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

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

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

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

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

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

Isn't that kind of blaming the victim?

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

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

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

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

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

Wait! It gets crazier:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Own Private 1984: Why Is Saying the Muslim Brotherhood is Radical A Controversial Claim?

By Barry Rubin

In 2003, I and the publication I edit, the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, became the world’s biggest story for two or three days. Last week I became a “story” without knowing it until later.

First, the 2003 experience. An Iraqi-American author submitted a good article that explained how Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime’s intelligence agencies worked. As I edited the article I said to myself–this is absolutely true–that this was one of the most uncontroversial articles I’d ever publish because it was so bland, though useful as a database inventory of Iraqi institutions

Without my knowing it, the British prime minister’s office plagiarized the article as part of its campaign to justify launching the attack on Iraq to overthrow Saddam. A MERIA Journal reader who opposed the war noticed this plagiarism and brought it to public attention. The reader in no way criticized the journal but only the British government. I should stress that the article said nothing to support (or oppose) going to war with Iraq. I think it was used mainly to make it appear as if the British prime minister’s office had done some research on Iraq.

The story was front-page news around the world. I walked into a room as a famous television personality was discussing the matter with total inaccuracy on the television. Prestigious newspapers got our journal’s name wrong. Only one reporter ever called to interview me. Left-wing sources speculated that the plagiarism involved some kind of Israeli conspiracy to begin the war, though again nothing in the article suggested attacking Saddam.

I was amazed and disgusted. But that’s nothing compared to what has just happened to me.

Before you read the rest of this note, understand that none of those involved have consulted me nor have they used my name. I heard about this by accident after it happened. Other than those directly involved I’m presumably the only one who knows that this was my article. Here we go.

A well-known television program took an article of mine that appeared on my blog and quoted it on the air. The extract was put up on the screen though the author’s name wasn’t mentioned. It was about the Muslim Brotherhood. The article quoted a Brotherhood leader as talking about his hostility toward Israel, etc. At this point, I was saying to myself: There goes a million dollars in free publicity!

The program’s critics submitted the article to one of these mainstream prestigious “fact-checking” sites. The site called up an “expert” who I’ve never heard of at an American institution and asked him about it. He said that he had never heard of the Egyptian Brotherhood leader. The site then pronounced, on the basis of that one conversation, that the article was inaccurate and criticized the program for using it. Note that my article was sourced and if anyone had asked me I could have shown them the original and many similar statements,as well as proof of the importance of the Brotherhood leader making the statement.

I only know about this because I was listening to the program and they cited the article (without my name) and of course I recognized the quote. Nobody consulted me at any point on this matter.

So to quote a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood based on a reliable (and available) translation as saying that the Brotherhood wants an Islamist state and wants to wipe out Israel is considered to be not credible on the basis of a statement by one American who, to my knowledge, has never done any research on the Brotherhood. Yet there are scores of such Brotherhood statements, including those from both the leader and deputy leader of the Brotherhood as well as many recognized leaders and in Brotherhood publications.

This is the closest thing I’ve ever seen and experienced to a Soviet-style or 1984-type denial of reality. We have reached the point of being able to quote the motto of George Orwel”s totalitarian state in 1984:

WAR IS PEACE [The revolutionary Islamist war on the West doesn't actually exist.]

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY [Free speech is Islamophobic, racist, etc., and thus a form of "hate crime." Censorship makes us freer.]

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH [Mass media editing out of reality makes us stronger by eliminating potential "thought crime" and nudging the masses toward more "correct" behavior.]

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

The Race in The Mid East To Fill the Vacuum Created By Lack Of U.S. Leadership

By Barry Rubin 

In the absence of U.S. leadership, others want to direct the Middle East. The battle is becoming a competition of radicals for run the region. That’s what happened in the 1950s and 1960s and it isn’t good. Then, the competition was between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Today, the contestants are Turkey, Iran, and a radical Egypt, with Iraq and Syria sidelined due to internal issues. Meanwhile, the Saudis have been forced to take over leadership of the remaining moderate Arab states (the Gulf sheikdoms, plus Morocco and Jordan) since they can no longer depend on America for protection.

The Egyptian foreign minister has warned Iran not to try to intervene too much in the Gulf, posing as protector of Saudi Arabia and the smaller states. This is a hint that Egypt wants to resume its pre-Sadat role as leader of the Arab world. Cairo will see itself as protector of the Muslim, Sunni, and Arab world against Persian, Shia Muslim Iran; Turkish Turkey; and Jewish Israel. With Iraq turned inward and Syria turned upside down, Egypt is the only remaining Arab state that can make a play for region-wide power.

That Egypt wants to stop Iranian expansion is a good thing, but that the next government—a radical, possibly Islamist one, will have its own ambitions isn’t. I predict that Egypt and Iran will tussle over who will be the patron of Hamas and that Egypt will win. It also seems likely that a radical, Islamist-influenced Egypt would be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jordan, too.

The Saudis are also reaching out. Their leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in sending troops to Bahrain and tightening the security links among the members is another sign that they aren’t depending on the United States any more. Equally impressive is the GCC’s invitation to Jordan to join, a total break with past policy. This is a good thing since the Jordanians need help (particularly money) to stay stable and fend off Iranian influence and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.

Iran’s ambitions are well-known but the statement of parliament speaker Ali Larijani (generally regarded as a “moderate” on the Islamic republic’s political spectrum) is still an escalation. He said that Tehran will “protect” Muslim states from U.S. and Israeli aggression. Clearly, this doesn’t include Libya where the Iranians hope that the United States and NATO will overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi and open the way for a radical Islamist dictatorship.

Of course, Iranian protection implies that regime’s hands around the neck of other countries. The regime now has Lebanon as a satellite, tremendous influence in Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, patronage over Hamas, and an alliance with Turkey and Syria. That’s a pretty good situation. And once it has nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime believes it can do whatever it wants and nobody will complain too much.

Then there’s Turkey. It is foolish and certainly outdated to see Turkey as somehow on the “West’s” side against Iran. First, Turkey is allied with Iran to a large extent. Second, if and when the two countries differ it is about how to carve up others. Kemal Ataturk’s wise injunction—the equivalent of George Washington’s avoiding “foreign entanglements”—of “peace at home, peace abroad” is being thrown on the garbage heap with all of his other hard-earned wisdom.

I don’t like the use of the word “Ottoman” to apply to post-Ataturk Turkey as there are simply too many differences and confusing nuances. After all, in modern history, despite the fact that its sultan was also the Muslim caliph, the Ottoman Empire functioned internationally as a normative power, not an Islamist state. It was also a status quo power seeking to preserve an existing empire and easily forming alliances with European states.

The new Turkey is ambitious, Islamist, anti-Western, and not likely to be a force for stability. In his victory speech, reelected Prime Minister Erdoğan did not mention Europe or the West even once. Though the Western media didn’t notice it in praising the victory of the Turkish Islamists he spoke as a Muslim leader. .

Breaking with the orientation of the Turkish republic since the 1920s, Erdoğan began his speech by praising, “All friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku and Nicosia.”

He added: “The hopes of the victims and the oppressed have won,” and, “Beirut has won as much as İzmir. West Bank, Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem have won as much as Diyarbakır. The Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans have won, just as Turkey has won.”

In talking about the Middle East, he wasn’t including Israel; in the Caucasus, he didn’t mean Armenia or Georgia; and as for the Balkans he didn’t mean Greece or Croatia or Yugoslavia.

As a Turkish journalist explained:
“The fact that he mentioned Sarajevo, while avoiding mention of Europe, clearly shows that he sees himself as the leader of the Muslims and that of those Muslims who are oppressed, not by their regimes, in the view of Erdoğan, but by the Christian West. So, Erdoğan’s world view, based on juxtaposing the oppressed East vis-à-vis the imperialist West, is here to stay.”

Is it of some concern that the leader of Turkey speaks in the same terms as the leader of Iran? You wouldn’t know it from Western coverage.

One point that isn’t properly understood is that if Iran, post-secular Turkey, post-Mubarak Egypt, and Syria (though sidelined by its own internal problems for now) may be contending to some extent, it isn’t good for Western or U.S. interests. They’re squabbling about who gets to devour what.

In this context, the battle over Syria should be understood. It is widely claimed that Turkey has broken with the Syrian regime as if this were a humanitarian impulse. There are proposals to use Turkey as a mediator and even reports that President Barack Obama is consulting Turkey about what to do in Syria.

Big mistake. True, Turkey has been allied with the dictatorship of President Hafiz al-Asad. But the revolution has posed a dilemma for Ankara. Asad is good. After all, he hates the United States (though the Obama administration doesn’t seem to notice) and Israel, supports revolutionary Islamists (Hamas, Hizballah, Iraqi insurgents), and is an ally of Iran. Iran and Hizballah, both of them Shia Muslim, prefer their ally Asad, who claims to be Shia Muslim.

But for the (Sunni) Islamists in Ankara, the Islamists in Damascus are better. The Turkish regime doesn’t want a moderate, pro-Western democratic government in Syria; it wants an Islamist, even more anti-American government in Syria.

So the Middle East is returning to a higher level of conflict and eventually bloodshed, in part thanks to U.S. bumbling. It’s a typical story. Obama thinks American power is evil and bullying, but by withdrawing it (except for the bizarre adventure in Libya), he is contributing to anarchy and the destruction of legitimate U.S. interests.
By the way, notice that—at least for the moment—the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflict is of no importance in all this. Yet that’s the issue the West is obsessed with, usually in ways that would weaken Israel and thus strengthen all of its enemies.

It’s a very sad and even more dangerous story. The hope is that as all these problems and disasters become more visible, the Western democracies will wake up and change their policies. Every minute counts.

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

Understanding Hamas, A Detailed Assessment

By Barry Rubin

What do you have to do to be recognized as a revolutionary Islamist group using terrorism, backed by Iran (and now probably a radicalized Egypt), seeking to wipe Israel off the map and kill the Jews? It isn’t easy. People keep trying to make you into something else: incipient moderate? Multifaceted debating society? Insisting that you just don’t really mean it?

Such is the case with Hamas. Every day—in speeches, articles, violence, mosque sermons, and media, Hamas makes its positions absolutely clear. And every day someone in the West just doesn’t want to believe it.

Now Hamas has formed an alliance (of convenience?) with the Palestinian Authority (PA), run by Fatah and governing the West Bank. It’s a remarkable situation—or would be anywhere outside of the Middle East. 

After all, Hamas won an election, made a deal with the PA, and then staged a coup to take over the Gaza Strip that included shooting dead wounded Fatah fighters in hospital. Fatah and the PA regularly repress Hamas on the West Bank. So why are they “working together”? The PA wants to show unity to the world; Hamas hopes that it can take over the PA. 

Is it true that “as older leaders of Hamas claim some degree of moderation, younger radicals refuse to give up violence?” Not exactly. First, there is no real division along age lines. Nor is it all but merely some leaders of Hamas who “claim” some moderation. 

But what’s important is that word “claim.” They do not claim it in Arabic, they do not claim it when talking to their people, and they do not claim it on their television stations or their debates with the PA and Fatah. They only claim it when they are talking to Westerners, usually reporters or sometimes diplomats. In other words, it is just a public relations’ exercise. 

What about the “Salafi-Jihadist” groups? Clearly, there are some differences, often relating to external alliances. Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood group; the dissidents sympathize with al-Qaida. Yet they don’t pose any serious challenge since Hamas is far stronger. Hamas also uses them as deniable purveyors of attacks on Israel, assaults that Hamas can allow but also deny. The most important non-Hamas group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, very much plays that role.

There has been some effort to set up a distinction between Hamas, as the relative moderates, and the new small groups as the radicals. This would legitimize Hamas as protecting everyone from the real extremists. But the problem with these other groups—and that includes al-Qaida—is that they are too tactically inflexible. They only use violence rather than base building; reject elections; and never pretend to be moderate. 

Thus, while these groups can stage terrorist attacks or violence, they are not the real threat. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hamas, or Hizballah, they cannot take over whole countries. And if in the Gaza Strip they ever do challenge what Hamas wants to do, they will be slapped down without mercy. That’s not because Hamas is moderate but because it will accept no rival. 

Indeed, one reason why salafi-jihadist groups have not been successful among the Palestinians is that there is already a strong Islamist organization—Hamas—which can combine the nationalist and religious cards. Among the Palestinians, Hamas are the Salafists and Jihadists. Who needs any alternative?

The article states that “a generation of Hamas leaders, now mostly in their 60s, that wants to deal, that's willing to agree to establishing a Palestinian state within Gaza and the West Bank as defined by the Green Line, the ceasefire line that separated Israelis from Jordanian and Egyptian forces until June, 1967.”

But this is misleading, as the article goes on to explain. For whenever these Hamas leaders discuss such an idea they make absolutely and explicitly clear that this is a temporary measure, a temporary truce, designed to get a state that can be used as a platform for destroying Israel. The PLO accepted such a “two-stage strategy” more than 35 years ago but no one thought that was moderate at the time. 

Who needs “radicals” when you have Hamas. Incidentally, the same arguments can be applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or any number of other militant groups. There is always someone even more radical. But the most extreme of the extreme simply are not good at building a mass organization, in part because they are so much on the edge.

There is another assumption made in dealing with Hamas that is also very dangerous. It is presumed that the PA will moderate Hamas. Yet it is more likely that Hamas would radicalize or take over the PA. Many times before, it has been seen around the world that highly disciplined groups with a clear ideology have the advantage of looser, corrupt and ill-defined rivals. 

But Hamas is also more dangerous precisely because it is more flexibly clever. The naïve super-radicals want to convert the Gaza Strip into an imitation of Taliban Afghanistan overnight. Hamas leaders understand, however, that they must go step by step so as not to antagonize the population so much as to lose power or to show the West their true intentions so much that it might do something about the danger Hamas poses.

Thus, Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, explains the situation in the article: "No one is more experienced in resistance than Hamas. No one has more martyrs…..Resistance has cost Gaza a lot of lives and a lot of damage. We need to evaluate each situation" before waging resistance.’

What he’s saying here is that Hamas isn’t moderate, it just isn’t stupid. Compare Iran and Afghanistan, for example, the Islamic republic of Iran has known—even while sponsoring terrorism and subverting neighbors—how to be cautious and when to be brutal. The regime is still in power after more than three decades. The Taliban was foolhardy and adventurous, getting involved in the September 11 attacks against the United States. Its leaders are now living in caves.

At the end, the question is asked: “Which side of Hamas will prevail?” But aside from interviews given in English for the express purpose of fooling people there is no evidence that there are two sides of Hamas.

The Toronto Globe & Mail should be praised by seriously studying this issue, at a time when many newspapers in other countries increasingly “dumb down” their coverage. But the question remains how Hamas should be understood.

The advisor on counterterrorism to President Barack Obama once explained that Hizballah couldn’t be terrorists because it included lawyers. But who says that a revolutionary Islamist movement must merely be drooling terrorists saying, “Kill, kill, kill!” Even the Nazis weren’t like that and neither were the Stalinists. Of course, there are intellectuals and doctors, teachers and engineers, involved in the movement, as in all revolutionary Islamist movements. So what? 

Quickly, however, in such discussions there is a felt need to discover a spectrum of views when no significant differences exist, or at most they are purely tactical emphases. For example, an article in the Toronto Globe & Mail says that Hamas has “disavowed suicide attacks in recent years.” In fact, they have claimed many such attacks. They might disavow certain specific attacks that are inconveniently timed. That isn’t moderation it is political cleverness. 

That article notes: “Hamas-backed militias regularly rain rockets down on targets inside Israel.” Yes, but so does Hamas itself. Other militias have been used as fronts since Hamas’ defeat by Israel in 2009 so that Hamas can pretend it isn’t violating the ceasefire. Yet this is a thinly veneered trick since Hamas verbally supports the attacks, does nothing to prevent them and never punishes them afterward. Compare this to the bloody crackdowns of Hamas—as discussed in the article—when it really does feel its power and policy challenged.

Another important misunderstood point made in the same article says, “Hamas members remain the elected representatives of a large chunk of the Palestinian people, placed there by a fair exercise in democracy.” That is true as far as it goes. But many people think Hamas governs the Gaza Strip because it won an election. First, it won an election, then it made a coalition deal, then it seized power by force. 

In stating the usual juxtaposition, the article compares Hamas, “committed to the destruction of the Jewish state,” with Fatah and the PA, “moderate and secular.” While there is certainly truth in this distinction it is also dangerously misleading. For it suggests that these two groups are like oil and water. Yet while there are hardline and very pious forces in Fatah, there are no moderates and secularists in Hamas. Thus, Hamas can appeal to a lot of Fatah supporters but not so much the other way around. 

The article states, “It would be unrealistic to think that Hamas will fade away.” Absolutely right. But it is more possible that it will win control of the Palestinians altogether. True, as the article correctly states, people in the Gaza Strip have a lower living standard than those in the West Bank living under PA rule (mainly because the latter receive high levels of international aid). But is that enough to sustain Fatah?

Suppose an independent Palestinian state is established after an agreement with Israel and internationally supported. What would happen if some time later Hamas seized power by force, won an election, or formed a coalition with some younger Fatah cadre to rule. It would tear up the agreement with Israel—as is about to happen in Egypt—and return to the conflict with itself much stronger and Israel weaker than is true at present. Such a scenario is a very realistic one.

Even short of that, Hamas would maintain that it had the right and duty to attack Israelis (whether or not it publicly claimed responsibility for doing so).whenever that was politically profitable. Is a Fatah or coalition government really going to stop them from doing so? 

Meanwhile, Hamas preachers and teachers would be telling young people that being a jihad fighter or a suicide bomber is the most properly Islamic and wonderful thing they could do with their lives. How easily could moderates compete with such appeals, especially when—as we have seen elsewhere—moderates would be subject to intimidation or even assassination.

But actually the world should continue to shun Hamas for reasons having nothing to do with Israel. The Middle East today faces a huge internal conflict. That is the region’s main feature. The battle is between Islamists—be they Afghan, Iranian, Arab, or Turkish—and a much-varied set of nationalists, liberal reformers, and traditionalists. The mix is different in every country.

This battle is similar to the great struggles in Europe once caused by Communists and fascists. It is not merely a matter of Islam or Muslims because most of the people on the anti-Islamist side are also Muslims who think they are just as properly Islamic as the revolutionaries.

Giving international recognition or help or legitimacy to Hamas helps the radical Islamist side. It entrenches the Gaza Strip as a revolutionary statelet on the Mediterranean Sea, backed by Iran, using terrorism, dedicated to genocide against Israel and to subverting all of the relatively moderate Arab states.

It indoctrinates children to be future terrorists, to hate and kill Jews, expels Christians, subjugates women, and supports the murder of gays. In addition, it advocates the expulsion of Western influence from the region and opposes virtually all Western interests. A Hamas regime is bound to return to war again in the not-distant future. The group’s radicalism will kill any hope for a peace process between Israel and the PA. Hamas in power means a totalitarian state using torture and ferocious repression.

And it also furthers the revolutionary Islamist movements’ efforts to dominate the Middle East and spread their doctrine and power to Western countries.

A handful of carefully tailored English-language interviews by some Hamas leaders (while they and others speak very frankly and in a totally opposite way in Arabic) changes nothing. The group’s actions speak louder than such words. Their television shows directed at children tells more than soothing words meant to lull the West to sleep. 

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

President Obama, al-Qaida's New Leader, and Their “Mutual Friend”

By Barry Rubin

Ayman al-Zawahiri, nephew of a Nazi collaborator and grandson of the man who helped produce the genocidal antisemitic doctrine in Islamism, now seems to be head of al-Qaida.

In what appears to be his inaugural speech as al-Qaida leader, al-Zawahiri thanked Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas, for his praising Usama bin Ladin after his death.

Haniya is often described as a moderate in the Western media.

The group that Haniya heads benefited from:

--U.S. and Western pressure on Israel to stop fighting Hamas in early 2009 and not to overthrow that regime.

--U.S. aid to pay Palestinian Authority employees in the Gaza Strip, which thus benefits Hamas by improving the economy there and thus stabilizing its rule.

--U.S. pressure on Israel to reduce sanctions against the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip to the absolute minimum.

--U.S. efforts to overthrow the anti-Hamas regime in Egypt and President Barack Obama’s support for bringing Hamas’s ally, the Muslim Brotherhood, into Egypt’s government.

--U.S. willingness to say and do nothing while Hamas, led by Haniya, made a merger deal with the Palestinian Authority so that it could enter into the PA government.

--The PA government receives massive aid and diplomatic support from the U.S. government.

--The U.S. government has treated the Syrian regime, also a Hamas patron, as a friend and has done everything possible to avoid acting against the Syrian dictators' bloody repression of peaceful demonstrations.

Perhaps Haniya, once he becomes one of the main leader (or even prime minister? president?) of the state of Palestine will introduce President Obama to al-Zawahiri and they can discuss the virtues of bin Ladin, the finer points of training suicide bombers, and that jolly little party al-Zawahiri and bin Ladin organized in New York…on September 11, 2001.

Indeed, since Haniya is also an ally of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist Iran, the revolutionary Islamist Hizballah, and repressive Syria, too, they can all get together at Haniya’s house. But I don’t recommend making it a beer summit.

OK, I don't want to be unfair. But in reality U.S. policy--whatever its intentions--has protected and helped Hamas in practice. Currently, the strategy of the greatest superpower in the world is based on standing by, watching, and hoping that the Fatah-Hamas deal will fall apart. Even while it tries to advance the creation of a Palestinian state--half under the rule of Hamas--as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, in "respectable" circles of the West it is permissible to argue that Hamas has become and is becoming more moderate. Attacking the United States for killing a "good guy" like Usama bin Ladin seems to be no barrier to that perception.

Think I'm exaggerating? Read this AP article claiming that Hamas is really going to be moderate now and doesn’t really want any power.

 Just like, no doubt, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood doesn't want power, right? They began by saying that they wouldn't seek any political power; then they were only competing for 30 percent of the parliamentary seats, then 50 percent but not running a presidential candidate; and now 50 percent and a presidential candidate.


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

Obama’s Middle East Policy Will Collapse In September

By Barry Rubin

Prediction: In September, President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy blows up in his (and our) face(s). It’s totally obvious and yet no one is focusing on it.

I’m not referring to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for unilateral independence at the UN. I’m referring to the Egyptian parliamentary election.

It is totally obvious that in that election Egypt will elect a radical, anti-American, hate-Israel parliament which will then write the country’s new constitution. This is a turning point in Middle East history. And Obama is unaware of it. Quite the contrary, he declared in his State Department speech that everything is great with the “Arab spring.” Nothing can go wrong. It is the expression of a yearning for prosperity and freedom.

The Arab spring began when a frustrated man in Tunisia set himself on fire.

It will now move to the new phase: the whole Middle East will be set on fire.

Is that alarmist? Not at all, except in the sense that when one sees a fire he sets off the fire alarm.

Don’t be distracted by the question of whether Islamists will have a majority or the even narrower question of whether the Muslim Brotherhood will have a majority.

There WILL be a radical majority, there MIGHT be an Islamist majority, there won’t be a Muslim Brotherhood majority but it will ALMOST CERTAINLY be the largest single party.

Why do I say this? Well, Amr Moussa, who isn’t an Islamist and is Egypt’s most popular and important Egyptian politician says so.

There is no sign—no sign—that the moderates are organizing serious parties. Instead of getting to work, they’re complaining. Meanwhile four radical, anti-American, passionately anti-Israel forces are organizing:

--The Muslim Brotherhood, which should get one-third or more of the seats and is contesting half of them, obviously in the districts where it has the best chance of winning.

--Smaller and even more radical Islamist parties (referred to as Salafists) who could form agreements with the Brotherhood so that they won’t hurt each other’s chances.

--Left-wing neo-Marxist parties.

--Radical nationalists.

There will probably be a number of independents who will be courted and won over by one of these blocs.

Imagine the day after that election. What will the mass media say? What will the American politicians say?

--That they were wrong about the Egyptian revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood?

--That by helping to bring down the old regime, U.S. policy foisted a disaster on the region and on its own interests?

--That by celebrating how great the “Arab Spring” is and refusing to acknowledge the real threats and problems, Obama made catastrophic errors.

--That his policy has led to many advances for America’s enemies?

--That Israel is in a far worse strategic situation and certainly can’t and shouldn’t make any more concessions?

--That the Islamists are emboldened and thus both Hamas and the radicals who run Fatah are taking an even harder line?

--That the loss of faith in America by its Arab allies is now undeniably clear and they are scrambling to make their own deals with Iran and other extremists?

--That there is a real possibility of a war in which Egypt either joins directly or backs Hamas? Imagine, Egypt stays “neutral” but nobody stops thousands of Egyptian volunteers from crossing into Gaza to fight or even across the Egypt-Israel border to launch terror attacks?

--What will the Obama Administration do if in practice Egypt tears up the Israel-Egypt peace treaty even if it pretends that it isn’t doing so?

--People are insisting that if Hamas in practice becomes part of the Palestinian Authority that the United States, and certainly Congress, will cut off aid. But what will happen when the Obama Administration does everything possible to prevent an aid cut-off and nothing possible to pressure the PA into changing its policy or behavior?

These are not speculations. These things WILL happen. Nobody in the United States or Europe is seriously discussing these scenarios and what should be done about them.

And I didn’t even mention the Egyptian presidential elections or, for that matter:

--An emboldened Turkish Islamist government if it wins the June 11 elections the:re,

--A Lebanese government controlled by Syria and its clients, especially Hizballah, if it ever gets a new prime minister and cabinet installed in that country.

--The survival of an anti-American Syrian government that has murdered hundreds of its citizens and will be arresting and torturing thousands, in part due to the Obama Administration's failure to try to overthrow it?

--The sight of Iran ever closer to nuclear weapons and admissions that the sanctions had only a limited effect?

These are not far-out scenarios. All of them have a 90 percent or more likelihood of happening.

I don’t want to take your time here for a history lesson but consider precedents:

--1952. Radical regime takes power in Egypt. U.S. realizes the threat by April 1955 but then saves the regime from being overthrown by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956. Result: Violence, disruption, and anti-American problems in the region for decades.

--1979. Radical regime takes power in Iran. U.S. policy makes a mess in dealing with the revolutionary crisis. Americans taken hostage, revolutionary Islamism flourishes, thirty plus years of violence, September 11, Islamist movement still growing. By the way, why does not one of the hundreds of "experts" on television and in the mass media remember that the Iranian revolution began after President Jimmy Carter urged reform on the shah and ended with the United States calling on the shah to go away? Remind you of anything?

September 2011 will be another of those moments. Mark that on your calendar. On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the United States will be watching the triumph of the ideology and movement--not Usama bin Ladin, of course, but his smarter counterparts--in much of the Middle East.

PS: Here's an excellent guide to Egypt's political parties so far which proves my point . Note that there isn't a single serious moderate party. Amr Mousa isn't forming a party while Muhammad ElBaradei, Obama's favorite, isn't doing anything but complain. There is a "Facebook party." So far it has 1000 "likes." Egypt has about 85 million people.


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

If The Obama Administration Actually Studied The Middle East Maybe It Wouldn't Be So Ignorant About It

By Barry Rubin 

A lot of people may think that I’m too tough on President Barack Obama and the New York Times. Yet every day they do something that—despite my high suspicions and low expectations—amazes me.

Consider a New York Times article, “Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World. First, the concept of “reset” was invented by the Obama Administration and has been used by it to describe the new policy about to be announced on the Middle East. One could not possibly think of an idea more unsuited to the region.

Reset implies starting over, forgetting everything that has happened before. Yet there is arguably no part of human society that is more obsessed with history than the Middle East. You have people ready to die and kill to realize a vision of society from more than twelve centuries ago, a reborn country that had been destroyed more than nineteen centuries ago, and the world’s longest-lasting continuing conflict that has been going full steam now for more than six decades. And those are only three examples.

Who thinks like this, that you can press a button and have history disappear? Americans, or at least a certain kind of American. The concept of reset is so remarkably ignorant and doomed to fail that it is shocking that the great geniuses who guide America haven’t thought of this problem. To my best knowledge not a single person has pointed out this fatal flaw though everyone in the Middle East innately understands it!

The Arab world isn’t erasing history so much as reliving it, heading back to the 1950s and 1960s, but with revolutionary Islamism replacing Arab nationalism. And that’s even worse.

Then there is this shocking quote from the same article: 

"Obama has ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries to find precedents for those under way in Tunisia and Egypt. They have found that Egypt is analogous to South Korea, the Philippines and Chile, while a revolution in Syria might end up looking like Romania's." 

I’m not a big fan of this type of political science, which never produces useful results. But leaving that aside, doesn’t anyone notice a few details? Revolutionary Islamism doesn’t really exist as a national factor in those countries. Neither does radical Arab nationalism. The three countries mentioned as being like Egypt are in fact dominated by a basic pragmatic approach, an absence of dominating ideology, a strong social flexibility.

No matter how many degrees he might have anyone who would use such a method as a guide to policymaking on a life-and-death issue is a fool. (Oops! There goes my hope of a job in the Obama Administration!) 

Now, in about 400 words and taking about three minutes of your time I have explained why the current policy plans of this U.S. government are doomed. Why not instead study Egyptian history and society, the Muslim Brotherhood, and things like that? 

Yet I suspect there is one more hidden factor here. The American government has this thing called the State Department and sections of the Defense Department that do this kind of thing. There are people who have been following Arab politics and ideology and the military for decades. Why not call on them for their analysis?

I think that Obama is instead turning to his clueless National Security Council staffers (the ones who wanted Husni Mubarak overthrown in 24 hours) and left-wing academics or think-tanks, and a couple of pundits (the names Zakaria and Friedman have in fact been mentioned) instead. The result is going to be something of a combination of hilariously stupid and the kind of policy that ends up setting off wars and getting tens of thousands of people killed.

But then if your advisors deny that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamist anti-American group favoring genocide against Jews—indeed argue it is sort of secular—what can one expect? If the courtiers keep calling you the smartest president in all of history how are you going to correct your errors? 

Now if one could only reset Obama’s worldview….

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/us/politics/12prexy.html?_r=1