What is Behind the Israel Apartheid Weeks?

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Hat tip JJ and Miggie


As March approaches, we can expect another wave of organized Israel-Apartheid weeks being held in Europe and North America-largely on university campuses. Once again, the pro-Palestinian forces will  erect mock apartheid walls, bring in radical speakers, wave Palestinian flags, and accuse Israel of apartheid and genocide against the  benighted Palestinian people, who in spite of the supposed genocide have seen their population numbers explode. Indeed, the Arabs who have deigned to call themselves Palestinians have increased in numbers (through high birth rates) since the creation of Israel. Where is the genocide? Where are the death camps? As for the charges of apartheid, anyone familiar with the apartheid system of South Africa can readily list the differences. In this 5-minute video published by Prager University, South African Parliament Member Kennith Meshoe explains the differences.

But anyone who studies or works on a university campus might ask him or herself why this issue, this conflict, has assumed so large a role on campus. It is because a well-organized worldwide Palestinian lobby has made it so. We  are not talking about a few Arab students standing on a soap box at some corner of a university yelling at uninterested  students who pass by. We are talking about university recognized student groups who have the ability to rent space and bring in invited speakers largely using university funds (from tuition fees) made available to such groups. We can begin with the various chapters of the Muslim Student Association (a creation, by the way of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) and their sister organization, Students for Justice in Palestine. They are the ones who host the annual hate fests that come to so many campuses each year devoted to de-legitimizing the Jewish state.

Then you have the various university student governments who devote so much time and energy to repeated efforts to pass resolutions urging the university to boycott, sanction and divest from companies that do business with Israel. The University of California campuses have been especially active lately. One such resolution was narrowly voted down last week at UC Riverside after 4 hours of debate. (The universities uniformly issue statements rejecting such measures if they pass.) So  how is it that student governments allow themselves to get tied up with this issue when their efforts, time and resources could be better spent on other issues affecting the student body? It is because anti-Israel activists are getting themselves elected to student government positions and dominating said student governments.

Then there is the faculty, largely in the humanities, stuffed with left-wing radicals all too willing to use the issue as part of their bash America agenda. Burgeoning Middle East studies departments, funded by Saudi Arabia, are staffed with pan-Arab, anti-Israeli professors dedicated  to indoctrinating their students against Israel and the West.

Thus, what you have is the perfect marriage of convenience between the pro-Palestinians, Islamist forces, and the left.

But what is especially troubling is that the ultimate root cause of the Israel-Arab conflict is infecting our own campuses and our societies in the West. It is anti-Semitism-or if you prefer, pure Jew-hatred, plain and simple. At its source, the Arab world in the Middle East will never accept the idea of a Jewish state in its midst. The Palestinians are mere pawns. In the West, they have large armies of activists to do their bidding.

Of course, here in the US, it would be bad tactics to scream anti-Semitic insults on college campuses-though some speakers actually have (Amir Abdel Malik Ali, Alim Musa, Mohammed al Asi). For the most part, the speakers who come to campus will  insist that they are merely anti-Zionist-not anti-Jew. Indeed, the clever pro-Palestinian organizations on campuses have succeeded in bringing in a ready stable of Jewish activists who fervently hate Israel. From left-wing professors like (ex-professor) Norman Finkelstein and Judith Butler, to anarchist Israelis like Matan Cohen, to Neturei Karta rabbi Ysroel Dovid Cohen, to the Jewish Voice for Peace, these useful  pawns are all too ready to travel the university lecture circuit and denounce the Jewish state on behalf of forces that want to drive every last Jew from the Middle East.

Sadly, in the process of all this activity in the past several  years, our country has witnessed a revival of anti-Semitism, the oldest hatred in the history of our planet. It is just the most recent form of Jew hatred. From charges of killing Christ to the Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to  being nationless, mercenary cheats, to being non-Aryan race defilers, to dominating Wall Street, Hollywood and the banks, it is the evil Zionist Israelis and their Jewish coreligionists in the West that are now the problem.  The modern anti-Semitism (or is it post-modern?) is now incorporating some of the old canards to gather public opinion against Israeli and Jews in general. Even the Blood Libel has been revived.

And the focal point for this resurgence in the US is on our university campuses.

Posted on "Apartheid Wall" at UC Irvine in May 2008 and personally witnessed by this writer


If you thought that  today's anti-Semitism in the West was something that was re-hatched by some neo-Nazi dropout types at punk rock concerts, think again. A recent study in Germany turned up some interesting results.

This is what our children are being exposed to when we send them off to college. These are the future leaders of our country, and their minds are being poisoned by rhetoric that often degenerates into out and out hate speech. Mix this up and throw it in with all the leftist race-conscious rhetoric that already predominates on our campuses, where "victimized and oppressed people of color" are aligned against "privileged whites", and what you have is a dangerous cocktail with the potential to explode some day in deadly violence on a US university campus.

But make no mistake: No matter how loud or how gentle the speakers words at these Israel Apartheid events; no matter whether the speaker is Arab, Jew or other; no matter how much the speaker sprinkles his/her words with phrases like "human rights", "justice", or "peace". It all boils down to one thing: For them, there is no room for Jews in the Middle East. And that is anti-Semitism or Jew-hatred, whichever you choose to call it.



 

Robert Spencer & Walid Shoebat

Article: Walid Shoebat

Article: Robert Spencer

Follow on Facebook: Defence of the Realm

Susan Rice Has No Regrets

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


In an administration filled with people who have no shame, Susan Rice stands out like a Texas-size turd blossom. In this interview with NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press today, she continues the great Benghazi lie and says "she has no regrets".



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/23/rice-acknowledges-some-her-benghazi-info-was-incorrect-but-has-no-regrets/

Here is the text of the above Fox News article. My comments are interjected in bold print.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday she has no regrets over what she told the American public about the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks in the immediate aftermath of the deadly strikes.

"Je ne regrette rien" as Edith Piaf sang

Rice did a round of Sunday TV interviews a few days after the attacks, in which some of the information she gave was later proven incorrect.

Not incorrect. Lies.

“What I said to you that morning, and what I did every day since, was to share the best information that we had at the time,” Rice told NBC's “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory on Sunday. “The information I provided … was what we had at the moment.”

Nonsense. The people on the ground in Libya told their superiors in Washington that it was a coordinated terrorist attack and that there was no protest that went out of control. That information was provided to DOS before Rice appeared on the Sunday talk shows. Indeed, it has been shown that the Pentagon, General Martin Dempsey, and Leon Panetta were told a terrorist attack was happening just before they went to the White House to meet President Obama.

Rice said “No,” when Gregory asked whether she had any regrets about her statements.

She should tell that to the families of the four dead Americans and those that survived the attack and in some cases, are still recuperating from their wounds.

She also said nobody in the administration intended to mislead the public, but acknowledged some of her information was inaccurate.

Lies. Flat out lies. Not some of the information. All  of it.

“That information turned out, in some respects, not to be 100 percent correct," Rice said. "But the notion that somehow I or anybody else in the administration misled the American people is patently false. And I think that that's been amply demonstrated."

Note the equivocal choice of words ("..in some respects not to be 100 percent correct"). Amply demonstrated? What has been amply demonstrated is that the administration perpetrated a lie upon the public. The talking points memo was changed by people within the administration and State Department to fit their own narrative that what happened at Benghazi was a protest gone awry and to continue the myth that Libya was stable. The administration and State also knew that if it got out that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were running loose all over Eastern Libya, the previous pleas for enhanced security from the post at Libya would surface and put the lie to the entire narrative.

She was, at the time, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a top candidate to become secretary of state.

However, Rice withdrew herself from consideration in the wake of the attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, after the firestorm of criticism she received for her response.

Rice said Sunday she didn’t know whether her responses killed her chances of getting the top U.S. diplomatic post.

She  doesn't know. I know. Anybody with half a brain knows.

“I don’t know,” she said. “What I do know is that I [now] have a great job.”

She has a great job, and four Americans don't have a great job because they are dead.

Four Americans were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, and State Department information management officer Sean Smith, also died in the attack. 

Rice said the Benghazi attacks appeared to be a "spontaneous reaction” to an anti-Islamic video on the Internet.

The administration later said the attacks appeared pre-planned, but exactly who and what started them remains unclear, despite several investigations.

Pseudo investigations-like that DOS Accountability Review Board "investigation" that cleared Hillary Clinton without even interviewing her.

Ms Rice may have no regrets, but an entire nation has regrets over this tragedy that never should have happened. Rice may argue that as then-ambassador to the UN, she was not directly involved in the information flow, but she sure was in a position to find out what the facts were within the next five days when somebody handed her a doctored sheet of talking points and sent her of all people out to face the Sunday talk shows instead of Hillary Clinton, who was "too tired" to do her job (translation: answer hard questions about where she was and what she was doing on that fateful evening).

And isn't it interesting that Rice, instead of appearing on all five networks today as she did after the Benghazi attack, chose to appear only with a sympathetic David Gregory and the friendly confines of NBC?

Either Susan Rice knowingly lied on those Sunday talk shows, or she was incredibly derelict and naive in not asking the people around her for the facts before blindly going out and repeating those absurd talking points about a video. In either case, she "amply demonstrated", to  borrow a phrase,  that she is unfit to be either secretary of state or national security adviser.

SecState Clinton Before, During and After Benghazi

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Hat tip Family Security Matters and Squid






The below report in pdf format was compiled by a group of special ops veterans and former intelligence officers known as Opsecteam. The report is published by Frank Gaffney's Family Security Matters. The below report paints a damning picture of Hillary Clinton in the time before the Benghazi mission attack when the State Department was going full speed ahead with supporting the new Libyan government, setting up an expanding mission in Benghazi, and collecting surface to air missiles left over from the Libyan insurgency while ignoring warning signs of terrorist activity and pleas for more security in Benghazi. It then paints a picture of Clinton as basically missing in action with her whereabouts and actions unaccounted for in the hours of September 11 when the mission was under attack. Finally, it describes her actions and the actions of her underlings in the cover-up of the motive for the attack and the propagation that it was a protest over a video. The authors state that the information is derived from public source documents and reports.

http://opsecteam.org/download/breach.pdf

Comment: Of course, detractors will say that the writers are anonymous, shadowy, right-wing activists with an ax to grind against Clinton and the Obama administration. The above FSM link has a link to a review by Reuters which pretty much implies that it is a Republican smear job.

"Thomas Pickering, who chaired the State Department's official inquiry, said his panel concluded Clinton's performance was appropriate: "We did look at her role. We thought that she conducted her meetings and activities responsibly and well."
-Reuters

Yet Reuters never informs its own readers that Thomas Pickering's Accountability Review Board investigators never interviewed Clinton! To be sure, Family Security Matters is a conservative site that focuses on the threat of Islamic terrorism. They have been critical of the Obama administration's handling of the threat. So evaluate it as you will. I assume, being former intelligence operatives,  that they also have inside contacts.

The fact does remain, however, that Hillary Clinton has never fully accounted for her actions and whereabouts on the night of September 11. For that matter, neither has Obama.

Couple Stoned in Pakistan

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Here's the latest from that area in Pakistan where the Taliban and al Qaeda reign supreme. A couple has been stoned to death for adultery. Reuters has the report.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/17/us-pakistan-couple-stoned-idUSBREA1G18F20140217

This is what the concept of human rights is in Pakistan. But you say, "Fousesquawk, six people have been arrested." Yes, but the sad reality is that none of these people will be in jail say a year from now. If punished at all, it will be merely a slap on the wrist. This atrocity is considered an "honor killing". Adultery is punished by death-stoning.

And here is what is especially disturbing. A cleric ordered the stoning, and it was carried about by the immediate families of the victims.

So what is to be done? The  answer, as far as we are concerned, is nothing. There is nothing that we here in the West can do. This is Pakistan-to be exact- an area called Baluchistan, in which the central government has no control. This is the way things are done there and have been done for hundreds of years. We can't change it. I doubt the Pakistani government in Islamabad can change it. How can we educate these people that this is wrong and a violation of basic human rights? In truth, we cannot. That is the code they live by.

But if we want to maintain our concepts on human rights, we don't have to allow folks like this to immigrate to our country (ies). They can stay right where they are and practice their barbaric customs all they want and if the Pakistani authorities in Islamabad or Baluchistan want to intervene, arrest them, prosecute them, and put them in jail for 30 days, or do nothing, that is their business.

But I don't want to see that mentality here in the US. And that is where we can do something. You talk about immigration reform? This is an area where immigration reform is badly needed.

No Thank You!

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

Was the words coming from workers in Tennessee who work for Volkswagen to the United Auto Workers (UAW).

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have voted against union representation, a devastating loss that derails the United Auto Workers union's effort to organize Southern factories.

The 712-626 vote released late Friday stunned many labor experts who expected a UAW win because Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the Chattanooga factory to make sales pitches.

But the union faced stern opposition from Republican politicians who warned that a union win would chase away other automakers who might come to the region. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the most vocal opponent, saying that he was told that VW would not build a new SUV in Chattanooga if workers approved the union. That was later denied by a VW executive in Tennessee.

The UAW for decades has tried without success to organize a foreign-owned plant in a region that's wary of organized labor. The loss now makes it even harder for the union to recruit members at another Southern factory, a key priority of outgoing UAW President Bob King. He has said in the past that the union has no long-term future if it can't organize the Southern plants.

"It is pretty devastating" for the union, said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank in Michigan. "If this was going to work anywhere, this is where it was going to work."

Gary Casteel, a UAW regional director who headed organizing efforts at the plant, hinted that the union may challenge the election results with the National Labor Relations Board.

"We think that it's unfortunate that there was some outside influence exerted into this process," Casteel said Friday night. "There are still some issues that have to be sorted out about this election, and we'll let the people that do that evaluate the impact of others and whatnot further down the road."

Dziczek said the union may have to change its tactics in future organizing efforts, because King's strategy of the union and company working together to help each other did not work.

But she does not expect the well-funded union to give up on organizing Southern factories. "I think they will continue to push everywhere they were pushing and see if they get more traction," she said.

Many viewed VW as the union's only chance to gain a crucial foothold in the South because other automakers have not been as welcoming as Volkswagen. The vote means the union may be quarantined to its base with the Detroit Three automakers in the Industrial Midwest and Northeast.

King, however, stuck to statements he made earlier that the union would seek a vote and respect any decision made by workers. "While we certainly would have liked a victory for workers here, we deeply respect the Volkswagen Global Group Works Council, Volkswagen management and IG Metall for doing their best to create a free and open atmosphere for workers to exercise their basic human right to form a union," King said in a statement.

SOURCE

The truth is that American workers are seeing the truth about the modern union movement.  They don't see the friend of the worker as was seen in the 1920s and 1930s, but a corrupt entity that is only interested in how much dues they receive and how many Democrats they can support.

 The workers in Tennessee aren't dumb hicks.  They are educated patriots who see the harm that unions have caused this nation.  And have voted to remain free.

Ten Reasons Why The BDS Movement Is Immoral And Hinders Peace ~~ By Alan M. Dershowitz

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle


From The Gatestone Institute

As a strong supporter of the two state solution and a critic of Israel's settlement policies, I am particularly appalled at efforts to impose divestment, boycotts and sanctions against Israel, and Israel alone, because BDS makes it more difficult to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Mid-East conflict that requires compromise on all sides.

The BDS movement is highly immoral, threatens the peace process and discourages the Palestinians from agreeing to any reasonable peace offer. Here are ten compelling reasons why the BDS movement is immoral and incompatible with current efforts to arrive at a compromise peace.

1. The BDS movement immorally imposes the entire blame for the continuing Israeli occupation and settlement policy on the Israelis. It refuses to acknowledge the historical reality that on at least three occasions, Israel offered to end the occupation and on all three occasions, the Palestinian leadership, supported by its people, refused to accept these offers. In 1967, I played a small role in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242 that set out the formula for ending the occupation in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace. Israel accepted that Resolution, while the Palestinians, along with all the Arab nations, gathered in Khartoum and issued their three famous "nos:" No peace, no negotiation, no recognition. There were no efforts to boycott, sanction or divest from these Arab naysayers. In 2000-2001, Israel's liberal Prime Minister Ehud Barak, along with American President Bill Clinton, offered the Palestinians statehood, and the end of the occupation. Yasser Arafat rejected this offer—a rejection that many Arab leaders considered a crime against the Palestinian people. In 2007, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians an even better deal, an offer to which they failed to respond. There were no BDS threats against those who rejected Israel's peace offers. Now there are ongoing peace negotiations in which both parties are making offers and imposing conditions. Under these circumstances, it is immoral to impose blame only on Israel and to direct a BDS movement only against the nation state of the Jewish people, that has thrice offered to end the occupation in exchange for peace.

2. The current BDS movement, especially in Europe and on some American university campuses, emboldens the Palestinians to reject compromise solutions to the conflict. Some within the Palestinian leadership have told me that the longer they hold out against making peace, the more powerful will be the BDS movement against Israel. Why not wait until the BDS strengthens their bargaining position so that they won't have to compromise by giving up the right of return, by agreeing to a demilitarized state and by making other concessions that are necessary to peace but difficult for some Palestinians to accept? The BDS movement is making a peaceful resolution harder.

3. The BDS movement is immoral because its leaders will never be satisfied with the kind of two state solution that is acceptable to Israel. Many of its leaders do not believe in the concept of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. (The major leader of the BDS movement, Marwan Barghouti, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel's right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people even within the 1967 borders.) At bottom, therefore, the leadership of the BDS movement is opposed not only to Israel's occupation and settlement policy but to its very existence.

4. The BDS movement is immoral because it violates the core principle of human rights: namely, "the worst first." Israel is among the freest and most democratic nations in the world. It is certainly the freest and most democratic nation in the Middle East. Its Arab citizens enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere else in the world. They serve in the Knesset, in the Judiciary, in the Foreign Service, in the academy and in business. They are free to criticize Israel and to support its enemies. Israeli universities are hot beds of anti-Israel rhetoric, advocacy and even teaching. Israel has a superb record on women's rights, gay rights, environmental rights and other rights that barely exist in most parts of the world. Moreover, Israel's record of avoiding civilian casualties, while fighting enemies who hide their soldiers among civilians, is unparalleled in the world today. The situation on the West Bank is obviously different because of the occupation, but even the Arabs of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tulkarim have more human and political rights than the vast majority of Arabs in the world today. Moreover, anyone—Jew, Muslim or Christian—dissatisfied with Israeli actions can express that dissatisfaction in the courts, and in the media, both at home and abroad. That freedom does not exist in any Arab country, nor in many non-Arab countries. Yet Israel is the only country in the world today being threatened with BDS. When a sanction is directed against only a state with one of the best records of human rights, and that nation happens to be the state of the Jewish people, the suspicion of bigotry must be considered.

5. The BDS movement is immoral because it would hurt the wrong people: it would hurt Palestinian workers who will lose their jobs if economic sanctions are directed against firms that employ them. It would hurt artists and academics, many of whom are the strongest voices for peace and an end to the occupation. It would hurt those suffering from illnesses all around the world who would be helped by Israeli medicine and the collaboration between Israeli scientists and other scientists. It would hurt the high tech industry around the world because Israel contributes disproportionally to the development of such life enhancing technology.

6. The BDS movement is immoral because it would encourage Iran—the world's leading facilitator of international terrorism—to unleash its surrogates, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, against Israel, in the expectation that if Israel were to respond to rocket attacks, the pressure for BDS against Israel would increase, as it did when Israel responded to thousands of rockets from Gaza in 2008-2009.

7. The BDS movement is immoral because it focuses the world's attention away from far greater injustices, including genocide. By focusing disproportionately on Israel, the human rights community pays disproportionately less attention to the other occupations, such as those by China, Russia and Turkey, and to other humanitarian disasters such as that occurring in Syria.

8. The BDS movement is immoral because it promotes false views regarding the nation state of the Jewish people, exaggerates its flaws and thereby promotes a new variation on the world's oldest prejudice, namely anti-Semitism. It is not surprising therefore that the BDS movement is featured on neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial and other overtly anti-Semitic websites and is promoted by some of the world's most notorious haters such as David Duke.

9. The BDS movement is immoral because it reflects and encourages a double standard of judgment and response regarding human rights violations. By demanding more of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, it expects less of other states, people, cultures and religions, thereby reifying a form of colonial racism and reverse bigotry that hurts the victims of human rights violations inflicted by others.

10. The BDS movement will never achieve its goals. Neither the Israeli government nor the Israeli people will ever capitulate to the extortionate means implicit in BDS. They will not and should not make important decisions regarding national security and the safety of their citizens on the basis of immoral threats. Moreover, were Israel to compromise its security in the face of such threats, the result would be more wars, more death and more suffering.

All decent people who seek peace in the Middle East should join together in opposing the immoral BDS movement. Use your moral voices to demand that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority accept a compromise peace that assures the security of Israel and the viability of a peaceful and democratic Palestinian state. The way forward is not by immoral extortionate threats that do more harm than good, but rather by negotiations, compromise and good will.

Michael Behenna Wins Parole

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

Good news for his family.

Former U.S. Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna has won parole and will be released from Fort Leavenworth on March 14, his mother, Vicki Behenna, said Wednesday.

Behenna, who was convicted of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone, learned early Wednesday morning and called his parents in Oklahoma City.

“We go between tears and laughing,” Vicki Behenna, of Edmond, told The Oklahoman. “I’m just so thankful. I’m just so very very thankful. It’s wonderful.”

Behenna, 30, has served five years of a 15-year sentence. He was convicted in 2009 of killing an Iraqi man connected to al-Qaida while questioning him.

This was his first year of eligibility for parole.

His parents, Vicki and Scott, and brother Brett appeared last month before the U.S. Army Clemency and Parole Board outside Washington and presented the members with a 400-page report that included a letter from Michael, letters of support from Gov. Mary Fallin and members of the congressional delegation and law enforcement officials.

The family told the board that Michael would work on a western Oklahoma cattle ranch and take classes at Oklahoma State University in ranch operations.

“They came and got him about 7:30 this morning and gave him a letter to read,” Vicki Behenna said. “The letter said his request for clemency (a reduction in sentence) had been denied but that his request for parole had been granted.”

She said, “I think he’s in shock. I started crying immediately when he told me. Of course over the phone I can’t see his expression. He would kind of go, ‘Yeah, it’s good, mom. It’s good.”

She said he immediately expressed concern about two fellow inmates.

Behenna was officially dismissed from the Army last month. The secretary of the Army signed his dismissal, which had been pending during Behenna’s appeals through military courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lt. Col. Alayne Conway, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army, said, “The recommendation of the Army Clemency and Parole Board was based on a thorough review of Mr. Behenna’s case. While Mr. Behenna was denied clemency, members voted unanimously in favor of parole based on a number of factors, including a strong parole plan with family and community support.

“Mr. Behenna will have served five years confinement, and will continue to be under parole supervision for ten years.”

Gov. Mary Fallin, who has been monitoring the case closely since she was in Congress, said, “I am glad this long ordeal has finally come to an end for Michael Behenna and his family. Michael went to Iraq to serve his nation and to defend liberty both here and abroad. Instead, he found himself mourning the loss of his friends from the inside of a cell.

“I believe the Army acted appropriately and compassionately in offering him parole.”

Rep. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, whose district includes Edmond, has sent staff members to every hearing in the Washington area and has written officials about the case. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, has also dispatched staff to official hearings and led congressional delegation letters to the Army.

Lankford said Wednesday that when one of his staff members got the call from the Pentagon and relayed the information, “everyone in our office spontaneously burst into tears. It’s a really good day for the Behenna family … I’m looking forward to meeting Michael sometime soon.”

SOURCE

An innocent man has to admit guilt to be set free. Michael Behenna did nothing that my father and thousands of US troops in combat zones have done through out the ages.

Now to work to clear his name.

U.S. "Chose to Stay Silent" on Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2013

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle

A Christian college professor in India was finally acquitted of all blasphemy charges, although is still missing an arm -- cut off by a group of men, following accusations that some of his exams contained offensive questions about Islam's prophet Muhammad.

According to the founder of the Maspero Union, an activist movement in Egypt, targeting Christians in the context of seizing their money and their property is seen "as a religious duty."

The rise of endemic Christian persecution in the Middle East was noted in November when Roman Catholic Pope Francis declared "We will not resign ourselves to imagining a Middle East without Christians" and stressed the importance of "the universal right to lead a dignified life and freely practice one's own faith" after meeting with patriarchs from Syria, Iran, and Iraq -- all countries where Christian minorities are under attack.
Powers best placed to do something about the plight of Mideast Christians, however —namely, the U.S. administration—made it clear that they would do nothing, even when well-leveraged to do so.
In November, the wife of American Pastor Saeed Abedini, who has been imprisoned in Iran for over a year for practicing Christianity, said she and her family were devastated after learning that the Obama administration did not even try to secure the release of her husband as part of the newly signed deal on Iran's nuclear program.

"The talks over Iran's nuclear program were seen by his [Abedini's] family and those representing them as one of the most promising avenues yet for securing his release," said Fox News. "But the White House confirmed over the weekend that Abedini's status was not on the table during those talks."
"I don't think we have any more leverage," said Abedini's wife. "We now have to consider other avenues and having other countries speak out because our country, when we could have used our leverage, chose to stay silent."

The rest of November's roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Islamic Attacks on Christian Places of Worship

Lebanon: An unidentified attacker firebombed the reception area of the newly built Christian cathedral of the town's patron Saint, Mar Zakhya. Despite the loud boom heard in the town's main square, there was limited damage; some building material used for the building process of the cathedral was destroyed. Although Lebanon was a Christian-majority country in the mid-20th century, today it is roughly 60% Muslim, 40% Christian.

Sudan: Police and security forces used a truck and two Land Cruisers to batter down the fence around Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church, before breaking into the church and beating and arresting the Christians present, as Muslim onlookers shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is Greater!"). The government, which has been destroying or taking over church buildings in retaliation to the secession of the mainly Christian South Sudan in July 2011, is believed to be behind the move, on the pretext that parts of the church's property actually belong to a Muslim business investor.

Syria: Nine children were killed and 27 people wounded after Islamic rebels targeted and fired mortar rounds at the St. John of Damascus Christian School and its school bus. Also, the aftermath of the rebel invasion and occupation of the city of Qamishli in the northeast near the Turkish border included, among other atrocities, such as beheadings, churches bombed, abductions and rapes, beheading Christians, and their clergy, as well as the destruction of all Christian icons in the local church and the theft of the church's most prized possession, a reportedly two-thousand year-old icon of the face of Christ.
Turkey: Historically the oldest Christian place of worship in Istanbul, the ancient monastery of San Giovanni in Studion founded in 462, currently classified as a museum, is now going to serve as a mosque. This would be the third ancient Christian building and heritage site set to be transformed into a mosque. Earlier it was announced that the ancient churches of Hagia Sophia (St. Sophia) in Trabzon and in Iznik would also be turned into mosques.

Islamic Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, Proselytism

India: TJ Joseph, a Christian college professor, was finally acquitted of all blasphemy charges, although he is still missing an arm. Back in 2010 he had his right hand and part of his arm cut off by a group of men, following accusations that some of his exams contained offensive questions about Islam's prophet Muhammad. Although he had apologized, after he was mutilated, his college also fired him. According to one source: the most serious aspects of this episode "was the attitude of the police, who registered the complaint against him and also arrested him, and of the institution, which has suspended him from duty. Fortunately, the Mahatma Gandhi University, to which Newman College is affiliated, revoked the decision of the school authorities and has offered him his job back."

Iran: The fate of Hossein Saketi Aramsari, a Christian known as "Stephen" among his friends, remained unknown. Iran's secret police arrested him in July 2013, on suspicion that he was engaging in "evangelistic activities." According to sources, apparently to increase pressure on him, authorities transferred him from one jail to another; he has also been in solitary confinement. Then, in October, a judge of the local Revolutionary Court "officially charged him with doing evangelism." It is believed that he is currently held in the same prison where Benham Irani, another Christian "prisoner of conscience" is being held, abused, and refused medical treatment, also on the charge of proselytizing. Explaining this rise in crackdowns on evangelizing, Mohabat News said, "Conversion of youth and their families has become a major concern for the Iranian security authorities and Islamic leaders." Separately, a former Muslim and drug addict, Armin Davoodi -- who had twice attempted to commit suicide before he converted to Christianity at a rehabilitation center (at the hands of another former Muslim and formerly drug-addicted woman, who had earlier become Christian) -- was, according to those close to him, falsely convicted of selling drugs in the facility, severely beaten, and sentenced to prison, after authorities learned that he had begun to proselytize in the rehabilitation center. Police also temporarily arrested his parents at their home and confiscated his personal belongings, including the Bibles he used to take to the rehabilitation center. Relatives with strong government connections were able to get him released under many conditions, including the requirement that he state in writing that Christians had misled him into the faith and that he would never again go to a church or talk to other Muslims about the Gospel, and that if he did, he would be executed by the state. He agreed to their proposal and has since fled.

Pakistan: Blasphemy cases against Christians have reached an all-time high. Four such cases were reported in November; a number, according to activists, four times higher than the monthly average recorded over the past two years. Activists and clergy further stressed that the overwhelming majority of blasphemy accusations are being used as "instruments of revenge" against Christians, as a sure way to see them get punished for whatever real or imagined grievance the accusing Muslims might have. Separately, Younis Masih, a 35-year-old Christian who had been imprisoned and sentenced to death on blasphemy charges since 2005, was finally released after judges decreed he did not blaspheme Islam. He and his family are still in hiding, as some Muslims are still seeking to kill him despite his being cleared of the blasphemy charge. According to Masih: "I have four children and I have no job, no one is helping me. I live with the fear of being killed." In the words of his lawyer: "Christians in Pakistan fear threats, attacks, violence, discrimination and hatred. The law of blasphemy is always a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads: Their life is not safe even after their release from prison."

Somalia: A Muslim convert to Christianity living in Mogadishu was killed by Islamic gunmen accusing him of spreading the faith. Two men armed with pistols shot Abdikhani Hassan, 35, seven times as he approached his home, after he closed his pharmacy. He is survived by his wife, who is pregnant, and five children ranging in age from 3 to 12. He and his wife converted to Christianity in 2000. Before killing him, one of the assailants told a neighbor, "We have information that Hassan is spreading wrong religion to our people, and we are looking for him." According to a source, "The men who murdered Abdikhani [Hassan] are suspected to be Al Shabaab militia," the Somali wing of al-Qaeda which has vowed to "cleanse" the country of any Christian presence.

Turkey: A Christian pastor was reportedly arrested on charges of organizing human trafficking and prostitution. The Christian community of Agape (or "Brotherly Love") Church, where Orhan Picaklar, 42, is pastor, insists that he is innocent, and that "the allegations are entirely instrumental, as the Pastor was under observation for suspected 'illegal missionary activity.'" Later, the church where the Agape community meets was damaged by vandals, even though the congregation had obtained the formal status of "association" in 2005: as with other Christian communities in Turkey, the government does not grant official recognition of "church" to new communities.

Dhimmitude

Central African Republic: At least 450,000 Christians have fled their homes in the 80% Christian-majority nation since the Islamic takeover in March 2013. Then, Seleka—a coalition of local and foreign Arabic-speaking Islamic militias—seized control of the capital, Bangui, in an orgy of violence, bloodshed, and rape, against Christians. As one analyst put it, "But Seleka does not rape, loot and kill indiscriminately. Rather, Seleka attacks Christians and spares Muslims, causing traditional community trust to evaporate, and creating a sectarian tinderbox." Christians, however, who make the majority of the African nation, are fighting back, leading to an extremely volatile situation. Christian Bishop Albert Vanbuel stated, "a rebellion of religious extremism with evil intentions, characterized by profanation and planned destruction of religious buildings, especially Catholic and Protestant churches" is now in power.

Egypt: Three months after the Egyptian military liberated Delga from Muslim Brotherhood supporters and sympathizers—who were forcing Christians to pay jizya, or tribute [tax], to stay alive—they continued to terrorize Christians in other towns across Egypt. Especially throughout regions in Upper Egypt, such as Minya, extortionists using the threat of kidnap, torture and murder seized money, land and other property from Christians. One Copt was tied by his kidnappers as they repeatedly shot an automatic rifle next to his ear. According to the Morning Star News, "Besides the emotional damage he suffered, the shockwaves exiting the rifle combined with the muzzle blast shattered the Christian's eardrums and burned his face. The Copt begged his family to gather the ransom money, and eventually they paid the kidnappers some 50,000 Egyptian pounds (US$7,260). He returned to his family shattered and unable to speak of the ordeal until recently." According to the founder of the Maspero Union, an activist movement that played an important role in mobilizing the June 30 Revolution, targeting Christians in the context of seizing their money and property is seen "as a religious duty." The director of a human rights organization in Upper Egypt said, "This past month alone, we had nine cases of kidnapping in Minya, and they all paid their ransom, which was between 100,000 and 250,000 Egyptian pounds [US$14,500 to $36,300] for each case." Separately in Minya, after a Coptic boy was accused of being in a relationship with a Muslim girl, "Muslims burnt down the house of the boy's father and an adjacent house."

Nigeria: After kidnapping a teenage Christian girl named Hajja, members of the Boko Haram terrorist organization kept her as a slave, eventually putting a knife to her throat and offering her one of two choices: convert to Islam or die. "If I cried, they beat me. If I spoke, they beat me. They told me I must become a Muslim but I refused again and again… They were about to slaughter me and one of them begged me not to resist and just before I had my throat slit I relented. They put a veil on me and made me read from the Koran." According to Reuters, "She ceremonially converted to Islam, cooked for the men, carried ammunition during an attack on a police outpost and was about to be married to one of the insurgents before she managed to engineer a dramatic escape. She says she was not raped." Recounting how her captors used her to lure people into traps, the 19-year-old told Reuters, and "They took them back to a cave and tied them up. They cut their throats, one at a time. I thought my heart would burst out of my chest, because I was the bait." Among those who did the slaughtering was the Muslim wife of a leader, the only other woman in the band of jihadi terrorists. Separately, a Baptist high school principal and some teachers were beaten to a "pulp" and "state of coma" at the hands of "unknown persons," who used axes, among other weapons. The reason was that the school had earlier sent home a female student for wearing a veil, or Islamic hijab, while on school premises. Finally, over 70 Christians were killed by what were described as "Islamic extremists": Boko Haram terrorists killed 34 Christians in Borno State, while "Muslim herdsmen" slaughtered 37 Christians, injured dozens, and looted and destroyed their homes, in coordinated attacks on four Plateau State villages.

Pakistan: An entire Christian community has been forced to flee a Lyarni neighborhood known as the "slaughter house," due to the endemic killings, rapes of young girls, thefts, drug dealing, and extortions. Before surrounding Muslims began their incursions, the residential area was 90% Christian, 10% Hindu, with four churches and three temples. "It is almost empty now," said an elder of a Christian family. "We all are separated now. We won't be reunited again." "A lot of the families have left the compound since 2008, after their daughters were kidnapped and raped," said another community elder. "No one knows where they have gone." He recalled an incident when a teenage girl, who was dancing at her brother's wedding, was kidnapped. "Her parents, brother and relatives cried and appealed to the kidnappers but they didn't listen," he narrated. "She was dishonoured and was left outside the compound the next morning. That family was never seen in the city again."

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching pandemic proportions. "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

1. To document that which the mainstream media often seems to fail to report.
2. To suggest that such persecution is not random but systematic.

These accounts span different ethnicities, languages, and locations.

Nonie Darwish Speaks Out on our Troubling Immigration Policy

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


 
"Approved"


                                
"Denied"

Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-American apostate from Islam, has written the below article for Frontpage Magazine, in which she criticizes President Obama's policies toward the Middle East and, in particular, our immigration policy. She points out that Egyptian Christians are having problems getting their applications approved at the same time that a new policy has been issued that loosens restrictions for those found to have "provided limited material support" to terrorists.

Amazing.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/jihad-migrating-to-red-states-with-obamas-blessing/

What I miss here is the reference in the title of bringing immigrants into red  (Republican) states, but it could very well be the case. Refugee groups like Somalis have been settled in places like Minneapolis, Denver, and other cities. If Obama wants to change the demographics in red states, what easier way to do it?  

"What is also strange is the US State Department is not welcoming fleeing Christians in the Middle East as they should. Most of the visa applications submitted by the desperate and oppressed Egyptian Christians are denied. It was reported that only about 800 to 900 applications were approved by the US for Christian Egyptian immigrants out of 20,000 applications."

Outrageous. Can we expect the same hurdles for Jews trying to immigrate from Europe? It simply defies common sense. The administration  is trying to open the floodgates for Muslims from terror-spawning nations even in the wake of 9-11 and the Boston Marathon attack while neglecting the persecuted Christians. What's more, we are also increasing the numbers of people who will become agitators for groups like CAIR, more radical Middle East Studies professors, more imams to preach Wahhabi Islam in our mosques and more agitators against our ally Israel on college campuses.

Downright stupefying.

Make no mistake. This policy will result in the deaths of more innocent Americans down the road when one (or more) of these favored immigrants will carry out an act of Jihad on our streets. It borders on criminal negligence.

The Islamic Terror Threat Against the Winter Olympics

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Hat tip Frontpage Magazine


Muslim apostate Nonie Darwish has written an interesting and provocative article on the Islamic terror threat against the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/the-islamic-grinch-who-stole-the-olympics/

Darwish, who was born in Egypt and is now an American citizen, left her religion of birth when she could not reconcile the fact that she was expected to hate Christians and Jews. It just didn't measure up to what she had been experiencing in the US where she was making friends with people of different religions.

It is outrageous that the athletes and other visitors to Russia have to go through these Olympics in such a climate of fear. Of course, we remember the last Olympics that was victim of Islamic terrorism (Munich 1972). So why should we not talk about it? Why don't the so-called moderate Muslims who run all these so-called mainstream organizations in the US like CAIR and MPAC speak out forcefully against these terror threats instead of endlessly complaining about Islamophobia? They cannot even define the term lest any serious discussion of it make it clear why so many have to live their daily lives in fear, such as Christians in the Middle East or Olympic athletes in Russia. Are they afraid? Yes. What are they afraid of? Being killed by some fanatical Muslim suicide bomber or having their churches burned down with them inside.

Irrational fear? Hardly. It is quite real, and it is all very simple. Who needs a center for research and documentation of Islamophobia at UC Berkeley to figure it all out?

Of course, we all concede that there are millions of innocent Muslims living in the US and the West who wish us no harm. The term Islamophobia should not mean a hatred for all Muslims, rather a rational fear of a supremacist, totalitarian and violent ideology that must never be allowed to gain a foothold in the free West. Unfortunately, until decent Muslims can manage to seize control of their religion from the Ayman al Zawahiris, Yusuf al Qaradawis, Hamas, the religious bigots, and the black widows of the world, suspicion is a fact of life they will unfortunately have to live with. In fact, they are irrelevant to the discussion.

As long as Christians, Baha'i, Jews, and gays have to live in fear of persecution in Muslim majority lands, as long as Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims kill each other, as long as the civilized world has to live under the threat of Islamic terror, as long as mosques and madrassahs are used to spread hatred of others, as long as loudmouths like Anjem Choudary promise an Islamic takover of the West and installation of Sharia law, and as long as events like the Boston Marathon and the Olympics cannot be held free of the threat of bombs going off, there will be Islamophobia. And it is we who will define it-not CAIR and not some professors in Berkeley or any other university.

New Court Documents Reveal Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's Final Moments

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


A firefight in which Border Patrol agents were firing bean bags at drug traffickers using weapons from Operation Fast and Furious

Thanks to newly-released court documents, we now have an account from Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's fellow agents of the firefight in the Arizona desert that took Terry's life. The mainstream news media will surely ignore it, but this story should never be allowed to die.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/05/new-court-documents-reveal-final-moments-border-agent-brian-terrys-life/


"Among other details, they reveal two of four federal agents at the scene that day actually fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a violent drug gang carrying assault rifles. Weapons from the botched anti-gun trafficking program were found at Terry's murder scene."

Bean bags. 

"Those agents, members of BORTAC, an elite unit within the Border Patrol, had deployed in the desert to locate a drug gang, known as a rip crew, that had terrorized the Nogales, Ariz., area for months."

Dear Reader. In law enforcement talk, the word, "rip" is one of the most frightening terms in our jargon. It means a "rip-off". In DEA undercover work, a rip-off was when the undercover agent becomes the victim of a robbery, in which the seller of the drugs would rob and kill the purported buyer rather than make a drug for money exchange. There have been several undercover DEA agents who have been killed in these rip-offs over the years. So when I hear that the target of Agent Terry's group was a "rip crew", the immediate question in my mind is....

What the Hell is this talk about using bean bags??

What kind of sick mentality is it in Washington that sends agents like Brian Terry off to fight violent drug gangs on the border with bean bags??

And to this day, the Justice Department under that crook Eric Holder is withholding thousands of documents requested by the Congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious. Those documents have now been put under the protection of President Obama with his claim of executive privilege. Richard Nixon would be proud because unlike him, Obama is getting away with it.

Has anybody ever asked Janet Napolitano (now the president of the University of California and heading the US delegation to the Winter Olympics) why she allowed her Border Patrol agents to fight drug traffickers on the border with bean bags? No. I asked her when she spoke at UCLA a couple of years back why she wasn't pounding on Eric Holder's desk demanding to know why one or even two of her agents were dead because of  Fast and Furious. Answer? She preferred to allow the "investigation" to play out. Well, it seems it has "played out", just as Holder, Obama and Napolitano wanted. Nobody has ever been held accountable for one of the most boneheaded ventures in the history of law enforcement, one that has resulted in the deaths of one, possibly two US agents and hundreds of Mexicans.

Bean bags.