Tag Archive for: jihad

VIDEO: Ryan Mauro on Stopping the Iran Deal

Ryan Mauro, National Security Analyst, Clarion Project is our featured guest on today’s short promotional for the “DAY OF ACTION” in Santa Barbara, California on Sunday, August 30th, 2015.

Join us in STOPPING THE IRAN DEAL!

We have TWO amazing events on August 30th!

The first is a Roundtable Luncheon featuring a panel of national and local experts on the Iran Treaty, on the U.S. and Israel and how it will affect Santa Barbara County. Tickets are $60. Sponsorships are available at different levels. A ticket to the lunch gets you a VIP seat at the rally (details below). If you are not able to attend but would like to donate (100% tax-deductible) to help offset to costs of this grassroots effort, it would be appreciated. To purchase tickets, to sponsor or to donate, go to: StopIran.eventbrite.com

After the lunch, there will be a Stop Iran NOW Rally at the Santa Barbara Courthouse Sunken Gardens co-hosted by Stand With Us, The Clarion Project, The United West and other local groups. The rally is FREE and we need as many people as possible to attend. Please forward to your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. It’s up to us to stop this deal! Signs and flags will be provided.

Is FBI report attempting to chill free speech? Reads like it was authored by the Southern Poverty Law Center!

World Net Daily writer Leo Hohmann (who has written extensively on the Refugee Program) reports on a document that the FBI will not deny is theirs.

The gist of it is that the FBI is watching militia groups they claim are anti-Islam and asserts that the groups are getting their inspiration from World Net Daily, the Blaze, Fox News and Pamela Geller among others.  Below we have snipped a bit of Hohmann’s report.

FBI

But, first a suggestion from a political observer to me:

This appears to be a free-political-speech threat.

Grassley (Senate Judiciary) or Goodlatte (House Judiciary) should open an investigatory hearing on this “intelligence bulletin”, swear all the administration witnesses, ask who directed such instructions, and at least publish a report or a staff study on their findings.

Here is World Net Daily (ignore the confusing headline) on the astounding “intelligence bulletin:”

Just three weeks after ISIS attacked a Muhammad cartoonist event in Garland, Texas, the FBI began circulating an intelligence bulletin that alerts state, federal and local law enforcement about the likelihood of attacks against Muslims by “militia extremists.”

The bulletin, marked “sensitive” and not for distribution without FBI authorization, cites evidence gathered since 2013 that American militia groups are planning attacks on mosques, Islamic centers and possibly individual Muslims.

The document is dated May 28, 2015, and was leaked to Public Intelligence, an online information site committed to exposing government secrets and data. Public Intelligence posted the document on its site Aug. 18.

Named in the bulletin as news sites that provide information that supposedly fuels the militia groups were WND.com, Fox News, the Blaze, Western Journalism Center, Patriot Newswire and Pamela Geller’s blog, AtlasShrugs.com.

[….]

The FBI concludes that there are “salient perceptions within militia extremism that contribute toward an anti-Muslim bias.” The FBI says such “bias” against Islam is based on the following beliefs among the “extremists”:

~“Islam represents a foreign threat, equivalent to those which emanate from illegal immigration or international terrorism.

~“The President of the United States not only sympathizes with Islamic extremists but directs U.S. Government policy to align with their goals.”

[….]

WND contacted the FBI with several questions about the bulletin and got the following response from Joshua Campbell, supervisory special agent of the FBI office of public affairs.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any information on the authenticity or contents of the referenced document. Our standard practice is to neither confirm or deny investigations or comment on bulletins provided to law enforcement partners.”

One of the questions WND asked was if he FBI had documented any actual militia attacks on Muslims over the past seven years.

None, I am sure, or it would have been all over the news.

Go to WND to read what some of those fingered by the FBI have to say.

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Islamic State links its origins to the killing of Osama bin Laden and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq

Obama’s most significant legacy is the Islamic State. Its rise is the most important accomplishment of his Administration.

Islamic State Links Its Origins To Killing Of Bin Laden,” Investor’s Business Daily, August 17, 2015 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

Killing Osama bin Laden may have won President Obama re-election in 2012, but the price was the rise of the Islamic State. At least according to IS itself.

The secret 32-page IS manifesto and strategy plan, written in Urdu and just uncovered from remote Pakistan by the American Media Institute, is titled “The Caliphate According to the Prophet.”

Beyond its headline-grabbing reference to Obama as “Mule of the Jews,” the IS dossier blames the president for the organization’s rise to power in a whole new way.

Obviously, Obama’s cut and run of U.S. troops from Iraq left the welcome mat out. But the manifesto boasts that IS ruler Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in avenging the killing of Osama bin Laden, engineered car bomb and IED attacks in cities across Iraq.

“The losses inflicted upon Americans, apostates and heretics were unprecedented,” the IS document stated. “This state of affairs forced Mule of the Jews, U.S. President Obama, to announce an exit plan.”

There is a chilling irony here. When Obama, interviewed by the New Yorker a year and a half ago, dismissed IS as just “a jayvee team,” in the same breath he downplayed their importance because IS lacked “the capacity and reach of a bin Laden.”

The IS strategy document reveals that the new caliphate is already taking steps to unite Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions, then launch a war on India. And then finally confront America….

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Government report: U.S. fight against Islamic State disorganized, incoherent

Wow. What was their first clue? “Government Report: U.S. Fight Against Islamic State Disorganized, Incoherent,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, August 17, 2015 3:35 pm

The U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State (IS) suffers “from a lack of coherence” and is often operated in a disorganized fashion, harming efforts to effectively combat the terrorist force, according to a new report by the government.

As the United States and 21 other nations attempt to push back IS forces operating in Iraq, the new report warns that the war effort is being undercut by a lack of coordination and, in some cases, efforts that “contradict” one another, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service that was not made public but was released by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

The report comes amid numerous reports IS is making gains and solidifying its control key Iraq cities and even expanding outside of the war torn country’s borders.

CRS concluded in its analysis that the effort, dubbed Operation Inherent Resolve, is being led in a haphazard manner that leads to inefficient military action by the countries involved.

“Without a single authority responsible for prioritizing and adjudicating between different multinational civilian and military lines of effort, different actors often work at cross-purposes without intending to do so,” the report states.

Exact financial contributions by countries remains fuzzy, making it difficult to track exactly what each nations if funding and for what reason.

“Each nation is contributing to the coalition in a manner commensurate with its national interests and comparative advantage, although reporting on nonmilitary contributions tends to be sporadic,” the report found.

Recent military campaigns provide evidence of the incoherent strategy, according to CRS.

“These coalition coordination challenges were demonstrated in recent military campaigns (and particularly in Afghanistan),” it states. “Exacerbating matters, other actors in the region—some of whom are coalition partners—have different, and often conflicting, longer-term regional geopolitical interests from those of the United States or other coalition members.”

“This, in turn, may lead nations participating in the coalition to advance their goals and objectives in ways that might contradict each other,” the report found.

These flaws are impacting the success of the joint military campaign against IS, which has cost the United States $3.21 billion as of July 15….

RELATED ARTICLE: Nigeria: Up to 150 drowned, shot dead fleeing the Islamic State

Could the Jig Finally Be Up for Huma Abedin?

In FrontPage this morning I explain why the current mini-controversy over Huma Abedin bespeaks a much larger problem with America’s contemporary political culture.

They got Al Capone for tax evasion, and they may get Huma Abedin for “violating rules regarding vacation and sick leave” and for the “possible exchange of unsecured, classified data.” To be sure, these are serious charges, and the available evidence makes it abundantly clear that there is ample warrant to investigate and perhaps even charge Abedin. However, it is a sign of a serious problem with today’s political culture that even more serious allegations regarding Abedin have never been investigated, and almost certainly never will be.

Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood connections have been fully exposed by Andrew McCarthy and bruited about for years. The facts are quite public, albeit largely ignored: Abedin’s parents are both members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but her links to the organization are not just familial. Abedin was for twelve years the assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA), which was founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Muslim Brotherhood operative and al-Qaeda financier. Naseef and Abedin both appeared on the JMMA’s masthead from 1996 to 2003.

Consider that Abedin worked closely for seven years with a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who financed al-Qaeda in light of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy during the years that Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. Everyone acknowledges that Abedin and Clinton are extremely close, and that Abedin controls access to Clinton and has tremendous influence over her. Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department was distinguished by the remarkable sight of Egyptian anti-Muslim Brotherhood protestors holding signs denouncing the President of the United States for supporting terrorism, and by the Benghazi debacle, when the Secretary of State sat back and did nothing as jihad terrorists murdered four Americans, including an ambassador.

Then there was the Benghazi cover-up, during which Clinton vowed to have a man who made a video criticizing Muhammad arrested and imprisoned for supposedly provoking the riots, thereby placing herself firmly in opposition to the freedom of speech and aligning herself with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s efforts to compel Western governments to criminalize criticism of Islam (under the guise of “incitement to religious hatred”).

Is it at all possible that Huma Abedin, whose parents were active in the Brotherhood and who worked for twelve years for a journal closely linked to the Brotherhood, had anything to do with the pro-Muslim Brotherhood orientation of the Obama/Clinton State Department? In today’s poisonous political culture, it isn’t possible even to ask the question without incurring charges of “Islamophobia” – as we saw in 2012, when Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had the temerity to call for an investigation of possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.

Bachmann explained: “The concerns about the foreign influence of immediate family members is such a concern to the U.S. Government that it includes these factors as potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining a security clearance, which undoubtedly Ms. Abedin has had to obtain to function in her position. For us to raise issues about a highly-based U.S. Government official with known immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations is not a question of singling out Ms. Abedin.  In fact, these questions are raised by the U.S. Government of anyone seeking a security clearance.” And that was to say nothing about Abedin’s association with Naseef and work with the JMMA.

Now that Abedin is suspected of mishandling classified material, Bachmann’s questions about Abedin’s security clearance are piquant in retrospect. But when she first raised them, Bachmann was ridiculed and vilified, even earning a denunciation from John McCain: “These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way. These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis, and no merit. And they need to stop now.”

It was actually about more than just Abedin’s family, and a perfectly sound case could be made, in light of Obama’s foreign policy disasters, that Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood links possibly did harm and threaten the United States. But Bachmann’s name was dragged through the mud in 2012 for talking about all this, and now none of the new allegations against Abedin raise any issue with her possible Muslim Brotherhood connections.

That few people care about those connections, and that those who do are dismissed as “far-Right bigots,” shows how myopic and foolish our contemporary political culture is. If Huma Abedin had a hand in the pro-Muslim Brotherhood tilt of the Obama/Clinton State Department, that would be a far graver offense than anything she is accused of now, just as old Capone was guilty of far greater crimes than tax evasion. But on the other hand, those tax evasion charges ended Capone’s operations for good, and so if Hillary’s infamous email server does the same to Huma Abedin, no one who values America’s historic role as leader of the free world will have any reason to complain.

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VIDEO: How the Western Establishment Conceals Muslim Persecution of Christians by Raymond Ibrahim

On June 11th, I delivered a lecture on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. It was part of Coptic Solidarity’s sixth annual conference. My topic was the failures and cover ups of the Western establishment—academia, government, and mainstream media—concerning the rampant persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

This 15-minute video is from my lecture:

RELATED ARTICLE: Brazilian author Paulo Coelho defends Qur’an as “book that changed the world”

Islamic State Leader ‘Repeatedly Raped and Tortured U.S Aid Worker Kayla Mueller’

Disturbing details have come to light about the ordeal faced by American aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was captured by the Islamic State and repeatedly raped by the terror organization’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

A Yazidi eyewitness, who also suffered sexual assault, apparently told American officials of Mueller’s torture and rape.

“We were told Kayla was tortured, that she was the property of al-Baghdadi. We were told that in June by the government,” Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, confirmed to ABC News.

“They told us that he married her, and we all understand what that means,” Carl Mueller, told The Associated Press.

ISIS held the 26-year old from Arizona for some 18 months before she was killed. The Islamic State maintains she lost her life during an attack by coalition forces in February.

Much of the evidence on Mueller’s torment came from a 14-year-old Yazidi girl, who said she spent two months in a house with Mueller before escaping in October 2014. Al-Baghdadi would take Mueller to his room and then on her return, Mueller would tell the other captive women and children what the ISIS leader had done to her.

The Yazidi said Mueller refused to escape with her and others because she could endanger them as she was more-easily recognizable. She also cared for other captives during their time together.

The Islamic State has a track record of enslaving women, selling them in markets and repeatedly raping them before passing them on to other fighters.

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Iran ‘not satisfied’ with nuke deal, wants more concessions

Obama and Kerry will no doubt jump to give him what he wants, but if they do, the opposition to the deal will grow even stronger than it already is.

“Iranian hardliner: The supreme leader opposes the nuclear deal,” by Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press, August 15, 2015:

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is opposed to a landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers, a prominent hard-liner claimed Saturday.

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the daily newspaper Kayhan and a representative of Khamenei, made the comments in an editorial Saturday.

It marked the first time someone publicly has claimed where Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, stands on the deal.

Khamenei has not publicly approved or disapproved the deal. However, he repeatedly has offered words of support for his country’s nuclear negotiators. Moderates also believe the deal would have never been reached without Khamenei’s private approval.

Iran’s parliament and the Supreme National Security Council will consider the agreement in the coming days. The deal calls for limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.

Shariatmadari said in the editorial that many parts of the deal threaten Iran’s independence, security and “the sacred system of the Islamic republic of Iran” and that it would be “disastrous” if Tehran implements the accord. He did not specify which parts of the deal he thought were problematic.

He also referred to a speech by Khamenei last month during which the ayatollah said, “Whether this text is approved or disapproved, no one will be allowed to harm the main principles of the (ruling) Islamic system.”

The editorial noted: “Using the phrase ‘whether this text is approved or disapproved’ shows his lack of trust in the text of the deal. If His Excellency had a positive view, he would have not insisted on the need for the text to be scrutinized through legal channels … It leaves no doubt that His Excellency is not satisfied with the text.”…

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Muslims Fight Each Other to Get a Spot on Greek Refugee Ship

You’ve probably seen or heard it somewhere in the news recently that the Greek government has sent a huge cruise ship to house refugees arriving by the thousands on the island of Kos.

Seems the Greeks are going to help the Syrians first, so all of the other Middle Eastern young men are fighting each other.

Isn’t diversity beautiful!

Foolish, foolish EU!  They should have done as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott advised months ago—turn back the migrant boats to where they were launched, or die!

From the Daily Mail (hat tip: Fjordman):

Fighting broke out between a group of Asian migrants on the Greek island of Kos today.

Riot police did nothing as 50 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran threw rocks and exchanged blows near a passenger ship where hundreds of migrants were being registered.

Hundreds of Asian migrants were stood near the police station when the brawl broke out, possibly because they have little chance of being processed on the Eleftherios Venizelos.

The Greek authorities are giving priority to Syrians. They are treated as refugees because they are fleeing their country’s bitter civil war and therefore have greater rights under international law than economic migrants.

Over 250,000 ‘asylum seekers’ have arrived in Europe this year.

Go to the Daily Mail for more and to see all of the photos.

See our ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here.

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Pat Buchanan Sides with Obama against Israel

Pat Buchanan has for years been such a virulent opponent of Israel that he has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism, and this column condemning Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly interfering in America’s internal affairs by opposing the Iran deal is not going to erase that impression. The paleocon Right hates Israel with such abiding passion that it is increasingly self-contradictory: for a small government advocate like Buchanan defending Barack Obama and tacitly supporting a deal that threatens not just Israel, but the U.S. as well, manifests a moral myopia of catastrophic immensity.

But it’s no surprise. I’ve noted before how the paleocons over at Buchanan’s American Conservative have embraced the hard Left’s invention of “Islamophobia” and even come out in favor of submitting to violent intimidation and kowtowing to the foes of the freedom of speech. If they’re the opposite end of the political spectrum from the hard Left, the ends are meeting.

And now Pat Buchanan pretends that Barack Obama, who has shown himself again and again to have the attitude and assumptions and sensibilities of a Marxist internationalist, is an old-school President like Truman or Ike who only makes deals with other nations with America’s best interests at heart. That’s some serious hatred of Israel, to make Pat Buchanan pick up the pom-poms for a far-Left statist. But lines are being redrawn all over the place these days.

“How to Seal the Iran Deal,” by Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative, August 7, 2015:

In his desperation to sink the Iran nuclear deal, Bibi Netanyahu is taking a hellish gamble.

Israel depends upon the United States for $3 billion a year in military aid and diplomatic cover in forums where she is often treated like a pariah state. Israel has also been the beneficiary of almost all the U.S. vetoes in the Security Council. America is indispensable to Israel. The reverse is not true.

Yet, without telling the White House, Bibi had his U.S. ambassador arrange for him to address a joint session of Congress in March—to rip up the president’s Iran nuclear deal before it was even completed.

The day the deal was signed, using what the Washington Post calls “stark apocalyptic language,” Bibi accused John Kerry of giving the mullahs a “sure path to a nuclear weapon” and a “cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars … to pursue its aggression and terror.”

Bibi has since inspired and led the campaign to get Congress to kill the deal, the altarpiece of the Obama presidency. Israel Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican operative now cast in the role of “Citizen Genet,” has intensively lobbied the Hill to get Congress to pass a resolution of rejection.

If that resolution passes, as it appears it will, Obama will veto it. Then Israel, the Israeli lobby AIPAC, and all its allies and auxiliaries in the think tanks and on op-ed pages will conduct a full-court press to have Congress override the Obama veto and kill his nuclear deal.

Has Bibi, have the Israelis, considered what would happen should they succeed? Certainly, there would be rejoicing in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Bibi would be crowned King of Capitol Hill. But they will have humiliated an American president by crushing him by two-to-one in his own legislature. Such a defeat could break the Obama presidency and force the resignation of John Kerry, who would have become a laughing stock in international forums.

The message would go out to the world. In any clash between the United States and Israel over U.S. policy in the Middle East, bet on Bibi. Bet on Israel. America is Israel’s poodle now.

With the Gulf nations having joined Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in backing the deal, Israel is isolated in its opposition. And, two weeks ago, Kerry warned that if Congress rejects the deal, “Israel could end up being more isolated and more blamed.”

Hardly an outrageous remark. Yet, Israel’s ex-ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren fairly dripped condescension and contempt in his retort: “The threat of the secretary of state who, in the past, warned that Israel was in danger of being an apartheid state, cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty to oppose this dangerous deal.”

But this is not Israel’s deal. It is our deal, and our decision. And Israel is massively interfering in our internal affairs to scuttle a deal the president believes is in the vital interests of the United States. When the U.S. and Israel disagree over U.S. policy in the Mideast, who decides for America? Them or us?

Why does Barack Obama take this? Why does John Kerry take this?…

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Maine: African Muslim Refugees Charged in Brutal Murder

Except apparently it was so brutal that the case (and the autopsy) has been sealed from the media for at least a week! Or, why else would it have been sealed?

Diversity is strength alert!

The story is here at World Net Daily:

Authorities in Portland, Maine, have arrested three Somali-American men in connection with the brutal killing of a man inside his apartment, then moved quickly to seal the case from public view.

Police arrested Abil Teshome, 23, Mohamud Mohamed, 36, and Osman Sheikh, 31, on Thursday. All three are charged with the murder of 49-year-old health-care worker Freddy Akoa.

Mohamed-Mohamud

Mohamed Mohamud, one of three suspects charged in the killing of Freddy Akoa in Portland, Maine. Credit/Portland Press.

[….]

The killing “wasn’t random in nature,” said Police Chief Michael Sauschuck, indicating the alleged killers knew their victim.

The U.S. State Department, in cooperation with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, has sent 1,379 Somali refugees to Maine since 2002, with 1,010 of them going to Portland, according to the State Department’s refugee database. Records prior to 2002 are not kept online, but the U.N. has been sending Somali refugees to the United States since the early 1990s with the full support of the U.S. Congress, despite the fact that hundreds of them have turned out to be jihadists or criminals.

There is much much more from reporter Leo Hohmann who tells us about how the case is sealed for at least a week from media review.

By the way, my first thought, when I saw the original news yesterday, was that the case involved rival gangs fighting over drugs, but the victim, Freddy Akoa, another immigrant (most likely a Christian, but we don’t know that yet), was by all accounts a successful middle-aged man (with a loving family) working in the health care industry.

Readers often want to know how we know if someone got into the US as a refugee.  For some ethnic groups we don’t know, but virtually all of the Somalis in the US and those in Maine are here as refugees or the children of refugees.  Some may have come illegally, but the Refugee Admissions Program of the UN/US State Department is responsible for the vast majority of Somalis in your towns and cities.  By the way, the accused have not been publicly identified as Somalis yet, but the names of at least two of them are common Somali names.

Hohmann also reports on the bill introduced recently by Rep. Brian Babin of Texas which seeks to suspend the refugee program until questions about the cost and impact on national security have been examined.

Continue reading here.

Maine the welfare state!

We have written a lot about how Somalis got to Maine with the help of Catholic Charities, the primary resettlement agency in the state. Here is a post from 2009 about how Somalis were attracted to Maine welfare.  For years that post was one of our top most-read posts.

The primary resettlement agency in Maine is Catholic Charities.  However, we don’t know if the accused arrived in Maine with the help of a resettlement contractor or were secondary migrants who were resettled somewhere else in America and then moved to Maine to live in one of the Somali enclaves there—in Portland or Lewiston.

Learn about one of the leading figures in Portland promoting more African resettlement for Maine, here.

See our very extensive archive on Maine by clicking here.  There are more murder and crime stories in the archive.

In addition to refugee resettlement, Maine has become a desired state for asylum seekers to head to as it is one of the few states that gives welfare to those seeking asylum who have not yet been granted permission to stay.

RELATED ARTICLE: Buchanan: Immigration the issue of the 21st Century

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Osman Sheikh, 31, one of the African Muslims in court.

Iran: The Nuke Deal will Help Us Target Israel

Zarif isn’t even bothering to hide Iran’s intentions. The deal is done. He knows he has John Kerry in his pocket, and that nothing can stop the mullahs now.

“Iran says the nuke deal will help it target Israel,” New York Post, August 13, 2015 (thanks to Eli):

President Obama says his nuclear deal with Iran is good not just for America, but also for US ally Israel. Iran’s foreign minister disagrees.

Mohammad Zarif was in Lebanon this week, meeting with the head Hezbollah terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah.

Hezbollah’s TV station al-Manar reported, “Zarif said from Beirut that the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers created a historic opportunity for regional cooperation to fight extremism and face threats posed by the Zionist entity.”

Translation: With a “signing bonus” to Iran of $100 billion or more, the nuke deal will empower the Islamic Republic to send more cash, rockets and other arms to Hezbollah and other anti-Israel terrorist groups.

It will also boost Tehran’s regional prestige — allowing it to bully other nations into greater hostility toward Israel.

Plus, the deal provides a glide-path for Iran to go nuclear in a decade or so, even without cheating. And Iranian nukes will drastically shift the regional balance of power in Tehran’s favor — and against Jerusalem.

No, this isn’t just spin from the Hezbollah station. Zarif told reporters that Iran’s top challenge in the region involves “confronting” “the Zionist and extremist regime.”…

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Bishop Slaughtered for Refusing to Convert to Islam to be Beatified

Nowadays Bishop Flavien-Michel Malké’s feckless successors among the U.S. Catholic bishops bow and scrape before the children and heirs of those who killed him, silencing those who speak out about the Muslim persecution of Christians and consigning today’s new martyrs to their fate, sacrificing them on the altar of their fruitless, delusional and self-defeating quest for “dialogue” with Muslims.

How many Christians has that “dialogue” prevented from being persecuted or martyred? Why, absolutely none, of course. But the comfortable suburban Church continues on its comfortable suburban way, secure in its illusions and delusions.

One day, however, the truth it has so assiduously endeavored to ignore, deny and suppress will dawn upon it with undeniable and terrifying reality, and maybe some of those bishops will realize how ill they served their people by enforcing and reinforcing their ignorance and complacency.

“Syriac Bishop Will Be Beatified on the 100th Anniversary of His Martyrdom (832),” National Catholic Register, August 11, 2015:

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — On Saturday, Pope Francis approved a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Flavien-Michel Malké, a Syriac Catholic bishop who was killed in 1915, amid the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against its Christian minorities.

The decision was made during an Aug. 8 meeting between Pope Francis and Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Bishop Malké will be beatified Aug. 29, the 100th anniversary of his martyrdom, during a liturgy celebrated by Ignatius Youssef III Younan, the Syriac patriarch of Antioch, at the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Lebanon. It is expected that thousands of Syrians and Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State will attend the beatification.

“In these painful times experienced by Christians, especially the Syriac communities in Iraq and Syria, the news of the beatification of one of their martyrs, will surely bring encouragement and consolation to face today’s trials of appalling dimension,” read an Aug. 9 statement of the Syriac Patriarchate of Antioch.

“Blessed Martyr Michael, intercede for us, and protect especially the Christians in the Orient and all the world in these hard and painful days.”

Malké was born in 1858 in the village of Kalaat Mara, a village of the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey, to a Syriac Orthodox family. He joined a monastery of that Church and was ordained a deacon, but then converted to the Syriac Catholic Church. (Both the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics use the West-Syrian rite.)

After his conversion, he was ordained a priest in Aleppo in 1883. He was a member of the Fraternity of St. Ephrem and served parishes in southeastern Turkey, near his home.

Ottoman persecution of Christians began in earnest with the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1897. Malké’s church and home were sacked and burned in 1895, and many of his parishioners were murdered, including his mother. In total, the massacres killed between 80,000 and 300,000 Christians.

He was selected to become a bishop in the 1890s, serving as a chorbishop and helping in the rebuilding of Christian villages. In 1913, he was consecrated bishop and appointed head of the Syriac Diocese of Gazireh (modern-day Cizre, 150 miles southeast of Diyarbakir).

A second round of persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire began in April 1915. Known as the Armenian Genocide, it targeted the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian minorities in the empire. The Assyrian genocide (the portion of the mass killings directed against Syriac and Chaldean Christians) is also known as the Seyfo Massacre, from the Syriac word for sword.

Some 1.5 million Christians were killed, and millions more were displaced during the genocide.

During the summer when the genocide broke out, Bishop Malké was in the Idil district, near Gazireh. In June 1915, hearing the Ottoman forces were preparing to massacre Gazireh’s people, he returned.

According to the Syriac Patriarchate, when his friends and acquaintances urged him to withdraw from Gazireh to a safer location, he replied, “Even my blood I will shed for my sheep.”

Together with four of his priests and the Chaldean bishop of Gazireh, Philippe-Jacques Abraham, he was arrested and imprisoned for two months.

Bishop Malké refused to convert to Islam, and on Aug. 29, 1915, he was martyred.

He was the last Syriac bishop of Gazireh; after his death, the diocese was suppressed, and, today, the Syriac Catholic Church has no presence in Turkey.

In an Aug. 8 interview with Vatican Radio, the postulator of Bishop Malké’s cause, Father Rami Al Kabalan, spoke of the bishop’s deep spiritual life as well as the relevance his martyrdom has today.

The bishop, he said, “played a fundamental role in encouraging people to defend their faith in the difficulties of the time, during the persecutions of the Ottoman Empire.”

Bishop Malké lived a life of poverty, even selling his liturgical vestments in order to assist the poor and help fight poverty, Father Al Kabalan said.

In addition to his closeness with the poor, the priest said that Bishop Malké was extremely zealous in his apostolate and visited all of the parishes within his diocese.

One of the bishop’s most striking phrases, his postulator said, comes from when he was pressured to renounce the faith and to convert to Islam. Rather than giving in, the bishop replied, “I will defend my faith to the blood.”…

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Washington, D.C. 1943: A Tragic History is About to Repeat Itself

On October 6, 1943, a delegation of American rabbis arrived at the White House for a personal audience with President Franklin Roosevelt. They planned to present to the president irrefutable proof that the Nazis were conducting a wholesale annihilation of European Jews.

As they arrived, the rabbis knew that this was a decisive moment—the last chance to stop the Holocaust before the last of European Jewry was extinguished.  They were denied a meeting.

The ensuing tragedy is, of course, well known. No coordinated Allied rescue was launched. The flames consumed six million Jews. Six decades later, America is ignoring the appeals of the state of Israel concerning Iran’s plans to wipe out the Jews with atomic bombs.

Today, you and I have been chosen by God to stand in defense of Israel. The Jewish people are under attack and facing threats on every side. They need to know that they are not alone, that their Christian friends around the world are standing with them.

The Jerusalem Prayer Team has made our support of Israel and the Holy City plain by building and opening the wonderful Friends of Zion Museum just 600 meters from the Temple Mount. Every day we are telling the true story of Christian love for the Jewish people to hundreds of visitors from all around the world.

We made the decision not to charge people to visit the museum in order to ensure that as many people as possible could be touched by this powerful witness. The operating costs are massive—electricity, maintenance, personnel and more—and we are continuing to improve the experience, including translating the presentation into still more languages. We need your help today so that the light of Christian love will not go out.

Your gift will allow us to continue the wonderful outreach of the Friends of Zion Museum…and feed hungry Holocaust survivors, encourage Believers to join us in prayer, and launch the new Friends of Zion Ambassador Institute. But none of this is possible without your help. Please stand with us in the gap for Israel and the Jewish people with your gift today.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the historic Rabbis’ March On Washington in 1943 to stop the Holocaust.

Tel Aviv on the Seine Flushes Out the Slithery Creatures — Part 2

Ah ha ha, I’m chortling. Or maybe it’s better to imagine airy bell-like laughter, something silky and lacy. Ah ha ha, I’m laughing. The Big Bad Wolf said I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll… give an interview to a journalist. That was Gaza Beach today, a silly little flop. More journalists than BDSniks in their green Boycott Israel t-shirts. More riot policemen than petulant self-satisfied protestors in keffieh. The caliphators were not out in force.

Journalists cooling their heels at Gaza Beach.

But let’s begin at the beginning. Shortly before noon a parade of police cars passed by, sirens singing. That always electrifies the atmosphere. The cars took up positions around the Hôtel de Ville [city hall]. Dozens of CRS [riot police] were already in place, manning their stations. A long line of people waited patiently on the high road to go through the checkpoint and down the ramp to Tel Aviv on the Seine. Silent hecklers waited off to the side, making a fashion statement with their keffiehs and Gaza Beach Soccer t-shirts as if their presence were the eloquent expression of “international opinion.” Euro-Palestine in person [http://www.europalestine.com/] had informed loyal followers that permission to demonstrate had been granted on the grounds that they not try to mingle with the Tel Aviv beachgoers. So of course that’s why a dozen of them had to stand there like “do me something.”

A generous supply of press badges were waiting on a table. We signed up, got our badges, and took the fast track through baggage control. Then a short stretch under the bridge, with dozens of CRS lined up in the shadows next to the WCs, and here we are at the much maligned Tel Aviv on the Seine. We walk a bit further and come to the patch of sandy beach. Israeli music rings out, people are dancing, hips are gyrating, hands are clapping, the crowd is already dense. TV trucks look down from the bridge, cameramen are all over the place, microphones with logos are looking for something to record. One food truck (more about that later), an ice cream stand, and that’s it. A pittance.

Dancing at Tel Aviv on the Seine.

As if the whole thing had been nothing more than a stupid conversation! I may get more information in the coming days: was this the original plan, or was it scaled down in the face of fierce opposition (see Part 1)? Wasn’t there something about beach games and what not? I can’t even remember the details of what I’d read yesterday. Perhaps further on? We walked through a sort of covered passage. I spotted a keffieh-umbrella, some Palestinian flags. “I thought they weren’t supposed to mingle?” In fact, we were on Gaza Beach! Without warning. No signs to indicate we were entering the territory occupied by the “Palestinian” contingent. A handful of activists were activating. Stringing up their huge banner. Always that same self-satisfied look. Journalists standing around waiting for something to happen. We got into a conversation with a Mediterranean looking young woman brandishing a Radio France Internationale mike. Remarked that we had entered the sector by mistake. There was no checkpoint but now we discover we can’t go back to Tel Aviv, we have to go up the stairs to the upper quai, make a long detour, and pass through the checkpoint again. “You know why? It’s because there’s no fear of an incursion from the Tel Aviv side. But the same is not true of this side.” The fresh young raven-haired RFI journalist does not agree. “There’s just as much chance of an attack from that side as this side,” she says with a certainty that can only come from repeating what you are told and never thinking for yourself.

Gaza Beach right next to Tel Aviv.

The police can’t play around with that kind of nonsense. They protect from clear and present dangers. The bridge and the high road overlooking Gaza beach are open to the public. Bridges and the high road above the Zionist side were blocked… taking no chances on a wannabe Al Aqsa from which rocks might be cast down upon the festive crowd.

The weather has changed. After days and weeks of glorious sunshine that made Paris blossom like a woman in love, the sky was heavy today with thick white clouds. All the magic of Paris Plages had disappeared. I couldn’t believe I had found it so charming. Nothing but a dreary road along the river, with a few tables and chairs squeezed against damp dark stone walls. And that sort-of-a- beach where young and not so young were dancing and putting some heart into it.

The food truck? The one and only food truck where the hungry lined up forever? What was the connection between Tel Aviv and the three young women with ashram accessories running “Epices & love” [peace  & love, y’get it?]. The vegan craze? We sit on a narrow wooden bench chomping on a tasteless wrap filled with tasteless vegetables, that and nothing more. D. tells me what he saw in a kindergarten when he went into Gaza at the end of the ’67 war: nothing on the walls but big drawings of the different ways of killing Jews.

When we left the Seine at about 3 PM there was still a long line of people waiting to cross the checkpoint into Tel Aviv beach. E. and I decided to walk down toward Châtelet and check out Gaza on the Seine. As before, we had to cross to the far side of the street as we passed the Zionist stretch where the music was still going strong. Finally we could cross over and look straight down at the handful of BDSsers clustered around a haranguer telling them when the pharmacist offers a generic drug be sure to say no to TEVA. Hip hip hurrah, they holler, we don’t want TEVA. Then, if I’m not mistaken, it’s the leader of Euro-Palestine CAPJPO herself, Olivia Zemour who takes the mike. We voted for this Socialist mayor, she says, and now look what she’s done. She honors the apartheid State of Israel that massacres the people of Gaza! These politicians, after they get into office, they do whatever they please. Right or Left, it’s the same.

Did you hear that, monsieur Left? You curry their vote, bend over backward and worse, authorize their protests, twist the news to suit their views, and just when you think everybody is happy, you forget one day to absolutely totally and completely vilify Israel, and you’ve lost their vote.

Ah, but it doesn’t matter says O. Zemour, because our movement is constantly gaining ground [as testified by the half a dozen people drinking in her words] and Israel is more and more isolated… To listen to her, you’d think it was half way wiped off the map already.

A different kind of poster on the Tel Aviv side.

I walked down rue des Rosiers to get a breath of fresh air after all that pathetic spectacle. We don’t need the city hall to give us a stingy smidgeon of Tel Aviv. This is the real thing. People lined up at the falafel joints for some real food! Sweet wholesome perfume of fresh baked cakes and bread. An extra contingent of soldiers and police… in case, I suppose, an overflow from Gaza Beach might come storming in. But it wasn’t that crowd today. The caliphators are on vacation in their homelands, or weren’t mobilized for this event.

Prime time news on i24 this evening: French people on the real beach in the real Tel Aviv danced in front of the French embassy to show their solidarity with us over here. The rain started falling on Paris Plages at about 6 PM but nothing like the huge thunderstorm with hail and lightening that had been forecast. Another non sequitur.

It was all rather pitiful. The Mayor and her assistant holding out against vicious pressure while giving into it at the same time. The festive event falling short of reasonable expectations. Riot police, the gendarmerie, undercover agents, and domestic intelligence mobilized for a handful of agitators with big banners. Not enough troublemakers to spoil the party, not enough party to lift the spirits. No falafel, no sunshine.

And yet this whole affair was like a stumbling block that tripped up the long standing notion of the acceptable Israeli who has traded the blue & white Magen David flag for the universal rainbow of LGBT, decries the democratically elected government, detests the religious, the “colonists,” and the army, pleads guilty when accused, cries “peace” when pinched, and parties until dawn.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of  Checkpoint at the entrance to Tel Aviv sur Seine.