My head is spinning

Even for someone like me with little faith in the Obama administration's foreign policy, today is exceptional:

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces the resumption of "limited contacts" with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to "emphasize the importance of non-violence, democratic freedoms, and the rights of women and minorities in such contacts." Whaddya think, will this be as successful as our outreach to Iran?

Somehow I doubt we can influence the thinking of the man rumored to be the Brotherhood's secret candidate for president, Mohamed Selim al-Awa. He's reportedly close to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the famous 'spiritual' leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who prayed in Tahrir Square for Muslims to reconquer Jerusalem. But, hey, maybe we can persuade him to break off ties with Hamas. Al-Awa has also claimed that the Egyptian Copts are storing weapons in their monasteries to use against the Muslims, so he'd be equally good at restoring inter-religious amity within Egypt. How open do you think he'd be to guaranteeing the rights of minorities?

-- Israel has been added to our list of 36 specially designated countries believed to "have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members." What does this mean? Israelis will now be subjected to a special security screening if they are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing the immigration laws. I don't know how many Israelis are usually detained by ICE, but I'm glad to know we're safe now. And I wonder if CAIR, ISNA, or other U.S. groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood had any influence on this decision.

Seriously, I can understand the need to have contact with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, especially if they are among the winners in the September elections. But I'm willing to bet that our "limited contacts" will only serve to enhance their credibility, while bringing us nothing.

Indeed, we'll be boosting the group seen by the 'good guys' - secularists, democrats, all those young people you saw demonstrating - as the biggest threat. According to one of the Youth Coalition's leaders: "The Brotherhood is tyrannical in its opinions and views, and I think they will take the side of the Islamist businessmen who fund it and have strict Islamic ideologies ... Whatever constitution they might form would not fulfill the demands of Egyptians for civil rights and democracy."

Dershowitz nails Gates

American lawyer, jurist and political commentator Alan Dershowitz takes issue with the assertion that Defense Secretary Robert Gates did the right thing by making sure that the United States did not go to war with Iran on his watch. Instead, "History will not be kind to Gates. Despite some noteworthy accomplishments, he will be remembered as the single most important facilitator of an Iranian regime with nuclear weapons."

Gates' policy toward Iran, Dershowitz argues, is like that of Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Like Chamberlain, he took the "military option" off the table, and in so doing emboldened the enemy. Chamberlain though he could contain the Nazis, and Gates apparently thought he could the same with the Iranians. However, "[t]his alleged policy of containment is no policy at all; it is an admission of failure."

As for me, I was amazed that Gates remained in his post after he publicly opposed destroying Libyan air defenses as an act of war and was then then overruled by President Obama. Or when his lawyers were overruled by White House and State Department lawyers as to whether, yet again, what we're doing in Libya constitutes hostilities. I guess I'm naive.

Wilders acquitted

Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been acquitted of all charges of inciting hatred and discrimination after a lengthy trial. Commentator Mark Steyn terms the proceedings a "show trial." He certainly has a point; even the public prosecutor had already called for an acquittal.

If there was no case against him, why was Wilders on trial? In addition to domestic pressures, Wilders was the target of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the international organization comprising over 50 Muslim countries. The OIC leaned hard on the Dutch government to punish Wilders; let's see what it does now.

Who are the Libyan rebels?

John Rosenthal reports here that two French think tanks who sent a 6-person expert mission to Libya this spring have produced a study with some very unsettling conclusions. Among them:

-- Islamists play a predominant role in the eastern Libyan rebellion.

-- the justifications given for Western military intervention are largely based on media exaggerations and outright disinformation.

-- current NATO actions "risk destabilizing all of North Africa, the Sahel, and the Middle East and favoring the emergence of a new regional base for radical Islam and terrorism."

-- "Benghazi has become over the last 15 years the epicenter of African migration to Europe. This traffic in human beings has been transformed into a veritable industry, generating billions of dollars. Parallel mafia structures have developed in the city, where the traffic is firmly implanted and employs thousands of people, while corrupting police and civil servants. It was only a year ago that the Libyan government, with the help of Italy, managed to bring this cancer under control . . . Following the disappearance of its main source of revenue and the arrest of a number of its bosses, the local mafia took the lead in financing and supporting the Libyan rebellion."

This is a very disturbing report; if you read Rosenthal's article, you'll find lots more detail. I don't know these think tanks and so can't vouch for them, but I suspect we'll look back on the Libyan operation and wonder how we got ourselves into such a mess.

Yale gets the antisemitism center it wants

Down with YIISA, long live the new Yale Program for Antisemitism. YIISA director Charles Small will be replaced by Maurice Samuels, an expert in 19th century French antisemitism.

Perhaps the new center will do pretty much what the old one did. But I sincerely doubt it.

There's no political difficulty in studying 19th century, or 12th century, or 20th century antisemitism - at least much of the 20th century. But I doubt that the new program will explore Muslim or left-wing antisemitism. That would probably be denounced as 'advocacy' - although just what anyone is advocating is still a mystery to me.

More precisely, those topics are forbidden because any respectable scholar soon uncovers the genocidal ideology behind groups like the PLO and Hamas that requires exterminating the Jews (not just the Israelis). The scholar will also discover that those views are shared, across the famed Sunni-Shiite divide, by the rulers of Iran.

Charles Small thought this problem was critical and worthy of scholarly examination; we shall see if Maurice Samuels agrees with him. Or, to be more precise, if Yale lets him do so. And we'll see if the donors who supported YIISA will contribute to the new center.

YIISA

On June 1, Yale University decided not to renew the contract for the Yale Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) which was established in 2006. Since then, several reasons have been advanced for this decision, among them that YIISA produced too few peer-reviewed publications, that it attracted too few faculty members and students, and that it was too often political rather than academic in its approach.

The latter criticism, I think, is telling - as a mirror image of what was really going on. For example, one Yale professor reportedly criticized the August 2010 conference hosted by YIISA, saying that too many of the speakers used antisemitism as an excuse to dismiss public concerns with the Israeli government’s behavior. So .... let's see. That means that the only way to discuss antisemitism is to spend most of your time criticizing the Israeli government. Speaking of rank politicization!

I attended a number of YIISA lectures and participated in the 2010 conference; at all these events there were indeed relatively few Yale students. At the time, I assumed that antisemitism could hardly compete with subjects like global warming or gay rights. Especially when, to be at all honest intellectually, you must admit (as did numerous conference participants) that Muslim antisemitism is an important and dangerous factor today. That observation, alas, brands you as a 'right-wing extremist' on an American campus.

I don't think this story is over yet; YIISA may morph into some other form and migrate to another university or think tank. Let's hope so.

Gates on NATO

You've probably heard about the speech last Friday by outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in which he warned the Allies that they were contributing so little that the future of NATO was endangered.

That's all true, but as Joe has pointed out to me, that's not the worst of it. No, the worst of it is that the contortions underlying the decision to intervene in Libya have caused NATO to engage in widespread lying about its intentions and its actions.

The United States, of course, has contributed significantly to this problem. For example, I defy you to tell me just what U.S. goals are in Libya: regime change? protecting civilians? advancing democracy? supporting Islamists? And, by the way, since when is NATO something separate from the United States, as it appears to be in President Obama's mind?

I have felt for years that NATO could not survive the sharp drop in European military capabilities after the end of the Cold War. Now, with the pressure of the Libyan operation added to that of the one in Afghanistan, we may be approaching a point of no return. And we're doing so in the worst possible way: we've let ourselves be sucked into an operation that is not in our national interest, only to discover that our Allies want us to do their heavy lifting.

Women call for sharia

Yet another of my faithful readers (without whom I should have long ago abandoned this blog) asked me last week why women agree to veil themselves and accept the other conditions required under sharia law. And, as if by magic, here are a couple of news items that give a little insight into that question.

First is a call by a Kuwaiti woman 'activist' to allow men to buy and sell non-Muslim girls, captured in jihad, as sex slaves "in order to protect Muslim men against seductive sexual immorality." This was the arrangement under traditional sharia and was only abandoned in more recent times when slavery got a bad name. So why would this woman want it? First, she and the other Muslim wives would gain non-Muslim slaves to do the heavy lifting around the house when they weren't 'servicing' the husband. And, since she obviously assumes her husband is not monogamous, keeping his amours all under one roof provides her oversight and control.

Lest you think that far-fetched and remote, consider this recent letter in a local California paper calling for adulterous women to be put to death. As the female writer puts it: "These slut women do not know how to say no. To my judgment, these women who freely sleep with married men must be severely punished and put to death."

The letter may be a fake one ... or it may not be. To put it in context, look at this report about a Toronto mosque that published a list of things that constitute a 'violation of Islam. One of them: "To say that enforcing the punishments prescribed by Allah, such as cutting off the hand of a thief or stoning an adulterer, is not suitable in this day and age."

Next time someone tells you that sharia is an enlightened code and doesn't involve such things as sex slavery or the death penalty for adulteresses, ask them how they would answer these two proposals. And if you want to learn more about these issues, just check out FrontPage Magazine, Atlas Shrugs, or Pajamas Media.

Watch this guy!

Here's a news story with an absolutely unbelievable video of a Haitian fellow, George Exantus, who was severely injured during the 2010 earthquake. One foot had to be amputated, while the other leg and an arm were badly maimed. He received treatment from a special Israeli medical unit and is now ready to resume his career as a dancer. Watch him dance!

Unfortunately, there's a dumb twist to this story: he was denied a visa to travel to New York to participate in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade.

Shariamerica

One of my faithful blog-readers just sent me the link to this video showing how Muslim sharia law is already being implemented by the U.S. government. (For some reason the link jumps to minute 3:15, so you'll need to restart it at the beginning.)

The video documents the ways in which our senior political leaders are violating the Establishment Clause by offering Islam a privileged position above all other religions, and are already attacking free speech if it includes criticism of Islam.

Among other things, it compares the condemnations of Pastor Terry Jones Koran burning by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Graham, and General David Petraeus with the decision by the U.S. Army to burn Bibles confiscated in Afghanistan.

Only a fool would think that our Islamist enemies will be mollified by such pronouncements. They'll be emboldened instead - appeasement is a sign of weakness, not wisdom.

Follow Qaradawi's moves

Several months ago Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims and of the Muslim Brotherhood, gave a speech in Cairo's Tahrir Square. In that speech he called for Egypt to re-open the border with Gaza (previously closed to block terrorists and terrorist supplies from entering Gaza) and for Muslims to reconquer Jerusalem. That part of the speech, needless to say, was ignored by the Western media.

Since then, Egypt has re-opened its border with Gaza. Now Hamas' prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniya, has invited Qaradawi to come lead a public prayer in Gaza. And gee, what do you think Qaradawi is likely to pray for? A mutually-acceptable peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Don't hold your breath.

According to a recent Pew poll, 31% of Egyptians favor the Islamists, and 30% do not. But since those who disagree with the fundamentalists are disorganized, there's not much chance that they will be able to restrain the foreign adventurism of the Islamists.

And this is all happening as the Egyptian economy deteriorates. Tourism is down 60%, some 300,000 refugees from Libya swell the ranks of the unemployed, domestic and foreign investment is leaving, and foreign reserves are falling and may be depleted in six months. With a mess this big, there's really no choice but to flame the hatred of Israel (and America) to distract people.

CAIR is soooo lucky!

Some organizations have all the luck - take the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), for example.

-- For several years, they were classified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in which an Islamic charity was eventually convicted of funding Hamas terrorism.

-- Unbeknownst to the public or the Congress, last year the Justice Department dropped the case against CAIR. This despite a 2009 finding by a federal judge that the "Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR ... with the [Holy Land Foundation] ... and with Hamas." For more details, see this letter from Rep. Peter King to Attorney General Eric Holder. Apparently political appointees at Justice overruled the career professionals working the case.

-- Today, CNS News reported that CAIR has written to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to call for an agency-wide investigation of whether the people in charge of training national security personnel are 'Islamophobic.'

So now the organization that Holder and his senior staff saved from an indictment for its terrorist links wants to vet the people training national security personnel on terrorism issues. If your head is spinning, you should take that as a sign of mental health. You still retain some instinct for self-preservation.

The long view

I'm not a big fan of decades-long demographic projections, but this analysis is quite thought-provoking. According to UN data, if current fertility rates remain constant, Israel will have more young people by the end of this century than Turkey, Iran, Germany, Italy or Spain.

The author of the analysis suggests that these trends will have a direct impact on the Mideast regional military balance:

"if present trends continue, Israel will be able to field the largest land army in the Middle East. That startling data point, though, should alert analysts to a more relevant problem: among the military powers in the Middle East, Israel will be the only one with a viable population structure by the middle of this century.

That is why it is in America's interest to keep Israel as an ally. Israel is not only the strongest power in the region; in a generation or two it will be the only power in the region, the last man standing among ruined neighbors."

Israel is already an economic powerhouse, whether you're measuring GDP growth, patent applications or venture capital. It also rates on the cheerfulness scale: according to a recent Gallup poll, a higher percentage of Israelis than Americans consider themselves to be thriving.

So what does this all mean? Hey, I don't know - except that Israelis, despite all their problems, are up, not down. No wonder their neighbors (and dwindling Europe) dislike them so much. (Thanks to Richard Landes.)

Denying Israel's right to exist

As everybody knows, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. It has words to that effect in its charter, and it reconfirmed its position when it reached the unity agreement with Fatah.

Less well-known is that many in the Palestinian Authority, of which Fatah is the key player, share this ideology, despite many reassurances about commitment to the peace process, etc. Here's a report, prepared by Palestinian Media Watch, that quotes senior officials, textbooks and state-controlled media delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. They offer many arguments to prove that justice will be achieved when Israel ceases to exist.

Saying a country must cease to exist and calling for its destruction is a distinction without much of a difference. Particularly if, as the Palestinian Authority does, you're paying the salaries of terrorists in Israeli jails.

I'm not arguing that everyone in the Palestinian Authority is focused solely on destroying Israel. On the contrary, many have been working successfully to rebuild the West Bank and so prove that they are worthy of statehood. But they will have a tough time prevailing now that Hamas and Fatah are 'united.' Indeed, I fear they are just about to lose all they've worked so hard to achieve.

Bye bye Sweden

UK video commentator Pat Condell is back, this time with a devastating clip about Sweden.

He reports that Sweden is now the rape capital of Europe, with twice as many rapes per capita as any other country. Most of the rapes committed by men from the Mideast and Africa, although no one will say that. Even the police in Oslo, in neighboring Norway, are willing to admit that, in a recent 3-year period, all of the 41 aggravated rapes were committed by immigrants from the Mideast and Africa, and characterized by 'gross violence.'

Before you denounce me as a racist for publishing these facts, let me first say two things:

(1) Thank heavens I live in America where the First Amendment protects my right to free speech. Things would be different if I lived in the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Sweden...the list goes on.

(2) There's a reason for these rapes: they are intended to establish Muslim dominance of the streets (and therefore society's public spaces) as well as the suppression of women. If you don't get that part, you don't understand anything.

Condell highlights several other disturbing trends: a rise in anti-Semitism (what a big surprise) and the fact that the Swedish government is deporting Iraqi Christians back to Iraq - apparently only Muslims need apply for residence papers in Sweden. Indeed, in today's Sweden, you no longer need Swedish citizenship to hold a sensitive or high government position, including that of national prosecutor.

(Thanks to FrontPage.)

The source of the Syrian revolt

Did you ever wonder why the revolt in Syria, which has been going on for over a month now, continues despite the brutality of the regime in repressing it? So far, almost 1,000 demonstrators have been murdered. Well, what apparently sparked the uprising was a horrible crime by the authorities in Daraa (near the border with Jordan).

"Ten children living in the Syrian city of Daraa were inspired by the Arab Spring and wrote an expression of freedom on walls. They were arrested by the intelligence agency. Families of the children applied to the Office of the Governor, but that didn’t help. They went to the intelligence offices, that didn’t help either. Finally, the Office of the Governor was raided and the children were taken back. There was a problem however: Nails of the children had been removed and some of them had been raped. The families went ballistic and their tribes were outraged by the fact. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets, burned down the intelligence headquarters and the phone company belonging to Rami Makhlouf. This is how the fear threshold was passed against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria." (Thanks to Daily Alert.)

The new Nashville

You may have thought of Nashville as a fun place and the home of Grand Ole Opry (when it isn't flooded as it was last year). Unfortunately, that's not all it is:

It has a radical Islamic Center of Nashville; one of the men who set it up came to Nashville from Brooklyn, NY, where he was the imam of the mosque linked to the first World Trade Center bombing. For more details on the mosque and its proselytizing mission, watch this disturbing video made by a group of concerned citizens. (Thanks to Rachel.)

Among the students radicalized at Tennessee State University was Carlos Bledsoe, who subsequently murdered a soldier as an act of jihad. His father testified before the House Homeland Security Committee about the danger posed by Islamists recruiting students: how radical Islam destroys not only its murder victims, but the jihadis themselves and their families.

You can also measure the threat level in Nashville by the fact that Dutch politician Geert Wilders just gave a speech there (thanks to Atlas Shrugs). His message:

"My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called 'hate speech crimes' which is only used to punish people who are critical of Islam, that day America will have lost its freedom ... Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance."

Read the whole speech - he's thought about this problem a great deal and expresses his ideas very clearly. And he's right: if we lose our right to free speech, both the hearer and the speaker lose. You can't fix a problem that you can't even talk about in public.

Which London do you prefer?

Within the space of one week, London has shown two very different faces.

First was of the royal wedding: spectacular pageantry, beautiful bride and handsome groom, even more beautiful bridesmaid, swooning Anglophiles. I won't bother to link a video, since there cannot be a single person who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

Then a week later came the angry pro-Osama Bin Laden protests, including a mock funeral staged in front of the U.S. embassy.

But maybe I'm being unfair: the situation in Germany is even worse. There a judge in Hamburg filed a criminal complaint against Chancellor Angela Merkel for saying she was glad Bin Laden had been killed. The charge? Endorsing a crime - but of course!

I can't take it any more!

OK, so I'm not really suicidal - just frustrated! On today's Fox Sunday show, commentator Mara Liasson said the threat from Al Qaeda was now past, given all the people protesting in favor of freedom and democracy as part of the Arab Spring.

Huh? Just what does one thing have to do with the other? What bothers me the most is her assumption that the threat to the West comes only from 'violent' Islamism, when nothing could be further from the truth. 'Non-violent' Islamists have made great strides in Turkey, Lebanon and Gaza in recent years, not to mention in many European countries. Why shouldn't they do the same elsewhere?

I certainly agree that there are obviously people in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere who want greater freedom, an end to corruption, economic opportunity and so forth. The important question, though, is whether they will achieve those goals, or whether Islamists or other thugs will win out and run the show.

So why am I so bothered to hear Mara Liasson say such things? Because she's close to the Obama Administration, that's why. What she's saying may be what they're thinking. And if that's the case, we're in deep trouble.

More on innovation

Yesterday's entry described Israeli innovations in armor defense technology; today's is about the lack of EU innovation, as bemoaned by EU council chairman Herman Van Rompuy.

Van Rompuy blamed the lack of innovation on "societal problems" and said people "live in a climate of despair and are depressed." Which is interesting, if you think about it: if Europeans were beset by existential enemies on all sides, would they be more likely to innovate? (Just for the record, the latest Gallup poll reports that Israel is the seventh highest country on the happiness index. Ahead of it are several European countries, rather undercutting Van Rompuy's argument. )

The solution, according to Van Rompuy: political leaders must be upbeat and work hard to get people to invent new things. No suggestion, of course, that the massive weight of governmental taxation and regulation could be a cause of the problem or that the EU, itself a mighty bureaucratic machine, might be least able to fix the problem. Earlier this week, Ernst & Young released a report decrying the wastefulness and complexity of competing EU programs intended to foster innovation.

In fact, Van Rompuy's remarks sound a lot like what used to emanate from Soviet and Warsaw Pact leaders. I'm sure that's just a coincidence...