Citing the fact that over the last 10 years, “Israel was hit with more than 10,000 rockets [by Palestinian terrorists],” and that, “India faced brutal terrorism in the form of 60,000 terror incidents that killed about 18,000 people, mostly due to radical Islam,” a group billing itself as the “Coalition for Peace” has organized an “Awareness Campaign Against Terrorism” during President Obama’s inaugural parade on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
The “US, Israel and India should work together to defeat the axis of radical Islam,” says a Coalition press release because, “Radical Islam has assumed an alarmingly dangerous worldwide proportion, [and] it is absolutely essential that [the] U.S.A, the only [s]uper [p]ower of the world, under the Presiden[cy] of Barack Obama take firm action [against] those who support terrorism in the name of the extreme ideologies.”
Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Cathedral during the National Prayer Service on January 21st. The event is part of the festivities for the inauguration of Barack Obama, which occurs January 20. A convert to Islam, Mattson directs the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.
The Hindu-Jewish-Christian-Buddhist Coalition against Islamic Terrorism is having a telephone conference call this evening to finalize details of their Obama Parade Rally. I urge everyone to attend or to assist in other ways e.g. write articles, take videos and photos, publicize it via the internet and in all your local media. … (Continue reading…)
When I heard that Israel had begun the bombardment of Gaza, as would any supporter of Israel, and as a Jew, I said, “at last”. After so many years of unanswered rocket attacks from Gaza, the Israeli government has at last taken responsibility for the safety of its citizens.
I realized that it is the military-grade Katusha rocket attacks that ‘persuaded’ the Kadima/Labor government toward action against Hamas. At the same time, having had experience of the previous Lebanon war of 2006 and knowing the political ineptness of the current government, I restrained my optimism and expectations. It took only a couple of days for my limited optimism about this operation to evaporate completely. I realized that:
At the inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) back in April, presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration. Though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine — such as Clausewitz’s On War, Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, even the exploits of Alexander the Great as recorded in Arrian and Plutarch — Islamic war doctrine, which is just as if not more textually grounded, is totally ignored.
Today everyone’s talking about a ceasefire in Gaza. With the UN proposing one and Israel demurring, the public, unaware of anything much about Gaza, Hamas, or Israel, blithely puts Israel in the dock. Yet during the last “ceasefire,” when rockets continued to land in Israeli civilian centers, there was a noticeable silence on the part of the international community. It seems it’s okay to drag Israel back from an attack on a massively financed and armed terrorist entity (and if Hamas isn’t a terrorist entity, it’s hard to know what it is), but just not right on to demand the same sort of action on the part of the terrorists. Don’t forget, Israel isn’t the only one refusing a ceasefire at this point: Hamas is rejecting one too, and for dishonest reasons.
Whatever became of reality, at least in analyzing the Middle East? Consider the following:
“With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel.”[1]
Let’s say that you love the Palestinians, are sympathetic to Arabs, and are indifferent to Israel.
Presumably, you would favor an immediate ceasefire to stop Palestinian suffering. But what else? What next? What is the solution from your point of view, from the Palestinian point of view?
The answer is: you should support the downfall of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Let me explain why:
WASHINGTON (January 13, 2009) — For the past two years DHS (Department of Homeland Security) has shown ramped up commitment to helping states diminish fraud and increase security by enhancing driver license issuance across the board. Using the monies Congress has provided to date, alongside final regulation guidance and contracts with individual states to move secure ID issuance forward, a key 9/11 Commission recommendation is being fulfilled. However, the incoming Obama Administration may begin backpedaling on our security. In 2008 President-Elect Obama stated that he does not support REAL ID “because it is an unfunded mandate, and not enough work has been done with the states to help them implement the program.”
… Once again, the British medical journal The Lancet has allowed anti-Israel politics to invade its pages. Thus, they have published a letter signed by seven American medical students, on behalf of 753 additional medical students, who are in school in the Boston-Cambridge area; the letter is about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This letter remains silent about civilian suffering in Israel, silent about Hamas’s vicious terrorism, both against Muslims and Jews; silent about Hamas’s use of mosques, hospitals, schools, and private dwellings as the places from which they launch their rockets and mortar against Israeli civilians and against the IDF. The letter does not dwell on Hamas’s literal use of children and women to hide among and behind — let them all be blown to bits, for this will become an anti-Israel photograph which will continue to fuel the world’s hatred against peace-loving Israel. … (Continue reading…)
Last December, Hamas unilaterally ended its ceasefire with Israel and escalated the kind of cross-border attacks continually attempted even during the ceasefire. With massive public support, Israel struck back against a neighboring regime which daily attacked its citizens and called for its extermination.
For decades, Israel’s history shows a general pattern: its neighbors attack, Israel responds, Israel wins the war, and the world rushes to ensure that its victory is limited or nullified. If, as sometimes happens, the diplomatic process really improves the situation and provides progress for peace that, of course, is beneficial.
Since their electoral landslide victory in November 2002, Islamists within Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) have camouflaged themselves as “democratic Islamic conservatives.”[1] The AKP claims to be the Muslim equivalent of the Christian-Democratic parties of Western Europe. Such an analogy is false, however. What the AKP seeks is not “Islam without fear,” to borrow the phrase of Trinity College professor Raymond Baker,[2] but rather a strategy for a creeping Islamization that culminates in a Shari’a (Islamic law) state not compatible with a secular, democratic order. The AKP does not advertise this agenda and often denies it. This did not convince the chief prosecutor of Turkey who, because of AKP efforts to Islamize Turkey, sought to ban the party and seventy-one of its leaders. While the AKP survived a ban, the majority of justices found that the AKP had worked to advance an Islamist agenda and undermine secularism.[3] Nevertheless, the AKP enjoys the backing of the United States and the European Union as well. Through its support for institutional Islamism in Turkey, the West loses its true friends: liberal Muslims.
As Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) begins its seventh year in leadership, Turkey is no longer the secular and democratic country that it was when the party took over. The AKP has conquered the bureaucracy and changed Turkey’s fundamental identity. Prior to the AKP’s rise, Ankara oriented itself toward the United States and Europe. Today, despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Turkey away from Europe and toward Russia and Iran and reoriented Turkish policy in the Middle East away from sympathy toward Israel and much more toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. Anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments have increased. Behind Turkey’s transformation has been not only the impressive AKP political machine but also a shadowy Islamist sect led by the mysterious hocaefendi (master lord) Fethullah Gülen; the sect often bills itself as a proponent of tolerance and dialogue but works toward purposes quite the opposite. Today, Gülen and his backers (Fethullahcılar, Fethullahists) not only seek to influence government but also to become the government.
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