Tag Archive for: United States

Biden Brings in Islamic Activists to Investigate U.S. Military for ‘Extremism’

Muslim Brotherhood supporters to help Biden destroy American soldiers.


A decade ago, Hina Shamsi was fighting on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation whose leaders had been convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

As the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project, Shamsi, a Pakistani citizen, had fought fiercely for the Islamic terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. “We all must pledge — not one person more in Guantanamo, not in our names,” she recently declared.

But now the Pakistani advocate for Islamic terrorists has a new job: going after our soldiers.

Shamsi (pictured above left) is one of the terror lawyers who appears on a list of partners for the Biden administration’s crackdown on “extremism” in the military. The only kind of extremism that Shamsi appears to be an expert on is the Islamic kind and her expertise has been in denying it.

Furthermore, at least as of 2017, Shamsi had described herself as a Pakistan citizen with permanent legal residency in America.

She’s not the only apparent Pakistani citizen tasked by Biden to go after our troops.

Take Faiza Patel, another Pakistani immigrant, who co-wrote an article arguing against designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. The article claimed that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a religious organization, a political party, and a social service provider” and that it had “disavowed violence decades ago.”

That would come as news to Hamas and its other active Jihadist network members.

In another co-written article, Faiza Patel claimed that laws against Sharia were Islamophobic.

Patel has worked for international organizations in Europe, including the International Criminal Tribunal, and was a member of a UN Human Rights Council working group which listed her as a member from Pakistan, not the United States, raising questions about her citizenship.

And yet Shamsi and Patel aren’t the worst of the list of partners for the Biden administration’s Countering Extremism Working Group (CEWG) published by OANN correspondent Jack Posobiec

While Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had announced the CEWG group to counter supposed “extremism” in the military, the list of CEWG partners contains a lot of Muslim lawyers and activists. In addition to Shamsi, there’s fellow Pakistani ACLU activist: Manar Waheed.

The list includes Wael Alzayat in his role as the CEO of Emgage. The national co-chair and founding member of the Islamic group is Khurrum Wahid who has been described as one of the country’s most prominent terror lawyers and whose clients include an Al Qaeda operative who plotted to kill President George W. Bush and Sami al-Arian who was linked to Islamic Jihad.

Wahid had been placed on a terrorist watch list and Emgage, as counterterrorism researcher Joe Kaufman noted, “holds events at terror-linked mosques”: including one founded by al-Arian.

Emgage’s board includes Dhabah ‘Debbie’ Almontaser who was forced out of her old job over t-shirts reading “Intifada NYC”. Nada al Hanooti, Emgage’s Executive Director for Michigan, is the daughter of Muthanna al Hanooti, a former CAIR leader who was accused of working for Saddam Hussein and Iraq’s intelligence agency.

Is that the kind of extremism expertise that the Department of Defense really needs?

Also on the list of Biden’s CEWG partners is Iman Boukadou:, the staff attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

The ADC has a long history of defending and excusing Islamic terrorism. “I know many people in Hamas. They are very respectable,” its former president Hamzi Moghrabi had said. Former ADC president Hussein Ibish called Hezbollah “a disciplined and responsible liberation force” whose members “conducted themselves in an exemplary manner.”

Boukadoum was most recently hard at work fighting for Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who had been convicted of obstruction of justice in a case involving the flow of money to Hamas.

Ashqar ran for president of the Palestinian Authority while awaiting trial in the United States. He had argued that the evidence against him had come from a time when “Hamas was not designated as a terrorist organisation” and boasted that, “they wanted me to testify against my people. I said I’d rather die than betray my commitment to freedom and justice for Palestine.”

American military personnel are being put at the mercy of advocates for their worst enemies.

Biden’s DOD radicals have assembled a list of activists who have absolutely no credibility when it comes to extremism. Multiple “partners” for Biden’s Countering Extremism Working Group have appeared at events for CAIR, ICNA, and other terror-linked organizations. Some have appeared at events featuring advocates for Islamic terrorism, sharia, and violence against non-Muslims. They’re the extremists that Americans should be concerned about.

It was not surprising that Biden’s CEWG partner list would include multiple personnel from the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center including Heidi Beirich, formerly of the SPLC, currently running her own organization, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which barely has a website.

Or that the only conservative on the list is the First Liberty Institute. FLI’s Michael Berry also appears to be the only person on Biden’s list who is qualified for this role as a Lt. Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve who works as FLI’s Director of Military Affairs.

But to Biden, defending Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorists, is the only qualification needed for going after American soldiers. That tells us everything we need to know about Biden’s goals.

Biden’s Secretary of Defense Austin falsely claimed that, “this is not about politics or political views.” His list of partners makes it abundantly clear that this is entirely about politics.

The list consists almost entirely of organizations and individuals who supported Biden.

And that makes this look even more like a political purge of the military by a radical administration that began its time in office by abusing the military for political purposes, and has made it clear that it intends to eliminate any opposition within the military to its political views.

But it’s striking that a third of Biden’s CEWG partners are Muslim. Especially since the Biden administration isn’t looking for another Nidal Hasan in the hopes of averting another Fort Hood Massacre, but is instead trying to rewrite history to pretend that the greatest threat to our national security comes from Biden’s political opponents rather than from his Islamist backers.

The Obama administration infamously dismantled our counterterrorism programs and replaced them with Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). Biden is dismantling CVE and siccing Islamist activists and their lawyers on the military to implement a ruthless purge of American soldiers.

Witnessing Gitmo lawyers licking their lips at the prospect of bringing the Jihad into the heart of the military against soldiers who bravely served our country but have no defense against being betrayed by their own government is as disheartening to us as it must be to them.

“Did we lose a war?” the ordinary American confronted with this reversal of terror may wonder.

And the answer is, “Yes, we did.”

COLUMN BY

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Meet the Team of Israel-Haters Joe Biden Has Assembled

My latest in PJ Media:

Oh yeah, this is sure to work: Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, according to the Jewish Press, that he was “sending an envoy to the Middle East to ‘seek to calm tensions’ even as he urged Israel to avoid killing civilians.” Israel does more than any other military force has ever done to avoid killing civilians, so that was not a good sign. Even worse was that the soothing envoy is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr, an indefatigable supporter of the genocidal Palestinian Arab jihad against Israel.

Back in 2002, Amr declared: “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada.” He said that Palestinians would “never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military, and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.” He did not, of course, say a word about Hamas’ long-established practice of launching jihad attacks from civilian areas, so that retaliatory fire could be used for propaganda purposes. Of course, that was a long time ago, but Amr went on to a long career in the Obama administration and elsewhere, and never showed any sign that he had moderated his positions.

Anyone who is surprised that Biden’s handlers would send a jihad supporter to talk with the Israelis and Palestinians hasn’t been paying attention. Just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, pro-Erdogan Turkish journalist Hakkı Öcal, according to Ahval News, “highlighted a report on the strong presence of Jews in the cabinet of U.S. President Joe Biden.” The report claimed that there was an “over 50 percent Jewish presence in the new U.S. cabinet,” and pointed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, among others. But Öcal was off base: among Biden’s handlers, Jewish and non-Jewish, there are few, if any, staunch friends of Israel. After just a few months in office, it was clear that Joe Biden’s handlers’ administration was shaping up to be the most anti-Israel presidency since the founding of the modern State of Israel. That is clear from the appointments Biden’s handlers have made. A sampling:

Robert Malley, special envoy to Iran, has become notorious over the years for his support for Iran’s Islamic regime and pronounced distaste for Israel. The Washington Times revealed in February 2021 that back in July 2019, “Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.”

Malley was a good choice for such an assignment. An Israeli security official noted in February 2008 that Malley “has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.” Obama dropped Malley in May 2008 after it came to light that he had met with representatives of Hamas, but six months later sent him as an envoy to Egypt and Syria.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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https://twitter.com/Roger_Smith_911/status/1368358430344441856

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Handlers Get the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict They Wanted

Once again, the Dems embolden – and enable – evil. My latest in FrontPage:

On his new Save America website, former President Trump stated the obvious that the elites wish us to overlook: “When I was in office we were known as the Peace Presidency, because Israel’s adversaries knew that the United States stood strongly with Israel and there would be swift retribution if Israel was attacked. Under Biden, the world is getting more violent and more unstable because Biden’s weakness and lack of support for Israel is leading to new attacks on our allies.”

Weakness and lack of support for Israel, and open support for the Palestinian jihad. The Washington Free Beacon reported last March that “the Biden administration privately confirmed to Congress last week that the Palestinian Authority has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists but said the finding won’t impact its plans to restart funding.”

And it didn’t. Biden’s handlers gave $235 million to the Palestinians in April. So now you can see your taxpayer dollars at work, funding the bloody Palestinian jihad against Israel, thanks to Biden’s handlers. Meanwhile, in an example of a frequent leftist tactic, the complete inversion of reality, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) tweeted: “American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations. Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed. Statements aren’t working @SecBlinken. Enough is enough.” American taxpayer money is indeed being used to commit human rights violations, but not in the way Tlaib has in mind.

The kind of people that Tlaib and her colleagues in the American left are fronting for are epitomized by Hamas Political Bureau Member and former Minister of the Interior Fathi Hammad. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Hammad said on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV Friday: “People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels. With those five shekels, you will humiliate the Jewish state.”

Hammad continued with a quotation from the Qur’an: “‘You shall find the strongest in enmity towards the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.’” That’s Qur’an 5:82. Hammad added: “The Jews have spread corruption and acted with arrogance, and their moment of reckoning has come. The moment of destruction at your hands has arrived.” Palestinian Arab leaders and their allies around the Islamic world routinely frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Islamic terms. Western Middle East “experts” just as routinely ignore or downplay the role of Islam in the conflict. This foredooms all their peace-processing to failure. The Palestinian Delusion explains why in detail.

But Biden’s handlers are not interested in learning the lessons of history or the clear evidence regarding the motivating ideology underlying the conflict that can be found in the texts and teachings of Islam. They are committed instead to adhering to the left’s claims to stand for the oppressed and downtrodden, no matter how much Palestinian jihad propaganda they have to swallow in order to enable themselves to see the Palestinian jihadis as innocent victims of the rapacious Israeli war machine. And ultimately, they’ve gotten Israel and the world into this mess by the overarching determination to undo everything Donald Trump did as president. John Kerry had said with the confidence of someone who is ignorant, arrogant and half-educated that no peace was possible between Israel and the Muslim countries of the region without first making peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump proved Kerry wrong, so now Kerry and the rest of the foreign policy establishment have to wipe the egg off their face by undoing Trump’s achievements and reasserting the status quo they created.

Now they have done so, and the Middle East is on the brink of all-out war.

In his message about this imbroglio, Trump enunciated more unwelcome truths as well: “America must always stand with Israel and make clear that the Palestinians must end the violence, terror, and rocket attacks, and make clear that the U.S. will always strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. Unbelievably, Democrats also continue to stand by crazed anti-American Rep. Ilhan Omar, and others, who savagely attack Israel while they are under terrorist assault.”

Needless to say, if he were still president, none of this would be happening. Strength engenders respect.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Team of Israel-Haters

Just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, pro-Erdogan Turkish journalist Hakkı Öcal, according to Ahval News, “highlighted a report on the strong presence of Jews in the cabinet of U.S. President Joe Biden.” The report claimed that there was an “over 50 percent Jewish presence in the new U.S. cabinet,” and pointed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, among others. But Öcal was off base: among Biden’s handlers, Jewish and non-Jewish, there are few, if any, staunch friends of Israel. After just a few months in office, it was clear that Joe Biden’s handlers’ administration was shaping up to be the most anti-Israel presidency since the founding of the modern State of Israel.

Robert Malley, Special Envoy to Iran, has become notorious over the years for his support for Iran’s Islamic regime and pronounced distaste for Israel. The Washington Times revealed in February 2021 that back in July 2019, “Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.”

Malley (pictured above left) was a good choice for such an assignment. An Israeli security official noted in February 2008 that Malley “has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.” Obama dropped Malley in May 2008 after it came to light that he had met with representatives of Hamas, but six months later sent him as an envoy to Egypt and Syria.

Meanwhile, Reema Dodin is a deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. According to the Jerusalem Post, “during the Second Intifada, in 2002, Dodin spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with residents of Lodi, California, saying that ‘suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.’” Also, “in 2001, Dodin took part in a demonstration at UC Berkeley calling for the university to divest from Israel….The demonstrators compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.”

In a similar vein, Biden’s handlers appointed Maher Bitar the Senior Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council. In 2006, while a student at Georgetown University, Bitar was a member of the executive board of the viciously pro-jihad, anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine, and was seen dancing in front of a banner that said “Divest from Israel Apartheid.”

The Deputy Secretary of State is Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator of Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. The State Department’s undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights is Uzra Zeya. According to the Jewish News Service, Zeya “worked for the magazine Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and its publishing group, American Educational Trust. The Washington Report has questioned the loyalty American Jews have to the United States; published accusations against the ‘Jewish lobby’; claimed American Jews control the media; and accused the Mossad of perpetrating the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine is Hady Amr. In an unhinged 2002 rant, Amr repeated Palestinian jihad propaganda, declaring: “I have news for every Israeli: a very large proportion of the more than 150 million children and youth in the Arab World now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is Colin Kahl. According to Israel Hayom, “Kahl has quite the anti-Israel record. He thinks the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq was 1981 was a mistake. In 2012, he acted to remove recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the Democratic party’s platform. In 2015, he was among those to formulate the Iran nuclear deal. In 2016, at the end of his term, then-US President Barack Obama tasked him with enlisting support for the anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that determined Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria were a violation of international law.”

Have Biden’s handlers appointed a balancing group of strong supporters of Israel, who will move to prevent this unsavory group (which is larger than just those named here) from disrupting America’s relationship with its strongest, most reliable ally in the West? Is there any brake to the ability of the anti-Israel group in Biden’s administration to force Israel to make potentially life-threatening concessions to the Palestinian jihad force. The answer to both questions is no.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

House passes bill stopping any future president from imposing ‘travel ban on the basis of religion’

The list of countries of concern that the Trump administration outlined in an executive order was based on the document devised by the former Obama administration. Despite the fact that it was Obama who set the foundation, it is Trump who is persistently criticized as being discriminatory against Muslims. Obama restricted visa waivers for seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. The restriction was based on security issues. But we didn’t hear any Leftist outcry about Obama being “racist” against Muslims or discriminatory.

This new bill is nothing but virtue-signaling, and wouldn’t even have stopped Trump’s bans, for they were not based on religion, but on security.

It just happens to be the case that among the world’s most egregious violators of human rights and hotbeds of terrorism are many Muslim countries. Does this new bill now mean that such countries when they are Muslim-majority are no longer dangerous? Does it mean that America should permit open immigration from any country, no matter how violent, as to not offend Muslims and the woke crowd?

As absurd as all this is, it is the premise of the irrational policies that are being instituted by the Biden administration. The administration is willing to put national security at risk as to not offend Islam. America continues a rapid descent downwards; Sharia tenets are being institutionalized, while the strictures and policies of Communism are being increasingly normalized.

US House passes bill to prevent another ‘Muslim ban’

by William Roberts, Al Jazeera, April 21, 2021:

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would limit the ability of any United States president to impose a travel ban on the basis of religion, a move that was welcomed by civil rights advocates as “a major step forward”.

The legislation, known informally as the NO BAN Act, comes in response to former President Donald Trump’s controversial “Muslim ban” that barred travel to the US from several Muslim-majority countries.

The bill, which must also pass in the US Senate to become law, was approved by a 218-208 vote in the House on Wednesday.

“The Muslim ban tore families apart, put lives on hold for years and labelled Muslims, Africans and other targeted people as threatening outsiders,” said Madihha Ahussain, counsel to Muslim Advocates, a US civil rights group.

“We must ensure that no president can enact discriminatory bans like this ever again and with the passage of the NO BAN Act in the House, we are taking a major step forward to ensuring that they won’t,” Ahussain said in a statement as the bill was passed…

COLUMN BY

 

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tennessee lawyer files free speech lawsuit after being fired for ‘anti-Islam’ and pro-Trump tweets

Jerry Morgan gave the details of this case in an exclusive Jihad Watch article HERE. Get more background on this case HERE, where Robert Spencer stated:

What disparaging remarks did Morgan make? Did he say that Muslims were “the most vile of created beings”? No, that’s what the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, calls non-Muslims (98:6). Did he call Muslims “apes and pigs”? No, that’s what the Qur’an calls Jews (2:63-65, 5:59-60, 7:166). Did he say Muslims were “unclean”? No, that’s what the Qur’an says of non-Muslims (9:28).

So what egregious statements did Morgan actually make?

As it turned out, he has been forced to resign for “praising President Donald Trump for ‘stopping Muslims’ and ‘talking big against Muslims,’” and “said Islam was not a peaceful religion and made comments linking the faith with violence and ‘Muslim terrorists.’”

To our dhimmi overlords, however, all that matters is that anything offensive to Islam/Muslims, even if it is true, must be shut down in accordance with Sharia blasphemy laws, which are well on the way to becoming mainstream in American society, despite the First Amendment. Jerry Morgan is one of the few who have had the courage to fight back, and we wish him well.

“Tennessee: State Lawyer Fired for ‘Anti-Islam’ Tweets Files Speech Suit,” 

Bloomberg Law, April 6, 2021:

An attorney alleges the Tennessee Supreme Court’s board of professional responsibility unlawfully fired him for posting Tweets that an opposing party said displayed anti-Muslim bias, arguing his social media posts were constitutionally protected political speech similar to that of former president Donald Trump.

The board of professional responsibility regulates licensed Tennessee attorneys. Jerry Morgan handled appeals to the state supreme court regarding attorney discipline, according to his complaint filed Monday at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Attorney Brian Manookian, who was undergoing disciplinary proceedings, filed a motion to disqualify Morgan, claiming he was an anti-Muslim bigot. Manookian cited multiple Tweets Morgan had posted that, among other things, praised then-candidate Trump for “talking about the #1 issue of our time—stopping Muslims” and disparaged Muslims and Democrats.

Manookian claimed Morgan had an anti-Islam bias that could prejudice him, because his wife was Muslim and his children were being raised in a Muslim household.

Morgan says his posts were “indisputably political in nature,” concerning matters that were controversial but part of the national debate. “Many were views publicly expressed by Trump” and agreed to by the Tennessee voters who “overwhelmingly” voted for him in 2016, Morgan says. There were no accusations against him of biased conduct in the Manookian case or any other, Morgan claims.

Morgan was fired in December. He sued the board and chief disciplinary counsel Sandra Garrett, alleging he was unconstitutionally punished for Tweets that were made in his private capacity and were about matters of public importance.

Cause of Action: First Amendment.

Relief Requested: Damages, injunctive relief….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

South Korea to release $7 billion in frozen assets to Iran after consulting with Biden’s handlers

While Biden may well be looking for ways to save face in a standoff with Iran, he just gave the thumbs up for South Korea to release $7 billion in assets in Iran. Biden likely hopes this gesture will move Iran closer to negotiations with the U.S. If Biden is lucky, this money will lead Iran to soften its stance and return to the negotiating table, so as to restart the disastrous Iran nuclear deal that saw over $100 billion flow into the coffers of the Islamic Republic. That was a windfall that allowed the mullahs to continue their jihad in the region and globally; another such windfall is in the offing.

To facilitate the trade with Iran of humanitarian items, such as medicine and medical equipment, South Korea has been seeking to use a Swiss channel backed by the U.S., known as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), to use the money through Swiss companies’ sales of goods to Iran.

But the trade of humanitarian items just frees up money for other activities. Who could forget Iran’s deceptions? These include its violation of the nuclear deal, and its own admission to having done so, as well as its boastful, repeated threats and provocations regarding its military capabilities. Yet far too many Western leaders have never recognized the implications of all this.

“Foreign ministry says Iran’s assets to be unlocked through consultations with US,”

Korea Times, February 23, 2021:

The Iranian assets locked in South Korea will be released after consultations with the United States, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, after Iran claimed it has reached a deal with Seoul on how to transfer and use the frozen money.

According to Iran’s government website, the agreement was reached Monday (Tehran time) during the meeting between Iran’s Central Bank Gov. Abdolnaser Hemmati and South Korean Ambassador to Iran Ryu Jeong-hyun.

It said that the two sides agreed on the destinations for the transfer and that the Iranian central bank informed Seoul of the amount of the money it wants to be transferred.

Tehran has been pressuring Seoul to unblock about US$7 billion of its assets frozen in two South Korean banks due to U.S. sanctions. Seoul has been in talks with Washington on ways to release the money without violating the sanctions, including expanding humanitarian trade with the Middle Eastern country.

“Our government has been in talks with Iran about ways to use the frozen assets, and the Iran side has expressed its consent to the proposals we have made,” the foreign ministry said without providing further details of the proposals.

“The actual unfreezing of the assets will be carried out through consultations with related countries, including the United States,” the ministry said.

Earlier this month, a foreign ministry official said Seoul was finalizing talks with Washington about using some of the frozen funds to pay Tehran’s U.N. dues in arrears, to which the Islamic republic has also agreed.

To facilitate the trade with Iran of humanitarian items, such as medicine and medical equipment, South Korea has been seeking to use a Swiss channel backed by the U.S., known as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), to use the money through Swiss companies’ sales of goods to Iran.

Despite the denial from Seoul and Tehran, speculation has mounted that Iran’s discontent over the frozen funds is related to its recent seizure of a South Korean oil tanker and its crew members in the Persian Gulf early last month….

COLUMN BY

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Surrenders to Iran’s ‘Death to America’ Jihadis in Yemen Who Attacked USS Mason

Not exactly a surprise.

The Biden foreign policy team is crawling with Obama’s pro-Iranian echo chamber foreign policy trolls and the Iran Lobby was among his biggest bundlers.

Iran’s expansion into Yemen via the Houthis, a Jihadist group whose motto is “Death to America, Death to Israel,  A Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam”, has been backed by the media and the foreign policy establishment which falsely kept blaming the Saudi campaign against the Houthis for the famine when in fact it was the Houthis who had caused the famine by stealing humanitarian aid. This didn’t stop Islamists and the media from keeping the famine lie going anyway.

Or the Biden campaign from adopting it as a talking point.

The Houthis had meanwhile fired on the USS Mason (“Death to America” is right in their motto) and were ethnically cleansing Yemen’s Jewish population.

Despite all that, the Biden administration is now very predictably dropping support for the Saudi campaign against the Houthis, calling for a diplomatic solution, and dispatching a special emissary.

In other words, they’re surrendering to Iran and the Houthis.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had pushed a terrorist designation for the Houthis on the way out the door, leading to outrage from the Democrats, their media, and even some Republicans. The Biden team is going the other way by rolling over for the, “Death to America” Jihadis leading to another of Obama’s “Victories for Islam”.

The Yemen mess spilled over due to Obama’s Arab Spring. Just wait for the Biden Islamist Winter.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Nuclear Submarine enters Persian Gulf after Pompeo blames Iran for Rocket Attack on U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

Tension is heating up in the Persian Gulf following a rocket attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad that left a civilian dead.

The nuclear sub sends a clear message to Iran, but clearly Iran has been emboldened by its expectation of a Biden administration that will enable billions to flow once again into its coffers, facilitate its nuclear arsenal build-up, expand its influence in the Middle East, and further enable it to terrorize its targets abroad, including Iranian dissidents who should be safe in the West.

“Israeli Submarine Reportedly Crossed Suez in ‘Message’ to Iran as US Warships Enter Persian Gulf,” by Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik News, December 22, 2020:

A US nuclear-powered submarine entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December as part of Washington’s latest deterrence mission against Iran as tensions spiked after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the American Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.

An Israeli Navy submarine visibly crossed the Suez Canal above water last week in what is being seen as a show of force aimed at Iran, Kan News, a public broadcaster, reported on Monday night.

Arab intelligence officials had reportedly confirmed to Kan News that the IDF Navy submarine surfaced and faced the Persian Gulf, which lies on the other side of Saudi Arabia, in a deliberate act, approved by Egypt, and purportedly intended to ‘send a message’ to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

There has not been any official comment from the Israel Defence Forces, with the IDF saying it does not respond to “reports of this kind.”

Earlier, on 21 December IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi voiced a warning to Tehran against attacking Israel, vowing that the Jewish state would retaliate forcefully against any aggressive moves.

“Recently, we have heard increased threats from Iran against the State of Israel. If Iran and its partners, members of the radical axis [Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups], whether in the first circle of states or the second, carry out actions against Israel, they will discover their partnership to be very costly,” Kohavi was quoted by The Times of Israel as saying at a military ceremony. He added:

“The IDF will forcefully attack anyone who takes part, from near or far, in activities against the State of Israel or Israeli targets. I am saying this plainly and am describing the situation as it is — the response and all the plans have been prepared and practised.”
‘Message to Iran’

The reported move by the IDF Navy comes as a similar manoeuvre was undertaken on Monday by a US submarine. The US Navy confirmed that the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December, accompanied by two American warships, the guided-missile cruisers USS Port Royal (CG 73) and USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), amid heightened tensions with Iran.

​A US Navy official confirmed to Fox News that the latest movements in the Persian Gulf had been “long planned” ahead of the approaching anniversary of the killing of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, in Iraq on 3 January 2020 by an American drone.

According to the American official, the manoeuvres were not in response to the rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.

According to a statement from the US Navy, accompanied by photos of USS Georgia at the surface, the vessel can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and 66 special forces soldiers.

The Navy warned that the military move seeks to demonstrate “the United States’ commitment to regional partners and maritime security with a full spectrum of capabilities to remain ready to defend against any threat at any time.”

US military officials have been apprehensive of a possible attack by Iran to avenge the assassination of Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in Iraq in early January.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Chief Commander, Hossein Salami, said in September on the guard’s website that Tehran will avenge the US killing of its top commander General Qasem Soleimani by targeting those involved, in an “honourable” retaliation.

Spike in Iran Tensions
The show of force in the Persian Gulf comes amid heightened tensions with Iran after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid the blame with Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on 20 December.

The attack left at least one local civilian dead, while no embassy personnel were killed or injured, according to NPR, which cited US diplomatic sources….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Israel-Morocco Accord: Trump Gives the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Another Reason to Honor Him

Donald Trump has just given the Nobel Peace Prize Committee another reason for awarding him that prize. After the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Sudan, a fourth Arab state – Morocco – has now announced it has agreed to normalize ties with Israel. “Morocco, Israel normalize ties as US recognizes Western Sahara,” by Omri Nahmias, Lahav Harkov, and Greer Fay Cashman, Jerusalem Post, December 11, 2020:

Israel and Morocco have agreed to establish diplomatic relations, US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, Dec. 10.

Morocco became the fourth Arab country to normalize ties with Israel in four months, following the Abraham Accords with United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.

“Another historic breakthrough today!” Trump tweeted. “Our two great friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!”

Israel and Morocco plan to reopen economic liaison offices, which were closed in 2002, and work quickly to exchange ambassadors and begin direct flights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

In addition, Trump announced that he signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a disputed territory. “Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity!” he tweeted.

Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Trump added. No other UN member states recognize Western Sahara as part of Morocco.

That was the quid pro quo that Morocco required: recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara. Just as the U.A.E. wanted, in exchange for agreeing to normalize relations with Israel, an American promise to sell the Emirates the Stealth fighter jet, the F-35 (and from Israel, it wanted, and received, a promise to suspend extension of Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank), so King Mohammad VI wanted the U.S. to recognize Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara. This was not only to satisfy the government in Rabat, but also could be held up to the Moroccan people as a diplomatic coup, so that they would be less inclined to resent the new ties to Israel.

The Trump administration viewed finalizing establishment of ties between the two countries as a prime goal in the past few weeks.

White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner said normalization “comes on the heels of four years of very, very hard work and very intense diplomacy.”

The move is the culmination of a successful year of upgrading Israel’s relations with Arab and Muslim countries, beginning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Chad and meeting Sudan’s leader in Uganda, the Abraham Accords, as well as the warming relations and cooperation with Saudi Arabia, in addition to a number of other Arab states.

Israel proposed a scenario similar to what has since unfolded, by which normalization with Morocco would come in conjunction with American recognition of the Western Sahara, to the White House in the beginning of this year, as reported in multiple Israeli media sources.

French media reported that Morocco purchased three drones from Israel for $48 million in January.

This is evidence of ties already warming up long before the announcement on Dec. 10. Israel does not sell weapons to states with which it has less than friendly ties.

Like the Gulf states, Morocco views Iran as a threat. Rabat cut ties with Tehran in 2018, because Iran funded Western Sahara separatist movement Polisario via Hezbollah.

Long before that, Morocco had a relationship with Israeli intelligence agencies. Moroccan King Hassan II gave Israel recordings of an Arab League meeting [in 1965] that helped Israel prepare for the Six Day War, according to former IDF intelligence chief Shlomo Gazit and former intelligence officer and cabinet minister Rafi Eitan. That same year, the Mossad helped Morocco abduct a dissident from France.

King Hassan II provided Israel with a secret recording he had made of an Arab League meeting held in Casablanca in 1965, that revealed both the disunity among the Arabs and the parlous state of their military – especially that of Egypt. The tale of that Moroccan tip-off to Israeli military, that helped Israel win the Six-Day War, can be found here.

And Israel, in turn, helped Morocco. Mossad helped persuade a Moroccan dissident, Mehdi Ben Barka, to come to a rendezvous in Paris, where he was then kidnapped outside a famous restaurant, the Brasserie Lipp, by two French policemen working for the Moroccans; Ben Barka was never seen again.

Netanyahu, however, focused on the many Israelis of Moroccan origin and not security matters in his remarks on normalization, which he called a “great light of peace” in honor of Hanukkah.

Everyone knows the warm ties of the kings of Morocco and the Moroccan people to the Jewish community there,” Netanyahu said. “Hundreds of thousands of Jews moved to Israel from Morocco and they form a living bridge between the people of Morocco and Israel. This solid base is the foundation on which we build this peace.”

Trump’s proclamation said the US “affirms, as stated by previous Administrations, its support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute over the Western Sahara territory…An independent Sahrawi State is not a realistic option for resolving the conflict and that genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only feasible solution.”

“Therefore, as of today, the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory.”

The White House also urged the sides in the Western Sahara conflict to return to the negotiating table under the framework of Morocco’s plan for autonomy for the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara.

Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara has been recognized by the U.S., but it is expected that the Sahrawi people will enjoy a large degree of autonomy. We will see if that promise by Morocco is borne out. And we still don’t know if that “autonomy” will give the Sahrawis a fair share of the revenues from the huge deposits of phosphates in the Western Sahara.

The US plans to open a consulate in Dakhla, in Western Sahara, which the Moroccan Foreign Ministry said would have “a primarily economic vocation.”

Kushner said recognizing Moroccan sovereignty in the Western Sahara was “something that seemed inevitable at this point; is something that we think advances the region and helps bring more clarity to where things are going.”

Following the announcement, President Trump spoke with King Mohammed VI of Morocco. According to a readout provided by the White House, “the leaders discussed cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus, ways to minimize its economic impact, and common interests in critical regional issues.”

During the conversation the King agreed to resume diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel and expand economic and cultural cooperation to advance regional stability,” the White House said in a statement.

King Mohammed told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a phone call on Thursday that Rabat stands by a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a royal court statement said.

Like the U.A.E. and Bahrain, Morocco has reaffirmed the boilerplate commitment to a “two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And like them, it has no plans to help the Palestinians beyond that recital; it has decided to promote its own national interests – its claim to the Western Sahara – over the demands of the Palestinians, who have been “betrayed” and “stabbed in the back” yet again, this time by Rabat’s willingness to normalize ties with the Jewish state.

The king added that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are the only way to reach a final, lasting and comprehensive solution to the conflict.

King Mohammed also highlighted his commitment to a two-state solution, as well as the importance of freedom of worship in Jerusalem, during his conversation with Trump.

Of course, there is now total “freedom of worship” in Jerusalem, as there was not during the 19 years of the Jordanian occupation. The only worshippers who may feel they don’t have “freedom of worship” are the Muslims from countries that have normalized ties with Israel, who have been cursed and threatened at Al-Aqsa mosque by angry Palestinians.

The White House, not Netanyahu, informed Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Benny Gantz of the developments with Morocco several weeks before they were made public, contrary to the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan deals in which they were told at the last minute.

Ashkenazi said that “today is another great day for Israeli diplomacy, a day of light befitting the holiday of Hanukkah.

And Ashkenazi should have mentioned that it’s also “another great day for American diplomacy,” but since he didn’t, we’ll do it for him.

“Renewing relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco is an important part of the Abraham Accords that reflects the deep and longstanding friendship between the nations. I call on more nations to join the Abraham Accords’ circle,” he stated….

It isn’t true that there has been a “deep and longstanding friendship between the nations” (of Israel and Morocco), but I suppose it’s a useful fiction. Ashkenazi might have said that “we all hope that this historic agreement will lead to a deep and longstanding friendship between our nations.” That would have been dignified, hopeful, and true.

Approximately one million Israelis are wholly or partly descended from Moroccan Jews, the second largest group in Israel after the Jews from Russia. They are well disposed to their original home and to the present King Mohammed VI, who like his father, King Hassan II, is known for his sympathetic interest and affection for the Jews in the Kingdom.

Furthermore, King Mohammed VI’s senior advisor is Andre Azoulay, a Moroccan Jew who previously advised Mohammed’s father, King Hassan II.

The Moroccan king’s philosemitism, beside his interest in Moroccan Jews, is expressed in the distinct absence of any animus toward Israel, a view which he surely inherited from his father. His father hosted two Israeli prime ministers, Rabin and Peres, in Morocco, and remained friendly with Rabin until the end of the Israeli’s life, and with Peres until the end of his own, even when Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza were engaged in war. King Hassan II’s father, King Mohammed V, blocked efforts by Vichy officials to impose anti-Jewish measures on Morocco and deport the country’s 250,000 Jews to their deaths in Europe, and is revered for that by Morocco’s Jews and their descendants in Israel.

King Hassan has been celebrating Morocco’s Jewish heritage in recent years, and bringing other Moroccans along with him. “Judaism is part of Moroccan identity,” said Zhor Rehihil, Muslim conservator at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca, the first of its kind in the Arab world. “We still have a Jewish memory, even though the Jews left.” No other Arab state has devoted so much attention to its former Jewish population.

This normalization of relations with a fourth Arab state has gone off without a hitch. The sky has not fallen. The Palestinian Authority, still smarting from its treatment by the Arab League (that refused to denounce the U.A.E. and Bahrain), has been quiet. Morocco’s decision to normalize relations is likely to increase the pressure on other Arab and Muslim states to follow suit. Each additional Arab state that normalizes relations with Israel increases the gravitational pull on the others that have not. They’ve all taken note of the granting of national wishes – the F-35 sale for the U.A.E., the recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara for Morocco, the removal of economic sanctions for the Sudan – by the American government. What would it take to get Oman to follow suit? Or Mauritania? Or Tunisia? And what of Saudi Arabia, whose King Salman thinks one way about normalization of ties with Israel (which he insists can only happen after a Palestinian state in the “pre-1967 lines” is created), and his son the Crown Prince, who doesn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, quite another?

Another coup for President Trump, in achieving yet another astonishment, but will the Biden transition team be willing to recognize this feat of diplomatic finesse? I have my doubts.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Israel has tape of Iranian nuclear scientist saying mullahs ‘want five warheads’

Yet His Fraudulency Joe Biden plans to enable Iran’s nuclear program anew by returning to the Iranian nuclear deal. Find out why that would be a catastrophic move in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran.

“‘Israel has tape of slain Iran nuke chief talking about building five warheads,’” Times of Israel, December 4, 2020:

Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

This top-secret recording was played in 2008 by former prime minister Ehud Olmert for then-president George W. Bush during a visit by Bush to Israel and was a key element in convincing the Americans to step up efforts to combat Iran’s nuclear program, the report said….

“I’m going to play you something, but I ask that you not talk about it with anyone, not even with the director of the CIA,” the report quoted Olmert as telling Bush from within the closed-door meeting. Bush reportedly agreed to the request.

Olmert pulled out a recording device, hit play and a man could be heard speaking in Persian.

“The man speaking here is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,” Olmert reportedly explained. “Fakhrizadeh is the head of the “AMAD” program, Iran’s secret military nuclear project. The one it denies exists at all,” Olmert told Bush according to the report.

The prime minister then revealed that Israeli intelligence services had managed to recruit an Iranian agent close to Fakhrizadeh who had been feeding Jerusalem information on the nuclear scientist for years.

Olmert provided Bush with an English-language transcript of what Fakhrizadeh had said in Persian.

According to the report, Fakhrizadeh could be heard giving details about the development of Iranian nuclear weapons. However, the Yedioth report only quotes selected phrases, without the word nuclear. The scientist complains that the government is not providing him with sufficient funds to carry out his work. On the one hand, Fakhrizadeh says, in an apparent reference to his superiors, “they want five warheads,” but on the other, “they aren’t letting me work.”

Fakhrizadeh then goes on to criticize colleagues in the defense ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the report.

Bush read the recording’s translation and reacted with silence. Yedioth claimed the recording served as a “smoking atomic gun” for Olmert….

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EDITTORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Gingrich: 2020 Election is the ‘Biggest Theft Since 1824’ – But It’s Even Worse Than That

Newt Gingrich tweeted Friday:

“The more data comes out on vote anomalies that clearly are not legitimate the more it looks like 2020 may be the biggest Presidential theft since Adams and Clay robbed Andrew Jackson in 1824. State legislatures should demand recounts.”

He was right, except for one detail: the stolen election of 2020 is shaping up to be much worse than that of 1824.

Rating America’s Presidents explains that by that year, the Democratic-Republican Party, which was the party of the previous three presidents, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, now included virtually every politician of significance and had split into factions of its own. The congressional caucus that had chosen Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe bypassed the candidate whom many considered to be Monroe’s heir apparent, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Instead, the caucus picked a candidate who stood for the old Republican principles of strict adherence to the Constitution and a weak federal government: William Crawford, who had been a senator from Georgia, minister to France, and secretary of war and secretary of the treasury in the Monroe administration.

The caucus, however, didn’t have the influence in 1824 that it had enjoyed in previous years. Those who favored the positions that had initially been identified with the moribund opposition party, the Federalists, including a strong federal government that funded internal improvements, a centralized Bank of the United States, and high tariffs to protect American industry, were Adams and the speaker of the House, Henry Clay of Kentucky. Then there was General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 and, more recently, a senator from Tennessee. Jackson had genuine popular support, which was increasingly important, as more and more states were choosing electors by popular vote.

No one, however, knew exactly where Jackson stood on the issues. Adams, whom Jackson would soon count among his bitterest political enemies, actually supported him for vice president, albeit with a quip about Jackson’s volatile character: “The Vice-Presidency was a station in which the General could hang no one, and in which he would need to quarrel with no one.”

One reason why 2020 is worse than 1824 is that everyone in that race, like everyone for the first century and a half of the republic, had an America-first agenda. So there was nothing like the modern-day division of candidates on that score, and voters didn’t have to ask themselves which candidate was less likely to sell America’s interests to the highest international bidder.

What’s more, the positions that were truly best for America in the long run were distributed across factional lines; the Adams party held some, and the Jackson party held others. The gargantuan growth of the federal government today and its increasing interference in the daily lives of its citizens make one long for the era when politicians were determined not just to pay lip service to the idea of limiting its power. One need not acquiesce in that unrestrained and continually growing power in order to accept the Supreme Court’s declaration of the constitutionality of using federal funds for internal improvements as based on the Commerce Clause; nor does this require one to endorse the later abuse of that clause. The Bank placed control of the public funds in private hands, which was never wise, as it risked the possibility of an elected clique, rather than the people, setting the national agenda; we are seeing the consequences of that in other contexts today.

The question of Andrew Jackson’s fitness for office was a key issue in 1824, as it had been for no previous presidential candidate. Jackson was widely considered to be unsuitable to be president, as he had little political experience. Clay sneered, “I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult, and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy.”

Nevertheless, the election results had Jackson leading the field, winning ninety-nine electoral votes, with eighty-four for Adams, forty-one for Crawford, and thirty-seven for Clay. As none of the candidates had a majority, the election went to the House of Representatives, where the choice was between the three top vote-getters. Clay threw his support to Adams, who prevailed. Adams, as president, then chose Clay as the secretary of state, which was reasonable in light of their agreement on key issues. But Jackson and his supporters charged Adams and Clay with making a “corrupt bargain” to secure the presidency for Adams. Jackson raged: “So you see the Judas of the West [Clay] has closed the contract and will receive his thirty pieces of silver. Was there ever witnessed such bare faced corruption in any country before?”

So it was that the presidency of John Quincy Adams, a man who was distinguished throughout his long political career for his integrity, was tainted from beginning to end by charges of corruption and venality. Adams entered the White House under a cloud that never dissipated. In his inaugural address, Adams appealed to the goodwill of the American people: “Less possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence.”

He didn’t get it. His victory was so tainted that his presidency was effectively crippled from the start. Of course, he didn’t have the weight of a complicit and compliant media and political establishment behind him. Compared to Donald J. Trump, John Quincy Adams had it easy.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Chutzpah: Palestinians Prepare List of Demands For Biden Administration

The Palestinian Arabs sense an opening for them in Biden’s Washington, where they rightly assume they will be personae gratae again. They have already been preparing their laundry list of demands for the Biden Administration, which is discussed here: “PA wants Biden to reverse ‘anti-Palestinian’ decisions,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2020:

The Palestinians will demand that the new administration under US President-elect Joe Biden cancel “anti-Palestinian” decisions taken by the administration of President Donald Trump, Palestinian officials said on Sunday.

The officials told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Authority has prepared a list of demands that will be presented to Biden after he is sworn in on January 20.

The list includes a request to reopen the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington, rescinding Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, resuming financial aid to the PA and the UN Relief and Work Agency and reopening the US consulate in east Jerusalem.

In addition, the officials said, the Palestinians will also demand the Biden administration cancel the recent decision that allows US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth, as well as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement allowing for settlement products to be labeled as “Made in Israel.”

“We have already contacted Biden’s people to inform them of our demands,” a Palestinian official told the Post. “We had a positive dialogue with senior officials who are close to Biden.”

Since that contact between the Palestinians with Biden’s staff, the two most pro-Israel of Biden’s advisers, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, have been appointed to be, respectively, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. It may not be quite as smooth sailing for the PA as it thought just a few days ago.

Last week, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the Palestinians want to conduct dialogue with the new US administration in order to cancel decisions taken by the Trump administration.

Malki said the Palestinians have suffered tremendously as a result of Trump’s decisions directed against them, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the closure of the PLO mission in the US and the suspension of US financial aid to the Palestinians.

Malki and other Palestinian officials said they also expected the Biden administration to distance itself from Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century.” The Palestinian leadership has strongly condemned the plan, unveiled in January 2020, as a “conspiracy aiming to liquidate the Palestinian issue and national rights.”

Another Palestinian official told the Post that while he was optimistic the Biden administration would cancel some of the decisions taken by the Trump administration, the Palestinians do not believe it would be easy to return the US Embassy to Tel Aviv.

No, it won’t be easy to move the Embassy back to Tel Aviv. It will be impossible. There is not a chance in hell that the American Embassy will be moved out of Jerusalem. Biden has already declared that he would not do it, though he also added that he “would not have made the move himself,” a curious remark given that he was one of the most enthusiastic backers of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which passed in the Senate by 93 to 5.

“We know that the Biden administration would not be able to accept all our demands, such as the removal of the embassy from Jerusalem, but we are very optimistic regarding the other demands,” the official explained. “If [Biden] renounces the ‘Deal of the Century’ and resumes financial aid to the Palestinians, this will be a good step in the right direction. It will be a big victory for the Palestinian people.”

The suspension of financial aid to the Palestinians was partly in response to the PA’s refusal to end its Pay-For-Slay program, which incentivizes terrorism by providing generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists who had been killed. The PA has been recently been making noises about modifying the plan, by providing stipends based not, as now, on the length of a sentence, which provide more money the longer the sentence (so those who commit the worst attacks get more money), but instead on the “financial need” of a terrorist’s family. Qadri Abu Bakr, the PLO’s Director for Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, in English told the New York Times that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) policy on terrorists’ families’ salaries will change. But in the Arabic version of those remarks, Qadri Abu Bakr said the exact opposite, assuring his listeners that the calculation of stipends to terrorists and their families would not change in any way. Two versions, directly contradicting each other. Why not? Qadri Abu Bakr knows: “War is deceit,” said Muhammad.

It is thus doubtful that the PA could bring itself to change its Pay-For-Slay policy, which reflects the Palestinians’ visceral support for terrorism. But even if the PA did change the criteria according to which the stipends are calculated, this would still leave in place a program that subsidizes, and therefore incentivizes, terrorism. This will make it very difficult for the Americans to turn on the faucet of aid again.

The PA’s complacent assumption that the Americans will renew financial aid to the Palestinians needs to be challenged and undermined. Even without the Pay-For-Slay program, why should the Americans turn on that tap for the PA, rather than have the PA go hat in hand to their fellow Arabs in the oil states, or Iran, or Turkey, and ask them for aid? Who decided that the United States owes the Palestinians a permanent living? And why should American taxpayers be shelling out billions, over the years, to UNRWA, which includes on its ever-expanding rolls of those who receive its largesse not just the real Palestinian refugees, those who left in 1947-1949, of whom there may now be 30,000 still alive – but also all of their descendants, now amounting to more than five million people? Who decided that among the many tens of millions of refugees who have been created by conflicts – wars, civil wars, persecutions — all over the world since the late 1940s, only one group, the Palestinians, should be allowed to pass on the refugee status to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, world without end?

This ever-lengthening list of “Palestinian refugees” has been on the international – almost entirely Western – dole for decades. Don’t we need to ask a few questions at this point? For example, why are we Americans expected to give hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Palestinians instead of, say, to the inoffensive and much poorer people in Bolivia or the Congo or Nepal? What exactly have the Palestinians done for us? Haven’t they used terror as a weapon for a half-century? Didn’t we see the Palestinians hand out candies and celebrate when they heard the glad news on 9/11/2001? Haven’t Palestinian terrorists killed American citizens? Isn’t Hamas a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks a worldwide caliphate? And what about the links between the Palestinians and our mortal enemy, Iran?

According to the official, the Palestinians are also expecting the Biden administration to return to the long-standing US policy toward settlements and adhere to UN resolutions on this issue.

In November 2019, Pompeo announced that the US no longer views settlements as “inconsistent with international law,” a move that drew strong condemnation from the Palestinian leadership.

Secretary Pompeo had quite properly declared as a break with previous policy what ought to have been American policy all along. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate, and are not “inconsistent with” international law. Their legality stems from the Mandate for Palestine, that included the entire West Bank in the territories assigned to the future Jewish National Home. Previous administrations had relied on the “Hansell Memorandum” of 1978, which took the position that the settlements were “illegal,” but Hansell himself never mentions the Palestine Mandate In his memorandum, as if it were of little moment, when it is, in fact, the essential document for understanding Israel’s claim to the West Bank, and hence, the basis of Israel’s right to build settlements in that territory.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump is Right: Our Exit from Afghanistan is Long Overdue

President Trump is withdrawing a significant number of troops from Afghanistan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is livid. According to AP, McConnell “warned against a potentially ‘humiliating’ pullout from Afghanistan that he said would be worse than President Barack Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq and reminiscent of the U.S. departure from Saigon in 1975.” Not to be outdone, Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican leader on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, insisted: “We need to ensure a residual force is maintained for the foreseeable future to protect U.S. national and homeland security interests and to help secure peace for Afghanistan.” But McConnell and McCaul are advocating for a failed policy. It is long past time to leave Afghanistan.

In his State of the Union address on February 5, 2019, President Trump stated: “As a candidate for President, I pledged a new approach. Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Epitomizing the need to do this was what happened when Trump first moved to end America’s longest endless war, the war in Afghanistan, with a treaty with the group that the U.S. entered Afghanistan in order to topple, the Taliban, in February 2020. The ink was still fresh on the signed document when the Taliban launched a new attack against Afghan government forces, killing twenty Afghan soldiers and police officers.

The attack was a fitting symbol of the fruitlessness of these endless wars and the bankruptcy of the assumptions and policies that had led to their being waged.

After all these years, we have little to show for all our efforts in the nation that has been ominously dubbed the “graveyard of empires.” The U.S. has sacrificed the lives of numerous heroic service members and squandered trillions for nearly two decades in the fond hope that it could remake Afghanistan into a stable, Western-style republic that would respect the human rights of all its citizens. That’s still the plan, as far as the architects of our intervention are concerned: One foreign policy establishment wonk counseled patience, saying that Afghanistan “is not going to become Switzerland overnight,” a fact that is as obvious as Joe Biden’s dementia.

Great. So we know now after almost twenty years that it isn’t going to happen overnight, but how long exactly is it going to take? To that question the advocates of endless intervention have no definite answer. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in late 2019: “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.”

All right, but what’s it going to take? Do Rumsfeld, McConnell, and McCaul really think that after nearly twenty years, one more year, or five more years, or ten more years, will do the job?

Afghanistan will never be a Western-style republic and will likely never be free of the Taliban without a massive transformation of Afghan society, no matter how long we stay, and such a transformation is not on the horizon. This was clear relatively early in the conflict, but the obviousness of this fact did not make successive Republican and Democratic administrations rethink the wisdom of being there.

And so after all this American expenditure of personnel, money, and materiel, there is absolutely no doubt that once we leave, the Taliban will make gains and may even regain control of the Afghan government.

Did that mean that America had to keep troops there for fifty years? A hundred years? Should we just make Afghanistan the fifty-first state and seal our commitment there forever? Or should the U.S. instead focus on what is best for America in Afghanistan, working to contain the jihad there and to ensure that the Taliban does not and cannot engage in international jihad terror activity, while otherwise leaving the Afghans to their own devices?

America’s tragic misadventure in Afghanistan makes it clear that a new foreign policy strategy is urgently needed, and that the ideas and assumptions that have governed U.S. foreign policy for nearly a century needed to be consigned to the dustbin of history. President Trump had proposed to do that. Now we are likely to see instead a retrenchment of the forces that made the tragedy of two decades of war in Afghanistan happen in the first place. President Biden, or President Harris, or President Pelosi, or whatever horror show we may be facing next, could send the troops that Trump withdraws right back into the belly of the beast.

After all, as Trump said last September, “the top people in the Pentagon…want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.” He is getting us out. Others, wanting to keep the Masters of War happy, may get us right back in.

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Nigeria’s president: Trump “looked at me in the face. He said ‘why are you killing Christians?’”

Nigeria ranks 12th in the Open Doors USA World Watch List of the worst countries for Christian persecution. Fulani jihadists and the Boko Haram jihad group brutalize and slaughter Christians on a routine basis.

For some odd reason, Buhari — himself a Fulani and a Muslim — decided to be honest about what transpired between him and Trump.

“I was in his office, only myself and himself. Only God is my witness. He looked at me in the face. He said ‘Why are you killing Christians?‘”

Buhari explained: “I tried and explained to him this has got nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. It is a cultural thing which the respective leadership was failing the nation.”

This is disingenuous. Nigeria has been termed the “biggest killing ground of Christians in the world.” Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Argak Kwashi of Jos said: “This thing is systematic. It is planned; it is calculated…. their intention is to Islamize Nigeria.”

Although Buhari openly condemns Boko Haram and Fulani jihadist attacks on Christians, he has done little to stop them.

In February, the Trump Administration launched the first-ever International Religious Freedom Alliance, which 26 countries joined: Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, The Gambia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Togo, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Let’s hope more practical efforts are made to help Christians who are suffering persecution in Nigeria and elsewhere. Western countries need to be stop aid to countries that aid and abet persecution against Christians and other religious minorities.

“Buhari: Trump Accused Me of Killing Christians in Nigeria,” by Omololu Ogunmade, This Day, September 8, 2020:

For the first time since he met the United States President Donald Trump in Washington in April 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari disclosed Monday that Trump unequivocally accused him of killing Christians in Nigeria.

However, he said he defended himself, telling Trump that the conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria was caused by cultural matters and not dictated by ethnic or religious factors.

Buhari, who said he was put on the spot by Trump when he was alone with him, alleging that he (Buhari) was slaughtering Christians in Nigeria, added that the question startled him but he put his emotion under control.

The president, who made the disclosure when he deviated from his closing speech at the end of a two-day ministerial retreat in the Presidential Villa, said he was the only African leader from less developed countries that was invited by Trump at the time.

He asked his cabinet members how they would feel if they were the ones put on the spot and confronted with such a grave allegation, disclosing that he further told Trump that the conflicts were caused by successive leaders of the country who tampered with established grazing routes.

According to him, only Nigerian leaders in the First Republic kept grazing routes while subsequent ones encroached on them, adding that the crisis was older than him and much more than Trump whom he said he was still older than.

“I believe I was about the only African among the less developed countries the President of United States invited, and when I was in his office, only myself and himself. Only God is my witness. He looked at me in the face. He said ‘why are you killing Christians?’

“I wonder if you were the person how you will react. I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray my emotion. So, I told him that the problem between the cattle rearers and stagnant farmers I know is older than me, not to talk of him (Trump). I think I am a couple of years older than him.

“With climate change and population growth and the culture of the cattle rearers, if you have 50 cows and they eat grass, any route to your water point, they will follow it, it doesn’t matter whose farm it was.

“The first republic set of leadership was the most responsible leadership we ever had. I asked the minister of agriculture to get a gazette of the early 60s which delineated the cattle routes where they used meagre resources then to put earth dams, wind mills even sanitary department.

“So, any cattle rearer that allowed his cattle to go to somebody’s farm is arrested, taken before the court, the farmer is called to submit his bill and if he can’t pay, the cattle are sold, but subsequent leaders, VVIPs (very very important persons) they encroached on the cattle routes, they took over the cattle rearing areas.

“So, I tried and explained to him this has got nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. It is a cultural thing which the respective leadership was failing the nation,” he said….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.