When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced last month that Walid Phares — a Lebanese-American Christian, adjunct professor of jihadist global strategies at the National Defense University, and former Middle East studies professor at Florida Atlantic University — would be a special adviser on the Middle East and North Africa, it elicited howls of fury from the usual suspects. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding case and the chief Islamist organ in the U.S. — sent a letter to the Romney campaign stating CAIR’s predictable objections, while publications such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and Mother Jones followed suit with error-filledhit pieces.
In the early morning hours of Friday November 11th, vandals set fire to several parked cars and scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on nearby benches in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Midwood in Brooklyn in what the police said was a hate crime.
The arson took place along Ocean Parkway between Avenue I and Avenue J in what is commonly referred to as the Flatbush section, where three cars; a BMW, a Lexus and a Jaguar, were set ablaze. In addition, the epithet “KKK” was scrawled on the side of a red van, the police said, and swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs could be found on benches.
The New York Times has run an op-ed entitled, ‘The Overblown Islamist Threat.’ Big surprise: There’s no Islamist threat! They’re all moderates! Just like in 1979 Iran or in Turkey more recently. Do you think we might see an oped in The New York Times entitled, ‘The Islamist Threat is Very Real?’ Of course not.
But the real surprise is the author’s identity. It’s former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher. Huh? Jordan’s policy on Islamism has been based precisely on the idea that letting them take power would be the end of the regime and a disaster for the country.
Political commentaries about the events in the Middle East resemble mythological plots written by an experienced censor.
Myths don’t need facts. Their creators’ adjust the facts to their own paradigm. And ideological mythology is not an exception.
Western journalists’ commentaries on Middle East problems give me a sense of deja vu. It feels as though they have undergone the censorship of the Soviet Political Bureau or rather were written by the editor of Soviet “Pravda”, and then distributed with slight modifications, when actually these were written in The Washington Post, La Repubblica, Israel’s Haaretz and other “trustworthy” publications.
Just hours before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna released their much awaited report confirming Iran’s “development of a nuclear explosive device”, this very topic was vigorously addressed at a forum at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s upper east side. Excerpts from the powerful 2011 documentary, “Iranium” (which documents the genesis of Iran’s nuclear threat, beginning with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the ideology espoused by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini until today) was screened before the 200 audience members. Simulcast to a variety of venues around the country, the distinguished panel members had the opportunity of answering questions from audience members who were not present at the location.
Amid all the debate as to what lies in store for Libya, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Islamism will be the dominant political force in the country.
Indeed, this trend should already have been clear in the treatment of David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew residing in Italy who returned to his ancestral homeland in the summer to fight alongside the rebels against Gaddafi. Yet when he tried to rebuild and reopen the abandoned and desolate synagogue in Tripoli, he faced death threats, intimidation and protests, such that he was eventually deported. The National Transitional Council (NTC) dismissed this matter as one of no importance.
Richard Falk has no problem “put(ting) aside his ethnic identity,” because, in my opinion, he is a Jewish anti-Semite and he proudly carries out his maliciousness while the entire Middle East burns in the fires created by Islamic dictators and fascist religious fanatics.
The people “willing to confront the Zionist furies of Israel” as Falk puts it, are grounded in their vision of a world forced to suffer under terrorism, nuclear destruction, misogyny, oppression, honour killings, Koranic Jew-hate, and revisionist historical propaganda that distorts reality beyond recognition.
As the U.S. troop presence in Iraq continues to diminish, it is worth examining what sort of political system has been left behind. Is Iraq really a democracy as many officials in the Bush administration hoped it would be? Sadly, the answer to this question cannot be in the affirmative.
It is of course true that in March 2010, Iraq conducted elections recognized as free and fair by the UN. However, as Osama al-Nujayfi, the Sunni speaker for the Iraqi parliament, astutely observed, democracy is more than just about holding elections. In many of the other essential aspects of a truly democratic society, Iraq’s status is far from satisfactory.
Time to wake up to reality. How can Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas believe in peace with Israel when he doesn’t believe that Israel exists as a country? He claims all of Israel as part of his proposed “Palestinian” state:
Speaking before an overflow audience at the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening November 1st, Helen Freedman, the executive director of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI) told those gathered at the Zionism Museum and Education Center that, “the current political climate in Israel demands our active concern and our concrete participation. As the government of Israel acquiesces to world pressure and maintains a timorous posture towards the Arabs, as UNESCO sanitizes the Palestinian Authority, we are witnessing an all out assault against the intrepid settler movement.”
What does theocracy look like? This is what theocracy looks like! *
Many people find it hard to comprehend what the Obama Administration thinks it’s doing in the Middle East. But it’s really very simple if you know the history of the arguments, read carefully administration speeches and documents, watch their actions, and talk to some of those involved.
Leaving aside a number of points I’ve made in a previous article (which would be good to read in conjunction with this one), I want to focus here on one concept: the idea that the U.S. government has outsmarted the Islamists.
The referendum held on January 9, 2011, was a milestone for Sudan. With an overwhelming majority of 98.3 percent, southerners decided to secede from the north and to create Africa’s youngest state — the Republic of South Sudan. While this momentous development was expected to end Khartoum’s decades-long struggle with the southern Sudanese rebels, it has set off a number of ticking time bombs and exacerbated existing conflicts. On top of Sudan’s financial problems and the wider impact of the Arab upheavals, President Omar Bashir’s government is now facing a number of pressing issues in the post-referendum era. With the rise of new disputes and the escalation of protracted conflicts, is Bashir’s Sudan on the verge of further instability?
Three months after the birth of South Sudan, how is the northern neighbor of the world’s newest nation faring?
The country, witnessing minor demonstrations, generally managed to escape the large-scale protests that have swept across the Middle East and North Africa since last winter, but as the Financial Times reports, Sudan’s economy has been hit severely by the secession of the south, which was by far Khartoum’s largest source of oil revenues.
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