran allowing inspection of some of its nuclear sites was a kind of ominous prelude to the Baghdad talks. It was the IAEA whose report last November—confirming all of Israel’s warnings about Iran’s unceasing progress toward the bomb—seemed to create a more serious atmosphere regarding the threat. It was Amano himself who heightened the sense of crisis in March by <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3399">warning</a> that Iran had tripled production of higher-grade enriched uranium.</p>
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		<title>World Powers to Iran: Keep Building Nukes</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/world-powers-to-iran-keep-building-nukes/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=world-powers-to-iran-keep-building-nukes</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:55:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Catherine Ashton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[P5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[talks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=128945</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the winner of the first round of nuclear talks is the Islamic Republic. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/web-iranOSM13-N_1395766cl-8.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-128950" title="web-iranOSM13-N_1395766cl-8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/web-iranOSM13-N_1395766cl-8.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a>On Saturday the P5+1 countries (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/europe/iran-begins-nuclear-talks-with-six-nations.html?hp">met with Iran</a> in Istanbul for what is being called a “first round” of nuclear talks. By all accounts, it was a “round” with little or no substance—except one major result: the parties agreed to reconvene for another “round” in Baghdad in another five weeks, on May 23.</p>
<p>No one seriously concerned about Iran’s ongoing enrichment of uranium, its ongoing transfer of centrifuges to its deep-underground Fordo site, its ongoing work on nuclear-weapons development, could be pleased with this result. As Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4216279,00.html">put it bluntly</a>: “My initial impression is that Iran has been given a freebie. It’s got five weeks to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition.”</p>
<p>Some, though, were indeed happy with the meeting’s outcome.</p>
<p>One was EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton—who not long ago made waves when she <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/22/toulouse-jihadist-revealed/">reacted to the Toulouse terror</a> by equating the Israeli army with mass murderers. Ashton called Saturday’s talks “constructive and useful” and rhapsodized: “We expect that subsequent meetings will lead to concrete steps toward a comprehensive negotiated solution which restores international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program.”</p>
<p>And another party that reacted with great satisfaction was the Iranians themselves. Their chief negotiator Saeed Jalili exulted that the talks were a “positive sign” compared with “the language of threats and pressure that do not work on the Iranian people.”</p>
<p>And AFP <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iran-world-powers-set-depth-talks-baghdad-020326230.html">reported</a> on Sunday that “Iran’s media, including outlets close to the leadership…hailed renewed talks with world powers as positive[.]” The government-run, English-language <em>Iran Daily</em> trumpeted on its front page: “EU Reaffirms Tehran’s Nuclear Rights.” The newspaper <em>Jomhuri Eslami</em> said the key to progress “is that America give up its political games and surrender to the realities”—that is, of Iran’s ongoing march toward the bomb.</p>
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		<title>Iran Senses Western Weakness</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/iran-senses-western-weakness/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-senses-western-weakness</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/iran-senses-western-weakness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:54:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hitler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[talks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125259</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Talking while the clock is ticking.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125266" title="Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Iran-nuclear-weapons-program-IAEA-report.gif" alt="" width="375" height="261" /></a></p>
<p>As the clock ticks closer to a nuclear-armed Iran, the Western powers are girding their loins for––more talks. Actually, they’re getting ready to talk to Iran about the <em>conditions</em> for talking some more. EU foreign policy head Catherine Ashton announced that the “P5 + 1” powers (the permanent Security Council members plus Germany) hoped to persuade “Iran to move away from its nuclear program,” and expected “from the contacts we’ve had that this process can now move forward swiftly and seriously.” Ashton didn’t produce any evidence why the Iranians would voluntarily give up the bomb, or how yet one more round of negotiations, like the so-called “crippling sanctions,” will produce anything other than giving Iran more time to “swiftly and seriously” achieve nuclear-weapons capability.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Obama administration keeps shifting the conditions under which the U.S. would take military action. Secretary of State Clinton on February 29 three times told the House Foreign Affairs committee that “it’s absolutely clear that the president’s policy is to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons capability.” A few days later anonymous “administration officials” said Clinton had “misspoken,” which Obama confirmed in his speech to AIPAC where he several times asserted that “<em>obtaining</em> a nuclear weapon,” not capability, would be the casus belli, even though he has no clue exactly how we’d know the mullahs had nuclear weapons before they announced it to the world, the same way we found out Pakistan and North Korea had them. The purpose of this shift is obvious: it provides more time for “diplomacy” and “sanctions” to work their magic, and puts more pressure on Israel not to do anything that might make unpleasant headlines compromising Obama’s reelection. However, the history of Pakistan and North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons shows that the consequence of this delay will be a nuclear-armed Iran.</p>
<p>But that contingency doesn’t seem to bother Obama’s academic allies like Bruce Ackerman, who recently provided a specious justification for inaction in the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>. The Yale law professor asserted that American support for a preemptive strike on Iran “would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution.” The Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/11/a_misreading_of_law_and_history_on_preemptive_strikes_113442.html">dismantled</a> Ackerman’s tendentious and erroneous interpretation, which Berkowitz shows is an attempt “to bend the precedents and provisions of international law and twist the facts of American politics to conform to their policy preferences.” The left’s hysterics about the illegality and immorality of “preemption,” of course, has always been an ideological pretext for demonizing and hence discouraging U.S. military action, which to the left is almost never justified, given America’s neo-colonial crimes and oppression.</p>
<p>But preemption has for millennia been an obvious common-sense response to an aggressor. The 4<sup>th</sup> century B.C. orator Demosthenes used a memorable metaphor for preemption when he was trying to rouse the indolent Athenians to use force to resist Philip II of Macedon’s aggression: “To manage war properly, you must not follow the trend of events but must forestall them . . . But you Athenians, possessing unsurpassed resources––fleet, infantry, cavalry, revenues–– have never to this very day employed them aright, and yet you carry on war with Philip exactly as a barbarian boxes. The barbarian, when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.” In other words, anticipate the aggressor’s actions, and, as Nathan Bedford Forrest supposedly put it, “ Get there firstest with the mostest.”</p>
<p>So much is mere common sense, but common sense is woefully lacking in the West’s response to a regime of religious fanatics in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unwilling to act, whether because of fear, ideology, or political self-interest, Western leaders continue to camouflage their inaction with sanctions and diplomatic palaver. Yet the historical record of both in deterring a committed aggressor is one not just of failing to stop aggression, but of enabling it. The Thirties, of course, provide numerous examples, starting with the League of Nations’ toothless response to Japanese aggression in China, moving on to the flaccid reaction to Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and culminating with the Munich conference that delivered Czechoslovakia to Hitler and paved the way for World War II. In each case, sanctions and talk led to more aggression, because the aggressors correctly interpreted that sanctions and words were the face-saving excuses of nations afraid to act.</p>
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