03/8/15

Arabs stand with Israel against Obama

By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Al Arabiya

President Obama has ushered in a world that defines the statement “truth is stranger than fiction.” Defying his oath to “support and defend the U.S. Constitution…” Obama has in a few short years turned the world upside down. He has sided with our enemies against our friends in the Middle East, and has worked assiduously to “negotiate” a deal allowing Iran to obtain the bomb. He supported the successful effort to depose Hosni Mubarak, one of our most loyal Arab allies, and more importantly, promoted his replacement with the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization responsible for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the rise of al Qaeda and practically every other Islamic terrorist organization in the world. In Libya Obama forced America to side with al Qaeda linked groups to overthrow Qaddafi – an action which eventuated in the murder of an ambassador, two US Navy SEALS and one other American. Now one of those Islamist “friends” has become ISIS’s representative in Libya.

You simply can’t make this stuff up. It is difficult to conceive of an American president being so consistently incompetent, unless it is something else. While Obama doubtless coasted through Columbia and Harvard on the strength of his many communist connections, as opposed to any real intellectual rigor, he is not stupid. The only thing more treacherous in my mind is the level of complicity he receives from the American press, which assiduously refuses to explore these mind-blowing developments.

So it is not surprising that our Arab friends have begun to look on Obama as a danger more than a friend. Despite all their oil money, the Arab world has always been a dangerous place for the Arabs – from some of their own. Obama’s outreach “to the Muslim world” appears to be reserved specifically and exclusively for that part of the Muslim world dedicated to Islamic terrorism – the same component looking to overthrow the various Arab kingdoms, especially the terror supporting Iran, now a nascent nuclear power thanks to Obama.

Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress was historic. It was an object lesson to Obama about how to actually lead. Obama may not have paid attention, since “leading” in the generally accepted meaning of the word is not his intention, but the Arabs did. And they approved! Truth is stranger than fiction, but when your friend becomes the friend of your enemy and turns his back on the free world, then everyone has something to worry about. Here are some pithy quotes about Netanyahu’s speech from the “Muslim world” that Obama claims to appeal to. From Faisal J. Abbas, Editor-in-Chief, Al Arabiya English:

President Obama, listen to Netanyahu on Iran. In just a few words, Mr. Netanyahu managed to accurately summarize a clear and present danger, not just to Israel (which obviously is his concern), but to other U.S. allies in the region.

The Israeli PM managed to hit the nail right on the head when he said that Middle Eastern countries are collapsing and that “terror organizations, mostly backed by Iran, are filling in the vacuum” during a recent ceremony held in Tel Aviv…

What is absurd, however, is that despite this being perhaps the only thing that brings together Arabs and Israelis (as it threatens them all), the only stakeholder that seems not to realize the danger of the situation is President Obama, who is now infamous for being the latest pen-pal of the Supreme Leader of the World’s biggest terrorist regime: Ayottallah Ali Khamenei. (Although, the latter never seems to write back!)

From Dr. Ahmad Al-Faraj, Columnist, Al-Jazirah:

Since Obama is the godfather of the prefabricated revolutions in the Arab world, and since he is the ally of political Islam, (which is) the caring mother of (all) the terrorist organizations, and since he is working to sign an agreement with Iran that will come at the expense of the U.S.’s longtime allies in the Gulf, I am very glad of Netanyahu’s firm stance and (his decision) to speak against the nuclear agreement at the American Congress despite the Obama administration’s anger and fury.

I believe that Netanyahu’s conduct will serve our interests, the people of the Gulf, much more than the foolish behavior of one of the worst American presidents…

“One of the worst American presidents.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, although it might be better to describe him as one of the most effective traitors in American history, because in that one sense, he truly is a masterful success. If Obama’s treasonous betrayal of our nation, our friends and allies is not plainly apparent to you, you are just not paying attention.

02/18/15

10 Troubling Aspects of President Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Summit

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

The White House’s “Countering Violent Extremism” summit is barely underway, yet the message is already clear: the conference is politically correct — and far worse — a charade.

And that is a charitable interpretation.

Its sponsors are engaging in intentional obfuscation (e.g., saying “violent extremism” is the enemy), as well as peddling ineffective and ill-considered policy proposals (more community “empowerment”). The conference will effectively aid and abet America’s increasingly ascendant jihadist foes.

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

Reviewing the Obama administration’s summit preview, here are its 10 most disturbing aspects:

1. Contrary to its big government ethos, the Obama administration asserts that national security should be driven by the people, not the state.

(Image source: BuzzFeed)

According to the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

Really at the core of our approach is that the government does not have all the answers in combatting violent extremism. It is, at its core, a bottom-up approach. It puts communities with civic leaders, with religious authorities, with community power brokers, teachers, health providers, et cetera, in the driver’s seat. They know their citizens best. They are the first line of defense to prevent or counter radicalizing forces that can ultimately lead to violence. And so our approach is to really embrace and empower what local communities can do. So we’ve been working with our federal partners and our local partners to put in place this approach over the past couple of years.

Further:

Again, this is not about government, especially the federal government. The federal government doesn’t have all the answers. This is about building a comprehensive network to fight back against violent extremism. And we are explicitly recognizing the role that civil society plays, the private sector plays, and that families, et cetera, can play in countering violent extremism.

Who knew the Obama administration had so much respect for and faith in civil society?

Yet of course, this faith turns out to be dangerously misplaced as…

2. The groups the president wants to empower are those who may pose the biggest threat.

As Patrick Poole noted in an extensive report for TheBlaze:

In December 2011, the White House issued the “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” – the local partners, of course, being Islamic organizations, including those cited by the Justice Department as working to aid foreign terrorist organizations. All national security and law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local level would now have to consult these groups and rely on “local partners” as a matter of policy. And as made clear in Salam al-Marayati’s Los Angeles Times op-ed, Islamic groups complaining about counter-terrorism policies or training would disrupt government efforts to “counter violent extremism” gave them an implicit veto over counter-terrorism policies. [Los Angels Times link added for context]

Why should we care about this 2011 report?

A senior Obama administration official noted in previewing the summit that the report details the very efforts the administration will be hawking during the three-day event.

Local partners such as the Council on American-Islam Relations — an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Hamas funding trial in history — has advised members of the Muslim community not to work with the FBI, and religious leaders to lawyer up as opposed to working together with law enforcement when it comes to potential jihadists. On the eve of the summit, CAIR is reportedly calling for the Department of Justice to “protect those who act in good faith to prevent violent extremism by engaging with [Muslims] considering it in order to dissuade them.”

A partner of perhaps higher standing is the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a group linked to numerous jihadis and jihadi-sympathizers, that is reportedly the primary liaison between the Muslim community and law enforcement in countering violent extremism. The Boston program will be one of the three held up as a success story during the summit, despite the ISB’s Islamic supremacist efforts.

Looking to the heart of Muslim communities, according to the Mapping Sharia project, imams in over 80 percent of 100 randomly surveyed representative mosques in America recommended the study of violence-positive texts. The correlations with these texts are disturbing, as illustrated below:

Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques (Image Source: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/sharia-adherence-mosque-survey/html)

(Image Source: Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques)

In Pew’s extensive 2011 report on Muslims in America, 21 percent of those polled indicated there was a great deal or fair amount of “support for extremism among Muslim American;” 19 percent did not indicate that “suicide bombing/other violence against civilians is justified to defend Islam from its enemies;” only 70 percent indicated that they viewed Al Qaeda “very unfavorably.”

As leaked Department of Homeland Security documents reveal, the second highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by our government reside in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn’s population is 96,000, and it has the highest percentage of Arab-Americans of any city in the country.

In light of these figures, and the fact that jihadist groups worldwide claim they are at war with America, having committed over 25,000 attacks in the name of Allah since Sept. 11, 2011, one must ask, what exactly is the rationale behind leaving self-policing to Muslim communities when these are the very places from whence jihadists spring?

Such a policy of course is only baffling if you are of the belief that jihad is an Islamic tenet, and that Islamic supremacist ideology is what animates the vast majority of the world’s “violent extremists.”

But of course…

3. According to the administration there is no profile of a “violent extremist.”

Returning to the transcript:

[I]n the United States there has been violent extremists that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and so the agenda for all three days is going to show a wide array of speakers and participants from all backgrounds who combat radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism in its many forms.

…In terms of the phrase “vulnerable community,” I think one is that we want to be clear that the evidence doesn’t show that there’s any particular community, there’s no profile that we can point to say this person is from this community, is going to be radicalized to violence.

4. The administration thinks a key focus should be on non-Muslim terrorist groups — like those in Colombia.

Per the preview:

Q: I’m just wondering, in light of the current events that Andrea Mitchell and others mentioned during this call, almost all of those involves Muslim extremism. And I get that the phrase for this three-day event is “violent extremism.” Might some critics think that you’re avoiding the world “Muslim” as though extremists in the Islamic communities are the focus — or are they not the focus? That’s my question.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: …I think obviously we want to be taking into account the current concerns that different countries are facing. But as I think will be clear from the variety of presentations and case studies that are mentioned — to include some of the media that we have organized to help catalyze the discussion that features some of the longer-running terrorist threats that people sometimes forget about in the current context, such as the FARC in Colombia, which is now in negotiations, but has been a designated terrorist organization for some time, responsible for countless acts of violence.

I think we will see through the complexity of the discussion that violent extremism is a broader trend…I think we’ll see in the context of the meeting itself the diversity that reflects the reality of recent history.

5. The administration disavows a link between jihadism — a word it won’t use — and religion.

This image made from a video released Sunday Feb. 15, 2015 by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group purportedly shows Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. Later in the video, the men are made to kneel and one militant addresses the camera in English before the men are simultaneously beheaded. The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. (Image source: AP)

Per the administration preview:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let’s be clear. We recognize that violent extremism spans many decades and has taken many forms. But we all agree that the individuals who perpetuated — who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere are calling themselves Muslims and their warped interpretation of Islam is what motivated them to commit these acts. They’re not making any secret of that, and neither are we.

But we are very, very clear that we do not believe that they are representing Islam. There is absolutely no justification for these attacks in any religion, and that’s the view of the vast majority of Muslims who have suffered huge casualties from the likes of folks like ISIL or al Qaeda. So you can call them what you want. We’re calling them terrorists.

6. The administration continues its “mea culpa” campaign, attributing radicalism to economic, social and political disparities — but not religion.

Per the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

The final panel will focus on secure and resilient communities, and it will, in particular, begin by looking at the role of civil society, particularly youth and women preventing violent extremism. It will look at community-police relations and community-security force relations as a critical element of prevention. And it will finally broaden that conversation to address social, economic and political marginalization, including the effects of integration of minority communities.

Based on all we have observed from this White House, do you think that the onus will fall on law enforcement to work on “improving relations” with “violent extremist” communities, or vice-versa? Reports on the Minneapolis countering violent extremism pilot program, one of the three that will be presenting at the summit, indicate that its Somali Muslim community mistrusts law enforcement because it fears being spied upon. Does this give you confidence in cooperation from a neighborhood that has produced over a dozen known jihadists in recent years?

The notion that “marginalization” and poor integration in minority communities is the root cause of jihadism, as echoed by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf is a canard. Not only are there very wealthy families from the bin Ladens to the Saudi royals who drive jihadism worldwide, but conversely practically every group that has ever succeeded in America came to this country poor and marginalized, yet did not resort to strapping bombs to themselves or chopping off heads.

None of this is even to mention the fact that Muslims, other ethnic and religious minorities and the most important minority, the individual, has at least historically had more freedom and opportunity in America than in any other country in the world. Perhaps the White House wishes this forum to be a vehicle for revisiting Ferguson.

7. The administration wants to rehabilitate and reintegrate violent extremists.

Clearly the recidivism rate for Guantanamo Bay detainees has not sunk in to the collective mind of the public, as the White House continues:

The third session focuses on weakening the legitimacy and the resonance of the brand of violent extremism. So that will include a panel on strategic communications, social media. It will include a discussion of how non-violent religious issues and education can be elevated as a matter of international and local-level concern. And it will look at best practices with regard to rehabilitating and reintegrating violent extremists.

Note that this is also in keeping with the Obama administration’s efforts through Eric Holder’s Justice Department to treat terrorism as a criminal matter.

8. The Obama White House has regularly partnered with and enabled ”violent extremists,” without whom a countering violent extremism summit would not be necessary in the first place.

One of the more unbelievable indications of the Obama administration’s willful lack of self-awareness is that it has regularly partnered with the “violent extremists,” aiders, abetters and sympathizers with whom theoretically this summit is about countering.

The administration is currently negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program — the largest state sponsor of terror in the world.

Several weeks ago the White House met with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose 1991 strategic memorandum on North America called for a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

In Libya and Syria we have armed jihadists to our own great detriment.

How can a president who so frequently makes common cause with, and whose interventions overseas have so consistently aided jihadists, have any credibility in countering violent extremism?

9. The summit’s very name tells us how fatally flawed the exercise is.

Little exemplifies better how ill-equipped America is to deal with the threats facing her than the fact that the Obama administration wants us to believe that we are fighting “violent extremism.”

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

As many have said in recent weeks, if you cannot identify your enemy, you cannot defeat it. By not having the moral clarity, or even worse by exhibiting such cowardice in creating a mushy phrase like “violent extremism,” which not only obscures the enemy from the American people, but allows the Obama administration to associate all sorts of other peoples with jihadists is shameful.

Islamic supremacists are at war with us. It is quite evident we are not at war with them.

10. Finally, the key issues crucial to understanding the nature of, and means of best countering Islamic supremacism are not going to be addressed.

Were the summit actually to identify Islamic supremacism as the enemy, as the Center for Security Policy’s recent Defeat Jihad Summit illustrated, we might examine issues among many others including:

The Islamic doctrine that animates jihadists both Shitte and Sunni, and the goals, tactics and strategies set forth therein
The global funding of the jihadist support architecture
- Activist groups
- Educational institutions including America’s Middle East studies departments
- Media organizations
- Mosques
- Other agents of influence
Jihadist infiltration of American political institutions
The undefended borders through which jihadists are surely entering
Legal immigration policies including visas for religious leaders, student visas and immigration from jihadist areas worldwide
Iran’s efforts to infiltrate South America
Radicalization in prisons

We should seriously consider the aforementioned 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on its mission in North America:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

…A mission as significant and as huge as the settlement mission needs magnificent and exhausting efforts. With their capabilities, human, financial and scientific resources, the Ikhwan will not be able to carry out this mission alone or away from people and he who believes that is wrong, and God knows best. As for the role of the Ikhwan, it is the initiative, pioneering, leadership, raising the banner and pushing people in that direction. They are then to work to employ, direct and unify Muslims’ efforts and powers for this process. In order to do that, we must possess a mastery of the art of “coalitions”, the art of “absorption” and the principles of “cooperation.”

02/18/15

Beyond Anti-Semitism

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

I read Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent call to European Jews to move to Israel in the wake of the attacks in Paris and in Copenhagen. “Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” was Netanyahu’s message to those considering leaving their home nations.

By 2012 about 43% of the world’s Jewish community lived in Israel, making it the country with the largest Jewish population. The bulk of the rest of the world’s Jewish population lives in the United States and the remainder are scattered among other nations.

When it declared its sovereignty in 1948 Israel quickly filled with Jewish immigrants from the surrounding Arab nations that made it clear they were not welcome even if their families had lived there for generations. Now they are extending their hatred to Arab Christians.

These days Israel’s population numbers 7,821,850. For years Israel has been welcoming Jewish immigrants from nations that include Russia, Ethiopia, Ukraine, and France; even some from the U.S. As incidences of anti-Semitism increase in Europe, Netanyahu’s invitation is being answered by more Jews seeking a respite from the hatred they are encountering.

Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world’s population.

In the U.S., unless you live in a major urban center or its suburbs, you are not likely to encounter too many Jews. According to the 2015 World Almanac and Book of Facts® there are 5,439,000 Jews in North America and 13,862,000 worldwide.

So why are we witnessing attacks on Jews? Writing in The Wall Street Journal on January 15, 2015, Ruth R. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, warned that “If we mistakenly imagine that this is ‘about’ Jews, however, we fall into the trap that anti-Semitism sets for us by deflecting attention from perpetrators to victims.”

“The trail of terror leads not to the Jews but from those who organize against them…In every case, Jews are convenient targets standing in for the liberalizing aspects of individual freedom, democratic governance and modernity complete with its anxieties. Anti-Jewish politics aims at the tolerant societies in which Jews flourish.”

Therein lays the danger in President Obama’s resistance to identifying the terrorists and acts of terrorism around the world as fundamentally Islamic. Do all Muslims hate Jews? Probably not, but enough do to support radical Islamism in the millions and their hatred extends to Christians and all other infidels, unbelievers.

One thing is for sure. As reported on June 3, 2014 in The Wall Street Journal, “from 2010 to 2013, the number of jihadist groups worldwide has grown by 58%, to 49 from 31; the number of jihadist fighters has doubled to a high estimate of 100,000; and the number of attacks by al Qaeda affiliates has increased to roughly 1,000 from 392.” Those numbers are increasing.

CNS News.com reported in November 2014 that “The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60% compared to the previous year—from 11,133 to 17,958—with four Sunni Muslim extremists groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities” according to the Global Terrorism Index, a project of the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The failure to defeat the jihadist groups can only lead to the increasing danger of an attack on the U.S. homeland, but it will also ensure that such attacks occur throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East wherever there are large Muslim populations.

On September 29, 2014, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly. “It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. Typically its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds—no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying, ‘All politics is local’? For militant Islamists, ‘All politics is global’ because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.”

When Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress next month, his message will surely be the same, but with one difference. He will focus on the insane prospect of an Iran, the source of terrorist acts against the U.S., since the Beirut bombing of our Marine barracks there in 1983.

What Obama does not grasp is that Netanyahu wants the U.S. to cease its insane support for a nuclear Iran. He wants to protect his nation, but what he also wants to do is to save Iranian lives because Iran will not be permitted to reach a point where it can annihilate Israel.

This goes beyond the anti-Semitism that has flourished for millennia and goes straight to the question of whether Israel and the U.S. can survive an inevitable attack and whether the rest of the world can avoid slipping into a new Dark Age rooted in the seventh century.

02/12/15

Of Double Standards and Triple Homicides: Media Malpractice and the North Carolina Murders

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

On the night of Sept. 11, 2011, three men were brutally murdered in Waltham, Massachusetts — their throats slashed and bodies covered in marijuana.

Despite the gruesome nature of the crime, which one investigator described as “the worst bloodbath” he had ever seen, the national media would have never reported on this story, let alone identified the Jewish religion of at least two of the slain, had Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Muslim and close friend of the third victim, not carried out the Boston bombing.

In fact, in spite of Tsarnaev’s ties to the victims of these yet unsolved murders, to this day articles almost specifically de-emphasize the date of the crime, the fact that as the same investigator described it, the victims’ wounds were akin to those of “an Al-Qaeda training video,” and the religion of the slain.

Contrast this story with the horrific news that three Muslims were murdered execution style in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Suzanne Askar, right, rests her head on the shoulder of Safam Mahate, a student at North Carolina State University, as they stand next to Nida Allam, far left, during a vigil for three people who were killed at a condominium near UNC-Chapel Hill, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Craig Stephen Hicks appeared in court on charges of first-degree murder in the Tuesday deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. (AP Photo/The News & Observer, Al Drago)

Unlike in the Waltham triple homicide, this story was explicitly reported as I just laid it out – a man killed three Muslims – a man, mind you, who many reports neglected to note is a militantly anti-religious atheist progressive.

In spite of the fact that stories ran across practically every major publication, with articles from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal referring to a triple murder of Muslims, social media exploded, with individuals appalled that the crime was somehow being ignored.

The #MuslimLivesMatter hashtag, adopted from the #blacklivesmatter hashtag created in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases went viral, signaling presumably that people believe atrocities are being carried out against Muslims en masse.

The juxtaposition of these two stories is instructive when it comes to today’s media.

While we might excuse the media in the case of the Waltham homicide for originally ignoring the date, nature of murder and religious identity of the victims, given their involvement with marijuana and law enforcement’s original public hypothesis that the murder was drug related, it is telling that these facts continue to be largely ignored in coverage of the murders.

Conversely, in the case of the Chapel Hill murders, religion was explicitly injected into the story from the start, leading many readers naturally to ascribe an anti-Muslim motive to the triple homicide. Meanwhile, local police believe the murders stemmed from an altercation over a parking space.

It is ironic that in the wake of President Barack Obama’s remarks about a “random” attack by a Muslim terrorist on a Kosher supermarket — note that the White House will not call it a jihadist attack on Jews — in the case of the victims in North Carolina, again from the start they were identified as Muslims. Randomness is clearly in the eye of the beholder.

French police officers storm a kosher grocery to end a hostage situation, Paris, Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. Explosions and gunshots were heard as police forces stormed a kosher grocery in Paris where a gunman was holding at least five people hostage. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

In any event, can you think of another case where the media identified the victim(s) by religion?

Can you think of another case where the media identified the victimizer(s) by religion?

In recent instances of Muslim crimes against non-Muslims, whether an axe attack on New York Police Department officers in New York, a beheading in Oklahoma, or the systemic rape and abuse in Rotherham, almost universally the media initially and often ultimately excludes details about the Muslim identity of the attackers.

Instead we are left with euphemisms for the perpetrators, such as that they are “North African” or “Asian.”

In the case of the Middle East, where Western media reports are notoriously anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish, we get stories about Israelis killing two Arabs in a mosque, only later to include the minor detail that these two Arab terrorists were killed in an act of self defense, and then only after they terrorists had murdered five Jews in a synagogue.

One case among all others perhaps best illustrates the media’s unwillingness to put truth above narrative. In one of the most egregious and egregiously neglected stories of all, as we reported last year, Anders Breivik — the Nordic terrorist responsible for killing 77 people and injuring 319 more in a July 2011 rampage in Sweden — by his own admission committed a false-flag attack meant to discredit the counterjihadists and Zionists with whom he claimed allegiance. To this day, almost no others outlets have reported on this.

While journalists should not be selecting and/or framing stories to fit their own worldview to begin with, it would be one thing if these narratives had some basis in fact. But frequently, the evidence directly contradicts the story that the media would like to paint.

In America, according to the most recently available FBI hate crime statistics, it is Jews, not Muslims, who are the most discriminated against of all religious minorities, disproportionately targeted in a staggering 60 percent of all religion-based hate crimes, a rate four times as high as that of Muslims.

In Europe, the Jewish population has continued to plummet precipitously, with Jews from France to Great Britain leaving as anti-Semitism and Islamic supremacism have increased, sentiments that are inherently interrelated.

In Israel, it suffices to say that were its enemies to lay down its arms tomorrow, there would be peace; if Israel were to lay down its arms tomorrow, it would be blown to pieces.

Keen watchers of the media will note that a similar pattern of narrative-setting in reporting occurs in the coverage, or lack thereof, of black-on-white or black-on-black versus white-on-black crimes, and/or cop-on-civilian versus civilian-on-cop killings.

To adopt an Orwell saying, when it comes to the media, some victim(s)/victimizer(s) are more equal than others.

Identity matters only insofar as it serves a political narrative.

These journalistic sins of omission and commission, used to craft a political message, are antithetical to the truth-seeking purpose of the profession.

With the special rights and protections granted to the press comes an obligation to soberly and objectively inform the citizenry.

Today in America, and throughout the West, this obligation is being disgracefully dishonored.

02/9/15

Hypocrisy Writ Large

Arlene from Israel

Hypocrisy is all around us, but I will focus today on the very significant information that the Israeli NGO Regavim has uncovered regarding the EU:

The Europeans protest long and loud about “illegal Israeli building” in Judea and Samaria. But what it turns out is that they have been supporting illegal Arab building in Area C. The Oslo Accords assigned full control (civil and military) of Area C to Israel. This is apparently irrelevant to the EU, in spite of the fact that the EU was a witness to (and according to international lawyer Alan Baker) a guarantor of the Oslo Accords.

The building is being done in Ma’aleh Adumim and near E1 (a region that stretches between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem). Clearly, this is intended to establish facts on the ground, by way of supporting a Palestinian state.

As the JPost reported last week (emphasis added):

“According to Regavim, European Union support for the Palestinians has in recent years moved from ‘passive diplomatic and financial assistance to a situation of active cooperation in illegal building which the Palestinian Authority has been advancing unilaterally since 2000, as part of its strategic plan to create a Palestinian state de facto, while avoiding the need for negotiations with Israel.’

”This week, prior to the release of its latest report, Regavim took journalists to look at a number of Beduin encampments straddling E1 as well as the Jerusalem-Jericho road. They are not temporary tent encampments as they were in years past, but rather clusters that – in addition to tents and tin shacks – also include modular structures with cement floors bearing the EU logo.

”According to Ari Briggs, Regavim’s international relations director, the EU logo is placed on the structures in the belief that this will prevent Israel from demolishing them. Israel is not likely to take down a building with an EU logo, due to concerns over both public relations damage and the harm it could cause to relations with the EU, he said…

“The EU-funded structures, according to Meir Deutsch, the director of Regavim’s policy and government relations department, are being placed illegally on state land, and in some cases in restricted nature reserves.

“When Regavim appealed to the High Court in 2008 to compel the state to demolish illegal buildings in the area, it ruled that this could not be done until an alternative living arrangement was found for the Bedouin living there. Israel then began planning a city – called Ramat Nueima – north of Jericho for some 12,000 people, a plan now adamantly opposed by the Palestinians and the EU.

“In November, a meeting of EU foreign ministers issued a statement that, in addition to their usual condemnations of land expropriation and settlement construction, also slammed plans to ‘displace Bedouin in the West Bank and the continued demolitions, including of EU and member states funded projects.’”

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Report-EU-building-hundreds-of-illegal-structures-for-Palestinians-in-Area-C-of-West-Bank-390184

Charges Briggs:

“This is great hypocrisy. Any time a building goes up for Jews, they raise an outcry, call it illegal and say it endangers peace. They are building illegal houses for Arabs.”

According to Deutsch, from 2012 to 2014, the EU spent millions of euros in putting up more than 499 structures.

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An excellent story on the Regavim report, complete with a large collection of Regavim photos and maps, has also been put out by the Daily Mail (emphasis added).

“Official EU documentation reveals that the building project is intended to ‘pave the way for development and more authority of the PA over Area C’… “Locally, the villages are known as the ‘EU Settlements’, and can be found in 17 locations around the West Bank.”

Because the Daily Mail is in the UK, it has an emphasis that is different from that of the JPost: Concern is expressed about European tax money being spent on this illegal venture.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2874883/EU-funding-illegal-building-West-Bank-says-report.html

Notable among the pictures is one of a man in an EU uniform threatening Israeli soldiers with a rock.

A structure in Area C bearing an EU flag:

Credit: Regavim

And the full Regavim Report here:

http://regavim.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Position-Paper-European-Building-in-Area-C-US.pdf

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The staff of Regavim has worked hard to produce this scrupulously researched material. Now, as always, it falls to us to spread this information as broadly as possibly. Truth must be exposed.

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Already we have seen one positive outcome to this report.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to move forward with a plan to demolish some 400 Palestinian structures built in the West Bank with European funding, Israeli media reported Friday. “

http://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-orders-demolition-of-eu-funded-palestinian-settlements-in-west-bank/

02/9/15

The Arab Armies

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

The ongoing Syrian conflict, the fall of the Yemeni government, the burning of the Jordanian pilot, and other events make one wonder why even those Arab nations with significant military capabilities tend not to use them against a common enemy.

The attacks on ISIS by the Jordanian air force have been a dramatic example of what could be done to eliminate this threat to the entire region if the other military forces would join in a united effort.

This raises the question of why the armies of various Middle Eastern nations do not seem to be engaged in destroying the Islamic State (ISIS). The answer may be found in a casual look at recent history; these armies have not been successful on the field of battle. Most recently what passed for the Iraqi army fled when ISIS took over much of northern Iraq.

Since 1948 the Arab nations that attacked Israel were repeatedly defeated. The Iraq-Iran war conducted by Saddam Hussein finally stalemated after eight years. Later it took the leadership of the U.S. to drive Saddam’s Iraq out of Kuwait.

Israeli fighter jets

In October 2014, the Business Insider published a useful ranking of Middle Eastern militaries put together by Armin Rosen, Jeremy Bender, and Amanda Macias. Ranked number one should surprise no one. It was Israel which has a $15 billion defense budget, 176,000 active frontline personnel, 680 aircraft, and 3,870 tanks.

Unlike previous administrations dating back to Truman, while the U.S. is technically still an ally of Israel, in reality the Obama administration has demonstrated animosity toward the only democratic nation in the region. Indeed, the U.S. has been engaged in lengthy negotiations with Iran that would ultimately permit it to become a nuclear power. There isn’t a single Middle Eastern nation that wants this to occur and it has greatly harmed U.S. relations with them.

Ranked second militarily is the Turkish Armed Forces with an $18.1 billion defense budget, 410,000 active frontline personnel, 3,675 tanks and 989 aircraft. This nation has shifted heavily toward being an Islamist state as opposed to the secular one it had been since the end of the Ottoman Empire in the last century. Its military hasn’t been involved in a conflict since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. It is a NATO-allied military but that doesn’t mean it will support NATO in a future conflict. It was used against the Kurdish separatist movement in the 1980s, but these days the Kurdish Peshmerga, between 80,000 and 100,000 strong is now ranked as “one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East” and it is likely the Kurds will carve their own nation out of an Iraq which barely exists these days.

Number three among the Middle East militaries is Saudi Arabia with a $56.7 billion defense budget, 233,500 active frontline personnel, 1,095 tanks, and 652 aircraft. It has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades, but the Obama Iranian nuclear negotiations have negatively affected that relationship. One can assume the same from its other allies, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has also provided “substantial assistance” to post-coup Egypt.

The rankings put the United Arab Emirates a #4, Iran at #5, Egypt at #6, Syria at #7, Jordan at #8, Oman at #9, Kuwait at #10, Qatar at #11, Bahrain at #12, Iraq at #13, Lebanon at #14, and Yemen at #15. The Business Insider article noted that “The balance of power in the Middle East is in disarray” and that’s putting it mildly.

Debka File, an Israeli news agency, reported on February 5 that “The group of nations U.S. President Barack Obama assembled last September for an air offence against ISIS inroads in Iraq and Syria is fraying.”

It deemed the participation of the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Bahrain as “more symbolic than active” noting that Iraq has no air force to speak of and an army in name only while the Saudis “allotted a trifling number of planes to the effort” and Bahrain has no air force at all. The UAE has the biggest and most modern air force and it has reportedly joined with Jordan to attack ISIS strongholds.

Debka reported that the coalition is “adamantly opposed to Obama’s policy…and loath to lend their air strength for its support” and that is very good news for ISIS, but not for the rest of the Middle East.

In October, Commentary magazine published an analysis by Ofir Haivry, vice president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, about the “Shifting Alliances in the Middle East.” It began with the observation that “The old Middle Eastern order has collapsed” as “the ongoing Arab uprisings that begin in late 2010 have unseated or threaten to unseat every Muslim government in the region.”

Postulating ‘five broad, cross-regional, and loosely ideological confederations”, Haivry concluded that “Perhaps our biggest challenge is not a new Middle East, but a new United States in paralysis. Under the Obama administration, America’s historic aspiration to shape events in the region has given way to confusion and drift.”

It should not come as that much of a surprise that Israel has been developing intelligence and security relations with several Arab nations, including what the Middle East Monitor described as “growing secret cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.” That sounds like very bad news for Iran and very good news for the rest of us.

02/4/15

Horrendous Truths Unfold

Arlene from Israel

What I write about here will not in its essence be a surprise to many of my readers. And yet, there is no way to confront what is going on without a sense of horror. The reality is being exposed, one ugly report followed by another:

We start with this, which broke yesterday:

According to Israeli officials, European diplomats are saying that the US, which has made significant concessions, is close to striking a deal with Iran that would permit them to keep up to 6,500 centrifuges in return for “guaranteeing regional stability” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/02/03/eu-concerned-over-report-of-major-us-concessions-to-iranians-in-nuclear-negotiations/

This is insane. How can the source of the greatest terrorist unrest in the world “guarantee stability”?

This deal would put Iran about three months from creating a bomb. What is more, apparently the US is also considering a “time limit,”so that the “restrictions” would last only for 10 to 15 years, after which Iran could do what it wished.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-deal-will-leave-iran-with-6500-centrifuges-spinning-months-from-a-bomb/

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Now, it might be, as some say, that Obama is doing this because he covets the “historical legacy” of having “brought Iran into the family of nations” (a la Nixon and China). And I suppose it’s possible that he hopes Iran will cool its instigation of terrorism briefly, in order to allow him to say has accomplished positive things without having to commit the US military in a significant way. But when you tally the implications of this report with others, below, it appears that he is on the other side, content to see the destruction of his own nation, as well as others that he should be eager to protect. This is a surreal conclusion, but a very distinct possibility.

Word is that the Saudis, whom Iran seeks to control, are thoroughly enraged with what Obama is doing. In the end, whatever his motivations, his behavior is exceedingly destructive. (Please, do not write to me to tell me what Obama’s reasons are. I am tracking his behavior.)

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I do have a question for which there seems to be no satisfactory answer. In theory, it is P5 + 1 – the permanent members of the Security Council, US, UK, France, Russia and China, plus Germany – negotiating with Iran. So, if the Europeans are deeply dissatisfied with the US position, why can they not block it or override it? The best answer I’ve been able to secure is that the US, while cutting Iran significant slack, wields significant power with regard to fellow negotiating partners. Apparently, what Obama says, goes.

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How can anyone with an ounce of sense in his head object to Netanyahu’s scheduled speech to the Congress? What he has to say may be immeasurably important. Yet now I hear that some prominent democrats, Vice President Biden among them, are thinking that they might not attend. Who knows what arm-twisting has ensued from the White House, but it would be most unfortunate if they were not present. They might disagree in the end, but they have a responsibility to be open to hearing the information Prime Minister Netanyahu will seek to impart. That responsibility, in the face of huge dangers to the world, trumps political considerations.

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As if the above were not enough, just under a month ago, the German weekly Der Spiegel broke with news (emphasis added):

”New intelligence suggests that Bashar al-Assad is still trying to built the bomb. And he may be getting help from North Korea and Iran…

”…secret information obtained by SPIEGEL indicates that the world is once again being misled by Assad. Syria’s dictator has not given up his dream of an atomic weapon and has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location. It is an extremely unsettling piece of news…

”Analysts say that the Syrian atomic weapon program has continued in a secret, underground location..Furthermore, a new reactor or an enrichment facility has very likely been built at the site — a development of incalculable geopolitical consequences.

Intelligence agency findings indicate that the material [uranium, etc.] was moved to a well-hidden underground location just west of the city of Qusayr, not even two kilometers from the border with Lebanon.

“…the clearest proof that it is a nuclear facility comes from radio traffic recently intercepted by a network of spies. A voice identified as belonging to a high-ranking Hezbollah functionary can be heard referring to the ‘atomic factory’ and mentions Qusayr…

“Work performed at the site by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is also mentioned in the intercepted conversations…”

http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=66224

What was that, again, about Obama seeking Iran to “guarantee regional stability” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria?

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And how about this, by Khalid Abu Toameh, who wrote, “U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists” (emphasis added)”:

“While the Egyptian government has been waging war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radical groups, the U.S. Administration and some Europeans are continuing to hamper efforts to combat terrorism.

“Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation…

“The State Department’s hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders has outraged Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Sisi, who has been waging a relentless war against the organization over the past year…

“’If the White House is out to offend some of its closest Arab allies and is intent on heightening their suspicions, it’s succeeded,’ wrote Middle East expert Linda S. Heard. ‘If there’s a plot, then it’s unfolding,’ she added. ‘Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.’

“’The U.S. Administration is continuing to jeopardize its relations with Egypt by appeasing Muslim Brotherhood,’ remarked columnist Ezzat Ibrahim. ‘The Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to return to the political arena through the American door and terrorist attacks. The U.S. policy appears to be devious and unreliable.’

“Another Egyptian columnist, Mohamed Salmawi, launched a scathing attack on the U.S. Administration; he accused it of deception and double standards. He said that the meeting between U.S. officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders exposes the U.S. Administration’s deceptive policy toward Islamic terror groups.

“’The U.S. Administration says it is combating these groups at home while it is supporting them abroad,” Salmawi wrote. ‘This meeting has grave indications because it shows that Washington has not abandoned its policy of double standards toward Islamic terrorism.’

“Said Lindawi, a prominent Egyptian international affairs expert, said that the meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders with State Department officials means that the Obama Administration has given the organization a green light to carry out terrorist attacks against Egypt.

“’The U.S. Administration has refused to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group,’ he said. ‘The Americans continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is not responsible for the terrorist attacks in Egypt.’

“By embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. Administration has sent the wrong message to moderate Arabs and Muslims. This is a message that says that Washington believes that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists.”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5179/us-terrorists-ally

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My job is to broadcast this information as broadly as possible. And so, to that end I look to each of you, as I always do, to share this posting, put the information on your FB pages, write talkbacks and letters to the editor, etc. Word on the current state of affairs must get out.

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J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami has written: “Momentum is on our side — and it’s growing. Make it clear that Netanyahu’s speech shouldn’t go forward as planned.” Well, folks, if you are represented in Congress by Democrats, contact them and urge that they attend.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4622997,00.html

Martin Indyk, director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institute, and a former Obama envoy to the “peace negotiations,” is on record as having made some negative comments about Netanyahu’s up-coming speech. But please remember that the Brookings Institute has taken large sums of money from Qatar.

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In spite of all of the horrendous truths I speak about above, there are also signs that are encouraging. Next posting, I hope to share a number of these. Here I close with a link to an incredible MEMRI video of an imam in Brooklyn who speaks out passionately for Muslim moderation.

http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4748.htm

There is hope. (With thanks to Leon K. for calling my attention to this.)

01/27/15

A No-go Zone for Truth

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Accurately reporting on no-go zones dominated by Muslims in Europe is now a no-go zone. Our media have made a mess of the whole issue and are now afraid to dig themselves out. What a disgrace and disservice to news consumers.

Jumping on the pile, the left-wing Politico has published a story accusing Louisiana Republican Governor and possible presidential candidate Bobby Jindal of telling a “lie” about the no-go zones by saying they exist. But the story is itself based on a lie. Things are so twisted that Politico is doing the lying by denying that the no-go zones exist. How did we get in such a mess?

Let’s understand that the method in this madness is to accommodate the radical Muslim lobby and demonize politicians who talk about the jihad problem.

First of all, the evidence shows that the zones or areas do exist. We cited evidence for them, and numerous other outlets have done so as well. The confusion stems from a Fox News apology over the matter that should never have been made.

Steve Emerson made a mistake on one Fox show in saying that “in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Acknowledging his error, Emerson tells WorldNetDaily that he is nevertheless appalled that the media have now decided that any and all reporting on no-go zones is wrong. “It’s outrageous for media outlets to apologize, saying ‘no-go zones’ don’t exist in Europe, when even the New York Times for years has published articles documenting Muslim ‘no-go zones’ do exist in European countries like France,” he tells WND reporter Jerome Corsi.

Corsi notes that “NBC News, the New York Times, the Associated Press and others were using the term ‘no-go’ zones for Muslim-majority neighborhoods in Paris when Muslim youth gangs were rampaging through the streets and setting cars on fire.”

We made the same point in our treatment of the issue, noting that Fox News suddenly altered its reporting of the Muslim riots in France in 2005, determining them to be “civil riots” instead. We saw then the power of the Islamists to alter Fox’s coverage.

Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz had a great opportunity on his Sunday show “Media Buzz” to set the record straight. Instead of confronting his own channel over the unnecessary apology, Kurtz praised CNN’s Anderson Cooper for making the same kind of apology. But then he mentioned that other outlets have been reporting on the no-go zones for years. So an apology wasn’t necessary after all! “The subject is complicated,” he said. No it’s not. Just tell the truth.

If all of this is unnecessarily confusing, it’s clearly because of the unnecessary Fox apology. It was a political apology. There is no other explanation. It is this kind of pandering that is becoming a pattern at Fox, which had earlier yanked anchor Bret Baier from a Catholic conference under pressure from the homosexual lobby.

Liberal special interest groups should not have this kind of influence on a news organization, especially one claiming “fair and balanced” coverage that is also supposed to be accurate.

Journalism 101 teaches that corrections or apologies are called for when errors are made. Since no-go areas do in fact exist, according to numerous sources, no apology was necessary. Yet, Fox News offered the view that since the no-go zones are not “specific” or “formal” entities, they really don’t exist. Fox was wrong. This is complete nonsense and a gross distortion of the concept.

Robert Spencer makes the observation, “The Fox apology is all the more curious in light of the fact that others, even on the Left, have noticed the no-go zones in France before some Fox commentators began talking about them in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.”

Citing just one example of many, he notes that David Ignatius had written in The New York Times back in 2002, “Yet Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders.”

Spencer notes that Fox’s apology “only plays into the hands of leftists and Islamic supremacists who have a vested interest in rendering people ignorant and complacent about the reality of what is going on in these areas.”

He suggests that Fox “apologize for its apology.” That would perhaps further confuse matters, but it is the right thing to do.

Without an apology for the apology, those who apologize for the Islamization of Europe like Arif Rafiq will continue to claim, as he did in Politico, that Jindal, by even discussing the no-go zones, “has been repeating a lie that even Fox News was forced to apologize for.” The Fox News correction, or apology, though unwarranted, is now being cited as the media standard.

Politico headlined the piece, “Bobby Jindal’s Muslim Problem,” as if the governor has a bias against Muslims. So a Fox News apology has now been transformed into an indictment of a conservative political figure. Soon, Jindal will be denounced as an “Islamophobe,” another smear term used by the radical Islam lobby.

The liberal media won’t believe any of Fox’s normal day-to-day reports. But when the channel claims to have made an error that makes the rest of the media look good by comparison, that suddenly becomes the truth and the channel has to be believed. This is how reality is turned upside down.

The real story is why Fox made this unnecessary correction. The clout of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Council on American-Islamic Relations is the most likely explanation. Fox has undermined its own credibility by apologizing for something that was true. It is bizarre and was absolutely unnecessary.

Pamela Geller is correct that the major media are “failing us.” It’s terribly tragic that at a time when we were depending on one channel, Fox, to tell the truth, it has failed us, too.

01/17/15

Intifada USA? American Radicals Build Ties to “Palestinian” Revolutionaries

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

2015 could be the worst year for civil unrest in the United States, since the Vietnam War era.

Communists and their Islamic allies are looking to build on 2014’s Ferguson riots, to create major havoc in America this year.

Dream Defenders delegation, Nazareth, January 2015

In an ominous warning of trouble to come in the first few days of the New Year, a group of mainly Black and Latino American revolutionaries traveled to Israel/”Palestine” to build ties to Arab comrades:

Representatives at the forefront of the movements for Black lives and racial justice took a historic trip to Palestine in early January 2015, to connect with activists living under Israeli occupation.

Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter, journalists, artists and organizers representing Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and more have joined the Dream Defenders for a 10-day trip to the occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.

The trip came after a year of highly-publicized repression in Ferguson, the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as solidarity between these places.

Ahmad Abuznaid, Dream Defenders’ legal and policy director and a co-organizer of the delegation, said that the goal of the trip was to make connections.

“The goals were primarily to allow for the group members to experience and see first-hand the occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality Israel has levied against Palestinians, but also to build real relationships with those on the ground leading the fight for liberation,” wrote Abuznaid.

“In the spirit of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and many others, we thought the connections between the African American leadership of the movement in the U.S. and those on the ground in Palestine needed to be reestablished and fortified.”

During the trip, the delegation has met with “refugees, Afro-Palestinians, a family that was kicked out of their house by settlers in East Jerusalem, and organizations representing Palestinian political prisoners, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said apartheid is what immediately struck her about what she saw on the ground.

“This is an apartheid state. We can’t deny that and if we do deny it we are a part of the Zionist violence. There are two different systems here in occupied Palestine. Two completely different systems. Folks are unable to go to parts of their own country. Folks are barred from their own country.”

“Community Organizer” Cherrell Brown said she saw many parallels between state violence against Palestinians and Black Americans.

“So many parallels exist between how the U.S. polices, incarcerates and perpetuates violence on the Black community and how the Zionist state that exists in Israel perpetuates the same on Palestinians,” Brown said.

“This is not to say there aren’t vast differences and nuances that need to always be named, but our oppressors are literally collaborating together, learning from one another – and as oppressed people we have to do the same,” she said.

“So many parallels exist between how the U.S. polices, incarcerates and perpetuates violence on the Black community and how the Zionist state that exists in Israel perpetuates the same on Palestinians,” Brown said.

Delegates expressed a “desire for Black and American action in support of Palestine.”

“I believe the Black Lives Matter movement can benefit greatly by learning about struggles outside of the U.S., but particularly the Palestinian struggle,” said Patrisse Cullors. “I want this trip to be an example for how Black folks and Arab communities can be in better solidarity with one another.”

Delegate Cherrell Brown made no bones about the underlying ideology of the movement.

“I want us to take back things we can do in the now, as Americans, to raise awareness and action around Palestinian liberation. I want us to reimagine what society could and will look like when we’ve dismantled this white-supremacist patriarchal and capitalist society. I want us to do it together. I want to bring back these conversations and stories in hopes that it will help add to this global struggle to get free.”

The most well known delegate was leading leftist journalist and commentator Marc Lamont Hill, a contributor to HuffPost Live, BET News, and CNN.

Hill was also very blunt about the “revolutionary” purpose of the trip.

From Legal Insurrection:

See the full video here:

I predict, that unless firm action is taken at State and Federal levels, we will see significant radical inspired unrest on America’s streets this year. As the police struggle to contain the trouble, there will be provocations and police will be forced to use force to restore order.

RT (Russia Today) and Al Jazeera will be on hand to film this “police brutality” and American police will be subject to the same inflammatory propaganda that the Israeli Defence Force has had to endure for decades.

The Islamo-Communist Axis means to create chaos and to severely demoralize both Israel and the United States through a campaign of vilification against US and Israeli Defence and Justice systems. They aim to “soften up” both countries by turning them into self-doubting “pariah” states.

This is way bigger than the also communist dominated Occupy Movement and far more dangerous to national security.

The full list of delegates included five Dream Defenders (Phillip Agnew, Ciara Taylor, Steven Pargett, Sherika Shaw, Ahmad Abuznaid), Tef Poe and Tara Thompson (Ferguson/Hands Up United), journalist Marc Lamont Hill, Cherrell Brown and Carmen Perez (Justice League NYC), Charlene Carruthers (Black Youth Project), poet and artist Aja Monet, Patrisse Cullors (Black Lives Matter) and Maytha Alhassen.

In your opinion readers, is it legitimate for the National Security Agency to be monitoring the communications of these people and others like them? What do you think?