Train in Vain

In the past few weeks, Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. and their friends have significantly stepped up efforts to eradicate all references to Islam from federal agencies charged with investigating terrorism. Groups like Muslim Advocates and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the ACLU, and media helpers like Wired and TPM Muckraker have teamed up on the narrative that the FBI is training its agents in Islamophobia. The only cure, naturally, is an all-out ban on any training that correlates extremist violence with Islam. Oh, and “a new ‘interagency task force’ to review the training materials — a task force including representatives of the Islamist organizations the FBI is tasked with monitoring.”

Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog writer Spencer Ackerman kicked it all off with a bomb-throwing exposé of FBI counterterrorism training:

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.” (“FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’”).

Ackerman, who discloses that his wife works for the ACLU, previously criticized an intelligence analyst’s presentation to a Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney’s Office that “warns of a ‘Civilizational Jihad’ stretching back from the dawn of Islam and waged today in the U.S. by ‘civilians, juries, lawyers, media, academia and charities’ who threaten ‘our values.’” (“Justice Department Official: Muslim ‘Juries’ Threaten ‘Our Values’”).

Ackerman never bothered to report that the “Civilizational Jihad” phrase is taken directly from a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum obtained by the FBI and presented in the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007.  If the phrase looks familiar, that’s because it’s anchored on our blog sidebar at the upper right.

The day after Ackerman’s Wired piece, Farhana Y. Khera of Muslim Advocates fired off a letter to the Acting Inspector General of the Justice Department demanding an investigation. Muslim Advocates has previously joined forces with the ADC, CAIR, and MPAC to counter government efforts to address homegrown Islamic terrorism. Khera has also posted advice on her Website “that tells Muslims not to speak with the FBI or other law enforcement personnel unless a lawyer is present.” Khera was also spokesman for a coalition of groups trying to stop Rep. Peter T. King’s House Homeland Security Committee hearings on Muslim extremism last spring. "Our first preference is for him to kibosh the whole thing," Khera said. (“Coalition urges halt to House hearings on Muslim radicalization”)

In her September letter to the acting inspector general, Khera cited Ackerman’s piece in Wired to demand an “immediate investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) use of grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and highly offensive counterterrorism training materials about Muslims and Islam used to train its agents and other law enforcement.” Her letter then dishonestly co-opted a September 12^th letter from Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins to Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, completely mischaracterizing the senators’ letter as a “call for the administration to stop the funding of anti-Muslim trainers.” More on this letter below.

Next, MPAC president Salam Al-Marayati used Ackerman’s articles as a basis for an op-ed in the LA Times complaining about the “bigoted and inflammatory” views FBI agents were exposed to at Quantico. (“The wrong way to fight terrorism”). Claiming that the training “reveals a deep anti-Muslim sentiment within the U.S. government,” Al-Marayati threatened that if it isn’t “immediately addressed, it will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community.” MPAC’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood are well documented, and, as reported at the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, “has opposed virtually every counter-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government.” 

Aside from giving one another awards, there is no productive relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community.

But the most disgusting thing I’ve seen is the bizarrely misleading article by writer Ryan J. Reilly at TPMMuckraker, (“DOJ Official: Holder ‘Firmly Committed’ To Eliminating Anti-Muslim Training”). Perhaps in hopes of a fait accompli, Reilly attempted to credit the most extreme views of one of the DOJ’s dhimmi lawyers as the official policy of the Attorney General himself.

Beneath a gigantic head shot of Eric Holder, Reilly’s lead described Holder as “’firmly committed’ to nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training,” and then makes use of quotations along this line:

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said. “They will not be tolerated.”

But notice it wasn’t Holder who said, this, but Holton.  It’s almost too cute.  In fact, Reilly’s article doesn’t contain a single syllable directly quoting the guy whose big head is in the picture, Eric Holder. (Reilly also uses Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez to put words in his boss’s mouth, confirming that the Attorney General “is upset.”)  No matter how weak Holder is on counterjihad, at the moment he’s preoccupied battling mounting calls for his resignation over the “Fast and Furious” debacle. I don’t believe Holder’s really that enthusiastic about launching a new counterterrorism policy premised on Islamic jihad having nothing to do with Islam.

Anyway, you ask, just who in the hell is Holton?

Dwight C. Holton is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Oregon in charge of – well, nothing.  Thanks to district office “musical chairs” arising from the prior U.S. Attorney’s departure after appointment to the federal bench, Holton happened to be serving as the second of two acting U.S. Attorneys presiding over the Oregon district at the time of the Christmas-tree lighting plot of Mohamed Osman Mohamud in Portland last year. Before that, Holton’s specialty was prosecuting environmental and white-collar crimes. The extent of his contribution on the Mohamud case was that “[i]n the 37-page complaint that laid out the allegations against Mohamed Mohamud, he is never once identified as a Muslim.” This would be the prosecutorial equivalent of rewriting The Godfather without once identifying Don Corleone as a Mafioso.

Holton called the outreach he did with the Muslim community over the course of his tour as U.S. Attorney for Oregon the most important work of his career, joking that he put on “10 pounds in lamb weight” and recalling having 15 to 20 imams over at his house for a halal meal that went until 2 a.m.

As soon as the new U.S. Attorney – not Holton, but the actual nominee -- was commissioned on October 5, Holton resumed being a line attorney – and a self-appointed spokesman for the Attorney General and the Ikhwan.

As for TPM’s Reilly, based on what I’ve seen here the guy is a shamelessly dishonest reporter. Before he decided to use Holton to channel hearsay from the Attorney General, he was falsely reporting that Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins – both reliable counterjihadists – were upset about federal dollars “flowing to anti-Muslim terrorism training.”   (This is the lie Farhana Khera exploited in her letter to the assistant IG).  His headline even falsely quotes them saying, “If Obama won’t do something about anti-Muslim counterterrorism training, we will.”  (“Lieberman, Collins: If Obama Won’t Do Something About Anti-Muslim Counterterrorism Training, We Will”).

Reilly cast a false light on Lieberman’s and Collins’s September 12, 2011 letter to the disastrous John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security, claiming that their concerns about “trainers spewing . . . bigoted information” was the crux of their complaint “that agencies providing grants to state and local law enforcement lack meaningful standards for counter-terrorism curriculum and an adequate vetting process for individual trainers.”

This is nearly the direct opposite of the letter’s purpose.  First of all, Brennan is a disaster in national security, who has publicly referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, “Al-Quds,” described jihad as “a legitimate tenet of Islam,” and is rumored to have earned the Secret Service codename, Nakba.”  The Lieberman-Collins letter is a public rebuke of Brennan for a half-assed “Framework” he offered for countering domestic radicalization: “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” Lieberman and Collins express their extreme disappointment with Brennan’s lack of effort on the Framework, noting, among other things, his failure to develop “rigorous counterterrorism training standards,” and failing to “explicitly identify the enemy as violent Islamist extremism”:

Our enemy has a distinct ideology, and that ideology has a name – violent Islamist extremism. The Framework, however, refuses to state this clearly. First, it says that we are at war with “al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents” and later more generally talks about countering “violent extremism.”

The first term is too narrow – and the second, too broad . . . .

. . . . Violent Islamist extremism has a particular – if twisted – message that must be understood and countered. The clearly stated goal of the Islamists is to establish a caliphate, or empire, within the Arab and Muslim world that would overthrow existing governments and impose upon the people a harsh and radical interpretation of Shari’ah (Islamic religious law).

If the senators talked this way at a Quantico briefing, they’d be banned for using grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and highly offensive counterterrorism training materials.

At any rate, the senators did indeed call for training standards, but their focus wasn’t on alleged anti-Muslim trainers, but on a lack of rigor in defining and confronting violent Islamic extremism. In fact, the example they offer to Brennan of training failure wasn’t one of some innocent victim of FBI Islamophobic heavy-handedness, but the case of Major Nidal Hasan, “who was allowed to continue through his Army service in part because his commanding officers and fellow soldiers were not trained in the distinct difference between the religion of Islam and the violent political ideology of violent Islamist extremism.” Lieberman and Collins knew perfectly well that the failure to intervene with Hasan wasn’t caused by any “deep anti-Muslim sentiment within the U.S. government,” but by a culture of political correctness towards Muslims in the military that terrified officers away from reporting Hasan’s extremist behavior.

If anything, individuals facing  future Hasans will have even more to be afraid of if they report him, not less.

Since this media campaign commenced around September 12^th, there have been these related developments:

• October 13 – MPAC posts an “Action Alert” opposing creation of a Department of Homeland Security office “to ‘counter homegrown violent Islamist extremism,’ particularly focusing on the ‘ideology’ of violent extremists such as Al-Qaeda inside the US,” because MPAC claims “religiously laden terminology such as “Islamist” bolsters violent extremists and alienates mainstream Muslims.”
• October 19 -- Obama administration confirms “pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.”
• October 19 –Assistant AG for Civil Rights Tom Perez expresses enthusiasm for Islamists’ demands for DOJ civil rights lawyers to “come up with a way to redefine” criticism of Islam as illegal “racial discrimination.”
• October 20 -- the ACLU released its "Mapping the FBI" initiative, accusing the FBI of "mapping American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes."
• October 25 – For the 10^th anniversary of the Patriot Act, Muslim Advocates releases a 56-page report accusing “the FBI and other federal agencies of “’bad policing’ and flaunting the Constitution.” 

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Feds Win, With an Asterisk

The Justice Department didn’t lose a minute October 12 before taking full credit for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea to all counts in his terror trial.  According to the statement released by the DOJ, Attorney General Eric Holder said:

“Contrary to what some have claimed, today’s plea removes any doubt that our courts are one of the most effective tools we have to fight terrorism and keep the American people safe. Our priority in this case was to ensure that we arrested a man who tried to do us harm, that we collected actionable intelligence from him and that we prosecuted him in a way that was consistent with the rule of law. We will continue to be aggressive in our fight against terrorism and those who target us, and we will let results, not rhetoric, guide our actions.”

I’ll tell you at the outset I never doubted the government would have won a guilty verdict had the U-bomber’s trial continued. Not only did the FBI have his confession in a bag, but there were plenty of eyewitnesses and  drawers full of physical evidence to prove exactly what U-bomber tried to do.

That said, I’m at a complete loss how the AG gets off claiming Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea proves the AG’s theory that civilian trial are more effective than military tribunals for trying enemy combatants.

In case you missed the seven-minute news cycle on this, Abdulmutallab was in the second day of his trial when he unexpectedly offered to plead guilty to all counts – on his own initiative and against the advice of his attorney.

Defendants plead guilty frequently after their trials begin. Usually it happens once the defendant gets a load of how much evidence against him the prosecutor is showing to the jury.  Defendants  figure out their facing the maximum verdict and the maximum penalty if they don’t spare everyone the ordeal of the trial and plead to something lesser.

This isn’t what happened in the Abdulmutallab trial. His decision to plead was not in response to the evidence -- the trial had barely begun. It wasn’t in response to anything the government did during trial. More notable, he didn’t ask for anything in exchange for his plea. He wanted to plead to all counts, straight up. It was Abdulmutallab’s decision all the way. Why he did it this way doesn’t really matter, even if we knew.

But bear in mind that if he’d wanted to, Abdulmutallab could have entered the same plea at his arraignment last year. And, he could have also pleaded guilty if he’d been charged by a military commission. That’s exactly what Khalid Sheikh Mohammad tried to do. During his trial before a military commission, KSM announced he wanted to plead guilty and get the death penalty.  But then the trial was aborted when President Obama ordered a halt to the commissions. (“Holder “Reluctantly” Sends KSM to Military Commissions”).

I don’t know about you, but that stunt by itself removed any doubts I had about the competence of the Obama administration to handle national security. In April of this year, 2,500 halal meals later, Holder reluctantly agreed that the mastermind of 9/11 would go before a military commission after all.

As I said, had Abdulmutallab forced the government to try him all the way to a verdict, I’m sure the U.S. Attorney’s Office would have persuaded the jury to convict him.  That’s not the issue here.

But there’s no basis whatever for DOJ’s claim that Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea “removes any doubt” that civilian courts are more effective than military commissions for trying enemy combatants. It proves nothing on the subject one way or the other.

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Hey, Hey We’re the Mongees!

While the subject of the state of war between Islam and the western world is still fresh, I’d like to share something Andrew McCarthy has written in reaction to the recent Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil:

Iran’s sharia state has been killing and plotting to kill Americans for more than 30 years. Critics who see that observation as war-mongering repeat the folly that gave us 9/11: When the other side is already at war with you, you cannot make the war go away by ignoring it — that only emboldens the enemy. I don’t want war with Iran. I want to win the war Iran has instigated. (“Breaking Tehran”).

I wish I’d written that.

At any rate, because a “war-monger” is the party who tries to stir up a war, I believe our enemies are actually the war-mongers, which, regardless of how we respond, would naturally make us the war-mongees.

Allah in the Dock

TR Clancy comments on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea via American Thinker:

Think of this as Islam's guilty plea.

Will we accept it?

Don't bet on it, because ten years after the worst sneak-attack on the U.S. so far in Islam's war on America, the nation's situational awareness is worse than ever.

1. Most of us still stubbornly refuse to admit what we already know about Islam: that it's a violent, malevolent religion whose adherents can't stop themselves from announcing to us their intentions to make war against us until they've either killed us or made us slaves.
2. Most of us still stubbornly profess our belief in a "true" Islam, peace-loving, egalitarian, more or less an Arabian version of Christianity.
3. Most of us reflexively channel all blame for the daily bombings, beheadings, murders, mutilations, honor killings, and sundry other savagery committed in the name of Allah away from "true" Islam onto what we're told is a distorted, hijacked Islam embraced by only a tiny fringe.
4. Most of us haven't lifted a finger since September 11, 2001 to find out if our opinions about 1, 2, and 3 have any basis in reality; we haven't read a single book, done a single Internet search, or tried reading a Qur'an.

For the past week media attention has focused on the "Occupy Wall Street" phenomenon. The commentariat justly criticize the mobs for their incoherent message. Panels debate, "Who are these people, and what do they want?"

I find no signs of such curiosity in response to what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had to tell us. Not only did he fully answer the two questions the silly Occupiers cannot answer, but he answered them without even being asked. Too bad he was drowned out by the Occupier kid who wants free college tuition.

Please read the rest here at American Thinker.

The Squat Heard Round the World, or, We Have Nothing To Lose But Our Drains

The global planners behind Occupy Wall Street deemed it wise to send a contingent to Detroit. (“In wake of Occupy Wall Street, plans develop for Occupy Detroit”).  No one really knows why.  Until now the movement to unoccupy Detroit has been so frantic that the only remaining idea of the city’s one-party government has been “right-sizing” Detroit down to a heavily subsidized farm collective. (“In Havana, an impressive network of urban farms, first created amidst the severe food shortages of the ‘Special Period,’ are now providing most of Havana’s fruits and vegetables.”)  Detroit’s farm project, known as “Focus Hoedown,” has stalled pending a public school administrators’ study of best practices on how to embezzle fresh eggs and feed corn.

Undaunted, Occupy Detroit has established its headquarters at Grand Circus Park, welcoming  “‘Everyone who has suffered financial injustice.’” 

The Detroit Free Press described this scene last weekend:

In the early morning darkness, with a brisk breeze making the temperatures in the 40’s feel even colder, some of Detroit’s newest residents emerged from tents, folding their blankets after a night of slumber in Grand Circus Park just before dawn this morning. (“Occupy Detroit protesters say they'll be in park until mid-December”).

Now that’s a rare sight around downtown Detroit: people waking up in parks after spending the night.

“’This is meant to be a peaceful nonviolent act of civil disobedience,’” said Alexandra Borngesser, a member of the Occupy Detroit and Lansing Volunteer Group.”

In another show of civil disobedience last Saturday, New York’s Occupy Wall street demonstrators tried to take over Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park: “‘We don’t want to ask for public space, we want to take it,’ said Mike Andrews, a 30-year-old protester, during the planning meeting on Sunday night. (“Protesters’ Next Frontier: Washington Square Park”).

By contrast the Detroit Occupiers obtained a 60-day permit to camp in Grand Circus Park. A spokesman for the clerk’s office confirmed that the occupiers even forked over an additional $8.00 to get a “civil disobedience” endorsement.

Spokesmen for the city announced that the anti-corporate protesters have made a 2-month “commitment” to the city. The mayor’s office, following Detroit’s traditional method for attracting outside interest, granted campers $55 million in tax credits for a promise not to ditch town before December 15.

Recent Wayne State University graduate, Jacquie Piche of Dearborn Heights, has taken up temporary residence at the Grand Circus campground. She told the Free Press, “It’s really incredible we built a pretty awesome community in this park. There are a lot of people with a lot of different issues out here and I think every one of them is very important. I think the government needs to care about the people that it’s governing.”

Now there’s something you don’t see every day in Detroit: people in parks with a lot of different issues.

World leaders like Hugo Chavez and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have declared support for the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. On Thursday even Moamar Ghadafi, in one of his last public announcements, was heard to shriek anti-Wall Street sentiments from the drain pipe where he was cornered. Noted Hollywood celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Danny Glover have shown up at New York’s Zucotti Park to show solidarity with the movement.

Occupy Detroit hasn’t been so honored.  Detroit’s world-class political leaders, such as Congressman John Conyers and Senator Carl Levin  haven’t shown up yet, nor has the Grand Circus Park campsite  received any celebrity visits. A publicist for Slim Shady (aka Eminem) did say the artist might stop by “for a minute” a week from Wednesday, when his mom’s got a dentist appointment at the Whitney Building. On Friday, occupiers demonstrating at the Guardian Building branch of Bank of America cheered wildly when WDIV-TV weather personality Chuck Gaidica showed up. (“Occupy Detroit protest Bank of America over foreclosures”). Cheers turned to boos when they realized Gaidica was only trying to get inside to use the ATM.

So far, Detroit’s occupiers have remained peaceful, unlike other occupied cities that have witnessed ugly scenes. In San Francisco, one protester reportedly was “dragged away by his index finger while police officers threatened to break it.” Police explain the incident was ignited after the  protester  invited an officer to “pull my finger.”

In a report from another occupied city, the corporate headquarters of Susie’s Lemonade had its windows smashed out by a coalition of activists demanding Susie’s slash the price of its popular beverage to one cent. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka called for raising the hourly wage of lemon pickers to $75. Corporate CEO, Susie  allegedly replied to occupier demands by sticking out her tongue.

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Will DOJ Create an Anti-Blasphemy Division?

By Diana West:

Eric Holder, Meet John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams doesn't need to meet Abu Qatada

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The Justice Department's war on the facts about Islam, currently playing out in a purge of fact-armed trainers such as FBI analyst William Gawthrop, has taken a publicly aggressive turn as former US Attorney Dwight C. Holton declared AG Holder's "firm committment" to, as TPM reported, "nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training."

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said. “They will not be tolerated.”

As obliquely noted yesterday, such a diktat would ban the Koran from the training curriculum due to its "portrayal of Islam as a religion of violence" and "tendency toward violence" -- Justice's Two Big No-Nos. This is something my friend and retired detective and police officer John Work well understands. At his blog today, he fires off a quick list of Koranic exhortations to violence -- a tiny sample of the Islamic teachings we as a people have been well and purposefully conditioned not only to ignore and regard as being "out of context" and therefore meaningless, but also as evidence of the harmonious, Hershey Kiss of an impact Islam has on the world.

John throws in a bonus quotation from John Quincy Adams, our erudite and accomplished sixth president:

“[Mohammed] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Quran is, perpetual war against all who deny that [Mohammed] is the Prophet of God.

The vanquished [dhimmi] may purchase their lives by the payment of tribute.”

Notably, one of William Gawthrop's thoughtcrimes is simply to acknowledge the role of Mohammed as the jihad model, a truism in Islam as elaborated on, for example, mega-Sheihk and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual advisor Yusef al-Qaradawi: "Allah has also made the prophet Muhammad into an epitome for religious warriors [Mujahideen] ..." (I am quoting from the 2001 MEMRI translation on p. 248 of Andrew Boston's The Legacy of Islamic Jihad.)

Clearly, this duh-point was not lost on John Quincy Adams.

How far we have fallen: If AG Holder had his way, the 6th President of the United States would be purged, too.

Why Dawud Walid Wants Abdulmutallab To Keep Quiet

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab stopped his trial on its second day and pleaded guilty to all eight charges against him yesterday in the U.S. District Court in Detroit. 

He was allowed to make his own statement. I think it’s important that his full explanation get around more widely.

I heard him give it yesterday, and while some of his more quotable comments are being repeated in lots of news articles, I haven’t seen his most instructive statements in the paper.

The Detroit Free Press published the full transcript of his statement, released by the U.S. District Court. 

What I haven’t seen in the papers, but I think is the most instructive thing he said yesterday, is this:

In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

October 12, 2011

DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF

The following is the transcript of what accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab said to the court today as he pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges in federal court in Detroit. The transcipt was provided by the U.S. District Court in Detroit.

“In the name of Allah, the most merciful, if I were to say I the father did not do it, but my son did it and he conspired with the holy spirit to do it, or if I said I did it but the American people are guilty of the sin, and Obama should pay for the crime, the Court wouldn’t accept that from me or anyone else.

“In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.

“As a result, I traveled to Yemen and eventually to the United States, and I agreed with at least one person to carry an explosive device onto an aircraft and attempt to kill those onboard and wreck the aircraft as an act of jihad against the United States for the U.S. killing of my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world.

“I was greatly inspired to participate in jihad by the lectures of the great and rightly guided mujahedeen who is alive, Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, may Allah preserve him and his family and give them victory, Amin, and Allah knows best.

“Participation in jihad against the United States is considered among the most virtuous of deeds in Islam and is highly encouraged in the Koran; however, according to U.S. law, which is unjust and oppressive according to the Koran, my actions make me guilty of a crime in the United States, in particular, the following counts in my indictment.

"Count 1, conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, so by me traveling to Yemen, then to Djibouti, to Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, the Netherlands, and eventually the United States, with an agreement with at least one person to carry an explosive device in an attempt to kill those onboard for the U.S. killing of innocent Muslims, I’m guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 2, possession of a firearm or destructive device in the furtherance of a crime of violence, I carried with me an explosive device onto Northwest 253, again, to avenge the killing of my innocent Muslim brothers and sisters by the U.S. So I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 3, attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, again, in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and Israel massacres of innocent Palestinians, so I am guilty of this count, too.

“Count 4, use and carrying of a firearm, destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence by carrying an explosive device and attempting to use it on Flight 253 for the U.S. killing of innocent Muslims, I am guilty of this count, too.

“Count 5, willfully placing a destructive device in and upon, in proximity to a civil aircraft which was used and operated in interstate, overseas, and foreign air commerce which was likely to have endangered the safety of such aircraft, I intentionally carried an explosive device onto Flight 253, for the United States tyranny and oppression of Muslims, so I am guilty of this count in U.S. law, but not in the Koran.

“Count 6, possession of a firearm/destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence. I was in possession of an explosive device intended for use against the United States for U.S. interference in Muslim countries, so I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“Count 7, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, I attempted to use an explosive device which in the U.S. law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for U.S. use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. So I am guilty in U.S. law of this count and innocent in Muslim law.

“Count 8, willful attempt to destroy and wreck a civil aircraft, I intended to wreck a civil aircraft for the U.S. wreckage of Muslim lands and property, so I am guilty in U.S. law of this count.

“The United States -- the United States should be warned that if they continue and persist in promoting the blasphemy of Muhammad and the prophets, peace be upon them all, and the U.S. continues to kill and support those who kill innocent Muslims, then the U.S. should await a great calamity that will befall them through the hands of the mujahideen soon by God’s willing permission. Or God will strike them directly with a great calamity soon by his will, Amin.

“If you laugh at us now, we will laugh at you later in this life and on the day of judgment by God’s will, and our final call is all praise to Allah, the lord of the universe, Allahu Akbar.”

Source: U.S. District Court, Detroit

Umar and Me

I was jaywalking in front of the U.S. courthouse early Wednesday morning when I was nearly run over by the black SUV transporting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab  and its police escort, sirens wailing up Fort Street, hell-bent-for election to get the prisoner to court for jury selection.   It occurred to me later how that was  the second near-miss I’ve had from passenger Abdulmutallab. The other was when he tried to blow up an Airbus 330 above my house.

Or am I just getting a complex?

Jury selection for the U-bomber’s trial was finished Thursday.

Exactly on cue the U-bomber’s legal adviser, Anthony Chambers, complained that he was “not pleased” with the racial makeup of the jury.

"By appearance, it does not represent the community. That should be clear."

And what he means “by appearance,” is that the jury– two blacks, one Indian, and nine whites -- isn’t divided equally enough between blacks and whites.  Chambers is a prominent fixture of the Detroit criminal defense bar. As such, it’s a mere reflex for him to attack the racial makeup of a jury.  For years Detroit’s defense attorneys have claimed that a black defendant can’t possibly get a fair trial unless the jury predominantly represents “the community,” which, in most cases, means black Detroiters.  The intrinsically racist logic behind this is that black jurors will not convict black robbers, rapists, drug dealers, and murderers because, obviously, the jurors understand that both they and the accused are all fellow victims of white injustice.

Which is, of course, nuts. For years low-profile black defendants have been getting convicted by majority black juries, who quite reasonably don’t want these punks destroying their neighborhoods any more than they already have.  In higher-profile cases, because they involve higher-profile attorneys and greater publicity, race will become an issue if at all possible.   

I do think this was a pro forma by Chambers; after the defendant is convicted, he’s going to have to have something upon which to base an appeal.  I seriously doubt Chambers believes that just because Abdulmutallab is black, he’s identified somehow with Detroit’s black community.  The case simply has nothing to do with race.  If the U-bomber had succeeded in bringing down Flight 253 over the heart of metro Detroit, the black community would have been well represented among his intended victims.

Detroit isn’t his community.  He’s not even an American. He wants to kill American blacks and whites with equal fervor.

The relevant community Abdulmutallab belongs to is the Ummah, worldwide Islam. 

Norquist the Tax Reformer: From Flat Tax to Jizya Tax?

There’s a National Leadership Conference sponsored by the Arab American Institute going on at the DoubleTree Hotel in Detroit this weekend.

We find it notable that one of the darlings of the conservative talk-show circuit, Grover Norquist,  is sharing a bill with, among other characters, Dawud Walid, Executive Director of CAIR-MI (Muslim Brotherhood), and whom our readers know well, and Wajahat Ali.  Ali is a co-author of “Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” the Center of American Progress report claiming to “exposes the Islam-bashing network in America.” It’s primary targets include Frank Gaffney, David Yarushalmi, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Steven Emerson.  The aim of the report is to slander criticism of Islamism as “Islamophobia,” and to minimize the danger of Islamist terrorism, especially in the United States. 

The conference program outlines an agenda for both domestic and foreign issues.  For example, attendees  will work to “Promote the civil rights of Arab Americans and American Muslims.” One workshop title is, “Defeating Hate Legislation: From Arizona Copycats to Sharia,” (“we will discuss the rampant emergence of hate legislation, including the Arizona copycat laws and Sharia bans now in nearly two dozen states across the country”).  They’ll work also to “Support Palestinian human rights and freedom.” If you read James Zogby’s analysis of the recent bid for Palestinian statehood you’ll get an idea of what kind of support is intended.

Norquist is the man who, as Pamela Geller explains it,  is most responsible for tricking George W. Bush into placing his moral prestige and the authority of his presidency behind the slogan, “Islam is a religion of peace.”

‘Name That Religion’ Banned in Boston

Rezwan Ferdaus, the Massachusetts Islamist arrested for plotting to blow up the Capitol and the Pentagon with explosive-laden model planes, hadn’t a doubt in the world about his motivation.

He wanted to do jihad for the “sake of Allah,” “terrorize” the United States, and kill as many Americans, “infidels,” and “kafirs” as he could, including women and children, whom he referred to as “enemies of Allah.”

Here is the affidavit supporting his indictment.

I believe it’s safe to say that Ferdaus’s motives are religious ones, and that his religion is Islam. There’s no doubt the deity he worships is Allah, the being who have him the skills, he said, “to strike the ‘infidels’ by carrying out his planned attacks and building bomb components to kill the ‘kafir armies.’”

But in the wake of the indictment, the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz,

stressed that any underlying religious motives to Ferdaus’s actions should not reflect on the Muslim culture at-large.
“I want the public to understand that Mr. Ferdaus’s conduct, as alleged in the complaint, is not reflective of a particular culture, community or religion,” Ortiz said.

Not reflective of a particular religion? But The Hill reports that, “According to the DOJ, a focal point of Ferdaus’s plots revolved around ‘jihad’ and his desire to carry out the will of Allah.”   Is there some generic religion that incorporates the concepts of “jihad,” “Allah,” and “death to the infidels”? 

Isn’t Ferdaus’s conduct explained by his motivations?  She might as well say that the O.J. Simpson’s conduct is not reflective of homicidally jealous husbands.     

Of course Ferdaus’s conduct is reflective of his particular religion. He said himself that his desire to attack the “enemies of Allah” in the United States was overwhelming: “I just can’t stop; there is no other choice for me.”

Now I realize that U.S. Attorney Ortiz isn’t only concerned with trying to keep that high shine on Islam’s already sparkly image. She also feels the political duty to minimize yet another shocking example of a jihadi threat by suggesting an equally menacing counterthreat from nonMuslims sharpening their pitchforks with revenge on their minds. That’s why she said:

In addition to protecting our citizens from the threats and violence alleged today, we also have an obligation to protect members of every community, race and religion against violence and other unlawful conduct.

Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, went her one better in the DOJ press release,

It is important to remember that our system of justice is based on the notion of individual responsibility. Therefore, no one should cite Mr. Ferdaus’ actions as an excuse or reason to engage in any unlawful behavior against others in the community. We will work diligently to protect the civil rights of all Americans.

It’s also part of our system of justice not to ascribe criminal impulses to law-abiding citizens who are just minding their own business.  I wonder if  DesLauriers and Ortiz both find it necessary, whenever announcing a big arrest, to warn the innocent populace that they’d damned well better not take the perpetrator’s bad conduct out on the rest of the arrestee’s “community.”  I don’t know if the same warning is required for the captures of money launderers, drug dealers, kidnappers, and murderers. 

Maybe it’s a special problem they have in Boston.

Krauthammer on ‘Land Without Peace’

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the U.N. to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.

It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — ten months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.

To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the tenth, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.

Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”

Please read the rest of Charles Krauthammer’s “Land Without Peace” here. 

You’re Not Paranoid if They’re Really Out to Get You

Robert Spencer and David Horowitz are asking if fear of Islam deserves the commonplace charge that it’s “irrational”:

In recent months, several reports have appeared to a generally uncritical reception in the press, which purport to expose alleged conspiracies organized by “Islamophobes” against American citizens who mean us no harm. These reports single out for condemnation a dozen prominent conservative figures (and mostly the same dozen) who have publicly criticized the misogyny, bigotry, and terrorism promoted by many (but not all) Islamic institutions and religious texts.

The term “Islamophobia” itself was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the political fountainhead of Islamic terror, having spawned al-Qaeda and created Hamas. Not coincidently, the reports themselves have been produced by Brotherhood fronts like CAIR, and jihadist apologists like the Southern Poverty Law Center. But the latest and most elaborate Islamophobia report, transparently derivative of its predecessors, has been issued by the Center for American Progress, which is a brain trust of the Democratic party. It thus marks a disturbing development in this ugly campaign.

On examination, the term “Islamophobia” is designed to create a modern-day thought crime, while the campaign to suppress it is an effort to abolish the First Amendment where Islam is concerned. The purpose of the suffix — phobia — is to identify any concern about troubling Islamic institutions and actions as irrational, or worse as a dangerous bigotry that should itself be feared.

Is fear of terrorists inspired by Islam irrational? There have been 17,800 terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims in the name of Allah since 9/11. Is it unreasonable to be concerned that 30,000 shoulder-ready surface-to-air missiles have recently gone missing in the Muslim nation of Libya, where both government and rebels support the Islamic jihad against America and the West?

Would not a reasonable person be concerned about the attacks plotted and carried out by Muslims in the United States who claim to be inspired by the Koran and who regard themselves as holy warriors in the jihad declared by Osama bin Laden and other Muslim fanatics? These Muslim attacks include the successful massacre of unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood by Nidal Hassan, a self-declared Muslim warrior whose anti-infidel rantings were ignored by the military brass.

Read the rest of “A Rational Fear of Islam” here at NRO.

Moderate Virginia Imam Assassinated

Anwar al-Awlaki was such bad news even the Obama administration wanted him dead. An American citizen, no less, with no Miranda warning.

For once we’re all in agreement this guy was a terrorist. 

But  a reminder is in order of just who Awlaki was not so long ago.

Just before the 9/11 attacks, he was the imam of the large Falls Church mosque in northern Virginia. He was the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University. The New York Times reported that, a few weeks before 9/11, Awlaki preached a sermon in the U.S. Capitol.

After the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki was widely believed to be a moderate. He was first imam to pray at the U.S. Capitol with the Congressional Muslim Staff Association in 2002.  (Present that day was Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.)   He was honored with an invitation to talk at a Pentagon luncheon, because  the Secretary of the Army “’was eager to have a presentation from a moderate Muslim'.”  In his presentation Awlaki reportedly condemned al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.  As late as May 2010 the New York Times quoted the “moderate” Awlaki approvingly:

“We came here to build, not to destroy,” the cleric . . . said in a sermon. “We are the bridge between Americans and one billion Muslims worldwide.”

The Times believes Awlaki only turned radical after the U.S. response to 9/11.

I disagree, not least because Awlaki was a liar long before 9/11. He was born in New Mexico, and his family returned to Yemen when he was 7. When he came back to attend Colorado State University he lied on his visa application and said he was born in Yemen, enabling him to collect $20,000 in scholarship money for foreign-born students.

And long before 9/11 he joined the Muslim Students Association, the Muslim Brotherhood front. He even became president of his chapter. In 1993, the year of the first World Trade Center bombing, he took his “vacation” in Afghanistan, and came back quoting Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.

According to Steve Emerson, “Azzam is more responsible than any Arab figure in modern history for galvanizing the Muslim masses to wage an international holy war against all infidels and non-believers until the enemies of Islam were defeated.” 

During the Afghan war against the Soviets Azzam declared: “"The Jihad in Afghanistan will broaden until the entire world will be conquered because Allah has promised the victory to Islam."

Azzam preached at a Brooklyn mosque in 1988 that:

. . . Every Moslem on earth should unsheathe his sword and fight to liberate Palestine. The Jihad is not limited to Afghanistan. Jihad means fighting. You must fight in any place you can get. Whenever Jihad is mentioned in the Holy Book, it means the obligation to fight. It does not mean to fight with the pen or to write books or articles in the press or to fight by holding lectures.

Awlaki’s radicalism was getting noticed.  According to the New York Times,

[T]he F.B.I. had first taken an interest in Mr. Awlaki in 1999, concerned about brushes with militants that to this day remain difficult to interpret.  [I.e., difficult to the New York Times. t.r.c.]  In 1998 and 1999, he was a vice president of a small Islamic charity that an F.B.I. agent later testified was “a front organization to funnel money to terrorists.” He had been visited by Ziyad Khaleel, a Qaeda operative who purchased a battery for Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone, as well as by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, who was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.

In 2008 the Washington Post reported:

Federal prosecutors in New York alleged in a 2004 terrorism-related trial that a U.S. branch of a Yemeni charity for which Aulaqi served as vice president was a front that sent money to al-Qaeda. Documents filed around the same time in federal court in Alexandria assert that a year after 9/11, Aulaqi returned briefly to Northern Virginia, where he visited a radical Islamic cleric and asked him about recruiting young Muslims for "violent jihad."

And since Awlaki the jihadist was a liar, it was easy enough to lie to the Kuffirs about what Islam meant to him. And with so many Kuffirs absolutely desperate to paste a “moderate” label on anything in a Kufi that moved, it was almost too easy.  Not everyone was fooled.  But the ones who weren’t fooled, like the FBI, somehow failed to impress upon those who were what kind of guy they were dealing with.

But what’s important here is to recognize that the same moderate façade that shielded the real Awlaki in the months after 9/11 is just as effective for those wearing it today: 

Leadership of a large  mosque; so what? 

An MSA/Muslim Brotherhood connection; and? A Muslim chaplain at a prominent university;  what about it? 

Sympathies with a Palestinian Islamist; something wrong with that?

Association with CAIR; what of it?  Association with Congressional Muslim Staff Association; Yeah?  

High-level involvement with the U.S. branch of a Muslim “charity”;  your point being?.  

Viewed by some in the U.S. government as an “’up and coming member of the Islamic community'”;  exactly. 

Leader of “a chorus of outrage” after post-9/11 over a series of raids on Muslim community leaders, “noting that some of the targets were widely viewed as moderates”, (just like Awlaki was widely viewed as a moderate); 

Publicly condemns al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks;

Claims to be a “bridge” between Americans and the Muslim world;

Known for “interfaith outreach, civic engagement, and tolerance’”';

Moderate.

Bridge.

Interfaith.

Tolerance.

So? Does all that mean that every al Qaeda condemning, moderate-sounding imam who gets himself invited to government meet-and-greets is a lying jihadist who despises the Kuffir fools who line up to shake his hand?

No, it doesn’t.

But, having said that, that’s all the defense these guys will get from me.

Because Awlaki sounded just like them, and the onus isn’t on me to prove that, behind the façade, they don’t think just like him.

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Would It Help if They Wore Black Hats?

WASHINGTON — The Palestine Liberation Organization's ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that any future Palestinian state it seeks with help from the United Nations and the United States should be free of Jews. (“PLO ambassador says Palestinian state should be free of Jews”).

With all we’ve got on our national mind these days, we Americans can get confused.  Maybe it’s all those cell phone microwaves burrowing into our brains and all that tweeting.  Could a  clear-headed people who hadn’t been reduced to conversation via misspelled sentence fragments ever go to sleep undisturbed that we have all these vampire-based TV shows, the Bravo network, and Eric Holder as attorney general?

These distractions may just explain how Americans can still be so confused about what’s going on between Israel and her mortal enemies: the stateless Palestinians, and the 1.5 billion Muslim ummah. some with nukes, who side with them in their lust for Israel’s destruction.

According to the latest poll by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center asking if the UN should recognize an independent Palestinian nation:

Fully a quarter of Americans express no opinion when asked for their “sympathies” between the two parties, a near high in polls back to 1982. In all, 40 percent say they side with the Israelis, 10 percent with the Palestinians, and 21 percent volunteer “neither.” Among those paying “a lot” of attention to the statehood issue, a majority — 55 percent — sympathize with Israel; 19 percent with the Palestinians.

Twenty-one percent don’t know their sympathies?  (Frankly, it feels even higher.)

American public opinion swings back and forth from decade to decade on all sorts of issues.   But in spite of that we’ve always shared in common the  national trait of rooting for the underdog.  Show us which one is being pushed around, and we know where our sympathies lie.

But, for some reason, that doesn’t apply when the underdog is Israel.

This 21% “neither” number is as if the whole country watched “Rocky,” and 65 million of your countrymen said afterwards they’re not sure if Creed should have won that fight.  And the Palestinians, sensing this confusion, intend to exploit it at the UN. 

Adding to this signal of confusion is President Obama.   In his speech about the Palestinian request for statehood to the UN the other day, he said, “One year ago, I stood at this podium and I called for an independent Palestine. I believed then, and I believe now, that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own.”

When Palestinians have been allowed to vote, they have gleefully elected a terrorist group like Fatah, except when they could do even worse by electing a terrorist group like Hamas. When America was attacked on 9/11, Palestinians handed out candy to their children and danced in the streets. 

So whatever else may be said about all this, what can’t seriously be suggested is that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own. That’s why the President, in spite of what he says the Palestinians “deserve,” is opposing statehood.

Now Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the guy whom we we confused Americans erroneously believe is a peace-loving moderate (but only compared with Hamas), declared last December,  “I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.” And now the PLO’s envoy to the US,  Maen Areikat, says there won’t be any Jews in a Palestinian state – even as his government is applying to the UN for Palestinian statehood.   Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported the story or Areikat’s comments.

USA Today did report:

Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

Israel has 1.3 million Muslims who are Israeli citizens. Jews have lived in "Judea and Samaria," the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years.

But now 21% of underdog-loving Americans don’t want to pick sides? Isn’t it interesting how the large majority (55%) in the Pew poll of those who sympathize with Israel tracks with people who pay attention to the issue?

Too bad that not paying attention to this issue is a very big American national pastime right now, along with downloading ringtones and getting tattoos.

But even if you’re one of those whose opinion is that the Palestinians “deserve their own state” --maybe because you heard sound bites somewhere about how Israel is an “apartheid state” and an is engaged in “illegal occupation” of Palestinian national territory, and you think they might be the underdogs – does it bother you at all to know that the Palestinians intend to establish a racist state next door to a people whose right to exist they have never once acknowledged?

Don’t you owe it to yourself to get the facts?

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Send in the Clowns

Michigan Congresswoman Candice Miller has done some truth-telling in a column this past week in The Detroit News. (“Miller: Military commissions best place for terrorists trials”).   Maybe she’ll fill some of the void left by Michigan’s loss of Congressman Pete Hoekstra.

Treating terrorism as a criminal matter the way we used to, Rep. Miller writes, did nothing to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet the Obama administration is now clinging to this same “flawed approach”:

affording constitutional rights to terrorists, including the right to remain silent, to which I believe they are not entitled. Our enemy views this system as a weakness to be exploited to advance their cause.

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, he is reported to have told his interrogators, "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer."

Fortunately for the nation, KSM was captured under the Bush-Cheney administration, and they knew we were in a war.  Mohammed never got to New York, and the mastermind of 9/11 wound up talking instead to the guys of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation team someplace else. These conversations led to KSM eventually disclosing  invaluable information, including the plans for a 9/11 follow-up attack on Los Angeles,  and key information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In stark contrast, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, when he should have long since been facing a military at Guantanamo, is  going on trial here in Detroit.  Writes Rep. Miller:

This administration's ideological blinders prevent it from seeing what most Americans innately understand — these enemies of freedom do not deserve the protection of our Constitution; they are, and should be treated as, enemy combatants. Never before has any nation extended such a robust set of protections to its enemies, and given them a forum to spew their vile hatred.

Recently, potential jury members and the city of Detroit were treated to such an outburst by Abdulmutallab who shouted, "Osama's alive" and "Jihad" during a jury selection hearing in federal court. This terrorist was afforded his Miranda rights shortly after his capture, given the the best medical care at the University of Michigan Hospital and is being afforded a standby attorney even though he has decided to represent himself. Taxpayers are footing the entire bill.

While we watch the pre-trial unfold, it is disheartening to watch as yet another terror trial turns into a circus.

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Obama’s Reluctant Lifeline

Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley has an apt summation of President Obama’s mentality on Israel in his Sunday column: “Obama comes from the faculty lounge, the place where Israel is most detested and where Palestinians retain their victim status no matter what atrocities they commit.” (“N.Y. voters stand up for Israel”).

Finley sees the shellacking the Democrats took in New York’s 9^th District last Tuesday as punishment from the sizable Jewish electorate there for his “wobbly support of Israel.” He’s also optimistic that Obama got the message.

We’ll see.  

I think “wobbly” is far too kind a term for the policy of betrayal Obama has been enthusiastically implementing since the start of his term. I do agree that Obama’s hatred for Israel is rooted in his academic background and his lefty politics.  But wobbly is what you get when a politician is ambivalent.  Obama isn’t ambivalent about Israel. He really does hate that Jewish homeland. 

Nor do I agree with Finley that this president has shown much taste for political pragmatism. He’s been ideological on all of his major policies: on reducing American influence, on wealth redistribution, on increasing government control, on sapping America’s key alliances, on weakening Israel.

Finley’s optimistic that Obama will set aside his ideology now and the 9^th district’s rebuke may mean “a lifeline” thrown Israel’s way.

Considering all the perils Israel faces from Egypt, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Hamas, and a newly-minted “Palestinian state” that will be a forward base for every jihadist maniac from 57 Muslim states, is a lifeline thrown out at the point of a political gun really enough?

The Palestinian Big Lie

Sol Stern has published the following on NRO:

On September 20, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, will take his case for Palestinian statehood to the United Nations. This is a matter of basic justice, Abbas will argue, because the Palestinian people were dispossessed by the new state of Israel in 1948, and the current Israeli government is still preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

But Abbas’s claim is based on a big historical lie.

In fact, Abbas has lately been lying about his own life story as one of those “dispossessed” Palestinians. Last May, he published an op-ed article in the New York Times titled “The Long Overdue Palestinian State,” in which he recounted his own “expulsion” by the Jews in 1948, at the age of 13. Abbas wrote that “shortly after” the U.N. General Assembly voted to partition the “Palestinian homeland”into two states in 1947, “Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.” Abbas claimed that he and his family were forced out of their home in the Galilean city of Safed and fled to Syria, where they “took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees.” For dramatic effect, the Times provided an illustration above Abbas’s article depicting a young boy standing next to a tent in the desert and gazing forlornly at the verdant hills of Galilee just over the horizon.

In his Times op-ed, Abbas also wrote, “Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.” Abbas didn’t explain how any country could have recognized a United Nations–designated Palestinian state that the Palestinians and the Arab states themselves rejected. The Arab Higher Committee (AHC) was the recognized representative of the Palestinian people at the time of the U.N. partition vote. The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The AHC and the Arab states rejected any proposal to share the land and vowed to drown the fledgling Jewish state in “rivers of blood.”

Following instructions from the AHC, Palestinian militias and volunteers from neighboring Arab countries began attacking Jewish settlements after the U.N. partition plan was announced in November 1947. The irregular Arab units were ordered to take strategic strongholds and hold on until the expected invasion of Israel by regular Arab armies after the British withdrawal on May 14, 1948. What happened in Safed was typical of the bloody inter-communal warfare that soon convulsed the country. Elements of the Arab Liberation Army — the main Palestinian armed force — plus Jordanian irregular units, entered Safed’s Arab neighborhoods and began sporadic attacks on the Jewish quarter. Facing a full-scale invasion of Galilee by the Syrian and Jordanian regular armies, Jewish military commanders couldn’t afford to have armed Palestinian units behind their lines. On the night of May 8, reinforcements from the Palmach, the elite Jewish strike force, counterattacked and took the key Arab strongholds in the city. Almost immediately, Safed’s Arabs began streaming out toward the Syrian border. There were no expulsions of Arab civilians by Israeli forces.

In his Times op-ed, Abbas even contradicted previous accounts he had offered in which he conceded that his family left Safed voluntarily— in part because of fear that the Jews would seek revenge for a murderous rampage by local Arabs against the Jewish community in 1929. In an interview on Palestinian radio, Abbas said, “We left [Safed] on foot at night to the Jordan River. . . . Eventually, we settled in Damascus. My father had money, and he spent his money methodically. After a year, when the money ran out, we began to work.” There was no mention by Abbas in that earlier interview of living in a canvas tent.

President Abbas’s historical distortions (clearly not fact-checked by the Times) are at the very heart of the Palestinian nakbamyth (nakba is the Arabic word for “catastrophe”) and emblematic of the Palestinian leadership’s century-long refusal to accept a Jewish state in any part of the Arab Middle East. That obstinate rejection, not the Israeli government’s positions about borders or West Bank settlements, remains the No. 1 obstacle to peace in the Holy Land.

Last week, as he prepared for his statehood initiative at the U.N., the Palestinian president reaffirmed that the issue for the Palestinians is not the occupation of the West Bank, but the very creation of Israel. In a New York Times report from the Palestinian capital of Ramallah, Abbas was quoted: “Some Israelis complain that this is a unilateral move, but when you address 193 countries, that is not unilateral. We are going to complain that as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years.” The Times reporter didn’t bother commenting that the 63 years of “occupation” Abbas was complaining about goes back to 1948 and the original sin, for the Palestinians, of the creation of the modern state of Israel.

Resolving the Israel–Palestine conflict is tough enough; it becomes almost impossible when one side insists on lying about the conflict’s origins.

— Sol Stern, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal, is the author of the just published A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred (an Encounter Broadside).

‘If You Love Me, Shear My Sheep’

From NRO:

Worry Not, Obama Can Still Be Like Jesus

By Charles C. W. Cooke

President Obama may well be taking flack from all sides, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be compared to Jesus Christ. In a blog post Wednesday, NPR lamented that The One’s loss of mojo — which is apparently the product of the“realities of governing as opposed to the unrealities of presidential campaigns” — has changed the president into a “human figure compared with the almost messiah-like status he had in the eyes of many supporters in 2008.”

Still, fear not, for the attenuation of Obama’s appeal ”doesn’t mean there still isn’t the occasional moment reminiscent of a Bible story.” That’s lucky, then. NPR explains:

Here’s John 21:15, the New International Version, describing a scene between Jesus and his disciples:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter,”Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Most people will have seen President Obama’s call for yet another stimulus as somewhat routine, and possibly even thought that the terms in which the appeal was couched bordered on narcissism. (“If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill. (Applause.) If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill.”) It’s good to know that, even in these troubled times, what looked like a routine political speech was in fact reminiscent of something on an altogether higher plain.

These Aren’t Diamonds on the Soles of My Shoes, or, These Keds Are All Right

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Detroit’s very own Mohamed Atta Mini-Me,  made his first bad impression on prospective jurors Wednesday by leaning back in his chair in court and putting his feet up on the defense table.

The attitude was captured nicely by courtroom artist Carole Kabrin here.

Showing the soles of one’s foot is a significant insult in the Islamic world.

You may recall how the BBC and others in the leftist media never got tired of pointing this out when George W. Bush was the target of a thrown shoe in Iraq. 

No one’s mentioning it now, though.  Maybe that’s because the intended target is only the American judicial system – the trial judge and the prospective jurors.  In other words, you and me, America.

The U-bomber also acted up by saying things in court like, “Osama is alive,” “Jihad,” and “I'm being forced to wear prison clothes.”

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, explains it this way. "He's delusional. Even al-Qaida has recognized bin Laden is dead. I don't know what point he was trying to make, except being disruptive."

Walid is being too modest pretending not to see the point. You know it can’t be easy for Walid having a prominent Muslim Brotherhood operative in town, hand-picked by al-Awlaki himself,  and then not being able to show him any better hospitality than to keep describing him in the press as  “delusional,” and “insane.”

Regardless, Walid pretended not to recognize the shoe insult, and confined his shoe-related reaction to observing how the U-bomber has “got more shoes than some poor kids who live in Detroit." We’re not sure what the significance of that is.

Abdulmutallab has more prison clothes than those poor kids do, too: but U-bomber’s complaining he’s forced to wear them, whereas the Detroit kids dress like that of their own free will. What’s up with all that?

What Walid cares about more than anything right now is driving a wedge into your head between this Nigerian kid and his plain-spoken jihadist logic and the word “Muslim.”

All to distract from one of “the most closely watched terror cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”   Not that that’s saying much, since there have been so few, and none of them closely watched.  Closer to the truth that the same Muslim leaders and media brains who brought us “Ten Years After: The 9-11 Tragedy” are never going to get this trial in focus, because Islam is in the dock with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

I’m at least encouraged for now that U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, appointed to the federal bench by the first President Bush, has avoided two pitfalls into which many trial judges fall. The first pitfall is indulging the notion that jury fairness exists in inverse proportion to jury awareness of what happened. “We are not trying to find people who have never heard of this case,” said Judge Edmunds. “We are looking for people who can serve as fair, objective and impartial jurors.” It’s much better for everyone if we have a jury who aren’t  not so insulated and ignorant that they’ve never even heard of terrorism, or jet planes or even underwear (in other words, pretty much the same standard used to select the O.J. jury).

The second encouraging thing is Judge Edmund’s finding that the U-bomber’s admissions when he was first being interrogated by the FBI will not be excluded just because he was on a powerful painkiller and wasn’t given his Miranda warnings. The judge said “national security fears justified agents not reading Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights before interrogating him.” A burn until nurse helping treat him said he was “lucid and not confused” in spite of a hefty dose of fentanyl.

DU has been unable to confirm if the U-bomber next will argue for exclusion of  his statements on the alternative ground that he made them after the hospital staff taking care of him refused his request to turn off Christmas music, thus violating his First Amendment right to be free from unwanted Christian speech.