Iranian Commander: We Will Hunt the Jews Down from House to House

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Iran was always Barzini in the Middle East — Hamas are just thugs (buffers). They could never outfox Israel. Those Iranian jihad cowards always wage war by proxy. Hezb’Allah is an Iranian proxy. So is Syria’s President Assad.

Obama had the opportunity to oust these savages in the summer of 2009, when the Iranian people took to the streets in a quest for freedom but were murdered in cold blood. Obama did nothing. They pleaded to Obama for help. He was photo-oped eating an ice cream cone at a dessert shop in DC.

Instead of helping the Iranian people, he removed sanctions, released billions and sanctioned the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program.

When is the enemedia going to start telling the truth about the jihadi in the White House?

IRGC Deputy Commander: "We Will Hunt the Zionists Down from House to House,” MEMRI

In a public address marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day, IRGC Deputy Commander Brigadier-General Hossein Salami warned the “Zionists”: “We will hunt you down from house to house, and avenge every drop of blood of our martyrs in Palestine.” Salami further said:

“The world of Islam will become a graveyard for the policies of America, the Zionist regime, and their reactionary allies in the region.”

Following are excerpts from the address, broadcast on the Iranian news channel IRINN on July 25, 2014:

Hossein Salami: Today, the resistance of the Palestinian people keeps on growing. The truth of Palestine will...

Read the whole entry »

Israeli Christians take to the streets to rally for Israel, against Hamas and Muslim persecution of Christians

Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

 

This is a most positive development. Although Jews and Christians face the same fate under Islamic law — subjugation as dhimmis and denial of basic rights — the unhappy history of Christian anti-Semitism and the near-universal denial of the reality of the Islamic jihad, among innumerable other factors, have prevented the formation of any large-scale cooperative efforts. The Arab nationalist movement, which is now nearly moribund but was the dominant ideology in the Middle East just a few years ago, also co-opted Arabic-speaking Christians into parroting the Islamic supremacist agenda, out of a “shared Arab identity.” Freedom lovers may hope that the noxious idea that the oppressor and the oppressed have common interests will be forever consigned to the dustbin of history, and that rallies like this one will be the beginning of much more Jewish/Christian cooperation in defense of freedom.

“Israeli-Arab Christians take to the streets of Haifa for an unusual protest,” TLV1, August 5, 2014:

A group of Israeli-Arab Christians marched in Haifa last night against the persecution of Christian Arabs in the world, against radical Islamic organizations such as Hamas, and in favor of Israel’s military operation. TLV1′s Lissy Kaufmann was there.

A group of Arabs gathered on Sunday night at Unesco Square in Haifa, waving Israeli flags. Wait – Arabs? Well, the language that was mostly heard around was indeed Arabic. But when asked who they are, the protesters said something completely different:

I am not Arab because I am Christian and I don’t think that you can be Arab and Christian at the same time, Arabs are Muslims in my opinion, they just made us forget who we are, our identity. I am Israeli, I am Christians and that is it.

I am Israeli, I am Christian, and I am Israeli so I support Israel, I live here in Israel and this is my country.

Yes, yes I am Christian and Israeli and proud of it. No not at all, you are insulting me right now because I don’t consider myself…. I feel 2 months later I will go to the army. And I am the kind that gives all to my state – that is all.

The people that gathered at Unesco Square in Haifa are Christian-Israelis. They waved not only Israeli flags but also the yellow and white flag of the Vatican. They have been distancing themselves from the Arab population and from its protests against the war during the last couple of weeks. These round about 100 people were protesting against Christian persecution in the Middle East, such as in Syria and Iraq. Some of them were holding banners asking why the UN and the West are closing their eyes on it.

The protest was also against Hamas. Shadi Khalloul can explain why. He is the spokesperson of the Forum for Christian Recruitment, which tries to persuade more Christians to join the IDF. And was also one of the organizers of the protest.

You cannot only do only a protest about Christians in Iraq and Syria and ignoring what is happening for you here inside the country. You can see where are in war. If we would ignore this, the soldiers that being killed, the civilians being killed by the same terror we will not be doing the just way, that be believe in it, which is terror is the same terror, it is killing the same people Hamas is the same ideology like al Qaida, like Hezbollah, and they don’t accept anyone who is different from them.

The religious assistance came from father Gabriel Nadav, a priest from Nazareth who also prayed together with the crowd. Father Nadav cannot leave the house anymore without security. Many people, including from his hometown of Nazareth, vehemently oppose his opinion that Christians are not Arabs, that they are closer to the Jewish religion and that it is good for them to serve in the IDF.

One of the young Christians who will soon be joining the army is 17-year old Jennifer, who is waving the Israeli flag to the cars passing by, shouting “Hamas out”. A big Christian cross is hanging from her necklace. From all the countries in the Middle East, only in Israel can she live as she wishes and is granted freedom of religion, and that’s a reason to be grateful, she says:

It is very important because we are Christians here, we have been safe. I am not dying over here, they are not killing me, that is because thanks to Israel.

There were also Jewish Israelis present at the Christian protest. Shadi Khalloul called out to the young people of the Likud, who seem to be the closest to his beliefs, to join him and his people. 27-year old Gal, a student from Haifa, is one of the Jews who attended. He thinks that Israel is facing the same problem of Islamic fundamentalism as Iraq.

We came here to show solidarity with the Christians who are demonstrating against the ethnic slaughter in Iraq committed by the ISIS organization. We think it is the same thing there than here.

Jews and Christians protesting together in favor of the state of Israel and in favor of the ongoing war feels like a revolution. Many Christians, says Shadi, think this way. But they are afraid to speak out against the Arab Muslim population. Shadi knows that his group is still a minority and that many people from the Arab community do not appreciate his work. Which is one of the reasons that he carries a gun. He says that he has been carrying it ever since he left the army 16 years ago, because many people didn’t like his decision to voluntarily join the IDF. But the Christian community isn’t being attacked by Muslims alone, but by Jews as well. A couple of months ago, Shadi’s village, Gush Halav, was attacked by radical right-wing Jews, who also sprayed his family’s house. But even this doesn’t make him change his mind:

They don’t represent the whole Jewish population, most of the support us and the government represent the majority of the population support Christians in Israel and it is doing making many laws to protect the population to give them more rights and more freedom in the state.

13 years after 9/11, terror threat undiminished: Column

The Islamic State now as big a threat as al-Qaeda ever was.          
James S. Robbins / USA Today

Last January, President Obama dismissed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a mere junior varsity terrorist outfit compared to al Qaeda. "The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate," he told TheNew Yorker, "is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant."

Flash forward to this summer. Islamist radicals control vast swaths of land across Iraq and Syria, and this week crossed the border into Lebanon. Their victims' heads festoon telephone wires in Raqqa,
Syria, and they have posted videos online showing mass executions of prostrate Iraqis. Other terror groups are rallying to their black banner. ISIS has been so successful that at the end of June it shortened its name to simply the Islamic State (IS), with its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi assuming the title of caliph. President Obama may think they are j.v., but they clearly see themselves as big league.

The Islamic State is metastasizing much the same way al Qaeda did, but on an accelerated timeline. Bin Laden's network grew in the 1990s by recruiting foreign fighters who had battled the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Islamic State has developed its own deep bench of transnational terror talent, recruiting from countries throughout the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States. Franchises are reportedly opening in Libya and Tunisia. The North African terror conglomerate Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has aligned with ISIS. Nigerian Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has sworn allegiance to al-Baghdadi, as has Abu Sayaaf leader Isnilon Hapilon in the Philippines. The Islamic State currently controls more fighters, more territory, and has a vaster alliance system than al-Qaeda ever did.

Like Bin Laden, al-Baghdadi is exploiting the breakdown in state sovereignty and seizing control of ungoverned spaces. The problem of governance is even worse today than it was in the 1990s, though the White House seems unaware. In June, Obama declared that "the world is less violent than it has ever been," and in July, White House press secretary Josh Earnest boasted of the administration's role in increasing the "tranquility of the global community." Mr. Obama's perspective is that America is winning the war on terrorism because Osama bin Laden is dead and U.S. drones continue to decimate "core al-Qaeda."

However, this perspective is dangerously outdated. The war on terrorism has always been less a battle against a specific terror organization than a struggle against a violent, transnational extremist ideology. Al-Qaeda is no longer the leading force in global Islamist terrorism; the torch has passed to the Islamic State, which we ignore at our peril. In his first public statement as caliph, al-Baghdadi proclaimed that the world is divided into two camps, the "camp of Islam and faith" and the "camp of the Jews, the crusaders, [and] their allies," led by the United States. And like Bin Laden, he has a vision. When leaving prison in Iraq in 2009, he told his American captors, "I'll see you guys in New York." We may not be at war with the Islamic State, but it is at war with us.

The CIA Fudges The Facts — Just Like Obama

by Chip Wood / Personal Liberty Digest

SPECIAL

Despite CIA Director John Brennan’s assurances to the contrary, it turns out that some members of the CIA did hack into computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

When the charges were first aired, Brennan dismissed them as “spurious allegations that are totally unsupported by facts.”

Back in March, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of hacking into the computers of Senate investigators who were looking into accusations of CIA misconduct.

Brennan flatly denied that anyone in his agency broke the rules. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he declared. “I mean, we wouldn’t do that.”

But it turns out that indeed they did. An internal investigation by the CIA confirmed that agency operatives hacked into committee computers, looking for documents they weren’t supposed to have.

So the CIA broke the rules, and probably violated the law, by spying on an agency of Congress. Is anyone surprised?

In case you missed the beginning of this brouhaha, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been investigating the detention and interrogation practices of the CIA in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The committee has prepared a 6,300-page report on its findings, which will be released shortly.

President Barack Obama said the report will confirm that the agency used techniques that “any fair-minded person would believe were torture.” At a news conference two weeks ago, the President said: “We did a whole lot of things that were right [after 9/11], but we tortured some folks.”

Actually, Mr. President, those weren’t just “folks” that the CIA was questioning; they were jihadist terrorists who were actively conspiring to murder as many of their opponents as they could.

At the time, U.S. officials (and a ton of us civilians) were worried about more attacks on U.S. soil — because the terrorists vowed they were coming. So the Federal government approved the use of “enhanced interrogation methods,” including waterboarding, to learn about the plans of al-Qaida and other jihadists.

In fact, the Justice Department at the time gave the CIA written approval to use such techniques. It was the official position of our government back then that they didn’t qualify as torture. Our leaders said the interrogations produced valuable intelligence that saved American lives.

Now, of course, the rules are different.

After charges of CIA spying on a Senate committee were aired, Brennan ordered the CIA Inspector General to look into the allegations. Guess what? It turns out they were true. In a classic case of understatement, the IG report acknowledged that “some employees acted in a manner inconsistent” with the CIA’s own regulations.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the CIA, said that Brennan will sure do something about the mess, by golly. “The director is committed to correcting any shortcomings related to this matter,” he declared.

He’ll begin by appointing a “special accountability board” to review the IG’s findings.

That should make any miscreants tremble in their boots, don’t you think?

So what will happen now? Apparently, pretty much nothing. The Justice Department says it will not investigate further. Department spokesman Peter Carr said, “The Department carefully reviewed the matters referred to us and did not find sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation.”

Even Feinstein seems to be satisfied. “Director Brennan apologized for these actions and submitted the IG report to an accountability board,” she said. “These are positive first steps.”

While some members of the Senate, including Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), are demanding that Brennan either resign or be fired, that doesn’t look likely. When White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked if Brennan has any credibility problems as a result of the controversy, he replied, “No, not at all.”

The facts are the director of the CIA lied about what his agency was doing. He either knew he wasn’t telling the truth, or he relied on subordinates who deliberately deceived him. You’d think either one would be grounds for instant dismissal.

But, hey, why should we hold the CIA director to a higher standard than his boss? Obama has told so many whoppers it’s hard to keep track of them all. I guess this is what passes for “the new normal” in Washington, D.C., these days.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

Will NATO End With a Whimper?

Victor Davis Hanson / Townhall Columnist

ISTANBUL -- April marked the 65th birthday of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed at the height of the Cold War to stop the huge postwar Red Army from overrunning Western Europe.

NATO in 1949 had only 12 members, comprising Western Europe, Canada and the United States. Its original mission was simple. According to the alliance's first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, NATO was formed "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

Western Europeans were terrified of the Soviet Union, which had just gobbled up all of Eastern Europe. They feared that the American army would go home after World War II, just as it had after World War I, consistent with its isolationist past. And the war-torn democracies were scared that Germany might quickly rebound to prompt yet another European war for the fourth time in less than a century.

Sixty-five years later, the Cold War has been won and has now been over for a quarter-century. Germany is quite up. The Russians are not so out. America seems not to want to be in anywhere.

Those paradoxes beg some questions. Is NATO even needed in the 21st century? Can it survive its new agendas and missions?

Article 5 of the NATO charter calls for all members of the organization to come to the aid of a fellow member if attacked. Article 4 is a watered down version that obligates NATO members to consult on mutual defense when asked by a threatened member.

Oddly, these two articles were never put into play during the nuclear dangers of the Cold War. They have only been invoked fairly recently -- mostly for terrorist attacks, Middle East crises and fear of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

An aging and tired NATO now suffers from three existential problems. Perhaps none are fatal in isolation. But when they are taken together, it is easy to see how NATO might soon unravel or be rendered irrelevant.

First, the military weakness of Europe has long meant that for all practical purposes, NATO is ATO -- The American Treaty Organization. The European Union may have a gross domestic product and population larger than the United States, but on average its members spend far less than half of what America budgets for defense.

American protection of Europe has made Europeans reluctant to sacrifice some of the good life for their own defense. Being rich and weak is a dangerous combination. Worse, the subsidy has created European feelings of resentment toward the more powerful American big brother.

Second, Putin has compromised many NATO members through Russia's many lucrative gas and oil deals. What would happen if Russia spread its aggression from Georgia, Ukraine and Crimea to other former Soviet republics? Tiny NATO member Estonia, with its large Russian minority, would seem a likely next candidate for Putin's machinations.

Russian intervention in Estonia probably would not prompt NATO to invoke Article 5. Or, if it did, it is dubious whether all NATO members would go to war to save an independent Estonia, which is nestled right next to St. Petersburg.

It is said that Putin fears provoking NATO. More likely he will soon seek to wreck it by deliberately bullying weak and distant NATO members like Estonia, over whose independence Europeans are unlikely to start a war.

Third, the expansion from 12 to the current 28 members vastly complicated the alliance's responsibilities -- and vulnerabilities. To paraphrase Frederick the Great, protecting everything now means often protecting nothing. Turkey is now becoming obvious problem.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in his 11th year of undermining Turkish democracy and Islamicizing the country. Erdogan is a friend of anti-American and soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. He despises democratic Israel and is unashamedly pro-Hamas.

Erdogan also has had various beefs with war-torn neighbors Syria and Iraq. Occasionally he has intervened against semi-autonomous and pro-American Kurdistan.

Turkey still has territorial disputes with fellow NATO member Greece in the Aegean and over Cyprus. Erdogan still resents being turned down for European Union membership.

If Erdogan's growing rivalries ever escalated into real wars, it is likely that many NATO members would more readily sympathize with his enemies. Yet Erdogan has exercised Article 4 more than any other NATO member.

NATO is not fully supported financially or militarily by its own members. Its expansion has created obligations that it has no intention of honoring, nor the ability to do so. And it has members whose politics and policies are becoming antithetical to the original idea of defending the liberal values of democratic Western Europe.

One day soon we will wake up and NATO will have simply vanished with a whimper.

President Obama's New Poll Numbers Eerily Similar To Bush's Before 2006 Wipeout

Matt Vespa / Townhall Columnist

 

The recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll surely doesn’t bode well for the Obama administration, which promised hope and change on a platter back in 2008. Seventy-one percent of Americans feels that the country is going in the wrong direction.

President Obama’s job approval has dropped to 40 percent–and only 42 percent approve of how he’s handling the economy. Approval on foreign policy, an area where this administration polled somewhat strongly, fell to 36 percent among Americans.

Regarding the economy, Carol Lee of the Wall Street Journal said earlier this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “there’s a total disconnect” between reality and rhetoric on Obama’s economic agenda:

See video here: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2014/08/06/president-obamas-new-poll-numbers-eerily-similar-to-bushs-before-2006-wipeout-n1875744

CAROL LEE, WSJ: If you look at what the president is saying, his messages publicly, there's a total disconnect between, clearly, what the American public feels and what he is saying is going on in the economy. On Friday he came out and said things are getting better. And clearly, people don't feel that way. The president was campaigning -- raising money in California -- a few weeks ago and he was saying people feel better than they did five years ago. And some of the folks who were interviewed, who participated in this poll explicitly said that they don't feel better than they did five years ago, and so I think what the White House has to contend with is how you match the president's rhetoric and how he's approaching the public on this issue with more what you're seeing in this poll, which is that people are not feeling good about the future -- the 79% of people who think their kids' future is not going to be better than their own.

But where there is a connection shouldn't make any supporter of the president hopeful as the 2014 midterms approach since these numbers are eerily similar to Bush's in 2006 (via Roll Call/ Stu Rothenberg):

The new survey, conducted July 30-August 3, showed Obama’s approval at 40 percent, with 54 percent disapproving of his performance. 

Since Bush’s late July 2006 job ratings stood at 39 percent approve/56 percent disapprove, the new Obama numbers bear an even more uncomfortably close resemblance to Bush’s.

As I noted in the column, foreign policy has become a significant problem for the president — and therefore for his party — in the midterms.

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found Obama’s job performance on foreign policy as a weak 36 percent approve/60 percent disapprove — by far his worst numbers in that area.

While Congress — and Republicans in Congress — remain unpopular, the bad news for the president in the survey continues to raise the possibility the midterms will be more “about” President Obama than about anyone or anything else.