The Obama administration is considering releasing five top Taliban jihadists from custody at Guantanamo Bay in hopes of negotiating a peace agreement with the Afghan terrorist movement. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week that administration is in "the preliminary stages" of testing whether talks with the Taliban can succeed.
President Obama plans to withdraw virtually all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2014. Last month, Vice President Joe Biden told an interviewer that "the Taliban per se is not our enemy."
Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney blasted Obama's approach to the Taliban, declaring that "The right course for America is not to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban are killing our soldiers." Yet one of Romney's top foreign policy aides has reportedly advocated a negotiating approach that is similar to Obama's.
Today, it has become popular to malign young Jews and to suggest that they are turning away from Israel. We hear that they have been turned off to Israel by policies of the Israeli government and have become increasingly supportive of the Palestinians. Those of us who work with students know this is rubbish and now a new poll provides evidence that young Jews feel close to Israel, have little sympathy for the Palestinians, are hawkish on peace issues, and don't believe public criticism of the government advocated by Jews on the far left is helpful.
The nationwide poll of 400 Jewish college students sponsored by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and The Israel Project found:
90% agree that Israel is the spiritual center of the Jewish people.
83% said caring about Israel is an important part of being Jewish.
73% said American and Israeli Jews share a common destiny.
89% have warm/favorable feelings toward Israel.
78% sympathize with Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
84% think America should support Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now preparing for the day after the formal death of the peace process.
Abbas is conducting negotiations with three different parties simultaneously: Israel, Hamas and the international community.|
His policy now is to shoot in all directions in the hope of hitting as many birds as possible. This strategy, however, has so far failed to score significant gains.
The negotiations Abbas is conducting with Hamas are intended to create a joint Palestinian strategy in the aftermath of the failure of the peace process with Israel.
Why 2011 should force a 2012 American Rethink of its Middle Eastern Military Relationships
By Gabriel M. Scheinmann
JINSA
January 17, 2012
It is an odd situation when your strongest ally finds itself surrounded by increasingly hostile forces whose militaries you arm and train. And yet, this is exactly the state of U.S.-Israel affairs. 2011 witnessed the decline or fall of many of America’s Middle Eastern allies. Islamist groups made major gains in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt. The “partner for peace” Palestinian Authority (PA) concluded a reconciliation agreement with the terrorist group Hamas, Iran extended its domination of Lebanon through its Hezbollah proxy, and the Iraqi government took a pro-Iranian authoritarian turn following the American withdrawal. The common thread to all these regimes: the U.S. has continued its military aid, assistance, or training to all of them despite these substantial negative political changes.
Take Egypt. The United States has been Egypt’s prime military benefactor since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978, providing $1.3 billion in military aid in 2011 and selling it many of its heavy arms systems including M1 Abrams tanks, which are assembled in Egypt, and over 200 F-16 fighter jets. Following the fall of the Mubarak regime last February, Egypt has permitted passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal, been unable to secure the Egyptian-Israeli border from increased terror attacks and arms smuggling into Gaza, and was unwilling to prevent a mob attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Most recently, radical Islamist parties, with an anti-Israel if not anti-Semitic agenda, have won an overwhelming victory in lower house parliamentary elections, promising to put the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord to a popular referendum. Israel could soon face a situation where it is being threatened by radical, Islamist regime whose military is American trained and armed.
Comparable developments have occurred in the West Bank. Since 2007, the United States has overseen the training of a 5,000-man Palestinian Authority Security Force in Jordan. At a cost exceeding $500 million, the effort is intended to train Palestinian forces to fight terror in the West Bank. Although Israel has largely been supportive, Israelis reiterate that these forces cannot be counted on to operate independently following a potential full Israeli withdrawal.
Muslims in Europe are increasingly converting empty Christian churches into mosques.
The proliferation of mosques housed in former churches reflects the rise of Islam as the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Europe.
There are now more practicing Muslims than practicing Christians in many parts of Europe, not only in large urban centers, but also in smaller towns and cities across the continent.
As Islam replaces Christianity as the dominant religion in Europe, more and more churches are set to become mosques, which increasingly serve not only as religious institutions but also function as the foundational political building blocks for the establishment of separate, parallel Muslim communities in Europe that are based on Islamic Sharia law.
By Dr. Louis René Beres
BESA Center
January 16, 2012
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel should not expect stable coexistence with a nuclear Iran. Instead, it must enhance active defense, improve nuclear deterrence and target selected Iranian infrastructures. As Tehran edges closer to gaining nuclear capabilities, however, Israeli preemption tactics are becoming far more limited.
On January 16, 2003, the "Project Daniel" Group advised then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons.1 This report, which contained substantial legal and strategic recommendations, urged the prime minister to suitably enhance Israel’s deterrence and defense postures; to consider a prompt end to deliberate nuclear ambiguity (if Iran should be permitted to become nuclear); and to appropriately refine pertinent preemption options. It also concluded that Israel should not expect stable coexistence with a nuclear Iran and that active national defense should be increased and strengthened accordingly.
Israel’s active defense strategy involves mutually reinforcing the Arrow, Iron Dome, and, in the future, Magic Wand systems. To adequately protect against a potential WMD attack from Iran, however, these advanced elements of ballistic missile defense are not enough. They must be optimally complemented by improved Israeli nuclear deterrence and by a capacity for viable conventional first strikes against selected Iranian military and industrial targets. Under no circumstances, advised Project Daniel, should Israel assume that a safe and durable “balance of terror” could ever be created with Tehran.
By Jay Bushinsky
The Jerusalem Post
January 13. 2012
Israel soon will have the world's biggest detention center for illegal migrant workers. The new facility will have room for 12,000 detainees.
It will enable the law enforcement authorities to lock them without trial up for up to three years instead of 60 days which has been the limit until now.
Meanwhile, the special law-enforcement unit that arbitrarily rounds up men, women and children whose presence here is deemed demographically dangerous by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and his narrow minded 'Shas' party will press on with its cold-hearted operations.
How reassuring: Jerusalem Police commissioner Nisso Shaham has sanctimoniously added his two cents’ worth to the synthetic hullabaloo that gripped specified Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh neighborhoods – the sort to which I and my sort never go. Yet my non-Jerusalemite sort is the loudest in kicking up a righteous fuss about oddities that barely impact our daily lives.
Those of us who remember this country a little further back than the day before yesterday know that given anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox elements habitually sought to stoke the fires of contention. Their counterparts on the leftist fringes of our political patchwork were equally eager to fan the flames. For the latter, it’s politically expedient to ignite culture wars and lump the entire complex gamut of Israel’s observant Jews under the single, all-inclusive epithet of haredim (God-fearing).
The religious zealot who called a female soldier “pritzeh” (Yiddish for a woman of loose morals) was turned into a sectarian martyr when the prosecution – generally renowned for its languor and lenient plea bargains – charged him with no less than sexual harassment. The outsized photo of the secularist heroine in khaki, posing with self-important indignation, became the obligatory front-page feature for all tabloids.
Gilles Jacquier of France 2 television receives a trophy on October 9, 2010 in Bayeux, western France, after winning the new television category award - grand-format television for reports of up to 26 minutes -- for a story on a school in Afghanistan, during the annual Bayeux-Calvados prizes ceremony honouring war correspondents. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
According to a reporter who was on the media trip, the group was hit by several grenades. As many as six Syrian civilians also were killed, but the figure could not be confirmed, activists said. [...] The circumstances of Wednesday's violence were unclear, but reporter Jens Franssen said he was among about 15 journalists who were taken on a tour of the city. "At some point, three or four (grenade) shells hit, very close to us," he told the Belgian VRT network.
WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE BELOW
The video below purports to show Jacquier in the backseat of a yellow taxi. Pools of blood cover the streets.
The Associated Press reports on the attack:
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman spoke at the American University in Cairo the other day about the rise of the Islamism in the Egyptian political arena, and the future of that nation. His thesis would not surprise those familiar with his work; in short, the demands of running a state in the modern world will cause those coming to power – the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies – to soften their hardline positions and become moderate, responsible leaders….and, presumably, not seek the destruction of Israel, Jews in general, and the entire West.
And while that's a lovely thought, perhaps Mr. Friedman missed one more likely outcome. For while it is true that the state, whoever runs it, will most likely attempt to get the economy going, which will necessarily mean engaging the global marketplace on the market's terms – capitalism, without any Islamic interpretation or priorities. A fine example of just such engagement is the wildly successful international drug business being conducted by Hizballah, shipping and selling heroin, cocaine, and whatever else around the world, reaping literally billions of dollars for both the organization and its leaders in the process. The tenets Islam might frown on drugs, but hey, this is the 21st century, and even terrorists play by the market rules.
And perhaps so it will be with Egypt. Perhaps the Islamists will jump right in and become good capitalists. However, that doesn't mean the new capitalists will necessarily become new democrats. This is hardly an original thought: the Chinese have done very well profiting on the world economy while the government maintains their often ruthless control over their people. The Gulf states are earning billions upon billions of dollars through a variety of economic enterprises, while keeping first their de facto foreign slave labor force and their own people well in line.
The Islamist frenzy that is currently sweeping the Arab world has seen Hamas rise to become a legitimate and recognized player in the Palestinian and international arena.
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh last week began a tour of a number of Arab and Islamic countries, where he has so far been received as a hero and with chants of "Death to Jews!"
In the countries that he has visited so far -- Sudan, Turkey and Tunisia -- Haniyeh was received as the "Palestinian Prime Minister." The leaders of these three countries went out of their way to treat Haniyeh as if he were a legendary Muslim warrior who has declared jihad [holy war] on the infidels.
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday that he expects Syrian President Bashar Assad to lose power and that the IDF is planning to absorb a large influx of Alawite Muslim refugees in the Golan Heights.
The Alawites are a minority in Syria but rule the country under Assad, and a full-scale presence in the Golan Heights would threaten the bare Jewish majority in the area. The Druze comprise almost 50 percent of the Golan population, and a larger non-Jewish population could re-ignite attempts by the United States and other Western countries to pressure Israel to give up the strategic area to Syria in return for a peace treaty.
“The day the Assad regime falls, this is expected to hurt the Alawite sect. We are getting ready to take in Alawite refugees in the Golan Heights,” Lt. Gen. Gantz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee.
Turkey’s prime minister has moved against American interests in many ways. So why does President Obama continue to support him?
For the first time in 40 years, Israel is not the American president’s favorite Middle Eastern ally. Instead, that role is played by Turkey’s government.
This would not be such a bad thing if we were talking about the “old” Turkey, the secular republic. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s favorite adviser among the regional leaders is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The US is the guarantor of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it received a peace treaty with Egypt. Now that the Islamists are poised to take power, the treaty is effectively null and void.
The question naturally arises: Will the US act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel? Because if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the EU does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.
Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.
By Jay Bushinsky
The Jerusalem Post
January 6, 2012
The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who fire home-made Qassam and imported Soviet-type Grad missiles must be prevented from playing Russian roulette with the people who live in southern Israel.
As a sovereign state which bears responsibility for the safety and security of its citizens, Israel must take effective action to this end. Israel's government cannot allow nearly a million of them to live in constant dread.
These deadly projectiles have been launched sporadically since August, 2005, when Israel withdrew its military personnel and civilian settlers from Gaza unilaterally and unconditionally -- an act that ran counter to international norms and precedents.
The votes still aren't fully counted in Egypt, but the Obama administration has seen enough to reverse long-standing and well-rooted policies to shun the theocratic, global Caliphate-minded Muslim Brotherhood, whose philosophy spawned terrorist movements from Hamas to al-Qaida.
High level meetings between American and Brotherhood officials reflect a “new political reality here [in Egypt], and indeed around the region,” the New York Times reported in a front-page article Wednesday, “as Islamist groups come to power.”
What is astounding and dangerous about the new U.S. recognition is the fact that Brotherhood leaders became more openly radical and militant once Mubarak was thrown out, issuing incendiary speeches calling for “martyrdom” operations against Israel and aligning with Hamas and other terrorist groups. Yet as the New York Times wrote, the Obama administration accepts as truthful “the Brotherhood's repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt's treaty with Israel.”
"Saying Merry Christmas Is Worse than Killing Someone"
By Raymond Ibrahim
January 5, 2012
The Nigerian church bombings, in which the Islamic group Boko Haram ["Western Education Is Forbidden"] killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world. Elsewhere in this region, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that "saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone.
" A few examples: Egypt: The Coptic Church is being threatened with a repeat of "Nag Hammadi," the area where drive-by Muslims shot to death six Christians as they exited church after celebrating Christmas mass in 2010. Due to fears of a repetition,the diocese "cancel[ed] all festivities for New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve."
Indonesia: In a "brutal act" that has "strongly affected the Catholic community," days before Christmas, "vandals decapitated the statue of the Virgin Mary in a small grotto … a cross was stolen and the aspersorium was badly damaged."
Iran: There were reports of a sharp increase in activities against Christians prior to Christmas by the State Security centers of the Islamic Republic. Local churches were "ordered to cancel Christmas and New Year's celebrations as a show of their compliance and support" for "the two month-long mourning activities of the Shia' Moslems."
MGI News is the sole U.S. incorporated news and programming
organization specializing in the Middle East directed by Jay Bushinsky, founding
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Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Hizbollah and more...
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How reassuring: Jerusalem Police commissioner Nisso Shaham has sanctimoniously added his two cents’ worth to the synthetic hullabaloo that gripped specified Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh neighborhoods – the sort to which I and my sort never go. Yet my non-Jerusalemite sort is the loudest in kicking up a righteous fuss about oddities that barely impact our daily lives.
The religious zealot who called a female soldier “pritzeh” (Yiddish for a woman of loose morals) was turned into a sectarian martyr when the prosecution – generally renowned for its languor and lenient plea bargains – charged him with no less than sexual harassment. The outsized photo of the secularist heroine in khaki, posing with self-important indignation, became the obligatory front-page feature for all tabloids.
Gilles Jacquier of France 2 television receives a trophy on October 9, 2010 in Bayeux, western France, after winning the new television category award - grand-format television for reports of up to 26 minutes -- for a story on a school in Afghanistan, during the annual Bayeux-Calvados prizes ceremony honouring war correspondents. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Tuesday that he expects Syrian President Bashar Assad to lose power and that the IDF is planning to absorb a large influx of Alawite Muslim refugees in the Golan Heights.
Turkey’s prime minister has moved against American interests in many ways. So why does President Obama continue to support him?
The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The US is the guarantor of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it received a peace treaty with Egypt. Now that the Islamists are poised to take power, the treaty is effectively null and void.
The Nigerian church bombings, in which the Islamic group Boko Haram ["Western Education Is Forbidden"] killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world. Elsewhere in this region, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that "saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone.