Slave market in Isisland.

I am not the son of my terrorist father

Obama should blame himself, not Chuck Hagel, for Hagel's failure as Defense Secretary

Updated by Max Fisher on November 24, 2014, 2:50 p.m. ET @Max_Fisher

he official reason President Obama is "announcing the resignation of" (read: firing) Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to the extent that the White House is quasi-announcing it by leaking it to the New York Times, is that Hagel has the wrong skill set to deal with ISIS. Hagel's resignation, they told the Times, is "recognition that the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ." Hagel is a dovish Republican who came on to transition the Pentagon out of war mode after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars ended; now it turns out that Obama needs a wartime secretary to take on ISIS.

That's the official reason, but it's not the real reason. The real reason is that Obama is trying to fix a much bigger problem: US foreign policy has been struggling throughout Obama's second term (Hagel came on in early 2013 when that term began), and Obama has been hinting that he would replace one or two top people to try to fix it.

Obama is right that Hagel did a weak job. But he has mistaken Hagel's poor performance as a cause of Obama's struggling foreign policy, when in fact it's a symptom of the real, underlying problem: Obama has neutered his cabinet secretaries on foreign policy, forcing all decisions through an intelligent but too-small team in the White House. Firing Hagel, of all people, is just going to perpetuate the problem rather than fix it.
Hagel's failures are real, but there's a deeper issue behind them

[www.vox.com]

The Origin of the New York Times’ Long History of Anti-Semitism



The NY Times column on anti-Zionism is a reminder of its own publisher’s past

By Rafael Medoff/JNS.org


The New York Times raised some eyebrows in the Jewish community with a lengthy feature about four self-described religious Jews who oppose Israel. In an apparent attempt to legitimize Jewish anti-Zionism, the article stressed that Zionism “was not always the norm among American Jews” and that it was only “the persecution of European Jews [which] turned many American Jews into Zionists.”

Interestingly, one of the most famous “religious Jews” who opposed Zionism did not change his mind even after the Holocaust. That was the Times’s own publisher from 1935 to 1961, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Sulzberger was a devout adherent of classical Reform Judaism. In his view, Jewish identity should consist only of religious beliefs, not any sense of peoplehood, nationalism, or ethnic affiliation. He even rejected the existence of Jewish war veterans organizations on the grounds that they were examples of “Ghetto living.”

As Prof. Laurel Leff explains in her critically acclaimed book, “Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper,” Sulzberger instructed Times editors to bury news of the Nazi genocide on the back pages, and to tone down or eliminate references to the fact that the victims were Jews. Sulzberger worried that if the Times reported what was happening to the Jews in Europe, someone might accuse it of being a “Jewish newspaper.”

As news of the Nazi atrocities moved many formerly anti-Zionist Reform rabbis and leaders to recognize the need for a Jewish State, Sulzberger pushed back. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of the American Council for Judaism, a group created by a handful of Reform rabbis in 1942 to oppose Zionism. The Times gave frequent and generous coverage to the activities of the tiny Council.

Even a visit to former Nazi concentration camps in 1945 did not alter Sulzberger’s anti-Zionist convictions. In a speech the following year, Sulzberger said that while he felt sorry for the Jewish survivors living in Displaced Persons camps in Europe, they were “but a minor percentage of the total of displaced persons” and therefore should not be receiving so much attention.

The Times publisher even went so far as to claim that Zionism was to blame for some of the Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. He alleged, in that 1946 speech, that the refugee crisis during the war had been “a manageable, social and economic problem” until “the clamor for statehood introduced an insolvable political element” into the issue. “It is my judgment that thousands dead might now be alive” if “the Zionists” had put “less emphasis on statehood,” Sulzberger asserted.

One of the Jewish anti-Zionists profiled in last week’s New York Times article described himself as a fan of the late Judah Magnes, who advocated a binational Arab-Jewish Palestine instead of a Jewish State. Sulzberger, too, thought highly of Magnes. In June 1946, Sulzberger tried to organize a dinner at Manhattan’s Hotel Pierre to raise funds for Magnes’s work. The Times publisher invited 23 of his associates. Only three accepted. The dinner was canceled.

The increasingly isolated Sulzberger grew more and more frustrated. A pro-Zionist statement by the formerly anti-Zionist president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in early 1947 prompted Sulzberger to write to a friend, “Apparently if you are a Jew you have to contribute Jewishly, eat Jewishly, think Jewishly, part your hair Jewishly… Gosh I’m sick!”

On another occasion, Sulzberger was horrified to see the AJC and other Jewish groups listed as affiliates of the United Jewish Appeal in an advertisement in the Times. “The only thing I miss is the Jewish Chiropractors’ Society,” he complained. “In other words, J E W is to be the common denominator for everything we do. God help us!”

In his final years, Sulzberger’s anti-Zionism never eased. He resigned from one of the Reform synagogues to which he belonged after it introduced the singing of Hatikvah along with the Star-Spangled Banner. He apparently considered visiting Israel on one occasion, but changed his mind after Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made a speech that he disliked. Ironically, however, after Sulzberger passed away in 1961, his widow established a scholarship in his name at Hebrew University. It seems unlikely he would have approved.

(A personal aside: For those not familiar with the Hebrew term, aliyah, it literally means rising up spiritually as one is called to read Torah or physically referring to one’s emigration to the Biblical land of Israel. During the synagogue service, individual congregants are sometimes asked to rise up to participate in the Torah service when they are honored for some achievement or in memory of one of their deceased love ones).

(On occasion it is sometimes my habit to snidely claim, when addressing the politics of the Sulzberger family, that they finally made the ultimate aliyah, at least to their minds. They became Episcopalians — thus solving many of their own personal problems and those of the world itself via their New York Times — that is, Hashem forbid, until another Hitler finds out that they were Jews after all and deals with them accordingly)

Jerome S. Kaufman

Robert Spencer: Hagel Takes the Fall










Chuck Hagel is out at the Department of Defense, and one administration officialexplained that it was because “the next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus” – apparently one that doesn’t shed such a bright light upon the smoking ruin that is Barack Obama’s foreign policy.



Hagel may have sealed his fate last week, when Charlie Rose asked him in an interview about the decline of the U.S. military. “I am worried about it,” Hagel responded with unexpected candor, “I am concerned about it, Chairman Dempsey is, the chiefs are, every leader of this institution” – as Bryan Preston of PJ Media has noted, he perhaps pointedly left Obama and Joe Biden off this list of concerned officials.

Yet who is the single individual most responsible for the decline of the military? Hagel must have known the answer to that question when he added: “The main responsibility of any leader is to prepare your institution for the future. If you don’t do that, you’ve failed. I don’t care how good you are, how smart you are, any part of your job. If you don’t prepare your institution, you’ve failed.”

Did Obama take that as a reference to his steep defense cuts at a time when the world is on fire? Or did he object to Hagel’s surprisingly cordial relations with Israeli officials?

We may never know what the true story is. It may be that Obama chose Hagel, the sole Republican on his national security team, to be the one to take the blame for his spectacular misjudgment of the Islamic State, which he famously dismissed in January 2014 as a “JV team.”

Did Chuck Hagel whisper that notorious analogy in Obama’s ear?

Or maybe Hagel is walking the plank for Obama’s insistence upon referring to jihad terrorists in Syria as “vetted moderates.” “We have a Free Syrian Army and a moderate opposition that we have steadily been working with that we have vetted,” said Obama in September 2014. What was he working with them for? To get them to fight the Islamic State. Yet long before that, in July 2013, Free Syrian Army fighters entered the Christian village of Oum Sharshouh and began burning down houses and terrorizing the population, forcing 250 Christian families to flee the area.

This was not an isolated incident. Worthy News reported that just two days later, Free Syrian Army rebels “targeted the residents of al-Duwayr/Douar, a Christian village close to the city of Homs and near Syria’s border with Lebanon….Around 350 armed militants forcefully entered the homes of Christian families who were all rounded-up in the main square of the village and then summarily executed.”

Then in September 2013, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry praised the Free Syrian Army as “a real moderate opposition,” the FSA took to the Internet to post videos of its attack on the ancient Syrian Christian city of Maaloula, one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken.

And now the U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State are reportedly being used by FSA fighters as a pretext to join the Islamic State. If this is true, they were never going to fight the Islamic State, and were never “vetted moderates.” Obama’s whole Syria strategy is based on fantasy.


Is that Hagel’s fault?

It is November 2014. It is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for Obama at this late date to blame George W. Bush for his foreign policy disasters. Another scapegoat had to be found. Hagel, with his unexpectedly warm relations with Israel (in sharp contrast to the chill between Israeli officials and Barack Obama and John Kerry) and concern over the gutting of the military as the jihad rages more violently than ever and the JV team controls a land expanse larger than Great Britain, was the logical stand-in. He is even a Republican!

And so he will be gone from the Department of Defense, as soon as Obama peers at his gaggle of sycophants and chooses one of them for a big promotion. Likely gone with Hagel will be any remaining obstacle to an increasing chill with Israel, and any murmur of dissent from Obama’s mad plan of demolishing the military while simultaneously expecting it to hold back the Islamic State, Ebola, and a host of other threats.

Times are tough when Chuck Hagel looks like a voice of reasoned pro-American foreign policy. And times are indeed very tough, and about to get a great deal tougher.

[www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org]

To all those who celebrate Thanksgiving.


=http://www.casimages.[URLcom][/URL]

WSJ Calls Obama a Dummy !!!!!!!!!!!


Wall Street Journal Sizes Up Obama

A "deadly" article regarding Obama, at the Wall Street Journal, which today is the most widely circulated newspaper in America .

Article from the Wall Street Journal - by Alan Caruba:

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, 6 full years into his presidency, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain .

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States .

We the people are coming!

Male circumcision could help decrease the risk of contracting HIV and several other sexually transmitted infections.


The benefits of male circumcision outweigh the risks, according a long awaited draft of federal guidelines from US health officials released Tuesday.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that medically performed male circumcision could help decrease the risk of contracting HIV and several other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as well as other health problems.

The recommendation, which includes counseling parents of male newborns on the benefits and risks of the procedure, comes at a time when the rate of male circumcision has been decreasing in the United States.

From 1979 through 2010, the national rate of newborn circumcision declined 10 percent to 58 percent, according to the CDC.

The procedure, which has been subject of fierce debate, involves cutting the foreskin around the tip of the penis.

"These recommendations are based on an evaluation of available information on the health risks and benefits associated with high-quality, medically performed male circumcision and were developed to pertain to men and male newborns in the United States," the document said.

Several studies conducted in Africa indicated that circumcision could help reduce the spread of the virus that causes AIDS.

All uncircumcised adolescent and adult males who engage in heterosexual sex should be informed about the significant, but partial, efficacy of male circumcision in reducing the risk of acquiring HIV and some STIs through heterosexual sex, as well as the potential harms of male circumcision, the draft guidelines said.

The overall risk of adverse events associated with male circumcision is low, with minor bleeding and inflammation cited as the most common complications, according to a CDC fact sheet.

The draft recommendations are subject to a 45-day public comment period and a formal external peer review. Comments provided will be considered before recommendations are finalized, CDC said.

The agency said it developed the draft guidance based on a systematic review of all evidence on the health risks and benefits of circumcision and consultation with experts in HIV prevention and related fields.



www.jpost.com

Un interview de Mahmoud Abbas sur lequel il revele le fond de sa pensee.
Cet interview a eu lieu le 30 novembre 2014 en Egypte pour un journal egyptien.

'Abbas In Interview: Six Million Refugees Want To Return, And I Am One Of Them; Hamas And The MB Are Liars; Hillary Clinton Phoned Me And Asked Me To Persuade President Mubarak To Step Down"



A lire car tres interessant

[www.memri.org]

Darlett
depuis Arafat nous assistons à un phenomène unique dans les annales des conflits armés sur la planète depuis l'antiquité.Les vaincus de guerres qu'ils ont declarées et menées veulent imposer leurs conditions pour signer un traité de paix.Paix qu'ils savent être provisoire pour pereparer leur prochaine agression.
Ils fondent leurs exigences sur le précédent egyptien.Sadate obtint l'evacuation des 3,70 kms carrés de Taba pour signer.Et pourtant ses armées capitulèrent dans tous les combats .

Un autre fait unique dans l'histoire il veut un état pour les palestiniens mais pas ceux qui ont la nationalité israelienne, ils sont pas palestiniens

Citation:

derka
Un autre fait unique dans l'histoire il veut un état pour les palestiniens mais pas ceux qui ont la nationalité israelienne, ils sont pas palestiniens

En effet, Derka c'est amusant puisqu'ainsi il les defait de cette identite qu'ils ne cessent de revendiquer.

An Arab prince denounces Islamism
In a remarkable but thus far unnoticed address on Dec. 5, Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain (an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf and home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet), candidly analyzed the Islamist enemy and suggested important ways to fight it.

He has much to teach Westerners (starting with his hapless U.K. counterpart, Crown Prince Charles), if only we would listen. Yes, some Western leaders speak about confronting the Islamist ideology, but the majority avoids this issue by resorting to euphemism, obfuscation, and cowardice. Most frustrating are those leaders (like Tony Blair) who deliver powerful speeches without follow-through.

Prince Salman, 45 and widely acknowledged to be the Bahraini royal family's principal reformer, opens his remarks by addressing the inaccuracy of the phrase, "War on Terror." The time has come, he says "for us to get rid of" a term that dates back to 9/11. "It is a bit misleading, it is not the entirety and the totality of our conflict" but merely a "tool" and a tactic.

He goes on in flawless English to place the current conflict in historical context: "If I think back in the last century, we faced a very different foe. We faced communism and we faced it together. But when we faced communism we understood it as an ideology. Terrorism is not an ideology."

He notes that "we are not only fighting terrorists, we are fighting theocrats." As Salman uses this term, theocrats are men "placed at the top of a religious ideology who [have] the power by religious edict to strip someone … of their hereafter -- and use [religious power] for political gains." They are also tyrants, isolationists, and misogynists who will need to be fought "for a very long time." He scorns them for being "very much like the seventeenth century" and having "no place in our modern 21st" century.

He urges us "to discard the term 'War on Terror' and focus instead on the real threat, which is the rise of these evil theocracies"; to this end, he proposes to replace "War on Terror" with his formulation: a "War on Theocrats." This concept, he hopes, will make it possible to "start to put together the military, social, and political -- and maybe even economic -- policies in a holistic manner to counter this, as we did with communism." In perhaps the outstanding line of the speech, he states that "it is the ideology itself that must be combatted. It must be named, it must be shamed, it must be contained, and eventually it must be defeated."

So far, perfect. But Salman avoids the bitter reality that the "twisted" and "barbaric" ideology he describes is specifically Islamic and the theocrats are all Muslim: "This war that we are engaged in cannot be against Islam, … Christianity, … Judaism, … Buddhism." So, when naming this ideology, Salman dithers and generalizes. He proffers an inept neologism ("theo-crism"), then harkens back to World War II for "fascist theocracy." He implicitly rejects "Islamism," saying he does not want a "debate about certain political parties, whether they're Islamist or not."

I submit that Islamism is precisely the term he seeks for the enemy ideology; and we are engaged in a "War on Islamism." Salman understands the problem well -- the transformation of Islam into a totalitarian ideology. But he seeks refuge in the pretense that Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism all share this affliction. Better that he -- and other forthright Muslims -- accept the ineluctable reality that Islam alone contains a totalitarian temptation.

On the positive side, Salman's remarks fit into a growing trend among Muslim politicians directly to confront the Islamist danger. Two recent examples:

In an important conceptual breakthrough, the nearby United Arab Emirates government has placed the Council on American-Islamic Relations and many other nonviolent groups on its terrorism list on the grounds that they engage in incitement, funding, and the other precursors of terrorism.
The government of Egypt issued an Interpol arrest bulletin for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 88, the hugely influential spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, for "incitement and assistance to commit intentional murder, helping … prisoners to escape, arson, vandalism and theft."
This new tendency has great importance. As I often say, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution. Now, we may add another influential leader, indeed a crown prince, to the ranks of those Muslims who wish to find a solution.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.


B:

December 15, 2014

Christmas According to Matthew, Luke, and Obama
By Jan LaRue


After expounding repeatedly about who or what is Islamic, President Obama continues to assume the role of America’s theologian in chief by giving us his twist on the “Greatest Story Ever Told.”

Obama injected his private interpretation into the Christmas story to bolster support of his executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. As reported by Charlie Spiering of Breitbart.com, Obama told an audience of amnesty advocates at a town hall meeting in Nashville, Tenn. on Dec. 9:

“If we’re serious about the Christmas season, now is the time to reflect on those who are strangers in our midst and remember what it was like to be a stranger.… As I said the day that I announced these executive actions that we were once strangers too, and part of what my faith teaches me is to look upon the stranger as part of myself. And during this Christmas season that’s a good place to start.”

Mary and Joseph were not excluded from Bethlehem’s inn because they were poor “strangers,” much less illegal aliens. The inn was fully occupied. It would have been unthinkable to remove guests the innkeeper had already accepted and give their room to others. He made room such as he had, and there’s no mention of him charging Mary and Joseph.

Luke tells us that they went from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be registered because it was Joseph’s hometown as a member of the “house and family of David.” They were citizens of Israel subjected to a decree by the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus who ordered a census in order to impose taxation on the whole world.

Now there’s a ruler after Obama’s heart.

Since he has no qualms about playing fast and loose with the Bible, it’s not hard to understand why Obama treats the Constitution as a mere thing of wax.

read more : [www.americanthinker.com]

December 17, 2014

Federal judge issues memo declaring executive amnesty unconstitutional
By Thomas Lifson

It sounded and was too good to be true yesterday afternoon when news flashes indicated that a federal judge had “ruled” that President Obama’s executive action on not prosecuting millions of illegal aliens and issuing documents to them is “unconstitutional.”

Unfortunately, the action by federal judge Arthur Schwab, a George W. Bush appointee, is merely his observation, not a ruling, contained in a memo, with no force of law. It was, however, the very first judicial action on the presidential action (not even an executive order, but rather a memorandum). Jonathan Adler wrote in the Washington Post:

According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority. (snip)

The case involves an individual who was deported and then reentered the country unlawfully. In considering how to sentence the defendant, the court sought supplemental briefing on the applicability of the new policies to the defendant, and whether these policies would provide the defendant with additional avenues for seeking the deferral of his deportation. In this case, however, it’s not entirely clear it was necessary to reach the constitutional question to resolve the issues before the court with regard to the defendant’s sentence.

My translation: Judge Schwab went out of his way to find an excuse to offer his opinion. As much as I agree with him, I am afraid that this maneuver will serve to allow others to dismiss his opinion as grandstanding.

On the other hand, it is something, and now any other judge who expresses an opinion will be on notice that this logic is on the record.


[www.americanthinker.com]

[video.foxnews.com]

January 10, 2015
Islamic Executions in Paris
By Jonathan F. Keiler www.americanthinker.com

The Islamic terror attack on the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo humor magazine is neither an aberration of historic Islamic belief and practice (as many would like to believe) nor the beginning of a full-scale intifada against the French Republic (as some suspect). What this incident demonstrates is an often underplayed aspect of Islam: its military/imperial nature. This was not an act of religious vengeance, but rather one of imperial discipline.

Unlike its predecessor monotheistic faiths (Judaism and Christianity), Islam emerged as a militant conquering faith, defined in military and political terms. The traditional start date given Islam, 622 C.E., marks the date of Muhammad’s flight (retreat) with his armed followers (the umma) to Yathrib (renamed Medina). Islam attracted pagan Arabs in part because of its demanding martial nature, which appealed to hardened nomadic tribal fighters. Islam itself means “submission,” and a Muslim is “one who submits,” as Arab warriors were accustomed to doing to a tribal chieftain or warlord.

Mohammad fought for control of Medina and launched raids on Meccan caravans. In 624 C.E., Mohammad led his forces against the Meccans and defeated them in the Battle of Badr. The Meccans counter-attacked, and Mohammad and his followers continued to battle the Meccans and tribes in Medina until he defeated both by 630 C.E. In the next couple of years he fought and overcame several other Arab clans that challenged Islam’s hegemony.

Mohammad did not long survive his victories, dying in 632 C.E. But upon his death, the caliphs (successors) launched a breathtaking series of military campaigns that by the early 8th century stretched from Spain to India. From its founding, Islam’s identity was closely aligned with the idea of military conquest and political domination.

Thus, Islam began as much as a military/political movement as a religious one. The first two Muslim dynasties were almost exclusively Arab. Arab warlords saw jihad as a call not to convert the conquered, but to dominate them. Conquered peoples were not always treated harshly (particularly if they were Jewish or Christian), but they were given second-class status (dhimmitude), placing them in a subservient status to the conquering Muslim Arabs.

These purely Arab dynasties did not last long. After about a century, they were gone. As Islam developed, it spread beyond ethnic Arabs (becoming especially popular among Turkic tribes) and came to accept (or in some cases demand) converts. But the idea of dhimmitude never went away, and it applied now to anyone not a Muslim.

Later, in India for example, after the Islamic conquests, Muslims – mostly Turkish by that time – incorporated the caste structure into their dynastic systems. This meant that for conquered Indians, converting to Islam would not in most cases improve one’s caste position. Theoretically, under the tenets of Islam the religion, this should have happened. But the political won out over the theological.

The first obligation of a conquered people is to submit to its new ruler. It goes without saying that submission abjures mockery of the ruler. Indeed, in any generally authoritarian system, such action is rarely tolerated.

For Westerners, it is hard to understand why Muslims don’t take satirical depictions of Mohammed with the same savoir faire with which Christians and Jews accept similar mockery of Jesus or Moses. Some do, but it is fair to say that Muslims, even if they do not as a majority support violent actions against those who mock Mohammad, do not take such actions with the same good humor as other monotheists.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo, then, is best seen as a political action, by a resurgent Islam that is seeking not revenge for a religious slight (as it is generally depicted and analyzed), but rather to enforce dhimmi status on what many Muslims believe is a subject people. The brave talk in much of the Western press and political classes, that we will not be intimidated by a few religious extremists, is hollow so long as the mainstream press, European governments, and especially the Obama administration bend over backward to insist that Islam (at least as it has been practiced historically) is “the religion of peace” or “tolerant,” or that Muslims have legitimate grievances against Western societies.

Perhaps people can argue in good faith over the modern meaning of jihad, but there is no question what it means historically. And it is facile to claim that Islam is a tolerant religion, with regard to theology or practice. The very name of the religion belies this. Ridicule of Allah or his Prophet is not tolerated in Muslim lands. Why would a Muslim living in France believe that it would be okay there?

Of course, most offended Muslims in France or England or the United States don’t take violent illegal actions against those who disrespect Islam. But treating their sensitivities differently from how we treat those of any other confessional group encourages rather than discourages resentment. Islam is not a religion of the downtrodden, the poor, or the meek. It is a religion of the warrior – Nidal Hasan, committer of “workplace violence” at Fort Hood, carried “Soldier of God” business cards. Warriors support and defend the warlord/king. That’s what the killers in Fort Hood and France were doing. Not avenging grievances.

This was not the first attack on Charlie Hebdo. It was firebombed without casualties in 2011. That perhaps was vengeance. But the goal of the recent attack was not resolving a grievance. It was submission of the dhimmi. The killers carried out a precision execution of the Charlie Hebdo staff, in the same way a monarch executes those who would strike him. It was not an act of anger, but one of cold deliberation, meant to be seen that way, so that the other dhimmi will clearly understand both the offense and the punishment.

Bold talk in the Western press and in the halls of government today about facing down intimidation, when it is done without clear knowing statements pointing at the intimidator, rather than vague straw men like “international terror” or “radical Islam,” is false and useless.

Islam will either undergo a reformation that will allow it to co-exist with Western civilization (as Egyptian President Sisi recently urged) or seek to conquer, as it has done since its genesis. The West can either fight (politically and if necessary militarily) or submit. After all the brave talk is done, Western Europeans will likely get back to the submitting part. As long as President Obama is in office, and American politicians in concord with the mainstream media continue to favor Islam as a non-Western victim of imperialism, rather than an imperial entity in itself, so will the United States.

Here is a real leader who tells it like it is.

France’s Jews Have No Choice but Israel

Shmuel Rosner




TEL AVIV — There is great irony to Israel’s instinctive response to terror attacks on Jews in Europe — and the devastating attack last week on a kosher grocery store in Paris was no different.

Pack your belongings! Flee! Escape, Israel urges the Jews of France.

A government that never misses an opportunity to lecture the Western world about the pitfalls of surrendering to terrorism is proposing exactly that — surrender — to the Jews of France.

Surrender followed by immigration to Israel, where surrender is not an option.

“The state of Israel is your home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jews of France, refraining from blatantly saying that they ought to leave and come to Israel as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested.

“If I have to advise our brothers in France,” Mr. Sharon said at the time, “I’ll tell them one thing — move to Israel, as early as possible.” President Jacques Chirac reacted furiously and declared Mr. Sharon persona non grata.

It’s clear why the French take offense. The call for immigration to Israel is a vote of no confidence in France’s ability to protect its own citizens. Mr. Netanyahu was careful in packaging his message last week, but the French still didn’t want him at Sunday’s huge march in Paris and they only reluctantly accepted his presence.

Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government were, as usual, less diplomatic.

An Israeli deputy minister, Ofir Akunis of the Likud party, called on French Jews to “come home” to Israel. Deputy Minister Eli Ben-Dahan of the Jewish Home party told them, “Your place is with us.”

The immigration option has become much more pronounced in recent years. Last year more than 6,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel, more than from any other country, and the potential for growth is significant.

They have their reasons. Anti-Semitic incidents have become a regular occurrence in France. The surge in attacks is well-documented, as is the declining sense of security of French Jews. And the French government doesn’t seem to know how to halt this destructive process.

Encouraging Jews from all countries to move to Israel is in Israel’s DNA, and Israel could greatly benefit from an influx of French immigrants. But Israeli leaders ought to pause before calling for a mass exodus of French Jews.

Does the Jewish state want to actively contribute to ending many hundreds of years of French Jewish history? Does it want to convey the message that yes, as the terrorists argue, there is no place for Jews in France? Does it want to imply that French efforts to protect Jews have been a failure? Does it want the world to see fearful Jews fleeing from Europe en masse yet again?

France is home to a great Jewish civilization, the third-largest Jewish community in the world — a Jewish community in a Western, liberal country that seems to be in great trouble.

And we now live in a world where in recent months people have brooded unemotionally, almost nonchalantly, over the question of whether the Jews “have a future” in France.

If not France, where? And if not a future, what?

Israel believes it has the answer. Jews can flee the terror of radical Islamists in France, to find shelter in a place where the terror of radical Islamists is as routine as baguettes and Bordeaux.

If these Jews come to Israel and face terror, they will be urged to stay, to demonstrate to the enemy the meaning of a stiff-necked people. Israel, in the narrative that is sold to French Jews these days, is where Jews make their last stand.

It is heartbreaking to witness a great Jewish community in a great country slowly losing its ability to thrive in a hostile and violent environment. And it is unfortunate that all the Jewish state has to offer them is escape.

At the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Paris, he attended a ceremony in a synagogue, where the crowd spontaneously broke into song following his remarks. But they weren’t singing in Hebrew; they were singing France’s national anthem, “La Marseillaise.” One wonders what they were thinking when they reached the rousing chorus, “Aux armes citoyens!” And if these citizens one day take up arms to defend themselves, will they do so as French nationals or as Israelis?

On Sunday, France’s president, François Hollande, made quite clear how he views the situation. He reportedly vowed to Jewish leaders that he would take all necessary measures to defend them, including deploying the army.

But it is a devastating prospect that in 2015 the Jews of France might need soldiers to protect them from anti-Semitic violence.

For the four Jews who were killed at a Paris grocery store, Israel will be their final resting place.

If the only way for Jews to live in France today is behind barracks and guards with guns, perhaps it makes more sense not just for the dead to go to Israel, but also for the living to move to a place where we are the guards, we are the army and we are the government.

Shmuel Rosner is the political editor at The Jewish Journal and a fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Abandonner un pays qui vous interdit de vous défendre les armes à la main contre ses meurtriers n'est pas capituler.Si ce jeune Juif qui a reagi en voulant se servir de l'arme enrayée du terroriste avait eu sa propre arme ,il aurait certaienement sauvé les aurtres victimes.
Si les dirigeants français plus que d'autres pays ont peur de la disparition d'une communauté juive ,ce n'est pas par humanisme et fraternité.Ils ont en memoire la faillite de l'Espagne après 1492 ,celle de la France depuis Pierre l'Ermite et Philippe Auguste jusqu'aux "lettres patentes" de 1723 et la revolution de 1789 .Leur séjour fut remis en cause par Vichy,mais les "Justes" leur ont permis de croire en leur citoyenneté.Aujourd'hui,en les mettant sous l'improbable protection militaire,le gouvernement croit sauver le pays d'un declin economique previsible par leur depart.cette protection
ne sert à rien.Le moment de la fin du 3ème et dernier exil est arrivé,et le retour des Juifs de France à Sion,prélude celui de tous les pays.

Rosner a raison,il vaut mieux vivre en étant nous-mêmes garants de la securité de nos enfants.