#and because of that i know that hamas is a terrorist group whose only goal is to wipe out the jews from our shared native land

[jew-flexive]

a blog i used to love decided that this was the moment to post a link to a BDS website as their only response to the war. over 600 civilians are dead, more are injured, dozens are being kidnapped and raped, and the only thing you can think to say is “this is justified.” i keep thinking i won’t be blindsided by this shit, but no matter how well i curate my dash, there’s always at least one antisemite who doesn’t understand or care about the nuances of the conflict ready and willing to ruin my day. i have friends who have lost their homes and families—on both sides. this is not the moment to be talking about political moves that are proven to be ineffective and are funded by extremist groups. if you want to help, donate to the palestinian red crescent and stop spreading misinformation and telling your followers that hamas is justified in their violence.

when hamas was breaking into homes and murdering the civilians they found there, they didn’t scream “israeli” or “zionist.” they screamed “yehud.”

american leftists stop delighting in the murder of jews challenge.

[whiterosechrista]

Vent time!

Hey all.

So, I know I said in my first post that I’m not comfortable with heavy/political topics, but I really need to vent.

I sent a friend the link to the YouTube video for that Palestine bundle. She wasn’t the only one I sent it to, but she was the first to respond;

“Sorry, I stand with Israel but seems like a good deal otherwise.”

So of course I was like “with all due respect, why are you supporting GENODICE?” and she said it was because she;

“[stood] with anyone whose agenda was eradicating terrorism.”

Me, not knowing the full details of the Palestine situation, but knowing enough to know that didn’t sound right, said;

“So innocent Palestinians are terrorists then? People who’ve lost their homes, their family, their lives? For no reason other than Israel not liking them?”

“No the terrorist group Hamas.”

Before I could think of an adequate comeback, she continued;

“Who pillaged, massacred, raped, and reaked havoc onto Israeli citizens on october 7th with full intentions to cause harm and destruction to the Jewish race.”

Me, having not heard about that, was startled long enough for her to send one last message;

“And my heart goes out to all citizens of any country who gets caught in acts of war, but they were warned beforehand when Israel bombed those places. Who even does that in a war?? A country and government who actually cares about its citizens and their enemy’s citizens. They only bombed those places to reach the underground bunkers and tunnels that Hamas was and still is using to hold weapons of mass destruction which would be used on thousands of Israeli citizens with the sole goal to kill Jews.”

…

Yeah. She justified a bombing.

It took me a while to come up with a decent response to that, and I’m not even sure it’s the most appropriate one, but my feelings were scrambled and I wasn’t quite sure how to convince my friend (who’s only 16 by the way) that terrorism doesn’t justify bombing a place with innocent people, but I tried;

“I’m not defending Hamas at all, they can go to whatever hell they believe in. What I’m saying is that they’re not the only ones doing that. There’s many sides to every war, and if Israel had never started bulldozing, massacring, and invading Palestine, the chances are so much lower that Hamas would’ve ever done those things. I’m not gonna force you to believe me. I’m just gonna end with: the bundle is supporting the CHILDREN of Palestine. Not Hamas. Nowhere near Hamas. It’s supporting the children who never should have to go through the things they did, who are hurting and starving because some adults believe it’s okay to go to war.”

She hasn’t replied. Her notifications are silenced. I don’t know what to do.

Her family is pretty heavily Jewish, the kind that teaches their kids Israel’s in the right (at least on her dad’s side, and that’s who she stays with mostly, which is a problem ‘cause he’s not a good dude and shouldn’t have custody of her, but her mom has mental/neurological issues, so he used that in court (I think, I was only 11 at the time)), and I’m now worried that she’s going to get dragged into things that’ll seriously hurt her.

Mom warned me against having this debate with her again until she’s older and more independent, since living with her dad’s made her sheltered + naive and she’s not old enough to deal with the idea that her family’s been telling lies her whole life.

She’s right, of course, but I’m just so worried now. I don’t want my awesome friend to be brainwashed by this bullshit propaganda. I don’t want her to stop talking to me because she thinks I’m supporting terrorism or something. I want her to form her own opinions and live her youth freely without her closest family shoving lies down her throat.

She and her mom stayed with my family when the whole custody battle happened, and our moms have been friends since, which is how I got back in touch with her a year or two ago. As such, I feel almost a sisterly responsibility as the older one to make sure she’s doing okay/staying safe/etc.

Just.

Argh.

Why is life like this?

Why do people support genocide and try to get their kids supporting it too?

What do they think that results in? Aside from a whole generation of kids who’ll grow up and realize their parents were liars, not to be trusted?

I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. I just want all my friends to be safe and happy. Is that too much to ask?

[infiniteglitterfall]

So first, in all seriousness: That conclusion is ironic because it necessarily means only seeing Israelis as Bad Guys, not as real people.

If they killed hostages because they mistook them for unarmed Palestinian civilians -- in other words, if they were genuinely trying to indiscriminately kill Palestinians, lying their asses off about wanting to eradicate an explicitly antisemitic terrorist group whose stated goal is to violently destroy Israel and which just managed to mass-rape, murder, mutilate, and burn its way across 22 villages --

WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY PUBLICLY ADMIT IT?

People are genuinely in the notes all "wonder how many other hostages they killed and didn't tell us about," like it wouldn't have been SO MUCH easier for genuinely evil people to, idk, blow up the bodies? Bury 'em somewhere? And publicly blame Hamas when those hostages are never returned?

Especially when Hamas has literally said it has no fucking clue which hostages are still alive? Fuck, just leave them as is and say Hamas shot 'em! SO EASY! Propaganda win! "We found them just a moment too late!"

Occam's razor suggests that it MIGHT make more sense if, say, the hostages were in an area that the IDF was sure only Hamas members were in.

(So many of the comments are assuming the hostages saw them and were jumping around yelling "don't shoot." And/or that the IDF soldiers could have known from a distance that they were unarmed. Not like they're fighting a terrorist group that relied on suicide bombing for years oh wait.)

If I just google "How did the IDF kill hostages," I can find out on the first page of search results that the three hostages had somehow been abandoned by, or gotten away from, their captors, but were in "a key Hamas stronghold" with "some of its most elite forces and heavy fortifications," where they're constantly being ambushed and where "Gazan civilians are prohibited."

You know what, let me just highlight that for all the clowns out there.

THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE GAZAN CIVILIANS ARE PROHIBITED FROM BEING IN THIS HAMAS STRONGHOLD AND HAMAS HAS REPEATEDLY AMBUSHED THE IDF THERE, you clowns.

It is absolutely friggin ridiculous to assume that Israel is ever lying about this stuff, or that Hamas is reliably truthful. And I'll tell you why.

Hamas is CONSTANTLY, VISIBLY lying. It keeps tight control on social media and journalism in Gaza. So that people don't go telling the rest of us what Hamas is like. So that Hamas can control the narrative.

"Two years ago, when there was a previous war with Hamas, there was the head of UNRWA Gaza office, a guy named Matthias Schmale. He had said in a TV interview, when asked, he said that the Israeli strikes on Hamas were very precise. He acknowledged that Israel was targeting the Hamas terrorists, and not, as many media and others allege, that Israel targets civilians. He said no, Israel’s targeting the terrorists, and it’s very precise.

"And when he gave that interview, he suddenly became persona non grata in Gaza. Hamas organized protests, orchestrated protests, against him and basically pushed him out of Gaza and pushed him out of his position."

Israeli culture, by contrast, is AUTISTICALLY BLUNT. This is super refreshing in some ways, but FRUSTRATING AS HELL in others.

Because what happens over and fucking over is:

1. Some Israeli official blurts out the unvarnished truth, without a crumb of an iota of a thought about what their audience's context or assumptions are.

2. Allistic people cheerfully interpret it in absolute bad faith to fit their worst pre-existing beliefs. And frequently then weaponize it against Jews while (sometimes) pretending not to.

3. Hamas says some shit to the Western media that everyone assumes is 100% true, then turns around and tells its allies, and Palestinians, wild-ass things like,

"Oh, you seven million Palestinians abroad, enough warming up! There are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on planet Earth – we must slaughter and kill them, with Allah's help. Enough warming up!"

(Fuck, wait, that sounds even worse now that Hamas agents have been arrested in Germany and Denmark for plotting to attack Jewish institutions in Europe.)

4. UGGGGHHHH.

Seriously, how can people take what Hamas says in good faith every single time?! It literally weaponized mass rape, and everyone's like, "It was a glorious justified activist uprising!"

It's been creating NGOs to feed us propaganda for years. Like Samidoun in Germany, and probably Students for Justice in Palestine in the US. We eat it up, because Hamas has studied how to spin things to sound super progressive even when they're literally cutting off boobs to play with.

Hamas leaders: "We don't even know how many hostages are still alive. The number's not important."

Everyone else: "Israel doesn't think Palestinians are real people. That is the obvious conclusion here. The cartoon villain cut-outs I'm picturing aren't fighting a terrorist group, with a per capita military budget that rivals Ukraine's and Iraq's, whose stated mission is to violently destroy Israel because Jews are gross.

"These cartoon villains obviously are genocidal racists who just happen to have inexplicably taken 75 years to get around to kill" -- hold on, I'm autistic, my sarcasm requires a math component...

let's be really extra here and include every Palestinian they've killed over the past 75 years, and round up a whole bunch because the war isn't over, and take it as a percentage of the current population rather than the total population over the past 75 years....

-- "2% of Palestine. They're just really hand-crafting an ARTISANAL genocide. They're GOING to wipe out Palestine. Just GIVE them a minute. GEEZE.

"By contrast, I CLEARLY recognize the humanity in others."

Speaking of which, has anyone here considered giving a shit about the hostages or their families? Unserious question. I know the standard operating procedure out there is to deface or mutilate displays of hostage photos and beat Jews who witness it.

(Or yell chants about massacres and hostage abduction being justified, at a vigil, and then storm the library they retreat to. That one was special enough to deserve its own mention.)

"We mistakenly believed we were executing unarmed Palestinians instead of real people"

[tehamelie]

The Boys are such cops

I like this show. The changes from the comic are generally exciting to great, only sometimes disorienting, and never baffling. The writing, the acting, the casting, the design is all top shelf. But I'm starting to wonder if the writers don't know what terrorism is or just think talking about it would confuse the viewers.

It's a loose concept, but there's generally one definition that works to a) separate terrorism from not terrorism, b) without biases that preclude people you like from being terrorists: Terrorism is "a strategy of using violence against defenseless targets with the purpose of undermining the public's confidence in the ability of an open democratic society to function, or an ideology based in advocating this strategy."

Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid is a terrorist, whose plainly stated goal is to reduce the whole world to a state of perpetual open warfare. Daesh is a terrorist movement aiming, broadly, to foster division and conflict between whites and Muslims to a point where the only solution is keeping us locked in separate countries. Netanyahu is a terrorist, at this moment vigorously proving to everyone, especially the people of Gaza, that bombing universities is a better road to peace than building them; that if you disagree with someone the only solution is killing them and taking their land. Hamas is of course also terrorists, who knew without a doubt they could provoke Netanyahu into illustrating their point for them more clearly than Bush illustrated it for Al-Qaida, or maybe anyone in the history of terror.

But anyway. You don't decide someone is a terrorist just because he blows himself up to kill a team of US soldiers invading his country and killing his buddies under questionable legality. Naqib, it's likely, is freely associating himself with the terrorist organization what hijacked that plane, but we're told nothing of his goals and motivations. He's killed in the middle of working on his "branding" - it seems he wants a kind of holy warrior theme for his superhero persona, which is literally in no way different from most of what we see the American supes do in Vought's offices.

The show seems to want us to think it's different if you do it in a clay hut by torchlight or high up in a shiny skyscraper, and to want us to think it's different if you dress up in an American flag to murder a bunch of people than if you dress up in Arabic writing when you do it, and that's a bit disturbing. Like nobody so far has called the Homelander a terrorist but the Boys, the violent anti-establishment heroes of the show, immediately buy into it when CIA decides Naqib is a terrorist, not to mention this child soldier about whom all they know is that he was forced into a terrorist group and killed some people to get away from them. . .

[inqilabi]

The anon talking about Islamic terrorism was rather clearly implying groups such as Hamas. You then respond “what terrorism?” and bring up Nelson Mandela. Please understand some of us agree with you about Israeli war crimes, about wanting freedom for Palestinian civilians, etc. But we feel we can’t engage with you because you are coy about what you mean — do you think groups such as Hamas, who have called just a few weeks ago for the beheading of Jewish civilians, will be remembered years from now as freedom fighters, and that for you would be the morally correct position to take? I have seen you call their rockets ‘resistance rockets’, those same rockets whose intent, if not impact, is specifically to target and kill Jewish civilians — you think those are the ‘resistance’? It’s not that many of us disagree with you on the Israeli gov, or Israel as a state. We are concerned you’re not consistent in your views when you seem to excuse groups like Hamas’s terrorism or else play coy about any terrorist or antisemitic intent in the first place (“what terrorism? Nelson Mandela was classed as a terrorist”, etc). Which way is it? Can’t all bad things, all targeting of innocent civilians based on hatred, be bad?

So you do think Hamas are the resistance. But do you think that makes what they advocate for correct? You are lying if you think their only goal (or even their main one tbf) is the freedom of Palestinians and not the killing of Jews. Genuinely, I think there is a whole aspect of this that you are either deliberately trying not to comment on or else actively pretending is not there. You can’t be so blind to what Hamas leaders have said or encouraged.

I have to say that this was a disappointing ask, because even before the recent heightened ethnic cleansing effort by Israel, I was talking about propaganda. I posted a video where a ruling class agent openly talks about how they literally create stories, feed to the AP etc, get books written on the topic, the authors of which go on to become influential academics & poets and other cultural features so even if we don't absorb this information from political media, we will absorb it from the random fiction book or poetry we read. As well as I mentioned several instances of ridiculously sensational claims we repeat like robots without realizing that the oppressor class is producing them. And everything you've stated in this ask about Hamas is a product of all that, Israel specifically calls it hasbara. So hopefully you're a new follower, read selectively or are young- because otherwise, it's disappointing.

I also just want to inform you that I use to have the 'Hamas is a terrorist' position for a longtime, I had to struggle against my common notions to arrive at my current position. So I am not blind to Hamas, I believe that I am now more informed.

Yes Hamas is resistance. Because it formed in response to oppression. Hamas is armed civilian resistance. I don't how to make that any clearer. It formed in first intifada in 87'. Yes it is resistance rockets in the face of Israeli slaughter. And Hamas targets Israeli military targets, not civilians. Unlike Israel and IOF which only & exclusively targets civilians with their precision rocket technology under the lie of 'Hamas had a base there' because their goal is literally ethnic cleansing. Israel conducts census for this purpose. They know exactly the population of Palestinians: age, how many children in each family, who lives where, their phone numbers! Israel literally can kill no one even if they choose to bomb because they have technology that advanced & the census. And yet, they choose not to. Because the aim is ethnic cleansing. Hamas makes kitchen rocket from Israel's ethnic cleansing wreckage. The contrast between civilian causalities on both side speak to this fact. This will continue to happen regardless of whether Hamas exists or not. Hamas does not exist in the west bank, and yet Israel continues. Hamas did not exist before 87' and yet, Israel continued. Arabs have always been considered terrorist, as I stated already this was beginning to be the perception when the Arab revolts happened to the Zionist terrorism of the 1920s (might I add, terrorism as we associate with middle east was brought to the region by Zionist bombers but I digress).

Abu Obeida is the official spokesperson of Hamas, so I wouldn't believe nypost first of all, nor Fathi Hammad to represent Hamas' position re your 'behead jews' claim or whomever else made that claim. Hamas original charter was antisemitic, written in 87' during a horrible continued onslaught by Israel- nonetheless not justifiable. The original founders were all assassinated by Israel. And Hamas current character is not that of its foundation given the 30 years that have passed & that the leadership is now completely different, plus many other things that happened between other factions of resistance that have driven a new position. The new charter can be found here.

Point in mentioning Mandela was this: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Mandela, ANC and the armed resistance uMkhonto we Sizwe was considered terrorist in consciousness of most people at that time. They were considered to be hell bent on destroying the white people, the Afrikaners, targeting civilians. All of this rhetoric was used to uphold the apartheid.

Today, all liberals come to correctly believe that they were not terrorist, and targeted state apparatus- because this became clear after apartheid ended even though this info was availble before too for anyone who cared to understand. But these same people would have believed at the time that they were killing civilians, as the propaganda said so at the time. These same people today believe Hamas targets civilians. How can you have this hindsight and not understand that its the same thing happening today. Make it make sense!!!!

Anyway to summarize, I have my own opinions about Hamas, but I don't mention them as they're irrelevant since a) national liberation is to be supported no matter who is engaging in it b) I am not the Gazan people with my life being a sentence of death by apartheid Israel.

I think position you have comes from a far too narrow of an analysis, focusing only on the IOF and Hamas. Focusing only on right or wrong, focusing on both players as if they are equal and comes from a lack of understanding of the sheer brutality of colonialism. I would suggest you read this: On Violence.

[seleneprince]

Point 1: You're absolutely right. Israel got a sniff of a known group of armed terrorists known for their antisemitism doctrine planning to go and masacre and kidnap those teenagers and young people and they went "y'know what? let them do it. what could possibly go wrong? let's see what happens" 💀💀💀jeez

And no, they're not aware of every single location of Hamas' hiding spots, but they're easy to find because Hamas has been using the same tactic since 2007, which consists in building them near civilians locations to cover their losses with the tragedy of those innocent deaths. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 (you're also free to search up testimonies of arabs that have suffered Hamas's reign in their own skins if you don't believe this)

Point 2: Of course they're not, hell, it's all "black or white" with you people. But mind you, before all this mess started, Israel warned Palestine civilians about the upcoming attack as a retaliation for these horrific acts (these are only examples) and urged them to evacuate. However, Hamas forced them to stay and has blocked all evacuation routes for their own civilians, not to mention that most arab countries around them, their neighbours that are so loud in their support for Palestine and share the same culture, refuse to take any Gaza refugees. If you checked my links in the Point 1, you already know this.

How come we always go at Israel for firing the bombs (which it's true and they cannot be justified) but we never stop to consider "hey, why did Hamas built those tunnels and HQs underneath civilians? Why they keep putting them in first line of the war and don't let them go?"

Point 3: They do. They've eliminated multiple Hamas HQs, killed and captured some of their members, but erasing a terrorist group's whole operation that has been going on for decades isn't exactly a quick work. Not to mention Hamas are using the funds given to help palestinians to get more warring weapons, while also stealing resources from the civilians for their warring purposes, showing us what their priorities are..

Also, yeah, that's kinda the point in hiding among civilians. That they're the most numbered deaths.

Point 4: You finally mention some of Hamas's war crimes, thank god. Maybe you have some hope still. Because obviously you know this is exactly what Hamas does, right? You must know this...right?

Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

Point 5: This is heavily tied to the first points, but I guess you needed to add something to make it longer..

Point 6: Another repetition from the previous points but allright, we'll go over it again. How the fuck do you expect the military to avoid civilian casualties if all Hamas headquarters and locations are in THE SAME PLACE as civilians are. Is there a way to snuff the terrrorists out so they can be killed quietly? Can you move all the people magically to another place far away before bombing?

"Hey guys, can you move away from the civilians for a moment so we can kill all of you and take down your operation?"

"Sure mate, no problem. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable option we'll gladly take"

Again, there are many villains in this story, and Israel isn't the main one.

Point 7: You mean the hostages Hamas is torturing, mistreating, killing, raping, regardless of their age? Those hostages whose brutalization has been revealed to the public by Hamas itself so the families can see? The hostages who mean nothing to their kidnappers since they're mostly jewish and these people's doctrine is purely anti semitic?

But you're right, it's not only about releasing them. It's about killing that scum of earth and take revenge for all the lives they've sullen and taken only for their sadistic, selfish goals. Both Israelis AND Palestinians. Because yeah, news to you, Hamas has also been oppressing palestinians as long as the Israel's government. It's just the western media isn't interested in showcasing that fact. Wonder why...

Point 8: I genuinely don't know what you meant in that sentence, but it's true there's a certain group of people that have a strong and vicious hatred for Jews...

Point 9: ...really?

Point 10: Finally! You wrote something that makes sense, thank god!

Here is the link ->

[bountyofbeads]

Qassim Suleimani, Master of Iran’s Intrigue, Built a Shiite Axis of Power in Mideast

https://nyti.ms/36l1n3r

Qassim Suleimani, Master of Iran’s Intrigue, Built a Shiite Axis of Power in Mideast

The commander helped direct wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and he became the face of Iran’s efforts to build a regional bloc of Shiite power.

By Tim Arango, Ronen Bergman and  Ben Hubbard | Published Jan. 3, 2020 Updated 8:37 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 3, 2020 |

He changed the shape of the Syrian civil war and tightened Iran’s grip on Iraq. He was behind hundreds of American deaths in Iraq and waves of militia attacks against Israel. And for two decades, his every move lit up the communications networks — and fed the obsessions — of intelligence operatives across the Middle East.

On Friday, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the powerful and shadowy 62-year-old spymaster at the head of Iran’s security machinery, was killed by an American drone strike near the Baghdad airport.

Just as his accomplishments shaped the creation of a Shiite axis of influence across the Middle East, with Iran at the center, his death is now likely to prove central to a new chapter of geopolitical tension across the region.

General Suleimani was at the vanguard of Iran’s revolutionary generation, joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in his early 20s after the 1979 uprising that enshrined the country’s Shiite theocracy.

He rose quickly during the brutal Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. And since 1998, he was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ influential Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, melding intelligence work with a military strategy of nurturing proxy forces across the world.

In the West, he was seen as a clandestine force behind an Iranian campaign of international terrorism. He and other Iranian officials were  designated as terrorists by the United States and Israel in 2011, accused of a plot to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s chief enemies in the region, in Washington. Last year, in April, the entire Quds Force was listed as a foreign terrorism group by the Trump administration.

But in Iran, many saw him as a larger-than-life hero, particularly within security circles. Anecdotes about his asceticism and quiet charisma joined to create an image of a warrior-philosopher who became the backbone of a nation’s defense against a host of enemies.

He was close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and “forceful revenge,” in a declaration that amounted to a threat of retaliation against the United States.

“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” he said.

The first years of General Suleimani’s tenure in the late 1990s were devoted to directing the militant group Hezbollah’s effort against the Israeli military occupation of south Lebanon. General Suleimani, along with Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mugniyah, drove a sophisticated campaign of guerrilla warfare, combining ambushes, roadside bombs, suicide bombers, targeted killings of senior Israeli officers and attacks on Israeli defense posts.

At the end, the price for Israel was too high, and in May 2000 it withdrew from Lebanon, marking a major victory for General Suleimani, his Quds Force and Hezbollah.

The Arab Spring in the Middle East, and later the fight against the Islamic State, turned General Suleimani from a shadow figure into a major player in the geopolitics of the region, said Tamir Pardo, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.

“Suleimani’s professional life can be divided into two periods,” he said. “Until the Arab Spring, he is commander of a force that has branches in various parts of the world, active mainly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, but at the end of the day is a secret operational organization whose main purpose is terrorism.”

“From the shock that befell the Middle East following the rise of ISIS, he is changing course,” Mr. Pardo continued. “He becomes a kingpin regional player, knowing with great talent how to exploit the secret infrastructure he has established for so many years, to achieve noncovert objectives — to fight, to win, to establish presence.”

In recent years, the man whose face had rarely been seen became the face of Iran’s foreign operations.

In Syria, he oversaw a massive operation to shore up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose own troops had been depleted by widespread defections and fierce fighting with rebels seeking to topple the government since 2011. His command of Arabic helped put local commanders at ease as he welded them into a support network for Mr. al-Assad.

Over a number of years, Iranian operatives guided by General Suleimani recruited militia fighters from countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who were airlifted to Syria to back up Mr. Assad’s forces in key battles.

Many of these militia fighters received training at military bases in Iran or on the ground in Syria by operatives from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an organization General Suleimani had helped develop over the years.

When Iranian and Iranian-backed forces became major combatants against ISIS after the group took over roughly a third of Iraq in 2014, pictures of General Suleimani, often photographed on the battlefield in fatigues, began being widely shared on social media. The publicity spawned rumors that General Suleimani was trying to widen his fame for a possible run for Iran’s presidency; he denied them, saying he always saw himself as just a soldier.

That conflict, from 2014 through 2017, was a rare instance of Iran and the United States nominally fighting on the same side. On a number of occasions, Americans were hitting Islamic State targets on the ground while General Suleimani was directing ground forces against the militants.

It was unclear what direct role General Suleimani played in Yemen. But Iran’s patronage of the country’s Houthi rebels, which intensified when Saudi Arabia intervened against them in Yemen’s war in 2015, had all the hallmarks of the Suleimani playbook: above all, to support local militants as a way of expanding Iranian influence and foil Saudi Arabia, the region’s Sunni power.

Iran had long offered similar support to the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, creating decades of new security headaches for Israel. And with the support of the Quds Force, Hamas was able to take over the Gaza Strip, capable of firing rockets that can reach into most of Israeli territory.

Previous American administrations had resisted striking General Suleimani directly, either because of operational concerns or out of fear that killing him could destabilize the region further and lead to all-out war between the United States and Iran.

At least once, though, Israeli officials ran the possibility of attacking him up their command structure. That was in February 2008, while Israeli and American intelligence operatives were tracking Mr. Mugniyah, the Hezbollah commander, in the hopes of killing him, according to senior American and Israeli intelligence officials. Operatives spotted the Hezbollah commander talking with another man, who they quickly determined was Mr. Suleimani.

Excited by the possibility of killing two archenemies at once, the Israelis phoned senior government officials. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denied the request, as he had promised the Americans that only Mr. Mugniyah would be targeted in the operation.

Perhaps more than any other individual, General Suleimani was the foil for American plans in Iraq, which like Iran is predominantly Shiite.

After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iranian militiamen and their Iraqi allies fought a clandestine war against American troops, launching rockets at bases and attacking convoys. The militias also played a large part in inflaming sectarian tensions that led to Iraq’s sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007 between Shiites and Sunnis, leading President George W. Bush to order a troop surge there.

General Suleimani and other leaders of his generation were shaped by the brutal war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, a conflict so cruel, with trench warfare and chemical weapons, that some compared it to the devastation of World War I. Nearly a million people died on both sides, and General Suleimani spent much of that war on the front lines.

For him and his fellow soldiers, the war was a “never again” moment. Ensuring that Iraq was weak and unable to again pose a threat to Iran became the primary goal of Iran’s policy toward Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, whom the United States supported during its war with Iran in the 1980s.

“For Qassim Suleimani, the Iran-Iraq war never really ended,” Ryan C. Crocker, a former American ambassador to Iraq, once said in an interview. “No human being could have come through such a World War I-style conflict and not have been forever affected. His strategic goal was an outright victory over Iraq, and if that was not possible, to create and influence a weak Iraq.”

Sometimes, American officials secretly communicated with General Suleimani in an effort to ease tensions in Iraq. In 2008, the American general, David Petraeus, was trying to find a truce in a fight that American forces and the Iraqi Army were waging against Shiite militias loyal to Iran. In Mr. Petraeus’s  telling of the story, he was shown a text message directed to him: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassim Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan.”

Years later, General Suleimani personally, and mockingly, addressed another American leader: President Trump, who in July 2018 warned Iran’s president not to threaten the United States.

“It is beneath the dignity of our president to respond to you,” General Suleimani declared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a soldier, respond to you.”

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he added. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”

For years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran railed against what it saw as American aggression in the region, worried that the United States would turn its attention to regime change in Iran after Mr. Hussein was gone.

American officials have blamed Iran for killing hundreds of American soldiers during the war, many with sophisticated, shaped-charge bombs that could slice through American armored vehicles.

As the United States sought to negotiate a deal with Iraq that would allow American forces to stay in the country past a 2011 deadline, it was General Suleimani who relentlessly pushed Iraqi officials to refuse to sign, using a mixture of threats and the promise of more financial and military aid, American and Iraqi officials say.

On his orders, Iraqi construction crews in 2014 began building a roadway for Iranian supplies and militiamen, a small piece of what was perhaps the general’s most important project: establishing a land route from Tehran to the Mediterranean, across Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, where Iran has long supported Hezbollah, a primary threat to Israel.

One telling episode that illustrated the depth of Iranian control came in 2014, when the Islamic State was rampaging across Iraq. General Suleimani paid a visit to Bayan Jabr, then the country’s transportation minister.

According to a collection of Iranian intelligence cables published recently  by The Intercept and The New York Times, General Suleimani came to Mr. Jabr with a demand: He needed to use Iraqi airspace to fly planeloads of military supplies to support the Syrian government of Mr. Assad. Despite lobbying by the Obama administration to close Iraq’s airspace to the flights, Mr. Jabr quickly said yes.

“I put my hands on my eyes and said, ‘On my eyes! As you wish!’” Mr. Jabr told an Iranian Intelligence Ministry officer, according to one of the cables. “Then he got up and approached me and kissed my forehead.”

The same trove of documents contains evidence that General Suleimani is not universally admired within Iran.

A bitter rivalry between his Quds Force and the other main Iranian intelligence agency, the Ministry of Intelligence, played out over the course of the cables. Many criticized General Suleimani’s proxy campaign in Iraq, and the way his militia allies abused the Sunni population there, as weakening Iran’s long-term interests in the region.

“This policy of Iran in Iraq has allowed the Americans to return to Iraq with greater legitimacy,” one cable read.

In others, ministry case officers portrayed General Suleimani as a relentless self-promoter who used the battle against the Islamic State to bolster his potential political aspirations in the future.

Iran watchers sounded alarm that General Suleimani’s death would unleash unpredictable regional mayhem from Syria to Iraq that would be difficult for the United States to contain. Several Iranian diplomats said that the prospect of diplomacy with the United States, being quietly negotiated through Japan and France, was effectively dead. The talk was now of revenge, not negotiations, they said.

“This one life lost will likely cost many more Iranian, Iraqi, American and others,” said Ali Vaez, director of Iran program for International Crisis Group. “It is not just Suleimani’s death, but likely the death knell of the Iran nuclear deal and any prospect of diplomacy between Iran and the U.S.”

Qassim Suleimani was born in 1957 in Rabor, in eastern Iran, and later moved to the city of Kerman. He was the son of a farmer, and began laboring as a construction worker at age 12. His highest level of education was high school, and he later worked in the municipal water department in Kerman, according to a profile published by the Iranian state media.

According to a 2012 profile in The New Yorker, General Suleimani’s father became burdened with debt under the Shah. When the revolution came he was sympathetic to the cause, and joined the Revolutionary Guards soon after. He was married and had children, although there were conflicting stories in the Iranian news media about how many.

Within Iran, he was widely seen as exerting more influence over the country’s foreign policy than even the country’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

General Suleimani, in death if not in life, appeared to have united Iran’s rival political parties to rally behind the flag. Iran’s expansionist policies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon have been contentious at home among ordinary Iranians and some reformist politicians who saw money and resources diverted from Iran to fund General Suleimani’s missions.

But on Friday, there was only praise and grief. Iranian officials across the political spectrum issued statements of condolences and condemned the United States.

The powerful Revolutionary Guards, of which the Quds Force is a component, said plans were underway for a huge public funeral.

“He was so big that he achieved his dream of being martyred by America,” wrote a reformist politician and former vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi.

General Suleimani had received the country’s highest military honor, the Order of Zolfaghar, established in 1856 under the Qajar dynasty. He became the only military commander to receive the honor in the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Khamenei pinned the medal on General Suleimani’s chest last February, and in remarks that now seem prophetic, said: “The Islamic Republic needs him for many more years. But I hope that in the end, he dies as a martyr.”

______

Tim Arango reported from Los Angeles; Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv, Israel; and Ben Hubbard from Beirut. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Washington, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.

[militant-holy-knight]

The Sick Old Man of Europe

Its about time that Recep Tayyip Erdogan must be put into his proper place 

I’ve posted before how the Christchurch tragedy would have huge consequences due people using it to advance their personal agenda, but I must admit: I was rather shocked at what selfish lows Erdogan would go. During an election rally in Izmir, the Turkish dictator showed video footage of the massacre to an open crowd, something which the Western media has been trying to censor desperately for good reason. His reasoning is that the NZ terrorist wanted Turks removed from Europe, thereby presenting the voters with an “us vs them” mentality and essentially telling them “I am the only one who can protect you from this, so if you know what is good for you, then vote for me”. Not content with this, he has pressured New Zealand to execute the terrorist in custody and has basically threatened any New Zealander tourists with we will send you back home in coffins like we done to your ancestors in Gallipoli.

He probably took it more personally this time since the terrorist called for his death in his manifesto and he is in full-blown panic mode knowing that someone who wanted him dead slipped inside his country - oh the horror, nevermind the possibility of an white supremacist actually killing him is less likely than a radicalized Kurdish militant. He really wants that nutter dead despite him being in no position to harm anyone else or ever getting out and that is not if someone actually kills him inside and promised that he will take necessary action if New Zealand doesn’t cave to his demands. Many outsiders will say that he is just spewing a lot of hot air, but I think many outsiders - even those who are also critical of him - really underestimate the real danger he represents.

Coming from an Islamist background, Erdogan’s greatest dream was to relive the glories of the Ottoman Empire’s past which is reflected on his policy referred to as “Neo-Ottomanism”. After the Turkish sultan Selim the Grim defeated the Mamluks in 1517, the Ottoman Empire was elevated from an realm at the margins of the Islamic world from being in charge of it, ruling their most important seats of power such as Cairo, Aleppo, Mecca and Medina. As such they were recognized as a caliphate and their leader was regarded as the successor of the Prophet Muhammad and the spiritual leader of Muslims worldwide.

Despite their prestigious position, it was just a nice new title the Ottomans held in their long list and even then their authority was questioned for a number of reasons: for one, the caliph is supposed to be elected among the most capable and pious leaders while the Ottomans were infamous for relying on fratricide, having the prospective sultans killing their brothers to get to the throne (they later changed it to imprisonment or exile). Otherwise, they functioned like a typical Islamic absolute monarchy and they really wouldn’t adopt a policy of pan-Islamism until much later after their decline really began and they were referred to as the “sick old man of Europe”. Despite being in charge of the Empire, Turks only compromised a minority of its Muslim population while Arabs were the majority and they promoted Islam as the one thing tying them together in an attempt to counter nationalism in Europe. 

Rather than trying to restore the House of Osmanoglu (the descendants of Osman who founded the dynasty that ruled over an uninterrupted line over the empire since its foundation until Ataturk abolished the caliphate) back to power, Erdogan wants to do right what his predecessors have failed and recreate an Neo-Ottoman Empire based on what should have been and declare himself caliph by the correct application of Islam. He has worked all of his life with Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and some pleasant people like Afghan warlord Gulbuldin Hekmatyar (an well-known genocide perpetrator against the Hazara people and responsible for spraying acid on women for being unveiled) to plant the seeds necessary so that he could be recognized as the new caliph of all Muslims. He had spent a good time also antagonizing the Gulf States specially Saudi Arabia whose kings serve as Custodians of the Two Holy Places. But make no mistake, just because the Saudis are promoters of a fundamentalist brand of Islam it doesn’t make Erdogan less of an fundamentalist himself - he just sees Wahhabism/Salafism as a rivals to his conservative Islam. 

That opportunity finally came when the Arab Spring erupted. Erdogan was part of the international powers that formed an alliance to strike Libya. When Libya fell, followed by Tunisia and Egypt falling into the hands of Islamists, he rushed to pay these countries a visit and portraying himself as defender of all Muslims to get into their good graces. He spread his influence even further offering to build mosques in Albania, something which local Muslims found outrageous because they despise the memories of being under Ottoman occupation. 

However, he left all pretense and reason behind when it became obvious that Syria was not easily succumbing to the Muslim Brotherhood. He turned Turkey’s borders with Syria into an assembly of hardened terrorists brought in from all over the world, equipped with weapons and funds and aiming to bring Bashar Al-Assad down. Finally, the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt seemed to have pushed him over the edge. 

Most realists will coincide that he is a necessary evil since as a NATO member the West can’t afford to have him as an enemy - case in point, the main reason why Israel hasn’t recognized the Armenian Genocide is because Turkey is one of the few Muslim nations they consider as allies in the region. I really must question Erdogan’s reliability as an ally: 

Consider that Turkey has avoided confronting ISIS directly in order to let them fight the Kurds and the Assad government. 

Consider that Turkey has allowed Western volunteers to cross the border to join ISIS.

Consider Turkey has also supported jihadist groups that are no different than ISIS.

Consider that several people (such as Iraq’s Prime Minister, the King of Jordan and the Hezbollah leader) have accused Turkey of outright backing ISIS.

Consider that Hamas implied that Turkey backs ISIS when they refused to denounce them when they burned the Jordanian pilot alive saying that Jordan had no business fighting them and they should have taken Turkey’s position instead. 

Of course, I will admit this is circumstantial evidence and conjectural “he said, she said”. Some will point out that Turkey held the biggest number of Syrian refugees since the civil war more so than Europe itself which has struggled with the migrant crisis, but its clear that Erdogan doesn’t hesitate to weaponize them when it suits him such as when he threatened to evict all refugees into Europe in case they don’t play ball with him. And this is the reason why I made this blog. He must be disciplined for his arrogance and short temper.

Its pretty self-evident to outsiders that he is a dictator. His apologists will quickly come to his defense and say that he was democratically elected with 80% of the public support, which is a really tepid response. Nevermind how the electoral race was heavily skewed in one’s favor, I find almost comical that Erdogan supporters would hold democracy as an valid argument for him considering that he once served time in jail for declaring:

"Democracy is merely a train that we ride until we reach our goal. Mosques are our military barracks, minarets are our spears, and domes are our helmets.”

Looking at today’s Turkey, it’s very hard to believe that he regrets saying these words when he was mayor of Constantinople. Furthermore, the mark of an dictatorial regime is authoritarianism. Political dissidents, critics and journalists are jailed with staggering frequency, subjected to torture, rape and abuse that honestly makes the abuse in Abu Ghurab look tame and his outrage at it hypocritical in hindsight. Just imagine: Turkey arrests more journos than Saudi Arabia itself.

Erdogan is incapable of taking criticism, which is why he gives a platform for the Muslim Brotherhood members to criticize the current Egyptian government for overthrowing Mohammed Morsi because they pay lip service to him, all while jailing any journalist that publishes anything he dislikes on the excuse of “promoting terrorism” and it must strike him something fierce knowing not being able to do as he wills wherever he wants.

For all the shit that people pins on Donald Trump, Erdogan manages to be even less tactless and diplomatic than him. Remember how much scrutiny Trump got for describing third world countries as “shitholes” in a closed meeting? Can you imagine the cataclysm that would ensue if he made the same kind of comment as Erdogan? Or if he even showed footage of the Islamic terrorist attacks on Europe to prove a point? Now don’t get me wrong: you are in no way obligated to like Trump, you can certainly criticize both him and Erdogan for different reasons. But its really sad how American journalists live on easy mode when Turkish journalists constantly have to look over their shoulder to not post anything that the regime finds objectionable. 

I realize that not all Turks support Erdogan, but a significant number of them (including a former friend of mine) voted to place him into power and are fine with living under his autocratic rule. This speaks something truly depressing about the Turkish people that for all the pretense they were once the secular model that all Muslim peoples should aspire to be, if the statistic of support for Erdogan are correct, it means things must be worse than imagined.

To conclude this text with an anecdote, it seems that that not only Erdogan’s long-life dream appears to have been for naught with Assad still standing in Syria, Morsi gone, the Kurds are on the rise and Turkey’s economy being on the toilet and only being bailed out by Qatar, it seems Erdogan doesn’t have much time left on his planet and not only because of his advanced age. Wikileaks has reported that he has been diagnosed with cancer, and while he has officially denied it, his oncologist has been arrested too which is a very interesting development. As of the time of writing, the man doesn’t appear to be any worse than before so we should see how this pans out. But it should be interesting what kind of succession will be in place or if Erdogan actually planned that long enough. Its a luxury that dictators very rarely afford it for themselves.

I find it very fitting: that the actual sick old man of Europe would want to restore the previous sick old man of Europe that was the Ottoman Empire that he identified the most, the pan-Islamist one trying desperately to survive in a changing world only to live long enough to see political Islam fall flat on its face and become discredited as a viable ideology. 

[thisdaynews]

Breaking News: Israel Believes Gaza Fighting Is Over for Now, Won't Attack if Rocket Fire Ends

New Post has been published on https://www.thisdaynews.net/2018/05/31/breaking-news-israel-believes-gaza-fighting-is-over-for-now-wont-attack-if-rocket-fire-ends/

Breaking News: Israel Believes Gaza Fighting Is Over for Now, Won't Attack if Rocket Fire Ends

A potential calm was reached in Gaza after the Israeli military struck dozens of militant sites in Gaza overnight as rocket fire continued toward southern Israeli communities into early Wednesday morning. Egypt negotiated a cease-fire without Israel, but Israeli defense officials said the army will respect the deal if the calm is kept.

The border area has been tense in recent weeks as Palestinians held mass protests aimed at lifting an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007.

The attacks continued throughout Tuesday, triggering dozens of rocket sirens in southern Israel and wounding five Israelis, one of them suffering moderate injuries. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have claimed Tuesday’s attacks, while the international community has called on the groups to cease firing projectiles immediately.

10:24 P.M.: UN envoy calls flare-up ‘most serious escalation since 2014 conflict’

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council that Tuesday’s events were the most serious escalation since the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza, describing it as a warning on how close to the brink of war we are every day. (Noa Landau)

10:16 P.M. Israel’s UN ambassador: International community was fooled by terrorists disguised as civilians

Speaking ahead of the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on the Gaza flare-up, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said: “If the children of Israel do not sleep peacefully, in Gaza they will feel the powerful arm of the IDF. For a long time the international community was deceived when the demonstrators from the Gaza Strip were terrorists disguised as civilians – terrorists whose sole goal was one thing, to disturb Israel’s security.”  (Noa Landau)

7:14 P.M. UN Security Council to convene in coming hours, Israeli ambassador to speak

The UN Security Council is set to convene at 3 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (10:00 P.M. in Israel) regarding the flare-up. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, is expected to speak before the council at 4 P.M. Danon plans to hold a press conference at 2:30 P.M., ahead of the meeting. (Noa Landau)

6:25 P.M. Netanyahu: Gaza groups will pay heavy price if they keep testing us

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that organizations in Gaza will pay a heavy price if they continue to attack Israel. “When they test us, they pay immediately,” Netanyahu said at an event commemorating the 1948 Altalena affair. “And if they continue to test us, they will pay much more.” Netanyahu referred to the IDF’s airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday as “the worst blow we inflicted on them in years. Those responsible for the escalation, inspired by Iran, are the Hamas regime, the Islamic Jihad and other terror organizations. I am not specifying our plans because I do not want the enemy to know what is in store for him.” (Noa Landau)

5:25 P.M. Home Front Command says situation back to normal

The military’s Home Front Command has said that beginning at 6:00 P.M., residents of the Gaza border communities can return to their regular routines.

2:42 P.M.: With Eye on Bigger Threats, Israel Quickly Agrees to Hamas’ Request for Cease-fire | Analysis 

As of Wednesday morning, a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza has been in effect. The rocket and mortar fire from Gaza that trickled overnight has stopped and, accordingly, so have Israeli aerial attacks on Gaza.

This is not an official cease-fire. Senior political and military officials maintain that Israel has not signed anything with Hamas. The group’s leadership in Gaza sent Israel a message though Egypt that they are willing to end attacks on Israel and rein in their smaller groups in Gaza. Israel, in response, said that clam would be met with calm. In the meantime, the indirect agreement is holding – because, among others, Israel made sure not to let things spin out of control. (Amos Harel)

1:37 P.M.: Germany condemns Gaza rocket fire towards Israel

In a Facebook post, Germany condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza, saying “there is no justification for the massive mortar attack towards Israel from Gaza under any circumstances.” (Noa Landau)

11:29 A.M. Security cabinet to convene tonight at 6 P.M. at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv

Ministers in the government said Wednesday that they have received only “light” updates about the situation in Gaza. The meeting in the meeting will be about an hour.

Israeli ministers spoke to Israeli media about the calm and made seemingly conflicting statements. “There is no cease-fire,” Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said, “there is however a clear Israeli policy regarding violence towards Israeli citizens and territory.” Education Minister Naftali Bennett added that “there were no understandings, only action against Gaza.” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said there were understandings, “but more than that there is reality on the ground – understandings are reached on the basis of what happens.” (Noa Landau)

10:15 A.M. Israeli official on cease-fire: If attacks from Gaza resume, strikes on Hamas ‘will be even stronger’

An Israeli official said that the “army dealt a serious blow tonight. The responsibility lies with Hamas.” They added that “from the early morning fire has stopped, and Israel has passed on messages according to which if attacks resume, the strikes against Hamas and its affiliates will be even stronger.” (Noa Landau)

9:40 A.M. Gaza fighting is over for now, Israeli defense officials believe

Israel’s defense establishment’s assessment Wednesday morning is that the current round of violence in Gaza has come to an end. Despite the fact that understandings regarding a ceasefire were reached unilaterally, with Hamas talking directly with Egyptian mediators, the Israel Defense Forces will respect the calm if Hamas bring about an end to fire on Israel.

The current assessment is that Hamas was dragged into yesterday’s events despite not aiming for a conflict. Hamas was concentrating its efforts on a flotilla to break the blockade on Gaza but failed to stop the Islamic Jihad from taking revenge for the death of its operatives by Israel. The Islamic Jihad fire targeting civilians even caught Hamas by surprise, as though Hamas allowed the group to take revenge, it did not believe the response would be so severe. (Yaniv Kubovich)

8:38 A.M.: Gaza’s Hamas rulers say cease-fire reached with Israel

Gaza’s Hamas rulers say they have agreed to a cease-fire with Israel to end the largest flare-up of violence between the sides since a 2014 war.

Khalil al-Haya, a senior Hamas official, says Wednesday that Egyptian mediators intervened “after the resistance succeeded in warding off the aggression.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett told Israel’s Army Radio no agreement has been reached yet.

8:00 A.M. UN Security Council to likely to meet on Gaza later today

The United States has called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council over the firing of rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip. The U.S. expects the session to take place on Wednesday afternoon. (Haaretz)

7:22 A.M.: Solider hit by shrapnel in moderate condition (Haaretz)

Three Israeli soldiers were wounded by mortar fragments on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forecs said. One suffered moderate wounds and two were lightly injured. As of Wednesday morning, one was still in the hospital with moderate wounds.

7:09 A.M.: Eshkol regional council: Direct hit on home in the Eshkol region, no casualties

At least two rockets fired from Gaza exploded in the Eshkol region overnight, the regional council spokesperson said. One hit a house in the area directly. There were no casualties. (Almog Ben Zikri)

1:09 A.M. IDF confirms: 25 Hamas targets in Gaza Strip

The Israeli army has confirmed carrying out strikes on at least 25 Hamas targets in Gaza Strip. Earlier, Israel struck positions in Gaza, Palestinian reports said, after rocket explodes in southern Israeli town. (Yaniv Kubovich)

12:30 A.M.: Analysis: Israel-Gaza flare-up worst since 2014 – but war could still be avoided

Clear rules of the game have emerged in Gaza over the past two months – rules from which Israel and Hamas rarely deviated. Every Friday, and sometimes in midweek too, Hamas sent masses to protest along the border fence with Israel. Despite over 100 Palestinians being killed and thousands more being wounded by Israeli gunfire, Hamas preferred to confine the clash to the border fence.

Not only did the organization not fire rockets into Israel; it also forbade the other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip from committing revenge attacks. Hamas’ calculation was clear: It did not want to damage the narrative it was selling of a popular Palestinian struggle confronting Israeli snipers – even though, under cover of the protests, explosives were planted on the fence and members of Hamas’ military wing led mass attempts to breach the border. (Amos Harel)

12:05 A.M.: Analysis: The reasons Islamic Jihad is violating Hamas’ rules

It’s not a war yet in Gaza. Despite the higher-than-usual number of mortar rounds fired by Islamic Jihad and the backing it has received from Hamas, Islamic Jihad prefers to define the mortar firing as revenge for the killing of three of its operatives by the Israeli military. In other words, as a localized event, rather than the opening of a new front and the disruption of the hard-won 2014 agreement between Hamas, Egypt and Israel at the end of Operation Protective Edge. (Zvi Bar’el)

[therightnewsnetwork]

King Abdullah…a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

“If you ask me, am I a moderate or an extremist, I’m a Muslim.”– The words of Jordan’s King Abdullah II said in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria at al-Husseiniya Palace in Amman, Jordan

And so the man who claims to be a purveyor of peace will not admit to being either a moderate or an extremist, but know King Abdullah II is indeed an extremist…a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing in fact…a wolf soon coming to Washington D.C. to meet with President Trump and try to fool him like he has fooled past presidents. Hopefully, our current president will see through his lies.

And Abdullah is indeed the spreader of lies as all roads to the problems in today’s Middle East lead directly back to Jordan and their relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun). The Muslim Brotherhood who, over the past 80 decades or so, has had their tentacles deeply entwined into Jordan’s Hashemite kingdom…a kingdom whose population is comprised of 60% citizens of Jordanian/Palestinian origin and 40% of those of tribal origin (known as East Bankers and of which Jordan’s royal family belongs)…a kingdom that allows the Brotherhood to hide behind the guise of calling itself Jordan’s premier ‘charitable organization’…but to those knowing the truth it is anything but charitable for with the Muslim Brotherhood charity comes with strings attached.

So while President Trump keeps being advised not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization…advised by those truly not on America’s side or by those ignorant to the facts…know that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and even Syria consider the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization whose goal is to overthrow their existing governments and install one of their own. One just has to look back to Egypt to see this has already been tried but thankfully, in the end, failed, for remember when the Muslim Brotherhood led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s pro-West government and installed their puppet President Mohamed El-Morsi who in turn was toppled by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military-led coup.

And know that the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella organization of sorts…an organization that controls the political, charitable, and the ‘so-called’ spiritual needs and activities of the growing Islamist movement within Jordan…a movement that basically supports all things sharia. And know that the Muslim Brotherhood has a long and sordid history in Jordan…a history of Jordan condoning if not outright supporting this most dangerous of groups.

Briefly, after the Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in 1928, affiliated groups starting popping up throughout the region. In fact, then King Abdullah I of Transjordan wanted Abdul-Hakim Abidin, the brother-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna’s, to lead a new Jordanian government. And while he refused, the Muslim Brotherhood still became fully functioning and operational in both Transjordan and in then called Palestine by 1942 and was given ‘official recognition’ by King Abdullah I in 1946.

Then in April 1948, right before the creation of the Jewish State of Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood in Transjordan joined forces with their fellow Brotherhood members in Egypt to fight what became a losing war with now called Israel. And while they lost said war both Egypt and now Jordan continued to receive so-called ‘general supervision’…as in terror tactics and funding…from Egypt’s Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the region’s Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Now fast forward to present day Jordan where the Muslim Brotherhood maintains a close alliance with the monarchy, and know that King Abdullah II is directly tied to the Brotherhood no matter his and Jordan’s smoke-and-mirrors cursory role in the Syrian conflict and in the ‘War on Terror’…for the fact is that Abdullah is still paying off the ‘debt’ to the Brotherhood incurred by his late father King Hussein and his grandfather King Abdullah I before him. And that debt started in the 1950’s when King Hussein (who became king after the assassination of Abdullah l) relied on the Muslim Brotherhood…the region’s main Islamist movement at that time…to help protect his Hashemite kingdom against threats of revolution and overthrow from other Arab nationalist movements.

And as part of his debt to them, King Hussein then and King Abdullah II now both supported the Muslim Brotherhood becoming part of Jordan’s government to the point where their political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), continues to represent Jordan’s main political opposition force while directly being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood through governance structures and financial ties.

And after the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in Jordan’s 1989 election…garnering 23 out of Jordan’s Parliament’s 80 seats…King Hussein allowed them to hold five ministry positions no matter that he reined them in a bit after their showing strong opposition to his peace treaty with Israel…a peace treaty in appearance alone as it is a peace treaty not to be trusted, for Abdullah the son has still not repaid that debt in full and he must do so or face reprisals by the Muslim Brotherhood’s henchmen…henchmen of both the political and tangible sort.

So when will this debt be repaid…only when the Muslim Brotherhood says it is.

Are you starting to see the problem now…a problem whose solution lies within both Abdullah II himself and the Muslim Brotherhood, for noticeable tensions exist between Brotherhood members over the need for internal reform as well as to define what its ties to the terrorist group Hamas will be0 And it is via those tensions that Abdullah hopes to divide and conquer by keeping the political faction of the Muslim Brotherhood as the kingdom’s and his personal and legally sanctioned vanguard, while the more radical and younger faction covertly becoming his link to Hamas…and the hoped-for demise of Israel for as it stands now Jordan is not really their friend.

And with Abdullah knowing well that unless he can make the “divide” work in his favor as well as repaying in full the debt of his father and grandfather, that he cannot nor will he be permitted to keep his throne, thus he allows the Muslim Brotherhood needed space to operate from, helping to assure that both his authority as king and the continuity of the monarchy in Jordan will remain…at least for the time being.

But Abdullah is also smart enough to know that with ISIS sitting on Jordan’s doorstep…that if ISIS surpasses the Muslim Brotherhood regarding grassroots support amongst the people (and know that over 2,500 Jordanian young men have already joined ISIS and that Jordan was one of ISIS’ black market oil customers), then he will surely lose control of Jordan for the Muslim Brotherhood will not take kindly to his not preventing this from happening. That is why Abdullah allows the Muslim Brotherhood, via its charity fronts, to keep the people’s support from waning. In other words they both pull each other’s strings to some degree…but with the Brotherhood pulling more strings…especially with both the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and terrorism in general still not settled, and with the fact that 6.3 million Palestinians are not happy with the king who denies them rights, privileges, and assistance other Jordanian non-Palestinians…as in the East Bankers…receive.

So King Abdullah II’s words that Islamic terrorism…of which the Muslim Brotherhood both fully supports and finances…is the “greatest threat to our region” and that “Muslims must lead the fight against it”…become mere empty words for all terrorism leads back to Jordan as ground zero because of Jordan’s decades-long support for the Brotherhood. And Abdullah knows this but will try his best to keep this fact hidden from others.

How so…one just has to look at how Jordan currently responds to terrorism within its own country…or should I say does not respond…for the kingdom seems to close its collective eyes and look away when it does happen. Focusing on specific individuals deemed to pose a particular threat, the king dares not take into account the big picture involving the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to terrorism because the big picture would expose the truth that under his rule Jordan has not punished or even spoken out against troublemakers operating from within the ranks of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood for he dare not utter a word until his debt is paid-in-full…if even then.

And while the Muslim Brotherhood is now ‘supposedly’ illegal in Jordan…with ‘supposedly’ being done with a wink and a nod of course…the truth is that they still hold an ever-growing influence within the country by their freely being allowed to fuel the anger and resentment that simmers amongst young Jordanian Palestinians…Jordanian Palestinians that feel slighted by their government and who will now willingly join their ranks. And they have done just that to the tune of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood having 10,000+ members and with their IAF party having over 4,000 members. In fact, the more discontent the Brotherhood stirs up…the more its more radical members side with Hamas…the more power they actually coalesce behind Hamas…power they then use to demand and get political concessions from Abdullah’s government.

And nowhere is this more apparent than to those who have been peacefully working for democratic reform within Jordan’s government…reform as in replacing the Muslim Brotherhood supporting monarchy with a secular government…those whose pro-Israel movement is known as the Jordanian Opposition Coalition and whose leaders the king either jails or expels from their homeland. These are the words of Dr. Mudar Zahran, Secretary General of the Jordanian Coalition Opposition:

“Shockingly, while the king puts all seculars in jail and sentences me, the head of the secular opposition, to live in prison, he allows the Muslim Brotherhood to have their own charity, which is now worth over 4 billion dollars, their own TV station, and their own daily newspaper, and he even went as far as shutting down the opposition parties that oppose the Muslim Brotherhood and this is documented.” “What most Americans and Israelis don’t understand is how many Arab regimes work this way and play on them.” 

And how very right Dr. Mudar Zahran is.

Now as for Hamas’ somewhat recent breakaway of sorts from Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership and King Abdullah II’s role in how they operate….first, while Hamas remains part of the Brotherhood’s ideological base organization they do operate independently from them as it benefits strategically (in their war against Israel) both from Jordan’s Palestinian presence and it’s 60% and growing Palestinian population. And second, those very numbers allow Hamas to operate in the open while Abdullah looks away as the Hamas-linked reformist sector gains control of the IAF who are no longer content with the political role they had traditionally played in Jordan, as now they want to be influential players in the political decision-making process. And thanks to Abdullah’s inactions and his still ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, they are.

In other words, Hamas, coupled with the Muslim Brotherhood, is making major policy decisions regarding Jordan’s role in the Middle East…a role that has turned more observational than tactical as was promised by Abdullah. And with Hamas’ numbers continuing to rise means Abdullah has basically become politically impotent as opposition to his government has become more radical, and this is why Hamas has been able to position its sympathizers amongst the leadership of the country’s Islamists…whose numbers are also increasing.

And that is also why the Muslim Brotherhood hierarchy is concerned about Abdullah because as Hamas’ influence grows throughout Jordan they become relegated to second tier string-puller status. And you know that does not sit well with the Brotherhood in regards to Abdullah’s repaying of the debt owed because they can see that as Hamas increases its power they have already started to lose some of the benefits and protections they were afforded by Abdullah. And that makes for a very unhappy Muslim Brotherhood who now are forced to pull the (figurative) noose tighter around Abdullah’s neck, which means he cannot be trusted to work on Jordan’s behalf, on America’s behalf, or even to uphold the peace treaty his father signed with Israel for King Abdullah will throw all under the Muslim Brotherhood bus to save his own neck.

And now we have come full-circle back to the beginning.

“The brotherhood is everywhere in the world where there are Muslims,” so said Murad Adeleih, spokesman for the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood’s Amman-based political wing.

And Abdullah’s response: “I think he is right and I think this is something that has to be understood on a much larger platform because they’re looking for legitimacy that they don’t have inside of Islam. When we’re asked in this debate, you know, are you a moderate or extremist – what these people want is to be called extremist. I mean, they take that as a badge of honor. If you ask me, am I a moderate or an extremist, I’m a Muslim…” 

And King Abdullah II’s response makes him an extremist because like I have always said…” if you do not condemn you condone”…and nowhere has the king condoned either the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas nor any of their actions. And this is why when Abdullah meets with President Trump next week, Trump must not only have both eyes open but have his ears focused not on what Abdullah says but on what he does not say.

A lot of futures depend on President Trump doing just that.

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on American Political Radio

Copyright © 2017 Diane Sori and Craig Andresen / Right Side Patriots 

****************************************************************          RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS…LIVE!

Today, Tuesday, April 4th from 7 to 9 pm EST on American Political Radio, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori will discuss why Jordan’s king is a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing, Craig bursts liberal therapy bubbles and important news of the week.

Hope you can tune in at http://bit.ly/2cpXuRd

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King Abdullah…a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

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King Abdullah…a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

“If you ask me, am I a moderate or an extremist, I’m a Muslim.”– The words of Jordan’s King Abdullah II said in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria at al-Husseiniya Palace in Amman, Jordan

And so the man who claims to be a purveyor of peace will not admit to being either a moderate or an extremist, but know King Abdullah II is indeed an extremist…a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing in fact…a wolf soon coming to Washington D.C. to meet with President Trump and try to fool him like he has fooled past presidents. Hopefully, our current president will see through his lies.

And Abdullah is indeed the spreader of lies as all roads to the problems in today’s Middle East lead directly back to Jordan and their relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun). The Muslim Brotherhood who, over the past 80 decades or so, has had their tentacles deeply entwined into Jordan’s Hashemite kingdom…a kingdom whose population is comprised of 60% citizens of Jordanian/Palestinian origin and 40% of those of tribal origin (known as East Bankers and of which Jordan’s royal family belongs)…a kingdom that allows the Brotherhood to hide behind the guise of calling itself Jordan’s premier ‘charitable organization’…but to those knowing the truth it is anything but charitable for with the Muslim Brotherhood charity comes with strings attached.

So while President Trump keeps being advised not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization…advised by those truly not on America’s side or by those ignorant to the facts…know that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and even Syria consider the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization whose goal is to overthrow their existing governments and install one of their own. One just has to look back to Egypt to see this has already been tried but thankfully, in the end, failed, for remember when the Muslim Brotherhood led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s pro-West government and installed their puppet President Mohamed El-Morsi who in turn was toppled by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military-led coup.

And know that the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella organization of sorts…an organization that controls the political, charitable, and the ‘so-called’ spiritual needs and activities of the growing Islamist movement within Jordan…a movement that basically supports all things sharia. And know that the Muslim Brotherhood has a long and sordid history in Jordan…a history of Jordan condoning if not outright supporting this most dangerous of groups.

Briefly, after the Muslim Brotherhood was born in Egypt in 1928, affiliated groups starting popping up throughout the region. In fact, then King Abdullah I of Transjordan wanted Abdul-Hakim Abidin, the brother-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna’s, to lead a new Jordanian government. And while he refused, the Muslim Brotherhood still became fully functioning and operational in both Transjordan and in then called Palestine by 1942 and was given ‘official recognition’ by King Abdullah I in 1946.

Then in April 1948, right before the creation of the Jewish State of Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood in Transjordan joined forces with their fellow Brotherhood members in Egypt to fight what became a losing war with now called Israel. And while they lost said war both Egypt and now Jordan continued to receive so-called ‘general supervision’…as in terror tactics and funding…from Egypt’s Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the region’s Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Now fast forward to present day Jordan where the Muslim Brotherhood maintains a close alliance with the monarchy, and know that King Abdullah II is directly tied to the Brotherhood no matter his and Jordan’s smoke-and-mirrors cursory role in the Syrian conflict and in the ‘War on Terror’…for the fact is that Abdullah is still paying off the ‘debt’ to the Brotherhood incurred by his late father King Hussein and his grandfather King Abdullah I before him. And that debt started in the 1950’s when King Hussein (who became king after the assassination of Abdullah l) relied on the Muslim Brotherhood…the region’s main Islamist movement at that time…to help protect his Hashemite kingdom against threats of revolution and overthrow from other Arab nationalist movements.

And as part of his debt to them, King Hussein then and King Abdullah II now both supported the Muslim Brotherhood becoming part of Jordan’s government to the point where their political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), continues to represent Jordan’s main political opposition force while directly being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood through governance structures and financial ties.

And after the Muslim Brotherhood did so well in Jordan’s 1989 election…garnering 23 out of Jordan’s Parliament’s 80 seats…King Hussein allowed them to hold five ministry positions no matter that he reined them in a bit after their showing strong opposition to his peace treaty with Israel…a peace treaty in appearance alone as it is a peace treaty not to be trusted, for Abdullah the son has still not repaid that debt in full and he must do so or face reprisals by the Muslim Brotherhood’s henchmen…henchmen of both the political and tangible sort.

So when will this debt be repaid…only when the Muslim Brotherhood says it is.

Are you starting to see the problem now…a problem whose solution lies within both Abdullah II himself and the Muslim Brotherhood, for noticeable tensions exist between Brotherhood members over the need for internal reform as well as to define what its ties to the terrorist group Hamas will be0 And it is via those tensions that Abdullah hopes to divide and conquer by keeping the political faction of the Muslim Brotherhood as the kingdom’s and his personal and legally sanctioned vanguard, while the more radical and younger faction covertly becoming his link to Hamas…and the hoped-for demise of Israel for as it stands now Jordan is not really their friend.

And with Abdullah knowing well that unless he can make the “divide” work in his favor as well as repaying in full the debt of his father and grandfather, that he cannot nor will he be permitted to keep his throne, thus he allows the Muslim Brotherhood needed space to operate from, helping to assure that both his authority as king and the continuity of the monarchy in Jordan will remain…at least for the time being.

But Abdullah is also smart enough to know that with ISIS sitting on Jordan’s doorstep…that if ISIS surpasses the Muslim Brotherhood regarding grassroots support amongst the people (and know that over 2,500 Jordanian young men have already joined ISIS and that Jordan was one of ISIS’ black market oil customers), then he will surely lose control of Jordan for the Muslim Brotherhood will not take kindly to his not preventing this from happening. That is why Abdullah allows the Muslim Brotherhood, via its charity fronts, to keep the people’s support from waning. In other words they both pull each other’s strings to some degree…but with the Brotherhood pulling more strings…especially with both the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and terrorism in general still not settled, and with the fact that 6.3 million Palestinians are not happy with the king who denies them rights, privileges, and assistance other Jordanian non-Palestinians…as in the East Bankers…receive.

So King Abdullah II’s words that Islamic terrorism…of which the Muslim Brotherhood both fully supports and finances…is the “greatest threat to our region” and that “Muslims must lead the fight against it”…become mere empty words for all terrorism leads back to Jordan as ground zero because of Jordan’s decades-long support for the Brotherhood. And Abdullah knows this but will try his best to keep this fact hidden from others.

How so…one just has to look at how Jordan currently responds to terrorism within its own country…or should I say does not respond…for the kingdom seems to close its collective eyes and look away when it does happen. Focusing on specific individuals deemed to pose a particular threat, the king dares not take into account the big picture involving the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to terrorism because the big picture would expose the truth that under his rule Jordan has not punished or even spoken out against troublemakers operating from within the ranks of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood for he dare not utter a word until his debt is paid-in-full…if even then.

And while the Muslim Brotherhood is now ‘supposedly’ illegal in Jordan…with ‘supposedly’ being done with a wink and a nod of course…the truth is that they still hold an ever-growing influence within the country by their freely being allowed to fuel the anger and resentment that simmers amongst young Jordanian Palestinians…Jordanian Palestinians that feel slighted by their government and who will now willingly join their ranks. And they have done just that to the tune of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood having 10,000+ members and with their IAF party having over 4,000 members. In fact, the more discontent the Brotherhood stirs up…the more its more radical members side with Hamas…the more power they actually coalesce behind Hamas…power they then use to demand and get political concessions from Abdullah’s government.

And nowhere is this more apparent than to those who have been peacefully working for democratic reform within Jordan’s government…reform as in replacing the Muslim Brotherhood supporting monarchy with a secular government…those whose pro-Israel movement is known as the Jordanian Opposition Coalition and whose leaders the king either jails or expels from their homeland. These are the words of Dr. Mudar Zahran, Secretary General of the Jordanian Coalition Opposition:

“Shockingly, while the king puts all seculars in jail and sentences me, the head of the secular opposition, to live in prison, he allows the Muslim Brotherhood to have their own charity, which is now worth over 4 billion dollars, their own TV station, and their own daily newspaper, and he even went as far as shutting down the opposition parties that oppose the Muslim Brotherhood and this is documented.” “What most Americans and Israelis don’t understand is how many Arab regimes work this way and play on them.” 

And how very right Dr. Mudar Zahran is.

Now as for Hamas’ somewhat recent breakaway of sorts from Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership and King Abdullah II’s role in how they operate….first, while Hamas remains part of the Brotherhood’s ideological base organization they do operate independently from them as it benefits strategically (in their war against Israel) both from Jordan’s Palestinian presence and it’s 60% and growing Palestinian population. And second, those very numbers allow Hamas to operate in the open while Abdullah looks away as the Hamas-linked reformist sector gains control of the IAF who are no longer content with the political role they had traditionally played in Jordan, as now they want to be influential players in the political decision-making process. And thanks to Abdullah’s inactions and his still ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, they are.

In other words, Hamas, coupled with the Muslim Brotherhood, is making major policy decisions regarding Jordan’s role in the Middle East…a role that has turned more observational than tactical as was promised by Abdullah. And with Hamas’ numbers continuing to rise means Abdullah has basically become politically impotent as opposition to his government has become more radical, and this is why Hamas has been able to position its sympathizers amongst the leadership of the country’s Islamists…whose numbers are also increasing.

And that is also why the Muslim Brotherhood hierarchy is concerned about Abdullah because as Hamas’ influence grows throughout Jordan they become relegated to second tier string-puller status. And you know that does not sit well with the Brotherhood in regards to Abdullah’s repaying of the debt owed because they can see that as Hamas increases its power they have already started to lose some of the benefits and protections they were afforded by Abdullah. And that makes for a very unhappy Muslim Brotherhood who now are forced to pull the (figurative) noose tighter around Abdullah’s neck, which means he cannot be trusted to work on Jordan’s behalf, on America’s behalf, or even to uphold the peace treaty his father signed with Israel for King Abdullah will throw all under the Muslim Brotherhood bus to save his own neck.

And now we have come full-circle back to the beginning.

“The brotherhood is everywhere in the world where there are Muslims,” so said Murad Adeleih, spokesman for the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood’s Amman-based political wing.

And Abdullah’s response: “I think he is right and I think this is something that has to be understood on a much larger platform because they’re looking for legitimacy that they don’t have inside of Islam. When we’re asked in this debate, you know, are you a moderate or extremist – what these people want is to be called extremist. I mean, they take that as a badge of honor. If you ask me, am I a moderate or an extremist, I’m a Muslim…” 

And King Abdullah II’s response makes him an extremist because like I have always said…” if you do not condemn you condone”…and nowhere has the king condoned either the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas nor any of their actions. And this is why when Abdullah meets with President Trump next week, Trump must not only have both eyes open but have his ears focused not on what Abdullah says but on what he does not say.

A lot of futures depend on President Trump doing just that.

By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on American Political Radio

Copyright © 2017 Diane Sori and Craig Andresen / Right Side Patriots 

****************************************************************          RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS…LIVE!

Today, Tuesday, April 4th from 7 to 9 pm EST on American Political Radio, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori will discuss why Jordan’s king is a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing, Craig bursts liberal therapy bubbles and important news of the week.

Hope you can tune in at http://bit.ly/2cpXuRd

The post King Abdullah…a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing appeared first on Tea Party Tribune.

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[creepingsharia]

Chicago: New Muslim College Run by Muslim from Terror-linked CAIR, ISNA

Superintendent Safaa Zarzour was president of the CAIR-Chicago and currently vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Both unindicted-conspirators in the largest terror finance conviction in U.S. history.

By Hesham Shehab

The Prayer Center of Orland Park (OPPC), Illinois, recently declared the establishment of an Islamic university at its premises, the Universal Islamic College of Chicago (UICC) that  will provide “higher Islamic education to the American Muslim community as well as serve as a seminary that would prepare imams for mosques” in North America.

The foundation of this four-year university is a joint effort between the OPPC and the Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois.

The identities of the founders and faculty of the university are deeply concerning and suggest the seminary will be promoting an Islamist ideology to Muslim students in Illinois and throughout the United States.

In the video announcing the college’s founding, Universal School is represented by its Superintendent Safaa Zarzour.

Zarzour has extensive ties to Islamist groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, including serving as a board member and president of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and currently vice-president and formerly Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Zarzour also served as operations officer for the Zakat Foundation.

CAIR has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood’s establishment of infrastructure to support Hamas, according to documents released as evidence during the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, in 2008, when HLF, the largest Islamic charity in the U.S. at the time, was blacklisted by Washington for supporting Hamas in 2001, and eventually convicted of financing the terrorist group in 2008.

ISNA itself has a long history of fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and support for terrorism. Named as an unindicted co-conspirator during the HLF trial, evidence presented against ISNA led federal judge Jorge Solis to write, “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.”

The Zakat Foundation has been accused of working alongside charity groups affiliated with Hamas, and whose executive director was tied to an Al Qaeda funder.

Also closely associated with the Universal School is Bassam Osman, Former ISNA Shura council member and chairman of NAIT. Osman was described as the “representative of NAIT” on the Universal School board, according to older versions of the school’s website. Osman was also listed as a member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council, according to a copy of a phone directory submitted as evidence during the Holy Land Foundation Trial.

According to Sabith Khan and Sharqi Siddiqui in their book, Islamic Education in the United States, Universal School began in 1990 as “The Universal School: ISNA Model Learning Center” and ISNA raised $2 million for the project.

Another Universal School founder, Dr. Abdul R. Amine served as a board member for the Mosque Foundation, a Bridgeview, Illinois mosque directly across from the Universal School. Also known as the Bridgeview Mosque, the Mosque Foundation was identified as have close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, according to the Chicago Tribune. Despite their close proximity, Universal School denies any connection to the Mosque Foundation.

Representing the Orlando Park mosque was Imam Kifah Mustapha. Mustapha has a history of supporting violent Anti-Semitism. In 2015, the same year he was hired as the imam of the center, Mustapha was caught supporting the “stabbing intifada” against Israelis on Facebook, writing, “An uprising in the blessed land will reflect blessings on all the Arab Revolutions God Willing.”

Long before he was appointed Imam of OPPC, Mustapha was a member of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), where he performed in its Al Sakhra band which chanted jihadi songs at fundraising events for HLF.  Mustapha was named as an unindicted co-conspirator by federal prosecutors in the HLF terror trial because of his fundraising activities.

In one of the videos entered into evidence during the trial, Mustapha wears a Palestinian garb and Kufiyah and chants in Arabic:

“O mother, Hamas for Jihad. Over mosques’ loudspeakers, with freedom. Every day it resists with stones and the dagger. Tomorrow, with God’s help, it will be with a machine gun and a rifle.”

Currently, Mustapha teaches one course at the UICC, while courses offered in Arabic are taught by his assistant Imam at OPPC, Dr. Haitham Alzamareeh (also spelled Zamara) who acts as the registrar for the college as well. Alzamareeh was hired by OPPC in January as assistant director to the mosque.

Previously, Alzamareeh taught online at Refugee Studies Academy (RSA), an Islamic institute based in London, U.K, that offers graduate degrees. RSA offers a diploma in Palestinian Studies, where the Academy lists as one of the goals of that degree is to provide the students with the “ability to refute the slander and lies: The student will have the scientific background and the necessary knowledge of the Zionist slander and their [Zionists] lies against them [Palestinians] in the land of Palestine.”

Alzamareeh’s online lectures feature rank anti-Semitism and concerning supremacist language. In one of his online lectures published on YouTube on November 27, 2016, Alzamareeh says: “Our [Palestinian] cause is an Islamic cause and our struggle against the Jews is not because they are Jews, but because they transgressed against our sacred places and occupied our land. They [Zionists] are trying to give this a religious dimension, which makes our struggle against them a creedal [religious] struggle.”

“For us [Muslims] this cause is first religious before it is a national [Palestinian] cause,” he added. “But to be clear,” Alzamareeh said, “Muslims hate any creed other than Islam.”

With founders and faculty Mustapha, and Alzamareeh and its connection to the Universal School and Safaa Zarzour, there is every reason to believe that UICC’s curriculum will include radical Islam, victimhood, conspiracy theories, anti-Western ideologies, and anti-Semitism.

The partnership with Universal School seems intended to speed the college towards accreditation, since the Universal School is already accredited by the Illinois board of education and the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), despite the fact that the Universal School’s corporate status was involuntarily dissolved in May of this year, according to records from the Illinois Secretary of State’s office.

When the first Islamic university -- Zaytuna College -- was founded in Berkeley, California, in 2010, Mahmoud Ayoub, a retired professor of Islamic studies from Temple University did not support the idea.  Ayoub, who had worked with the U.S. State Department representing America to the Muslim world, said: “I don't know that I would send my child to go to a college where they can only learn tradition. Young people have to live (…) I like mixing people. I don't like ghettos."

UICC would seem to be a college that would fulfill Ayoub’s worst suspicions, one that perpetuates a ghetto mentality of supremacist Islamism.

[creepingsharia]

Why the US Army War College Surrendered to Terror-linked Muslim Group CAIR

Submission. “Canceling Mr. Ibrahim’s presentation at the Army War College demonstrates that the global jihad’s information warfare campaign is effective and operating within DoD academic halls.”

“Free speech silenced. The U.S. Army War College capitulates to the demands of Islamic activist groups and cancels the schedule lecture of this author. Why was this Egyptian-American labeled a white racist?”

More via the victim’s website: The Facts: Why the US Army War College Surrendered to CAIR

Perhaps the most dishonorable aspect of this entire fiasco is that, in a vain effort to save face and pretend that the prestigious United States Army War College is not surrendering to the demands of a notorious Islamist organization—whose subversive tactics and terroristic ties are well documented (here, here, here, and here)—the USAWC’s official story is that my lecture has only been “postponed,” and not because of CAIR’s demands. 

As a June 10, 2019 report notes, the USAWC’s decision to “postpone” the event “comes in the wake of strong opposition from the Muslim community to the previously scheduled appearance of author Raymond Ibrahim.  The Army War College on Monday, however, suggested that the postponement had nothing to do with the outcry from the Muslim community” (emphasis added).

Reality is clear enough: for the USAWC suddenly to postpone a long-planned event only nine days before schedule—and just a handful of days after CAIR’s smear campaign—is not a “coincidence”; it is a clear message for all.

Incidentally, the USAWC is now learning that once you give CAIR an inch, like all bullies it will demand a mile. 

Consider: in CAIR’s original letter, Jacob Bender, its Philadelphia executive director, actually conceded to my lecture, with one caveat, which he requested in all politeness: “We would ask that if Mr. Ibrahim delivers his talk that we be allowed the same format to put forth counter points to his arguments.” 

Even though the USAWC completely acquiesced by canceling the event altogether, CAIR—having smelled blood—has since become more aggressive and abusive to the military.  After gloating over the USAWC’s capitulation, the same Jacob Bender who would’ve been grateful just to have the opportunity to “put forth counterpoints” to me (though only after I was gone and no longer there to respond), is now asserting that

The statement [to “postpone” the lecture] by the College spokeswoman falls short of repudiating Mr. Ibrahim’s racist views. A postponement is not enough—the college should reject hate. We will continue to advocate for … [the] exclusion of anti-Muslim racist theories in the college’s programming…. [W]e are ready to provide an alternative viewpoint and suggest a pool of academic analysts who can provide an objective assessment of military and historical perspectives to the US Army War College community.

In other words, if the USAWC really wants CAIR to stop verbally terrorizing it, canceling my lecture is only the first step; the USAWC must next invite a Muslim apologist to come and present a history opposite to the one I was going to present—that is, the usual pseudo-history of an “evil” West that has long victimized a “progressive” Islam, hence “why they hate us,” and why we—in this case, the USAWC—have to appease them, etc., etc.  

The grand lesson of this entire debacle should be disheartening for all who care about this nation.  If an ethnic Egyptian and native speaker of Arabic, with verifiable credentials, whose extended relatives continue to be persecuted because they are Christian, can be characterized by Islamist groups with terror links as a “racist” and “white nationalist”; and if, of all places, the US Army War College, as opposed to the average “liberal” college, can so easily capitulate to such patently deceptive tactics—the true motives of which are to keep the actual and troubling history between Islam and the West concealed from the military—know that the hour is late indeed. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And on CAIR and the perilous situation the U.S. is now in: “Global Jihad’s Information Warfare Campaign”

CAIR’s foundation is in Hamas, the combat jihad arm of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. They were an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal material support to terrorism trial, the Holy Land Foundation trial. Ultimately, after years of public exposure, the FBI was forced to cut professional ties with them. I sincerely doubt the War College leadership is conversant on the goals, objectives and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in America and its front organization CAIR. I will put it in terms they might understand. The trial discovery documents revealed their long view campaign plan, which is centered on “civilizational jihad”— their words.

To quote from their Explanatory Memorandum: “The Ikhwan [The Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Canceling Mr. Ibrahim’s presentation at the Army War College demonstrates that the global jihad’s information warfare campaign is effective and operating within DoD academic halls.