Showing posts with label Arabs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arabs. Show all posts

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Hillary Huffs, Arab League Puffs, Abbas Blows The House Down

If Abbas believes that America will insist that Israel cease all building activity in East Jerusalem - then pigs might really fly


By David Singer Wednesday, March 17, 2010

It may seem discourteous to Jews and Arabs to refer to their current spat in the same breath as the tale of the three little pigs.

There is rare unanimity between Jews and Arabs when it comes to pigs - both religions forbid the eating of pig or any product derived from pig.

However this common bond has been trashed into pig swill when it comes to Jews and Arabs living within cooee of each other on a postage sized piece of land comprising 5% of historic Palestine with an area approximating the size of Delaware.

The squeals and snorts emanating from the Arab side at the thought of Israel building 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem to accommodate the burgeoning population growth among religious Jewish families averaging 5-6 children continues with ever piercing ferocity. It is almost certain to erupt in a frenzy of demonstrations and stone throwing.

You would think the Arabs were being led to the slaughter and were being pushed out of their existing residences to make way for the Jews. Certainly there have been Court ordered evictions of Arab squatters on Jewish owned properties in East Jerusalem but the 1600 planned units were not slated to be built on the site of those disputed properties.

Israel certainly did commit a huge PR gaffe in announcing its intention to build those 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem for a group of religious Jews who do not even support the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

To make that announcement was extremely naïve and provocative at precisely the time that the Vice President of the United States - Joseph Biden - was visiting Jerusalem - with an entourage that had booked out 200 hotel rooms - to launch the beginning of proximity negotiations to supposedly advance the resolution of competing Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Arab League - believing it could now renege on giving its blessing to those negotiations commencing - - then promptly committed its own PR gaffe in withdrawing its consent to those proximity talks being held - - just two days after agreeing those talks should go ahead .

The American Vice President however appeared to accept Israel’s apology unreservedly.

There the matter should have ended and the proximity talks begun but for the intervention of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who roundly condemned Israel for spoiling what would have been seen as a triumph of American diplomacy in bringing a recalcitrant Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating pen.

Clinton’s verbal onslaught on Israel encouraged Abbas to believe he could now get America to demand Israel halt all building activity in East Jerusalem before the proximity talks were begun.

America - albeit reluctantly - had accepted Israel’s position almost four months ago that there would be no such halt as a condition to the resumption of any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas now mistakenly sniffed a new opportunity to wheedle out of the proximity negotiations with an enraged Hillary Clinton’s backing.

The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator - Saeb Erekat - certainly conveyed that impression when making the following statement:

“The PA “welcomes the statements from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Quartet condemning the Israeli government decision to build settlements in the eastern sector of Jerusalem…

We want these positions to become binding and for Israel to scrap its settlement decisions, especially its plan to build 1600 homes in Jerusalem…

“We want a total halt… we want to stop this Israeli policy that is useless and destructive for the peace process, especially for the US administration’s honest efforts to relaunch real and serious negotiations.”

Hillary Clinton’s huff however had more to do with something ingrained in Arab culture - the loss of face and the need to regain face as soon as possible.

Abbas already had found himself suffering a distinct loss of face when he agreed to commence proximity negotiations - and only after the Arab League provided him with the face saving cover to do so.

His political opponents - Hamas - and other radical Palestinian Arab groups had ridiculed his decision and denigrated his authority when commenting on Abbas’s decision:

“This decision will have serious repercussions for the Palestinians and their cause,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip. “This decision will help Israel in ending the state of isolation it has been in because of its war crimes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Another Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, condemned the decision to resume the negotiations as a “crime” against the Palestinians.

“We consider these negotiations, which will take place in the wake of Israeli escalation against our people and holy sites, a national crime,” he said. “Anyone who negotiates with the occupation is a criminal against our people.”

Abbas was feeling decidedly threatened by his own brethren until Israel’s intemperate announcement provided the Arab League and himself with what he thought was an opportunity for another opportunity to miss an opportunity and regain the loss of face he had sustained by bending to American pressure to agree to proximity negotiations in the first place.

Vice President Biden’s immediate acceptance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology however left the Arab League and Abbas high and dry yet again and subject to even further loss of face if Abbas limply crawled back to the negotiating table in the face of Israel’s provocative announcement to build those 1600 units in East Jerusalem. Hamas would have had a real field day in denouncing Abbas.

Hillary’s attempt to play piggy in the middle by rapping Israel severely over the knuckles thereby restoring Abbas’s loss of face among his own power base, saving his bacon and enabling him to once again agree to conducting proximity negotiations - had backfired.

Abbas misinterpreted Hillary’s huff as a signal that America would now pressure Israel to cease all building activity in East Jerusalem before he was required to commence any proximity negotiations.

If Abbas believes that America will insist Israel do that - then pigs might really fly.

Canada Free Press

David Singer Most recent columns

David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International—an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at: [url=http://www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com]http://www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com[/url]

David can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com

Sunday, February 14, 2010

It’s back to square one in Palestine

The Daily Star.com
By Rami G. Khouri
Commentary by
Saturday, February 13, 2010

The likelihood that Palestinians and Israelis will soon launch indirect negotiations, or “proximity talks” mediated by American officials, sounds positive on the surface, but in reality it is a very bad sign. It provides the illusion of progress toward peace, while in fact it mainly affirms the depressing state of play of the five primary actors in this long Middle Eastern drama – the Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Arabs and the United Nations. The Europeans do not figure here, because they are now busy ski jumping, and perhaps they will re-enter the picture in spring.

The sudden resort to indirect talks is bizarre because it follows 17 years of on and off efforts in which the two sides met regularly and negotiated directly. They have concluded agreements, implemented parts of them, and established joint mechanisms and close working ties in many fields. The 1993 Oslo Accords never achieved their full potential, as the momentum for a comprehensive peace agreement was halted, then reversed, Israeli colonization and Palestinian resistance persisted, and wars followed in Lebanon and Gaza. Now we are back to square one.

The desperate resort to indirect talks following 17 years of failure makes no sense, other than to provide the illusion of progress where there is only stalemate. The Israelis are the most pleased with this development, because they will feel that they have forced the Palestinians and Americans to play by Zionist rules. Talks will resume while core Israeli activities persist unchanged – colonization, expropriation and theft of occupied Arab lands, slow motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from occupied East Jerusalem, the siege and strangulation of Gaza, and refusal to seriously explore resolving the Palestinian refugee issue through the application of UN resolutions and international law.

The Palestinians, represented by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, have neither credibility nor clout. Abbas has tried several approaches to negotiating with Israel, and all have failed. He has marginalized himself and his Fatah movement by trying to do the impossible: enter into a serious diplomatic negotiation without harnessing his Palestinian national assets, resolving the split with Hamas, or marshalling the support of wider circles of allies in the region and beyond. When he finally did take a principled stand – refusing to negotiate with Israel until it froze all settlement activity – he was unable to maintain this for more than a few months, and ultimately panicked and agreed to the bizarre proximity talks suggestion.

The Americans are the world’s least credible go-between, to judge by their performance during the past four decades. Senator George Mitchell’s personal credibility from his Northern Ireland days is impressive, but the past year has not provided a single shred of evidence that the Obama administration wants to apply the approach that worked in Northern Ireland to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The opposite seems to be the case, as the United States has backed down from demanding an Israeli settlement freeze and still refuses to engage diplomatically with Hamas. Relying on the US to mediate fairly when Israel is involved seems slightly delusional

The Arabs who should provide support for the Palestinians are nowhere to be seen. They have never seriously followed up their 2002 Arab peace plan that offered Israel long-term, comprehensive peace, coexistence and normal relations. Whether this is because of insincerity, incompetence or irresoluteness due to dependency on US (and occasionally Israeli) protection is not clear. What is clear is that the Arabs collectively are on diplomatic vacation.

The United Nations is intriguing as an actor, or, in this case, a non-actor. While it is not a sovereign player, but rather reflects the collective position of the world’s states, it does provide diplomatic mechanisms that states can make use of, and that the secretary general of the UN can trigger as well through his personal initiatives. The organization remains on the sidelines, however, shackled by its odd participation in the American-dominated and Israeli-defined Quartet (with the US, the European Union and Russia), licking the wounds of its own growing irrelevance.

The resort to indirect proximity talks merely highlights the prevailing postures of the five principal actors. None of the five has offered any sign that it will change positions to help move towards a diplomatic breakthrough. With no likelihood of progress, it is not clear why anyone is interested in these proximity talks, other than to perfect their skills in the domain of diplomatic illusion and self-deception.

It is interesting to contrast these moves with this week’s 20th anniversary commemoration of F.W. de Klerk’s release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, a decisive, bold move that paved the way for justice, peace and reconciliation in that land. The giants who changed South Africa belong to a different world than the thugs, wimps and children who prevail in Israel and Palestine.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

Note: "The Israelis are the most pleased with this development, because they will feel that they have forced the Palestinians and Americans to play by Zionist rules." When anyone makes a bold statement that Israel is playing by "Zionist rules", all credibility of that individual ceases - for it demonstrates antisemitism. Please look at the following:

Zionism Is Not Racism


In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution slandering Zionism by equating it with racism. In his spirited response to the resolution, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog noted the irony of the timing, the vote coming exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht.

Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which holds that Jews, like any other nation, are entitled to a homeland.

History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through a national homeland. Zionism recognizes that Jewishness is defined by shared origin, religion, culture and history.

The realization of the Zionist dream is exemplified by more than four million Jews, from more than 100 countries, including dark-skinned Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and India, who are Israeli citizens. Approximately 1,000,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Baha'is, Circassians and other ethnic groups also are represented in Israel's population.

Many Christians have traditionally supported the goals and ideals of Zionism. Israel's open and democratic character and its scrupulous protection of the religious and political rights of Christians and Muslims rebut the charge of exclusivity.

The Arab states define citizenship strictly by native parentage. It is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Several Arab nations have laws that facilitate the naturalization of foreign Arabs, with the specific exception of Palestinians. Jordan, on the other hand, instituted its own "law of return" in 1954, according citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews.

The presence of thousands of black Jews in Israel is the best refutation of the calumny against Zionism. In a series of historic airlifts, labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991), Israel rescued almost 42,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community.

To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism. "A world that closed its doors to Jews who sought escape from Hitler's ovens lacks the moral standing to complain about Israel's giving preference to Jews," wrote noted civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."

The 1975 UN resolution was part of the Soviet-Arab Cold War anti-Israel campaign. Almost all the former non-Arab supporters of the resolution have apologized and changed their positions. When the General Assembly voted to repeal the resolution in 1991, only some Arab and Muslim states, as well as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam were opposed.

Zionism Is Not Racism IS FROM the website Jewish Virtual Library,

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Zionism_Is_Not_Racism.html

.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Salaam only sounds like Shalom

WHERE DID THIS CULT OF HATRED AND DESTRUCTION COME FROM?

By David Rushton Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Italian and Spanish languages have many similarities. The numbers, for example, are almost the same in both languages because they came from the same root. Similarly the Arabic language has a lot in common with Hebrew because they are both Semitic languages. So when a Muslim says Salaam we naturally think of the Hebrew Shalom as having the same meaning. But while Salaam is translated as “peace” it doesn’t carry the same thought to a Muslim. Muslims believe that they will only have peace when all enemies of Allah are dead and the World under submission to Islam. Above all they want to destroy Israel and take over all of Israel for Allah. That would be true Salaam to them.

The Israelis have no such ambition. To an Israeli the idea of peace is to be left alone to enjoy life and continue to beautify and bless the Land God gave them. They have already fulfilled the biblical prophecy of turning the desert into a rose garden and they want to continue with that dream. Israeli Universities and pharmaceutical laboratories continue to lead the world in helping mankind and their electronics companies pioneer products that make life more productive throughout the world. They have no desire at all to take any Arab or Muslim lands. They want only what the God of the Bible promised them 3000 years ago. Yet while Israelis do nothing but good they are surrounded by the Evil Empire of Islam which constantly plots the destruction of Israel.

The patience of the Jewish people is amazing. After being forced into exile 2000 years ago they have returned to the Land given to them by God (something no other nation can claim) and they have had to fight nature on the one hand to conquer the desert, and on the other hand fight for the right to even exist at all in a very impatient world. Yet Israel has smiled and offered peace after every time they have been attacked. But today’s Israelis are a little different from the Jews of the 1940s who resignedly walked into the gas chambers. The Israelis are tough and they are determined never to give up again in the face of brutality and ignorance. In today’s world Israel waits patiently as the Muslims rain down rockets on her towns and villages from Lebanon and from Gaza until finally she is forced to move and fight back with great force because the United Nations does nothing to help. And then the Muslims whine and the U.N. condemns the victim once again for not just dying when provoked and attacked.

In a very real sense the world is split into two camps. There are those who stand up for Israel and the God of Israel and those who oppose God and His Chosen People. Of course critics will scoff at this simple statement but in fact from the very beginning God has given man a very simple choice to follow Him or to oppose Him and in most cases man has chosen the latter. In this, the end of days, one anti-God entity has arisen to dwarf all others and it has set its sights on the destruction of Israel and any who would stand with Israel. From the start it was a cult of war and destruction and it can never change.

World opinion based on the screams of the Muslims and broadcasts by the CNN and other networks of deception believes that Israel is an aggressive nation and that the Muslims are oppressed by them. But any person who takes the time to read knows that it is exactly the opposite.

While Israel is daily confronted by this menace the United States is also one of its foremost targets.

We all remember where we were on September 11, 2001. It was like the day Kennedy was shot. We were all so stunned by the TV film of the airliners flying into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 that we will never forget where we were when we first saw them. But where were you on February 26, 1993?

At 12:17 p.m. that afternoon, a Kuwaiti immigrant Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim (AKA Ramzi Mohammed Yousef),drove a rented Ryder truck into the basement of the underground garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. In the back of that truck fellow Muslims had loaded 1,500 pounds of explosives designed to destabilize the north tower and send it crashing into the south tower thereby destroying the complete twin towers complex.

After setting the timer Yousef calmly walked out of the building and his Muslim friends spirited him away to Pakistan. Subsequently Ramzi Yousef was arrested in Pakistan and extradited to the United States for trial. During the next four years a total of seven Muslim conspirators were convicted of involvement in the attack including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. These Muslims failed in their attempt to destroy the towers. They succeeded in murdering six people and causing financial damage but it was not the spectacular event they needed to bring attention to the teaching of the Khoran and bring America to her knees. But that was only the first part of the Muslim attempt to destroy the World Trade Center.

On September 11, 2001, they tried again. 19 Muslims hijacked four airliners. Two of them were crashed into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and the fourth, aimed at the White House, was diverted by the gallant act of passengers and finally blew up in a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3000 innocent people died in those attacks including citizens of 80 other nations: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 Israelis; more than 250 citizens of India; and hundreds of British citizens.

Although most of those mass murderers were from Saudi Arabia, not all of them were. The nineteen had only two things in common. They were men and they all believed fervently in the teachings of the Koran.

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush made a speech at the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. which included the words “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” Where was Congressman Joe Wilson that day to shout “You lie.” to a president. (He shouted “You Lie” at Obama).

I cringed when I heard George make that statement. Apparently his speechwriters thought that the word Islam means “peace.” But in fact it means Submission- submission to the will of Allah as laid down in the Koran and Hadith. And the Koran and Hadith instruct Muslims to live at peace with other Muslims but to make merciless and unceasing war on the unbeliever.

On December 10, 2002 President Bush said “Islam traces its origins back to God’s call on Abraham. And Ramadan commemorates the revelation of God’s word in the Holy Koran to the prophet Mohammad.” Oh Joe, how we needed you again to shout “You Lie.”

How could any thinking person say that Islam traces its origins back to Abraham? Mohammad founded the Muslim cult more than 1600 years after Abraham. It was based on bits and pieces of more than 300 cults and religions of his day. He skillfully wove into the fabric of Islam parts of other religions in an attempt to entice Jews, Christians, and other to join his new cult. As part of the plot he rewrote parts of the book of Genesis to say that Ishmael was the father of the chosen nation. For instance, he claimed that it was Ishmael who accompanied Abraham to Mount Moriah and was about to be sacrificed as a test of Abraham’s faith. We know, of course, that it was, in fact, Isaac and that God specifically stated that the line of promise would go through Isaac and absolutely not through Ishmael. Ishmael would receive a blessing yes, but he would father a nation of angry warriors – the Arabs.

Genesis 16 8-12 And the angel said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” The angel of the LORD also said to her: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (New International version)

YES! I know George Bush was trying to avert the natural tendency of Americans to take revenge on the enemy in our midst. The government was in a very difficult position because Americans were very angry. Most of us would have been horrified at the result if that natural tendency for revenge had not been muted. So George was trying to calm the troubled waters of American feelings. But to deliberately lie about Islam and whitewash it was also wrong.

Come on George, do you really believe Islam is Peace? Surely that must rate as one of the most naive statements ever. It was Islam that destroyed the twin towers in New York. It was Islam that killed those people in a Pennsylvania corn field. It was Islam that killed those people in the Pentagon. There were no Jews among them. There were no Christians in their ranks, no Hindus, not even a Mormon or a Scientologist. They were ALL Muslims dedicated to the teachings of the Koran.

A poll of Evangelical Protestant leaders taken in 2002 revealed that only 10% agreed with President Bush that Islam was synonymous with peace.

Pope Benedict XVI refused to agree that Islam was a religion of peace. However he stated: It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: We must always seek the best elements.

Well, I tend to agree with the Pope. If we could teach Muslims to live by the good verses and reject the violent ones it would be wonderful. But every Friday their Imams all over the world teach violence and lawlessness. For example there was that British Imam Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, who told his congregation that they need to go out and rob banks. “Are you poor? Don’t cry about it, but wage jihad, also by holding up banks,” “Do you, like many, cry because you are poor? If so, wage jihad! Look at all the money stashed away in Swiss banks. How can we compete with that?

You can’t rewrite history and make sweeping alterations in the Bible to justify a bloodthirsty cult of war and destruction. Mohammed was a desert brigand who made his living plundering the camel caravans that crossed Arabia between India, Europe, and Africa. He was illiterate but dictated his ravings to scribes who wrote them down and used many parts to eventually form the Koran and the Hadith. And it is these two hate-filled books that have given rise to the bloody tactics of terror used by Muslims today.

Muslims have never had any concern for the Geneva Convention or any other rules of war set down by nations to reduce suffering and promote some vestige of what is fair and right. If war is inevitable then at least it should be fought with some degree of care and fairness. Hospitals, churches, synagogues and even mosques are considered as safe havens and never to be attacked. Enemy wounded must never be killed but taken as Prisoners of War and treated for wounds. Women and children must never be attacked.

The Israeli Army has always followed these rules except in the case of a few individual soldiers and these were tried and sentenced by military courts. But the Muslims have no such rules when fighting against Israel, other armies, or even against other Muslims. There have been numerous accounts of Muslims blowing up Mosques belonging to other segments of Islam and they certainly don’t mind killing children, even Muslim children, for the cause just so that they can blame it on Israel. And when they do such things they can be sure to get the U.N. and the press to pass on the lie for broadcast to the world.

Their tactics include

Using Hospitals as firing positions so that when the Israelis fire back they kill patients.

Using Ambulances to take terrorists from Gaza into Israel because they know the Israelis will let the ambulance go through checkpoints.
Setting up rocket launchers right next to apartment houses and accusing the Israelis of genocide when they fire back at those positions.

Sending Arab children into the space between the two armies so that Israelis will shoot the children. The Israelis would never do this knowingly but the sight of a fourteen year old boy running toward them in the night has on some occasions caused Israeli snipers to fire.

Forcing women to wear an explosives belt and sending them into a group of Israeli soldiers while they detonate the explosives from a safe distance.

There is nothing they will not do to gain a victory for Islam and they use the Koran to justify everything because the Koran teaches that anything done to further Islam is permissible.

Israeli Children are taught in school to love and to make peace while Muslim schoolchildren are taught to hate Jews. They are given toy guns and taught to march. America was shocked to find children being forced to perform pro-Obama songs in school but Muslim children are taught to sing songs of hatred and in order to get good grades they have to make speeches about their desire to become a Shaheed (Martyr) by killing Jews.

Meanwhile the United Nations refuses to condemn the Muslims but condemns Israel at every possible chance. The Goldstone report after Operation Cast Lead (when Israel was forced to go back into Gaza after months of rocket attacks on Israeli towns) concluded that there were violations on both sides but the UN published ONLY the parts of it that condemned Israel.

In Joseph Farah’s C2 Bulletin he quotes London’s MI5 as saying that Muslim doctors have trained in London and returned to their own countries to fit explosive implants into female suicide bomber’s breasts. It sounds like something from a James Bond movie but apparently it is true. British scientists say that a woman could carry enough undetected explosives in this way to blow a hole in an airliner that would force it to crash. So it has come to that; even that part of the body God designed for nurturing and peace the Muslims have turned into a weapon of war. Indeed they will stop at nothing to kill, maim, and destroy humanity.

Israel keeps making peace in the face of this hatred yet the U.N. and the press constantly paints Israel as the aggressor. The smallest child in the school is accused of bullying the bullies. What insanity.

WHERE DID THIS CULT OF HATRED AND DESTRUCTION COME FROM?

We all know that it was started by an obscure brigand in the desert of Arabia who robbed desert caravans for a living, stealing the merchandise killing the men and raping the women. He claimed to have a vision of the Angel Gabriel who said that God wanted him to start a new religion. He continued to have visions and while he did he frothed at the mouth and shook violently. Some say he was an epileptic but Mohammed himself said that he was demon possessed.

Mohammed relied on market research. If one form of his new cult did not seem to be very popular he made some changes and tried it again. For instance, he lived in a part of Arabia that worshiped more than 360 gods and goddesses. When he test marketed his one god theory he ran into a road block of immense proportions. Naturally if all those 360 plus gods were dumped a lot of people would be out of a job. Eventually Mohammed decided that one god would not work and announced that he was wrong on that and the other gods were reinstated. But then he found that all of his followers who liked the one god religion were angry and wanted to take their toys and go home. Either way Mohammad would lose. So he finally decided that he would have one god plus the two daughters of Allah and that should make a lot of people happy and maybe that would be enough to start his new religion. Later, facing more opposition, he had to remove Allah’s two daughters and go back once again to his one god idea but he blamed his constant changes on the fact that he was demon possessed, which was probably the one grain of truth in the whole thing. Yes, that fact is there and Muslims do not deny it.

During his lifetime Mohammed never displayed any tendencies toward peace. Indeed he seemed to be constantly at war with his neighbors. Since the people of Mecca had more sense than to accept his new cult he had to make war on them and force them into submission (remember Islam means submission). He massacred whole villages of people who opposed him and according to a Muslim website he personally led his cutthroat army in no less than 27 battles against mostly defenseless villagers. When asked if it was right to murder women and children in these raids he answered that it was the will of Allah.

These 27 battles did not include the ones he sent his armies to fight but only the ones he himself led. Is this a man of peace who founded a religion of peace? Was George right to say “Islam is peace?”

Mohammed told his followers many times that they must kill for the cause. One quotation beloved by Muslims is “Paradise is under the shade of the sword.” Can there be any doubt as to the meaning of such a statement. In another place Muslims are told “Kill anyone if it is in a just cause”. Oh! “What might be a just cause?” In other places they are told that anything they say or do to further Islam is justified.

The Khoran also teaches that any who leave Islam or who oppose Islam must be hunted down and be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or be expelled out of the land.

So where do people get the idea that Islam is a religion of peace, or a religion at all?

It was Islam that caused the Armenian genocide.

A bill deploring the Armenian Holocaust was seen as sure to pass through Congress in 2000 until the Turkish Government warned the United States not to allow it or suffer the consequences. Under Islamic threats the mighty United States backed down and came into submission (Remember please that Islam means submission).

In early April of 1915 Armenian officers in the Turkish army suddenly found themselves under arrest for no apparent reason. With their leaders in custody the lower ranks were also arrested and all of them were then transferred to labor battalions. Not many days later they were all shot without trial.

On the 24th April 1915, 300 Armenian leaders from all over Turkey were executed. They included writers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen, church men, and civil servants. The same day in Constantinople (Istanbul) the Muslims rounded up 5,000 more Armenians and cut them to pieces in the streets and in their homes, shops and schools.

Finally the rest of the Armenians all over Turkey and Armenia were arrested and told they were to be relocated. Then they began the “Death March.” They were told they would be taken to concentration camps in the desert between Jerabalus and DeitesZot. Many never made it to the camps dying on the way of heatstroke. Children and old and sick people who could not keep up were shot or bayoneted on the spot. Those who were able limp and crawl to the camps wished they had not. They were left to die in the baking sun without food or water. Ironically, on the Black Sea Coast the Armenians were taken out to sea and drowned.

In all 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered or starved to death buy the Muslims.

But Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright persuaded the American Congress to submit to Islam and never allow that bill to come up for a vote.

It was Islam that murdered hundreds of Israelis on buses and in other terror attacks.
It is Islam that constantly bombards Israeli villages with rockets from Gaza. Gaza is part of the Land deeded to Israel by God yet the world forced Israel to give Gaza to the Muslims as part of the Land for Peace initiative and from there Muslims bombard them with rockets.

Is Israel a Warmongering Nation?

In mid-May of 2007 Muslims in Gaza fired more than 220 Qassam rockets into the Israel town of Sderot in the Negev in just one week. Israel waited patiently for the UN to step in and stop the attacks on unarmed Israeli civilians. But as usual the UN did nothing to help Israel and prompted the inevitable Israel retaliation.
Israel had no choice but to strike back. They could not possibly allow their citizens to be killed by over the border rockets and nobody did anything to stop the constant bombardment.
No other country would have waited so long and so patiently in the face of constant attacks by the enemy. Had Russia attacked the United States with missiles the United States would have sent such a barrage of rockets on Russian cities as to wipe them out in a few hours. Can you imagine China waiting patiently and doing nothing if it were attacked by Taiwan? So why did the world expect Israel to do nothing about those rockets fired into Israeli towns by the Muslims in Gaza? It seems that Israel is the one country in this world to that is expected to turn the other cheek over and over again.

While Israel has never admitted to having any nuclear weapons in her arsenal if we are to believe the reports of experts Israel has enough nuclear weapons stored in the desert near Dimona to wipe out every Arab and Muslim capital in a matter of hours. So why don’t they do it? Surely it is because Israel is the most patient and forgiving nation on the face of the earth. They truly believe in Shalom.

Israelis want peace more than anything and they have given constantly in a naive bid for peace. But the Muslims have never reciprocated. They follow a cult of war and will never make peace until the whole world is under the Muslim curse.

They live their lives under the shadow of an evil book called the Koran. Politicians, reporters, and even religious leaders claim that the Koran is a book that offers peace. But in fact the only peace it proclaims is the peace of those who kill for Islam.

I know that President Bush wanted to calm America down and stop Americans from a wholesale slaughter of the enemy in our midst, but George you lied to us and when our country is at war with the evil empire of Mohammed that seems to be getting pretty close to treason doesn’t it?

Not only did George’s speechwriters put lies in his mouth but they also got a very basic fact wrong. Islam has never been translated as “peace”. The word for peace in Arabic is Salaam. But then of course that particular peace refers to the peace Muslims will have when all the enemies of Allah are dead.

THE PRESS, FEEDS THE MYTH OF ISRAELI BRUTALITY

People say they don’t believe half what they see on T.V. but the fact is that they do retain the lies in their memories and at least wonder if some of the stories could be true. A man can be found not guilty of murder but there will always be some who say “There’s no smoke without fire.” So a public bombarded by constant lies cannot help wonder about Israel.

One Howling example of dishonest reporting was a story in the New York Times on September 20th 2000 in which they showed a photograph of a poor battered Palestinian youth with blood running from his mouth and a vicious looking Israeli Policeman standing over him with a club ready to hit him again if he tried to get up. The world was shocked at this example of Israeli brutality as the photo appeared in one newspaper after another from London to New York and from Shanghai to Moscow.

But the unfortunate “Palestinian” was in fact Tovia Grossman a Jewish youth from New York. He and some friends had been travelling in a taxi when it was stopped by a mob of Muslims who forced the young people out of the car and began to beat them. Fortunately an Israeli policeman came on the scene just in time and the photo was in fact of Tovia being protected from the Muslim mob. But the New York Times did not care how many lies they told in order to get across their theme that Israelis are bad people.

There are numerous accounts of so called “Palestinians,” including children, being shot by Israeli soldiers which, when investigated proved to be a case of Palestinians shooting innocent civilians and pretending the Israelis did it. In the recent war in Gaza many residents told of rocket batteries being set up in houses or villages to deliberately draw Israeli fire and no matter how careful the Israel soldiers were they could not help killing or wounding a few innocent people forced to stay there by the Muslim terrorists.

When I was growing up in England we could rely on the BBC to report the news without bias I’m not sure when it was that the BBC diverted from its policy of no bias and began to attack Israel at every possible opportunity with lies and distortions. At one point the BBC correspondent in Gaza spoke to a crowd of radical Muslims and assured them that the press was on the Muslim side fighting with the Palestinians against the Israelis. The BBC dismissed his speech as “his own opinion.” But aren’t reporters supposed to report the news. Since when are they supposed to make the news?

The number of anti-Israel news reports on TV and in print is staggering. There is a constant onslaught of lies. No wonder so many people doubt the sincerity of the Israelis.

May I suggest that you go to one site that endeavors to sort out the truth from lies when it comes to reporting about Israel? honestreporting.com and Jihadwatch

Muslims export death – Israel exports life

Do you remember the song from the 60s,

When it’s Spring again
I’ll bring again
Tulips from Amsterdam.

The tulips only grow in Holland in late April or early May. Yet whenever you visit the flower market you’ll find beautiful tulips for sale. The truth is that they are grown in Israel and flown to Holland every day.

You’ll find Israeli refrigerators and other appliances in all of the Arab countries. They first go across the border to Jordan where the manufacturers plates are changed to show them being manufactured in Jordan.

The best of the tomatoes in the British Greengrocer stores come from Israel. Israeli bananas find an eager market in Paris. And so it goes on.

Israelis export life to Jordan. If you take the road from the Dead Sea to Galilee and look to your right you’ll see the Jordan River, a glistening snake reflecting the sunlight. And on both sides of the Jordan there are miles and miles of farms producing everything from cucumbers to lettuce and from corn to cabbages. The Israeli government has been sending specialists to help the Jordanians plant Israeli seeds and nurture them by means of the Israeli drip system of watering through tiny tubes containing nutrients. Israel has done the same for many countries in Africa, Central America and Asia.

Did you see that report on CNN about the Israeli field hospital set up in Haiti within 24 hours of the earthquake while it took the American government six days to get organized? In fact Israel is first on the disaster scene all over the world. It’s amazing for a tiny country surrounded by enemies and fighting for her own survival.

Yet I always remember that man in London who owned a Jewish Deli. When I asked him how are things for Jews in London these days he said “Not so bad, but no matter how many times I wash my hands they always call me a Dirty Jew.”

Salaam only sounds like Shalom

The two words are similar because they come from the same route in Semitic language but in fact they are very different.


David Rushton Most recent columns

David Rushton was born in London where his parents were staunch conservatives. He immigrated to the United States in the sixties and formed a patriotic organization advocating conservative principals which include rallies and marches. He had his own radio talk show for many years and was also a guest on many radio and Television talk shows.

In the last few years David wrote several books about the dangers of radical Islam and spoke on this subject in some of the largest Conservative Churches in the United States.

He now resides with his wife Marcia in Costa Rica.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Israel's Muslim Problem is Not Unique


Sultan Knish
ByL Daniel Greenfield

The visit of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to Israel this week is a timely reminder that Israel's problems with Islam are not unique. Like Israel, Bulgaria was ruled over by the Ottoman Empire, which exported their population to Bulgaria, oppressed the native Bulgarians, seized their lands and attempted to become the dominant majority. And when the Ottoman Empire lost control over Bulgaria, it left behind a huge Muslim population in Bulgaria.

The key difference between Bulgaria and Israel, is that Bulgaria since the 1870's forced much of its Turkic Muslim population to leave. As a result millions of Turkic Muslims left Bulgaria, leaving it a quieter place than neighboring Yugoslavia or Russia, or for that matter modern day France. Muslim clothing was banned, mosques were torn down and lands held by the Ottoman Muslim settlers were returned to native Bulgarians.

Today Bulgaria still has a troublesome Muslim minority of under a million, led by Ahmet Dogan, and backed by Turkish intelligence, which under Islamist PM Erdogan has branched out into promoting Jihad, much as Pakistan had. But despite Turkish attempts to intervene in Bulgaria, the country's Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov is a staunchly anti-Muslim leader, who has challenged Turkey's EU bid over its expulsion of Bulgarian in the 1920's.

Bulgaria is an example and a warning not just to Israel, but to Europe, Russia, Australia, America and many other parts of the world as well. Had Bulgaria not made life uncomfortable for Muslims, its fate in the 1990's would have probably resembled that of Yugoslavia, torn apart by foreign backed civil war and then carved up by Clinton and Albright. That same fate is now overtaking Israel and will overtake Europe as well.

That is because Israel's Muslim problem is not unique. Israel, like so many other lands, was overrun by Muslim conquerors who repressed the native Jewish population and settled their own population in its stead. The only unique thing about Israel's dilemma is that when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, Israel did not receive its freedom. Instead a British Mandate that was supposed to create a Jewish state, instead tried to create an Arab client state by expanding Arab immigration to Israel, while restricting Jewish immigration.

Had Israel received its freedom after WW1 when its Ottoman overlords departed, it would have never been overrun by Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who were magically transformed into "Palestinians" in the 70's at the behest of the KGB. Nor would the Holocaust have claimed a fraction of the lives that it did, had Israel existed as an independent nation capable of taking in refugees, instead of having its ports shut to refugees by a British Empire more interested in appeasing Muslims and using them to establish client states under their control. And the worldwide Jihad and Oil for Terror are the aftereffects of British and American appeasement and coddling of Muslim desert sheiks then.

But the past is in the past. The challenge of the future is to learn from it. The long term effects of Muslim expansionism around the world has embedded Muslim minorities in countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Those minorities have always served as a local powder keg, which is now being lit with the help of Saudi petrodollars. Now a new wave of Islamic expansionism through immigration and Jihad is spreading even into regions that had never known the tyranny of Islam such as Australia, North and South America; as well as Europe where Islam had not succeeded in taking root before.

The toxic brew of religious supremacism and nationalist racism represented by Islamic expansionism is a threat to nearly every country in the world, whether they choose to admit it or not. And while Israel's troubles with Islam are more likely to become front page news, because its presence some 700 miles from Mecca is a perennial thumb in the eye of the Jihad-- it is also the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world.

Islamism insures that Muslims cannot co-exist with non-Muslims except under a harsh dictatorship. Which leaves free nations with a choice between tyranny and removing the Muslim minority within its borders. The absence of Islam within one's borders does not guarantee peace, but the presence of Islam insures that conflict will come sooner or later. The examples of that are unfortunately all too numerous across the globe, across entire hemispheres where blood is being spilled in the name of Islam. From suicide bombings to honor killings, from Muslim insurgencies in the countryside to Islamist parties creeping in from within, from Sharia at the point of a sharpened knife to riots in the streets-- where there is Islamism, there can be no peace.

Israel's great mistake was its belief that it could co-exist with Muslims, and for its entire existence has bent over backward to accommodate them. From accepting the UN Partition Plan to sending troops to urge fleeing Arabs to return to Israel, to leaving the Temple Mount in Muslim hands, to the entire disastrous attempt to negotiate a peace with terror by agreeing to the creation of a terrorist state within its borders-- Israel's folly has been to seek peace with an ideology that uses the promise of peace as a lure to convince you to cut your own throat.

Where Islam exists in a nation, it will sooner or later either be suppressed or it will come to dominate. That is a scenario that every nation with a Muslim minority must understand and address, or it will become a Muslim nation with the native population reduced to an oppressed minority or butchered in the night. A totalitarian ideology cannot be made peace with. Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Iran, not Israel, is Arabs’ Worst Enemy, Survey Reveals


(IsraelNN.com) Iran’s nuclear threat to regional security has replaced Israel as the Arab world’s public enemy number one for the Arab world, according to an Arab survey commissioned by the Doha Debates group.

A majority of respondents from 18 Arab countries said Iran is a bigger threat than Israel, and nearly a third think that Tehran is just as likely to target them as Israel. An overwhelming 80 percent do not believe that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

The poll's results reinforce an opinion of Arab leaders who have traditionally been suspicious of Iran. "The Arab-Israeli conflict is a minor historical hiccup compared with the ancient feuds between Arabs and Persians," Mideast analyst and journalist Michael J. Totten recently wrote in Commentary Magazine.

“Arabs and Persians have detested each other for more than a thousand years, ever since Arabs conquered pre-modern Iran and converted its people to Islam,” according to Totten, who has covered the war in Iraq and has written extensively from Middle East countries.

“Most Arabs are Sunnis, most Persians are Shias, and Sunnis and Shias have been slugging it out with each other since the eighth century,” he added. "Arabs and Persians killed hundreds of thousands of each other in the Iran-Iraq war alone in the 1980s. The civil war between Sunni and Shia militias in Baghdad a few years ago was much nastier than any of the Israeli-Palestinian wars."

Totten also noted that Iran and Israel had good relations until the Iranian revolution against the Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “used violent anti-Zionism to win the hearts and minds of the Arabs.”

“It worked to an extent for a while,” Totten wrote. "Most Arab governments didn’t buy it, but the people often did. For a while… it looked like Iran, by supporting Hizbullah and Hamas against Israel, might actually pull off the most unlikely of coups in rallying the mass of Sunni Arabs in support of Persian Shia hegemony. That disconnect now seems to be over.”

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Arab honour and the peace process

By Ted Belman

Arab honour is at the root of Arab rejectionism and intransigence. It prevents Arabs from accepting blame or compromising. It also prevents Arabs from losing land to Israel or ending the conflict.

Arab honour is closely linked to Islamic concepts of jihad and dhimmitude. Arab honour impells them to seek domination. Failure to dominate, dishonours them. Accepting responsibility is an anathema to their honour..

Muslim violence against the publication in Denmark of cartoons featuring Mohammed is a prime example of their refusal to accept the rule of law or western norms that are at odds with what their honour demands. The same goes for their reaction to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

Prof Richard Landes covers this phenomenon in Part III of “Paradigms and the Middle East Conflict.” titled HJP: Honour Jihad paradigm

    “The HJP understands the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of honor-shame culture and Islamic jihad. These elements of Arab culture are the main factors that have made it impossible to reach a solution to the conflict. Arab leaders view any compromise with Israel as “losing face,” since such an agreement would mean recognizing as a “worthy foe” an inferior group that should be subject. Such a blow to Arab honor cannot be tolerated for cultural and political reasons: losing face means to feel utter humiliation, to lose public credibility, and to lose power.[..]

    “According to HSJP, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fueled by wounded Arab honor and frustrated religious imperialism.”

Denis Schulz on Honor and Islam writes

    “The less honor reposing in a person or a group, the more angry and violent the response to any challenge, real or imagined, by said person or group.”and “[..]

    ..those who have the least of it spend the most time defending it”.

The peace process, if not the existence of Israel itself, is closely tied to the necessitudes of Arab honour. The Arabs simply refuse to accept responsibility for the problem and therein lies the problem.
Using Shulz’s insight, the bigger the defeat, the greater the need to be fully vindicated.

In The refugees, still essential to peace, Rami G. Khouri* claims the Arabs wish to achieve a negotiated, peaceful end to their conflict. I beg to differ. If the Arabs were so willing, why aren’t they willing to compromise by agreeing to accept 95% of the land. The truth is, they are willing to end the conflict, if at all, only on their terms.

For Khouri, “Israel’s refusal to come to grips with the core issue that matters for the Palestinians, which is their status as refugees.” is what is preventing peace.

While he acknowledges “half the people were forced into exile, either by deliberate Zionist ethnic cleansing or by the normal dynamics of war that caused civilians to flee temporarily to safer areas.” he fails to mention that the Arabs started the ‘48 war or that the invading Arab armies counseled the Arabs to leave. He makes the ahistorical claim that “the national community of Palestinians was shattered” whereas no such community existed at the time.

He demands that

    “Israel acknowledges its role in the refugeehood of the Palestinians and takes steps to end that problem. The Arabs have all accepted the demand that they coexist in peace and normal relations with an Israeli state that is predominantly Jewish, as it is now, with Jews comprising around 80 percent of the population. The Israelis in return have not moved at all toward coming to terms with the legal, political and moral decisions they must take to play their central role in resolving Palestinian refugeehood – since they were the principal party in bringing it about. “

I would argue that but for Arab aggression against Israel, there would be no refugee problem, I would further argue that but for Arab refusal to resettle the refugees as Israel did Jewish refugees from Arab countries, there would be no such problem.

But he does make an interesting analogy,

    The current Israeli superiority in military power will not bring it lasting peace and security because the Palestinians will not simply disappear into history – no more than the exiled Jews in Babylon went away to never return. [..]

    The Palestinians have passed through the same experience, two and a half millennia later, of seeking to end our exile through nationalist self-assertion and reaffirmation, along with patience and hard work.

He shamelessly takes from the Palestine Mandate which called for the “reconstituting their (Jews) national home in that country (Palestine)” by arguing for “the eventual return and national reconstitution in the ancestral homeland.”

Then he returns to the solution.

    For now, the Palestinians and all Arabs have expressed a willingness to coexist with Zionism – if the Israelis in turn come to terms with how critical it is to acknowledge and resolve the refugee issue in a reasonable and fair manner that does not negate the idea of a predominantly Jewish state.

Why should such “willingness to co-exist” be considered a concession. And why is it only “for now”? Israel was legally created and recognized by most states in the world in 1948. Yet the Arabs refuse to abide by the rule of law and accept it. Their honour demands that they not. Their honour demands that they destroy, or at least, dominate Israel.

Reading between the lines is the thought that Israel can accept some refugees back into Israel, because it is 80% Jewish, and still remain “predominantly Jewish”, i.e. one hundred thousand, or even two hundred thousand, barely alters the percentage.

If this was so important to the Arabs why don’t they agree to Israel retaining 10% of the disputed lands in exchange?

Nowhere does he ascribe to the Arabs, responsibility for causing the problem or for maintaining the problem, not just by refusing to allow refugees to be settled but also by inculcating in them the desire to return. But for this inculcation, there would not have been a national consensus or desire to return.

The analogy above noted is really a false one. Prior to the Jewish expulsion to Babylonia, Jews had a nation and a country. Prior to the ‘48 war, the “Palestinians” had neither.

Furthermore, to fight for only 5% of the 4.5 million “refugees” to be returned, is to fight to get Israel to take responsibility for the problem. That would exculpate the Arabs. But, accepting less than every inch of land back is something they will not do. And that assumes that the Arabs are prepared to end the conflict rather than to just coexist for now.

If that weren’t enough,, their honour doesn’t permit them to end the conflict. Islam requires all lands over which Islam is supreme to be retained or recovered, if lost. It would be an enormous loss of honour to end the conflict without destroying Israel.

Jonathan Dohoah-Halevi comments on the matter in a JCPA article,

    “Osama bin Laden has written: “We request of Allah…that the [Islamic] nation should regain its honor and prestige, should raise again the unique flag of Allah on all stolen Islamic land, from Palestine to Andalus.” Bin Laden’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam, established that the Islamic obligation to wage jihad in order to recover lost Islamic territories applies to Andalusia.

    “Accepting the Arabs’ terms for a Middle East settlement, or even going so far as “liberating” Palestine from Israeli rule, will not be the last stop in the radical Islamic journey being led by the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, which share the vision of spreading Islam all over the world”.

Abbas is not returning to negotiations because he is not prepared to accept President Obama’s terms that the Arabs recognize Israel as a Jewish state and end the conflict.

Professor Barry Rubin, in his latest article on why Obama’s offer was rejected, referred to Arafat’s rejection of Barak’s offer at Camp David because it didn’t contain the “Right of Return”.

    “As for the Right of Return demand, it was in line with something Qaddumi had said in March 2002: “The Right of Return of the refugees to Haifa and Jaffa is more important than statehood.” [..]

    Gaining total victory and destroying Israel was more important than getting a Palestinian state, ending the “occupation” and all the real or alleged terrible suffering of Palestinians we constantly hear about. So it was, so it remains.”

Nothing has changed for the better. Nothing will change.

* Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Two Big Developments: Hillary Announces Start of Sanctions Push, Arab Poll Says Iran is Bigger Threat than Israel.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

by Barry Rubin

It may well be that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given the signal for the new phase of U.S. policy toward Iran. On December 14, she said that the engagement policy with Tehran hadn’t worked and now it needs to press for additional sanctions.

Either this is her attempt to lobby for a tougher line against other administration officials or it's the long-awaited start of the sanctions made necessary by the looming of the administration’s own end-of-the-year deadline to get a deal with Iran or impose more sanctions.

Trying to negotiate, she said, has "produced very little" so "additional pressure is going to be called for."

Her phrasing was interesting, almost as if she was taking a poke at rivals in the administration who are reluctant to take action. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton said, as if daring someone in the White House to disagree?

So what is the administration going to do? Try to get the UN and EU to support more sanctions. Here the administration likes to claim that its popularity and patient (arguably too patient) coalition-building will bring broad support.

Yet there’s another development that shows the opposite may be true. An important meeting to discuss sanctions, set for December 22, has been postponed at China’s request. As an
AP account put it:

Russia in recent days has moved away from suggesting it would support [sanctions]. And recent statements from Chinese officials indicate that Beijing has not changed its traditional opposition to new sanctions. While Russia and China signed on to three previous sets of UN sanctions against Iran, they also forced their Western Security Council partners to water them down substantially.”

Note that the administration keeps claiming that Moscow and Peking are on board. We are going to see something quite different when the negotiations get serious in January and February.

Buried in a paragraph of an
obscure article is explosively important news. A survey of people in 18 Arabic-speaking countries commissioned by a Qatari group—and not fully released yet-- found that a majority see Iran as a bigger threat to their security than Israel and one-third believing Iran is as big a threat as Israel.

This is of historic importance and, of course, reflects reality. This doesn’t mean the Arab attitude toward Israel is going to change drastically, but it does indicate that the real main demand of Arabs toward the West is not making instant Israel-Palestinian peace but protecting them from Iran’s extremist Islamist regime. Western policymakers should take note.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.