It Isn’t Israel in Danger of Disappearing, It’s The People Who Threaten Her In Danger

"…never send to know for whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee."

--John Dunne

By Barry Rubin

Rome, Italy

I’m standing on the edge of the Roman Forum, by the Arch of Titus. This is the marble structure built by the Empire to commemorate the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple about 1941 years ago. Legionnaires are shown carrying off the Menorah and other items from the sanctuary. The inhabitants are sold into slavery, The Jews are finished.

Well, not really. Today, the great empire has long vanished and Israel is not just a living country but by every social, economic, and security standard a successful country.

In the late 1960s, more than 40 years ago, the Palestinian and Arab leaders were certain that Israel would not survive. The fact that they were completely wrong has not prevented a whole new rash of contemporary speculations.


The PLO view, shared by virtually all Arabs at the time, was very clearly defined. The two main points boil down to the following. First, Israel would not survive because there was no real basis for such a state and people. Second, the Arabs would destroy it using various strategies.


Here is the ultimate quote from Yasir Arafat in1968—that’s 43 years ago--on why this would work:

Terrorism would “create and maintain an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel….The Israelis have one great fear, the fear of casualties….”

The PLO's attacks would "prevent immigration and encourage emigration....to destroy tourism, to prevent immigrants becoming attached to the land, to weaken the Israeli economy and to divert the greater part of it to security requirements.” This would "inevitably" prevent Israel's consolidation and bring its disintegration. The final step would be “a quick blow by the regular armies at the right moment" to finish Israel off.

All of these things failed. More immigrants came than expected and were successfully integrated. People weren’t frightened into fleeing. Casualties were absorbed and limited. The country became economically successful and militarily victorious. Thus, today Israel is stronger—far stronger—than ever.

And who were the biggest losers in this conflict? Naturally, Israel has lost a great deal, especially in lives. But the biggest losers have been the Arabs who wasted resources, lost more lives, faced repeated humiliations, and ended up with dictatorship and stagnant societies. And they will be the biggest losers if they spend the next 60 years playing the same game.

And if Arab states that were relatively united and had a superpower sponsor couldn’t destroy Israel in 60 years how are they going to do so today? With Israel outpacing its neighbors on every index of social and economic development, with so much oil money spent without really advancing Arab societies, who has the advantage today?

Remember what happened in 1948. True, all the Arab states invaded the new state of Israel But they didn’t coordinate with each other and all wanted to grab territory for themselves. With Iran and Turkey all jostling for power and leadership today, the conflict and disorder is intensified.

Yet now there is a revival of the claim—sometimes among ill-informed well-wishers, more often among antagonistic haters—that Israel might not survive. This is based partly on wishful thinking, partly on ignorance. Underlying these factors, however, is a basic disbelief that Jews are a people and can be a state.

And that reflects a lack of knowledge—often among Western Jews themselves—about Jewish history as well as a naïve acceptance of anti-Israel propaganda, claims that have proven to be false for decades.

Actually, then, the shoe is on the other foot entirely from what is being claimed. It is not Israel’s existence that is threatened but that of its adversaries and in some ways of Western Europe, too.

Its enemy neighbors and near-neighbors are about to embark on a decades’-long horrifying series of civil wars: Islamists against Arab nationalists; Sunni against Shia Muslims; economic collapse; and much more. Syria is on the verge of an inter-communal bloodbath; Egypt faces not some bright new economic dawn but a terrible reckoning. At some point the oil will run out with much of that wealth squandered. Recent discoveries even suggest that Israel itself will be a rising exporter of petroleum and natural gas.

Periodically, some radical Muslim writes that if only each Muslim would kill one Jew then Israel would vanish. High hopes are held for nuclear weapons that Iran still doesn’t have. But such schemes never get off the ground. Indeed, it is Arab nationalism that is endangered with extinction under a wave of revolutionary Islamism. By leaving the path of pragmatism for that of doctrinaire Islamism, Turkey is likely to lose the success it enjoyed for so many decades.

There is not one regime in a Muslim-majority country that should feel confident about its future; not one such state whose continued existence can be taken for granted.

In contrast, there are only two ways Israel might perhaps disappear. First, it might happen if Arabs and Muslims dropped radicalism, ideology, and bickering to concentrate on technological and economic progress for 50 years, only then turning on Israel. That would require, for example, the Palestinians quickly dropping all of their rejectionism and demands to make a compromise agreement with Israel that they had no intention of keeping.

Yet quite the opposite is happening now. It is radicalism, not pragmatic development strategies that is in control. Besides, the problem is that a focus on material development and moderate democracy would erode Arab and Muslim tempers to the point that they would no longer want to engage in such a foolish and futile life-and-death struggle, which is why the Islamists reject that approach.

The other way Israel might be wiped off the map is if its leaders heeded the advice they are getting from the West. That’s the irony of the situation. Those stubborn, stiff-necked people are not going to doom themselves by implementing the mistaken ideas told to them by Western media, experts, intellectuals, and governments who claim such policies are the road to safety.

Part of the problem here is that all too many Western intellectuals no longer believe in fighting—or even sacrificing--for your country; patriotic pride or nationalism or religion; or even the nation-state itself. Consequently, while many Arabs and Muslims don’t believe Israel can exist because of contempt for Jews and belief in the superiority of their nations and religion, many Westerners now believe in the wickedness of their countries and religion and the unviability of the national model.

In thinking about Israel, both these opposite arguments amount to the same thing. Yet they tell more about those having these ideas than about Israel.

When a European cabinet minister says his country has no distinct culture and another urges the locals to be nice to Muslims so they will reciprocate after they take over; when a European country’s counterintelligence chief .tells me his country has no future, and a quartet of professors from another remark to me over cocktails that they believe their country is finished, is it Israel that is in danger of collapse?

Who’s really facing the abyss? That doesn’t mean destruction will come to Europe’s existing states and societies but it does mean they are more likely to go than Israel is. You want to talk about demographic threats? In Europe, the majority is often having children at half the rate needed for mere replacement of the existing native population.

Yet all of this also shows why Israel is the key to understanding today’s world. Israel’s survival shows that democratic societies can fight and defeat dictators and totalitarian ideologies, Western religions do have a continuing place in Western societies and nation-states are still a viable—perhaps the most viable—way to organize many political structures.

That’s precisely why so many are working so hard to demonize and discredit Israel. If people in the West understand what Israel is and what it is doing, they will comprehend the value of those approaches and values. And if they understand how Israel is lied about and mistreated they will comprehend much wider problems with the people, ideas, and institutions governing their own lives today.

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. His book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January. Latest books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com  

Intellectual Nonsense from the NY Times: Author Knows Zero About Sharia Except That It's No Problem

Jerry [Seinfeld]: “I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he’s converted to Judaism just for the jokes.”

Priest: “And this offends you as a Jewish person.”
Jerry: “No, it offends me as a comedian.”
–Seinfeld, “The Dentist” episode

The New York Times has run (still another) article about how Sharia law coming to America is nothing to fear. Question: Will the New York Times ever run an op-ed opposing Sharia law in the United States? Twenty years ago I would have said: Of course, any responsible newspaper publishes one piece on each side of an issue. Today, of course, we know there is no chance of balance.

Eliyahu Stern, an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Yale, seems to be an expert on Jewish history. In fact, Stern is so ignorant of the topic on Islam that he states most Muslims in America “don’t even come from the Middle East (the majority have roots in Southeast Asia).” Really? That’s a geographical term usually applied to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Perhaps he meant Pakistan, a well-known locale of moderate Islam? If anyone on the other side said something so obviously ridiculous they would never be taken seriously.

And the fact that the Times editors left in such a glaring factual error shows professional inadequacy and ignorance. But then this is the newspaper that let Tariq Ramadan claim that the Muslim Brotherhood (then headed by his grandfather) was an anti-fascist organization when every serious historian knows that it collaborated with the Nazis in preparing to turn over Egypt to Hitler and massacre the Jews there. (The documentary proof of this is in my book –written with Wolfgang Schwanitz – Nazis, Radical Arabs, and the Making of the Modern Middle East to be published by Yale University Press in 2012.)

Why then is Stern writing that there’s no need to fear Sharia law in America? Well, he apparently has just one argument: once people warned about Jewish law being dangerous, that was wrong, and we all know where that ended up. This is not exactly a brilliant argument for many reasons. The proportion of Jews was far lower than Muslim populations in the West are quickly becoming; Jews do not expect anyone else to observe their law or change behavior; there was never any question of compulsion within the community. Most Jews were not so religious and did not view themselves governed by Jewish law, except perhaps in the matter of very narrow issues regarding marriage and divorce that had no effect on the wider society.

To cite one famous incident that sort of reveals the difference, the baseball player Hank Greenberg became an American Jewish hero for refusing to play in the World Series on Yom Kippur. No Jew would have thought of demanding the World Series be changed to another day. Or, to give another example, Jews would never think of demanding that public facilities install special equipment or rooms for their needs at taxpayer expense, nor insist that work places shut down to permit them to pray, nor that kosher food had to be provided or else, nor that publications better censor themselves or they would face legal action and perhaps violent retribution. If passengers in taxi cabs were regularly bringing pigs into the vehicles–the equivalent of Muslim cabdrivers with guide dogs and even alcohol in some cases–Jewish cabdrivers wouldn’t have refused them service — they would have found another line of employment.

And then there are those little details like Jews not periodically kidnapping and murdering women for their social behavior or coreligionists who wanted to convert to other religions. Jews didn’t demand time off in the work day to pray and sue if it weren’t granted to them. They “knew their place” instead of demanding that others yield to them. Well, over 2000 years of being a dominated people had taught them to keep a low profile and avoid trouble. In contrast, Islam really does have the sense of being a ruling religion before which others must make concessions.

Such points do not reveal some irrational fear or hatred of Islam but are merely well-known facts. I often reflect that the phrase “Politically Correct” should be contrasted to the usual democratic, Enlightenment and Western norm of being Factually Correct. Political Correctness–as opposed to just plain politeness–is an approach that advocates telling lies because that’s really “better” for us all. But that’s not true, even for Muslims themselves who are the most frequent victims of Islamic practices being imposed on them or dominated by intolerant radicals.

It’s like the extensive arguments about why “Islamophobia” exists that never mention anything about terrorist attacks. You know, sort of like the upcoming official commemorations of the tenth anniversary of September 11 that will be careful not to say anything about who did it and why. Would Stern write or the New York Times publish an article about how mosques are the institution most likely to spread antisemitism today, or the prevalent hatred of Jews that comes from even the most sophisticated circles in the Muslim-majority world? Of course not.

The simple truth is that Stern has no valid or serious argument to make on this Sharia issue. He simply felt like writing an op-ed and the Times published it because it said the “right” thing. The Times has no professionally journalistic reason to run this op-ed except that it takes the only side the newspaper deems worthy of airing and may be seen as shoring up its Jewish readership and taking advantage of any repugnance to the Holocaust and antisemitism to sell the issue stance the newspaper wants.

Actually, the real issue is less that the application of Sharia law is far more problematic for Muslims than for society in general. It would greatly restrict the freedom of Muslims and contradict American law on many points. We have already seen precedents in which Sharia law is forced on non-Muslims. But the real victim would be Muslim women who would be forced by parents and community pressure–including threats of violence–to give up rights they possess as American citizens.

The argument that Sharia law is equivalent to letting Jews mediate over a “get” (divorce decree) is pretty ridiculous, but then so are many of the arguments put forward in American public debates nowadays by the establishment. Why did I write this article? Because such nonsense should not go uncriticized. Since the Times won’t provide a balance to its op-eds, someone has to do it.

Oh, and one more thing. “Islamophobia” is not inspired by honest discussion about radical Islamism. The truth is the exact opposite: because the establishment doesn’t make a truthful distinction between revolutionary Islamism and its Muslim victims that many people generalize about all of Islam and all Muslims. The obvious contradiction between the ludicrous insistence that Islam is always a “religion of peace” and no real problems exist causes more suspicion and hatred than any actual balanced account of the civil war among Muslims would have done.

I have no position on the passing of specific legislation by states or what U.S. law should be, but–parallel to Jerry Seinfeld’s stand on the dentist–as an academic, intellectual, and expert on Islam I resent antisemitism being exploited by people who never mention Islamist antisemitism, standards being corrupted by professors saying silly things, and the mass media turning itself into a one-sided propaganda operation.

And if one day, for example, Muslim women are beaten and intimidated into accepting Sharia law mediation in which their rights as human beings and as Americans are trampled, will Professor Stern take responsibility for that?

The “Ground Zero” Mosque Will Never be Built–For Totally Non-Political Reasons

By Barry Rubin

Readers of my column know that I have written repeatedly that the “Ground Zero” mosque would never be built for reasons having nothing to do with politics. The main financiers and the imam have gotten into one legal problem after another and Allstate Insurance Company is now launching a major lawsuit for fraud against one of them. As we approach the tenth anniversary of September 11, it’s clear that there isn’t going to be a mosque next to the World Trade Center attack site.

From the start, it seemed to me that the whole project was designed as something of a scam by shady characters to get lots of money from the contributions of the Saudis and others. In other words, the controversial and triumphalist aspects of the mosque were a public relations’ scheme designed to win millions of dollars from the Muslim-majority world’s millionaires. When the money didn’t materialize–the controversy didn’t help matters–the whole thing fell apart.

Should the mosque have been built? I have no strong opinion on that issue (especially since I knew nothing would ever actually be built). My father was a builder and I spent a lot of time around construction sites learning the trade in my youth, also gettingto know about how to put together a development project and what it takes to get zoning permissions. This project could never have gotten off the ground without the fear of being called Islamophobic making politicians either tremble or see an opportunity to burnish their Politically Correct credentials. But the scheme was such a mess that even with these special privileges it could never actually fly.

What should be most interesting about the whole affair aside from the political battle about whether or not a mosque should be built on that spot (freedom of religion versus respect for the victims, and so on). At any rate, you already know about all the various arguments on both sides.

Here’s the real story:

A group of people with a terrible record as developers who didn’t develop, businessmen who didn’t pay their bills, and slumlords put together a very badly designed project that would never otherwise have gotten zoning and other permits. In other words, the true story is how city officials gave special privileges and the media gave sweetheart coverage because people were Muslims building a mosque, not that there was discrimination against Muslims who wanted to build a mosque. Remember, in the end the mosque project got everything its advocates wanted and yet it still wasn’t built.

It is the story of how the corrupt can play a system built around special privileges for special categories of people, in which fear of being labelled some variety of “racist” overrides the proper enforcement of the law.

Someone should write the detailed story of the whole affair from that standpoint.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at http://www.gloria-center.org  

Norway Terror Attack: Lessons and Illusions

 by Barry Rubin

Once one gets beyond the polemics and clichés, there is a huge amount that could be learned from an honest discussion about the mass murders in Norway. Let’s look at some of them.

An editorial in the New York Daily News contains both valid points and dangerous silliness. It begins:

In his ravings, Anders Behring Breivik, confessed to having murdered 76 people, repeats a familiar refrain: He killed to save his country, his continent and Western civilization itself from an attempted takeover by Islam.

The trouble with a 1500-page manifesto is that one can find almost anything in it. For example, people, groups, and sites who have been cited once or twice in that manifesto are now being called complicit with the murders. In the case of one group in that position, Breivik actually attacked them for being non-violent! Another author in the United Kingdom had two articles footnoted by the killer that didn’t even deal with Islam. Now people are being incited to go after her in revenge.

Of course, Breivik did see Islam as a threat, but he didn’t attack mosques, he attacked two government targets: a camp of the ruling party and a government building. Thus, the main target was not an “Islamic takeover” but his view that the country was being destroyed by left-wing policies, of which unlimited immigration is one. I have no agenda in making that point, but it is surprising that this hasn’t been a bigger focus of the discussion. Breivik was not a single-issue guy.

A second question is whether his violent action “proves” that there is no such problem regarding Islam. Radical Islamist violence is not mindless. It is a response to a problem. Many view this problem as the oppression of Muslims. My opinion is that it is a strategy for revolutionary takeover, a radical Islamist government, and the fundamental transformation of society. Of course, this is far more likely in Muslim-majority societies.

The Daily News continues:

Breivik’s belief is the photo negative of al-Qaeda’s contention that the United States and its allies are hell-bent on destroying Islam.

That’s a clever point and has some merit. But after studying Islamism for 30 years, I’d say that equally or more important — and certainly the one used more in inner and sophisticated Islamist circles — is the idea that the real crime of the West is “preventing” Islamist revolutions by supporting existing regimes. On this one, they are right generally. The first argument is propaganda; the second is programmatic.

To argue that Western governments want the Islamists to win and take over their societies is paranoid. To argue, though, that Western governments follow bad policies that make it look that way has a lot of merit. Left-wing movements — as in Norway — hope that the Islamists will benefit them. They are wrong. An analogy here is the Communist Party in Germany (at Stalin’s orders, of course) arguing that the growth of the Nazis would benefit them at a certain point. They were dead — literally — wrong. That doesn’t mean the Communists were pro-Nazi, it meant that they were disastrously stupid.

But the next contention of the editorial is more questionable:

The belief, that Islam at large conspires to triumph over all Judeo-Christian society, is a delusion.

Of course, the trick here is to say “Islam at large,” that is all the Muslims, everywhere and all the time. So yes the extremists on the Breivik channel do help the people who say that the threat is a “delusion.” But if radical Islamism gains hegemony and then largely controls the dominant devision of contemporary “Islam,” then it will be no illusion at all.

For now, we know that large elements of Muslims — especially revolutionary Islamists and notably the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the far less significant al-Qaeda — want that triumph because they say so all the time. So do Hamas and Hizballah and Iran’s government, less often perhaps but often a lot. They can quote extensively from Islamic texts — the same ones that “counter-jihadists” point out — and thus persuade Muslims a lot more easily that they represent “authentic Islam” than can moderate Muslims.

That’s one big reason why “reform” or “moderate” Islam is so weak. Others include the fact that the radicals are willing to kill and intimidate people, have more supporters, and have more money.

What most decidedly isn’t a delusion is:

• Revolutionary Islamist movements seek to take over all Muslim-majority countries.

• Where they have taken over they seek to transform those societies permanently into Islamist-run dictatorships. Iran and the Gaza Strip are the two most prominent current examples.

• Revolutionary Islamists seek to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence. In practice, they also seek to get rid of Christians. Their seizure of power is against Western interests.

• In Western countries, Islamists seek to gain hegemony over Muslim communities both ideologically, religiously, and through instituting Sharia.

• More speculatively, they dream of total conquest. Of course, that is more speculative, less likely, and far longer-term.

The fact that the last paragraph is pretty unlikely does not invalidate the previous four paragraphs.

A lot of the discussion among “anti-jihadists” is based on quoting from Muslim religious texts, clerical interpretations, and political statements by Islamist groups. The mass media simply refuses to deal with this evidence. That’s why the arguments can easily be labeled fantasies. Yet if you can provide dozens of quotes and hundreds of actions as examples, who is it engaged in “paranoid and poisonous fantasies”?

I partly agree with the editorial’s statement that:

Demonizing a religion rather than those who pervert it is destructive and only wins sympathies to radical fanatics.

I wouldn’t use the word “pervert,” which implies the Islamists are lying. They are using material that actually is in Islam and if one doesn’t understand that then one is powerless to deal with it. But there’s also a nice irony in the quote: which “radical fanatics” are we talking about? The editorial no doubt wants to refer to radical fanatics like Breivik. It is also true, however, that it wins sympathies for the “radical fanatics” who deny that there’s a problem. And those people are far more powerful than the murderous Breiviks, a group that one can count so far on the fingers of one hand.

In fact, the editorial then proves my point:

Counterjihadists are fighting an imaginary enemy. In the United States Muslims constitute less than 1% of the population. In Europe, it is about 7%….[Muslim immigrants]…seek to practice their faith and to assimilate.

The editorial — and the mass media generally — defuses a serious discussion by making the only issue as to whether Muslims will take over. But the immediate dangers are different.

First, will the pool of potential terrorists and their supporters grow? We can add up attacks that total far more than the one in Norway. When, for example, a convert is inspired to murder a military recruiter in Arkansas or a radicalized Muslim opens fire at Fort Hood, this should be a warning bell. Will the number of attacks steadily increase?

Second, will Muslim communities be taken over — or at least the most energetic activists in them — by radical Islamists? There is real reason to believe this has been happening in many places. While one can show to a far more limited extent that “creeping Sharia law” in the West is affecting non-Muslims, it is certainly affecting Muslims.

And when, to cite just two examples, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a leading judge support the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in Great Britain, can anyone call that a delusion?

Third, Muslims who want to “assimilate” may be targeted or even killed by Islamists, who might be receiving state subsidies. Virtually every “honor killing” is against a woman who wants to assimilate. And since moderate Muslims are few, subject to intimidation, and receive little or no support from the Western establishments, those who often control these communities inhibit assimilation and teach people not to do so.

Any Muslims who are secular in their behavior, want to stop being Muslims, or who believe themselves properly religious but disagree with the extremists are being victimized.

When a woman is murdered in an “honor killing” or has her rights trampled on by Sharia as radically interpreted, she is also a Muslim. Often, governments have turned these people over to control by the radicals. They also finance the radicals, either because of the looseness of Western laws, misguided “multiculturalism,” or a conscious belief that helping radicals who aren’t committing terrorism this week will ensure there won’t be terrorism in future.

Fourth, there are real decisions to be made: Should public schools allow prayer (only, in the US) for Muslims? Can women wearing a veil have that picture on their driver’s license? Are cab drivers going to be allowed to refuse seeing-eye dogs? Will governments register polygamous marriages and give social welfare benefits on that basis? What is the definition of practicing their faith?

And then non-Muslims are being affected by being forced to observe Sharia law in an increasing number of cases, small in the overall extent of society, yet narrowing the freedom of those who experience it.

The final sentence of the editorial says:

Those who see “Muslim domination” and “creeping Sharia law” around every corner are imagining things. Their fictions only feed extremism.

True enough. Nobody should see anything “around every corner.” But saying that the problem is only imaginary and ignoring the real problems is also a fiction that will “only feed extremism,” including Islamist extremism, the triumph of the most radical interpretations of Islam, and extremists who want their own societies to decline.

Sheila Jackson Lee at Today's Muslim Hearing "Investigate The Right Wing Extremists""

Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx) is beginning to sound like a broken record and warped one at that. Today was the third installment of Peter King’s (D-NY) Muslim Radicalization hearings. While all of the committee members where focused on the threat of the potential radicalization of American Muslims, the Texas moonbat thought continued her tradition of making at least one ignorant outburst during each of King's hearings.

This time she argued that there should also be a set of hearing about those right-wing extremists.

“I would add to that, that I would like to have a hearing on right-wing extremists, ideologues who advocate violence and advocate, in essence, the terrorizing of certain groups."

For those of you who are thinking that Lee was reacting to last weeks horror in Oslo, the answer is no she does it all the time.

During the first day of hearings back in March Jackson Lee asked  LA County Sheriff Baca a question about his deputies’ outreach to minority groups. When Baca mentioned that he had a Muslim officer accompanying him, Lee began clapping.

That drew a reprimand from Peter King, who admonished all member and guests to avoid "outbursts" that's when Jackson-Lee's famous temper took over.

But the best part was the dead pan comment of the next congressman. "That's a tough act to follow."

If you cannot see two videos in this post click here.



The second hearing on Muslim radicalization saw Jackson Lee insisting on asking about the non-existent Christian militants who were trying to undermine the government.   King replied by reminding the Congressional Nutjob:

I would just remind the members of the minority for four years they controlled this committee and they could have had hearings on any of these issues at any other time if they wanted to. I never heard any mention of any of these groups at these hearings until we held our first hearing on Muslim radicalization. I wish you would have been as attentive during the previous four years.

 In other words....TAKE THAT!


After today's Jackson Lee demand for an inquiry into those right wing radicals who have been blowing up all those locations in America, she used much of her remaining time to question panelists with expertise on radicalization about the alleged hacking into telephones of 9-11 victims by the now-closed News of the World tabloid in England.

Look at the bright side, at least she didn't talk about Vietnam again.

ITS OFFICIAL! Herman Cain's Campaign is Done-Stick A Fork In It !

Herman we hardly knew you. On first hearing about Herman Cain's candidacy it was exciting.  What a resume, good on the stump, conservative ideals, worked for the federal govt but really became famous as a business executive who turned around companies in trouble...heck he saved Godfather's Pizza and I love pizza, that alone gave him extra points in my book.

Cain showed so much promise, he was good on the stump and was even better during the first debate, but now his campaign is dead, he may not know it yet but all that's left is for it to fall over.  The cause of death is the same as so many presidential campaigns before him, known in the Latin as Bardus Superstitiosus Orationes (stupid bigoted statements). 

The first hint that Cain's mouth did not have a self-control switch is when he announced that he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. Now a president's cabinet is supposed to act as his closest advisers, and he should be able to pick whoever he trusted most to fill those positions. But making a public claim that he will pick his advisers based on religion even if it were true, showed problem with his brain's "Warning You Are About To Say Something Really, Really Dumb" switch.


Cain seemed to back off that original statement last month, he started saying that he would appoint Muslims as long as they stated their loyalty was to America.  He supported that by saying he would make that same loyalty judgment about all of his appointees, no matter what the religion.  Something that sounded reasonable if it was the first thing he said, but coming after the "won't appoint Muslims at all" comment, it seemed hollow. As long as he didn't make the same mistake again the Cain campaign was still alive.


But sufferers of Bardus Superstitiosus Orationes usually find a way to become repeat offenders, and Herman Cain is no different.

This weekend Herman Cain was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. The former Godfather Pizza Executive doubled-down on  his opposition to a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and he showed a disturbing lack of knowledge about the first Amendment to the constitution.

“Our constitution guarantees separation of church and state,” said Cain. “Islam combines church and state. They are using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their mosque in the community and people in the community don’t like it. They disagree with it. Sharia law is what they are trying to infuse.”

Cain makes the same mistake that the ACLU types every year around Christmas. There is no Constitutional separation of Church and State. This is what the first amendment to the constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

See not there! Whether you agree with the ACLU that  there should be a separation of Church and State or not, any first year law student should know the original reason for the religion part of the first amendment was to keep the Federal government from trying to control religion. Many of the individual states already had an "official" religion, and the founders were worried about the Federal Government supplanting that local authority.

Like many Americans, I have a problem with Muslims who wish to make Sharia law public policy, the civil rule must take precedence over everything. However Sharia law being observed within the context of a Mosque is allowed under the Constitution as long as that law is subservient to civil law. Remember the amendment is supposed to protect the religion from government, not the other way around. Constitutionally the above statement would also be true if the words Sharia law were removed and Halachic Law (Jewish religious law) was substituted.  It does not mater of there are parts of fundamental Sharia Law are particularly brutal as long as the government enforces the fact that a particular code of religious law is subservient to civil law no one will be allowed to be brutalized and everyone's right will be protected.

So Herman Cain is wrong about the constitution here, and even worse that little speech filter failed him again.  But Cain wasn't done (if you cannot see two videos below click here):

CAIN: They could say that. Chris, lets go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying they’re objecting to. They’re objecting to the fact Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best, and I happen to side with the people in Murfreesboro.

WALLACE: You’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?

CAIN: Yes. They have a right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon religion.

We are supposed to be protecting religion from government. Despite his protestations Herman Cain is saying the Mosque is not allowed to be built because is a Muslim place of prayer. If Murfreesboro wants to ban the building of the Mosque, could a different community be allowed to ban the building of a Synagogue, Catholic Church? That is simply not allowed in the American Constitutional system.  I am not an expert in the Murfreesboro case, there may be a very valid reason for stopping the Mosque construction, but Herman Cain did not present one on Sunday.

And even worse for the Cain campaign, when paired with his earlier faux pas, Cain was beginning to look like a real bigot.

Here's the real confusing part.  Corporate America today his the ultimate home of political correctness. During my last stint working for "the man" at Viacom, there were regular sensitivity classes for sexual, racial and religious discrimination. Not only were there classes but there were memos, booklets, hats and special meals at the company cafeteria. The most important lesson the onslaught of training tried to impart on the employees was it didn't matter what the person who made the statement meant, it was only important how the person who heard the statement took it.  It makes one wonder how the hell did Herman Cain make it through the Corporate world without learning to keep his mouth shut?  It's scary that the guy has never learned to guard his tongue against making insensitive comments.

For those of you who think Cain's lack of a quality control speech filter should not hurt his nomination chances answer this. If Cain can't control himself when talking about Muslims or any people who may be different, but people whose votes he wants, how can he control himself during difficult negotiations with China? Or Russia? Or Saudi Arabia?

Here's another question for those of you who like me, feel that belief in the founder's vision of the Constitution is important for the eventual nominee, if Herman Cain does not understand the founders intentions behind the First Amendment, doesn't it make one question his knowledge of the rest of the constitution?

Today Herman Cain gave his reasons that Mitt Romney could not win.  His first reason was one of the primary reasons I would have problems supporting Romney during the primary season, Romney care.  The second reason was very troubling, Cain didn't believe a Mormon could win in the south.




Forgetting politics for a moment, this is the same country that just three years ago did what most people though was impossible, we elected someone who was half African-American as President, an event that as an African-American who has faced discrimination much of his life, Herman Cain should appreciate.  Is he now using religious discrimination as a reason Romney should not be nominated?

If Herman Cain's campaign was not dead after his discussion with Chris Wallace on Sunday, its dead now and quite frankly it deserves to be dead.  After showing much promise, Cain has shown a total lack of verbal control a failure of basic political skills.

Egypt’s Religious Establishment Takes On the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin



In a major new development, an Islamic force has arisen to challenge the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and support a more moderate regime in that country. This is a surprising opponent but the only one that could be of significance: al-Azhar University. Why is Egypt’s Islamic establishment taking on Egypt’s Islamists? Simple: survival and self-interest.

The prestigious al-Azhar is a conservative traditionalist institution that has been dominated by Egypt’s regime and used to oppose revolutionary Islamists. The Egyptian government decided who would run al-Azhar, who would be the country’s chief mufti (authority on Islamic law), who would preach in the mosques, who could build a mosque, and what clerics could appear on television and other media. If you wanted to build a career as an important Islamic cleric in Egypt you needed to get the rulers to like you. Their Islamist critics called them “parrots,” not only because they repeated the government line but also because a parrot is used like the English word, “bird-brained.”

Over the years, however, the establishment has made concessions to the new wave of radical interpretations. For the last few months, following Mubarak’s downfall, the al-Azhar leadership appeared ready to cut its own deal with the Brotherhood.

But the Brotherhood pushed too hard, demanding a totally new leadership for Egypt’s religious institutions. Facing a choice between resistance and total surrender (getting fired and perhaps facing a firing squad), al-Azhar’s heads decided to oppose the fundamental transformation of Egyptian society by the Brotherhood.

Thus, al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib, whose resignation the Brotherhood had demanded, has issued a declaration on Egypt’s future favoring a “modern” and “democratic nation-state” based on a constitution including rights for women, checks and balances among governmental institutions, freedom of speech, and other such things.

Tayyib is allied with Egypt’s other leading official cleric, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Both men were closely associated with the Mubarak regime, so a sweeping change in religious institutions would get them fired and possibly even facing legal charges under a Brotherhood-dominated government.

There are lots of subtleties in the statement that hint at opposition to an Islamist state, total Sharia law, and a caliphate. It puts al-Azhar into an alliance with democratic reformers and nationalists against the Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies.

Obviously, one shouldn’t romanticize an Islamic establishment that served the dictatorship and is not exactly liberal. This is merely an alliance of convenience for senior clerics acting out of self-interest. For example, one of the main provisions of al-Azhar’s political declaration is to maintain the university’s independence rather than, as the Brotherhood proposes, subordinate it to a president and parliament in which the Brotherhood will be very powerful.

Another element here is the conflict between the credentialed Muslim clerics and the self-taught preachers who often play a leading role in the revolutionary groups. The al-Azhar statement says that only licensed clerics can produce religious rulings.

The Muslim establishment is preferable to the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists. Al-Azhar has thrown down the gauntlet. If the Brotherhood and its allies win parliament there will definitely be a thorough purge of the religious hierarchy. If not, the anti-Islamists will have to make concessions to the official clerics to “prove” their pious credentials by making Egypt somewhat more Islamic than it has been for the last 60 years.

To read more about these issues and their historic background, Noha el-Hennawy has written a really excellent survey.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His articles published originally in places other than PajamasMedia can be found at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Obama Admin is Disguising Its Major Policy Shift to the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin


Here’s the headline: “U.S. to resume formal Muslim Brotherhood contacts.” But that’s not true. In fact, as the Reuters article itself admits, there have never been “formal” contacts before but only informal ones. Let’s examine the language, which stems from a “senior U.S. official,” to see what the Obama administration thinks about the Muslim Brotherhood:

A step that reflects the Islamist group’s growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.

Note how it is portrayed as an Israel-related issue. Won’t it upset people who care about U.S. interests? Won’t it upset Egyptian Christians? The Saudis and Jordanians and other relatively moderate Arab regimes? Won’t it upset Muslims who oppose revolutionary Islamism?

We are supposed to believe that only Israel and the Jews will be upset about the Obama administration moving closer to a radical antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist group that wants to repress women, kill gays, and overturn pretty much every existing government in the region. But just those Jews and their friends will be upset. You know, just like in the 1930s when certain people said that opposition to the totalitarian threat of those years was just coming from the Jews.

Reuters portrays the Brotherhood, as do many, as “a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.” Conservative? You mean they are like the Republican Party? You mean they are for the status quo? And of course one of the things they did since 1928 was to ally with Nazi Germany, and the Brotherhood continues to voice the same political line toward Jews that it did back then

We are also told that the Brotherhood “long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt….” This is simply not true. The Brotherhood merely temporarily renounced violence within Egypt because they knew that any resort to it would get them wiped out by the regime and the army. They postponed using violence until the revolutionary era arrived. Of course, if they can take over Egypt without violence they are happy to do so.

But there’s more. Every day for decades the Brotherhood has supported violence against Israel. It has supported violence against Americans in Iraq, and on various other fronts. Why is this so hard to see?

The result has been a dilemma for the Obama administration. Former officials and analysts said it has little choice but to engage the Brotherhood directly, given its political prominence after the February 11 downfall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

That is arguably true, but by recognizing the Brotherhood and having contacts with it, the Obama administration also makes a unilateral concession encouraging the Brotherhood. People who know the Middle East understand how this works: Soon many Egyptians will say (as they said in Iran and as they now say in Turkey) that the United States wants the Islamists to win.

But, the article continues:


U.S. President Barack Obama will surely face criticism for engaging with the Brotherhood, even tentatively.

And who do they go to — Middle East analysts who can explain why this is dangerous? No, to the head of AIPAC in order to perpetuate the theme that this is merely a problem with the Jewish lobby! And who is presented to refute this? Former American diplomats. So it is the people who know versus the Jews.

And what are we told about the Brotherhood’s goals? This:


The group says it wants a civil state based on Islamic principles, but talk by some members of an “Islamic state” or “Islamic government” have raised concerns that their goal is a state where full Islamic sharia law is implemented. The group says such comments have been taken out of context.

“Some members” include the leader and deputy leader of the group. It is apparently too much trouble to read and quote what Brotherhood officials say, or their publications openly state, or their political platform calls for. Never are these statements fully quoted. Always they are dismissed as insignificant, like the statements of the late Usama bin Ladin once were.

Moreover, Egypt under Mubarak could reasonably be said to be a “civil state based on Islamic principles.” And since “Islamic principles” are mandated by Allah, democracy is ultimately unacceptable since no human vote could alter those principles. How can an elected parliament pass a law limiting a man to one wife, or accepting religious conversion, outlawing amputations, or maintaining peace with Israel — to cite just a few examples — since those are against “Islamic principles,” at least under the interpretation of Islam held by the Brotherhood?

So we just can’t tell if the Muslim Brotherhood wants a radical Islamist state before it takes power. Just like it was presumably a mystery about what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to do in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

And finally the article doesn’t even mention the most important development in U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood relations during that group’s eighty-year history: President Barack Obama’s explicit (and uninvited) statement accepting the Brotherhood being in government. U.S. policy is paving the way for a radical, possibly Islamist, Egypt. It is a catastrophic strategy.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org.

UNBELIEVABLE! Obama Administration Puts Israel On List Of Countries That Support Terrorism

Only in the twisted world of the Obama Administration, where allies are trashed, and enemies are embraced, could the tiny nation of Israel, on the front lines of the war on terror for decades, be on a list of 36 nations which “have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.”

This is no joke and Alan Funt is dead so you can't be on Candid Camera. As reported by CNS News

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General published the list of "specially designated countries" as an appendix to an unclassified May 11 report--"Supervision of Aliens Commensurate With Risk"--that was publicly posted on the Internet. (The appendix is on page 18 of the document.)

As a matter of policy, according to the inspector general’s report, citizens of Israel and other “specially designated countries” are subjected to a special security screening called a “Third Agency Check” (TAC) when they are actually detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing the immigration laws.

The five countries on the list that do not have majority Muslim populations--Kazakhstan (47 percent Muslim), Eritrea (36.5 percent Muslim), Israel (16.9 percent Muslim), the Philippines (5 percent Muslim) and Thailand (4.6 percent)--have had internal problems with radical Muslim terrorists, as reported by the State Department. 

Isn't that kind of blaming the victim?

ICE officers are supposed to check all aliens they take into custody against the Terrorist Watchlist, which includes the identities of individuals the U.S. government knows or reasonably suspects to be terrorists. When ICE holds a citizen from a “specially designated country” in its own detention facilities, according to the agency’s standing policy, the individual is also supposed to be run through a TAC.

“In addition to the Terrorist Watchlist screening, ICE uses a Third Agency Check (TAC) to screen aliens from specially designated countries (SDCs) that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members,” says the inspector general’s report.

“The purpose of the additional screening is to determine whether other agencies have an interest in the alien,” says the report. “ICE’s policy requires officers to conduct TAC screenings only for aliens from SDCs if the aliens are in ICE custody. As a result, ICE does not perform a TAC for the majority of its population of aliens, which includes those incarcerated or released under supervision.”

The inspector general recommended in the report that ICE change its screening policy “to require officers to conduct TAC screenings for all aliens from SDCs, not just those held in ICE detention facilities.”

OK lets get this straight. Based on new Department of Homeland Security procedures, illegal immigrants who are caught breaking the law will not be deported, but the Inspector General is no recommending that every Israeli that visits the US should be subject to special screening procedures.

Wait! It gets crazier:

Even though the adminisration includes Israel among “specially designated countries” that it believes "have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members,” ICE Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen told CNSNews.com that the U.S. also considers Israel, as well as some other countries on the “specially designated countries” list, as partners in the struggle against terrorism.

“The U.S. does not and never has considered Israel to have links to terrorism, but rather they are a partner in our efforts to combat global terrorism,” Christensen said in a written statement. “Countries may have been included on the list because of the backgrounds of arrestees, not because of the country’s government itself.”

OH Israelis will now be subject to extra screening because the country arrests terrorists.
That makes sense?

ICE declined to say who put Israel on the list or when Israel was put there. However, in her written statement, ICE spokeswoman Christensen said the “specially designated country” list had been created "at least" seven years ago--which would have been during the presidency of George W. Bush--and that ICE was not responsible for creating it.

True but when this final list was proposed in March 2008 Israel was not on the list but North Korea was, today that is reversed.

“So many federal agencies have created different lists that U.S. officials contemplated adopting a single one to streamline the process, Stark wrote,” said the McClatchey report. “The proposed list, which officials said had yet to be adopted, includes 35 countries, most with significant Muslim or Arab populations.”

“The group of agencies--which included ICE, the National Security Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection--not only recommended one list but also suggested an interagency definition of ‘special interest alien,’” said the McClatchey report. “Under the proposal, a special interest alien would be an immigrant with terrorist ties or an immigrant who by nationality, ‘ethnicity or other factors may have ties or sympathies’ with the listed country.”

The 35 countries plus the West Bank and Gaza that were on the proposed list discussed in the ICE memo uncovered by McClatchey in March 2008 almost exactly matches the “specially designated countries” on the list published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General on May 11, 2011. There are only two differences: North Korea was on the list proposed in 2008; it is not on the May 2011 list. Israel was not on the list proposed in 2008; it is on the May 2011 list.

See how this administration cares about Israel?  Even though the list was already set, they made a change to put our ally on this special list. Boy oh boy, just like he is with Great Britain, whose Queen he gave an Ipod full of his speeches and Broadway Show tunes, Barack Obama is a real friend of Israel.

Obama always says that despite his constant criticism of  Israel, America will always have a special partnership with the Jewish State.  Now we understand he means putting Israel on a "special" terrorism watch list.

Peter King Bitch Slaps Sheila Jackson Lee At Today's Muslim Radicalization Hearing

With each passing day we learn more about Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. It as been long known that she is not the sharpest crayon in the playroom, her gaffes are legendary (only they aren't really gaffes she really believe this nonsense). There was the time she stood on the floor of the house  discussing how North and South Vietnam are living peacefully side by side, even though there hasn't been a North and South Vietnam since Gerald Ford was President, and another time when she told the House Judiciary Committee that the “penalty” which the health-care law imposes on individuals who do not buy health insurance is not in fact a penalty.

In March Daily Caller examined Jackson-Lee's management skills, and it wasn't pretty. Ms Lee might be the nastiest boss in the entire city of Washington, D.C.

During the first committee hearing about Muslim Radicalization in the US  Jackson-Lee threw a  hissy fit and was rebuked. A glutton for punishment, Ms Lee brought up an irrelevant point during today's hearing and got rebuked again.

During the hearing on Muslim radicalization hearing, Lee insisted on asking about Christian militants who were trying to undermine the government.   King replied by reminding the Congressional Nutjob:

I would just remind the members of the minority for four years they controlled this committee and they could have had hearings on any of these issues at any other time if they wanted to. I never heard any mention of any of these groups at these hearings until we held our first hearing on Muslim radicalization. I wish you would have been as attentive during the previous four years.

 In other words....TAKE THAT!

Its even better on video, go to the Right Scoop and watch the Peter King Slapdown.

President Obama’s “Reset” of Relations with Muslims and a Massacre in Pakistan

By Barry Rubin

There’s something particularly poignant about news that at least 80 people were killed in Charsadda, Pakistan, by a Taliban attack on a police training center there. It isn’t that the event was so unique—except for one feature—but it is a suitable symbol of the situation in the Muslim-majority world today and how messed up is the Western perception of that part of the world. 

The unique aspect is that the attackers said they are taking revenge for the killing of Usama bin Ladin by the United States.

And so as Americans cheer, 80 Pakistani families are in mourning. Let me quickly add that I do not blame the United States for this new mass murder. The crime is on the terrorists’ head. Nor do I believe the United States should not have killed bin Ladin. Not at all.

But this is a teachable moment so let’s summarize the lessons.

--Terrorism goes on. The death of one man or even of one organization won’t end it.

--If the United States had not killed bin Ladin on that particular day, in that place, or in that way, the Charsadda attack would have happened anyway. Thus, terrorists use specific events as excuses to do what they would have done anyway.

--Pakistan, albeit not to its credit, had nothing to do with the killing. In fact, major elements in the government protected bin Ladin while even more of the regime opposed the U.S. attack. Terrorists don't kill people because their victims are "guilty" nor do they need a "good reason" for murder. Their reason is the attempt to stage a revolutionary transformation of their society which they believe is mandated by the will of God and also would give them wealth and power. 


--The main cause of terrorism is not America (or Israel, or any other country) killing terrorists but revolutionary Islamism’s attempts to seize state power or of those revolutionary Islamists (and their allies) already in power (see Iran, Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and perhaps soon the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?) to overthrow neighbors. 

--These policemen were targets not because they were oppressive instruments of capitalism or imperialism but because the revolutionaries want to destroy order so they can operate in a situation of anarchy which they hope to replace with their own rule.

--Most of the victims of terrorism are Muslim but those who proclaim their love of Muslims and of Third World people (the Western left and most Muslim activists there) couldn’t care less about these thousands of killings. Their only interest is to blame them on America, Israel, the West, or Islamophobia. In fact, they attempt to interfere with the battle against the terrorists and revolutionary Islamists, thus leading to the death of more Muslims.

--Revolutionary Islamism uses terrorism because it is a reflection of the movement’s ultimate totalitarian and repressive aims.

--If revolutionary Islamism was just a heretical caricature of Islam then no Muslims would follow it. Why did millions of Iranians support the Islamic Republic? Why has Hizballah come to dominate the Lebanese Shia community? Why will millions of Egyptians vote for Muslim Brotherhood candidates? The reason is that revolutionary Islamism is a "legitimate" interpretation of Islam based on its texts and traditions. But it is not the only, or "best," or most beneficial (for Muslims and others) interpretation. To deny that Islamism is derived from Islam won't convince any Muslims because they know better. This is a battle over politics and interpretation, not "Islamophobia," a concept largely created by Islamists for their own benefit.

--Relatively moderate Arab governments are not just using the threat of revolutionary Islamism to stay in power (although they do that also) but as a reflection of a very real danger to their countries and societies. Whatever one thinks of the Mubarak regime, a Brotherhood regime would be worse. In contrast, it is ridiculous to protect the Assad regime in Syria because it is an ally of revolutionary Islamists, helping them to murder people in Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.

--Any true friend of Muslims would want the revolutionary Islamists defeated and the regimes supporting them overthrown. Such a person would join the fight against not only al-Qaida but also Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and the Taliban.

--Most of the obsessive demonization of Israel today does not spring from some humanitarian impulse but is orchestrated by revolutionary Islamists and their Western allies (witting or otherwise) to commit genocide on Israeli Jews, expel or oppress Palestinian Christians, and impose a totalitarian state on Palestinians.

--Until Western leaders understand the above principles, their policies will not only fail they will be counterproductive for the interests of both their own countries and millions of Muslims, who do not want to be ruled by revolutionary Islamism. 

Now here's an interesting question. Suppose the above list of propositions was submitted to leading politicians, policymakers, journalists, and academic experts, how many of these points would they accept as obvious and how many totally reject? If this list was given to average people how many of these points would they say that they've never heard expressed by their mass media or leaders?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at Pajamas Mediahttp://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.