Mysterious Sudan Strike

Sudanese President and sleazeball war criminal Omar

 

Sudan 'terrorist state', says Israel official after raid

 

Sudan is a "dangerous terrorist state," a top Israeli defence official said after the Sudanese government accused Israel of carrying out a deadly missile strike on a military factory in Khartoum.

Sudanese officials say the attack on the Yarmouk facility south of Khartoum, which took place at around midnight on Tuesday and killed two people, was carried out by four radar-evading aircraft.
Israel, which has long accused Khartoum of serving as a base of support for militants from the Islamist Hamas movement which rules Gaza, has refused all comment on the claim.

"Sudan is a dangerous terrorist state. To know exactly what happened (there), it will take some time to understand," Amos Gilad told Israel's army radio.  Asked directly whether Israel was involved in the attack, Gilad, who serves as director of policy and political-military affairs at the defence ministry, refused to reply directly.

The Israeli air force, he noted, was "one of the most prestigious in the world, a fact which had been proved many times in the past. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is regarded a war criminal. Sudan has also served as the operational base for (the late Al-Qaeda chief Osama) bin Laden," Gilad pointed out.

"The regime is supported by Iran and it serves as a route for the transfer, via Egyptian territory, of Iranian weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists," he told the radio.

Khartoum has said it found evidence of Israeli involvement among the remnants of the explosives at the blast site. "We think Israel did the bombing," Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said, adding: "We reserve the right to react at a place and time we choose."

It is not the first mystery blast which has prompted allegations of Israeli involvement.

[France 24]

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UPDATE:

Sudan Strike - A Blow to Iran -Yaakov Lappin

Sudan has been a central transit point for Iranian arms headed to Gaza. Israel has remained officially silent, but if Israeli planes did fly 1,900 km. to the Sudanese capital to bomb a rocket factory, the move could represent a major blow to Iranian efforts to smuggle arms into Gaza, and contain a demonstrable threat to Tehran of what may occur if it continues to develop nuclear weapons.

With Iran's nuclear sites roughly the same distance from Israel, an air strike in Khartoum would demonstrate Israel's long-range capabilities, and make the military threat on the table that much more tangible.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Iran Will "Dash To The Nuclear Finish Line"

Countdown to the Red Line in Iran -Reuel Marc Gerecht & Mark Dubowitz

Iran's oil exports have been halved by economic sanctions, but that still leaves the regime with around $50 billion in oil income this year, according to calculations by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Nevertheless, the Iranian economy has taken a substantial hit from sanctions. Tehran's recent currency restrictions were also a warning: In all probability the regime is battening down the hatches, husbanding foreign-exchange reserves, and preparing for a long ordeal.
   
Given the progress that Tehran has already made with its nuclear plans - still-hidden centrifuge manufacturing plants, enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, a likely weaponization facility at Parchin, and an extensive ballistic-missile program - the regime faces a short, relatively inexpensive dash to the nuclear finish line.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Would Hizbullah and Hamas Join Iran in a War Against Israel? -Ehud Eilam

There is a prevalent view that in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran, Tehran's proxies in Lebanon and Gaza - Hizbullah and Hamas - would join in retaliation against Israel. A more likely scenario is that those groups' participation will be limited at best. Hizbullah must consider its crumbling support from the weakened Assad regime, as well as popular opposition within Lebanon to its role in a military conflict with Israel. Hamas' recent feud with Iran over the group's lack of support for the Assad regime could render it reluctant to assist in the fight against Israel.
(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University)
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Hamas Rockets Rain on Southern Israel

Gaza rocket being fired into Israel. 
Note that they are being fired from civilian areas in the city center

Injured Israeli being evacuated to Beersheba. 



 

 



Hamas Launches New Rocket Offensive Against Israel -Barry Rubin

In 12 hours during the night and early morning of October 23-24, Hamas and its allies launched 68 rockets and also mortar shells [B's note: that number has increased to 80 rockets in 24 hours]. 

Iron Dome anti-missile missiles brought down 7 of them. Two foreign workers on Israeli farms were critically wounded; three or four others were lightly wounded; and several houses were damaged. Israeli civilians were told to stay near shelters and schools were closed. Earlier, a roadside bomb seriously injured an Israeli officer.

Israeli military forces hit two rocket-firing teams, an area from which launchers were firing, and tunnels used to smuggle in rocket motors. Similar short-term heavy barrages took place in March and June. Hamas sources reported three dead, two of them Hamas soldiers.

There are two important factors in this latest offensive. First, the attacks from Hamas and the smaller groups it allows to operate from the Gaza Strip are increasing. Second, an emboldened Hamas is now more directly involved in these operations.

This trend is a direct result of the fact that Hamas now feels secure in that its Muslim Brotherhood allies are governing Egypt and allowing more, and apparently more advanced, military equipment to enter the Gaza Strip.

The danger is that as the Brotherhood consolidates power in Cairo and Hamas becomes even more confident it will at some point open a war against Israel. Such a conflict would bring even more Brotherhood-Hamas cooperation and such things as escalated attacks across the Egypt-Israel border and the entry of Egyptian volunteers into the fighting.

[The Rubin Report]

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Three Hurt in Gaza Rocket Attacks

Five houses suffered direct hits. School has been suspended in the area and [Israeli] residents within 10 km. of Gaza were instructed to remain inside fortified spaces.

(Ynet News)

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UPDATES:

Israel to UN: Silence on Gaza Rockets Gives Terror a Green Light
-Joshua Davidovich

Israel's ambassador to the UN called on the Security Council to issue a statement condemning fire from Gaza after more than 80 rockets slammed into southern Israel over a single day. Ron Prosor warned Security Council members that if they don't condemn the rocket attacks, Hamas and other terrorists will interpret the silence "as a green light for terror."
(Times of Israel)


Why Hamas Feels Confident Enough to Fire Rockets at Israel
-Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas' involvement in the current rocket and mortar attacks on Israel is a sign of its growing sense of confidence, especially in the wake of the visit to Gaza of the emir of Qatar. Hamas knows that it also enjoys the support of many Arabs and Muslims thanks to the Arab Spring, including the full backing of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi.

Hamas feels confident that Morsi would not remain idle if Israel retaliated against the rocket fire with a massive military operation in Gaza. The least that Hamas expects from Morsi in response to such an operation would be to sever Egypt's diplomatic ties with Israel.

Hamas has to prove to its critics and political rivals that it has not abandoned the "armed resistance against the Zionist enemy."
(Jerusalem Post)
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VideoBite: Peace Calling, No Answer

Poignant, sardonic video highlighting Palestinian intransigence

The Beginning of the End

Islamic Awakening Is Not a Revolution -Hussein Agha & Robert Malley

• Everywhere, Israel faces the rise of Islam, of militancy, of radicalism. Former allies are gone; erstwhile foes reign supreme. But the Islamists have different and broader objectives. They wish to promote their Islamic project, which means consolidating their rule where they can, refraining from alienating the West, and avoiding perilous and precocious clashes with Israel.
• The quest to establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state was never at the heart of the Islamist project. Hamas, the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, harbors grander, less territorially confined but also less immediately achievable designs. They can live with a range of transient arrangements: an interim agreement; a long-term truce, or hudna; a possible West Bank confederation with Jordan, with Gaza moving toward Egypt. All will advance the further Islamization of Palestinian society.
• Israel fears the Islamic awakening. But the more immediate threat could be to the Palestinian national movement. There is no energy left in the independence project; associated with the old politics and long-worn-out leaderships, it has expended itself.
• Islamists prospered in opposition because they could blame others; they could suffer in power because others will blame them. Dilute their domestic and foreign agenda, and they may well lose their rank-and-file; pursue it and they will alienate non-Islamists and the West. Postpone the struggle against Israel, and their rhetoric will appear disconnected from their policy; wage it, and their policy will appear dangerous to their new allies in the West.
  
• If they explain that their moderation is tactical, they will expose themselves; stay silent and they will confuse the base. The power of political Islam flowed chiefly from not exercising it. Its recent successes could signal the eve of its decline.
  
  How much simpler was life on the other side.

(New York Review of Books)
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Arab Israeli Woman Loves Israel

Boshra Khalaila

Telling Israel Like It Is - in Arabic -Philippe Assouline

• Boshra Khalaila [pictured], a secular, independent and patriotic Israeli Arab woman, grew up in the Arab village of Deir Hana, in the Galilee. Her first contact with Jewish Israelis came at age 18 when she enrolled in Haifa University. "I am married and doing a master’s degree [in Tel Aviv]. I am a liberal, free woman, with all the rights that I could enjoy. I compare myself to other women my age in Jordan, the territories, Egypt, any Arab country. They don't have the rights that I have: freedom of expression, the right to vote. They are forced into marriage at a young age, and religious head covering, despite their own convictions. With me it's the opposite; I have everything."
• When I asked her why she feels the need to speak up for Israel so publicly, she answered: "To sacrifice from myself for the country that I live in and that gives me rights, that's a natural price."
• Boshra was part of a team of five people, including another Israeli Arab and a Druze, who were sent to South Africa with "Faces of Israel" during Israel Apartheid Week. "I study in the same educational institutions, ride the same buses, shop in the same supermarkets. Everything that they say is absolutely false. And I do feel that I belong to my country."
• At an Islamic, Arabic-language radio station in Johannesburg, the interviewer, a religious Saudi man, asked her why Israel doesn't let Muslims pray or go to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. "I told them that in my own small village in the Galilee there are not only one but two mosques and two imams who both get a monthly salary from the state. The interviewer was in shock. I added that I could go pray at Al Aqsa mosque at will, freely."
• "I said to him: 'In Saudi Arabia, can a woman drive a car?' He said no. I said: 'I can.' And he was silent. I asked: 'Can a woman in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia meet a man and get to know him before getting married or is she just forced into marriage at a young age?' He said no, she can't. I said: 'I can.'"
• Boshra does not identify with the Palestinians, nor would she move to a Palestinian state were it ever to arise.

(Times of Israel)
[Hat Tip: Linda F]
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Atomic Bread

Iranians Are Beginning to Panic Amid Rising Costs 
   
Iranians are beginning to panic about the deteriorating economic situation.
Pensioner Kamal G., 73, purchased a kilogram of minced meat for over 200,000 rials ($16), more than double what he paid two months ago. Chicken moved out of his price range a couple of weeks ago.
     
"Soon I will be spreading atomic energy on my bread," he says.    
(DPA-Gulf Times-Qatar)
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New Film on Iran in Theatres

Based on a true story, this new film highlights Iran's [then new] Islamist revolution

Apple leaves Israel off the Map App

Apple's new Map App leaves Jerusalem without a star, which designates a capital city

New iPhones Snapped Up in Gaza Despite High Prices, Poverty        

Apple's new iPhone 5 is selling well in Gaza, despite prices almost double what it costs in the U.S. The phones arrive via smuggling tunnels.
     
Maariv last week reported that the iPhone 5's new Apple Maps application does not list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and its built-in World Clock app shows Jerusalem as a city without an associated country.       
(Reuters)
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Join campaign “Amend Apple Maps to list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” – click here.

Syria: Will the Alawites Get Massacred or Will They Secure Separation?

The Alawites and the Future of Syria -Harold Rhode

For Alawites, the only solution [is] a separate Alawite state, or entity, where they could control their destiny and not be under the dreaded Sunni yoke.

The Alawites would be wise to fear that, whatever happens in Syria, the Sunnis will massacre them for having governed Syria and for having killed so many Sunnis during the current war. Assad, therefore, cannot give in. He and the Alawites - whether they support or oppose Assad - are fighting for their very existence.

The only way to end this civil war is to let them have control over their destiny - either as an autonomous region in Syria or as an independent entity. Whatever happens, they will insist that they remain well-armed. (Gatestone Institute)
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Politically Incorrect Questions about Arab Politics -Aaron David Miller

If the Arabs democratize, they will do so in their own unique way consistent with their politics, culture and history. In a region still dominated by religious strictures, regional conflicts, and tribal and provincial divisions, the arc of history on democratization is bound to be a long one.
(National Interest)
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Watching Jordan

The Jordanian Royal Family as pictured in their 2011 New Years Card

Will Jordan Be Next to Fall? -Lee Smith

Should Jordan's King Abdullah II become the next Arab ruler to fall, it will mark another major setback for the U.S. in the region. For Israel it's significantly worse news. Jerusalem would lose its remaining strategic partner in the region - having already lost Turkey and Egypt - and face a possible nightmare on its longest border, exposing the country's center to attacks from the east...
(Tablet)
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Deadly Emails...An Iranian Weapon

U.S.: Iran Aids Syria in Tracking Opposition -Ellen Nakashima 
 
Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security is providing crucial equipment and technical help to Syria in its effort to track opposition forces through the Internet and other forms of electronic surveillance, according to U.S. officials. Iran has long experience in tracking dissidents internally.
   
Iran advises the Syrians on how to gain access to Web forums and chat rooms, where they pose as opposition members to identify and track targets, one intelligence official said. Syrian agents are then dispatched to kill the rebels.
   
Pro-government hackers have covertly installed spyware on activists' computers by sending them e-mail and Skype messages purporting to be from opposition sympathizers that include attachments containing surveillance tools, said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy group.
(Washington Post)
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Teen Girl Takes on Taliban



Before Her Shooting, Malala Yousafzai Spoke Out Against Taliban

Malala Yousafzai [pictured], a 14-year-old schoolgirl who had become a symbol of resistance against the Taliban, was shot by Taliban gunmen in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Malala survived the attack but underwent complicated surgery to remove a bullet from her head, and is reported to be in stable condition.

The incident sparked outrage among Pakistanis who held anti-Taliban protests after the attack. A spokesman for the Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told BBC Urdu that Malala’s life would not be spared if she survived.
[Wall Street Journal]
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UPDATES:

Shot Pakistani girl’s father happy for ‘miracle’ -Cassandra Vinograd

The father of a 15-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban described his daughter’s survival and ongoing recovery as miraculous Friday, and said her shooting was a turning point for Pakistan.

Malala Yousufzai is recovering at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where she was flown for treatment and protection from Taliban threats after she was shot on Oct. 9 in northwestern Pakistan.

Her father, Ziauddin, along with her mother and two brothers were reunited with her after flying to the U.K. A picture issued by the hospital [see above] showed the wounded teen, her head covered in a light blue scarf, reclining in her hospital bed with her family gathered by her side.

Ziauddin Yousufzai said he initially feared he would need to prepare for his daughter’s funeral and that her status now is “a miracle for us.”

“She is recovering at an encouraging speed and we are very happy,” he told reporters in Birmingham.

He expressed gratitude for prayers and well-wishes that have poured in from all over the world, noting that the attack on his daughter had united left and right-wing forces in Pakistan in condemnation.
[The Washington Times]
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Shooting Exposes Taliban Cowardice -Eric Patterson

Why did the Taliban attempt to assassinate a girl? Why do they see her as a threat?

She represents the kind of woman the Taliban fears: a living, God-fearing alternative to their repressive social order. Indeed, what terrifies the Taliban the most is that Miss Yousafza is a traditional Muslim citizen. This young woman covers her hair; she is modest; she respects the Prophet; she respects Allah; she roots her arguments in common sense, faith and human dignity, and she tells the truth about what she sees.

There is nothing more threatening to the Taliban, because Miss Yousafza is in accord with the values of the majority of Muslims around the world. In short, the Taliban fear her because she represents a vision of the female Muslim citizen that resonates with the Muslim everyman and everywoman — and threatens to dump the Taliban into the ashbin of history.

Malala Yousafza is a modest, pious young Muslim woman who represents tens of millions of Muslim women around the world who want a better life for the women in their families. That is why the Taliban is scared of a girl.
[Washington Times]
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Mixed Messages = Foreign Policy Failure

A Red Line Iran Would Take Seriously -Michael Singh

• While red lines have been mischaracterized as automatic triggers or even deadlines for war, their purpose is to facilitate diplomacy. Red lines set by the U.S. are crucial for determining the "rules of the game" in geopolitics. Red lines create predictability and can also foster stability by heading off avoidable conflicts and forming the context for diplomacy.
• Red lines must possess enforceability and credibility. The U.S. red line on Iran - that Iran simply cannot have a nuclear weapon - falls short on both counts.
• It is not enforceable because once Tehran gets sufficiently close to possessing a nuclear weapon, the final steps can probably be done relatively quickly and in secret - and thus are not detectable.
• The U.S. red line also, regrettably, lacks credibility. Washington did not move to halt the North Korean or Syrian nuclear programs; we did so in Iraq but at so high a price that "avoiding another Iraq" has practically become a mantra of U.S. foreign policy. Other states are understandably skeptical that we would move to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons if and when the moment finally comes.
• And when it comes to credibility, the U.S. has undermined itself on multiple fronts - by rewarding Iranian defiance with better offers at the negotiating table, by enforcing sanctions reluctantly, and by allowing senior officials to speak out publicly against the military option that the president insists remains "on the table."

(Washington Post)
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Green Leadership

This video features Israel's leading role in green technology in an unusual way

Israeli Court Victory

Jerusalem Court: Jews Should Be Allowed to Pray on Temple Mount
-Oz Rosenberg
 
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Malka Aviv said that the police should allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. The High Court of Justice has previously ruled that policy on the Temple Mount is the sole purview of the police. Police currently enforce a Muslim ban on Jewish prayer at the site, citing security concerns.
   
"There is room to allow for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount," said the judge during a remand hearing for Hagai Weiss, who was arrested on suspicion of trying to pray at the site.

"The [police] explanation that Muslims don't approve of Jews praying on the Temple Mount cannot, in and of itself, prevent Jews from fulfilling their religious obligations and praying on the Temple Mount." She said Jewish prayer should be permitted on the Temple Mount "in a structured fashion, in a place designated for it," that would maintain the security of Jewish worshipers.
     
Israel gained control of the Temple Mount in the Six-Day War in 1967, but decided to leave the administration of the mount in the hands of the Jerusalem Wakf, or Islamic trust, which bans non-Muslim worship in the compound. Fifteen Jews have been arrested over the past few days for trying to pray on the Temple Mount. 
(Ha'aretz)
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The Economy of Flag Making in Pakistan

U.S. Film Protests Bring Boom for Pakistan Flag Makers  

As Pakistan's mullahs railed against a U.S.-made anti-Islam film, Naveed Haider's print works in Rawalpindi went into overdrive, running off hundreds of U.S. flags for angry protesters to burn at demonstrations.
   
"Whenever we have these demonstrations, I make 10 times as much money as normal," he told AFP.
   
With a surge in anti-American feeling in Pakistan, the U.S. has replaced traditional rival India as enemy number one in public opinion, according to the flag-sellers.
   
Asim, 22, a waiter in a seafood restaurant, says he has set four U.S. flags alight in a month. "It brings me such pleasure," he adds. Protests against the film have led to more than 50 deaths across the Muslim world.    
(AFP)
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College Students: Who Raised These Idiots?

College Students from a cross section of the best schools in the USA gave Ahmadinejad a standing ovation and gushed with enthusiastic support. 
Who raised these idiots?

U.S. Students Give Ahmadinejad a Standing Ovation -Josh Lipowsky

During his recent visit to the UN in New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a private dinner and briefing at the Warwick Hotel with more than 150 students and professors from Harvard, NYU, Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Columbia and Stony Brook.

Ahmadinejad was greeted with a standing ovation by these "future leaders" when he entered the room. Students later addressed him as "Your Excellency" during the question-and-answer session. One even prefaced her remarks by saying it was "a pleasure" to be in his presence.
(JTA)
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A Picture More Powerful Than Words

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

What World Leadership Looks Like

Canadian Prime Minister Harper

Harper Will Defend Israel, "Whatever the Cost"

[Canadian] Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he is prepared to suffer any political backlash that comes his way for speaking out against anti-Israel rhetoric.

Harper told an audience that while Israel is receptive to fair criticism, Canada is obligated to stand up for its ally when it comes under attack from others.

"Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us."
[CTV]
See video highlight above
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Historian Pins Palestinians

Benjamin Morris, ace historian clarifies the Palestinian position

Historian Benny Morris: The Palestinians Are Not Interested in 2-State Solution
- Coby Ben-Simhon

• Benny Morris, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University and one of the most prominent Israeli historians of his generation, declared:
  
  "The decades of studying the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which led to nine books, left me with a feeling of deep despair....I've written enough about a conflict that has no solution, mainly due to the Palestinians' consistent rejection of a solution of two states for two peoples."
• Regarding his book One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, he says, "The objective is to expose the goals of the Palestinian national movement to extinguish the Jewish national project and to inherit all of Palestine for the Arabs and Islam."
• He asserts that unlike the Zionists, who consented to dividing the land between the two peoples living in it, since its inception the Palestinian national movement has never retreated from its demand to establish a single state in the disputed territory. "In the end, both sides of the Palestinian movement - the fundamentalists led by Hamas and the secular bloc led by Fatah - are interested in Muslim rule over all of Palestine, with no Jewish state and no partition."
• "Abbas currently refuses to hold negotiations with the Israelis because negotiations could lead to a resolution to the conflict. He has no desire or intention of reaching a solution of two states for two peoples."
• "In the Israeli education system, in general, there is no demonization of the Arab. He might not be described positively, but he's not the Devil. There [in the PA], the Jews are completely demonized."

(Ha'aretz)
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UPDATE:


Fatah Reaffirms Option of Armed Struggle Against Israel
-Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinians have not abandoned the option of armed struggle against Israel, Mahmoud Aloul, a member of the Fatah central committee and former PA governor of Nablus, said.   
(Jerusalem Post)
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Scholar Calls for More Cartoons

 

Mocking Muhammad Is Not Hate Speech -Daniel Pipes, PhD [pictured]

To stop Islamist violence over perceived insults to Muhammad, I argued in a FoxNews.com article on Friday, editors and producers daily should display cartoons of Muhammad "until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger."

This appeal prompted a solemn reply from Sheila Musaji of The American Muslim website, who deemed it "irresponsible and beyond the pale." Why so? Because, as she puts it, "The solution to escalating violence and hate speech is not more hate speech."

That sounds sensible enough. But does mocking Muhammad, burning a Koran, or calling Islam a cult constitute hate speech? And what about the respectful representations of Muhammad in the buildings of the U.S. Supreme Court or the New York State Supreme Court? Even they caused upset and rioting.

Hate speech, legal authorities agree, involves words directed against a category of persons. Here's a typical definition, from USLegal.com: "incitement to hatred primarily against a group of persons defined in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and the like."

Attacking the sanctities of a religion, I submit, is quite unlike targeting the faithful of that religion. The former is protected speech, part of the give and take of the market place of ideas, not all of which are pretty. Freedom of speech means the freedom to insult and be obnoxious. So long as it does not include incitement or information that urges criminal action, nastiness is an essential part of our heritage.

Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and other faith communities in the West have learned since the Enlightenment to endure vicious lacerations on their symbols and doctrines.

If proof be needed, recall Monty Python's Life of Brian, Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, Andres Serrano's Piss Christi, and Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary. Or the avalanche of antisemitic cartoons spewing from Muslims.

For an over-the-top recent example, The Onion humor website published a cartoon under the heading, "No One Murdered Because of This Image." It shows Moses, Jesus, Ganesha, and Buddha in the clouds, engaged in what the caption delicately understates as "a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity." As the Onion mock-reportingly but accurately goes on, "Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day."

I asked for the cartoons to be published again and again to establish that Islamists must not chip away at the freedom to mock and insult by hiding behind bogus claims of incitement. Name an instance, Ms Musaji, when biting remarks about Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam have led to riots and murders by non-Muslims against Muslims?

I cannot think of a single one.

When attacks on Muslims take place, they occur in response to terrorism by Muslims; that's no excuse, to be sure, but it does indicate that violence against Muslims has no connection with lampooning Muhammad or desecrating Korans. Muslims need to grow thick skins like everyone else; this is one of the by-products of globalization. The insulation of old is gone for good.

To make matters worse, Islamists tell us Be Careful with Muhammad! and threaten those with the temerity to discuss, draw, or even pretend to draw the prophet of Islam, even as they freely disparage and insult other religions. I can cite many examples of actors, satirists, artists, cartoonists, writers, editors, publishers, ombudsmen, and others openly admitting their intimidation about discussing Islamic topics, a problem even Ms Musaji herself has acknowledged.

To cool the temperature, Muslims can take two steps: end terrorism and stop the rioting over cartoons and novels. That will cause the antagonism toward Islam built up over the past decade to subside. At that point, I will happily retract my appeal to editors and producers to flaunt offensive cartoons of Muhammad.
[Fox News]
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Rushdie Reflects

The Satanic Video -Bill Keller

Salman Rushdie's new memoir recounts a decade under a clerical death sentence for the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. The fatwa was dropped in 1998 and Rushdie is out of hiding, but he is still careful.


In his new book, Rushdie recounts being urged by the British authorities who were protecting him to "lower the temperature" by issuing a statement that could be taken for an apology. He does so. It fills him almost immediately with regret, and the attacks on him are unabated. He "had taken the weak position and was therefore treated as a weakling," he writes.
(New York Times)
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Iranians Find a Needle in the Haystack

Spy Device Disguised as Rock Blown Up near Iran Nuke     

     A spy device camouflaged as a rock near Iran's Fordo underground nuclear enrichment plant exploded last month when Revolutionary Guards attempted to move it, the Sunday Times reported this week.

       Experts who analyzed remnants of the device found it had been able to intercept data from computers at the nuclear plant.
(Al Arabiya)
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Sleeping as Iran Blazes Path to Genocide

Iran Has Taken 6 of 8 Steps on Path to Genocide -Mitch Ginsburg  

• Genocide is predictable and preventable, as long as you recognize the universal signs. And Iran, in its language and action, has taken six of the eight steps on the path to genocide, according to Dr. Gregory Stanton, founder and director of Genocide Watch.
• Talk of genocide, Stanton said - of removing a cancer or crushing a cockroach - is never just talk. "One of the best predictors of genocide is incitement to genocide," he said, "and I believe that is exactly what Iran is doing today."
• Encouraging genocide is a crime. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, signed in 1948, states that incitement "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" is illegal. Canada severed its ties with Iran on precisely those grounds.
  
• Recognizing the early signs, spotlighting them and prosecuting those encouraging the killings are some of the ways to prevent a genocide. Ignoring them, dismissing them as diabolical rhetoric or as a tactic meant to advance a different goal, is to enable the perpetrators, Stanton said.
• Over the years Stanton realized that all genocides follow eight stages. They are, in this order: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial. Iran, he said, had:
• Classified and symbolized Israel through exclusionary ideology and hate speech;
• Dehumanized it - "overcoming the normal human revulsion against murder" - by portraying the potential victims as a "cancer" in need of eradication;
• Organized fanatical militias (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps);
• Polarized the society by repressing dissent and arresting moderates;
• Prepared for the killing by denying a past genocide and by constructing weapons of mass destruction;
• And, through global terrorism, have even begun extermination.

(Times of Israel)
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Obama's Cairo Doctrine Dead

Obama in Cairo, June 2009

 

Obama's 'Cairo Doctrine' In Shambles -Charles Krauthammer

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama's foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

In June 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised "a new beginning" offering Muslims "mutual respect," unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.

But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.

First, he would cleanse by confession. Then he would heal. Why, given the unique sensitivities of his background — "my sister is half-Indonesian," he proudly told an interviewer in 2007, amplifying on his exquisite appreciation of Islam — his very election would revolutionize relations. And his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains:

• An outstretched hand to Iran's mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution.

• Withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence.

• A fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan.

• Returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar al-Assad — "a reformer," suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.

These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the U.S. and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands. It's now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around.

The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaida is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one's seen and may not even exist. What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to U.S. influence?

Religious provocations are endless. Resentment about the five-century decline of the Islamic world is a constant. What's new — the crucial variable — is the unmistakable sound of a superpower in retreat. Ever since Henry Kissinger flipped Egypt from the Soviet to the American camp in the early 1970s, the U.S. had dominated the region. No longer.

"It's time," declared Obama to wild applause of his convention, "to do some nation-building right here at home." He'd already announced a strategic pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific. Made possible because "the tide of war is receding."

Nonsense. From the massacres in Nigeria to the charnel house that is Syria, violence has, if anything, increased. What is receding is Obama's America.

It's as axiomatic in statecraft as in physics: Nature abhors a vacuum. Islamists rush in to fill the space and declare their ascendancy. America's friends are bereft, confused, paralyzed.

Islamists rise across North Africa. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria.

Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad "meeting" his international "obligations." The Gulf States beg the U.S. to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain ... Israel. Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests burned.

And what is the administration's official response? It denounces — a movie trailer! It asks Google to "review" the trailer's presence on YouTube. Deputies have a midnight "voluntary interview" with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of free speech.

What else can Obama do? At the convention, Democrats endlessly lauded themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over our embassies as mobs chant, "Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas." A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled USAID from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama "reset."
[Jewish World Review]
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U.S. Buys Pakistani TV Time to Denounce Film -John Eggerton   

    The State Department confirmed that the U.S. government spent about $70,000 for ad time on TV in Pakistan to air a public service announcement from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton disassociating the government from the movie trailer on YouTube that prompted Middle East demonstrations.        
(Broadcasting and Cable)


A Raw Salafist Power Play -Michael J. Totten
 
Something offensive to Muslims (along with something offensive to just about everyone else in the world) is posted on the Internet several times every second, yet massive international uprisings break out only periodically.

What we saw last week was a raw play for political power by radical Salafists. By ginning up an anti-American mob and forcing President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, to send riot police after the demonstrators to protect the American Embassy, the Salafists were able to make him look like a tool of the West. Salafist preachers ginned up a similar mob in Tunisia.
   
Members of Congress are publicly questioning whether the Egyptian government deserves any more aid. This question is an excellent start. We certainly should make it clear to Morsi that we can make his job and his life a lot more difficult than the Salafists can.
(Gatestone Institute)
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It's Not About the Video -Ross Douthat

The greatest mistake is to believe that what's happening in the Middle East is a completely genuine popular backlash against a blasphemous anti-Islamic video made in the USA. The mobs don't exist because of an offensive movie. Both the Egyptian and Libyan assaults look like premeditated challenges to those countries' ruling parties by more extreme Islamist factions.

Anti-Americanism remains a potent rallying point for popular discontent in the Islamic world. It's pointless to behave as if a more restrictive YouTube policy might have saved us from an autumn of unrest.
(New York Times)
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Reflections on The 9-11 Anti-American Tornado

Muslim Rage & The Last Gasp of Islamic Hate -Ayaan Hirsi Ali

For a homicidal few in the Muslim world, life itself has less value than religious icons, such as the prophet or the Quran. The riots in Muslim countries—and the so-called demonstrations by some Muslims in Western countries—that invariably accompany such provocations have the appearance of spontaneity. But they are often carefully planned in advance.

Utopian ideologies have a short lifespan.

After the disillusion and bitterness will come a painful lesson: that it is foolish to derive laws for human affairs from gods and prophets. Just like the Iranian people have begun to, the Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, and perhaps Syrians and others will come to this realization. In one or two or three decades we will see the masses in these countries take to the streets—and perhaps call for American help—to liberate them from the governments they elected. This process will be faster in some places than others, but in all of them it will be bloody and painful. If we take the long view, America and other Western countries can help make this happen in the same way we helped bring about the demise of the former Soviet Union.

We must be patient. America needs to empower those individuals and groups who are already disenchanted with political Islam by helping find and develop an alternative. At the heart of that alternative are the ideals of the rule of law and freedom of thought, worship, and expression. For these values there can and should be no apologies, no groveling, no hesitation.

It was Voltaire who once said: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” As Salman Rushdie discovered, as we are reminded again as the Arab street burns, that sentiment is seldom heard in our time. Once I was ready to burn The Satanic Verses. Now I know that his right to publish it was a more sacred thing than any religion.
[Newsweek]


The Video Didn't Do It -Lee Smith

White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Benghazi and elsewhere were "not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims."

Carney's comments send the message to America's enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to tell other Americans to shut up.
   
Virtually every description in our media of the movie was attended by various aesthetic qualifiers - laughable, crude, amateurish - as if the mobs and their organizers were motivated by considerations of artistic craft. To debate the right of an American to criticize religion does not indicate sophisticated sensitivity to the feelings of others but a willingness to turn tail and abandon our principles at the first sign of a fight.
(Weekly Standard)


Can A Trailer Really Be that Potent? -Jonah Goldberg

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insists the attacks in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere were a "response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration," but were rather a spontaneous "response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting."
   
It is simply a fact that Islamist radicals, the Arab street and the Muslim world have been angry at America for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. It's also true that demagogues and other opportunists have used things like this video as an excuse to attack America and the West for generations. But our public officials now treat attacks on Islam as especially offensive - more offensive than unremarked-upon near-daily attacks on Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, atheism and just about every other faith and creed.
     
Muslim rioters get special treatment. And that's nuts. If these people are going to hate us, maybe we should just accept that fact and stand up for what we believe, without apology.
(Los Angeles Times)


Arabs Sense Weakness -Ron Ben-Yishai

• The wave of anti-West riots sweeping through the Muslim world will gradually subside, mostly because the regimes realize that this wave threatens them more than it does the West. When the riots erupted after the anti-Islam film was posted on YouTube with Arabic subtitles, the regimes in the Muslim countries displayed sympathy and understanding with the rage and violence of the masses. The street sensed that it had the government's support and went wild.
• Muslims have been experiencing a frustrating "cognitive dissonance" for the past 200 years. They are taught that Islam is a source of greatness and achievements in all fields - as was the case during the religion's golden age. The frustrating reality, however, is that despite their oil reserves, the Muslims cannot integrate into the modern world and succeed in it, while the heretics in the West boast unimaginable achievements in every field.
• Suddenly, the street became a dominant factor that imposes its will on the new Arab regimes, which are cautious not to anger it for fear they will meet a fate similar to Mubarak's. This is apparent in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Jordan and even in the PA. In the aftermath of the revolutions, the Arab street imposes its will on the regimes.
• The White House and State Department condemned the insult to the Muslim religion's values, which in the Muslim world was interpreted as an admission of guilt by the U.S. which, from the Muslims' perspective, legitimizes violence.

(Ynet News)

UPDATES:

Insulted, Muslims Spread Hatred -Shaul Rosenfeld

The same Muslim society that turns violent whenever its holy figures are disparaged, revels in the horrific portrayals of Jews and Judaism in Arab media. Iranian movies and Egyptian television shows contain hateful anti-Semitic motifs, endorsed by respected Muslim academics, that the Muslim viewer "eats up" enthusiastically.

The people of the Levant can view an esoteric film as an excuse to launch a pogrom against the infidels from the West and at the same time accept fatwas describing Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs.
(Ynet News)


Redefining Freedom of Speech? -Alan M. Dershowitz
 
Religious fanatics who are easily offended by those outside of their religion who violate the rules of their religion cannot serve as censors in democratic societies. The threat or fear of violence should not become an excuse or justification for restricting freedom of speech.
    
People who have come of age in repressive regimes which do not permit any expressions disfavored by the government may not understand that by not censoring such speech, the American government does not place its imprimatur upon it. For example, when Iranian newspapers publish anti-Semitic diatribes, the views expressed in those diatribes are the views of the government. Not so with democratic states. It is probably true that more anti-Semitic material is published in the U.S. than in Iran, simply because so much is published and almost none of it is subject to any kind of censorship.
(Gatestone Institute)
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