Muslims as victims. From the Daily Star Sunday

...last night the mother of two of the abusers, Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, said they were innocent and accused police, social services and the girls themselves of being complicit in ­creating Britain’s “grooming culture”.

She said: “These girls should be playing with toys. If they start (having sex) at ten, by 15 they are proper ladies.” 

Her elder son Akhtar was convicted of 11 offences and Anjum of nine. Both men were found guilty of rape, child prostitution and trafficking. 

One victim told Thames Valley Police: “I’ve seen them doing it to little girls in their school uniforms.”

...speaking at her home in the Cowley Road area of Oxford, the Dogars’ mother – believed to be named Bashira – said they were innocent.

She said: “On the news they say the girls went from Oxford to London on the train. Are they not old enough then? She was looking for a boy (at a station in London). No one pressurised her, you can see that. Nobody can feel sorry for them unless they’re sorry themselves. In a Muslim community girls are focused on study. Why did they (the authorities) let this happen?”

The Dogars and five others – Mohammed Karrar, 38, Bassam Karrar, 33, Kamar Jamil, 27, Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 27 – have been told they will get lengthy jail sentences after they were found guilty of 59 charges.

Mrs Dogar also told of her shame at being associated with the case. She said: “We lose everything, our respect, our hope, our future, our community.”

Her shame is her failure to bring her sons up decently. Picture from Daily Mail.

May 28, 2013

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Praised at White House as He Subverts U.S. Interests

–While the U.S. government has pressured Erdogan not to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Erdogan announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would do so. An alleged U.S. ally says publicly in front of Obama while being hosted by him that he is going to defy the United States.

This is not some routine matter. With previous presidents, if an ally was going to do something like that he would say nothing at the time and then months later would subvert U.S. policy. Or better yet the foreign leader would not do so. To announce defiance in such a way is a serious sign of how little respect Middle East leaders have for Obama—and U.S. policy nowadays—and how little Obama will do about it.

–Equally bad is the fact that Erdogan directly promised Obama that he would conciliate with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooperated because Obama asked him to do so. That’s what U.S. allies do. But immediately Erdogan showed he would pay no attention to the agreement he made.

His negotiators subverted it in several ways, including the demands for ridiculously large amounts of money, the delay in the promised return of the Turkish ambassador to Israel, the continuation of legal action against Israeli officials involved in the Mavi Marmara affair, when Israeli soldiers were attacked by Turkish terrorists demanding to sail to Gaza to deliver equipment to Hamas.

So a second time  Erdogan betrayed Obama and make the president look foolish (that is, if anyone in the mass media pointed it out). Again, there was no U.S. criticism of the move or apparent pressure to make Erdogan keep his promise.

There are three other ways that Erdogan has subverted U.S. interests with minimal costs. In fact, the Obama Administration has usually furthered this behavior.

–Some small U.S. diplomatic protests were made about the growing internal repression in Turkey and human rights’ violations there. Increasingly, the country lives under a reign of intimidation even as the Western media mostly ignores this situation. Since the United States keeps praising him, Erdogan can demoralize his opponents, who cannot hope for foreign help, even as he carries on a policy of spreading anti-Americanism in Turkey. The political power of the Turkish armed forces–the traditional guarantor of the republic and stability in the country was dismantled by Erdogan with U.S. approval. The Turkish media was subverted with only an occasional American squeal of complaint. Now he’s destroying the independent judicial system, the last barrier to his assault on democratic rule. The U.S. embassy in Turkey consistently warned about what has been happening; the White House ignored this information.

–With the Obama Administration’s permission, the Turkish government violates the sanctions against Iran with ever-larger trade and major bilateral cooperation projects. Erdogan’s consistent defenses of Iran’s policies (though the two countries are at odds over Syria) have been forgiven and forgotten by the White House.

–Finally, in many ways the Turkish government has been taking the lead on setting U.S. policy toward Syria. It was Erdogan who largely determined that the official opposition exile leadership would be dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, a path followed by Obama. (I can’t prove it but I’ll bet that Turkey’s regime promised Obama that if he would declare support for the rebels verbally and let them be armed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia then Assad would easily fall. I’d also bet that Erdogan assured Obama that if the president helped the rebels a moderate government would emerge in Syria.)

Meanwhile, Obama has praised Erdogan unstintingly. Obama thinks Erdogan is the very model of a “moderate Islamist” and since Obama’s strategy is to support such people in much of the Arab world, Erdogan has been his guide to the region, though this has meant supporting the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. What is especially ironic is that Obama believed that Erdogan’s goals were essentially the same as those of the United States while Erdogan was in fact following a profoundly anti-American policy designed to bring hostile Islamist governments to power. Remember this is no longer the old Western-oriented Turkey of previous decades but a radical–if concealed–Islamist regime.

At the Washington meeting, Obama and Erdogan agreed that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must go. But who will they replace him with and how will they get rid of him? Obama said that the Syrian dictator, “Needs to transfer power to a transitional body….That is the only way we’re going to resolve this crisis.”

But that is demonstrably false because Assad won’t step down. So what’s the United States going to do about it? Will he continue to follow advice from Erdogan which has already proven to be wrong because it is based on the interests of a Turkish Islamist regime seeking to promote Sunni Islamism and Turkish influence in the region?

Once again the Turkish government has taken the lead on U.S. policy by pushing for direct U.S. aid to the rebels. That means giving money, weapons, and other aid to the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical groups to take power because the real moderates in the Syrian opposition are rare.

Obama’s expressed hope of creating a Syria that is “a source of stability, not extremism” is very dangerous because he might well hope that but it is not a realistic goal. And again what is Obama going to do to bring about this objective?  Here’s an excellent piece on the rebel side that explains why this is not going to happen. (It was written a  year ago and since then al-Qaida forces have become much stronger and openly affiliated to al-Qaida. Yet even back then it was clear that parts of the “moderate” Free Syrian Army–on which Obama and Erdogan depend–was close to al-Qaida and now in recent weeks they have defected altogether to that group.)

[Incidentally. the U.S. government has apologized to Israel for U.S. officials confirming to the New York Times that a ground attack within Syria earlier this month was staged by Israel. Publicly stating this information forced Syria (and Hizballah and Iran) to officially threaten Israel with retaliation, thus endangering Israel.]

Now, too, Iran, Russia, and Hizballah are stepping up support for Assad. It is clear that Russia will block tougher action in the UN Security Council.  It is also stepping up arms shipments to Assad. If Russia provides Syria with advanced anti-aircraft missiles these could be used to shoot down any U.S. planes that tries to enforce a no-fly zone. Yet Obama doesn’t have the credibility or leverage with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who from every indication holds him in contempt as a weakling, to stop Moscow from showing that it is the stronger, more reliable ally. Hizballah has up to 5,000 fighters inside Syria now, though they have been many employed in holding territory vital for Assad’s survival.

The rebels will not win without a lot of U.S. help. This civil war is becoming an international test of wills in which Obama–for reasons that are not unreasonable--doesn’t want to fight. Yet does that mean the United States will accept a humiliating defeat at the hands of Tehran and Moscow? Fortunately, while the rebels cannot win, they also are likely to hold much of Syria. In other words, Assad can’t put down the rebellion either. But the result will be: stalemate; continued war for two years or more; tens of thousands of more deaths.

One day there will be congressional investigations on how U.S. policy armed terrorist and even, albeit unintentionally, al-Qaida groups. It will be too late.  The situation in Syria makes the Iran-Contra affair–U.S. involvement during the Reagan Administration in supplying arms to pro-American Nicaraguan rebels– look like a picnic.

The situation is getting very dangerous and with a “friend” like Erdogan it is clear that Obama’s policy toward Syria, Iran, the advance of revolutionary Islamism, and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” is in serious trouble.

Swearing In the Enemy

One of the suspected Boston bombers was a naturalized citizen, and the other was on his way. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a new citizen, asks how we might change the process of becoming an American to exclude those who hate America.

By AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who recently became a U.S. citizen, argues that immigration reform needs to include measures to detect the radically anti-American beliefs of some newcomers who seek to become Americans.

On April 25, 2013, I took the oath to become a citizen of the United States. Perhaps only those who have taken this oath can fully understand how I felt that afternoon in Boston. I felt a strong sense of belonging, and tears welled up in my eyes more than a few times during the hourlong ceremony.

I have no reason to doubt that the 1,834 other men and women who took the oath with me also felt that special sense of homecoming. On that sunny afternoon, it seemed unreal that just 10 days earlier, another new citizen of this country had taken up arms against it—against us—in the very same city.

As the whole world now knows, that new U.S. citizen was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, only 19 years old. He had taken the oath just seven months earlier—on Sept. 11, in fact, a grim irony whose lessons we are still struggling to learn. His alleged partner in crime and mentor was his elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who himself had applied for citizenship and was well into the process, awaiting approval and the invitation to take the same precious oath.

That approval and invitation would surely have come, because Americans—we Americans—are a generous people. And yet, strangely, today's debate about immigration reform has little to do with keeping out people like Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Elizabeth Dietz

The author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, during her naturalization ceremony on April 25.

The Tsarnaev brothers are emblematic of the divided loyalties of our times—and they are not the only ones. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani national, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived the American dream: He arrived on a student visa, married an American citizen, graduated from college, worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a junior financial analyst for a cosmetics company in Connecticut, became a naturalized citizen at the age of 30 and then, a year later, in 2010, tried to blow up as many of his fellow citizens as possible in a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square.

Prior to sentencing, the judge asked Mr. Shahzad about the oath of allegiance he had taken, in which he did "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen." The defendant replied: "I sweared [sic], but I didn't mean it." He then expressed his regret about the failure of his plot and added that he would gladly have sacrificed a thousand lives in the service of Allah. He concluded by predicting the downfall of his new homeland.

Every naturalized citizen has a unique story to tell. My own journey to America was not only geographical but also intellectual, emotional and cultural. I grew up in Muslim communities in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. In my early years, these communities (with the exception of Saudi Arabia) were moderate in their religious beliefs and practices.

Enlarge Image

Photo Illustration by John Kuczala

The challenge is to uncover the deceit of phony citizens.

But during my teenage years, I saw a change. Friends and family members began turning to Islamic scripture, interpreted literally, for answers to all their problems. I saw religious leaders who emphasized ritual observance replaced by a new breed of imams who urged hostile action, even violence, against Jews, "infidels," and Muslims who neglected their religious duties or violated Shariah, the Islamic law.

I wasn't immune to the appeal of this new fundamentalism. I myself joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and social movement in which we were urged to implement Shariah in our families, communities and nations. For a young woman, this might mean strict obedience to her husband and quiet propagation of the message; for a young man, it might mean seeking martyrdom through a violent attack against the infidels. One person might contribute money, another his home, yet another his political and social connections. What mattered was being united around the ideal of a world ruled by Shariah.

Over time, I began to question that ideal. My journey included a decade in the Netherlands, where I lived a life of profound dissonance, mentally vowing to remain steadfast in my faith while my lifestyle drifted further and further from the narrow Islamic path. I knew that the freedom I experienced in the Netherlands was supposed to be abhorrent and evil, yet I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for it and for the generosity with which the Dutch people welcomed me and so many other émigrés. I discovered that I was more comfortable with the idea of treating women, gay people, and people of different races and faiths equally than I had ever been with the strictures of Shariah.

It was this journey from a world dominated by strict adherence to religious law into a world of freedom both for and from religion that led me to that ceremony in Boston, where I finally became a citizen of the country that, above all others, represents freedom to the world. I have devoted the past decade of my life to working as hard as I can to expose the threat posed by what I label, as carefully as possible, "political Islam."

It's a subject about which I know a great deal. Political Islam killed my Dutch friend Theo van Gogh, who dared to collaborate with me in making the film "Submission," which criticizes the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. Adherents of political Islam regularly threaten me, an apostate from their faith. Political Islam eventually made my life in the Netherlands impossible. If it were not for political Islam, I would almost certainly still be Dutch.

What is political Islam? It is not precisely the same as the spiritual dimension of the faith. Islam is multidimensional. It has a religious and social aspect but also a very strong political dimension. Political Islam is a comprehensive vision of ideas and ideals derived from Islamic scripture as interpreted by various scholars widely accepted as authorities on its meaning. Virtually all of these scholars agree that Muslim societies must accept Allah as the sovereign power and struggle to abide strictly by Shariah law as exemplified in the Sunna (the life, words and deeds of the Prophet). Political Islam prescribes a set of specific social, economic and legal practices in a way that is very different from the more general social teachings (such as calls to practice charity or strive for justice) found in the spiritual dimension of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other world religions.

All of this, obviously, flies in the face of the American—and more broadly Western—ideals of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. But most Americans ignore the fundamental conflict between political Islam and their own worldview. Perhaps this is because they generally assume that "religion," however defined, is a positive force for good and that any set of religious beliefs, however unusual, should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. I agree with that.

The problem arises when those who adhere to a particular faith use it as divine license to break the law. It is a wonderful truth about America—one of its powerful attractions for millions of immigrants like me—that you may think and say whatever you wish as long as you do not act on your beliefs in a way that harms others. Unfortunately, a minority of the adherents to political Islam wish to take violent action in support of their beliefs—threatening the lives of innocents like those killed and maimed as they stood watching the Boston Marathon. [here Ayaan Hirsi Ali fails to recognize that there is no clear division between those who wish to use violence as an instrument of Jihad, and those who for now do not wish to, but may change their minds in the future, if such violence can be conducted without repercussions, and in any case, the main point should not be the instrument of Jihad, but the Jihad itself, and for that, a large and comfortably settled Muslim population can be as dangerous, or more dangerous, to the well-being of non-Muslims, their laws and customs and understandings, than terrorists who are perceived as aliens

It is reasonable to ask yourself: How many more young men like Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are already living a double life in America, ready to take up arms for the cause of political Islam? And how many more will be naturalized this year? None? That seems pretty unlikely.

In a 2011 Pew survey, 1% of American Muslims said that suicide bombings were "often justified"—a tiny proportion, to be sure. The overwhelming majority of American Muslims want to lead peaceful lives. But 7% of those surveyed said that suicide bombers were "sometimes justified," and 5% said they were "rarely justified." Taking Pew's conservative estimate that Muslims now constitute 0.6% of the adult population of the U.S., this means that more than 180,000 American Muslims regard suicide bombings as being justified in some way.

Still more worrisome, a 2007 survey by Pew revealed that Muslim Americans under the age of 30 are twice as likely as older Muslims to believe that suicide bombings in defense of Islam can be justified. The same survey revealed that 7% of American Muslims between the ages of 18 and 29 had a "favorable" view of al Qaeda. [All such polls, asking Muslims living in the West what they think, are certain to mislead, to understate the problem. For there will be many who will lie-- taqiyya and kitman are both religiously-sanctioned --and lie in only one direction, by claiming that , but do so only in one direction -- pretending they don't approve of terrorism when they do. No one would claim to suppport terrorism if he didn't, but the reverse is not true. Furthermore, such a poll is not helpful, for it fails to ask, and could not have truthfully answered, the main question: Do you think Muslims have a duty to work toward a society where Islam dominates, where the teachings of Islam prevail? No real Muslim can answer "No" to that question, for the object of worship in Islam is Islam itself].

To repeat: The proportion may be small, but the number of Americans committed to political Islam and willing to contemplate violence to advance it is surely not trivial. And rising immigration from the Muslim world is likely to increase the proportion of Americans sympathetic to political Islam.

A 2013 Pew report revealed the extraordinarily large proportion of Muslims around the world who favor making Shariah the official law of their own countries: 91% of Iraqi Muslims and 84% of Pakistanis, for example. Comparably high proportions favor the death penalty for apostates like me. Are immigrants to the U.S. drawn exclusively from the tiny minority who think otherwise? I doubt it.

When trying to explain the violence of some political Islamists, some Western commentators blame hard economic circumstances, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males and so on. In other quarters, the mistakes of American foreign policy are advanced as an explanation. Even if one accepts these arguments—and these factors may indeed play a role in exacerbating the sense of violent alienation among many young Muslims—it remains hard to understand why a convinced political Islamist would sincerely want to become an American citizen.

The naturalized citizen swears to "support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic…bear true faith and allegiance to the same…[and] bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law." Naturalized citizens tie their own destiny to the destiny of this society, not their former one, for better or worse. So the potential bomber takes an oath to defend the Constitution and the U.S. against all enemies, while committed in his heart to a radically different political order.

The challenge that this would-be bomber poses for us is not to change our foreign policy or improve economic conditions in the Muslim world. We already do that. The challenge is to uncover the deceit of such phony citizens.

One measure employed during the Cold War was to question prospective citizens about whether they had ever been members of the Communist Party, a recognition that communism was an ideology fundamentally hostile to the American way of life. That question about the Communist Party is still asked today, even though the threat posed by communism has receded to a few desperate holdouts. I was surprised to encounter it not once but twice during my own application process. And it got me thinking: Is it not time to update the application form, substituting political Islam for Communism?

Of course, the question alone would do nothing to uncover deceit on the part of a determined terrorist. But it would establish the principle that adherence to political Islam, with its dreams of a society ruled by Shariah (not to mention a world ruled by a restored caliphate), is incompatible with the terms of the oath of allegiance.

During my application process, the Citizenship and Immigration Services requested that I show up at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in downtown Boston only twice—once for fingerprints and pictures, a second time for an interview with a civil servant to review my application. It was a purely bureaucratic procedure, empty of any larger moral or political meaning—as it must have been for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Faisal Shahzad and as it would have been for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, too.

The question now is whether the interview process should remain so devoid of meaning. Is that what we want for the next zealot of political Islam who wants to enjoy the benefits of American citizenship until the day he tries to slaughter as many of us as possible?

A half-century ago, the U.S. turned away from the era when immigration was restricted with the deliberate intention of keeping down the number of Chinese and other ethnic groups, who were deemed undesirable. I have no wish to go back to those bad old days. There should be no discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity or faith. But it is not enough to confine the current debate on immigration reform to a narrow argument about the future of illegal immigrants. I believe that we are entitled to filter out would-be citizens who are ideologically and morally opposed to the U.S. and pose a threat to its population.

Every applicant should be interviewed by an ethnically and religiously diverse panel made up of experts on ideological extremism, who would then advise the government on whether or not to allow the applicant to proceed along the road to citizenship. Muslim applicants need not feel singled out; the panel would look out for any individual whose political convictions, religious or otherwise, radically clash with the government and principles to which the applicant is preparing to swear allegiance.

This would include any and all extremists who openly advocate or engage in political violence as a means for attaining their ideal society. Examples would include members of terrorist organizations such as the FARC in Colombia, the PKK in Turkey, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and so on. The most important question is not what they believe but what they do—or believe it would be legitimate to do. Requiring candidates for citizenship to respond to questions from such a panel might do more than all the other inconvenient, expensive, and undesirable measures to combat terrorism that we currently put up with.

A big job to organize and implement? Absolutely. But such screening is necessary to ensure that the U.S. continues to draw and naturalize people who are genuinely attracted by what makes the country great and who want to make their own contribution to that greatness, while keeping out enemies bent on our demise.

"I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion: so help me God." Those closing words of the Oath of Allegiance are now etched indelibly in my memory. But as I said them, I thought of the Tsarnaev brothers, whose mental reservations about America grew to the point that they were prepared to sow murder and mayhem.

Immigration reform that does not make it harder for such people to settle in the U.S. would be, to say the least, very incomplete.

From The American Thinker:

May 19, 2013

Israel: Triumph of Resilience

Israel, having attained its 65^th anniversary, resists easy definition.  Sixty-five years ago, on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, declared independence, to which American and Soviet recognition was forthcoming the next day, following the expiration of British rule. 

Any reckoning on Israel, its successes and failures, is also inescapably interwoven with the verdict one gives on the animating philosophy of the state, Zionism, which itself will celebrate later this year its 116^th anniversary. 

Zionism foresaw a collectivity of Jewish labor redeeming a patrimony lost in antiquity.  It envisioned a national solution to that age-old disease, anti-Semitism, conscious of the fact that time was running out for Jews in Europe.  Theodor Herzl, political Zionism's founder, even thought it might prove the antidote to anti-Semitism, though he doubted the possibility of reviving ancient Hebrew as a spoken language.  He once asked rhetorically, "Who amongst us knows enough to purchase a railway ticket in that language?"

Herzl was wrong on both counts.  The national language was revived, a feat that still eludes other peoples seeking to emulate Israel's success, but anti-Semitism, far from having been extinguished, is very much alive.  Even when put to bed, it is a light sleeper. 

The widespread revilement of the Jews in pre-state times was replicated when the U.N. General Assembly resolved in November 1975 that Zionism, uniquely among national movements around the globe, was a form of racism.  So Israel became the focus of renewed anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism, a distinction without a difference insofar as the target remains Jews, with discrimination now applied to sovereign identity rather than individual rights. 

Israel solved anti-Semitism in the sense that it permitted Jews to cease being timorous petitioners to foreign governments and permitted those in need or desire of joining the national enterprise to do so.  In fact, nothing better evokes today, if only fleetingly, the lost pioneering ethos of Israel than latter-day efforts to rescue Jews in distress.  This is but a continuation of the process that began in Europe in the nineteenth century and embraced the Arab Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s, when Arab nationalism and Muslim supremacism combined to depopulate virtually each and every established Jewish community in Arab lands.  Unlike their European counterparts in the 1930s, however, these Jews did have somewhere to go.  In the span of Jewish history since the destruction of the Second Jewish Commonwealth nearly two millennia ago, that is likely to remain Israel's biggest achievement and calling-card. 

Jewish labor and nation-building have had a much more checkered history.  The utopian idealism of the kibbutzim is a thing of the past, although the kibbutz is still the only voluntary socialist system to have been devised and implemented.  The incorporation in 1967 of the West Bank and Gaza into Israeli control during the Arab-inspired Six-Day War saw the emergence of cheap "Arab labor" which would have been deplored by Israel's founding fathers, although the ongoing hostilities into this century have somewhat reversed that trend. 

The Oslo peace process, conceived as a project of political normalization, long ago foundered in bloodshed.  That failure was inherent in Israel's attempt to produce a neighboring Palestinian state with Yasser Arafat and his successors, who remain dedicated to a supplanting Palestinian state.  The Palestinian Authority (PA) that emerged from Oslo remains a moral and political Enron.  Palestinian society is radicalized and morally defunct, split between the Hamas fiefdom of Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah redoubt in the West Bank. 

Israel has provided Jews a home and turned that home into a innovative powerhouse, but it has a more modest record of success in the millenarian vision of an "in-gathering of the exiles."  The in-gathering was always going to be a combination of voluntary and involuntary immigration, but it is only the heroic age of Zionism that can boast a solid core of idealists.  In each succeeding epoch, the persecuted, the endangered, and the expelled have predominated.  Few nations are primarily composed of people (or descendants of people) who either involuntarily left their native homes or who would have gone elsewhere given the chance.  Yet there is no mystery about this.  It is a special breed of person who deliberately courts danger, disease, climatic extremes, economic uncertainty, material scarcity, and neighboring hostility in preference to a settled life in a relatively tranquil society.  Zionism has been only a peripheral magnet for free and enfranchised Western Jews in countries like the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, or Australia who, if they move at all, are as likely to move between each other as to Israel.

One remarkable success, however, is the realization of an early Zionist idea: to produce a new, sovereign Jew at home in his own country.  Diaspora Jews often notice that Israelis do not in the main share what Jean-Paul Sartre would have called the "over-determined" character of the Jews, a result of centuries of Jewish dependence on Gentile goodwill.  The Israeli is refreshingly free of untoward concern for the opinion of others or the belief that in whatever he may do, he is somehow representative of all Jews and is being judged accordingly.  He has been normalized to the extent that he feels he belongs somewhere without qualification and that in this way he is like most other members of the human family.  If he meets someone who dislikes him, it is not his problem, as it still remains for even the freest and most established Western Jew.  He needs no communal security apparatus, anti-defamation league, hate monitors, or communal advocates.  He has all of these in the forms of the Israel Defense Forces, the Mossad, and an elected, sovereign government.  He can leave the job, if not always confidently, to the professionals. 

For all this, Jewish sovereignty has not come cheaply; the loss of 23,085 soldiers -- about the equivalent to America losing 900,000 servicemen -- was commemorated at this year's Remembrance Day in Israel.  The Arab-Israeli conflict has subjected generations of Israelis to years of military service and reserve duty, and the civilian front has often been far from tranquil.  Indeed, with the advent of Oslo, Palestinian terrorists made killing and maiming ordinary Jewish civilians in the largest possible numbers a special priority.  For most of the Muslim world, a theological calamity occurred with Jewish statehood.  Muslim supremacists work overtime to ensure that the Jew, largely a figure of contemptuous docility in Arab collective memory, can be again relegated to Islamic subject status on "liberated" Islamic land.  

Perhaps, with so much conflict, internal and external, Israel's great achievement is the resilience of its democratic life.  By temperament, Israelis are the most democratic of peoples.  They have a low threshold of tolerance for any pretense of social superiority.  Informality is the norm.  Some people think this goes a little far.  As any visitor knows, graceful manners are in short supply.  The army is the most respected national institution for obvious reasons, yet it has almost no chivalric tradition.  There is an economy of military and civilian honors, which makes military ceremony on national occasions all the more haunting for its accessibility and austerity. 

Vigorous debate and parliamentary procedures are alive and well, but proportional representation in the Knesset has balkanized politics, sometimes defying the requirements of stability and holding majorities hostage to capricious minorities.  As a result, Knesset members hold office courtesy of party lists, not electors' votes, and are beholden to party whips, not to constituencies.  This has engendered at once careerism, lack of accountability, and public cynicism.  Worsening matters is Israeli bureaucracy, which, in its untroubled inefficiency, is typically Mediterranean.  Press freedom somewhat mitigates the picture, since Israeli journalists are not inclined to self-censorship.  Foreign correspondents congregate in the country, free to report without fear or favor, and often show little but disfavor.  Corruption scandals are far from rare, though the country's president, Shimon Peres, once offered a consoling thought: "Better a democracy with scandals than an authoritarian system without scandals."

The Israeli Arabs -- today a minority of approximately 24% -- spent Israel's first years under military rule before participating normally in Israel life.  Trade union membership followed in 1960.  Political representation has always been a feature of Israeli Arab life, with Arab judges presiding over courts and Arab Knesset members sitting in governing coalitions; one, Raleb Majadele, was recently a minister in the government of Ehud Olmert (though he refuses to sing the national anthem, Hatikvah).  Arabs represent Israel abroad in the diplomatic service; the staunchly loyal Druze population has enjoyed a harmonious relationship to the state, its youth even serving in elite units of the armed forces.  Knowing the limits of the human condition, Israel has not imposed army service on its Arabs (though volunteers are taken), just as the U.S. did not deploy Japanese-Americans in the Pacific theater of operations during the Second World War.  One result of this, however, has been that, in a country in which national service is often a prerequisite for good employment and economic opportunities, Arabs have lagged behind. 

The Israeli Arab impetus for integration, such as it was, has eroded dangerously in recent years, perhaps the worst long-term consequence of the Oslo process.  One need only consult the position papers of various Arab advocacy groups to see in print rejection of the Jewish character and symbols of the country and demands for binationalism.  Israeli Arab Knesset members have visited neighboring states still at war with Israel, praised terror groups murdering their fellow citizens, and even advised Arab belligerents on ways to further harm Israel in both war and peacetime.  How Israel deals with these ongoing dangers remains to be seen.  Oslo advocates used to speak of decommissioning the conflict and thereby easing its attendant home front tensions.  In reality, the opposite has occurred.

It is in these circumstances that Israel enters its sixty-sixth year.  Its oldest citizens are the last alive who can maturely recall the pre-state days, the early privations, the flush of vision and pre-sovereign innocence.  With their passing, the last link to Israel's youth will be lost forever.  Shimon Peres, Israel's president, the democratic world's oldest serving head of state, who was once Ben Gurion's private secretary and has been present at virtually all crucial moments in the country's history, will turn ninety later this year. 

Revisiting the national record has been constant with Israeli historians, boasting for over two decades now a discrete group of revisionists keen to debunk alleged nationalist orthodoxies.  As often happens in historical writing, those keen to dislodge old orthodoxies end up creating new ones.  It is not uncommon today to see or hear of Israeli academics lambasting their country's defense and rationalizing Arab aggression.  Some of the revisionists are also at the forefront of a campaign to efface national particularity -- a phenomenon termed "post-Zionism," a peculiarly heedless conception that confuses political normalization with regional assimilation.  Others have lent themselves to the campaign of delegitimization known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).

But post-Zionism, so popular abroad, is in retreat at home.  Twelve years since Arafat's walk-out with a counter-peace offer from Camp David and the unleashing of the so-called second intifada, a disillusion reinforced by Mahmoud Abbas's non-response to Ehud Olmert's 2008 offer of Palestinian statehood, Israelis are largely recovered from the shock of terror and scorching hostility to which they awoke in 2000.  Polls consistently show Israelis to be wary of Palestinian intentions and skeptical of diplomatic designs, whether drawn up at home, in Washington, or elsewhere.  The fusillade of rockets from Gaza permits few beyond the far left to pretend that the Gaza withdrawal was successful or that further negotiated retreats would prove more so. 

But then, winning the war for Israel's acceptance, like nation-building itself, is not the work of a couple of generations.  I very much like an anecdote about the veteran leader of Zionism, Chaim Weizmann.  In giving testimony to the Peel Royal Commission in 1937, convened to seek a solution to the conflict in the land then under British tutelage, Weizmann was asked by one of the commissioners, Sir Horace Rumbold, if he could ever envisage a fully formed Jewish state.  He replied, "Never."  Astonished, Rumbold queried why Weizmann could not foresee the completion of Zionism's work.  Weizmann replied that, just as Britain had been evolved over centuries so that it was impossible to determine when it had been fully formed, so too, it would be impossible to know when the Jewish state was built up and the task at an end. 

Dr. Daniel Mandel is a fellow in history at Melbourne University, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Middle East Policy, and author of H.V. Evatt & the Creation of Israel (London: Routledge, 2004).

From FoxNews:

Kenya police shoot dead "terror couple" who wounded 5 police officers in grenade attack

 May 19, 2013

| Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya –  Police shot dead a couple suspected to be terrorists after they threw four grenades, wounding five officers in an overnight stand-off, a police official said Sunday.

Following a tip, investigators raided the apartment where the couple was staying in the Githurai Kimbo area on the outskirts of Nairobi Saturday evening and ordered them out of their house, said Boniface Mwaniki, the head of the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit.

The couple refused to surrender, threw grenades and used their eight-month-old baby as a human shield, said Mwaniki.

Police fired tear-gas repeatedly into the house, said a resident of the building. The baby was removed from the house unconscious and two grenades were found in the house, said Augustine Nthumbi, the officer in charge of the Githurai Kimbo.

The incident highlights the threat of Islamic extremist violence in Kenya.

The man killed was Kenyan national Felix Otuko, who was suspected of carrying out two grenade attacks in October 2011 — the first of a string of grenade and gun attacks in Kenya, said Mwaniki of the police anti-terrorism unit.

Mwaniki said Otuko was a member al-Shabab cell with another Kenyan national Elgiva Bwire Oliacha, also known as Mohammed Seif, who is serving a life sentence in jail for grenade attacks in Nairobi on Oct. 24, 2011 which killed one person and injured 20 others.

Investigations showed that Oliacha supplied Otuko with the grenades for the two attacks, Mwaniki said.

These attacks followed threats against Kenya from Islamic extremist rebels in neighboring Somalia. The al-Shabab radicals, who are allied to al-Qaida, vowed to attack Kenyan targets in retaliation for the Kenyan government's decision in Oct. 2011 to send troops into Somalia to battle against al-Shabab.

The Kenyan government sent troops into Somalia after several cross-border attacks and kidnapping of foreign tourists that were blamed on al-Shabab.

Al-Shabab was working to establish a new generation of East African jihadists, warned a report by the United Nations in July 2011. The extremists represent a new security challenge for the region and wider international community, the report said. The rebels recruited other Africans in addition to ethnic Somalis, said the report.

Kenyan police warn that some are being trained by al-Shabab in Somalia and then returning to Nairobi slums, a border region near Somalia and Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, warn Kenyan police.

This is Carole Malone in the Mirror. Carole Malone writes the Mirror's 'bitch column'. I grew up on the Daily Mirror in the 50s and 60s when it was a good, campaigning, popular (but not dumb) working class newspaper. It went downhill in the 80s and cancelling it was a easy economy to make. These days it slavishly follows the Labour party line and sponsors pro Islamic, anti UKIP agitators Hope not Hate. Whether Mrs Malone's bluntness signals the beginning of the end of sponsorship for HnH or the end of her career at the Mirror I don't know. But her bluntness and Hope not Hate's reaction to the grooming here in the Yorkshire Post ( Nick Lowles, of Hope not Hate, said: “The evil that is abuse happens across all areas of society. This is not an issue of race or religion. . . We also need to ensure that the media, and far-right groups, do not promote an anti-Muslim agenda over so-called ‘grooming’ trials) are not going to be easy bedfellows.

Why did only one Muslim cleric have the guts to say it? Why was everyone else scared to? Why are they STILL scared to?

And why – even after all the sickening stories of those Oxford schoolgirls having babies aborted with hooks, being repeatedly gang-raped, beaten, branded and burned with cigarettes – are people STILL shying away from saying exactly what kind of crimes these are?

Because what happened to these girls can’t just be chucked in the box marked “general sex crimes”.

These gang atrocities in Oxford – just like the ones in Rochdale, Derby and Telford – were the very worst kind of ­racially motivated hate crimes committed by Muslim men who’ve been taught to believe that white women are worthless trash and deserve to be punished for their “decadent” Western lifestyle, i.e. wearing make-up and short skirts.

And while most Muslim clerics have stayed silent on this, while our wider society refuses to acknowledge what these crimes are REALLY about, only Dr Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic congregation, had the courage to stick his head above the parapet and say what happened to these girls WAS racially motivated and illustrates the deep- seated hatred some Muslim men have for white women.

“Some people are saying the predators’ religion was an irrelevance. But that’s deluded nonsense,” he says.

So why aren’t the police saying that? Why aren’t Oxford social services? Because only when the ugly truth is acknowledged – that in supposedly integrated Britain, some ­Muslim men (NOT necessarily Asian men) are ­targeting young white girls to abuse and degrade – can the problem be tackled.

But having seen how our gutless authorities operate on issues involving race, they knew they could defile white girls however and wherever they chose.

These women, (Thames Valley Chief constable Sara Thornton who earns £160,000 a year and Head of Oxfordshire Social Services Joanna Simmons who earns £182,000 a year, neither of whom have plans to resign) just like everyone else in this horror story, did nothing to confront this evil because to do so might have led to ­accusations of racism.

And everyone knows that in Britain today the quickest way to have your career wrecked is to be branded ­a racist.

And it’s because of this insidious ­political correctness that some Muslims ­appear to have been given immunity to the rules and the moral codes that apply to everyone else. And while some allowances made in the name of religion don’t matter, the wholesale degradation of vulnerable young white women DOES! 

From the German edition of The Local

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has called for the expulsion of Islamic religious leaders who preach hate and said Germany’s laws must be changed to accomplish that.

Friedrich, in an interview published Saturday in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, said, “we have to legally make it clear that using violence to accomplish a religious goal results in an automatic expulsion.”

Friedrich said he will introduce a draft bill at the conference of state interior ministers next week that calls for laws to tougher expulsion laws for extremists.

The paper asked if he was also in favor of making it easier for the government to curb social welfare payments to religious leaders who preach hate.

Friedrich said, “We want to make sure that hate preachers leave the country as soon as possible, then such a question becomes irrelevant.”

The interior minister also warned that Syria is becoming a magnet for European Islamic fighters and estimated that some 30 German Islamists are currently in Jihadist training camps in Syria. “It is to be feared that sooner or later these Islamists will come back against us.” 

From The Telegraph

Al-Qaeda's Syrian wing is helping to finance its activities by selling the product of oilfields that once helped to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Not long ago I bought a book, published in 1922, entitled Syphilis of the Innocent. Needless to say, the title implied a corollary: for if syphilis could be contracted by the innocent (as, for example, in the congenital form of the disease), it could also be contracted by the guilty.

In general, however, physicians do not inquire after the morals of their patients, except in so far as those morals have immediate pathological consequences. They do not refuse to treat patients because they find them disgusting, because they find them unappealing, because they are appalled by the way they choose to live. They try to treat them as they find them; they may inform, but they do not reprehend.

However, in practice things are sometimes more complex than this ecumenical generosity of spirit might suggest. According to an article in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, some doctors have been turning away patients on the grounds that they were too fat (one physician suggested that she did so because, ridiculously, she feared for the safety of her staff once the patients weighed more than 200 pounds), or that their children have gone unimmunised. Is such discrimination by physicians legitimate or illegitimate, legally or morally speaking? Is there not a danger that physicians may hide behind pseudo-medical justifications to express their personal prejudices or to coerce patients into doing what the physicians think is good for them?

Let us take the question of immunization of children as an example. Some general practitioners have refused to treat families whose children are not immunized according to the recommended schedule. They do so on the grounds that a visit to the doctor’s office by an unimmunized child may pose a threat to children who happen to be visiting at the same time. Yet the empirical risk is probably not known and very likely to be small, if it exists: probably much smaller than that of leaving a child of a crankish family without medical advice. In other words, the refusal is an expression of the physician’s irritation, perhaps even of wounded amour propre, rather than of concern for the welfare of children.

Obesity also raises questions of medico-political philosophy.  Surgeons, for example, sometimes refuse to operate on very fat people, especially for conditions that are not life-threatening, because the results are poorer and the rate of complications higher. This is important not only for the patient, but for the surgeon who might be judged by his results. No doubt physicians who refuse to treat the fat are more likely to see them as weak-willed rather than the victims of genetic endowment, physiology or even of society; but some doctors refuse to treat the fat on the grounds that they do not have the special equipment needed to do so. The authors of the article suggest that this is wrong; that the correct approach is that they, the doctors, ought to buy the necessary equipment. The authors, though, do not tackle the question of who is to pay for it: the doctors, the fat themselves, or the other patients? The answer given will depend crucially on one’s moral attitude to obesity.

In practice, say the authors, not many patients face discrimination; doctors still try to do their best for people as they find them. But they conclude:

Overt discrimination is rare. Evidence suggests, however, that even medical professionals are susceptible to implicit discrimination based on race, social class, sex, weight, and myriad other factors that may affect the care they provide.

This sounds ominously like an Inquisition’s charter to me. Perhaps there can be no freedom without tolerance of discrimination.

First published in PJ Media.

From Isracast:

ISRAEL'S OFFER TO SYRIA & RUSSIA

FSA (Free Syrian Army) figther in Alepo, Syria

 Why could the vicious bloody civil war in Syria now spill over into a new war between Syria and Israel? Israel has tried to stay out of the internecine bloodbath of a civil war that has been raging inside Syria for some two years. Since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Bashar regime has strictly enforced the cease-fire agreement with Israel. Israeli and Syrian forces did clash during the First Lebanon War in Lebanon, but even that did not boil over into an all-out war along the Israeli-Syrian border on the Golan Heights. But in the midst of the rebels' attempt to topple the Assad regime, Israel drew a red line: Israeli forces would intervene if the Syrian government tried to ship its chemical weapons or 'game-changing' weapons across the border to Hezbollah, its ally in Lebanon that has repeatedly attacked Israel. Last January, Israeli intelligence detected that a Syrian truck convoy was travelling to Lebanon with a shipment of advanced Russian made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles that could pose a serious threat to Israeli aircrafts. The convoy was bombed, reportedly by Israeli jets. And now this month, Israeli jets, reportedly from inside Lebanese air space, carried out two separate air strikes destroying more shipments bound for Hezbollah that included Fateh-110 surface to surface missiles that could reach Tel Aviv if launched from the Lebanese border area. Israel did not accept responsibility for any of these air strikes in order not to force Assad to retaliate. However, a Pentagon official apparently screwed up and leaked the story that indeed it was Israel! 

 Now put on the spot, a Syrian official declared that in the event of any future Israeli attack, Syrian forces were under orders to retaliate immediately. Iran also pressured Assad to permit Hezbollah to open a military front against Israel on the Golan Heights which has, by and large, remained quiet except for some errant shells and rockets fighting by the warring parties inside Syria. In return, an Israeli official telephoned the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem, warning that if Syria attacked Israel on the Golan, Israel would topple the Assad regime. The last thing President Bashar Assad needed now was to get into a war with Israel. Assad's top priority is to survive by weathering, with Russia's solid support, the rebel offensive which he has done despite most predictions that his days were numbered. 

 Moscow's rules... 

Russian Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin

 The plot thickens, and from Moscow's perspective things are getting out of hand. After Russia has lost Egypt, Iraq, and most recently Libya, President Vladimir Putin is determined not to lose Syria and his naval bases in the Mediterranean port of Tartus. In a clear message to both the U.S. and Israel, a number of Russian naval vessels were dispatched to the Mediterranean. Russia has been supplying Assad's army with weapons while the West has enforced a partial arms embargo on the rebels (however Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arming them surreptitiously). Moscow has a signed but unfilled agreement to sell S-300 state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that although Moscow would not sign any new agreements with Assad, it was duty bound to honor prior arms sales. This sounded alarm bells in Jerusalem. On a trip to China, Netanyahu telephoned U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington to discuss the situation. And immediately on his return from China, the Prime Minister telephoned Putin who invited him to come to the Black Sea resort of Sochi for an urgent meeting where he publicly expressed his displeasure over the Israeli air strikes on Syria: 'At this crucial period it is especially important to refrain from any moves that can further shake the situation'. And what did Netanyahu tell Putin? Channel 2 TV in Israel has reported the Prime Minister as saying: 'The sale to Syria would likely draw Israel into a response, possibly propelling the region into war'. While interviewed on Channel 10 TV, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin, a former chief of IDF Intelligence, said: 'To some extent, the current situation reminds me of the time before the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967'. 

 The U.S., which wants to stay out of the Syrian conflagration, has warned: 'The Russian missile shipment to Syria will embolden Assad and prolong the conflict". 

 Isracast Assessment: Over the past two days Israel has signaled to Syria and Russia that it wants to cool the tension. Interviewed on Israel Radio, Maj. Gen.(ret.) Amos Gilad a top adviser in the Defense Ministry, who often articulates defense policy, made this conciliatory statement: 'President Assad is in control of the Syrian Army's weapons systems and behaves responsibly toward Israel while realizing the force (Israel) that is facing him. Israel is not acting intentionally against the regime of Bashar Assad and the Israeli air strikes in Syria are motivated self-defense'. 

 Several hours later a senior IDF intelligence officer told the Times of London that Israel actually preferred that Assad remain in power: 'Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos, and extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there'.

Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon

 This should not come as a surprise. The Israeli intelligence assessment is that if Assad falls, Syria will fracture into 'cantons' controlled by various communities Alawites and Christians, Shiites, Sunnis, and the Kurds with Jihadist warlords and their forces, without any central control. In the midst of this pandemonium and a likely bloodbath, what will become of the Syrian army's large arsenal of chemical weapons and missiles?  From the Israeli point of view, the Assad regimes of Hafez and Bashar, have managed to keep the lid on and preserved the cease-fire along the Golan Heights. What has upset this delicate balance is Bashar Assad's decision to start sending 'game changing' weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon in return for Hezbollah fighters now stationed in Syria. Israel will not tolerate this move by Assad, and intervened last January. Assad apparently got that message but has now tried again. Again, Israel responded on May 3 and May 5. With the 'help' of a U.S. Pentagon official, Assad was forced to respond publically, Israel did not back down, and the Russians are now involved on Assad's side and 'Bob's your uncle'. How to defuse the current situation? Senior Israeli officials have just clarified that Israel not only does not want to get involved in Syria, but actually prefers that Assad remain in power rather than al Qaeda or other Muslim fanatics. Assad has indicated that he is in no position to take on Israel at this time, so if he stopped trying to send dangerous weapons to Hezbollah, Israel would have no reason to launch air strikes on Syria. Presumably Netanyahu conveyed this message to Putin when they met in Sochi on May 13. If so, can Putin persuade Assad to stop shipping weapons to Hezbollah? The Russian leader certainly has the leverage to do so. If this assessment does not hold water and Russia does send the S-300 missiles to Syria, Israel, which views such a step as a threat to her vital security interest, may very well strike. 

 But then there's Iran... 

 Why did Assad risk getting into hot water with Israel by sending lethal weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon? The answer is likely to be found with his Iranian ally. The Iranians are interested in stirring the pot as much as they can, and that includes strengthening Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah. It would appear that Tehran urged Assad to ship some of his most sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah. What Assad didn't count on is that Israel's intelligence would detect this gambit. If so, who has greater influence on Assad these days, Russia or Iran? But you can bet Iran's leaders are rubbing their hands over the focus of international attention now on Syria and not on their nuclear weapons program.    

From the Jerusalem Post:

Report: Israel prefers Assad survive Syria conflict

By JPOST.COM STAFF
18/05/2013

'Times of London' quotes Israeli officer as saying Israel prefers "the devil it knows."

The scenario that Syrian President Bashar Assad would survive his country's bloody conflict, yet would hold a lesser role, would be preferred by Israel in contrast to a takeover by rebel factions with Islamic extremist inklings, The Times of London cited an Israeli official as saying Friday.

“Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there,” one senior Israeli intelligence officer was quoted as saying.

A weakened, but intact Assad regime would be preferable for Syria and the Middle East, the Times reported intelligence sources as saying. 

The report quoted another defense official who told the Times that Assad's tenacity had been underestimated.

“We originally underestimated Assad’s staying power and overestimated the rebels’ fighting power,” the source said.

The situation that Assad survives, maintaining power in Damascus and in the corridors to the large coastal cities, would entail the breaking up of Syria into three separate states.

The remarks come amid current differing opinions within the defense establishment about what to expect in Syria and what outcome for its northern neighbor would benefit Israel.

Another senior defense official claimed recently in closed conversations that Israel has erred in its estimates of how quickly Assad would fall from power in Syria.

According to the official, Israel has "underestimated" Assad's strength and the inner life force of the Syrian regime.

The defense establishment however, maintains its view stressing that all scenarios are possible in Syria and a change in policy by the West that would lead to military intervention could tip the scales toward one side or the other. 

1. Suspected Islamist gunmen assassinate Yemeni colonel

   Reuters‎ - 7 hours ago
2. Yemen general denounces 'sabotage' of air force

   Business Recorder (blog)‎ - 2 hours ago

From the Jerusalem Post

ROME - A 22-year-old Moroccan man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for planning terrorist attacks on Milan’s main synagogue and Jewish school.The five year and four month sentence against Mohamed Jarmoune was handed down by a court in Brescia on Thursday.

Jarmoune, who has lived in Italy since childhood, was arrested in Brescia in March 2012.

From FoxNews:

Conservative Afghan lawmakers block law protecting women, saying it is against Islam

May 18, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan –  An Afghan legislator says conservative lawmakers have blocked a law that aims to protect women's freedoms, saying parts of it violate Islamic principles.

The failure highlights how tenuous women's rights remain a dozen years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime, whose strict interpretation of Islam kept Afghan women virtual prisoners in their homes.

The law has actually been in effect since 2009 by presidential decree. Lawmaker Fawzia Kofi wants to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent its future reversal.

Among its provisions are bans on child marriage and the traditional practice of selling and buying women to settle disputes.

Kofi said the law was introduced in parliament Saturday but met such fierce opposition that it was withdrawn. It wasn't immediately clear to which parts they objected.

INTERVIEW - Le cinéaste présente à Cannes, hors compétition, Le Dernier des injustes, film qui réhabilite le rabbin Benjamin Murmelstein, figure controversée de la Shoah.

An American reading the headline may not quite believe it: in France, many families -- apparently 15% of those that exist, or is it 15% of those on welfare -- have been receiving monthly allowances of 5,000 or 6,000 Euros. That amounts to about $100,000 a year. The amount depends on the number of children. Which families in France consist of unemployed parents and a  great number of children?

From lefigaro.com:

Annoncée début février, la réforme de la branche famille sera présentée par Jean-Marc Ayrault fin mai ou début juin. Les familles gagnant plus de 5000 euros par mois y perdront.

From Israel Hayom:

Dror Eydar

The banality of Dror Moreh 1. I was invited to a discussion of the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum recently. To prepare, I watched the two films that represented Israel in the American Academy Awards' documentary film category -- Dror Moreh's "The Gatekeepers" and "5 Broken Cameras" by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi. Despite the harsh reviews they received, I recommend seeing them. They represent a perspective that needs to be dealt with. I'll write about "The Gatekeepers" now and save "5 Broken Cameras" for another time. The sycophantic interviews of Dror Moreh in the American media did not bode well for his ability to decode the riddle of the heads of the Shin Bet. They do not say much that is deep in the film. Perhaps this is because Moreh could not deal with such minds or because he was interested not in psychological or intellectual depth, but rather in the political story in which the heads of the Shin Bet served as statistics to fill in the left wing's version of the failure of the Oslo Accords. The theme of "shooting and weeping" has been well known since we came back to our country and had to defend it with our lives, together with the necessity of taking the lives of others. Now even the heads of the Shin Bet have doubts. This either-or quality is the bread and butter of drama: morality versus terrorism, combat versus conscience, control versus the desire for liberty. The film opens with former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin's motto: "There's something unnatural about taking the lives of people in a single second." His predecessor, Avraham Shalom, gives away the film's implied position: "Because of terrorism, we forget the issue of the Palestinian state." Why did we forget? Maybe terrorism was the goal from the onset, and the Palestinians actually never wanted a state? But Moreh is not showing statements that could put cracks in his narrative. While the film pretends to present complexity, it never fulfills its promise. It shows the world as black and white, and the historical excerpts have no profound context. The Six-Day War. A Palestinian population. Occupation. That's it. There's no discussion about our historical, religious and cultural context as a nation living in this region. Not a word about our principled claim to sovereignty over it. 2. One of the film's focal points is the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but not as a failure of the Shin Bet; Moreh doesn't ask uncomfortable questions. He does not ask about the Shin Bet's involvement; the use of the agent Avishai Raviv, who was close to assassin Yigal Amir; or about the dilemma of planting provocateurs among the settlers. The settlers are shown in the context of madness, irrationality and menace. The Jewish underground of the time appears as a stereotype that is supposed to represent the entire settlement enterprise. It seemed that in those parts of the film, we were back in the 1980s, when there was no color television in Israel, but only black (the settlers) and white. Moreh repeats the lie of the demonstration at Zion Square on Oct. 5, 1995 against the Oslo Accords as if those who were on the balcony had seen the photo montage of Rabin in an SS uniform. Had he read the Shamgar Commission report's secret fourth chapter about Avishai Raviv, he would have found out who distributed the photo in the media. (Surprise: It was a Shin Bet agent.) Moreh also repeats the lie about Netanyahu and the coffin that was carried during another demonstration that was said to represent Rabin. That same year, students demonstrated with coffins representing the death of higher education. The coffin at the demonstration symbolized the death of Zionism, not of Rabin, as the writing on it clearly shows. But Moreh is not looking for truth. He seeks only to confirm his version of events, and uses Rabin's assassination to show what he sees as the right wing's culpability. This point is important because Rabin's assassination could have served as a profound mirror for decoding something in the enigmatic personalities of the heads of the Shin Bet. But Moreh is interested only in the oft-repeated, two-dimensional complaint: the occupation. Moreh's version of events posits that the killing of Yahya Ayyash, who was responsible for the murder of so many Israelis, led to a chain of suicide bombings. Those bombings, as he sees it, were our fault. The Second Intifada, which broke out in September 2000, is explained similarly. Ami Ayalon gives a justification for it, and there is no mention of how Arafat planned it in advance, as most experts claim. There is no historical context, only the platitude "violence breeds violence," a vague equation that draws its nourishment from moral relativism and rejects the idea that a righteous person is any different from a wicked one. No distinction is made between good and evil; everything, including the victim's attempt to defend himself, is bound up in the general concept of "violence." On second thought, the film actually does decide who is good and who is evil. Avraham Shalom, who was the head of the Shin Bet when the Bus 300 affair took place, plays a prominent role in the film. In April 1984, terrorists who hijacked a bus were captured, bound and killed. Shalom was considered the toughest of the six Shin Bet heads, and it is hard to get away from the impression that he wanted to clear himself. But nothing can clear Shalom of his statement in the film that our army resembles the German army during World War II (!). Indeed, he qualifies the statement: He's not referring to the way the German army treated the Jews, but the way it treated the Belgians, the Poles and so on. Still, Shalom had hundreds of examples to choose from, but chose one that makes a clear statement: The Israel Defense Forces resemble the Nazi army. After such a foolish statement, can one ever claim otherwise? And as if that were not enough, Ayalon comes along and calls the targeted killings "the banality of evil." From where I sit, that's the peak of the film and a distillation of Moreh's basic assumption. 3. To understand how banal it is to drop intellectual bombshells, we should remember where the expression comes from. It is taken from the title of the book the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about Adolf Eichmann's trial in 1961: "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." For Arendt, Eichmann was a man of ordinary character, a "banal" man who participated in the greatest crime in history. Now, here comes Ayalon's analogy. He compares Israel's adherence to the moral dictum of "if one comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first" to the banality of evil. In such a comparison, there is no choice but to see Israel's defensive surgical strikes as evil. The comparison does not stop there; it goes backward in time to Eichmann and his actions, which are the source of the expression. So it is that two heads of the Shin Bet compare Israel to Nazi Germany. Can there be a clearer expression of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Israel's old-time elite? A thousand public-relations teams throughout the world can never overcome the moral failure of those to whom we entrusted our security. These awful statements are exactly what the director wanted. An analysis of the film reveals his view that Israel's actions in Judea and Samaria are equivalent to the acts of the Germans in World War II. Moreh chooses to end the film with a highly significant scene: Palestinian detainees in their underwear. As is customary for him, he offers no explanation for the detainees' nakedness, which stems from the fear that they may be wearing explosive belts. What remains in the viewers' memories is the photograph of the Palestinians whom the wicked Israeli system has forced, in its banal arbitrariness, to undress and pass by en masse.

Mudar Zahran writes in Middle East Quarterly:

Thus far the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has weathered the storm that has swept across the Middle East since the beginning of the year. But the relative calm in Amman is an illusion. The unspoken truth is that the Palestinians, the country's largest ethnic group, have developed a profound hatred of the regime and view the Hashemites as occupiers of eastern Palestine—intruders rather than legitimate rulers. This, in turn, makes a regime change in Jordan more likely than ever. Such a change, however, would not only be confined to the toppling of yet another Arab despot but would also open the door to the only viable peace solution—and one that has effectively existed for quite some time: a Palestinian state in Jordan.

Abdullah's Apartheid Policies

Despite having held a comprehensive national census in 2004, the Jordanian government would not divulge the exact percentage of Palestinians in the kingdom. Nonetheless, the secret that everyone seems to know but which is never openly admitted is that Palestinians make up the vast majority of the population.

In his 2011 book, Our Last Best Chance, King Abdullah claimed that the Palestinians make up a mere 43 percent. The U.S. State Department estimates that Palestinians make up "more than half" of Jordanians[1] while in a 2007 report, written in cooperation with several Jordanian government bodies, the London-based Oxford Business Group stated that at least two thirds of Jordan's population were of Palestinian origin.[2] Palestinians make up the majority of the population of Jordan's two largest cities, Amman and Zarqa, which were small, rural towns before the influx of Palestinians arrived in 1967 after Jordan's defeat in the Six-Day War.

In most countries with a record of human rights violations, vulnerable minorities are the typical victims. This has not been the case in Jordan where a Palestinian majority has been discriminated against by the ruling Hashemite dynasty, propped up by a minority Bedouin population, from the moment it occupied Judea and Samaria during the 1948 war (these territories were annexed to Jordan in April 1950 to become the kingdom's West Bank).

As a result, the Palestinians of Jordan find themselves discriminated against in government and legislative positions as the number of Palestinian government ministers and parliamentarians decreases; there is not a single Palestinian serving as governor of any of Jordan's twelve governorships.[3]

Jordanian Palestinians are encumbered with tariffs of up to 200 percent for an average family sedan, a fixed 16-percent sales tax, a high corporate tax, and an inescapable income tax. Most of their Bedouin fellow citizens, meanwhile, do not have to worry about most of these duties as they are servicemen or public servants who get a free pass. Servicemen or public employees even have their own government-subsidized stores, which sell food items and household goods at lower prices than what others have to pay,[4] and the Military Consumer Corporation, which is a massive retailer restricted to Jordanian servicemen, has not increased prices despite inflation.[5]

Decades of such practices have left the Palestinians in Jordan with no political representation, no access to power, no competitive education, and restrictions in the only field in which they can excel: business.

According to the Minority Rights Group International's World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples of 2008, "Jordan still considers them [Palestinian-Jordanians] refugees with a right of return to Palestine."[6] This by itself is confusing enough for the Palestinian majority and possibly gives basis for state-sponsored discrimination against them; indeed, since 2008, the Jordanian government has adopted a policy of stripping some Palestinians of their citizenship.[7] Thousands of families have borne the brunt of this action with tens of thousands more potentially affected. The Jordanian government has officially justified its position: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Nayef Qadi told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper that "Jordan should be thanked for standing up against Israeli ambitions of unloading the Palestinian land of its people" which he described as "the secret Israeli aim to impose a solution of Palestinian refugees at the expense of Jordan."[8] According to a February 2010 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, some 2,700 Jordanian-Palestinians have had their citizenship revoked. As HRW obtained the figure from the Jordanian government, it is safe to assume that the actual figure is higher. To use the words of Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW, "Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens."[9]

But Abdullah does not really want the Palestinians out of his kingdom. For it is the Palestinians who drive the country's economy: They pay heavy taxes; they receive close to zero state benefits; they are almost completely shut out of government jobs, and they have very little, if any, political representation. He is merely using them as pawns in his game against Israel by threatening to make Jerusalem responsible for Jordanians of Palestinian descent in the name of the "right of return."

Despite systematic marginalization, Palestinians in Jordan seem well-settled and, indeed, do call Jordan home. Hundreds of thousands hold "yellow cards" and "green cards," residency permits allowing them to live and work in Israel while they maintain their Jordanian citizenship.[10] In addition, tens of thousands of Palestinians—some even claim hundreds of thousands—hold Israeli residency permits, which allow them to live in Judea and Samaria. Many also hold a "Jerusalem Residency Card," which entitles them to state benefits from Israel.[11] Yet they have remained in Jordan. Despite ill treatment by the Jordanian government, they still wish to live where most of their relatives and family members live and perhaps actually consider Jordan home.

Playing the Islamist Card

The Hashemites' discriminatory policies against the Palestinians have been overlooked by the West, Washington in particular, for one main reason: the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was the beating heart of Palestinian politics, and thus, if the Palestinians were empowered, they might topple the Hashemites and transform Jordan into a springboard for terror attacks against Israel. This fear was not all that farfetched. The Palestinian National Charter, by which the PLO lives, considers Palestine with its original mandate borders (i.e., including the territory east of the Jordan River, or Transjordan) as the indivisible homeland of the Palestinian Arab people.[12] In the candid admission of Abu Dawoud, Yasser Arafat's strongman in the 1970s, "Abu Ammar [Arafat] was doing everything then to establish his power and authority in Jordan despite his public statements" in support of King Hussein.[13] This tension led to the 1970 Black September civil war where the PLO was expelled from Jordan and thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered by Hussein's Bedouin army.

With the threat of Palestinian militants removed, the idea of having the Muslim Brotherhood entrenched in a Palestinian state with the longest border with Israel would naturally be of concern to Israel and its allies.

The only problem with this theory is that the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is dominated by Bedouins, not Palestinians. The prominent, hawkish Muslim Brotherhood figure, Zaki Bani Rushiad, for example, is a native of Irbid in northern Jordan—not a Palestinian. Salem Falahat, another outspoken Brotherhood leader, and Abdul Latif Arabiat, a major tribal figure and godfather of the Brotherhood in Jordan, are also non-Palestinians. Upon President Obama's announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden, tribal Jordanians in the southern city of Ma'an mourned the terror leader's death and announced "a celebration of martyrdom."[14] Other cities with predominantly Bedouin populations, such as Salt and Kerak, did the same. The latter, a stronghold of the Majali tribe (which has historically held prominent positions in the Hashemite state) produced Abu Qutaibah al-Majali, bin Laden's personal aide between 1986 and 1991, who recruited fellow Bedouin-Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in a 2006 U.S. raid.[15]

The Hashemite regime is keenly aware of U.S. and Israeli fears and has, therefore, striven to create a situation where the world would have to choose between the Hashemites and the Muslim Brotherhood as Jordan's rulers. To this end, it has supported the Muslim Brotherhood for decades, allowing it to operate freely, to run charitable organizations and youth movements, and to recruit members in Jordan.[16] In 2008, the Jordanian government introduced a new law, retroactively banning any existing political party unless it had five hundred members and branches in five governorates (counties). Since such conditions could only be fulfilled by the Muslim Brotherhood, most political parties were dissolved de jure because they did not meet the new standards, leaving the Islamic Action Front as the strongest party in the kingdom.

Both Jerusalem and Washington are aware of the Jordanian status quo yet have chosen to accept the Hashemite regime as it is, seduced by the conventional wisdom of "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." The facts on the ground, however, suggest that the devil they think they know is in deep trouble with its own supposed constituency.

The Bedouin Threat

Despite their lavish privileges, Jordanian Bedouins seem to insist relentlessly on a bigger piece of the cake, demanding more privileges from the king, and, in doing so, they have grown fearless about defying him. Since 2009, fully-armed tribal fights have become commonplace in Jordan.[17] Increasingly, the Hashemite regime has less control than it would like over its only ruling foundation—the Bedouin minority—which makes up the army, the police forces, all the security agencies, and the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. The regime is, therefore, less likely to survive any serious confrontations with them and has no other choice but to keep kowtowing to their demands.

What complicates the situation even further is that Bedouin tribes in Jordan do not maintain alliances only with the Hashemites; most shift their loyalties according to their current interests and the political season. Northern tribes, for example, have exhibited loyalty to the Syrian regime, and many of their members hold dual citizenships.[18] In September 1970, when Syrian forces invaded Jordan in the midst of the civil war there, the tribes of the northern city of Ramtha raised the Syrian flag and declared themselves "independent" from the Hashemite rulers.

Likewise, Bedouin tribes of the south have habitually traded loyalty for privileges and handouts with whoever paid better, beginning with the Turks, then replacing them with the better-paying Britons, and finally the Hashemites. This pattern has expanded in the last twenty years, as tribesmen exchanged their loyalties for cash; in fact this is how they got involved in the British-supported Arab revolt of World War I, in which the Bedouins demanded to be paid in gold in advance in order to participate in the fighting against the Ottomans despite their alignment with the Ottoman Empire before joining the revolt.[19]

This in turn means that the Jordanian regime is now detested not only by the Palestinians but also by the Bedouins, who have called for a constitutional monarchy in which the king hands his powers to them.[20] Should the tribes fail to achieve their goals, they will most likely expand their demonstrations of unrest—complete with tribal killings, blockades, armed fights, robberies, and attacks on police officers—which the Jordanian state finds itself having to confront weekly. In 2010, an average of five citizens was killed each week just as a result of tribal unrest.[21]

The Hashemite regime cannot afford to confront the tribesmen since they constitute the regime's own servicemen and intelligence officers. In 2002, the Jordanian army besieged the southern Bedouin city of Ma'an in order to arrest a group of extremists, who were then pardoned a few years later.[22] Similarly, Hammam Balaoui, a Jordanian intelligence double agent was arrested in 2006 for supporting al-Qaeda, only to be released shortly thereafter, eventually blowing himself up in Afghanistan in 2009 along with seven senior CIA officers and King Abdullah's cousin.[23]

Palestinian Pawns

These open displays of animosity are of a piece with the Hashemite regime's use of its Palestinian citizens as pawns in its game of anti-Israel one-upmanship.

King Hussein—unlike his peace-loving image—made peace with Israel only because he could no longer afford to go to war against it. His son has been less shy about his hostility and is not reluctant to bloody Israel in a cost-effective manner. For example, on August 3, 2004, he went on al-Arabiya television and slandered the Palestinian Authority for "its willingness to give up more Palestinian land in exchange for peace with Israel."[24] He often unilaterally upped Palestinian demands on their behalf whenever the Palestinian Authority was about to make a concession, going as far as to threaten Israel with a war "unless all settlement activities cease."[25]

This hostility toward Israel was also evident when, in 2008, Abdullah started revoking the citizenship of Jordanian Palestinians. By turning the Palestinian majority in Jordan into "stateless refugees" and aggressively pushing the so-called "right of return," the king hopes to strengthen his anti-Israel credentials with the increasingly Islamist Bedouins and to embarrass Jerusalem on the world stage. It is not inconceivable to envision a scenario where thousands of disenfranchised Palestinians find themselves stranded at the Israeli border, unable to enter or remain in Jordan. The international media—no friend of the Jewish state—would immediately jump into action, demonizing Israel and turning the scene into a fiasco meant to burden Jerusalem's conscience—and that of the West. The Hashemite regime would thereby come out triumphant, turning its own problem—being rejected and hated by the Palestinians—into Israel's problem.

A Pot Boiling Over

The Jordanian government's mistreatment of its Palestinian citizenry has taken a significant toll. Today, the Palestinians are a ticking bomb waiting to explode, especially as they watch their fellow Arabs rebelling against autocrats such as Egypt's Mubarak, Libya's Qaddafi, or Syria's Assad.

The complex relationship between the Palestinian majority and the Hashemite minority seems to have become tenser since Abdullah ascended the throne in 1999 after King Hussein's death. Abdullah's thin knowledge of the Arabic language, the region, and internal affairs, made him dependent on the Bedouin-dominated Jordanian Intelligence Department standing firmly between the king and his people, of which the Palestinians are the majority.[26] A U.S. embassy cable, dated July 2009, reported "bullying" practiced by the fans of al-Faisali Soccer Club (predominantly Bedouin Jordanians) against the fans of al-Wihdat Soccer Club (predominantly Palestinians), with al-Faisali fans chanting anti-Palestinian slogans and going so far as to insult Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent.[27] Two days after the cable was released, Jordanian police mercilessly attacked Palestinian soccer fans without provocation, right under the eyes of the international media.[28]

Palestinians in Jordan have also developed an intense hatred of the military as they are not allowed to join the army; they see Bedouin servicemen getting advantages in state education and health care, home taxes, and even tariff exemption on luxury vehicles.[29] In recent years, the Jordanian military has consumed up to 20.2 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).[30]

Government spending does not end with the army. Jordan has one of the largest security and intelligence apparatuses in the Middle East, perhaps the largest compared to the size of its population. Since intelligence and security officers are labeled as "military servicemen" by the Jordanian Ministry of Finance, and their expense is considered military expenditure, Jordanian Palestinians see their tax dollars going to support job creation for posts from which they themselves are banned. At the same time, the country has not engaged in any warfare since 1970, leading some to conclude that this military spending is designed to protect the regime and not the country—a conclusion underscored by the Black September events.

A Path to Peace?

The desperate and destabilizing measures undertaken by the Hashemite regime to maintain its hold on power point to a need to revive the long-ignored solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict: the Jordanian option. With Jordan home to the largest percentage of Palestinians in the world, it is a more logical location for establishing Palestinian statehood than on another country's soil, i.e., Israel's.

There is, in fact, almost nothing un-Palestinian about Jordan except for the royal family. Despite decades of official imposition of a Bedouin image on the country, and even Bedouin accents on state television, the Palestinian identity is still the most dominant—to the point where the Jordanian capital, Amman, is the largest and most populated, Palestinian city anywhere. Palestinians view it as a symbol of their economic success and ability to excel. Moreover, empowering a Palestinian statehood for Jordan has a well-founded and legally accepted grounding: The minute the minimum level of democracy is applied to Jordan, the Palestinian majority would, by right, take over the political momentum.

For decades, however, regional players have entertained fears about empowering the Palestinians of Jordan. While there may be apprehension that Jordan as a Palestinian state would be hostile to Israel and would support terror attacks across their long border, such concerns, while legitimate, are puzzling. Israel has allowed the Palestinians to establish their own ruling entities as well as their own police and paramilitary forces on soil captured in the 1967 war, cheek by jowl with major Israeli population centers. Would a Palestinian state on the other side of the Jordan River pose any greater security threat to Israel than one in Judea and Samaria?

Moreover, the Jordan Valley serves as a much more effective, natural barrier between Jordan and Israel than any fences or walls. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the centrality of Israeli control over the western side of the Jordan Valley, which he said would never be relinquished.[31] It is likely that the area's tough terrain together with Israel's military prowess have prevented the Hashemite regime from even considering war with Israel for more than forty years.

It could be argued that should the Palestinians control Jordan, they would downsize the military institutions, which are dominated by their Bedouin rivals. A Palestinian-ruled Amman might also seek to cut back on the current scale of military expenditures in the hope that the U.S. military presence in the region would protect the country from unwelcome encroachments by Damascus or Tehran. It could also greatly benefit from financial and economic incentives attending good-neighbor relations with Israel. Even if a Jordanian army under Palestinian commanders were to be kept at its current level, it would still be well below Israel's military and technological edge. After all, it is Israel's military superiority, rather than regional goodwill, that drove some Arab states to make peace with it.

The Palestinians in Jordan already depend on Israel for water[32] and have enjoyed a thriving economic boom driven by the "Qualified Industrial Zones," which allow for Jordanian clothing factories to export apparel to the United States at preferred tariff rates if a minimum percentage of the raw material comes from Israel.[33] Hundreds of Palestinian factory owners have prospered because of these zones. Expanding such cooperation between a future Palestinian state in Jordan and Israel would give the Palestinians even more reasons to maintain a good relationship with their neighbor.

Both the United States and Israel should consider reevaluating the Jordan option. Given the unpopularity of the Hashemite regime among its subjects, regime change in Amman should not be that difficult to achieve though active external intervention would likely yield better results than the wait-and-see-who-comes-to-power approach followed during the Egyptian revolution. After twelve years on the throne, and $7 billion dollars in U.S. aid, Abdullah is still running a leaky ship and creating obstacles to resolving the Palestinian issue.

Washington's leverage can come into play as well with the Jordanian armed forces which are, in theory, loyal to the king. With hundreds of troops undergoing training in the United States each year and almost $350 million handed out in military aid, the U.S. establishment could potentially influence their choices.

Recent events in the Middle East should serve as guidelines for what ought to be pursued and avoided. U.S. diplomacy failed to nurse a moderate opposition to Egypt's Mubarak, which could have blocked Islamists and anti-Americans from coming to power. The current turmoil in Libya has shown that the later the international community acts, the more complicated the situation can get. An intervention in Jordan could be much softer than in Libya and with no need for major action. Abdullah is an outsider ruling a poor country with few resources; his only "backbone" is Washington's political and financial support. In exchange for a promise of immunity, the king could be convinced to let the Palestinian majority rule and become a figurehead, like Britain's Queen Elizabeth.

As further assurance of a future Palestinian Jordan's peaceful intentions, very strict antiterrorism laws must be implemented, barring anyone who has incited violence from running for office, thus ruling out the Islamists even before they had a chance to start. Such an act should be rewarded with economic aid that actually filters down to the average Jordanian as opposed to the current situation, in which U.S. aid money seems to support mainly the Hashemites' lavish lifestyle.

Alongside downsizing the military, a defense agreement with Washington could be put in place to help protect the country against potentially hostile neighbors. Those who argue that Jordan needs a strong military to counter threats from abroad need only look again at its history: In 1970, when Syria invaded northern Jordan, King Hussein asked for U.S. and Israeli protection and was eventually saved by the Israeli air force, which managed to scare the Syrian troops back across the border.[34] Again in 2003, when Washington toppled Saddam Hussein, Amman asked for U.S.-operated Patriot missile batteries and currently favors an extended U.S. presence in Iraq as a Jordanian security need.[35]

Should the international community see an advantage to maintaining the military power of the new Palestinian state in Jordan as it is today, the inviolability of the peace treaty with Israel must be reasserted, indeed upgraded, extending into more practical and tangible economic and political arenas. A mutual defense and counterterrorism agreement with Israel should be struck, based on one simple concept—"good fences make good neighbors"—with the river Jordan as the fence.

Conclusion

Considering the Palestinian-Jordanian option for peace would not pose any discrimination against Palestinians living in the West Bank, nor would it compromise their human rights: They would be welcome to move to Jordan or stay where they are if they so wished. Free will should be the determinant, not political pressure. Besides, there are indications that many would not mind living in Jordan.[36] Were the Palestinians to dominate Jordan, this tendency will be significantly strengthened. This possibility has also recently been confirmed by a released cable from the U.S. embassy in Amman in which Palestinian political and community representatives in Jordan made clear that they would not consider the "right of return" should they secure their civil rights in Jordan.[37]

Empowering Palestinian control of Jordan and giving Palestinians all over the world a place they can call home could not only defuse the population and demographic problem for Palestinians in Judea and Samaria but would also solve the much more complicated issue of the "right of return" for Palestinians in other Arab countries. Approximately a million Palestinian refugees and their descendents live in Syria and Lebanon, with another 300,000 in Jordan whom the Hashemite government still refuses to accept as citizens. How much better could their future look if there were a welcoming Palestinian Jordan?

The Jordanian option seems the best possible and most viable solution to date. Decades of peace talks and billions of dollars invested by the international community have only brought more pain and suffering for both Palestinians and Israelis—alongside prosperity and wealth for the Hashemites and their cronies.

It is time for the international community to adopt a more logical and less costly solution rather than to persist in long discredited misconceptions. It is historically perplexing that the world should be reluctant to ask the Hashemites to leave Jordan, a country to which they are alien, while at the same time demanding that Israeli families be removed by force from decades-old communities in their ancestral homeland. Equally frustrating is the world's silence while Palestinians seeking refuge from fighting in Iraq are locked in desert camps in eastern Jordan because the regime refuses to settle them "unless foreign aid is provided."[38]

The question that needs to be answered at this point is: Has the West ever attempted to establish any contacts with a pro-peace, Palestinian-Jordanian opposition? Palestinians today yearn for leaders. Washington is presented with a historical opportunity to support a potential Palestinian leadership that believes in a peace-based, two-state solution with the River Jordan as the separating border between the two countries. Such leadership does seem to exist. Last September, for example, local leaders in Jordanian refugee camps stopped Palestinian youth from participating in mass protests against the Israeli Embassy in Amman;[39] as a result, barely 200 protesters showed up instead of thousands as in similar, previous protests.[40] As for East Jerusalem, under Israel's 44-year rule, Muslims, Christians, and members of all other religions have been able to visit and practice their faith freely, just as billions of people from all over the world visit the Vatican or Muslim pilgrims flock to Mecca. Yet under the Hashemite occupation of the city, this was not done. Without claiming citizenship, Jerusalem would remain an open city to all who come to visit.

The Jordanian option is an overdue solution: A moderate, peaceful, economically thriving, Palestinian home in Jordan would allow both Israelis and Palestinians to see a true and lasting peace.

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian-Palestinian writer who resides in the United Kingdom as a political refugee. He served as an economic specialist and assistant to the policy coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman before moving to the U.K. in 2010.

[1] "Jordan: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2001," Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, Mar. 4, 2002.
[2] "The Report: Emerging Jordan 2007," Oxford Business Group, London, Apr. 2007.
[3] "Jordan: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2001," Mar. 4, 2002.
[4] "Brief History," Civil Service Consumer Corporation, Government of Jordan, Amman, 2006.
[5] Jordan News Agency (PETRA, Amman), Jan. 10, 2011.
[6] "Jordan: Palestinians," World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Minority Rights Group International, 2008, accessed Sept. 20, 2011.
[7] "Stateless Again," Human Rights Watch, New York, Feb. 1, 2010.
[8] The Arab Times (Kuwait City), Jan. 13, 2011.
[9] "Jordan: Stop Withdrawing Nationality from Palestinian-Origin Citizens," Human Rights Watch, Washington, D.C., Feb. 1, 2010.
[10] "Jordan: Information on the right of abode of a Palestinian from the West Bank who holds a Jordanian passport which is valid for five years," Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Oct. 1, 1993, JOR15463.FE.
[11] "Jordan's treatment of failed refugee claimants," Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Mar. 9, 2004, JOR42458.E.
[12] The Palestinian National Charter, Resolutions of the Palestine National Council, July 1-17, 1968.
[13] Al-Jazeera (Riyadh), Oct. 1, 2005.
[14] Amman News, May 2, 2011.
[15] Ibid., May 2, 2011.
[16] Awni Jadu al-Ubaydi, Jama'at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin fi al-Urdunn wa-Filastin, 1945-1970 (Amman: Safahat Ta'arikhiyya, 1991), pp. 38-41.
[17] Samer Libdeh, "The Hashemite Kingdom of Apartheid?" The Jerusalem Post, Apr. 26, 2010.
[18] CNN, Nov. 28, 2007.
[19] Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (New York: Harper, 2010), p. 19.
[20] Hürriyet (Istanbul), Mar. 4, 2011.
[21] Libdeh, "The Hashemite Kingdom of Apartheid?"
[22] PETRA, Aug. 6, 2011.
[23] "Profile: Jordanian Triple Agent Who Killed CIA Agents," The Telegraph (London), Jan. 2010.
[24] Al-Arabiya TV (Dubai), Aug. 3, 2004.
[25] The Jerusalem Post, Sept. 24, 2010.
[26] Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1, 2006.
[27] The Guardian (London), Dec. 6, 2010.
[28] Qudosi Chronicles (Long Beach, Calif.), Dec. 16, 2010.
[29] "Assessment for Palestinians in Jordan," Minorities at Risk, Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, College Park, Md., Dec. 31, 2006.
[30] "Jordan Military Expenditures—Percent of GDP," CIA World Factbook, May 16, 2008.
[31] Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), Mar. 2, 2010.
[32] Lilach Grunfeld, "Jordan River Dispute," The Inventory of Conflict and Environment Case Studies, American University, Washington, D.C., Spring 1997.
[33] Mary Jane Bolle, Alfred B. Prados, and Jeremy M. Sharp, "Qualifying Industrial Zones in Jordan and Egypt," Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., July 5, 2006.
[34] Mitchell Bard, "Modern Jordan," Jewish Virtual Library, accessed Aug. 11, 2011.
[35] The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), Jan. 30, 2003.
[36] The Forward (New York), Apr. 13, 2007.
[37] "The Right of Return: What It Means in Jordan," U.S. Embassy, Amman, to Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., Feb. 6, 2008.
[38] "Non-Iraqi Refugees from Iraq in Jordan," Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Feb. 20, 2007.
[39] Mudar Zahran, "A Plan B for Jordan?" Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C., Sept. 16, 2011.
[40] The Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2011.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Alleged Hezbollah, Hamas men in NY smuggling ring

By JPOST.COM STAFF
17/05/2013

New York law enforcement authorities bust cigarette-smuggling ring funneling funds to terrorist groups.

NEW YORK – An extraordinary multi-agency policing effort came to a climax on Thursday, as search warrants executed from New York to Virginia led to 16 arrests in connection with a cigarette smuggling ring that authorities believe is the work of Hamas and Hezbollah operatives.

The scheme, which took in at least $65 million, involved Palestinians smuggling up to 20,000 cartons of cigarettes per week from low-tax states, for illegal resale across state lines.

The cost in lost tax revenue to New York State alone is estimated at $80m., authorities said. Based on previous operations, investigators believe the proceeds were being channeled to the two Islamist terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah).

“The proceeds from this alleged scheme can be used to fund a host of other criminal acts that threaten national security and public safety of Americans at home and abroad,” said James T. Hayes Jr., special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New York.

All members of the enterprise were Palestinians between the ages of 37 and 62, the New York Police Department said on Thursday.

Leading the group, the police said, were brothers Basel and Samir Ramadan, who lived in New York while running the operation.

The Ramadan brothers allegedly bought their cigarettes in bulk from a wholesaler in Virginia and stored their stockpile at a facility in Delaware. They expanded their operations by depositing more than $55m. from their illicit sales into small businesses in Maryland, according to the allegations, and the money they earned from those businesses was then used to buy more cigarettes in Virginia.

The question now facing federal investigators is where the proceeds went.

“The association of some of the suspects in this case [with Brooklyn Jewish teenager] Ari Halberstam’s killer, [terror mastermind] the Blind Sheikh [Omar Abdel-Rahman] and a top Hamas official concerns us,” New York police commissioner Ray Kelly said. “While it hasn’t been established yet where the illicit proceeds ended up, we’re concerned because similar schemes have been used in the past to help fund terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

While sources say that investigators are "following the money," the US doesn't expect foreign intelligence or law enforcement agencies to cooperate such that they will have sufficient evidence against the perpetrators to charge them with committing or conspiring to commit acts of terrorism.

In 1995, Operation Smokescreen busted a similar operation that US authorities believe topped $8m. in illicit revenue for Hezbollah. The operation involved numerous local and federal agencies, including the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the FBI.

All cigarette packs sold in New York City must bear a joint New York City and New York State tax stamp, and only licensed stamping agents are authorized to possess untaxed cigarettes and use such a stamp.

Agencies involved in the latest operation apparently used electronic and physical surveillance methods to track down the crime ring.

From The New York Times:

Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War

By BEN HUBBARD

CAIRO — The black flag of jihad flies over much of northern Syria. In the center of the country, pro-government militias and Hezbollah fighters battle those who threaten their communities. In the northeast, the Kurds have effectively carved out an autonomous zone.

After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking up. A constellation of armed groups battling to advance their own agendas are effectively creating the outlines of separate armed fiefs. As the war expands in scope and brutality, its biggest casualty appears to be the integrity of the Syrian state.

On Thursday, President Obama met in Washington with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and once again pressed the idea of a top-down diplomatic solution. That approach depends on the rebels and the government agreeing to meet at a peace conference that was announced last week by the United States and Russia.

“We’re going to keep increasing the pressure on the Assad regime and working with the Syrian opposition,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to keep working for a Syria that is free of Assad’s tyranny.”

But as evidence of massacres and chemical weapons mounts, experts and Syrians themselves say the American focus on change at the top ignores the deep fractures the war has caused in Syrian society. Increasingly, it appears Syria is so badly shattered that no single authority is likely to be able to pull it back together any time soon.

Instead, three Syrias are emerging: one loyal to the government, to Iran and to Hezbollah; one dominated by Kurds with links to Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Iraq; and one with a Sunni majority that is heavily influenced by Islamists and jihadis.

“It is not that Syria is melting down — it has melted down,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of “In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria.”

“So much has changed between the different parties that I can’t imagine it all going back into one piece,” Mr. Tabler said.

Fueling the country’s breakup are the growing brutality of fighters on all sides and the increasingly sectarian nature of the violence.

Recent examples abound. Pro-government militias have hit coastal communities, targeting Sunni Muslim civilians. Sunni rebel groups have attacked religious shrines of other sects. A video circulating this week showed a rebel commander in Homs cutting out an enemy’s heart and liver, and biting into the heart.

Analysts say this shift in the nature of the violence will have a greater effect on the country’s future than territorial gains on either side by making it less likely that the myriad ethnic and religious groups that have long called Syria home will go back to living side by side. As the momentum seesaws back and forth between rebels and the government, the geographic divisions are hardening.

After steadily losing territory to rebels during the first two years of the conflict, government forces have progressed on a number of key fronts in recent weeks, routing rebel forces in the southern province of Dara’a, outside Damascus and in the central city of Homs and its surrounding villages.

These victories not only reflect strategic shifts by government forces but also could further solidify the country’s divisions.

Since mass defections of mostly conscripted soldiers shrank the government’s forces earlier in the uprising, it has largely given up on trying to reclaim parts of the country far from the capital, said Joseph Holliday, a fellow with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

Instead, the government has focused on solidifying its grip on a strip of land that extends from the capital, Damascus, in the south, up to Homs in the country’s center and west to the coastal area heavily populated by Mr. Assad’s sect, the Alawites.

Other than hitting them with airstrikes or artillery, Mr. Assad has made little effort to reclaim rebel-held areas in the country’s far north and east.

The character of those fighting for Mr. Assad has changed, too. As the uncommitted defected, the loyalists remained. “All of these defections and desertions basically created a more loyal and therefore more deployable core,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, who is based in Dubai. “At least you know who is fighting for you.”

Mr. Assad has also come to rely more heavily on paramilitary militias that draw largely from his Alawite sect and other minorities who consider him a bulwark against the rebels’ Islamism. More recently, fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah have added extra muscle, especially in the border region near the town of Qusair, an area dotted with Shiite and Sunni villages that has seen intense fighting in recent months.

This new focus on tightening his grip on the country’s center suits Mr. Assad fine, said Abdulrahim Mourad, a Lebanese politician and former Parliament member who visited Mr. Assad in Damascus last month.

“He told jokes, was very funny,” Mr. Mourad said. “He was very relaxed and relieved.”

In the void left by the government in the country’s north and east, rebel groups have seized swaths of territory and struggled to establish local administrations.

Although the Obama administration and its allies share the rebels’ goal of removing Mr. Assad from power, they have little else in common with the many rebel brigades that define their struggle in Islamic terms and seek to replace Mr. Assad with an Islamic state. Among them is Jabhet al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, the local branch of Al Qaeda, which the United States has blacklisted as a terrorist group.

The war’s duration and the competition for resources have left the rebel movement itself deeply fractured. Few effective links exist between the rebels’ exile leader, Gen. Salim Idris, and the most powerful groups on the ground.

And recent months have seen increasing fights among rebels, diminishing their ability to form a united front against the government. This week, the Islamist Shariah Commission in Aleppo went after rebels accused of looting. The council sent fighters to surround the group’s headquarters and arrested some of its members, confiscating trucks full of looted goods. The haul in one neighborhood included five washing machines and a television.

Another video, circulated this week, showed a Nusra Front leader in eastern Syria standing behind 11 bound and blindfolded captives. After announcing that they had been sentenced by an Islamic court for killing Syrians, he drew a pistol and shot them in the back of the head, one by one.

Activists later identified the man as a Saudi citizen named Qaswara al-Jizrawi. They also determined that the executions took place months earlier since Mr. Jizrawi was killed in March in a gunfight between his and another rebel group that left dozens of people dead on both sides.

In Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh Province, the country’s largest Kurdish majority area, residents have taken in Kurds fleeing violence elsewhere, expanded the teaching of the Kurdish language in schools and raised militias that have clashed with rebel brigades. Many local Kurds are linked to groups in Turkey and Iraq and hope to use the uprising to push for greater autonomy.

These spreading fissures leave little optimism that Syria can be stitched back together under one leadership in the near future.

First published in The Australian.