by Michael Rubin*

“Not talking doesn’t make us look tough — it makes us look arrogant,” President-elect Barack Obama declares. Throughout his campaign, he has promised renewed engagement after eight years of moribund diplomacy. Chief among his diplomatic targets is Syria, low-hanging fruit unencumbered by the political minefield that would result from engaging the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government. Obama has already dispatched once and future adviser Robert Malley to discuss his regional agenda with Syrian leaders.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Radical Muslims have once again perpetrated a heinous, misogynistic act of barbarity against a female child. Such acts reveal the deeply repressed state of some Muslim males. They force their women to cover themselves up so as not to arouse sexual temptations, apparently not trusting themselves. They blame women who are, for example, raped — even executing them. Such “punishments” are almost incomprehensible to most Westerners, but the civilized world needs to pay attention to these acts of violence, as they provide deep insight into the “thinking” of Islamists. From the Daily Mail, entitled, “Somali girl ‘pleaded for mercy’ before Islamists stoned her to death for being raped:”

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By Phyllis Chesler

My sister’s blood, a child’s blood, cries out to me.

Last week, a barbaric gang of Somali Muslim fundamentalists gang-raped a 13 year-old girl after which they stoned her to death. One thousand spectators in the Kismayo stadium cheered the stoning on. The victim’s name was Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. … (Continue reading…)

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

When voters go to the polls on November 4^th, they will choose not only a new presidential administration, but also the candidate’s circles of influence. In the case of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, this includes Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab studies and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

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by Judea Pearl*

Many Arab officials and Israeli “New Historians” describe early Zionist attitudes toward the Arab population of Palestine as dismissive or arrogant. Books and pamphlets from the time tell a different story.

Ben-Gurion: Our Arab Brethren

During World War I, Israel’s future first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, spent three years in New York, exiled from Palestine “for conspiring against Ottoman rule.” He devoted most of his time to organizing the He-Halutz youth movement with Yitzhak Ben Zvi, but he also published, a few months before issuance of the Balfour Declaration, an interesting treatise: “On the Origin of the Falahin,” [1] the Arab peasants in Palestine. In this work, Ben-Gurion, the scholar and historian, argued that the falahin are descendants of Jews who remained in Palestine after the Roman expulsion and who later converted to Islam:

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By Aaron Eitan Meyer*

On October 4^th, the London Telegraph reported that YouTube had taken down comedian Pat Condell’s video “Welcome to Saudi Britain,” with the only explanation being that the video constituted a “terms of use violation.” In the video, which is now back up on YouTube, Condell took aim at the institution of Shari’a courts in Britain, terming them fundamentally unfair to women and criticizing the fact that “we’re now accommodating Saudi Arabian legal principles here in Britain.” A YouTube spokesman told the Telegraph that the site has guidelines regarding certain types of content, including ‘hate speech.’

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by Supna Zaidi*

Have you seen the little old lady who passes out Jehovah’s Witness literature in your neighborhood? Some people stop and show interest. Others roll their eyes, and keep walking. But, would you ever expect anyone to threaten her? Call her a racist, and try to get her arrested?

Islamists would. And that is exactly what happened to two English Christian ministers who had the nerve to proselytize on a street corner in a predominantly Muslim immigrant area in the UK in 2007.

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By Barry Rubin

In response to a casual question, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dropped a historical bombshell, an offhand remark telling more about how the Middle East works than 100 books. And a former Marine commander adds an equally big revelation about long-ago events quite relevant for today.

Almost thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter tried to show what a nice guy he was by pressing the Shah not to crush the revolutionaries. After the monarch fell, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski met top officials of the new Islamist regime to pledge U.S. friendship to the government controlled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, I wrote that by approaching some of the milder radicals, the administration frightened the more militant ones. U.S.-Iran relations must be smashed, they concluded, lest Washington back their rivals. In fact, as we’ll see in a moment, the Carter administration offered to back Khomeini himself.

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By Barry Rubin

So sang the Rolling Stones. But which side has time working in its favor? That’s one of the Middle East’s most intriguing and controversial questions.

Recently, Israeli leaders and well-wishers–sincere and hypocritical alike–have spoken in panicky terms that time isn’t on Israel side and it’s either peace in a few months or the Biblical flood.

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by Michael Rubin*

Containment helped define US foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Inspired by a view of the USSR as expansionist and intractably opposed to capitalist states, containment was viewed as the most cost-effective method to prevent Soviet extension without resorting to cataclysmic war.

The policy was perhaps best described by George Kennan in his 1947 ‘X’ article, in which he claimed “it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

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By Barry Rubin

The return of Russian power in the Middle East, next to Iran’s nuclear weapons’ campaign, is the region’s most important new issue. While far less threatening than the Soviet bloc’s Cold War backing for radical Arab states, this development poses some major problems for U.S. leaders, Israeli interests, and Middle East politics.

Between 1956 and 1990, the Soviet Union bestrode the regional stage like a colossus, the alternative model and sponsor that indirectly inspired, armed, and protected the domination of radical Arab nationalist regimes, groups, and ideas. Moscow’s goals were to win the competition with the United States, extend its influence, and gain access to strategic locations and resources.

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~by E.D. Kain, NeoConstant

According to The Long War Journal’s Jane Novak, the US Embassy in Yemen was attacked today by a militant group carrying machine guns, RPG’s, and setting off a series of explosions. The terrorist force was repelled after killing 16 people, and attempting to breach the US compound. After a fierce gun battle, the militants were repelled. No US citizens were killed, though many Yemeni security officers were killed or wounded in the fight.

A group calling itself Yemeni Islamic Jihad took credit for today’s attack. The group last month claimed responsbility for a July suicide car bombing at a police station in Hadramout killed one policeman and injured 18. The police station had been previously bombed with no injuries. Yemeni Islamic Jihad also threatened a future attack in the capital.

This is not the first attack or attempted attack on a US embassy or consulate this year. In July, the US consulate in Ankara, Turkey was attacked leaving several dead. Luckily both attacks proved to be failures, unlike some of the major suicide bombings we’ve seen in India and Afghanistan recently.

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By Barry Rubin

One evening you’re walking down a street. A robber jumps on you to steal your wallet. You fight back and after a protracted battle you injure him enough so that he flees the scene.

The next day newspapers report that you assaulted a poor innocent man to mug him. From pulpits, religious leaders denounce you as a bad moral example that should be punished. Politicians urge that the forces of the law be deployed against you. Your attempts to defend yourself are ignored and dismissed as lies and excuses. Most people never even hear your version.

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~by E.D. Kain, NeoConstant

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch writes today about European neo-fascism, and specifically the Cologne anti-Islamization conference.

Spencer is absolutely correct in his assertion that the neo-fascist approach to combating Islamization is the wrong approach. Little Green Footballs is also correct. I am always open to the exchange of ideas, but in my mind, to replace one form of fascism with another is simply ludicrous. Western Liberalism and Democracy is and has been the antidote to fascism and should be the antidote to theocratic totalitarianism and sharia as well.

Here’s what Spencer has to say on the issue:

And I think that a race-based approach is wrong in a number of ways. To repeat:

1. It’s the wrong way to fight the global jihad. The jihad is not a race, Islam is not a race, Muslims are not all of one race. Those who are threatened by the jihadists are not all of one race. The issues between the Islamic world and non-Muslims are not racial. They are about religious supremacism. Bringing in race just confuses the issue, and allows jihadists and their de facto allies among the Eurabian elites to claim that this whole thing is about racism. …

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By Phyllis Chesler

On September 11, 2001, at about 11 A.M., I walked over to my computer and typed the sentence: “Now, we are all Israelis.”

It always begins with the Jews. Osama Bin Laden called the assault on America “blessed attacks” against the “infidel … the new Christian-Jewish crusade.” He explained that the twin towers had fallen because of American support for Israel.

War — and a new kind of anti-Semitism — had been declared. … (Continue reading…)

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