Tag Archives: jihad

Robert Spencer: Osama bin Laden’s Miscalculations 4 (1)

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by Robert Spencer

Did each side misjudge the other?

A fascinating article in the New York Post Monday reveals that “Osama bin Laden had been ‘very eager to replicate the 9/11 attacks’ against the US — and actively plotted to blow up oil tankers, derail trains and use private jets as weapons, according to a trove of seized documents.” Yet while there have been numerous jihad attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, none matched its magnitude. Osama wasn’t able to replicate, for as it turns out, he misjudged the U.S. as drastically as the U.S. misjudged him and his movement.

“The plots,” the Post reported, “were spelled out in more than 500,000 letters and files seized by the Navy SEAL team that executed the mass-murdering al Qaeda leader in 2011, according to Nelly Lahoud, an Islamic scholar who spent years carefully studying the trove.” In his eagerness to bring about another 9/11, but aware that airport security had dramatically increased, bin Laden told his followers to “consider chartering private jets to attack the US.” He also “spelled out a detailed plan to slaughter American commuters on a train.” Osama “wanted to have around 40 feet of track removed so that a ‘train could be derailed.’”

The jihad mastermind had other ideas as well: “In 2010, a year before his death, bin Laden plotted to target multiple crude oil tankers and major shipping routes around the Middle East and Africa.” This was because, according to Lahoud, Osama saw “the importance of oil for the industrialized economy” as “similar to blood for human beings. So, if you cause somebody to bleed excessively, even if you don’t kill him you will at least weaken him. He really wanted to do to the American economy.”

He certainly did severe damage to the American economy. The war on terror cost the United States trillions of dollars, and all it gave us was a diminished presence on the world stage, an onerous and irritating security apparatus in airports, and an emboldened jihad force worldwide that continues to pose a problem for governments around the world (often self-inflicted, in the form of mass Muslim migration).

But apparently Osama thought that his victory would be more comprehensive and immediate. According to Lahoud, he made a “huge miscalculation” in predicting how the U.S. would respond to 9/11. “He thought,” she says, “that the American people would take to the streets, replicate the anti-Vietnam war protests and they would put pressure on their government to withdraw from Muslim majority states.” All he expected as retaliation for taking down the Twin Towers was “a limited airstrike.”

A huge miscalculation indeed. But the U.S. miscalculated as well. Six days after 9/11, George W. Bush went into a mosque in Washington, accompanied by the head of a Hamas-linked group and another Muslim leader who is now in prison for financing al-Qaeda, and proclaimed that “Islam is peace.” This discouraged those who were trying to understand the beliefs, motives, and goals of the jihadis from investigating even the jihadis’ own statements, for fear of giving the impression that 9/11, and jihad terrorism in general, had something to do with Islam. The false assumption that Islam was a religion of peace deformed the American response to 9/11 in numerous ways, leading to wrongheaded policies on both the domestic and international fronts, with consequences that have yet to play out fully.

When Donald Trump tried to correct one of those wrongheaded policies by restricting immigration from several Muslim countries that would not or could not provide adequate information about the people who wanted to enter the United States, he was roundly denounced as an “Islamophobe,” as those who have spoken honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terror have been for years, and Joe Biden repealed the policy on his first day in office. How many jihad terrorists, including al-Qaeda members, are in the country now as a result of this, awaiting their best opportunity? We’ll find out.

There were miscalculations on both sides. Both thought that the other posed a threat that was smaller than it actually was. The Post notes that “al Qaeda had just $200,000 in its coffers in 2006 and was unable to support its increasingly fractious jihad.” It would be another miscalculation, however, to take that as a sign that the jihad is largely a spent force. Al-Qaeda is just one of many jihad groups around the world. Since the death of bin Laden, his group has been largely eclipsed by another jihad group that emerged from it, the Islamic State (ISIS). Bin Laden may have underestimated America in 2001; other jihadis are sizing America up in 2022, and it would be much harder to underestimate us now.

FPM: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/osama-bin-ladens-miscalculations-robert-spencer/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Robert Spencer: Biden’s Team of Israel-Haters 4 (1)

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by Robert Spencer

Would a supporter of Israel really fill his foreign policy staff with those who hate the Jewish State?

Just days after Joe Biden was inaugurated, pro-Erdogan Turkish journalist Hakkı Öcal, according to Ahval News, “highlighted a report on the strong presence of Jews in the cabinet of U.S. President Joe Biden.” The report claimed that there was an “over 50 percent Jewish presence in the new U.S. cabinet,” and pointed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, among others. But Öcal was off base: among Biden’s handlers, Jewish and non-Jewish, there are few, if any, staunch friends of Israel. After just a few months in office, it was clear that Joe Biden’s handlers’ administration was shaping up to be the most anti-Israel presidency since the founding of the modern State of Israel.

Robert Malley, Special Envoy to Iran, has become notorious over the years for his support for Iran’s Islamic regime and pronounced distaste for Israel. The Washington Times revealed in February 2021 that back in July 2019, “Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.”

Malley was a good choice for such an assignment. An Israeli security official noted in February 2008 that Malley “has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.” Obama dropped Malley in May 2008 after it came to light that he had met with representatives of Hamas, but six months later sent him as an envoy to Egypt and Syria.

Meanwhile, Reema Dodin is a deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. According to the Jerusalem Post, “during the Second Intifada, in 2002, Dodin spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with residents of Lodi, California, saying that ‘suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.’” Also, “in 2001, Dodin took part in a demonstration at UC Berkeley calling for the university to divest from Israel….The demonstrators compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.”

In a similar vein, Biden’s handlers appointed Maher Bitar the Senior Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council. In 2006, while a student at Georgetown University, Bitar was a member of the executive board of the viciously pro-jihad, anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine, and was seen dancing in front of a banner that said “Divest from Israel Apartheid.”

The Deputy Secretary of State is Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator of Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. The State Department’s undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights is Uzra Zeya. According to the Jewish News Service, Zeya “worked for the magazine Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and its publishing group, American Educational Trust. The Washington Report has questioned the loyalty American Jews have to the United States; published accusations against the ‘Jewish lobby’; claimed American Jews control the media; and accused the Mossad of perpetrating the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine is Hady Amr. In an unhinged 2002 rant, Amr repeated Palestinian jihad propaganda, declaring: “I have news for every Israeli: a very large proportion of the more than 150 million children and youth in the Arab World now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children.”

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is Colin Kahl. According to Israel Hayom, “Kahl has quite the anti-Israel record. He thinks the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq was 1981 was a mistake. In 2012, he acted to remove recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the Democratic party’s platform. In 2015, he was among those to formulate the Iran nuclear deal. In 2016, at the end of his term, then-US President Barack Obama tasked him with enlisting support for the anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that determined Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria were a violation of international law.”

Have Biden’s handlers appointed a balancing group of strong supporters of Israel, who will move to prevent this unsavory group (which is larger than just those named here) from disrupting America’s relationship with its strongest, most reliable ally in the West? Is there any brake to the ability of the anti-Israel group in Biden’s administration to force Israel to make potentially life-threatening concessions to the Palestinian jihad force. The answer to both questions is no.

FPM: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/bidens-team-israel-haters-robert-spencer/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. 

Bill Lockwood: Stealth Jihad and the Islamization of America 4 (1)

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by Bill Lockwood

Islam divides the entire world into two sectors: “Dar-al-Islam” (House of Islam) and “Dar-al-Harb” (House of War). The only countries that are considered to be at peace with Islam are those which enforce Shari’a Law. This is because Islam does not recognize the right of any other religion to exist. America at large is thus a part of the “House of War.”

World Domination

Muslim leaders world-wide have been bold and blatant that their efforts are toward an Islamic-dominated world. Iranian leader Ahmadenejad declared it (2006); Leading Muslim cleric in the UK Anjem Choudary insisted that the Muslim flag will one day “fly over the White House;” the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) chair Omar Ahmad confessed in 1998 that the Islamic goal is “to become dominant worldwide;” and the Muslim Brotherhood has given us “The Project”—a 100 year-plan to establish “Islamic government on earth.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, created in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, claims to have more than 70 affiliated terrorist organizations throughout the world. It states that “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Note that they define “jihad” for us. It involves “dying in the way of Allah.”

“Jihad” is the sacred obligation to impose Islam upon the entire world. This is not the creation of a few extremists or the hijacking of a peaceful religion by a handful of radicals. Jihad is mandated in the writings of the Quran, was practiced in bloody earnest by the false prophet Muhammad, and is overwhelmingly defined by classical theologians, jurists and traditionalists as a military concept of “waging war.”

According to the eminent scholar of Islamic history and culture at Princeton University, Bernard Lewis, the late Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton,
[the] term ‘jihad’ has usually been understood as meaning ‘to wage war.’ The great collection of hadith all contain a section devoted to jihad in which the military meaning predominates. …According to Muslim teaching, jihad is one of the basic commandments of the faith, an obligation imposed upon all Muslims by God, through revelation … It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.

Students in public schools today learn the “5 Pillars of Islam” inclusive of prayer, alms, pilgrimage, and so forth. However, the instructional materials in our public schools normally do not include the 6th Pillar. Jihad is the 6th Pillar. So important was “Jihad” (Religious fighting for Allah) that Muhammad declared it the second most important deed in Islam. (Hadith by Bukhari, Vol. 1, no. 25).

Some Muslim clerics inform us that “jihad” can mean “inner struggle” as in a person who “struggles” for inner mastery over sin. This definition is “taqiyya”—or lying. Jihad, in the authoritative materials of Islam, uniformly means fighting for political mastery.

Muhammad himself stated that “The person who participates in Jihad (Holy Battles) for Allah’s cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His apostle, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to paradise (if he is killed.)” (Vol. 1:35).

Some Muslims may ignore jihad or disregard it—and we are glad they do– but it is certainly not defined in the authoritative Islamic texts as “inner struggle.” Further, this is not a matter of “interpretation”—but of either acceptance or rejection by Muslims.

It is very difficult for Christians to understand, but Islam is a militant movement which has as its primary aim not spiritual, but political goals. The ultimate purpose of Islam is the establishment by force of a worldwide Islamic state where Shari’a law is enforced.

Muslim Brotherhood

This brings us back to the Muslim Brotherhood. Their outlined strategies for western world takeover include the “appearance of moderation,” the “use of deception to mask good,” the “extensive usage of social networks,” and to “cultivate Islamist intellectual community;” “using Western institutions until they convert them into the service of Islam.”

Changing the laws of the United States is the primary target. Stealth Jihad. As Muslim Brotherhood leader Qaradowi stated, “jihad can be fought with the pen, then the sword.”

The great world-class scholar and former president John Quincy Adams warned America regarding Islam. His comment was that Muhammad had

poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature. … Between these two religions [Islam and Christianity], a war of twelve hundred years has already waged. The war is yet flagrant … while the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motive to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.

Robert Spencer: Elle Magazine Puts White Linda Sarsour on Its List of ‘Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020’ 0 (0)

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by Robert Spencer

Elle magazine seems somewhat embarrassed by its list, published last week, of “20 Women of Color in Politics to Watch in 2020.” The article now carries this prominent disclaimer: “The below list was compiled by She the People, a national non profit network of women of color committed to social justice and voter mobilization. A previous version of this story did not make clear that the list was compiled by She the People and not ELLE magazine.” This was added because Elle faced a backlash for including the vehemently anti-Semitic Leftist activist Linda Sarsour on the list. But no one seems to have noticed another problem: the list is of “women of color,” and Sarsour is white.

Such minor quibbles will fall on deaf ears among Leftists. For the Left is at war not just with conservatives, but with reality itself. This has been clear for quite some time. Instead of trying to achieve some reconciliation with the nature of things as they are, the Left is growing ever more divorced from truth, reason, and ineluctable facts. For example, witness the hijab-wearing feminist (an oxymoron just as much as a white “woman of color,” as white is not a color in the Left’s world) Linda Sarsour’s magical race transformation.

It has been absurd enough to see Sarsour, a hijab-wearing defender of that most misogynistic of legal codes, Sharia, emerge as a champion of women’s rights and a feminist leader. But that was rational compared to the weapons-grade absurdity that Elle, or She The People, is now serving up regarding this palest of “women of color.”

The stage was set for Elle to anoint Sarsour as a “woman of color in politics to watch in 2020” several years ago, when the blogger Elder of Ziyon made an amazing discovery: Linda Sarsour claimed she “magically changed from white to a ‘woman of color’ in an instant,” just by putting on a hijab.

It’s true: in a Vox video published in January 2017, Sarsour said: When I wasn’t wearing hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City.

But in an April 2017 interview of this hero of feminism, there is this: After watching Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Dangerous Minds, Sarsour decided to become a high school teacher, “inspiring young people of color like me, to show them their potential.” She graduated a year early, gave birth to her eldest son, and enrolled in community college.

In the ensuing controversy, Linda Sarsour doubled down, saying: I’m Palestinian. If I want to say “I’m black,” I’m black!

What did being Palestinian have to do in Linda Sarsour’s crowded mind with her spurious claim of blackness? Well, it’s a fictional nationality, so Sarsour might as well take on a fictional race to go along with it. Maybe she was saying that since she had already made one fantasy a cornerstone of her public identity, adding another couldn’t hurt. As The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process demonstrates, the “Palestinians” as a people were indistinguishable from the neighboring Arabs. The “Palestinian” ethnicity or nationality was never known or mentioned throughout human history until the 1960s, when Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented it as a stick to beat the Israelis with. Tiny Israel arrayed against 22 hostile Arab countries looked like the plucky, heroic underdog; but the tinier “Palestinian” people facing the massive Israeli war machine reversed the narrative.

PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977: The Palestinian people does not exist.

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a “Palestinian,” I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem.

However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

If Islamic jihadis (with considerable help from Marxist strategists) can invent an entire ethnic group, why can’t Linda Sarsour, a proud member of this invented ethnic group, change races? For “tactical reasons,” in order to identify with the fashionable victim classes instead of with the universally designated oppressor, white people?

Elle’s article shows that Sarsour’s tactic has worked wonderfully, and reality can take the hindmost. The Left left it behind long ago, and if you still pay attention to it, you’re just not woke.

PJM: https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/elle-puts-white-linda-sarsour-on-its-list-of-women-of-color-in-politics-to-watch-in-2020/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. 

Pamela Geller: The Ground Zero Mosque Project Is Back 0 (0)

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by Pamela Geller

Lest we forget, the building of the intended “Islamic center” was destroyed in the 911 Islamic attacks. Human remains were found on the site. 9/11 families were joined by immigrants from India, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Africa, Iran and Europe to show opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque at our protest at Ground Zero. Others flew in from overseas to speak or just to share their particular ethnic communities’ experiences at the hands of moslems.

The news was buried under two dense paragraphs and five large photos in an article in New York YIMBY about a different project: “Construction has also yet to begin on 51 Park Place, which is slated to become a 71-foot-tall, 16,000-square-foot Islamic cultural center.”  The infamous Ground Zero Mosque project, a long buried effort to build a triumphal mosque at the site of the worst jihad terror attack in American history, is back.

Construction has yet to begin, but it will: the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal, has been working to build this sinister structure for years.

We defeated the Ground Zero Mosque project once before.  The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built.  Our efforts in showing what an insult it was to the American people and to the victims of 9/11, and how many Muslims worldwide would inevitably view it as a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad attack, defeated it.  Tens of thousands of people came out for our rallies in lower Manhattan against this celebration of this 9/11 attacks, and El-Gamal was beaten in the court of public opinion.

It was a long battle.  President Obama announced his support for the mosque at an Iftar dinner, no less.  Then-mayor of New York City and current presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg supported the mosque as well, claiming hysterically that “if we don’t build it, the terrorists will win!”  The media actively campaigned for it — the elites in their increasingly fragile ivory towers relentlessly stumped for the Cordoba mosque (euphemistically called an Islamic center with a prayer space) for years.

And yet despite all this opposition and much more, the people stood up and fought the Ground Zero Mosque and won.  An army of Davids.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  Crains New York reported on El-Gamal’s new project in 2015 in a story that demonstrated how the developer was hoping to sneak his triumphal mosque into existence: “Mr. El-Gamal’s Soho Properties has proposed a 667-foot condominium tower at lower Manhattan’s 45 Park Place.  The glass skyscraper, which has yet to break ground, will include at least 15 full-floor units of 3,200 to 3,700 square feet, and average prices higher than $3,000 a square foot, according to plans released to Bloomberg by the developer.”

That sounded normal enough.  But then the article added: “Adjacent to the tower, Soho Properties will build a public plaza connected to a three-story Islamic museum and prayer space.”  An Islamic prayer space is a mosque.  The article also said: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email.  ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.’”

I think an Islamic museum at Ground Zero dedicated to the half-billion victims of jihadi wars, land appropriations, sharia, cultural annihilations, enslavements, and sharia enforcement is an excellent idea, but is that what Sharif El-Gamal had in mind?  Of course not.  And how did El-Gamal plan to finance this?  The answer was predictable.  The New York Post reported in May 2016 that “the developer of the failed Ground Zero Mosque has nailed down ‘Sharia-compliant financing’ for a new, luxury condominium tower and Islamic cultural museum on the same site, he and his banking partners said.”

Then in May 2017, the New York Times ran a story entitled “Condo Tower to Rise Where Muslim Community Center Was Proposed.”  The Times said that “45 Park Place, a 43-story condominium that will soon rise three blocks from the World Trade Center,” was “something of a consolation prize for the developer,” as it “replaces the developer’s 2010 plan to build a 15-story Islamic mosque and cultural center on this site, an idea that erupted into a national controversy and cable news network bonanza.”

In the last couple of years, there has been virtually no news about this “Islamic museum.”  But the New York YIMBY story shows that the project has been advancing under cover of darkness.  A 71-foot-tall structure is three stories high, as in the revised plans announced in 2015.

El-Gamal has many friends and allies among New York City’s political and media elites.  It is likely that de Blasio city officials and the New York Times and other city papers all met with El-Gamal and agreed to keep the reporting on this project to an absolute minimum, so that it could get built without incurring the righteous anger of the public again.  The first time around, they courted publicity and tried to make El-Gamal a hero.  We demolished that and destroyed their plans.  So now they’ve clearly decided to go ahead surreptitiously.

It is disgusting that El-Gamal continues to taunt Americans and poke at America’s most egregious recent memory.  El-Gamal was there when we had tens of thousands in the streets opposing his Ground Zero mosque.  He knows how angry and upset people get at these Islamic structures on the site of jihad war.  The 9/11 Muslim terrorists extolled Allah no fewer than 90 times in their last letters.  Will those letters be on display at this Islamic cultural center/museum?

There is an important lesson to be learned here — and one we would be wise to adopt.  They never stop.  No matter how absolutely they lose, how many setbacks they suffer, they keep on pursuing their supremacist goals.

The Ground Zero Mosque project was and is a middle finger to the American people.  There has never been a mosque of reconciliation and healing built on the site of a jihadi attack.  Ever.  It is, on the other hand, an Islamic pattern to build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.  History is riddled with triumphal mosques built on the sites of jihad attacks or appropriated from other religions: the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and innumerable mosques built on the sites of Hindu temples that were demolished by Muslims all attest to that.

And now it looks as if Sharif El-Gamal is going to be able to build his own triumphal mosque at Ground Zero after all.

GR: https://gellerreport.com/2019/12/gzm-back.html/

Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of The Geller Report and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of Fatwa: Hunted in America (foreword by Geert Wilders) (Dangerous Books), The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton) (Simon & Schuster) and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books). She is also a regular columnist for numerous publications.

Hugh Fitzgerald: The Israeli Air Force “Mows the Lawn” in Gaza 0 (0)

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by Hugh Fitzgerald

In Gaza, on November 11, having endured many attacks on its civilians by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Israel struck at the terror group with pinpoint accuracy, firing a missile at a particular room on the third floor of a residential building, which turned out to be the very bedroom of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander in northern Gaza, Baha Abu al-Ata, killing only him and his wife. Confirming his death, a PIJ spokesman said he was just about to undertake “a heroic jihadist action.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Abu al-Ata an “arch-terrorist” and said he was “the main instigator of terrorism from the Gaza Strip. He initiated, planned and carried out many terrorist attacks. He fired hundreds of rockets at communities in the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, whose suffering we have seen,” he told a news conference in Tel Aviv. “He was in the midst of planning additional attacks in the immediate short term. He was a ticking bomb.”

The PIJ is the second-largest terrorist group in Gaza, and also has offices abroad  in Damascus, Tehran, and Khartoum. It is even more extreme than its rival Hamas, in that – unlike Hamas — it refuses even to consider a ceasefire, and it has recently been firing hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, always into civilian areas, in its determination to prevent a shaky ceasefire between Hamas and Israel from taking hold. Israel has previously held Hamas accountable for attacks by the PIJ, and would attack Hamas targets in retaliation for PIJ rocket attacks on Israeli towns and cities. The idea was to inflict so much pain on Hamas that it would then target PIJ in Gaza itself, to prevent its attacking Israel. But now, with the killing of Baba Anu al-Ata, Israel appears to have concluded that Hamas has been not unwilling but, rather, unable to halt PIJ attacks on Israel, so the IDF will have to do the job itself. The Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt Gen Aviv Kochavi, said that Abu al-Ata had undermined recent efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which runs Gaza and is considered a rival to PIJ.

An hour after the Israelis announced the attack on Abu al-Ata in northern Gaza, an Israeli plane fired two rockets at the house of Akram al-Ajouri, a senior member of the terror group PIJ, in the Mezzeh area of Damascus. Al-Ajouri managed to survive, but his son and Ajouri’s bodyguard were killed.

What do these attacks signify? First, that Israel wants to do its utmost to ensure that no innocents are harmed. In both cases, the rockets struck with pinpoint accuracy. In Gaza, not only did the IDF manage to limit the attack to Abu al-Ata’s apartment on the third floor, but, with even greater accuracy, to the very bedroom where he and his wife were sleeping. In Damascus, a similar surgical strike on the home of Al-Ajouri killed only his son and his bodyguard. Many hours later, the Syrians claimed that Al-Ajouri’s granddaughter had also been killed; it’s unclear if this is true, or if it was fabricated in an attempt to elicit more anger against Israel.

Compare these Israeli strikes to how the PIJ struck back. In just the six hours after the killing of Abu al-Ata, PIJ fired more than 170 rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Workplaces and schools were shut down as far north as Tel Aviv. There was no attempt by PIJ to hit a particular target, no “pinpoint accuracy” to these attacks; every Israeli in southern and central Israel was a potential target, including those in the country’s hub, Tel Aviv. Half the country closed down, including schools and workplaces from Tel Aviv south; with sirens intermittently sounding, and people taking cover on the streets or in one of the many bomb shelters that Israelis have built everywhere in their permanently imperiled country

Israel has now retaliated, in turn, for those PIJ rocket attacks. It did not do so right away, holding its fire for six hours, possibly in the hope that after the targeted killings, and having vented its anger with its volley of rockets, the PIJ might rethink its strategy. But it was not to be: and so, with 160 rockets having been fired at Israel, the IAF finally struck back, only at strictly military targets of the PIJ. The IAF hit arms warehouses, a training center for Islamic Jihad’s naval force, a shaft of a PIJ terror tunnel in northern Gaza, and a digging site of another PIJ terror tunnel in the central Strip. Only five people have been reported killed in those attacks, all of them PIJ terrorists. Here, again, in Gaza, the IAF has shown itself to be exceedingly accurate, with no civilian deaths among the Palestinians reported so far.

Israel, meanwhile, has also been careful not to hit a single target belonging to Hamas. Israelis have rethought their previous strategy of holding Hamas responsible for attacks by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and attacking it after enduring attacks by PIJ. Israeli commanders have become convinced that Hamas is trying, but not succeeding, in preventing PIJ from launching its rockets. So Israel briefly decided to return – but has made clear it is doing so only temporarily — to its former policy of “targeted assassinations,” that it used to employ with such effect against Hamas. The IDF is trying to deal forcefully and quickly with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, by cutting off the “head of the snake” – that is, killing its military commander in Gaza, Baha Abu al-Ata, and, in Damascus, the head of its political wing, Akram Al-Ajouri. It wants to weaken Palestinian Jihad, perhaps enough to encourage Hamas to finish the job the IAF has begun, and to return to trying to keep alive the tentative ceasefire that Egypt has been brokering between Israel and Hamas.

As the battle goes on, and both sides have already been “urged to exercise restraint” by the U.N., note that “restraint” is exactly what Israel has always been exercising, in these surgical strikes against PIJ leaders and military targets. It is the PIJ that has never exercised “restraint” in its attacks on Israelis, consistently shooting its rockets into Israeli civilian areas. If it has not caused more civilian casualties, it’s not for want of trying.

The remaining leadership of PIJ remains defiant, and issued a statement promising that “Our inevitable retaliation will rock the Zionist entity.” So far that “inevitable retaliation” has not led to any Israeli deaths, but only to fewer than a dozen wounded. This low number testifies to the efficacy of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, the country’s excellent warning system, and the shelters that are found  everywhere in Israel.

Hamas, the Palestinian organization that administers the Gaza Strip, said Israel “bears full responsibility for all consequences of this escalation,” and promised Abu al-Ata’s death “will not go unpunished.” This is the minimum that could be expected from Hamas, which though secretly pleased at the damage done to its rival, must pretend to be outraged by Israel’s attacks. It is noticeable that Hamas did not fire any retaliatory rockets itself, nor did it state that it would participate in “punishing” Israel. If Abu al-Ata’s death “will not go unpunished,” apparently Hamas will not be among those doing the punishing. Hamas could have said that “we will help punish Israel for its murder of Abu al-Ata,” but did not. That’s a significant public breach between Hamas and PIJ. How long Hamas will wait, until itself taking on the much-weakened PIJ, in order to assure itself that the ceasefire with Israel will hold, is anyone’s guess. The Israelis hope it is soon. They would themselves re-enter Gaza, to crush all the terrorists, what they call “mowing the lawn,” only most reluctantly. Hamas cannot afford to behave like PIJ, oblivious to the consequences of its acts, and willing to endlessly attack Israel even if the IDF’s retaliation is always more punishing than anything the PIJ can inflict. For Hamas is now more than a terrorist group; it bears all the responsibilities of rule in Gaza. And that includes trying to maintain the ceasefire with Israel, brokered by Egypt, for as long as it serves its interests.

Why do Israelis call these actions taken against the terrorists “mowing the lawn”? It’s because they know it is only a temporary solution to a permanent problem. The terrorists may be cut down, but will always reappear, like a lawn that regrows after being mowed. The Jihad, the Israelis know, is permanent. It’s been going on, somewhere in the world, for the past 1,400 years. If only the people in the chanceries of the West, so quick to round on Israel for daring to defend itself, could grasp that simple fact.

JW: https://www.jihadwatch.org/category/hugh-fitzgerald

Hugh Fitzgerald is a student of history and literature, primarily of America and Europe. He admires Jacques Barzun, J. D. Salinger, and Alan Bennett, reads dictionaries for profit and pleasure, and finds particularly appealing the words “recompense,” “quondam,” “magari,” and “degringolade.”

By far the best way to reach Hughun is through the offices at Jihad Watch. Fitzgerald has an email account, the address of which is hughfitz123@msn.com.

Robert Spencer: Loyola Marymount University: It’s “Islamophobic” to be “Counter-Jihad” 0 (0)

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by Robert Spencer

The Los Angeles Loyolan tells us that it is Loyola Marymount University’s “award-winning, student-run news organization,” and it is not surprising that it would have won awards from the people who give out awards these days, because like all campus papers, it is a reliable guide to how deeply the far-Left indoctrination that most professors are conducting is taking root in their unwitting students. One of those students is the Assistant Opinion Editor for the Los Angeles Loyolan, a young man (I know that because he helpfully informs us that his pronouns are “He/Him/His”) named Cristobal Spielmann, who is, like all well-informed, duly woke students today, horrified at the prospect that someone would be so “racist” as to oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women and others.

Inside Higher Ed may weep bitter crocodile tears over my noting the ominous assumptions behind Spielmann’s words, as the young fellow is only a child, but he is a child putting his views out in the public forum, and consequently must deal with public dissent from his views – at least until he and his fellow fascists secure power.

And Spielmann’s views are indeed ominous. I am an “anti-Muslim extremist,” he claims in an extended complaint against Loyola Marymount’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, and offers this as his explanation of why: a pamphlet I wrote “takes every opportunity to paint the near entirety of Islam and the Quran as violent while creating a paranoid ‘us vs. them’ narrative of the West in a moral struggle with Islam.”

In reality, of course, the West is not in the least engaged in a moral struggle with Islam. Many Muslims, however, are in a moral struggle with the West and other non-Muslim entities. Apparently it is “Islamophobic” to take any notice of that. It is objectionable enough just to note that the Qur’an has passages calling for violence against non-Muslims. Did I misquote the Qur’an, or state its contents inaccurately? Spielmann had the residual honesty not to go so far as to say that, and of course he would not have been able to say it if he meant to tell the truth at all, since I don’t misquote or misrepresent the Qur’an. He just doesn’t like what I said about it, because it doesn’t fit the way he wants to pretend that the world is.

Even worse, “This isn’t even the first time that the LMU chapter of YAF has engaged in Islamophobia. Last fall semester, YAF posted a counter-jihad poster…”

So now it’s “Islamophobic,” at least at Loyola Marymount University, even to oppose jihad and to post a “counter-jihad poster.” Apparently now even opposing jihad, the imperative that led Mohamed Atta and his comrades to murder 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, and that has been the driving force behind over 36,000 terror attacks worldwide since that date, is “Islamophobic.”

This has been a long time coming. The seeds of it were planted the first time the establishment media labeled opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression “anti-Muslim.” If it’s anti-Muslim to oppose those things, then the establishment media narrative that such violence and oppression is perpetrated only by a tiny minority of extremists that misunderstands its own religion is false – but of course no establishment counterterror analyst has ever taken notice of that.

I have for years pointed out that when foes of jihad terror are smeared as “anti-Muslim” and “Islamophobic,” without any attempt whatsoever to delineate a proper and respectable response to that terror, then all resistance to the advancing jihad is stigmatized, and ultimately becomes impossible. That is exactly where we are now, in the thoroughly indoctrinated mind of young Cristobal Spielmann and millions of others like him. Leftist professors all over the country are turning out people like Cristobal on a daily basis. Before too long they will likely make it altogether impossible to say the slightest negative word about jihad mass murder, and when they do so, they will think they are doing something righteous. By that time even the most happily blinkered Leftist may wake up to what is happening. But it will be too late.

FPM: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/loyola-marymount-university-its-islamophobic-be-robert-spencer/

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. 

Travel Bans, Stealth Jihad and the Islamization of America 0 (0)

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Travel Bans, Stealth Jihad and the Islamization of America – “Changing the laws of the United States is the primary target. Stealth Jihad. “

by Bill Lockwood

Mark Miller, a senior attorney for Pacific Legal Foundation, writes in today’s The Hill regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling declaring unconstitutional an immigrant-deportation law defended by the Trump Administration. Now the High Court turns attention to an immigration-related case, Trump v. Hawaii, which has “bigger stakes,” according to Miller.

According to Miller, the “highest profile” question before the court is “does the travel ban violate the Constitution’s “Establishment Clause?” The challengers submit that the president’s “travel ban” amounts to “religious discrimination.” Oral arguments are underway this week.

The Establishment Clause refers to the first line of the First Amendment, of course, which forbade the federal government from establishing an official state religion in America.

Islam and Religion?

The fundamental error here, repeated daily in the press and in education, is that Islam is a religion. In truth, it is a political movement that has very little “religion” to it. Islam is nothing but communism that sails under a religious flag. Its goal is world domination by the edge of the sword. Global Islamic Rule.

Muslim leaders world-wide have been bold and blatant that their efforts are toward an Islamic-dominated world. Iranian leader Ahmadenejad declared it (2006); Leading Muslim cleric in the UK Anjem Choudary insisted that the Muslim flag will one day “fly over the White House;” the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) chair Omar Ahmad confessed in 1998 that the Islamic goal is “to become dominant worldwide;” and the Muslim Brotherhood has given us “The Project”—a 100 year-plan to establish “Islamic government on earth.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, created in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, claims to have more than 70 affiliated terrorist organizations throughout the world. It states that “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Note that they define “jihad” for us. It involves “dying in the way of Allah.”

“Jihad” is the sacred obligation to impose Islam upon the entire world. This is not the creation of a few extremists or the hijacking of a peaceful religion by a handful of radicals. Jihad is mandated in the writings of the Quran, was practiced in bloody earnest by the false prophet Muhammad, and is overwhelmingly defined by classical theologians, jurists and traditionalists as a military concept of “waging war.”

According to the eminent scholar of Islamic history and culture at Princeton University, Bernard Lewis, and Cleveland Dodge, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, the “term ‘jihad’ has usually been understood as meaning ‘to wage war.’ The great collection of hadith all contain a section devoted to jihad in which the military meaning predominates. …According to Muslim teaching, jihad is one of the basic commandments of the faith, an obligation imposed upon all Muslims by God, through revelation … It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.”

Muslim Brotherhood

This brings us back to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Their outlined strategies for western world takeover include the “appearance of moderation,” the “use of deception to mask good,” the “extensive usage of social networks,” and to “cultivate Islamist intellectual community;” “using Western institutions until they convert them into the service of Islam.” Changing the laws of the United States is the primary target. Stealth Jihad.  As Muslim Brotherhood leader Qaradowi stated, “jihad can be fought with the pen, then the sword.”

Muslim practitioners have no intention of following the Constitution of the United States. It is a devious political movement.

The great world –class scholar and former president John Quincy Adams warned America that Muhammad had poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature. … Between these two religions [Islam and Christianity], a war of twelve hundred years has already waged. The war is yet flagrant … while the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motive to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.

Although Adams called Islam a “religion” himself, the essence of it, even by his own definition, is a political movement that presses physical war. If the High Court of the United States would recognize these simple facts Islam would be seen for what it is and travel bans would be not be challenged on the basis of “religious discrimination.”

Jesse Lee Peterson: How to overcome evil 0 (0)

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How to overcome evil – Jesse Lee Peterson exposes battle raging in America under ‘wicked’ leaders

by Jesse Lee Peterson

President Trump told the absolute truth in Saudi Arabia when he said we are in a battle between good and evil. A day after he spoke to more than 50 leaders of the Muslim world about the scourge of terror, a Muslim terrorist set off a nail bomb at Manchester Arena, killing at least 22 innocent people at an Ariana Grande concert and injuring 60 others. A few days later, terrorists ambushed and killed 29 Coptic Christians on buses in Egypt. Weeks earlier on Palm Sunday, Muslims killed dozens of Coptic Christians in two church bombings in Egypt.

Terror attacks have become the norm. They’re not even a big deal anymore. There are too many to count in the Middle East and Africa. Terror is now expected and accepted by “leaders” in the West. London’s first Muslim mayor said in response to the bombings in New York and New Jersey last September (which you may already have forgotten about) that “part and parcel of living in a great, global city is that you’ve got to be prepared” for terror attacks.

It would be better and wiser to keep Muslims out of our countries. WND journalist Leo Hohmann points out that Japan has no problem of Islamic terrorism in its borders, as it has a permanent ban on refugees from Muslim countries. Hohmann reports terror is not happening in Poland, Slovenia or Hungary, either – because they keep Muslim migrants out. But the wicked United Nations and European Union pressure these countries to take in refugees, threatening billions of dollars in fines, legal action and “consequences” – to quit protecting their own people. Instead, they welcome unknown refugees like politically correct countries do.

For decades, governments in Western countries have put their citizens at risk by welcoming their enemies. When these enemies kill their people, government officials pay lip service to “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families. They need to be thinking and praying before they endanger their citizens like unfaithful, deadbeat public servants.

Our government has one job: to protect the people. It has failed over and over again. When will We the People overcome our weakness in electing wicked leaders who put our lives on the line?

Europe will fall to Islam. There is nothing to stop the jihadist takeover, because white people are too weak. When you elect “leaders” who accept your enemy into your country, you are weak. Remember the Brussels bombings? The Paris attacks? In response to the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice that killed 86 and injured 434, Trump observed, “France is no longer France.” Whole neighborhoods in France, England, Germany and Sweden are “no-go zones” taken-over by Muslims enforcing Shariah law.

It’s concerning that the influx of Muslim “refugees” under Trump has increased and not slowed, thanks, no doubt, to Obama holdovers in the State Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, apparently with the blessing of the DOJ. A big influx of mostly Muslim refugees was predicted by WND in March, and increases were reported by Breitbart this weekend.

Trump has a huge mess left by former Presidents Barack Obama (the most pro-Islamic president ever), George Bush and Bill Clinton, including 2.6 million permanent employees in the federal bureaucracy and 4,000 political appointees who mostly oppose Trump’s swamp-draining.

There are many parties to the same evil at work: 1) the “evil losers in life” as Trump branded the terrorists, 2) our government, liberal media, phony churches, activists and nonprofits whose false compassion for “refugees” and aliens, and greed for money and power, opens us up to attack, and 3) We the People, who allow our government to put our lives on the line.

Most reading WND support neither Shariah nor liberalism, which surrenders to Shariah, but many of us complain and feel helpless to stop the madness. We’ve seen major players in the media attacked and taken down after they stood in the way of political correctness.

Order Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson’s book, “The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame, and Victimhood

At Fox News, the children of evil took out Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Bill Shine, and they make major threats against Sean Hannity. These men were part of the reason America held onto a semblance of sanity. They helped expose Islamic terrorist training camps in America and the enemies within our government and liberal media who are more concerned about “Islamophobia” than terrorism.

But another man, President Trump, stood alone in a swamp of cowardly, politically correct politicians and won for America. How can we support him in his promises to protect us?

The anger of the “evil losers” in ISIS and al-Qaida is not unlike the anger of murderers in our cities, or your own when you act out in rage. And the weakness of politicians is not unlike the leniency of so many mothers of thugs who excuse and deny their children’s criminal behavior and lack of character, or your own when you accept sin.

My best advice is that you look within yourself, pray and overcome the weakness that holds you back in life, in your family and in business. We all can see the weakness of RINOs and the wickedness of liberals who usher evil into the country. But have you dealt with the weakness and wickedness in yourself?

WND: http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/how-to-overcome-evil/#RARjrBzewFKAYKGA.99

Read Jesse Lee Peterson’s Biography

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