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White Liberals Attack Brown Islamic Dissidents by Giulio Meotti

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • “[A] section of the Western left has adopted the ideology of the Salafists, Khomeinists and Islamists. It supports their blasphemy codes, and apologias for murder.” — Nick Cohen, The Spectator.”Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!” — Pascal Bruckner, Perlentaucher.
  • “It is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism (…) The document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing.” — Lee Smith, Tablet.
  • “Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era?” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wall Street Journal.
  • Most of the solidarity to French cartoonists under threat has come from even braver — but ostracized — Muslim intellectuals.
  • At the time of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the literary “Left” stood with the Muslim “anger”, not with the persecuted writer — while all around, translators and publishers were being killed and wounded by the Iranian murderers.
  • In the global struggle for the confrontation of ideas between the West and political Islam, too often the Western values are represented by Muslim dissidents and downplayed by the liberals who should be safeguarding them. It is an unpleasant spectacle.
  • “The current situation in Europe is deeply troubling: not only are Muslim women within Europe subject to considerable oppression in many ways, such norms now risk spreading to non-Muslim women who face harassment from Muslim men. One would think that Western feminists in the United States and Europe would be very disturbed by this obvious misogyny. But sadly, with few exceptions, this does not appear to be the case”. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The French daily Le Figaro captured the tragic condition of Muslim dissidents: “Seen as ‘traitors’ by their communities, they are accused by the elites in the West of ‘stigmatizing'”.

Le Point called it “the malediction of the dissident”: “For the European left, a bright danger threatens humanity. This is not terrorism or religious fundamentalism. But dissident intellectuals in the Muslim world”.

This is the meaning of a recent list of fifteen “anti-Islamic extremists,” published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Among them are, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament and the most famous dissident from Islamic world, and Maajid Nawaz, a British Muslim who founded the Quilliam Foundation to fight radicalism, and who has been a consultant to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has attacked principled and courageous critics of radical Islamism such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left), a prominent ex-Muslim writer, and Maajid Nawaz (right), a moderate practising Muslim writer, radio host and politician. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

Nick Cohen, in The Spectator, explained:

“in the liberal orientalist world view the only ‘authentic’ Muslim is a barbarian. A battery of insults fires on any Muslim who says otherwise. They are ‘neo-conservatives,’ ‘native informants,’ and ‘Zionists’: they are as extreme as jihadists they oppose, or, let’s face it, worse…”

In short, according with Cohen, “a section of the Western left has adopted the ideology of the Salafists, Khomeinists and Islamists. It supports their blasphemy codes, and apologias for murder”.

The Wall Street Journal, in an unsigned editorial, attacked the report of the Southern Poverty Law Center: that “as if facing down violent Islamist fanatics isn’t enough, Muslim reformers now have to dodge attacks from the American left”.

Lee Smith, in Tablet, noted:

“Yet now, the SPLC is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism… The document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing”.

Nick Cohen called it “the first fatwa of the white left”. But it is not the first. That horrible document belongs to the long “flight of the intellectuals” denounced by Paul Berman: the abandonment of Enlightenment values in the face of threats to freedom of expression.

“It is time to extend our solidarity to all the rebels of the Islamic world, non-believers, atheist libertines, dissenters, sentinels of liberty, as we supported Eastern European dissidents in former times”, French writer Pascal Bruckner said. Most of Western liberals are doing exactly the opposite. Not only are they refusing “to extend our solidarity” to these rebels; instead, they are actually targeting them.

The Director of the Middle East-Mediterranean chair at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and professor at Sciences-Po, Gilles Kepel , just published a book, Fracture, in which he blasts “the intellectuals paralyzed by postcolonial guilt” and the “blindness which leads them to minimize the jihadist risk”. It is what Kepel in the book calls “Islamo-Leftism” (“Islamo-Gauchisme“), which currently targets Muslim dissidents to exclude them from the debate.

The debate reminds one that during the Cold War, when the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of The Gulag Archipelago, was attacked by fellow writers such as Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate and devout communist.

In 2006, a group of 12 writers put their names to a statement in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, warning against Islamic “totalitarianism”. “After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism”, read the appeal. “We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all”. Among the 12 promoters, eight came from the Islamic world. Most of the solidarity to French cartoonists under threat has come from even braver — but ostracized — Muslim intellectuals. In the global struggle for the confrontation of ideas between the West and political Islam, too often the Western values are represented by Muslim dissidents and downplayed by the liberals who should be safeguarding them. It is an unpleasant spectacle.

And what was Islamo-Leftism doing? Busy targeting them. Timothy Garton Ash, a leftist opinion-maker, has asked how much the success of Ayaan Hirsi Ali depends on her beauty, and has defined her “an Enlightenment fundamentalist”: “It’s no disrespect to Ms. Ali to suggest that if she had been short, squat, and squinting, her story and views might not be so closely attended to”.

Similar criticism against Hirsi Ali came from Ian Buruma, a Dutch “radical chic” journalist transplanted to Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Ibn Warraq, another Muslim dissident isolated by the Left, attacked Buruma: “Disgraceful has been Buruma’s vilification of human rights activists, especially his attacks on such heroic figures as Afshin Ellian and Ayaan Hirsi Ali”. Buruma achieves his goals in a most insidious manner: hinting and insinuating.

In the German magazine, Perlentaucher, the French author Pascal Bruckner defended Hirsi Ali from the criticism of Buruma and Garton Ash:

“It’s not enough that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live like a recluse, threatened with having her throat slit by radicals and surrounded by bodyguards. She — like the French philosophy professor Robert Redeker who has also been issued death threats on Islamicist websites — has to endure the ridicule of the high-minded idealists and armchair philosophers. She has even been called a Nazi in the Netherlands. Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims! … It is her wilful, short-fused, enthusiastic, impervious side to which Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash object, in the spirit of the inquisitors who saw devil-possessed witches in every woman too flamboyant for their tastes”.

Geert Mak, a Dutch historian, likened the film “Submission”, written by Hirsi Ali, and which cost the life of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, to the Nazi propaganda film, “The Eternal Jew”. According to Mak’s “logic”, Hirsi Ali “stigmatized” Muslims as Joseph Goebbels did Jews. Leon de Winter rightly attacked Mak’s shameful comparison in a column for Volkskrant newspaper:

“If anything can be compared with the propaganda of Goebbels, these are the decapitation videos and anti-Semitic propaganda of Arab satellite stations in Amsterdam West. Mak turns the world upside down. Anne Frank has been abused enough”.

The “Index on Censorship“, in an article by the associate director of the magazine, Rohan Jayasekera, has painted Hirsi Ali as a silly girl who had allowed herself to be manipulated by a white man (van Gogh) in exploitative employment”. The Index on Censorship was founded in 1972 by Stephen Spender in response to a plea from Soviet dissidents facing show trials in Moscow, on the principle that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that the international community has a duty to safeguard. What would people have said of his organization if it had blamed those Soviet writers instead of their persecutors?

Two years ago, Hirsi Ali was even uninvited from Brandeis University, one of the cradles of American academic liberalism that was supposed to celebrate her with an honorary degree. 85 of 350 professors at the Massachusetts university refused to host such a speaker on the Third World and Islam. If one reads what Hirsi Ali would have said on campus that day, the leftist fear of Hirsi Ali it is understandable:

“We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged…. I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women’s and girls’ basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight. The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect. So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy — punishable by death — to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era?”

Dissident ex-Muslims from the Islamic world, who have fled to the West to escape persecution and sectarianism, also see their hosts are “going soft” on their persecutors. A motion in the European Parliament to fund Hirsi Ali’s U.S. security failed to reach a quorum of half the deputies in the 785-member body. She was “abandoned to the fanatics” in Europe’s shameful capitulation to intimidation and threats.

Directors, actors, producers, writers, and film critics, who usually pontificate on everything and side with any minority, all stood silent when Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam and threats were made against his brave writer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In the last few months, we have seen many Western feminists, especially on the “left”, standing in defense of burkini. The New York Times ran an article entitled: “At the beach with my burkini“. It is the burkini and the veil, that have become symbols of human rights, and not Hirsi Ali and other Muslim feminists who fight against these religious symbols coerced on women. For many feminists and liberals, submission is demanded only by white male Christian westerners. All minorities, such as Islamic dissidents, who face this enemy are considered provocateurs. Submission of women in the Islamic world? Female mutilation such as that suffered by Hirsi Ali? Much better to rally against Dominique Strauss Khan, the French Socialist sexual predator. Hirsi Ali criticized the Western feminist silence:

“The current situation in Europe is deeply troubling: not only are Muslim women within Europe subject to considerable oppression in many ways, such norms now risk spreading to non-Muslim women who face harassment from Muslim men. One would think that Western feminists in the United States and Europe would be very disturbed by this obvious misogyny. But sadly, with few exceptions, this does not appear to be the case”.

When mullahs in Iran placed a bounty of $2.8 million — recently raised by an additional $600,000 — on the head of a British citizen, the Muslim dissident, Salman Rushdie, for having written a novel, The Satanic Verses, a large part of London’s literary “left” sided with the Ayatollah Khomeini rather than the persecuted writer. The feminist writer Germaine Greer called Rushdie a “megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin“. Roald Dahl, the bestselling author of children’s books, defined him a “dangerous opportunist“. The king of the literary spy stories, John Le Carré, called Rushdie an “idiot”. At the time of the fatwa, the literary “Left” stood with the Muslim “anger”, not with the persecuted writer – while all around, translators and publishers were being killed and wounded by the Iranian murderers.

The Algerian writer, Kamel Daoud, in addition to the edicts of Islamic preachers in his country, had to face a far more sinuous menace in France a year ago. Daoud had the courage to break the taboo against criticizing Cologne’s sexual attacks. According to Daoud, Europe welcomes immigrants with visas and material sustenance, but without addressing values. What Cologne showed, says Daoud, is how sex is “the greatest misery in the world of Allah”.

First, twenty leftist academics launched an appeal in Le Monde, where Daoud was accused of a series of ideological crimes, such as “orientalist clichés”, “essentialism”, “psychologizing”, “colonialist paternalism”, which correspond, all together, to an accusation of “racism” and “Islamophobia”. Then a book entitled “Kamel Daoud the Enquête Contre” — signed by Ahmed Bensaada and with a preface of a French journalist, Jacques-Marie Bourget — attacked “these intellectuals in North Africa, who are auxiliaries of the French neo-conservative thinkers” who need “the good negro”, a “native alibi”. Daoud was accused of being an instrument of “neo-colonialist thought”.

“The process of Islamophobia against Kamel Daoud is worthy of the Stalinist era”, wrote at Le Figaro political scientist Laurent Bouvet. In the weekly, Le Point Étienne Gernelle attacked “the fools of the regressive left”. Rafik Chekkat called Daoud a “native informant”, while Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar, in an article accused Daoud of stigmatizing Muslims: “The machismo and sexual harassment exist all over the world, why isolating this phenomenon among Muslims, instead of trying to counteract all forms? Just because they are Muslims”. A great number of articles in the French press attacked Daoud.

The same treatment was reserved for the deputy editor at the time of Italy’s largest daily, Il Corriere della Sera, the Egyptian journalist Magdi Allam. He was targeted in an appeal signed by two hundred intellectuals, historians and writers, all belonging to the cultural milieu. Allam has also recently been attacked as a “racist” by the liberal Democratic Party in an Italian town which had wanted to honor him with the honorary citizenship:

“They imply that I have a prejudice against immigrants or Muslims and this corresponds to an offense because we speak of racism. I reminded them that I was a true Italian immigrant for reasons of study. They represent me as a terrorist but I am a victim of terrorism and of those who sow intolerance: I have been living under guard escort for 14 years”.

This cowardly interdiction of Muslim liberal voices in the West went ahead with Maryam Namazie, another Islamic intellectual of Iranian origin, was “disinvited” from the University of Warwick, in England, because her lecture could “feed the Islamophobia”. The left-wing press, led by The Guardian, supported the exclusion of Namazie:

“Does the withdrawal of an invitation really amount to censorship? Her words have not been banned, the state has not gagged her. Is Namazie’s capacity to share her ideas diminished if she doesn’t appear in front of 50-odd students? After all, she can still tweet and blog, as she showed over the weekend. If anything, the whole episode has increased her audience”.

Duke University students tried to stop the talk of another Islamic dissident, Asra Nomani, author of “Standing Alone”. In France, the book of the Egyptian writer, Hamed Abdel-Samad, was taken off the market because, according to the self-censoring publisher, Piranha, it would bring “water to the mill of the extreme right”. A Muslim author denouncing “Islamic fascism” was repudiated by the fascist anti-fascist “leftists” because of false “Islamophobia” claims.

Self-righteous liberals love “moderate Islam” when it appears under the guise of Tariq Ramadan, whose goal has been summed up by Jacques Jomier: “His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the Islamification of modernity”. But the same liberals target as agents provocateurs those dissidents trying to modernize Islam. The fatwas of the white liberals hit hard as the violent ones of the Muslim extremists.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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White House Officials Divided on Islam, ISIS, Israel and Iran by Soeren Kern

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

he decision to select Army Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster to replace retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as national security advisor is setting into motion a cascade of other personnel decisions that, far from draining the swamp, appear to be perpetuating it.

  • Trump has decided to retain Yael Lempert, a controversial NSC staffer from the Obama administration. Analyst Lee Smith reported that, according to a former official in the Clinton administration, Lempert “is considered one of the harshest critics of Israel on the foreign policy far left.”
  • Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who served as the NSC’s Iran director during the Obama administration, is now in charge of policy planning for Iran and the Persian Gulf at the Trump State Department. Nowrouzzadeh, whose main task at Obama’s NSC was to help broker the Iran Nuclear Deal, is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a lobbying group widely believed to be a front group for the Islamic dictatorship in Iran.
  • “The people who are handling key elements of those conflicts now are the same people who handled those areas under Obama, despite the results of the last election. No wonder the results look equally awful.” — Lee Smith, Middle East analyst.

The people U.S. President Donald J. Trump has chosen to lead his foreign policy team may complicate efforts to fulfill his inaugural pledge to eradicate “radical Islamic terrorism” “from the face of the Earth” — a Herculean task even under the best of circumstances.

An analysis of the political appointments to the different agencies within the U.S. national security apparatus shows that the key members of the president’s foreign policy team hold widely divergent views on the threat posed by radical Islam — and on the nature of Islam itself. They also disagree on approaches to Iran, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the European Union, Russia, globalism and other national security issues.

The policy disconnect is being exacerbated by the fact that dozens of key positions within the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies remain unfilled. The result is that the administration has been relying on holdovers from the Obama administration to formulate and implement U.S. foreign policy.

Current foreign policy advisors can be roughly divided into several competing factions and ideological schisms: career staffers versus political appointees, civilian strategists versus military tacticians, Trump supporters versus Obama loyalists, politically correct consensus-seekers versus politically incorrect ideologues, New York moderates versus populist hardliners, Palestinian sympathizers versus advocates for Israel, proponents of the Iran deal versus supporters of an anti-Iran coalition — and those who believe that Islamism and radical Islamic terrorism derive from Islam itself versus those who insist that Islam is a religion of peace.

The winners of these various power struggles ultimately will determine the ideological direction of U.S. policy on a variety of national security issues, including the war on Islamic terror.

During his presidential campaign, voters were promised a radical shift in American foreign policy, and the consensus-driven foreign policy establishment in Washington was repeatedly blamed for making the world less stable and more dangerous.

Although much can change, the current incarnation of the national security team indicates that the administration’s foreign policy, especially toward the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, may end up being more similar than different to that of the Obama administration. Those hoping for a radical change to the politically correct status quo may be disappointed.

National Security Advisor

Among recent personnel decisions, arguably the most fateful has been to select Army Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster to replace retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as national security advisor. This change is setting into motion a cascade of other personnel decisions that, far from draining the swamp, appears to be perpetuating it.

Flynn, who resigned on February 13 after leaked intelligence reports alleged that he misrepresented his conversations with a Russian diplomat, has long argued that the West is in a civilizational clash with Islam, and that the war on terror must be expanded and intensified to reflect this reality.

By contrast, McMaster emphatically rejects the notion of a clash of civilizations. His statements on Islam are highly nuanced and not materially different from those of former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

President Donald Trump appears with Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster, on February 20, 2017. (Image source: PBS News video screenshot)

Flynn, in a speech delivered at a synagogue in Stoughton, Massachusetts in August 2016, warned that the ultimate goal of radical Islam is world hegemony:

“We are facing another ‘ism,’ just like we faced Nazism, and fascism, and imperialism and communism. This is Islamism, it is a vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people on this planet and it has to be excised.”

That same month, Flynn addressed a Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas:

“I don’t see Islam as a religion. I see it as a political ideology that will mask itself as a religion globally, and especially in the West, especially in the United States, because it can hide behind and protect itself by what we call freedom of religion.”

In Flynn’s book, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War against Radical Islam and its Allies,” he warned:

“We’re in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by a totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam…. We’ve got to stop feeling the slightest bit guilty about calling them by name and identifying them as fanatical killers acting on behalf of a failed civilization.”

In an opinion article published by the New York Post in July 2016, Flynn wrote that America’s war against radical Islam is being run by political leaders who refuse to see the big picture:

“If our leaders were interested in winning [the war against radical Islam], they would have to design a strategy to destroy this global enemy. But they don’t see the global war. Instead, they timidly nibble around the edges of the battlefields from Africa to the Middle East, and act as if each fight, whether in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya or Afghanistan, can be peacefully resolved by diplomatic effort….

“No, we’re not going to talk our way out of this war, nor can we escape its horrors. Ask the people in San Bernardino or South Florida, or the relatives of the thousands killed on 9/11. We’re either going to win or lose. There is no other ‘solution.’

“I believe we can and must win. This war must be waged both militarily and politically; we have to destroy the enemy armies and combat enemy doctrines. Both are doable. On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan. Their current strength is not a reflection of their ability to overwhelm our armed forces, but rather the consequence of our mistaken and untimely withdrawal after demolishing them….

“We have the wherewithal, but lack the will. That has to change. It’s hard to imagine it happening with our current leaders, but the next president will have to do it.”

McMaster, however, has openly repudiated Flynn’s — and Trump’s — views on Islam. He rejects any connection between terrorism and Islam, even though Islamic scripture clearly states that true Muslims are duty-bound to wage jihad on non-Muslims until the entire world is brought under the submission of Islam and Sharia law.

On February 23, during his first staff meeting as the newly minted national security advisor, McMaster reportedly urged National Security Council employees to avoid using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” because, according to McMaster, groups such as the Islamic State represent a “perversion of Islam” and are therefore “un-Islamic.” McMaster added that “he’s not on board” with using the term because it castigates “an entire religion” and may alienate Muslim allies in the Middle East.

Less than a week later, McMaster urged Trump to remove references to “radical Islamic terrorism” from the speech the president was to deliver to Congress on February 28. The president nevertheless prevailed. “We are also taking strong measures,” he said, “to protect our nation from radical Islamic terrorism.”

Long before becoming America’s leading advisor on national security matters, McMaster, who has a long history of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, consistently echoed the Obama administration’s rhetorical efforts to delink Islamic terrorism from Islamic doctrine.

In November 2016, during a speech to the Virginia Military Institute, McMaster said that the Islamic State “cynically uses a perverted interpretation of religion to incite hatred and justify horrific cruelty against innocents.”

In May 2016, during a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he said:

“Groups like the Islamic State use this irreligious ideology, this perverted interpretation of religion to justify violence. They depend on ignorance, and the ability to recruit vulnerable segments of populations to foment hatred, and then use that hatred to justify violence against innocents.”

In August 2014, when McMaster was the featured speaker for the President’s Lecture Series at the National Defense University, he reportedly declared: “The Islamic State is not Islamic.”

In 2010, McMaster enthusiastically endorsed a book entitled, “Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat,” by U.S. Navy Commander Youssef H. Aboul-Enein and published by the Naval Institute Press. A review by analyst Youssef M. Ibrahim found its claims, “many of which the Obama administration followed to disastrous results, to be incorrect and problematic.”

Aboul-Enein’s central objective is to urge American policymakers to distinguish between militant Islamists such as members of the Islamic State and non-militant Islamists such as members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ibrahim counters: “In reality, all Islamists share the same ultimate goal of global Islamic hegemony. They differ in methodology — but not in their view of us as the enemy to be crushed.”

Ibrahim continues:

“Aboul-Enein also suggests that if an American soldier ever desecrates a Koran, U.S. leadership must not merely relieve him of duty, but offer ‘unconditional apologies,’ and emulate the words of Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, which Aboul-Enein quotes as exemplary: ‘I come before you [Muslims] seeking your forgiveness, in the most humble manner I look in your eyes today, and say please forgive me and my soldiers,’ followed by kissing a new Koran and ‘ceremoniously’ presenting it to Muslims.

McMaster’s endorsement of the book, which appears on the jacket cover, reads:

“Terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to recruit undereducated and disenfranchised people to their cause. Understanding terrorist ideology is the first and may also be the most important step in ensuring national and international security against the threat that these organizations pose.

“Youssef Aboul-Enein’s book is an excellent starting point in that connection. Militant Islamist Ideology deserves a wide readership among all those concerned with the problem of transnational terrorism, their ideology, and our efforts to combat those organizations that pose a serious threat to current and future generations of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.”

McMaster’s position on the nuclear deal with Iran remains unclear. If his views on Islam are any indication, McMaster, unlike Flynn, probably does not view Iran in ideological terms.

The president has described the “Iran Deal” as a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated.” On February 1, after Iran launched a ballistic missile, the White House signaled a tougher line on Tehran. Flynn said:

“President Trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between Iran, the Obama administration as well as the United Nations as being weak and ineffective. Instead of being thankful to the United States in these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened. As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”

Flynn’s ouster less than two weeks later was rumored to have been orchestrated by Obama confidants in order to preserve the Iran Deal. According to reporter Adam Kredo:

“The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes — the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber — included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.

“The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.”

Strategic Initiatives Group

McMaster’s views on Islam are also diametrically opposed to those held by Stephen K. Bannon, the administration’s chief political strategist. Bannon has long warned that the Judeo-Christian West is in a civilizational conflict with Islam.

On January 28, the president signed an executive order making Bannon a permanent invitee to all meetings of the National Security Council, and also making him a regular member of the so-called Principals Committee, the Cabinet-level senior interagency forum that is led by the national security advisor and decides foreign policy issues that do not go to the president. The executive order significantly increased Bannon’s influence and power in the White House decision-making process.

At the same time, Bannon and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have established the Strategic Initiatives Group, an internal White House think tank that some analysts believe will challenge policy advice coming from McMaster and the National Security Council.

The Strategic Initiatives Group, which has been described as a “shadow NSC,” is run by assistant to the president Christopher Liddell and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, and includes deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka, author of the book, “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.” Like Bannon, Gorka believes that “the global jihadi movement is a modern totalitarian ideology rooted in the doctrines and martial history of Islam.”

McMaster is rumored to be considering a reorganization of the White House foreign policy team that would give him more control. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said that McMaster has full authority to organize his staff, but that any change in Bannon’s status must be approved by the president. Either way, conflict between McMaster and Bannon seems inevitable.

National Security Council

McMaster’s first personnel decision was to name Dina Powell to serve as Deputy National Security Advisor, the number two position on the National Security Council — and a post already filled by K.T. McFarland.

McFarland, a former official in the Reagan administration, has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s timidity in the face of radical Islam, which she has described as “the most virulent, lethal, apocalyptic death cult in history.” In an opinion article that was published in the wake of the jihadist attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016, McFarland wrote:

“Global Islamist jihad is at war with all of Western civilization. President Obama and other Western leaders may not see it as a war, but the other side does. Left largely unchecked over the last seven years, radical Islam has exploded worldwide….

“We have been one step behind this enemy for years. We’re still tongue-tied by political correctness, while they’re setting off bombs at train stations, airports and community centers.

“We are losing this war. Our losses grow greater every day, while terrorists recruit off the images of the West’s most innocent and vulnerable fleeing in horror. The hour is already late to defeat this growing scourge. But if we are to defeat radical Islam, it will be only with a multifaceted, comprehensive strategy that calls on all the aspects of the national power of ourselves and our allies — like we summoned to defeat the Nazis in World War II or the Communists in the Cold War.”

McFarland, whose future at the NSC has been uncertain since Flynn resigned, reportedly has been offered the post of U.S. ambassador to Singapore.

Dina Habib Powell, 43, a former executive with Goldman Sachs, is the first Arab-American to join the Trump White House. She was born in Egypt and immigrated to the United States as a child with her Coptic Christian parents. Fluent in Arabic, she worked in the Bush administration, on public diplomacy to improve perceptions of America in the Arab world.

Powell is also said to be close to many Democrats, including some who have worked in the Obama administration. According to Politico, Powell has a strong personal relationship with Valerie Jarrett, one of the closest advisors to Barack Obama. Jarrett, who was born in Iran, and is widely rumored to be the architect of the Iran Nuclear Deal, reportedly has moved into Obama’s home in Washington, D.C. to lead a resistance movement against Trump’s efforts to reverse his predecessor’s foreign and domestic policies.

Powell’s ascendancy is tied to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who hired her to provide advice on politics in Washington. Powell has been described as “Ivanka Trump’s woman in the White House.”

Meanwhile, McMaster has tried to replace Ezra Watnick-Cohen, the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs. Watnick-Cohen, another Flynn protégé, is a 30-year-old intelligence operative with the Defense Intelligence Agency who has reportedly fallen out of favor with some people at the Central Intelligence Agency. Politico reported that Cohen-Watnick and Flynn “saw eye to eye about the failings of the CIA human intelligence operations,” according to an operative. “The CIA saw him as a threat, so they tried to unseat him and replace him with an agency loyalist,” he said.

Cohen-Watnick appealed McMaster’s decision to Bannon and Kushner, both of whom brought the matter to Trump. The president eventually agreed that Cohen-Watnick should remain as the NSC’s intelligence director.

McMaster reportedly also wanted to replace Cohen-Watnick with Linda Weissgold, a longtime CIA official. During the Obama administration Weissgold served as director of the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis. Journalist Michael Warren wrote:

“In her position at OTA, she was also involved directly in drafting the now infamous Benghazi talking points, which government officials revised heavily to include factually incorrect assessments that stated the attackers were prompted by protests. According to the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s report, Weissgold testified she had changed one such talking point to say that extremists in Benghazi with ties to al Qaeda had been involved in ‘protests’ in the Libyan city, despite the fact that no such protests occurred there on the day of the attack.”

The CIA also rejected a security clearance for Robin Townley, the NSC’s senior director for Africa and one of Flynn’s closest advisors. The denial of a request for so-called “Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearance forced Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer who had long maintained a top secret-level security clearance, out of his NSC post. The rejection was approved by Mike Pompeo, the new CIA director.

Flynn and his allies reportedly believed that the rejection was motivated by Townley’s skepticism of the intelligence community. “They believe this is a hit job from inside the CIA on Flynn and the people close to him,” said one source, who argued that some in the intelligence community felt threatened by Flynn and his allies. “Townley believes that the CIA doesn’t run the world,” the source said.

The Cohen-Watnick and Townley episodes have highlighted ongoing tensions between the CIA and Trump advisors who are skeptical of the agency. Flynn was said by some as waging “a jihad against the intelligence community” while others have pointed to Flynn’s ouster as an example of how the CIA is trying to undermine the Trump administration and retain its own autonomy.

At the same time, Trump has decided to retain Yael Lempert, a controversial NSC staffer from the Obama administration. Analyst Lee Smith reported that, according to a former official in the Clinton administration, Lempert “is considered one of the harshest critics of Israel on the foreign policy far left.” The source added:

“From her position on the Obama NSC, she helped manufacture crisis after crisis in a relentless effort to portray Israel negatively and diminish the breadth and depth of our alliance. Most Democrats in town know better than to let her manage Middle East affairs. It looks like the Trump administration has no idea who she is or how hostile she is to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Smith noted:

“This is the same Trump administration that said it was going to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? Making big promises to Jewish voters during campaign season and then dumping them in the trash along with yesterday’s campaign lawn signs is old hat in Washington, though. And after eight years of Obama’s very public ministrations to his favorite ‘donors,’ Jewish votes are especially cheap — you can name Louis Farrakhan’s former spokesman as vice chairman of your party and the faithful will sigh with relief. So why should Trump bother?”

Smith also revealed that the Trump administration has retained Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s special envoy to lead the campaign against the Islamic State. According to Smith:

“One of the main reasons Obama’s ISIS policy failed was because Sunni actors refused to engage in an intramural civil war whose spoils would go to the Iranians and their Shia allies. McGurk was the point man on this pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages.

“Remember when the Trump administration promised to make public the secret agreements that Obama made with Iran? McGurk signed some of the secret documents, relieving sanctions on a key financial hub of Iran’s ballistic-missile program, and dropping charges against 21 Iranian operatives linked to terrorism. Notably, none of those documents has actually been made public. Maybe that’s because McGurk’s name is on them.”

State Department

Meanwhile, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who served as the NSC’s Iran director during the Obama administration, is now in charge of policy planning for Iran and the Persian Gulf at the Trump State Department. Nowrouzzadeh, whose main task at Obama’s NSC was to help broker the Iran Nuclear Deal, is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a lobbying group widely believed to be a front group for the Islamic dictatorship in Iran.

In an opinion article published by the Washington Examiner on March 16, Amir Basiri, an Iranian human rights activist wrote:

“Obama’s failed Iran policy is a clear testament to the damage that appeasement and rapprochement does to the Iranian people, Middle East nations, and U.S. interests. The ill that Nowrouzzadeh and her ilk have caused only underlines the necessity to drain the Iran appeasement swamp in the State Department, and to stand with the Iranian people for a change.”

Other notable holdovers from the Obama administration include:

  • Chris Backemeyer, who serves as deputy assistant secretary for Iranian affairs under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Backemeyer is now the highest-ranking official at the State Department for Iran policy. During the Obama administration, Backemeyer was tasked with persuading multinational corporations to do business with Iran.
  • Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., a career foreign service officer who serves as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Shannon, the State Department’s fourth-ranking official, has warned that scrapping the Iran Deal would lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. “Any effort to step away from the deal would reopen a Pandora’s box in that region that would be hard to close again,” he said. His statement indicates that Shannon could be expected to lead efforts to resist any attempts to renege or renegotiate the deal; critics of the deal say that Iran’s continued missile testing has given Trump one more reason to tear up his predecessor’s deal with the Islamist regime.
  • Michael Ratney, a top advisor to former Secretary of State John Kerry on Syria policy. Under the Trump administration, Ratney’s role at the State Department has been expanded to include Israel and Palestine issues. In July 2016, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations disclosed that Ratney, who was the U.S. Consul in Jerusalem between 2012 and 2015, oversaw $465,000 in U.S. grants to the OneVoice Movement, a liberal group that waged a clandestine campaign to smear and remove Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office. Ratney admitted to Senate investigators that he deleted emails containing information about the Obama administration’s relationship with the non-profit group.

On March 30, Trump’s State Department announced that it would allow Jibril Rajoub, a Palestinian official known for promoting the murder and kidnapping of Israelis, into the United States for a series of high-level meetings on the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

Rajoub was sentenced in September 1970 to life in prison for throwing a grenade at an Israeli Army bus near Hebron. He served 15 years in prison, but was released in a 1985 prisoner exchange. Since then, he has repeatedly praised Palestinian terrorists who kill Israeli civilians. In an October 2015 television interview, Rajoub said:

“These are individual acts of bravery, and I am proud of them. I congratulate everyone who carried them out. I say to you, we are proud of you. Whoever confronts, fights, dies as a Martyr, is arrested or injured, they are assets to the entire Palestinian people.”

The Trump administration issued an anodyne statement that could easily have come from the Obama administration:

“The U.S. government does not endorse every statement Mr. Rajoub has made, but he has long been involved in Middle East peace efforts, and has publicly supported a peaceful, non-violent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We continue to press Fatah officials, including Rajoub himself, to refrain from any statements or actions that could be viewed as inciting or legitimizing others use of violence.”

Foreign affairs columnist Lawrence J. Haas has sharply criticized the administration’s embrace of Rajoub:

“Rajoub is no peace activist who just needs to tone down his rhetoric. He’s a hardcore Israel rejectionist who honors ‘martyrs,’ promotes murder and kidnapping, and envisions a Palestine that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, erasing Israel in the process.

“The embrace of Rajoub raises profound questions as to whether President Donald Trump has a coherent policy toward Israel or, as seems more likely, disjointed policies are emerging from competing power centers across the administration that view Israel and the U.S.-Israeli alliance in profoundly different ways.”

Historian Daniel Pipes believes the Trump administration may follow Obama’s footsteps and ultimately turn against Israel. In an interview, Pipes said:

“I also wouldn’t be surprised if he [Trump] turned against Israel, seeing it as the intractable party because that is what often happens. Look at Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama: they make efforts and they get frustrated that the Israelis don’t give more because there is an enduring belief that if only the Israelis gave more, the Palestinians would relent and stop being rejectionists and everything would be fine. So, I am worried.”

Department of Defense

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary James Mattis’s initial choice to be his second in command was Michèle Flournoy, a Democrat who was seen as a leading candidate for Defense Secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration. Flournoy turned down Mattis’s offer and the position continues to be filled by Robert O. Work, who was appointed to the job by President Obama. Some Republicans blame Work for Mattis’s failure to advocate for a greater increase in the defense budget.

Mattis, who fell out with the Obama administration over Iran, also proposed Anne W. Patterson as his choice for undersecretary for policy. Patterson served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 2011 to 2013, a time when the Obama administration supported the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government of then-President Mohamed Morsi. Patterson’s nomination was vetoed by the White House. The position is being filled by Theresa Whelan, a career member of the Senior Executive Service.

For the post of undersecretary for personnel and readiness, Mattis proposed Rudy de Leon, a veteran of the Clinton administration and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank founded by Clinton acolyte John Podesta. De Leon, it so happens, //medium.com/@NewSecurityNetwork/letter-from-national-security-leaders-on-refugee-executive-order-397576050a17” target=”_blank”>signed a January 30 letter opposing Trump’s moratorium on migrants from six Muslim countries. The letter says the suspension is “inhumane” and “beneath the dignity of our great nation.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill have expressed frustration with Mattis. An aide to a Republican Senator on the Armed Services Committee said: “He certainly has got a tough job, but it sometimes feels like he forgets that we won the election.” Another said: “We’ve waited eight years for this, to be able to fill these posts with Republicans. We know Trump isn’t part of the establishment and that it’s going to be a bit different, but it should go without saying that a Republican administration is expected to staff federal agencies with Republicans.”

National Economic Council

The National Economic Council, the main forum for developing and coordinating the president’s economic program, is headed by Gary Cohn, a registered Democrat and, like Dina Powell, a former executive of Goldman Sachs. So far, so good.

As Trump’s top economic policy advisor, however, Cohn has sparred with Bannon over key aspects of the administration’s economic, tax and trade policies. Among other issues, the two men are said to have competing positions on the border adjustment tax (Bannon is for it, Cohn is not), the carbon tax (Cohn is for it, Bannon is not) and trade. Cohn is a free trade globalist who supports multilateral trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while Bannon is an economic nationalist who eschews them.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly described NAFTA as a “disaster” and vowed to renegotiate the deal. On March 30, however, the Wall Street Journal, reviewing an administration draft proposal, reported that the White House is now seeking mostly minor changes to NAFTA and plans to retain some of its most controversial provisions.

Fox Business Correspondent Charlie Gasparino wrote:

“How Bannon and Cohn became senior officials in the Trump administration speaks to the president’s unorthodox management style, where he appoints people to key positions often based on gut and personal relationships.

“While Trump was naturally attracted to Bannon’s political and economic policies, he is said to be fond of Cohn’s assertive management style and stature; while at Goldman, Cohn was an imposing figure on the firm’s trading floor and later as a top executive, where he was regarded as the heir apparent to the firm’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein.

“But now Trump’s management style is being put to the test on economic issues as Bannon and Cohn compete for the president’s ear.”

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump loyalist, has accused Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, of feeding “lies and intel” to the media to hurt Bannon and others who are arguing against the “globalist agenda.” In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Stone said:

“The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, perhaps the one presidential aide who cannot be fired, is now in regular text-message communications with Joe Scarborough [a cable news and talk show host],” Stone said. “Many of the anti-Steve Bannon stories that you see, the themes that you see on ‘Morning Joe’ are being dictated by Kushner.”

Cohn and Powell are said to be allied with Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka and Kushner. They are allegedly leading a White House faction that has been referred to as the “New York liberals.” They are reportedly battling with the Bannon faction of populist hardliners for policy influence on a wide variety of policy issues.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal adviser to the president, put it this way: “It would be interesting to see to what degree the New York liberals change Trump and to what degree Trump changes the New York liberals.”

Conclusion

Trump has the opportunity to fill as many as 4,000 leadership and policymaking positions across the federal government, but he has vowed to leave many political appointments unfilled “because they’re unnecessary to have.”

As Lee Smith points out, the policy implications of the unfilled vacancies and the ongoing turf wars within the Trump administration are far-reaching:

“The main point is this: While the Trump cabinet is at daggers drawn, while it can’t hire the staff to implement the policies the president campaigned on — to destroy ISIS, to rein in Iran and crash the nuclear deal, to protect American citizens and interests, and to realign with allies like Israel that Obama made vulnerable — there are much more decisive and deadly conflicts going on almost everywhere around the world. The people who are handling key elements of those conflicts now are the same people who handled those areas under Obama, despite the results of the last election. No wonder the results look equally awful.”

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Which Way Will France Go? by Giulio Meotti

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • After two years and 238 deaths at the hands of Islamic terrorism, what did France do to defeat radical Islam? Almost nothing.
  • If Emmanuel Macron wins, France as we have known it can be considered pretty much over. By blaming “colonialism” for French troubles in the Arab world, and calling it “a crime against humanity”, he has effectively legitimized Muslim extremist violence against the French Republic.
  • In just two years, Muslim organizations in France have dragged to trial great writers such as Georges Bensoussan, Pascal Bruckner, and Renaud Camus. It is the Islamists’ dream coming true: seeing “Islamophobes” on trial to restrict their freedom of expression. Charlie Hebdo’s physical massacre was therefore followed by an intellectual one.

It was a sort of farewell to the army. During a brief visit to the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle last December, French President François Hollande honored the French soldiers involved in “Operation Chammal” against the Islamic State. After two years and 238 deaths at the hands of Islamic terrorism, what did France do to defeat radical Islam? Almost nothing.

It is this legacy of indifference that is at stake in the looming French presidential elections. If Marine Le Pen or François Fillon win, it means that France has rejected this autocratic legacy and wants to try a different, braver way. If Emmanuel Macron wins, France as we have known it can be considered pretty much over. Macron is, for example, against taking away French nationality from jihadists. Terrorism, Islam and security are almost absent from Macron’s vocabulary and platform, and he is in favor of lowering France’s state of emergency. By blaming “colonialism” for French troubles in the Arab world, and calling it “a crime against humanity“, he has effectively legitimized Muslim extremist violence against the French Republic.

As General Vincent Desportes wrote in his new book, La dernière Bataille de France (“The Last Battle of France”):

“President Hollande said on November 15 that it would be ruthless, we were at war … but we do not make war! History shows that in the eternal struggle between the shield and the sword, the sword is still a step forward and winning”.

In the past two years, France only used the shield.

France’s fake war began in Paris with a massacre at the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Twelve cartoonists and policemen were massacred by two brothers who shouted, “We avenged Muhammad, we killed Charlie Hebdo”. After a few days of marches, vigils, candles and collective statements such as “Je Suis Charlie”, half of the French intelligentsia was ready to go and hide underground, protected by the police. These are academics, intellectuals, novelists, journalists. The most famous is Michel Houellebecq, the author of the book Submission. Then there is Éric Zemmour, the author of the book, Suicide Française (“The French Suicide”); then the team of Charlie Hebdo, along with its director, Riss (Laurent Sourisseau); Mohammed Sifaoui, a French-Algerian journalist who wrote Combattre le terrorisme islamiste (“Combating Islamist Terrorism”); Frédéric Haziza, radio journalist and author at the journal, Canard Enchaîné; and Philippe Val, the former director of Charlie Hebdo. The latest to run was the Franco-Algerian journalist Zineb Rhazaoui; surrounded by six policemen, she left Charlie Hebdo after saying that her newspaper had capitulated to terror and refused to run more cartoons of Muhammad.

“Charb? Where is Charb?” were the words that echoed in the offices of Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, the day he and his colleagues were murdered. “Charb” was Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of the magazine that had published cartoons of Muhammad. Charb was working on a short book, On Blasphemy, Islamophobia and the true enemies of free expression, posthumously published. Charb’s book attacked self-righteous intellectuals, who for years had been claiming that Charlie Hebdo was responsible for its own troubles, a childlike view, popular throughout Europe. It is based on the notion that if everyone would just keep quiet, these problems would not exist. Presumably, therefore, if no one had pointed out the threats of Nazism or Communism, Nazism and Communism would have quietly have vanished of their own accord. Unfortunately, that approach was tried; it did not work. The book also criticized “sectarian activists”, whom he said have been trying “to impose on the judicial authorities the political concept of ‘Islamophobia'”.

As for “the Left”, he wrote: “It is time to end this disgusting paternalism of the intellectual left” — meaning its moral sanctimony. Charb delivered these pages to his publisher on January 5. Two days later he was murdered.

Now, some of these people he was calling out are trying to hide their cowardice by attacking him. In recent weeks, a number of cultural events in France have tried to “deprogram” the public from paying attention this extremely important book. A theatrical adaptation of it, attended by one of the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, Marika Bret, was scheduled to take place at the University of Lille. However, the president of the University, Xavier Vandendriessche, said he feared “excesses” and the “atmosphere”, so he eliminated Charb from the program. Twice. The play’s director, Gérald Dumont, sent a letter to the Minister of Culture, Audrey Azoulay, mentioning “censorship“.

At the same time, Charb’s book also disappeared from two events at a cultural festival in Avignon. “How to reduce the dead to silence“, tweeted Raphaël Glucksmann. “Killed in 2015, banned in 2017“, Bernard-Henri Lévy summed up.

During the past two years, the publishing industry itself has played a central role in censoring and supporting censorship, by censoring itself. The philosopher Michel Onfray refused to release his book, Thinking Islam, in French and it first came out in Italian. The German writer, Hamed Abdel Samad saw his book Der islamische Faschismus: Eine Analyse (“Islamic Fascism: An Analysis”), a bestseller in Germany, censored in French by the publishing house Piranha.

The French courts, meanwhile, revived le délit d’opinion — a penal offense for expressing political opinions, now an “intellectual crime”. It was explained by Véronique Grousset in Le Figaro:

“Insidiously, the law blurred the distinction between the discussion of ideas and the personal attack. Many organizations are struggling to bring their opponents to justice”.

It means that the legal system is hauling writers and journalists to court for expressing specific ideas, in particular criticism of Islam.

In just two years in France, Muslim organizations have dragged to trial great writers such as Georges Bensoussan, Pascal Bruckner, and Renaud Camus. It is the Islamists’ dream coming true: seeing “Islamophobes” on trial to punish their freedom of expression.

Charlie Hebdo’s physical massacre was therefore followed by an intellectual one: today, Charb’s important book cannot find a room in France for a public reading; it should, instead, be protected as a legacy of courage and truth.

Even in French theaters, free speech is being crushed. Films about Islam have been cancelled: “The Apostle” by Carron Director, on Muslim converts to Christianity; “Timbuktu” on the Islamist takeover of Mali, and Nicolas Boukhrief’s “Made in France“, about a jihadist cell. A poster for “Made in France” — a Kalashnikov over the Eiffel Tower — was already in the Paris metro when ISIS went into action on the night of November 13, 2016. Immediately, the film’s release was suspended, with the promise that the film would be back in theaters. “Made in France” is now only available “on-demand”. Another film, “Les Salafistes“, was screened with a notice banning minors. The Interior Ministry called for a total ban.

After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, the country seemed for a short time to return to normalcy. Meanwhile, thousands of Jews were packing up to leave France. At the request of local Jewish community leaders, the Jewish skullcap disappeared from the streets of Marseille, and in Toulouse, after an Islamic terrorist murdered a Jewish teacher and three children in 2012, 300 Jewish families pack up and left.

In the daily newspaper Le Figaro, Hadrien Desuin, an expert on international relations, compared the last two years to the “phony war” that France did not fight in 1939-40. Paris, while declaring a war against Germany, as it now declares a war against terrorism, simply refused to fight. For a whole year, France, crouching behind a Maginot Line that it foolishly believed was invincible did not fire a single gun against the Germans who were spreading throughout Europe at the time. Similarly, General Vincent Desportes explains in his book The Last Battle of France that Operation Sentinel, in which French soldiers are now deployed in the streets, is a “show”, and that “the Islamic State is not afraid of our aircraft. You have to attack by land, terrorizing. We have the means to do it, but it takes political courage”. According to Desportes, Operation Sentinel “changes nothing“.

France’s never-begun war on terror also collapsed around the three most important measures: removing French citizenship from jihadists, “de-radicalizing” them and closing their salafist mosques.

There are at least 20 among 2,500 famous radical mosques that need to close now. The Territorial Information Center (SCRT) recommended that there are 124 salafist mosques in France that should close. Only Marine Le Pen has demanded that.

Three days after the November 13 Paris massacres, President Hollande announced a constitutional reform that would strip French citizenship from Islamic terrorists. Faced with the impossibility of finding a shared text by both Houses, as well as with the resignation of his Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, Hollande was forced to cancel the move. It means that hundreds of French citizens who went to Syria for jihad can now return to their country of origin and murder more innocent people there.

The Bataclan Theater — the scene of a massacre in which 90 people were murdered and many others wounded on November 13, 2015 — recently reopened with a concert by the performer Sting. His last song was “Inshallah” (Arabic for “If Allah Wills”). That is the state of France’s last two years: starting with “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”), chanted by the jihadists who slaughtered 80 people, and ending with a phony invocation to Allah by a British singer. “Inshallah,” said Sting from the stage, “that wonderful word”. “Rebirth at the Bataclan,” the newspaper Libération wrote as its headline.

The director of the Bataclan told Jesse Hughes, the head of American band Eagles of Death Metal: “There are things you cannot forgive.” True. Except that France has forgiven everything. The drawing on the cover of Charlie Hebdo after the massacre — a weeping Muhammad saying, “All is forgiven” — was the start of France’s psychological surrender.

Left: The cover of Charlie Hebdo after the massacre of its staff — a weeping Muhammad saying, “All is forgiven” — was the start of France’s psychological surrender. Right: When the Bataclan Theater (where 90 people were murdered in November 2015) recently reopened with a concert by the performer Sting, his last song was “Inshallah” (Arabic for “If Allah Wills”).

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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Which Nation is (Still) the Number One Sponsor of Terrorism? by Peter Huessy

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • The June State Department report also lists 58 “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” of which over a dozen are allied with Iran. One Iranian Al Qaeda agent was specifically sanctioned by the US Treasury for distributing cash to the same al-Nusra Front the Iranian Foreign Minister complains is a terrorist organization.
  • Even more chilling has been Iran’s joint missile and technology cooperation with North Korea, making the potential use of weapons of mass destruction against the US a growing possibility.

On September 14, the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote in the New York Times that, “coordinated action at the United Nations to cut off the funding for ideologies of hate and extremism” is needed along with “a willingness from the international community to investigate the channels that supply the cash and the arms” to terrorists. He concluded with an appeal to “join hands with the rest of the community of nations to eliminate the scourge of terrorism and violence that threatens us all.”

Given that in 2015 alone there were some 11,774 terrorist attacks in 92 countries, killing 28,300 people, one can agree that such action is needed. The irony, of course, is that the US Department of State released its annual report in June on state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran was the gold medalist for the world’s number one terrorist nation — an honor it has held since 1984. Only two other countries were listed as state sponsors of terror: Syria and Sudan.

Having Iran’s Foreign Minister call for an end to terrorism is like having Bonnie and Clyde call for law and order.

The report makes clear, along with other available evidence, that much of the terrorism in the world is Iran’s handiwork — especially the terrorism directed at America.

The report emphasized that Iran “remained the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015, providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to [terror] groups around the world.” Iran provided arms and cash to terrorist groups and to nearly 30 Shia terrorist militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, especially Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Shia militias in Bahrain.

On September 13, 2015, the US Central Command officially reported that Iran is specifically responsible for killing at least 500 American soldiers through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the current defense minister in Iran, appointed by President Rouhani, orchestrated the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 American soldiers.

Overall, the State Department report lists 13 “terrorist safe havens” around the world where “terrorists are able to organize, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train, transit and operate.” These safe havens include remote areas in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America, virtually all of which have seen terrorist related activity by Iran and its IRGC. In just the Americas, this includes, says the Clarion Project, intelligence and terrorist networks in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Columbia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.

The State Department report also lists 58 “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” of which over a dozen are allied with Iran. One Iranian al-Qaeda agent was specifically sanctioned by the US Treasury for distributing cash to the same al-Nusra Front the Iranian Foreign Minister complains is a terrorist organization.

The current defense minister in Iran, appointed by President Hassan Rouhani (left), orchestrated the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 American soldiers. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right) complains the al-Nusra Front is a terrorist organization, even as an Iranian al-Qaeda agent was specifically sanctioned by the US Treasury for distributing cash to the organization.

Iran has evidently harbored senior Al Qaeda operatives since 9/11, including facilitating the flow of fighters and funds to al-Qaeda through Iran — a kind of jihadi pipeline. In the mid-1990s, reported the Clarion Project, Iran negotiated an agreement with Osama Bin Laden to allow al-Qaeda terrorists to freely transit Iran.

And, of course, Tehran’s senior leadership financed and facilitated, along with Hezbollah, the training of the 9/11 hijackers that killed nearly three thousand people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. According to a December 2011 decision by Judge George B. Daniels “Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported Al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks.”

But 9/11 was not Iran’s first terror attack against the United States. The Iranian government also financed the attack on the Pan Am flight that blew up over Scotland in December 1988, and was also responsible for the 1996 terror attacks against Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 1983 bombings of our Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon.

A number of American courts, upon hearing the evidence of Iranian government support for terrorism, found Iran guilty of terrorist attacks against the United States and its citizens, culminating in at least $56 billion in damages, which included being found guilty complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Even more chilling has been Iran’s joint missile and technology cooperation with North Korea, making the potential use of weapons of mass destruction against the US a growing possibility.

If any UN action is taken to stop terrorism, it should start with shutting down the number one source of state-sponsored terrorism in the world — the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, and was the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation for more than 20 years.

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When Will Obama and the West Listen to Hamas? by Khaled Abu Toameh

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

    • What senior Hamas figure Musa Abu Marzouk and other Hamas leaders are saying is very clear: Even if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, Hamas and other Palestinians will continue to fight until Israel is completely destroyed.

    • Hamas is openly stating that it will use any future Palestinian state as a launching pad to attack and eliminate Israel.

    • Hamas is not a small opposition party in the Palestinian territories that can be dismissed as a minor player. Hamas is a large Islamist movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls the entire Gaza Strip with its popu of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls the entire Gaza Strip with its population of 1.8 million Palestinians. Hamas, not much different from Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, has its own security forces, militias, weapons and government institutions.

  • The Obama Administration and Western governments can talk as much as they like about the two-state solution. Even if President Abbas agrees to a Palestinian state, he will never be able to persuade Hamas, Islamic Jihad and many other Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

  • Under the current circumstances, where Hamas and other Palestinians continue to dream about the destruction of Israel, any talk about a two-state solution is nothing but a joke.

As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were talking about the two-state solution during their meeting in the White House yesterday, the Palestinian Hamas movement reiterated its intention to destroy Israel.

Hamas’s announcement shows that the two-state solution is not a recipe for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The announcement also shows that all those who have been talking about a change in Hamas’s position towards Israel continue to live in an illusion.

As the Obama-Netanyahu meeting was underway, senior Hamas figure Musa Abu Marzouk issued a statement in which he declared: “We will never negotiate with the Zionist entity and we will never recognize its right to exist. We will continue to resist the Zionist entity until it vanishes, whether they like it or not. The soldiers of the Qassam [Hamas’s armed wing] were founded to liberate Palestine, even if some have recognized Israel. We want a state from the (Jordan) river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”

As U.S. President Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday (left), senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk (at far right, holding rifle) reiterated his organization’s commitment to eliminate Israel.

Abu Marzouk’s remarks came in response to statements made by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting with Egyptian journalists in Cairo on Sunday night.

Abbas was quoted as telling the Egyptian journalists that Hamas and Israel were conducting “direct negotiations” to establish a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and parts of the Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Abbas claimed that ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi had offered to annex 1000 square kilometers of Sinai to the Gaza Strip – an offer he (Abbas) had categorically rejected.

Abu Marzouk’s latest threats to eliminate Israel are not only directed against Abbas, but also towards President Obama and those in the international community who continue to support the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. What he and other Hamas leaders are saying is very clear: Even if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, Hamas and other Palestinians will continue to fight until Israel is completely destroyed.

In other words, Hamas is openly stating that it will use any future Palestinian state as a launching pad to attack and eliminate Israel. But Hamas’s message has obviously not reached the White House and other Western governments, where decision-makers continue to bury their heads in the sand, refusing to see or hear what some Palestinians are saying.

Hamas and many other Palestinians are completely opposed to a two-state solution: they believe that Israel has no right to exist — period — in this part of the world. The only solution they are prepared to accept is one that sees Israel wiped off the face of the earth.

Hamas is not a small opposition party in the Palestinian territories that could be dismissed as a minor player. Hamas is a large Islamist movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that controls the entire Gaza Strip with its population of 1.8 million Palestinians. Hamas has its own security forces, militias, weapons and government institutions.

Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas and its political allies have turned the coastal area into a semi-independent Islamist emirate.

Since then, Hamas has used the Gaza Strip as a launching pad to attack Israel with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. And Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated that their chief goal is to “liberate” not only the West Bank and east Jerusalem, but “all of Palestine.” In short, Hamas wants to replace Israel with an Islamist empire where non-Muslims would be permitted to live as a minority.

Hamas considers all Jews as “settlers” and “colonialists” who live in “settlements” such as Beersheba, Rishon Lezion, Ashdod and Bat Yam. Hamas does not differentiate between a Jew living in Ma’aleh Adumim or Gush Etzion (on the West Bank) and Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ramat Gan. That is why the Hamas media and leaders refer to Beersheba and Ra’anana, well within the “pre-1967 borders,” as “occupied” cities.

The Obama Administration and Western governments can talk as much as they like about the two-state solution. But so long as they refuse to listen to what Hamas and other Palestinians are saying, they will continue to engage in self-deception and hallucination. Even if President Abbas agrees to a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines, he will never be able to persuade Hamas, Islamic Jihad and many other Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Under the current circumstances, where Hamas and other Palestinians continue to dream about the destruction of Israel, any talk about a two-state solution is nothing but a joke.

The Obama Administration and the rest of the international community also need to understand that that the two-state solution has already been realized. In the end, the Palestinians got two states of their own: one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank. The one in the Gaza Strip is run by folks are not much different from Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, while that in the West Bank is controlled by a president who has entered the 11th year of his four-year-term in office and as such is not even seen by his people as a “rightful” leader. This is a reality that the world, including Israel, will have to live with for many years to come.

It is time for the world to stop listening only to President Abbas and Saeb Erekat, and start paying attention to what many other Palestinians such as Hamas are saying, day and night, regarding their commitment to destroy Israel.

 

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