Since December 2017, a sort of “rolling rebellion” has been occurring across Iran. It is bigger, deeper and stronger than the Green Revolution of 2009 and taking place in great measure outside Tehran, <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/01/04/non-persian-iran/">where the population is more diverse</a>. There have been strikes of truckers, bazaar shopkeepers, teachers, farmers, and students. See #WhiteWednesday on Twitter to watch brave Iranian women go into the streets and take off their head coverings. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes their husbands, fathers, and brothers go with them. Sometimes they are arrested and sometimes they go to jail. Unfortunately, it took the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-04/death-of-irans-blue-girl-casts-spotlight-on-iranian-women-and-a-growing-movement-for-equality">suicide of a young woman</a> facing seven years in prison for attending a soccer match to get the attention of the Western press.
In May of this year, <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/05/03/the-iranian-mullahs-are-nervous/">widespread upheaval</a> convulsed the country and thousands were arrested. This weekend, news of increasing protest in Iran comes from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — an organization with a mixed record of acceptance by the U.S. government, but with indisputable reach inside the country. According to NCRI’s Washington office, at least 65 cities have seen violent demonstrations, with people killed and injured by authorities. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Mojahedineng/videos">Videos, presumably from cell phones</a>, show that pictures of the Ayatollah Khameini have been set on fire and demonstrators are chanting “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Rouhani.” You can follow <a href="https://twitter.com/AlirezaNader">@AlirezaNader</a> for more.
As Iran spreads its tentacles abroad and builds its illegal nuclear capability, it is clear that the regime cannot fund domestic priorities and international revolution on the same budget — especially as that budget contracts.
Imperial overreach was the ruin of the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, Egyptians, Ottomans, Nazis, and Soviets. Could it be catching up with Iran? Wait, you say, Iran isn’t an empire. Not in the traditional sense. But it was always the belief of the hegemonic mullahs that instability across large regions, managed with a relatively small group of well-trained Iranian professionals and a lot of proxy fighters, would create a world in which Shiite supremacism held sway.
And it was working.
The Shiite Crescent — from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Mediterranean — was a “lid” over Iran’s Sunni enemies Saudi Arabia and Jordan, plus Israel. It was also a wedge between Sunni Turkey and the Sunni countries below — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states. Most of the proxy soldiers were Iraqi militias, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Pakistanis and Afghans brought to Syria under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The result was millions of Sunni Syrian refugees in the Middle East and Europe.
Sunni Hamas and Shiite Palestinian Islamic Jihad were both recipients of Iranian funds, weapons, and training to harass Israel.
There is also an underside Crescent, which is less well understood. It encircles the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf of Aden with a base in Yemen and a Houthi proxy at the bottom of the Red Sea, threatening the Bab el Mandeb Straits and the exit of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. And the American base in Djibouti.
And Africa. Iran incubated Sunni jihadists in the poor, corrupt, and vulnerable states of the second tier — Sudan, Chad, Niger, and Mali. The result was waves of migrants headed north. The North African countries — Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria — were all in the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue group that helped control safety and security in the sea until the Obama administration toppled the Libyan government in 2011. Libya, no longer a member of the Dialogue, has become a hole in the dam through which hundreds of thousands of African migrants reached Europe.
But has the empire reached too far?
American-led sanctions have been an enormous financial blow to the mullahs, but sanctions are misunderstood. Not a mechanism for toppling a government, they are a means of forcing a government to make choices — between, revolution and agriculture, between weapons and water and sewer systems, between Palestinian jihadists and schools, and so forth. That is what Iran faced in 2011 and that is what led to the Iran/P5+1 negotiations. The fact that President Obama collapsed and paid off the mullahs allowed them to avoid those very choices and set back the operation by years and millions of deaths in the Middle East and Africa.
The restoration of sanctions means Iran has less to pay off its proxies — as well as less for its own people. European businesses, and even China, are leaving Iran and taking their money. Iran tried to compensate by stealing Iraqi oil.
And that’s where empire begins to break down.
There are explicitly anti-Iranian <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-missing-the-point-of-the-latest-middle-east-protests">riots in Lebanon and Iraq</a>. Hezbollah fighters have announced they will <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2019/1112/Inside-Hezbollah-How-Lebanon-protests-are-breaking-fear-barrier">refuse to return to Syria</a> for Iran. Iraqis have <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/10/29/missing-the-point-of-the-latest-middle-east-protests/">attacked Iranian bases and depots</a>. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi">@HeshmatAlavi</a> for the latest Iraqi moves and Iranian counter-moves. But most of the mainstream press isn’t there.
But the biggest changes may be coming in Iran itself.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a>. Portions of this article appeared in the Jewish Policy Center magazine, inFOCUS Quarterly.

Iranian flag on conference table

BRYEN: Has The Iranian Empire Overreached?

Foreign Policy

Iran

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

Iraq

Israel

Lebanon

Middle East

Nuclear Weapons

Radical Islam

Saudi Arabia

Citing fear for the safety of herself and her child, the America-born daughter of a Yemeni diplomat who urged her fellow U.S.-based jihadists to go on &#8220;drivebys&#8221; and &#8220;spill all their [Americans&#8217;] blood&#8221; says she deserves &#8220;a second chance&#8221; because she now fully &#8220;regrets every single thing.&#8221;
According to the Trump administration&#8217;s past statements about the self-described &#8220;regretful&#8221; terrorist, however, she has no chance of getting back in.
In yet another sympathetic interview with <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-born-isis-bride-says-everyone-deserves-second-chance-n1075046">NBC News</a> published Friday, Hoda Muthana, a 25-year-old who left Alabama in 2014 to join the Islamic State in Syria and subsequently married three terrorists, tried again to make her case for being readmitted into the U.S.
Muthana currently lives in a tent with her 2-year-old son in the al-Roj refugee camp, a camp in northeast Syria that contains about 500 women who likewise joined ISIS and which is manned by an all-women Kurdish militia. Muthana has lived in the camp for 10 months since the collapse of the terrorist group she traveled from America to join.
In the interview, Muthana insisted to NBC that she fully &#8220;regrets&#8221; her past decisions and that she &#8220;deserves a second chance&#8221; no matter how &#8220;harmful&#8221; her past sins, NBC reports.
&#8220;Anyone that believes in God believes that everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how harmful their sins were,&#8221; Muthana told NBC, who also interviewed her earlier in the year.
&#8220;I did not support the beheadings from Dhola from day one till now,&#8221; she told NBC despite having fought alongside the murderous group for years and married three terrorists. &#8220;I do not support any of their crimes. I do not support any of their suicide attempts.&#8221;
She also portrayed herself as a victim under threat from more radical women in the refugee camp, describing herself as living in a state of fear of reprisal from fellow refugees who hold more radical views.
&#8220;I am risking my life doing these types of interviews,&#8221; Muthana told the network.
Along with the fear is a sense of despair, she suggested, telling NBC she finds it &#8220;hard to get up&#8221; in the morning. She said she wants her son to be around their family, while she just wants to &#8220;go to school,&#8221; &#8220;have a job&#8221; and &#8220;own my own car.&#8221;
Though Muthana maintains that she is &#8220;just as American as any blond-haired, blue-eyed girl,&#8221; as she put it in a February NBC interview — suggesting race was a factor rather than her terrorist activity — the Trump administration says that&#8217;s not true.
Born in New Jersey to a Yemen diplomat, the administration argues, she is not actually an American citizen. As NBC notes, &#8220;The children of foreign diplomats based in the U.S. are excluded from the right to citizenship by birthright.&#8221;
Though her father&#8217;s diplomatic posting ended in 1994, his family was allowed to stay in the U.S. because of the civil war raging in Yemen.
When Muthana&#8217;s legal attempt to get re-admitted into the U.S. first became a national story in February, President Trump announced on Twitter that he&#8217;d shut it down.
&#8220;I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!&#8221; Trump tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1098327855145062411?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;She&#8217;s a terrorist. She&#8217;s not a U.S. citizen,&#8221; Pompeo <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/mike-pompeo-on-hoda-muthana-she-is-not-a-us-citizen-1446009923715">told</a> NBC a day later. &#8220;She ought not return to this country.&#8221;

Islamic State flag is seen on an android mobile phone with

Woman Who Urged Jihadists To Spill American Blood Pleads Again To Get Back In U.S.; Trump&#8217;s Made Clear Where He Stands

Donald Trump

Islamic State (ISIS)

Terrorism

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about the Washington Post’s insane reaction to the killing of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Video and partial transcript below: 
This is an unobjectionable win for the White House. This is an absolute good for the country. They&#8217;ve really done something great here, we have defeated ISIS, and I think the real reason that the Left is so upset about it is really the timing, too. It so cuts against the narrative that we were hearing just last week — the narrative was ISIS is about to re-form. You heard it from some Republicans who didn&#8217;t want Trump to pull those troops out of northern Syria — and not only is ISIS not currently re-forming, [but] ISIS has now been struck the most decisive blow in the history of ISIS. 
This is a cause for some skepticism now, when we approach the mainstream media, because their predictions just keep being so wrong. The greatest example of this is actually not MSNBC — I don&#8217;t even want to really pick on MSNBC. The greatest example of this is The Washington Post. The Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness, ran an obituary for the leader of ISIS that read — I am not making it up — it said that “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an austere religious scholar at helm of the Islamic State, dies at 48.”
An austere religious scholar. Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56 — that was one version that went around on Twitter. Another one: Mao Zedong, who saved 20 to 45 million of his own people from having to suffer through the struggle of existence, dies at 82. I put one out: Attila the Hun, renowned world traveler and government administrator, dies at 46.
<iframe title="ISIS Is Dead, Kanye Is Alive | The Michael Knowles Show Ep. 439" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UBS2X7N1J5E?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
When I saw this Washington Post headline, I did not believe it, and it is not possible for me to have less respect for The Washington Post than I currently do. And yet even I said, This has to be a Babylon Bee parody of of The Washington Post. No, it was. It was real. 
They then changed the headline — they changed the headline a few times. It was “extremist leader,” but a lot of it focused on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi&#8217;s scholarly training — on his expertise in Islam, and it&#8217;s such an irony because all we heard during the rise of ISIS is that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. 
Here&#8217;s Barack Obama saying as much:
<blockquote>OBAMA: Now, let&#8217;s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents.</blockquote>
Look, let&#8217;s be perfectly clear. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has a Ph.D. in Islamic theology from Baghdad University — he doesn&#8217;t know nearly as much about Islam as me, some guy in America who is not a Muslim. 
He also calls them ISIL instead of ISIS, which everybody called them. Obama would call them ISIL, because if he called them ISIS, it would acknowledge that Obama had completely bungled Iraq and Syria — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. So he called them ISIL, which was the Islamic State in the Levant, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which was a little muddier.
So Obama didn&#8217;t have to take total credit for it, but he completely bungled the thing up and it exposes this lie. The Left wants to have it both ways. The Left wants to revere this austere religious scholar — this one is like, gosh, this guy really knew a lot about Islam and then say, but also he doesn&#8217;t know anything about Islam. It depends what argument they&#8217;re trying to make about the religion of peace. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show">Watch “The Michael Knowles Show” on-demand!</a>

President Donald J. Trump Watches Raid On Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi&#8217;s Compound

KNOWLES: Remember The Media Warning Us ISIS Would Return? Trump Proved Them Wrong.

Media

Media Bias

Radical Islamic Terror

President Donald Trump released a photo of the U.S. military dog who was credited for helping track down ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a raid on Saturday that resulted in al-Baghdadi&#8217;s death.
Trump tweeted: &#8220;We have declassified a picture of the wonderful dog (name not declassified) that did such a GREAT JOB in capturing and killing the Leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We have declassified a picture of the wonderful dog (name not declassified) that did such a GREAT JOB in capturing and killing the Leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi! <a href="https://t.co/PDMx9nZWvw">pic.twitter.com/PDMx9nZWvw</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1188909031403900928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
Newsweek <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-isis-leader-killed-in-trump-authorized-military-raid">reported</a> late on Saturday night that al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid in northern Syria which had been authorized by Trump the week before.
On Sunday, Trump held a press conference where he gave the following <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-death-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi/">remarks</a> about the raid:
<blockquote>Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization anywhere in the world.
The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years. Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration. U.S. Special Operations Forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style. The U.S. personnel were incredible. I got to watch much of it.
No personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him. He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way. The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house and are uninjured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death.
He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it, in addition. But test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. It was him.
The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.
We were in the compound for approximately two hours, and after the mission was accomplished, we took highly sensitive material and information from the raid, much having to do with ISIS origins, future plans, things that we very much want.
Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders and our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations.
Our reach is very long. As you know, last month, we announced that we recently killed Hamza bin Laden, the very violent son of Osama bin Laden, who was saying very bad things about people, about our country, about the world. He was the heir apparent to al Qaeda.
Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate, and they will not escape the final judgment of God.
Baghdadi has been on the run for many years, long before I took office. But at my direction, as Commander-in-Chief of the United States, we obliterated his caliphate, 100 percent, in March of this year.
Today’s events are another reminder that we will continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists to their brutal end. That also goes for other terrorist organizations. They are, likewise, in our sights.
Baghdadi and the losers who worked for him — and losers they are — they had no idea what they were getting into. In some cases, they were very frightened puppies. In other cases, they were hardcore killers. But they killed many, many people. Their murder of innocent Americans — James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller — were especially heinous.
The shocking publicized murder of a Jordanian pilot, a wonderful young man — spoke to the King of Jordan; they all knew him, they all loved him — he was burned alive in a cage for all to see. And the execution of Christians in Libya and Egypt, as well as the genocidal mass murder of Yazidis, rank ISIS among the most depraved organizations in the history of our world.
The forced religious conversions, the orange suits prior to so many beheadings, all of which were openly displayed for the world to see, this was all that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — this is what he wanted. This is what he was proud of. He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying.
This raid was impeccable, and could only have taken place with the acknowledgement and help of certain other nations and people.
I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. And I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain support they were able to give us. This was a very, very dangerous mission.
Thank you, as well, to the great intelligence professionals who helped make this very successful journey possible.
I want to thank the soldiers, and sailors, airmen, and Marines involved in last tonight’s operation. You are the very best there is anywhere in the world. No matter where you go, there is nobody even close.
I want to thank General Mark Milley and our Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I also want to thank our professionals who work in other agencies of the United States government and were critical to the mission’s unbelievable success.
Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, has violently been eliminated. He will never again harm another innocent man, woman, or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.
God bless America. Thank you.</blockquote>

Trump

Trump Releases Picture Of Dog That Got ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Syria

President Trump made good on a campaign promise with the U.S. Special Operations raid on Barisha, Syria that sent Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi into a dead-end tunnel, where he blew himself and three of his children to bits. In May 2019, Mr. Trump had announced “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-says-islamic-state-caliphate-completely-eliminated-11553273709">the end of the caliphate</a>” in the territorial sense, but the Americans have now eliminated its theological master and terrorist dictator. Bravo to the brave, intrepid, and patriotic men and women who proved once again, as President George W. Bush said, that “you can run, but you can’t hide.”
Let’s clear the quick and stupid stuff first: No, this is not the end of ISIS ideology or terrorism spawned by it; no, it doesn’t fix the problem of Syria; no, it doesn’t make things right with the Kurds; no it doesn’t slow Iran’s desire for a hegemonic land bridge to the Mediterranean. And, yes, The Washington Post is an <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1188473675894284289">idiot</a>.
Now, the implications. Most important for the future of the region and elsewhere, the ISIS concept of a land-based “caliphate” has probably expired. A <a href="https://libertyunyielding.com/author/rightbrain/">retired naval commander</a> notes:
<blockquote>It’s not 2013 anymore, when the progress of ISIS as a territory-gobbling guerrilla-terrorist force became evident. Their progress was defined by the Euphrates River, which they were following from the general area of Raqqa, from one side, and a general area between Ramadi and Haditha on the other, to link up between the Syria-Iraq border and Deir-ez-Zor. The fact that they were trying to consolidate and control that area was an arresting indication of their intentions, and then in 2014 they stormed into Mosul in the north.</blockquote>
The ISIS plan was different from that of al-Qaeda, which hid in caves in Afghanistan, as remote from its targets as it could be — and thus believed itself safe from retaliation. ISIS planted itself and its flag in the middle of Syria and Iraq: The benefit being oil fields with their revenue, land for training and operations, the ability to levy taxes on the population, and show how a “real” Islamic civilization would work. Not too many people were impressed.
Its one thing to coerce and threaten people to live in the “caliphate” under the rules you set for them, and entirely another to have people embrace those rules. Far more people were coerced than embraced the cause — and thousands who embraced the cause are presently sitting behind barbed wire, further reducing the appeal of a physical entity with governing powers.
Kurds and Arabs, who didn’t agree on much, agreed on that. Turkey’s Recip Tayyip Erdogan, a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Islamist himself, found it in his interest to cooperate with the United States on the raid. Iraq, in the midst of an uprising of millennials unhappy with Iranian interference in their country, provided intelligence to the U.S. Russia, long a foe of Sunni jihad — and fearing its return to southern Russia in Chechnya, stood down for the Americans and had its Syrian satrap do the same.
The president, rightly, thanked them all.
There is an emerging thread of political thought in the Middle East that “political Islam” <a href="https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/political-islam-decline/">is on the decline</a>. Professor Hillel Frisch points to the absence of reaction to the death of Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, and the absence, over the past few months, of religious demands by protesters in both Algeria and Sudan. To this can be added the incendiary protests in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/world/middleeast/iraq-protests-generals-court.html?module=inline">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lebanons-hezbollah-under-rare-street-pressure-114903448.html">Lebanon</a> — that, if anything, show an extreme distaste for religious leadership.
The physical demise of ISIS, followed by the ignominious death of al-Baghdadi, can only enhance a positive trend.
We don’t know exactly how the Americans got in, did their job and got out. And we don’t need to know. What we do know, according to the president, is that al-Baghdadi went <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/10/27/trump-says-isis-leader-al-baghdadi-died-whimpering-and-crying-and-screaming-all-the-way/">“whimpering and crying and screaming”</a> into that tunnel — as cowards do. As people willing to kill, rape, pillage, and force others into the vilest forms of servitude do when it is their turn to pay.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

BRYEN: &#8216;Whimpering And Crying And Screaming&#8217;

President Donald Trump authorized a special forces operation targeting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, and the military says that the ISIS leader was successful killed during the mission.
&#8220;Amid reports Saturday of U.S. military helicopters over Syria&#8217;s northwestern Idlib province, a senior Pentagon official familiar with the operation and Army official briefed on the matter told Newsweek that Baghdadi was the target of the top-secret operation in the last bastion of the country&#8217;s Islamist-dominated opposition, a faction that has clashed with ISIS in recent years,&#8221; Newsweek reported. &#8220;A U.S. Army official briefed on the results of the operation told Newsweek that Baghdadi was killed in the raid. And the Defense Department told the White House they have &#8216;high confidence&#8217; that the high-value target killed was Baghdadi, but further verification is pending.&#8221;
The operation, which was authorized a week ago by the president, was carried out on Saturday by U.S. special forces after they received intel on al-Baghdadi&#8217;s whereabouts.
Baghdadi joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq after being released from custody in 2004 and rose up the ranks of the Islamic terrorist group as they acquired other groups and eventually became ISIS.
&#8220;As the group took advantage of a U.S. military exit to further expand, he renamed the group to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham—or the Levant—better known as ISIS, in 2013, seeking to expand to neighboring Syria, where a civil war was raging,&#8221; Newsweek added. &#8220;Baghdadi&#8217;s forces made lightning gains across both Iraq and Syria, and in 2014 he declared his group a global caliphate from the Grand Al-Nuri Mosque in Iraq&#8217;s second city of Mosul in his only known public appearance as ISIS leader. Officially known from then on simply as the Islamic State, the group began to grab world attention not only for atrocities committed across the region, but in high-profile strikes on civilians in the West as well.&#8221;
Decimating ISIS has been a top priority for the Trump administration ever since Trump took office in January 2017.
Shortly after taking office, reports from Syria and around the Middle East indicated that Trump&#8217;s aggressive strategy in going after the Islamic terrorists was highly successful.
&#8220;Nearly a third of territory reclaimed from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since 2014 has been won in the past six months, due to new policies adopted by the Trump administration,&#8221; The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/under-trump-gains-against-isis-have-dramatically-accelerated/2017/08/04/8ad29d40-7958-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html">reported</a> in 2017. &#8220;Brett McGurk, the State Department’s senior envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, said that steps President Trump has taken, including delegating decision-making authority down from the White House to commanders in the field, have &#8216;dramatically accelerated&#8217; gains against the militants.&#8221;
&#8220;Combined Islamic State losses in both countries since the group’s peak control in early 2015 total about 27,000 square miles of territory — 78 percent of militant holdings in Iraq and 58 percent in Syria,&#8221; The Post added. &#8220;About 8,000 square miles have been reclaimed under Trump, McGurk said in a briefing for reporters.&#8221;
The administration&#8217;s continued push to eliminate ISIS comes after Trump recently announced that U.S. forces were pulling out of northern Syria, in which some ISIS prisoners were believed to have escaped. With Saturday night&#8217;s raid, it is clear that the Trump administration is not quitting its stated goal of completely eliminating ISIS.
Trump deployed military forces to Syria&#8217;s oil fields late this week to secure resources and to prevent the oil from falling in the hands of terrorists or other nations that are enemies of the U.S.

ISIS Leader Killed In Trump-Authorized Military Raid

“If you want to identify people who are okay with suicide bombing, I can give you a list,” including <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/167/yusuf-al-qaradawi">Yusuf al-Qaradawi</a>, Michigan State University Professor <a href="https://khalil.cal.msu.edu/">Mohammad Hassan Khalil</a> told me at a September Georgetown University <a href="https://acmcu.georgetown.edu/event/jihad-radicalism-and-the-new-atheism/">lecture</a>. Khalil theorized before an audience of some thirty people at the <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/607/wolf-to-georgetown-detail-use-of-saudi">Saudi-founded</a> Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) that Islam’s atheistic critics exaggerate the religion’s role in inciting violence.
While ACMCU Professor <a href="https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/topics/222/jonathan-brown">Jonathan Brown</a> moderated, Khalil’s responses ironically reinforced the critique of Islam he sought to refute. For the record, Qaradawi’s primetime show on Qatar’s Al Jazeera network drew an <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/qaradawis-war-for-egypt">estimated</a> 60 million viewers. Even had he been the lone cleric promoting suicide bombing — which he was not — the size of his viewership reveals the scope of the problem.
At the Georgetown event, Khalil presented his previously recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW7M1a0N_AA">discussion</a> of his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radicalism-Atheism-Mohammad-Hassan-Khalil/dp/1108432751">new book</a>, “Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism,” in which he disputes claims of many “New Atheists,” particularly <a href="https://samharris.org/about/">Sam Harris</a>, “that Muslim terrorism can be best explained by Islamic scriptures.” Harris further labels benign interpretations of Islam as “interpretive acrobatics.”
Khalil explained his focus on the so-called New Atheists, saying that “[m]any of [his] own colleagues and students have been and continue to be more profoundly impacted by the writings of New Atheists than, say, polemical works by far-right religiously-affiliated critics of Islam.” Correspondingly, he cited Harris’s statement to fellow atheist <a href="http://www.billmaher.com/">Bill Maher</a> that “we have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas.”
Although critics such as the ex-Muslim atheists behind the “<a href="https://exmuslims.org/ex-muslims-of-north-america-debuts-billboards-in-atlanta-chicago-houston/">Awesome Without Allah</a>” campaign would affirm Harris’s observations, Khalil accused Harris of “cherry-picking.” Reiterating his <a href="https://theconversation.com/so-what-really-is-jihad-118660">previous analysis</a> of Islamic canons to argue that jihadists like Osama bin Laden use “interpretative acrobatics” to justify attacks on civilians, Khalil asserted that “Harris’s interpretation of Islam is so obdurate and so extreme that it cannot even be ascribed to the man behind 9/11.”
Khalil claimed such jihadists are “on the fringes of the jihad tradition” in Islam, despite <a href="https://www.meforum.org/1003/the-religious-foundations-of-suicide-bombings">ample precedent</a> of jihadists applying distinctly Islamic doctrines to fight non-Muslims. “The attempts of al Qaeda and ISIS to justify terrorism on Islamic grounds typically require the abandonment of both strict literalism and the historically prevailing interpretations of Islamic thought,” Khalil said. “Before the <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/publication/the-rise-and-fall-of-suicide-bombings-in-the-second-intifada/">early 1980s</a>, there was no such thing as a Muslim suicide bomber,” Khalil added.
He next criticized the portrayal of a failed suicide bomber in Harris’s <a href="https://samharris.org/books/the-end-of-faith/">book</a> “The End of Faith.” Instead of accepting Harris’ description of terrorists’ motives as religiously informed, Khalil cited common, <a href="https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/07/new-book-examines-jihads-nightmarish-narrative">debunked tropes</a> of socioeconomic disadvantage driving men to violent jihad. Khalil concluded, erroneously, that “in blaming Islam’s foundational texts for contemporary terrorism, while downplaying other factors,” arguments of the New Atheists “are just as facile as those of the apologists they criticize.”
This continues a common trend of denying the Islamist roots of jihadi attacks, even as <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/">survey data</a> show that a deeply disturbing minority of Muslim believers support terrorism. As Israeli analyst Shmuel Bar <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/religious-sources-islamic-terrorism">wrote</a> in 2004, in leading Islamic clerical circles, “radical ideology does not represent a marginal and extremist perversion of Islam, but rather a[n] &#8230; increasingly mainstream interpretation.”
During the audience question and answer session at Georgetown, moderator Jonathan Brown failed to assuage concerns about the religious nature of jihad, even as he assailed New Atheists as the “most intense representatives of this sort of white, patriarchal ‘West is best’ idea.” He referenced his 2007 Yemen trip, during which he saw cigarette lighters for sale with themes of Bin Laden and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hassan-Nasrallah">Hassan Nasrallah</a>, the terrorist Hezbollah leader. Brown strained believability to dismiss these images as indicating not support for terrorism, but for individuals “who really stuck it to the man” of Western imperialism — as if mass atrocities were mere protest.
Khalil stated that he is “obsessed with 9/11 in a dark way.” Yet his obsession hardly obviates valid concerns about radical Islamic jihad. In dismissing historically accurate criticisms of radical Islam and Islamism, Muslims like Khalil undermine their credibility — and, by hosting such apologists, ACMCU reaffirms its place as America’s leading center of Islamist propaganda.
&nbsp;
Andrew E. Harrod is a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/16897">Campus Watch Fellow</a>, freelance researcher, and writer who holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/aeharrod">@AEHarrod</a>.

Georgetown University campus

HARROD: Professor Claims Islam Is Not The Root Of Islamic Terrorism

Atheism

Georgetown University

Islam

On Friday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Cory Booker’s appearance at a recent CNN town hall, in which he advocated for religious discrimination. Video and partial transcript below: 
So it’s not just Beto O&#8217;Rourke who has been doing this extremist routine. It&#8217;s also Cory Booker. Here&#8217;s Cory Booker [a few days ago, basically] suggesting that Catholic schools across the country should shut down. He says, Catholic schools across the country are using religion to justify discrimination. 
<blockquote>BOOKER: And so for me, I cannot allow, as a leader, that people are going to use religion as a justification for discrimination. I could respect your religious freedoms but also protect people from discrimination, and as I said in the earlier answer, I grew up in a household where my parents talked to me about how people used to use religion to justify the discrimination against African Americans. </blockquote>
&#8220;I cannot allow&#8221;? Who the eff are you, dude? You cannot allow? Guess what, that&#8217;s not your right. My right is to act in ways that don&#8217;t harm anybody else, and if I choose to have an institution where I am going to elevate heterosexuality above homosexuality, that is not harming anyone else. You don&#8217;t have to participate in that institution. It&#8217;s a free country. 
I mean, you have institutions where you don&#8217;t tolerate my religious beliefs. I don&#8217;t expect that when I walk into a mosque that suddenly they&#8217;re gonna start practicing Judaism, or expect that when I walk into an atheist meeting [that] they&#8217;re going to start keeping kosher. I don&#8217;t expect that when I walk into the offices of the Human Rights Campaign that they&#8217;re going to start handing out literature from Leviticus. Why in the world would you not express the same degree of tolerance for people who disagree with you and toward people who you agree with? If you are only tolerant of people who agree with you, this is a good indicator you&#8217;re not a very tolerant person.
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First of all, the very implication that the reason the Catholics are against homosexual activity is simply out of bigotry and discrimination is an absolute ignorance of Catholicism. It&#8217;s an absolute ignorance of the natural law history of Catholicism, of the natural law arguments with regard to human sexuality. For the same reason the Catholics are against abortion and contraception, they&#8217;re also against homosexual activity. Namely, they believe that the end of the sexual act is procreation, and that because sex is directed toward procreation and toward the deepening of relationships that end with procreation, heterosexual sex ought to be favored over homosexual activity — or by the way, over activity that ends the pregnancy outside of marriage, over adultery, over polygamy. 
There are plenty of sexual rules in religion, and picking out one of them and pretending that that&#8217;s the only one that matters is pretty insane by the Left anyway. It demonstrates a full-scale lack of understanding of how religion works. 
But notice that for the Left, they truly believe — many people on the Left like Booker — they truly believe that practice of religion is in and of itself discrimination. Okay well, guess what? Religion is exclusive. My synagogue is about practicing 613 commandments, and if you don&#8217;t practice a commandment, that would be a sin. 
Catholic faith: One of the tenets of Catholic faith is that you have to believe in Jesus. If you don&#8217;t believe in Jesus, you&#8217;re doing something wrong. You have to have faith in Christ, and if you don&#8217;t, then you are excluded from the Catholic faith. You are not a practitioner of the Catholic faith. Is that discriminatory? Sure, but that&#8217;s called religion. 
Okay, guess what? Cory Booker is discriminatory too, because I am barred from the kingdom of heaven because he and I disagree on social Leftism. Amazing. Tolerance only flows one way — it flows from people like me. Religious people like me, they don’t have any problem with Cory Booker feeling what he wants to believe, or Human Rights Campaign believing what they want to believe, or GLAAD believing what they want to believe. Do what you want, man; it&#8217;s a free country. But that tolerance does not extend back the other way. Not in any way, shape or form, and we can&#8217;t have a society that operates this way by the way. 
Cory Booker is crazy, [he] was asked about the Pulse terror attack. For those who don&#8217;t remember, the Pulse terror attack — it was up until the attack in Las Vegas, I believe, the deadliest terror attack in the United States, and we still don’t know if Las Vegas was effectually a terrorist attack or a mass shooting. It&#8217;s kind of on that fuzzy border of classification because there&#8217;s no actual political motive there. [But] we know the motivation in Pulse, where forty-nine people were killed at this gay bar. The motivation of Pulse was Islamic radical terrorism. 
Cory Booker tries to blame it on white supremacy, because we can never mention the intersectional conflict between radical Islam and gay rights. Whenever Cory Booker or Beto O’Rourke are attacking someplace, notice how they always attack synagogues and churches. They never have anything to say about mosques that believe exactly the same thing as synagogues and churches on traditional sexual morality. Here&#8217;s Cory Booker being a moron and suggesting that white supremacy was responsible for the Pulse terror attack.
<blockquote>BOOKER: So first of all, very clearly, it is a national emergency. The majority of terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11 have been right-wing extremist groups. The majority of them have been white supremacist and hate groups, and I will elevate as president United States an office on hate crimes and white supremacy to make sure it is a presidential-level effort to contact to protect our country as a whole. But I&#8217;m not stopping there. </blockquote>
Okay, by the way, the question that Booker was asked was about the Pulse terror attack. It sounds like he&#8217;s being asked about Tree of Life or something, [but] he was asked about the Pulse terror attack, which was committed by an actual terrorist, by an actual Islamic terrorist. Tree of Life was committed by a white supremacist, there is a bit of a difference there. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. </a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">Watch “The Ben Shapiro Show” on-demand!</a>

Cory Booker

SHAPIRO: Cory Booker Preaches Religious Intolerance

Ben Shapiro

Catholicism

Judaism

Religion

The Ben Shapiro Show

White Supremacy

ACT for America, a nationwide grassroots group that educates the public about radical Islam, was founded in 2007 by my vigilant activist friend and Lebanese Christian immigrant journalist Brigitte Gabriel. I was honored to accept Gabriel&#8217;s invitation to speak at her organization&#8217;s annual banquet at Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 7.
Gabriel has worked tirelessly to expose the Islamic imperialist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic state; barbaric practices of female genital mutilation and honor killings by adherents of sharia; and the whitewashing of violent jihad in American middle school textbooks. Past speakers and honorees at ACT for America&#8217;s events and legislative briefings include former Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas (now President Donald Trump&#8217;s secretary of state), Rep. Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma (now Trump&#8217;s NASA administrator), Rep. Ron DeSantis of Florida (now Florida governor) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
I planned to talk to ACT for America&#8217;s gala attendees about the ongoing national security threat that jihad-coddling Muslim grievance groups and other identity politics agitators in the &#8220;Open Borders, Inc.&#8221; infrastructure pose to our country&#8217;s very existence. But thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Council on American Islamic Relations, Miami Herald, copycat journalists and the Trump Organization, the event was banned from Mar-a-Lago.
Yes, banned.
All it took was a noisy little echo chamber of lazy media lemmings in search of weekend clickbait. On Saturday morning, the Miami Herald published an inflammatory attack masquerading as &#8220;breaking news&#8221; with the headline:
&#8220;Anti-Muslim extremist group says it will host $1,500-a-plate gala at Trump&#8217;s Mar-a-Lago.&#8221;
Where did the Miami Herald get its characterization that ACT for America was an &#8220;extremist group&#8221;? From the discredited charlatans at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Miami Herald reporter Nicholas Nehamas admitted to me that he wrote the &#8220;story,&#8221; padded with an obligatory assist and dutiful quote from SPLC&#8217;s Muslim counterparts at CAIR, after receiving an SPLC HateWatch alert titled:
&#8220;Anti-Muslim Hate Group to Hold Gala at Mar A Lago.&#8221;
Media monkey see. Media monkey do.
Barely two hours later, according to an email I obtained, the Mar-a-Lago catering department informed ACT for America that &#8220;we will not be able to host your proposed event&#8221; because &#8220;as a private Club we strive to ensure that the agenda and subject matter discussed at any event is in line with our Club&#8217;s culture.&#8221;
Gabriel was not given a chance to defend herself or educate Mar-a-Lago&#8217;s cowering bureaucrats about the SPLC&#8217;s corrupt culture of manufacturing hate fraud, raising millions off fear-mongering, stashing away gobs of money in offshore accounts and staving off internal complaints of racial and sexual harassment for decades. Nor was I was given a chance to answer any questions about the subject matter of my planned speech, which was going to cover the SPLC and CAIR&#8217;s war on immigration enforcement patriots, SPLC&#8217;s defamation settlements, and the ongoing litigation against the smear merchants by deplatformed Trump supporters Laura Loomer and Gavin McInnes.
A cascade of copycat hit pieces ensued. The New York Times crowed:
&#8220;Mar-a-Lago Won&#8217;t Host Anti-Muslim Group&#8217;s Gala, Trump Organization Says.&#8221;
The Palm Beach Post echoed:
&#8220;Trump Organization cancels anti-Muslim group&#8217;s event at Mar-a-Lago.&#8221;
The Guardian followed:
&#8220;Lavish gala hosted by anti-Muslim group canceled at Mar-a-Lago.&#8221;
And the Daily Beast bellowed:
&#8220;Mar-a-Lago Disinvites Anti-Muslim Group ACT for America to Host Annual Gala at Trump Resort.&#8221;
The Trump Organization&#8217;s capitulation to Trump-hating speech and thought police thugs has daunting implications for a wide range of politically engaged citizens on the right. If Trump&#8217;s family-run companies will swallow the SPLC and CAIR&#8217;s defamatory &#8220;hate&#8221; labels wholesale and throw the president&#8217;s most ardent supporters under the bus, what signal does that send to any hotel chain (or local government) about protecting the free speech and peaceable assembly rights of anyone on the center-right?
SPLC&#8217;s sweeping hate designations haven&#8217;t just targeted Gabriel and me (two conservative women of color, by the way), but also (for starters):
—Black conservative scholar Carol Swain.
—Black Trump administration Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
—Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz.
—Refugee Resettlement Watch blogger and citizen journalist Ann Corcoran.
—Investigative Project on Terrorism founder Steven Emerson.
—Former Reagan official and Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney.
—Jewish anti-jihad activist Pamela Geller.
—Former FBI agent and Marine veteran John Guandolo.
—Somali-born ex-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
—Renowned historian and author David Horowitz.
—Scholar and Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes.
—Palestinian-American ex-jihadist Walid Shoebat.
—Scholar and Jihad Watch founder Robert Spencer.
—Lawyer, Fox News host, LifeZette.com founder and talk radio veteran Laura Ingraham.
—Former prosecutor and judge and Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro.
—Author and nationally syndicated columnist Diana West.
—Alliance Defending Freedom.
—The Remembrance Project.
—Phyllis Schlafly&#8217;s Eagle Forum.
—American Principles Project.
Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. Cops, vets and government officials. Attorneys, doctors, academics, authors, journalists and activists. White, black, brown, multiracial, multiethnic, interfaith and intermarried. Has there ever been a more diverse universe of &#8220;white supremacists&#8221; on the planet?
But not to worry. While the SPLC and its open borders media handmaidens are busy destroying their enemies, Trump is busy &#8220;monitoring&#8221; the situation. With friends like these&#8230;
Michelle Malkin&#8217;s email address is MichelleMalkinInvestigates@protonmail.com. To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Trump.

MALKIN: Surrendering To SPLC&#8217;s Lazy Media Lemmings

Mar-a-Lago

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

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Editor&#8217;s Note: This piece was originally <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/8116/turkey-assault-on-kurds-the-silence-of">published</a> by IPT News, the author&#8217;s employer&#8217;s <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org">site</a>.
A stateless people comprised of a <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/kurds-turkey" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/kurds-turkey&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHzOrEz6yyzTXlSLfTiDu3ECJtPiA">large number of Sunni Muslims</a> is being bombarded by a country with an overwhelming military advantage. It&#8217;s the kind of thing that normally has American Islamist groups organizing protests and lighting up social media feeds.
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But this time, the aggressor is Turkey&#8217;s authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a man who has positioned himself as a defender of Hamas and a patron for Muslim Brotherhood leaders who sought refuge from Egypt&#8217;s military rulers. Erdogan is now bombing Kurdish targets in northern Syria and has sent his troops into the country.
The Kurdish Red Crescent <a href="https://twitter.com/RojavaIC/status/1182372582672289792" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/RojavaIC/status/1182372582672289792&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEFIYWtAWvjidk90BRQdOHF-L9nAQ">claims</a> there have been at least 11 civilian deaths, including an 11-year-old girl, and an additional 28 wounded. Erdogan&#8217;s invasion <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/over-60000-displaced-in-turkish-assault-on-syria-monitor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.timesofisrael.com/over-60000-displaced-in-turkish-assault-on-syria-monitor/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG4oTRYIPZLlikC1Fx7ayCfhlVmcw">displaced</a> at least 60,000 people, many of whom have nowhere to go.
American Islamists, normally not shy about Middle East conflicts, are largely silent about Turkey&#8217;s unprovoked bombing of Kurds, Syriac Christians, and Arabs. When Israel has launched defensive operations to stop Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorists from raining rockets on civilians in southern Israel, the same groups are <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/4454/latest-palestinian-israeli-conflict-exposes" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.investigativeproject.org/4454/latest-palestinian-israeli-conflict-exposes&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHnJw50Ni-JgvN3xNnyWgD2C9q1Mw">quick to condemn</a>, organize protests and social media campaigns, and demand U.S. government action.
Kurdish victims fail to generate similar concern. <a href="https://twitter.com/AliAlleile/status/1182046718440939521" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/AliAlleile/status/1182046718440939521&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHPIM8fMUJyJab-wdVimWvWxsr33Q">Images on social media</a> show Turkish bombing and shelling of civilians all along Syria&#8217;s northern border. Civilians in the town of Kobane, who withstood a 2014 ISIS onslaught, found themselves <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1182084149215203334" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1182084149215203334&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649640000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGBTNiowsBzx17nWguro8Rg8NI4YA">under attack</a> Thursday by Turkish artillery.
Turkish artillery hit civilian areas of the northwestern Syrian town of Qamishli — where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) headquarters is located — on Wednesday and Thursday, Kurdish Twitter sources <a href="https://twitter.com/ypg_bim/status/1182305405394968577" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/ypg_bim/status/1182305405394968577&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFjeo3nFG6FaFA1kazPOG_iM6ACvg">reported</a>. Video showed <a href="https://twitter.com/quincythepup/status/1182287554898468864" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/quincythepup/status/1182287554898468864&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHRw8OFHsIqNSGJrUJJLysQ_Ke45Q">explosions</a> in the town and <a href="https://twitter.com/M__Delal/status/1182283912715915264" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/M__Delal/status/1182283912715915264&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNERaEq2Ku4_WjkvzeybA4vHCyIRKg">civilian casualties</a>. Qamishli&#8217;s inhabitants are a mixture of Kurds, who are mostly Sunni Muslim, and Syriac Christians.
An ISIS sleeper cell <a href="https://twitter.com/HogerHamo1/status/1182657755519373314" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/HogerHamo1/status/1182657755519373314&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHEwXP7WPOfp6gVbZkiLMCOnzaLiw">detonated</a> a car bomb on Friday in Qamishli&#8217;s restaurant district. Casualty figures were not immediately available.
Turkey claims it is conducting an anti-terrorist operation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), from which the largest SDF faction the People&#8217;s Protection Units (YPG) descends. But the PKK&#8217;s ideology has moved away from revolutionary Marxism and now supports autonomy within Turkey, American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-acknowledge-pkks-evolution-42482" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-acknowledge-pkks-evolution-42482&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGD-9YWmFWuq7X9cSrAStXNY74uSA">argued</a> in January. Erdogan initially sought peace with the PKK before turning against it in 2015.
&#8220;To refuse to acknowledge let alone appreciate the evolution of the PKK and to refuse to recognize the achievements and stability of Syrian Kurdish governance against the backdrop of a horrendous civil war not only does an injustice toward the Kurds, but it also signals that in order to achieve their basic human rights, they must fight to the death in Turkey,&#8221; Rubin <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-acknowledge-pkks-evolution-42482" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nationalinterest.org/feature/its-time-acknowledge-pkks-evolution-42482&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGD-9YWmFWuq7X9cSrAStXNY74uSA">wrote</a>.
Turkey&#8217;s offensive has united political voices in the United States, primarily because the Kurds proved to be the only reliable fighting force ally against ISIS. In contrast, Arab militias backed by the West inevitably turned their weapons over to ISIS, al-Qaeda, or other jihadists. Kurdish forces successfully routed ISIS over the past few years with the help of American military advisers and airpower.
Western powers promised the Kurds a state of their own following World War I, but that failed to materialize. Kurds are spread out across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The PKK has fought a decades-long war with Turkey for autonomy and self-governance. Kurds are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/magazine/17turkey-t.html?ex=1361854800&amp;en=df64cf85326e2103&amp;ei=5124&amp;partner=permalink&amp;exprod=permalink&amp;mtrref=en.wikipedia.org&amp;gwh=6069AD76255067BD0C21A0601D75C415&amp;gwt=pay&amp;assetType=REGIWALL" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/magazine/17turkey-t.html?ex%3D1361854800%26en%3Ddf64cf85326e2103%26ei%3D5124%26partner%3Dpermalink%26exprod%3Dpermalink%26mtrref%3Den.wikipedia.org%26gwh%3D6069AD76255067BD0C21A0601D75C415%26gwt%3Dpay%26assetType%3DREGIWALL&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG8xzeyJfxRNwgqdQbVc4m5JGhFlA">denied</a> their language and identity by Ankara, which <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29702440" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29702440&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHsKMq04dbLMbK_PM6iUF0L6lj7jw">belittles</a> them as &#8220;Mountain Turks.&#8221;
But American Islamists do little to seek justice for the oppressed Kurdish people. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) thus far has been silent about Turkey&#8217;s assault. The same is true for the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
AMP Executive Director Osama Abuirshaid actually defended the invasion.
&#8220;The Turkish military incursion into Syria does not please us as Arabs,&#8221; Abuirshaid <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=osama%20abuirshad&amp;epa=SEARCH_BOX" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q%3Dosama%2520abuirshad%26epa%3DSEARCH_BOX&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEnZ8kriJ-mA1NI0eMEyifzGmeZGA">wrote</a> on Facebook, &#8220;but Turkey is practically forced to, and it has — to this very day — been the one who stood with the Syrian people the most.&#8221; He claimed Turkey &#8220;is trying to prevent the establishment of a &#8216;Kurdish Israel&#8217; along its southern borders.&#8221;
The leader of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) — <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/4313/american-islamist-coalition-launches-with-empty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.investigativeproject.org/4313/american-islamist-coalition-launches-with-empty&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE6-vD4caA5MrlHKFQsjDfdBUkelA">an umbrella group</a> of &#8220;major national American Muslim organizations&#8221; — also declared support for the Turkish invasion.
&#8220;What a travesty, progressive media wants to protect YPG, a terrorist affiliate of PKK, while innocent Syrians are slaughtered daily! Only Turkey carried the burden to host millions of Syrians and protect them. Who&#8217;s [sic] agenda &amp; interest is served here? We are watching!&#8221; USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jamal <a href="http://archive.is/OKXNM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.is/OKXNM&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHUP5wvmPOS1EfeJK2FQdxO1WoODg">tweeted</a> on Tuesday.
CAIR-Los Angeles chapter Executive Director Hussam Ayloush was the only CAIR official to speak about the invasion.
&#8220;Dear Western politicians/commentators and sudden experts on Syria, did it occur to you to ask how the 12 million refugess [sic] feel about Turkey establishing a safe zone in Syria that&#8217;s free from Assad and terrorists?&#8221; Ayloush <a href="https://twitter.com/HussamA/status/1182194162084536320" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/HussamA/status/1182194162084536320&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHFwBBo6Fij8i-nNlDY6u7NViEYjw">asked</a>.
That safe zone involves resettling Syrian refugees from other parts of Syria who live in Turkey, Erdogan said last month in a United Nations speech. Jihadists also reportedly are <a href="https://twitter.com/Raman_Ghavami/status/1182328821984501761" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/Raman_Ghavami/status/1182328821984501761&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHL2_e1BoQFNTTEeOz0Kv-8Lvv6cw">involved</a> in the invasion force alongside the Turkish standing army.
Last month, U.S. Islamist leaders <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/8089/us-islamists-effusively-praise-erdogan-in-new" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.investigativeproject.org/8089/us-islamists-effusively-praise-erdogan-in-new&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFTwwf5PZX2hlPXPPTp-YH-3m55-w">effusively praised</a> Erdogan. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and former Muslim American Society President Esam Omeish were photographed huddling near the Turkish leader.
Jamal called Erdogan &#8220;a wonderful human-being with patience, love, worries and cares for Muslim ummah.&#8221; Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj called for Turkey to lead the world&#8217;s 1.6 billion Muslims at an event sponsored by the Turkish American National Steering Committee.
These are the same Islamists who also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/litwin-islamists-are-exploiting-conflict-kashmir-oren-litwin">have been noisy</a> about India&#8217;s revocation of the special status of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
&#8220;We have to reject Hindu supremacy and assert that if India wants to be a democracy, it has to live up to the standard of a democratic state,&#8221; AMP Chairman Hatem Bazian <a href="https://www.facebook.com/iphobiacenter/videos/vb.262202317276845/2187568438015157/?type=2&amp;theater" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.facebook.com/iphobiacenter/videos/vb.262202317276845/2187568438015157/?type%3D2%26theater&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFknlOY-mVB2iJciEdvCTdyUa424Q">said</a> at a September 29 rally on Kashmir posted on AMP&#8217;s Facebook page. &#8220;India has become one of the largest purchasers of weapons. Supremacy is always used as militarism in a way that&#8217;s used to assert its right to rule. India has been spending massively. When we say that we are for peace and for justice, we are against weapons of mass destruction, against using nationalism as a way to kill and separate people.&#8221;
Bazian has made no mention of the Turkish invasion.
The SDF, which consists of Kurds, Arabs, and Syriac Christians, bent over backwards to convey to Turkey it was not a threat. SDF soldiers <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/09/03/us-backed-syrian-kurds-to-remove-fortifications-from-turkish-border-as-part-of-safe-zone-deal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/09/03/us-backed-syrian-kurds-to-remove-fortifications-from-turkish-border-as-part-of-safe-zone-deal/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570897649641000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGiXXnd4sdJzg2lddtQvDTMK8hWSQ">pulled back</a> from defensive positions along the Turkish-Syrian border in the weeks leading up to the invasion.
None of it was enough for Erdogan, who is determined to strike out at the very people who helped defeat ISIS. Apparently, that&#8217;s just fine with American Islamists.
</div>
</div>
&nbsp;
John Rossomando is a senior analyst at the <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/">Investigative Project on Terrorism</a>.

Erdogan in Russia

ROSSOMANDO: U.S. Islamists Are Silent About Erdogan&#8217;s War Crimes in Syria

Al Qaeda

CAIR

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

For much of the past week, our political and media elites alike have been unduly obsessed with the nuances — or, as is more often the case, the <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1181250860552204288">pompously asserted</a> lack of any underlying nuance — of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/white-house-announces-troop-withdrawl-from-syrian-border-to-allow-turkish-invasion">present imbroglio</a> involving President Donald Trump, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rossomando-emerson-while-erdogan-slammed-israel-at-u-n-turkish-support-for-terror-was-revealed">Hamas-bankrolling</a> Islamofascist nut job Turkish kingpin Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Kurds of Northern Syria. I, for one, am genuinely shocked to see the ubiquitous nature of the bipartisan outcry. Who knew that everyone apparently cared so much about the stateless Kurds?
There are a lot of very smart, astute commentators and politicians on the Right who are pulling their hair out in agony over Trump&#8217;s decision to withdraw fewer than 100 troops — yes, we are literally talking here about <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-07/trump-syria-withdrawal-turkey-kurds-republicans">fewer than 100</a> U.S. troops — from their flank in northern Syria. Those with a longer memory may recall that, last December, Trump almost removed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/politics/trump-syria-turkey-troop-withdrawal.html">2,000 U.S. troops</a> from Syria before ultimately changing his mind. The present withdrawal is roughly 5% of last year&#8217;s publicly floated withdrawal. And while it is true that the presence of U.S. troops in the region does protect the Kurds, whose peshmergas proved indispensable tactical allies in the elimination of Islamic State&#8217;s physical &#8220;caliphate,&#8221; there are at least three additional compelling factors that make the political calculus here much trickier than it may appear.
First, as Andy McCarthy <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/turkey-and-the-kurds-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/">notes</a> at National Review, the reality is that the Kurds are not necessarily the angelic, morally righteous figures that our political and media elites are holding them out to be. The U.S. should not generally be in the business of serving up its anti-Islamic State tactical partners as sacrificial offerings, but the reality is that Turkey&#8217;s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), of which the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) is the U.S.-backed Syrian offshoot, is — and remains — a formally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/10/09/us-downplayed-turkeys-concerns-about-syrian-kurdish-fighters-that-couldnt-last/">designated terrorist organization</a> under U.S. law. Second, Turkey, while horrifically transmogrified into a dictatorial, Islamist, Muslim Brotherhood-funding geopolitical nightmare under Erdogan&#8217;s rule, is — and remains — a NATO member. Third, there is simply no political will in the U.S. to have our soldiers continue to referee centuries-long internecine Islamic conflicts — such as the <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1182388689839820802">dispute between</a> the Turks and the Kurds — that lack a truly compelling U.S. strategic interest. Instead, as the always-incisive Caroline Glick hinted at earlier today, there is something to be said for what Sarah Palin <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/sarah-palin-let-allah-sort-it-out-096128">once said in 2013</a>: &#8220;Let Allah sort it out.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This seems like a rather positive development, in a Machiavellian sort of way. Turkey leads the Sunni jihadists. Iran leads the Shiite jihadists and they are priming for a war against one another?<a href="https://t.co/ES8UaGEmlL">https://t.co/ES8UaGEmlL</a>
&mdash; Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) <a href="https://twitter.com/CarolineGlick/status/1182268933321216000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Despite loathing Erdogan, therefore, I reluctantly find myself in agreement with <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/turkey-and-the-kurds-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/">McCarthy</a> — the situation on the ground is nuanced, there are complex factors that soberly caution against many of our understandable initial instincts, and it is difficult to fault the president too much for wanting to avoid a military conflict with a NATO member. Indeed, the political calculus would — or at least should — be very different in a world in which Turkey is kicked out of NATO. As it should be.
To be sure, it is nice to see Americans — especially those on the Left — finally waking up to the threat that is Erdogan&#8217;s Turkey. But here is the question I keep on asking myself: Where are all of these same political and media elites, who care oh so very much about the byzantine border intricacies of the Turkish/Kurdish conflict, when it comes to the harrowingly lawless situation on our very own southern border with Mexico?
Where are these same political and media elites when it comes to the John C. Calhoun-style neo-Confederates that comprise <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi">Supremacy Clause</a>-defying sanctuary city jurisdictions? Where are these same political and media elites when it comes to the countless crimes — every single one of which is preventable, were we only to have the will to enforce our own enacted laws — committed by <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/judge-creates-a-right-for-deportable-aliens-to-be-tipped-off/">readily deportable</a> illegal aliens? Where are these same political and media elites when it comes to the need to secure the line, once and for all, with additional Border Patrol and, if need be, hard military assets? Where are these same political and media elites when it comes to the need to formally designate the leading human trafficking rings and transnational criminal cartels as terrorist organizations? Where are these same political and media elites when it comes to the need to end our bogus faux-&#8220;asylum&#8221; regime that, in combination with the mass catch-and-release promulgated by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-did-dhs-abort-its-re-writing-infamous-josh-hammer">erroneous Flores consent decree</a>, mandates mass havoc all across the land? Where are these same political and media elites when it comes, more generally, to the systemic fiscal, cultural, and security costs of the limitless <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965">post-1965</a> immigration — both legal and illegal — to which We the People have manifestly not provided our societal consent?
It is truly baffling that so many people in America seem to care so much more about a highly complex, centuries-long Islamic ethnic war than they do about the very war collectively declared by the cartels, over the past <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration">record-breaking year</a>, upon our own national sovereignty. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">forgotten American</a> cares far, far more about our own border security than he cares about the border security of an Islamic U.S.-designated terror group offshoot halfway around the world. But tragically, both political parties seem to have forgotten about the forgotten American.

Turkey Syria border Kurds

HAMMER: Why Do Political Elites Care More About Turkey’s Border Than They Do About Our Own Border?

Illegal Immigration

Kurds

Southern Border

Turkey

With Tunisia’s presidential and parliamentary elections fast approaching, Ennahda, a dangerous Islamist political party in the North African republic, has been making quite a few campaign stops in the United States.
Two prominent Tunisian-American activists, in particular — Radwan Masmoudi and Mongi Dhaouadi — have long supported the Ennahda cause and now appear to serve as coordinators for Ennahda’s activities inside the United States.
Most recently, in September 2019, Masmoudi organized an event <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-and-greet-rabeb-ben-letaief-tickets-73911514329">featuring</a> Rabeb Ben Letaief, Ennahda’s selected parliamentary candidate to represent the Tunisian diaspora in America. And earlier this year, In January, Dhaouadi <a href="https://imgur.com/a/tx6vfhL">organized</a> an event with Ennahda politician Mehrzia Labidi, inviting Tunisians of the area to join them for a “great conversation.” During her visit, Labidi <a href="https://imgur.com/a/s5JZJwZ">met</a> Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), with Dhaouadi enthusiastically <a href="https://imgur.com/a/s5JZJwZ">commenting</a> that they were both “two amazing political leaders.”
Dhaouadi, former executive director of the Connecticut branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), is a “<a href="https://imgur.com/a/kOcxwK8">proud</a>” Ennahda member. He <a href="https://imgur.com/a/kOcxwK8">attended</a> the party’s tenth congress in 2016 and <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/6412/richard-blumenthal-cair-ally-posts-al-qaida">escorted</a> Ennahda founder and international Islamist luminary Rachid Ghannouchi during his 2015 visit to Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Masmoudi, also a card-carrying Ennahda <a href="https://twitter.com/radwan_masmoudi?lang=en">member</a>, heads the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) in Washington — for which Dhaouadi now also <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mongi-dhaouadi-814701ba/">works</a>. Masmoudi and Dhaouadi have spent years strengthening Ennahda’s image in the U.S. and <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06TUNIS2155_a.html">introducing</a> Ennahda to American officials.
Through CSID, Masmoudi has organized many events that feature high-ranking Ennahda officials. In 2014, Ali Larayedh, Ennahda’s former prime minister, <a href="https://www.csidonline.org/post/csid-fifteenth-annual-conference-final-report">delivered </a>the keynote address at CSID’s 15th annual conference. Others <a href="https://www.csidonline.org/post/csid-fifteenth-annual-conference-final-report">present</a> included Phillip Gordon, then the Special Assistant to President Obama; as well as then-Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) (who has his <a href="https://www.meforum.org/6547/keith-ellison-questionable-ties">own Islamist ties</a>). During this same event, CSID <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/csid-awards-2014-muslim-democrat-prize-to-tunisias-nahdha-bloc-263990381.html">awarded</a> the 2014 Muslim Democrat of the Year Award to the Ennahda bloc of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly.
In 2015, CSID <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/CSID-Report--Lessons-from-Tunisia-Dinner-with-Rached-Ghannouchi.html?soid=1102084408196&amp;aid=JAfkRjreSB0">held</a> a dinner in honor of Ghannouchi. This time, those in <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/CSID-Report--Lessons-from-Tunisia-Dinner-with-Rached-Ghannouchi.html?soid=1102084408196&amp;aid=JAfkRjreSB0">attendance</a> included John Desrocher, then the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Egypt and Maghreb Affairs at the U.S. State Department, as well as the former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray.
Through his other <a href="https://imgur.com/a/1wvxP8e">group</a> “Friends of Ennahda, USA”, Masmoudi has also <a href="https://imgur.com/a/juZJA2e">organized</a> events up and down the East Coast wit Larayedh, high-ranking Ennahda member (and recent presidential candidate) Abdelfattah Mourou, and, most recently, Ennahda parliamentary candidate Rabeb Ben Letaief.
Masmoudi <a href="https://imgur.com/a/jg3y0WB">claims</a> that CSID is independent, is not part of Ennahda, and works only for the success of  Tunisian democracy. But this claim of nonpartisanship is far from convincing.
In 2014, Ennahda hired American public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. <a href="https://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/250333/politique/limage-dennahdha-a-letranger-confiee-a-une-agence-americaine/?fbclid=IwAR1dAFmfxi5HjbfJdwiWa5peoa5oEfuByQy75h_rnlyQa7eSePsuxAF43Ds">According</a> to Jeune Afrique, Masmoudi personally arranged for Burson-Marsteller Paris to manage Ennahda’s public relations in Europe.
Masmoudi has been rewarded for his unwavering support for the party. In January 2019, Sayida Ounissi, an Ennahda minister in the coalition government who had previously <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/CSID-Report--Lessons-from-Tunisia-Dinner-with-Rached-Ghannouchi.html?soid=1102084408196&amp;aid=JAfkRjreSB0">attended</a> CSID events, <a href="https://www.businessnews.com.tn/sayida-ounissi-nomme-la-fille-de-radwan-masmoudi-a-son-cabinet,520,85123,3">nominated</a> Masmoudi’s daughter for a high-ranking position in the Tunisian government, despite her scant qualifications.
Ennahda’s roots lies in international Islamism. Its founding members pledged allegiance to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Originally established as a student organization in the 1970s, over the years, Ennahda became increasingly involved in politics and national protest, eventually escalating to violence and a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073WZ9TCF/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">coup attempt</a> in 1987.
Many prominent party members and allies were imprisoned or exiled around that time. In the West, these exiled Tunisian Islamists became closely involved with leading Islamic community groups. In the United Kingdom, for example, Mohammed Ali Harrath set up the Islam Channel, one of the most watched Islamic television stations in the West. The Islam Channel has long promoted some of the world’s most extreme Islamist clerics, including deceased Al Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki. The channel has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/nov/08/islam-channel-ofcom">censured</a> several times by British authorities for “advocating violence against women and supporting marital rape.”
Many Tunisians returned home after the 2010 revolution, which would later come to be seen as the precursor to the Arab Spring. Ennahda emerged victorious from subsequent elections. Prominent Islamist figures, such as Harrath, relied on the new Islamist regime to <a href="https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2017/653.html&amp;query=(harrath">nullify</a> their previous terrorism convictions.  Ennahda proceeded to manage the country <a href="http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/HJS-Ennahda-Report.pdf">disastrously</a> for only two years before being forced out of power.
While Ennahda claims to be a moderate movement, its two years in power illustrated otherwise. In 2012, Ennahda founder Rachid Ghannouchi <a href="https://www.france24.com/fr/20121011-tunisie-rached-ghannouchi-islamisme-salafistes-video-laics-polemique-ennahda">asked</a> young Salafi activists to be patient, saying that “secularists” still controlled the media and the economy, and so Islamists had to proceed slowly and carefully in order to “consolidate” their hold on the government. Ghannouchi’s advice, which led to widespread outrage in Tunisia, came to be seen as proof the party’s double discourse.
Ennahda once promised that it would not impose Islamic law, but Ennahda Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali subsequently <a href="https://www.contrepoints.org/2011/11/14/55531-tunisie-la-democratie-selon-ennahdha">proclaimed</a> that Ennahda “w[ould] not allow the illicit, clearly enacted by God.” He <a href="https://www.contrepoints.org/2011/11/14/55531-tunisie-la-democratie-selon-ennahdha">added </a>that Ennahda would one day call for the introduction of corporal punishments according to Sharia.
Worse still, Ennahda permitted Ansar Al Sharia Tunisia (AST), an Al Qaeda offshoot, to operate freely in Tunisia for several years. Only when AST<a href="https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/ansar_al_sharia.html"> was shown to be involved</a> with the violent 2012 attack against the American embassy in Tunis did Ennahda finally distance itself from the group, which was consequently <a href="http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20130828-tunisie-classe-jihadistes-ansar-al-charia-parmi-organisations-terroristes-aqmi-larayedh">put</a> on a Tunisian terror list. However, Larayedh nonetheless<a href="https://www.businessnews.com.tn/affaire-abou-iyadh--laarayedh-sort-de-ses-gonds-et-se-dit-victime-du-terrorisme,520,86185,3"> prevented</a> the police from arresting AST leader Abu Iyadh, who was able to give a live-streamed sermon in a mosque encircled by law enforcement before mysteriously evading capture.
Ennahda was forced to relinquish power in 2014. Along with widespread protest against its policies, it was also <a href="http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20131003-tunisie-manifestation-opposants-assassinat-belaid-brahmi-irva-autorite-responsabilite">accused </a>by the opposition of bearing responsibility for the murders of two left-wing politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.
In the wake of its ouster, Ennahda sought to improve its image. In 2016, Ennahda <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/05/21/la-tunisie-sceptique-sur-la-mue-du-parti-islamiste-ennahda_4923831_3212.html">declared</a> it was “<a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/05/19/rached-ghannouchi-il-n-y-a-plus-de-justification-a-l-islam-politique-en-tunisie_4921910_3212.html">leaving</a> political Islam” and would be separating its political and religious wings. This separation, however, was widely <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/05/21/la-tunisie-sceptique-sur-la-mue-du-parti-islamiste-ennahda_4923831_3212.html">regarded</a> as “purely technical and not ideological.”
Despite Ennahda’s incontrovertible links to violent Islamism, members of the party have been frequently welcomed as moderates in the United States. Ghannouchi visited the United States several times, <a href="https://www.leaders.com.tn/article/15145-ghannouchi-pourquoi-je-me-rends-aux-etats-unis">giving </a>lectures at Yale University and Columbia University and attending various <a href="https://myemail.constantcontact.com/CSID-Report--Lessons-from-Tunisia-Dinner-with-Rached-Ghannouchi.html?soid=1102084408196&amp;aid=JAfkRjreSB0">events</a> with leading U.S. government officials.
Tunisians are well aware of Ennahda’s duplicitous rhetoric: Claiming moderation while holding on to its extremist ideology. In the United States, however, Islamists such as Masmoudi and Dhaouadi work to portray the party only as peaceful, democratic and modern. Masmoudi’s events, at which high-ranking Ennahda officials mingle with U.S. diplomats and representatives, afford credibility to a party that enabled an Al Qaeda offshoot and worked towards a theocratic state.
Ennahda’s years in power were at least useful in the sense that they confirmed that party’s underlying extremism. Now, prominent American Islamists are doing all they can to ensure that Ennahda wields power once again.
&nbsp;
Martha Lee is a Research Fellow at <a href="http://islamist-watch.org/">Islamist Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a>.

TUNISIA

LEE: Tunisia’s Islamists Seek American Support

Tunisia

When embattled Broward County, Florida Sheriff Scott Israel was removed from office in January 2019 by new Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Israel claimed that the decision was partisan, that it had nothing to do with his deputies’ disastrous performance during two deadly mass shootings, and that he had provided “amazing leadership” to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO). Now, the Florida Senate’s special master has <a href="https://wsvn.com/news/local/florida-senate-recommended-to-reinstate-suspended-broward-sheriff-scott-israel/">recommended</a> that Israel be reinstated, even though the Supreme Court of Florida upheld the governor’s decision to remove him in the first place.
But I was the executive officer of the BSO. And Scott Israel is lying. He neglected police work in favor of politics. The bloody massacres at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in 2017 and the Parkland high school in 2018 were the most visible consequences. But another insidious effect was Sheriff Israel’s willingness to shatter the morale of the BSO by appointing political cronies to key posts — including radicals linked with Islamist extremism.
I began my law enforcement career serving with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. Under Giuliani, the direction of law enforcement was set by elected officials, but police policies and procedures were left to experienced, non-political leaders of the police department. That, I understood, was how a successful law enforcement agency should function.
That’s not what I observed while serving as the BSO’s executive officer. Instead, I saw politics permeate every layer of the agency until it completely delegitimized what was once the pride of South Florida’s law enforcement. Instead of the BSO functioning as a performance-directed institution, it acted more like a political campaign. Sheriff Israel surrounded himself with well-connected incompetents, who were unconcerned with the daily threats of crime, disorder, and terrorism. Sheriff Israel dared not fire them even when they made the most egregious mistakes. To do so would have harmed his political ambitions.
Upon taking office in 2013, Sheriff Israel appointed as his chief of staff Lisa Castillo, who had no prior law enforcement experience. In fact, she had no major work achievements in any previous position. Castillo served for a brief period as an intern with Mayor Ed Koch’s administration in New York City. From there, she had short stints in mid-level positions in local government. Despite her limited qualifications, the new sheriff apparently believed Castillo was qualified to serve on a very high level in an agency with a $900 million budget and 6,000 employees — and in a county of approximately 1.9 million residents.
However, Castillo brought something more valuable to Israel than education, experience, or competence: Political influence. Castillo was married to City Commissioner Angelo Castillo of Pembroke Pines, an important voting constituency in Broward County.
Pembroke Pines is also the location of the infamous <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/52481/do-not-be-fooled-by-these-moderates-in-florida">Darul Uloom</a> mosque, which is affiliated with the hardline South Asian Deobandi movement. The mosque’s imam, Shafayat Mohamed, was <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/52481/do-not-be-fooled-by-these-moderates-in-florida">involved</a> with a South African “backer” of Osama bin Laden. Mohamed has been thrown off several Florida nonprofit boards because of his bigoted statements about homosexuals. (The most notorious example was Mohamed’s 2005 article “<a href="http://imgur.com/vg8fGFs">Tsunami: Wrath of God</a>,” in which he claimed that homosexuality caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. He also called Christians and Jews “perverted transgressors.”) Worse, the mosque had counted among its members several future terrorists, including “dirty bomber” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-florida-padilla/u-s-judge-re-sentences-jose-padilla-to-21-years-on-terrorism-charges-idUSKBN0H41TW20140909">Jose Padilla</a>.
None of this stopped Sheriff Israel from establishing deep ties with Darul Uloom, at the urging of Lisa Castillo.
In August 2014, Israel appointed Nezar Hamze as a full-time deputy. Hamze was a regular attendee of Darul Uloom. When he was hired, he was also the regional operations director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL), and had previously been CAIR-FL’s executive director. CAIR has a <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CAIR_is_HAMAS.pdf">long history</a> of coordination with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, the FBI <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/1029/fbi-explains-its-cair-cut-off">cut off</a> all collaboration with CAIR after federal prosecutors named the Islamist group as an unindicted coconspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history. And in 2014, the United Arab Emirates <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-group-cair-named-terrorist-organization-by-united-arab-emirates">designated</a> CAIR as a terrorist organization.
Hamze’s colleagues at CAIR-FL are deeply alarming. CAIR-FL Communications Director Wilfredo Amr Ruiz regularly <a href="https://pjmedia.com/trending/islamist-civil-rights-activist-is-a-not-so-secret-anti-semite/">promotes</a> anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including canards about Jewish scripture popularized by the Nazis. CAIR-FL Director Hassan Shibly, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/blog/december-2017/leading-american-islamist-endorses-violent-antiahm">endorsed</a> a Deobandi organization that advocates the mass murder of Ahmadiyyas, a peaceful Muslim sect despised by Islamists.
The decision to hire the extremist-linked Hamze as a deputy was even more scandalous because he failed almost every step of the vetting process for the job. During his initial pre-employment interview in May 2013, three high-ranking BSO commanders — Major David Holmes, Major Michael DiMaggio, and Major Donn G. Peterson — all agreed not to recommend Hamze.
But Lisa Castillo advised the sheriff to overrule his commanders and to hire Hamze as a BSO deputy anyway. Hamze continued his position with CAIR-FL, despite the clear conflict of interest.
Shortly afterward, Scott Israel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1gcYmzywvg&amp;feature=youtu.be">attended</a> Darul Uloom along with Hamze, telling the congregation that it is important to “surround yourself with like-minded people.” Courting Broward’s growing Muslim voting population appeared to be a priority for both Israel and Castillo. To no one’s surprise, in May 2019, Angelo Castillo announced his candidacy for mayor of Pembroke Pines.
Israel has tried to explain these events as an effort to reach out to diverse audiences. However, Castillo had a remarkably narrow idea of which audiences were considered “diverse.” When staff suggested the sheriff’s office reach out to Jewish and Christian organizations to lecture on post-9/11 security issues, we were met with resistance from Sheriff Israel and his chief of staff. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Castillo, Israel ordered members of his Community Outreach Unit to participate in prayer sessions at the Darul Uloom mosque on a regular basis.
The rank and file of the BSO, men and women dedicated to their calling, recognized that preventing crime and promoting law and order took a backseat to politics during the Scott Israel regime. The politicization of the agency, the incompetence of the command staff, and the lack of training and experience in dealing with critical incidents created a fatally negative environment that consumed the entire agency. The hiring of Nezar Hamze was only the worst example. It is hardly surprising that morale and training deteriorated, contributing to the disasters at Parkland and Fort Lauderdale.
A wise man once said said: “Experience is the hardest kind of teacher because you take the test first and the lesson second.” Sheriff Israel, his chief of staff Lisa Castillo, and the BSO’s command staff never learned the lesson. They were willing to sacrifice the safety of Floridians in return for short-sighted political advantage. History will not be kind to Scott Israel; he will be remembered as the sheriff whose decisions failed the test of time and whose “amazing leadership” inspired no one.
Russell Di Perna is the former executive officer to the Sheriff of Broward County. He is a retired NYPD officer, and previously served in the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy. He is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University, where he studied political science, and of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where he pursued Counter-Terrorism Studies.

High School shooting in Parkland

DI PERNA: Sheriff Scott Israel Embraced Extremists to Secure His Own Political Future

Florida

Parkland Shooting

Police

You may have read about the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/devlin-californias-new-ethnic-studies-model-bradley-devlin">proposed ethnic studies curriculum</a> developed for California public high schools, which caused an uproar because of its biased treatment of Jews and Israel, support for the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-bds">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a> movement against Israel, and fear that it fomented anti-Semitism. That is one of many battles over curricula as Islamists attempt to rewrite history and erase any mention of Islamic extremism.
The “Islamophobia” industry is engaged in a systemic effort to whitewash the history of Islam and perpetuate the myth that Islam has always been nothing but peaceful toward non-adherents. These propagandists seek to silence and smear their critics as “Islamophobic.”
We have seen this effort across college campuses, which have received nearly $3 billion since 2012 from Arab/Muslim states and individuals who hope to influence the next generation of Americans to adopt their view of Middle East geopolitics. These investments have paid off via the hiring of apologists for Islamist terror who teach, write textbooks, and serve as sources for the media.
Historian Martin Kramer has <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad-as-unarmed-struggle">noted</a> how American scholars have made “a deliberate effort to &#8230; turn Islam into a pacifist faith — a kind of oriental Quakerism.”
Equally disturbing, as I wrote in my book <a href="http://mitchellbard.com/lobby.html">The Arab Lobby</a>, is an increasing effort to shape the views of children from kindergarten through high school. The 9/11 terror attacks provoked fear and misunderstanding about Muslims and Islam, while political correctness allowed the lobby to present its sanitized version of events aimed at downplaying Arab/Muslim distinctions, ignoring differences in values and interests, and dismissing links between radical Islam and terror.
U.S. taxpayers underwrite some of these efforts through government-funded Title VI Middle East Studies centers at major universities. Today’s “Islamophobia” lobby has an exponential impact through these centers, whose mandate is to educate teachers about the region. As I’ve <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/08/taxpayer-funded-bias-on-middle-east-invades-k-12-classrooms/">documented</a>, as part of their obligation to engage in outreach, these Title VI-affiliated centers often produce materials that reflect the lobby’s views. Teachers then pass on these views to their students.
Advancing the same politicized agenda that rules academia, Islamist organizations have allied with left-wing interest groups and pressured publishers to revise textbooks to better reflect multicultural ideologies. The result is a reluctance to discuss negative aspects of sharia law (such as the discriminatory treatment of non-believers, women, and gays), the role of radical Islam in pervading terrorism, and the Islamist animus toward the United States, Israel, and the West. A 2008 <a href="http://mylifepath.info/library/index.php?keyword=The+Trouble+with+Textbooks%3A+Distorting+History+and+Religion&amp;subid2=2019-08-28&amp;first_subid=34-290-201909290545463ac5b6ddc">study</a> by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra concluded:
<blockquote>Discovering in our schools a pervasive set of erroneous beliefs about such a vital topic should alarm every taxpayer, every parent, and every school official. To allow biased textbooks and outright propaganda in supplemental materials into the schools is to pervert the very purpose of public education and a misuse of our democratic system.</blockquote>
One such battle occurring in Virginia’s Loudoun County centers around the misrepresentation of the meaning of jihad. Loudoun’s presentation of <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad">jihad</a> and Islamic terrorism were criticized for bias. While it is understandable that American Muslims would not want their religion associated with radicalism, teaching that jihad is a wholly benign concept related to a believer’s internal struggle distorts the term’s meaning by ignoring its relationship to extremism, even as terrorist organizations — such as <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestine-islamic-jihad">Palestine Islamic Jihad</a> — use the very word itself to convey their malignant mission.
As Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-evolution-of-the-concept-of-jihad">explained</a>: “Conventionally translated ‘holy war,’ [jihad] has the literal meaning of &#8230; ‘striving in the path of God’ (fi sabil Allah). Some Muslim theologians … have interpreted the duty of ‘striving in the path of God’ in a spiritual and moral sense. The overwhelming majority of early authorities … discuss jihad in military terms.”
The “Islamophobia” lobby could veto Lewis, a Jew smeared by critics as a Western-oriented propagandist. But textbook authors could also cite the medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, who <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/org.oclc.lac.ui.DialABookServlet?oclcnum=318070877">wrote</a>: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”
Students can find a more contemporary definition in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, where Emile Tyan <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jihad-as-unarmed-struggle">wrote</a>: “Jihad consists of military action with the object of the expansion of Islam.”
Learning the meaning of jihad is also key for students to understand the Middle East today, where the commitment to jihad by terrorist organizations such as Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students should learn, for example, that Palestine Islamic Jihad considers jihad the only way to liberate Palestine. A Tel Aviv University analysis explains how the group believes that a “Muslim victory and the elimination of Israel are foreordained by God’s words in the Quran.”
By reading primary documents, students can see for themselves the true meaning of jihad. To understand the ideology of <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hamas-table-of-contents">Hamas</a>, teachers can direct them to the group’s <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hamas-covenant-full-text">charter</a>, which states that “[t]here is no solution for the Palestine question except through jihad” and calls on Muslims to “raise the banner of jihad” to “rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.”
American public schools could also use material taught about Islam in Muslim schools. A <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-survey-of-saudi-textbooks">study</a> of Saudi textbooks, for example, found that many “encourage both violent and non-violent jihad against non-believers.”
A Palestinian <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-textbook-calls-for-jihad-and-martyrdom-november-2003">textbook</a> for eleventh graders offered a definition of jihad very different from the one proposed for Loudoun school children: “Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that jihad has noble goals and lofty aims and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory.”
Unquestionably, students should learn more about Islam. But they should learn it from unbiased sources, not from apologists for Islamism. It is a disservice, and intellectually dishonest, to teach them a sanitized version of history that whitewashes the extremist elements of the religion. If the “Islamophobia” lobby has its way, the next generation will grow up unaware and unprepared to face the danger from Islamists who threaten American lives, values, and interests.
&nbsp;
Mitchell Bard, a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/fellows.php">Campus Watch Fellow</a> with the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a>, is the author/editor of 22 books, including the 2017 edition of Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, The Arab Lobby, and the novel After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.

elementary school classroom

BARD: In Whitewashing Islamism, Some K-12 Programs Advance Jihad

Anti-Semitism

Education

Two U.S. congressmen are asking the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission to reveal the details of its investigation into the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-kids-philadelphia-muslim-society-we-will-ryan-saavedra">April 2019 video</a> of Muslim children from a Philadelphia mosque performing anti-Semitic skits and singing violent songs.
<a href="https://www.memri.org/reports/children-philadelphia-muslim-society-we-will-sacrifice-ourselves-al-aqsa-will-chop-their">The shocking video</a> was presented by the Muslim American Society Islamic Center and Masjid A-Hidaya Mosque in Philadelphia in celebration of “<a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/ummah_day_in_philadelphia.html#ixzz60XAmVhmX">Ummah Day.</a>” As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-kids-philadelphia-muslim-society-we-will-ryan-saavedra">reported</a> at the time by The Daily Wire, the video featured Muslim children singing,
<blockquote>We will chop off their heads … we will lead the army of Allah fulfilling his promise, we will subject them to eternal torture … we will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies … sacrifice our souls without hesitation.</blockquote>
Following multiple press articles, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations <a href="https://www.apnews.com/d3c30af9eb174e78a8b04ae201ac509b">announced</a> an investigation into the event.
But more than five months have elapsed — with no follow-up from the Commission regarding its findings. Recently, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) sent a <a href="https://zeldin.house.gov/sites/zeldin.house.gov/files/09.12.2019-FINAL_0.pdf">letter</a> to the Commission’s executive director, Rue Landau, requesting an update of its findings and asking whether further investigation needs to be made by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The letter also informed Landau of the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) role as an “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood and notes that “several senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood are designated as terrorists.” Perry and Zeldin also noted that, given the Muslim American Society has 50 chapters throughout the United States, the results of the Philadelphia investigation are of national importance in trying to understand the role played by the organization and similar groups in indoctrinating American Muslims children towards <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lee-baird-recent-conference-highlights-emboldened-martha-lee">extremist Islamism</a>.
Contacted about the letter, Landau did not respond.
The disturbing video received both local and national attention at the time, but why is there only continuing interest in the results of the Commission’s investigation from a congressman from New York and a congressman from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania?
Where are the voices coming from lawmakers in Philadelphia — or the voices from local Muslim organizations purporting to be advocates for human rights?
The Philadelphia City Council has not taken action, either. While Philadelphia Councilman Curtis Jones <a href="http://legislation.phila.gov/transcripts/Stated%20Meetings/2019/sm040419.pdf">prepared a city council resolution</a> in outrage over Pennsylvania Representative Delegate Stephanie Borowicz’s references to Jesus in a State House invocation during the swearing-in of Muslim State Representative Movita Johnson-Harrell, there has been no similar resolutions or outrage over the Muslim American Society’s promotion of songs about beheading Jews. Calls and emails to Jones and other councilmen asking if they too would add their voices in requesting an update from the Commission were ignored.
The Masjid Al-Hidaya Mosque, where the video was filmed, sits in the congressional district of Congressman Brendan Boyle and neighbors the district covered by Congressman Dwight Evans. Calls to each congressman’s local office revealed no awareness of the Zeldin/Perry letter, although staffers suggested they would investigate the matter further.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s Philadelphia chapter responded to MAS’ head-chopping video with a press release at the time: “<a href="http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=536562&amp;f=87515&amp;s=92595&amp;m=992797&amp;t=fb532d90aa0066a36ae360a77a2789125f87202761881ec465f4ea390c6c3700">Muslim Community Condemns Anti-Semitism</a>.” CAIR-Philadelphia executive director Jacob Bender was careful to add: “We should be careful, however, not to conflate criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with anti-Semitism. Thousands of American and Israeli Jews like myself are critical of the oppressive policies of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.”
The CAIR-PA’s <a href="https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/cair-philadelphias-distorted-view-of-children-singing-about-beheadings-and-of-the-san-diego-synagogue-attack/">weak response</a> is a reminder of the historic relationship between MAS and CAIR. As federal prosecutors have <a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/UNITED-STATES-OF-AMERICA-Plaintiff-Appellee-v-Sabri-BENKAHLA-Defendant-A....pdf">previously argued:</a>
<blockquote>CAIR and MAS omit reference to a shared background that limits their membership to those of a particular political bent, and undercuts their credibility. The Muslim Brotherhood is a generally covert international organization whose credo is ‘Allah is our goal; the Qur&#8217;an is our constitution; the Prophet is our leader; Struggle is our way; and death in the path of Allah is our highest aspiration.’</blockquote>
CAIR-Philadelphia has a history of running substantial campaigns whenever they wish to highlight issues of concern to them. That includes a <a href="http://www.icontact-archive.com/archive?c=536562&amp;f=87515&amp;s=92595&amp;m=996529&amp;t=fb532d90aa0066a36ae360a77a2789125f87202761881ec465f4ea390c6c3700">recent effort targeting Starbucks</a> over the name on a Muslim man’s coffee cup. But they have issued no apparent follow-up regarding the MAS video — or the remedial training CAIR was <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/video-muslim-american-society-children-violent-mosque-philadelphia-20190515.html">supposed to have provided </a>to following the incident.
The Zeldin/Perry letter seeking disclosure of the Commission’s findings regarding MAS is a worthwhile effort. It’s a shame that local officials do not seem nearly as motivated in responding to an incident that has tarred Philadelphia’s reputation and raised serious questions about growing levels of Islamist anti-Semitism in the City of Brotherly Love.
&nbsp;
Leonard  Getz, CPA, is an associate in Philadelphia for <a href="http://www.counterislamist.org/">the Counter-Islamist Grid (CIG)</a> and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The American Thinker, The Algemeiner, PJMedia, Lifestyles Magazine, Nostalgia Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere.

Philadelphia skyline

GETZ: Congressmen Demand Answers About Horrifying Anti-Semitic Video In Philadelphia

Department of Justice

Lee Zeldin

Muslims

Philadelphia

The following is satirical.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, has set a new record for the most shameless distortion of the truth ever packed into a single journalistic sentence. In commemorating the attack on the United States on 9/11, the Times tweeted out a sentence from their news story saying, &#8220;18 Years have passed since airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center.&#8221;
The Times story had immediate effects. Assistant Head of Homeland Security Richard Tracy announced the Department would change its policies, saying, &#8220;Up until now, we were investigating any young men who were named Mohammed more than three times and who blame their craphole countries on everyone but themselves and who therefore go around randomly murdering people who have nothing to do with anything. But now that we realize it&#8217;s the actual airplanes that targeted the buildings, we are centering our investigations on suspicious flying machines especially if they have those weird grins painted on the nosecones. I just find those really creepy. All this time, we thought we were dealing with a medieval religious philosophy that has threatened the existence of the West for over a thousand years and kept entire regions of the earth in theocratic religious oppression and poverty but now we finally realize it&#8217;s the planes. Thanks, New York Times, and please renew my subscription.&#8221;
The Times took the tweet down after being ridiculed as lying buffoons, but woke reporters at the ex-newspaper celebrated the new distortion record and say they soon expect to win the Pulitzer Prize for biggest lying buffoons. In a meeting held in the middle of the street, Times Editor in Charge of Wokeness Charles Woke told a gathering of homeless people, &#8220;By using nonsense terms like Islamophobia, Racial Profiling, and toxic masculinity, we on the left have managed to pack more dishonesty into fewer words than anyone outside the novel 1984. But we have now outdone ourselves in&#8230;&#8221;
Mr. Woke left the thought unfinished when my car aimed itself at him and ran him over. Don&#8217;t blame me.

new_york_times_gi.jpg

New York Times Wins Pulitzer For Lying Buffoonery [Satire]

New York Times

Last week’s announcement that U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban had been called off relieved many, but distressed others who were hoping for an end to our longest war. After a suicide bombing killed 12 people on Thursday, September 5th, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-camp-david.html">acknowledged</a> that the Taliban failed to live up to its commitments. Trump tweeted: “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” Welcome to the Art of the Deal, Taliban-style.
Perhaps Trump is learning from his experiences with Israel’s longest war with the Palestinians and the difficulty he has experienced with his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51599/israel-jason-greenblatt-has-done-crucial-work-gideon-israel">“Deal of the Century”</a> proposal. While each situation differs in some significant ways, both serve as illustrations that wars don’t end when only one side wants it to end. Until one side wins and the other acknowledges defeat, a war will continue.
The Trump administration’s desire to “finally get the hell out of Afghanistan” might be an admirable one, but our departure before the Taliban has acknowledged its defeat will be interpreted as victory and embolden the group to return to its old ways. Though the Taliban and the Afghan ISIS groups are currently at least in part rivals, no one should preclude the possibility of a union between the two.
After the first Gulf War, enough Israelis believed that their war with the Palestinians could finally come to an end. But their generosity to the dispersed PLO, exiled to Tunisia, was interpreted as weakness. The PLO exploited it to recruit a new generation of fighters — a generation they educated with their newfound autonomy. Palestinian terrorism escalated dramatically, both in the number and severity of attacks.
Soon after the talks with the Taliban were scuttled, word came out that there was a plan for members of the Taliban to join members of the Afghan government and U.S. representatives at Camp David. Some believed that having Taliban negotiators on U.S. soil on September 11th, 2019 would be worse than “bad optics” — their presence would defile the venerable retreat in Maryland. But here too, the PLO’s Yasser Arafat had already accomplished that feat, soiling the grounds with his presence in 2000. During the Clinton presidency, Arafat <a href="http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatArticles.html">spent more time</a> in the White House than any other foreign “leader.”
Inviting bad actors, even those with American blood on their hands, is acceptable only after they have been defeated and have acknowledged their defeat. Until both the Taliban and whomever the Palestinians choose as their leaders acknowledge their defeat, their presence should not be tolerated on U.S. or Israeli soil, respectively.
Perhaps neither our war against the Taliban nor Israel’s war against the PLO/PA/Hamas is actually winnable. But both are certainly lose-able.
A complete pullout of all U.S. troops and advisors from Afghanistan will be celebrated from Kandahar to Quetta as a Taliban victory. Recall how Taliban propagandists compared Obama to Gorbachev when the new U.S. president simultaneously announced both a troop surge and a subsequent date for their departure from Afghanistan.
Likewise, any Israeli offer of more accommodations, cash, and autonomy to the PLO/PA/Hamas will be seen as weakness and will be exploited. Recall Arafat’s not so-secret messages to the Palestinian critics of Oslo that the “peace process” would buy them time to gain strength and continue the fight.
For American and Israeli lawmakers, the time to talk about peace will only come when the Taliban and the Palestinians feel their defeat and believe that they have better options than continuing to fight. Until then, the best we can hope for is a managed conflict, limiting our own casualties, and inflicting more severe casualties on our enemies.
A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsburg-Ingerman fellow at the <a href="https://www.meforum.org">Middle East Forum</a> and a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

U.S. And Afghan Forces Battle Taliban In Kunar Province

CASCHETTA: War Isn’t Over Just Because You Want It To Be Over

Afghanistan

Hamas

Military

Palestinians

Eighteen years ago today, in what would be the deadliest assault by a geopolitical foe on U.S. soil since the War of 1812, the global jihad struck the most lethal blow in the history of its wretched movement. The 9/11 airline hijackers were largely trained and funded by Wahhabist/Salafist Sunni zealots based in <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/19/911-report-details-saudi-arabia-funding-of-muslim-/">Saudi Arabia</a>, were substantially aided by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">terrorist</a> <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/iran-told-to-pay-10-5-billion-to-sept-11-kin-insurers">Iranian</a> regime, and were protected and mollycoddled by Taliban Islamists.
It was not amorphous &#8220;terrorism&#8221; — an easily <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51440/hammer-san-francisco-has-beclowned-itself-labeling-josh-hammer">malleable</a> linguistic concept — in the abstract that killed those <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2019/09/11/remember-2/">three thousand people</a> on 9/11. It was a much more clearly identifiable and unmistakable foe: genocidal Islamic jihadism.
It is astonishing to ponder that those born now will be eligible to serve in the U.S. military despite being born after 9/11. For those fresh new military recruits, 9/11 will be ingrained in their consciences as but one of many distant historical events — akin to the Vietnam War, the Pearl Harbor attacks, or perhaps even the Battle of Gettysburg. That is a downright harrowing thought for those of us for whom 9/11 was a seminal — perhaps life-changing or career trajectory-altering — event.
Crucially, these impressionable 18-year-old military recruits have grown up thinking of 9/11 and the corresponding bipartisan military adventurism overseas as inextricably linked. It is, of course, true that the Taliban in Afghanistan harbored the al-Qaeda militants who took down the Twin Towers. But it is also true that Afghanistan has already become this generation&#8217;s Vietnam: A seemingly interminable struggle in a faraway land for which there seems no way out.
While there is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">prudent and responsible &#8220;third way,&#8221;</a> far too often our foreign policy and national security discourse in the post-9/11 era has been oversimplified to a most regrettable dichotomy: That between George W. Bush-era moralistic interventionist neoconservatism and a fanatical isolationism that has never seen a foreign threat worth seriously engaging. For the young generation that has intellectually matured in the proverbial shadow of this oversimplified discourse, 9/11 and our subsequent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are solidified in the mind as part and parcel of Bush-era military interventionism.
As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/us/politics/us-soldier-killed-afghanistan.html">Americans continue to die</a>, eighteen years later, fighting in third-world sharia hellholes to try to quixotically impose Madisonian democracies upon Islamists who effectively live in the seventh century, the public will to fiscally fund and morally support our campaigns naturally wanes. While that support wanes, the isolationist <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/fox-news-tucker-carlson-reportedly-at-center-of-trump-s-decision-not-to-bomb-iran-1.7403783">Tucker Carlson wing</a> of the foreign policy Right <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51610/hammer-bad-trump-presidents-dismissal-john-bolton-josh-hammer">markedly ascends</a>. But Tucker Carlson-esque thinking on foreign policy is exceedingly dangerous. If 9/11 taught us anything, it taught us that real evil exists in this earthly realm — and that evil must be soberly assessed and unambiguously thwarted, lest we succumb to its tyranny. Evil loves a geopolitical vacuum, and there is no greater vacuum than when the post-World War II United States entirely withdraws itself from the world.
The problem is that, no matter its flaws, Carlson&#8217;s isolationism will continue to gain momentum so long as it is juxtaposed with the overly sanguine Pollyannaism of those who would moralistically intervene and seek to build Enlightenment-style Western nation-states in <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/2019-02-18/obamas-libya-debacle">sharia-governed desert backwaters</a>. The onus, therefore, falls on those of us <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">true, non-neoconservative counter-jihadi hawks</a> to articulate and advocate for a compelling foreign policy vision that both soberly reflects upon the excesses of bipartisan moralistic interventionism gone awry and rejects the unyielding demands of the &#8220;bring America home&#8221; isolationists.
There is much to be said about what this vision looks like, and my hope is that future columns will help further contribute to the development of this &#8220;third way.&#8221; But instead of deploying U.S. military assets for dictator-toppling and nation-building purposes, a &#8220;third way&#8221; hawkish foreign policy would focus upon utilizing the tools of soft power, &#8220;draw and strike&#8221;-style lesser hard power maneuvering, hard deterrence (e.g., strategic naval asset deployment), statecraft, and sanctions/finances to achieve its goals: To thwart jihadism and deter the hegemonic ambitions of other non-jihadist geopolitical foes, such as Russia and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47057/hammer-china-americas-greatest-21st-century-threat-josh-hammer">China</a>.
The U.S. should label the leading Mexican cartels as State Department-recognized <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/time-designate-mexican-cartels-terrorist-organizations/">foreign terrorist organizations</a>. The U.S. must label the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46714/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">Muslim Brotherhood</a>, which is the intellectual progenitor of all contemporary Sunni jihad, as a terrorist group. The U.S. must <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/01/cutting-us-aid-to-the-lebanese-army-would-increase-pressure-on-the-iran-hezbollah-axis/">defund the Lebanese Armed Forces</a>, given that the entire Lebanese military apparatus has been overrun by Hezbollah. The U.S. must amp up pressure on Qatar and Turkey, which have both long surpassed Saudi Arabia as the leading global bankrollers of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Sunni madrasas alike.
In terms of immigration, the U.S. must focus not just on a border wall but also on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42539/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior enforcement</a>: After all, two of the 9/11 hijackers — who should, of course, have never received visas in the first instance — were present in the country on that fateful day due to overstaying their visas. Two of the 9/11 hijackers, in other words, were illegal aliens still presently in the country due to a lack of robust interior enforcement.
Why on Earth, for that matter, has the U.S. continued to implement a lax immigration policy that continues to voluntarily <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/aimless-fighting-in-afghanistan-while-we-bring-afghanistan-to-our-shores/">bring the very problem we claim to be fighting overseas</a> to our own shores? Has the development of Rep. Ilhan Omar&#8217;s (D-MN) large Somali immigrant community into the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/how-rep-ilhan-omars-minnesota-district-became-the-terrorist-recruitment-capital-of-the-us-officials-highly-concerned">nation&#8217;s largest terrorist recruitment hub</a> taught us nothing? Why are we not implementing an immigration policy for the Islamic world that, while allowing for dispensations, starts from a default baseline level of effectively zero? None of the 9/11 hijackers should have been in the United States and, distressingly, our inadequate immigration &#8220;vetting&#8221; procedures are oftentimes hopeless in attempting to prevent the next importations of jihadist evil.
But a true &#8220;third way&#8221; foreign policy approach — a common-sense approach that can repel the nostrums of Tucker Carlson&#8217;s isolationism and moralistic interventionism alike — must begin with a sober assessment of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. There is no reason whatsoever for the U.S. to <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/now-pull-the-plug-on-afghanistan/">still deploy large swaths of troops</a> to Afghanistan. Our fanciful efforts to democratize a seventh century-dwelling bastion of Islamism has manifestly failed, and will never succeed. But even more germanely, there is no present security threat from Afghanistan itself. Unlike Iran, the world&#8217;s most dangerous Islamist nation and number one global funder of jihad, Afghanistan has no nuclear weapon program or expressed desire to develop intercontinental ballistic missile technology, does not fund jihadist outfits or targeted assassinations overseas, and poses no genuine threat to American interests other than the radicalization of Afghans themselves.
It turns out that there is a much simpler and more cost-effective method of dealing with the Afghanistan problem than a seemingly endless military presence — with the concomitant constant risk of <a href="https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/03/21/green-on-blue_attacks_in_afghanistan_the_data_111015.html">&#8220;green-on-blue&#8221; violence</a>. Instead, U.S. policymakers ought to simply amp up border security, interior enforcement, and set Afghan visas to zero. A meaningful withdrawal from Afghanistan, furthermore, would allow genuine counter-jihadi hawks to demonstrate to isolationists that they have no interest in occupying or democratizing every sharia hellhole the world over. And it would save much-needed intellectual, moral, financial, and military capital that must be conserved for a potential showdown with genuine jihadi state actor threats, such as Iran.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">My argument has always been that hawks themselves should support getting out of Afghanistan. We waste intellectual, moral, fiscal, physical, and human capital that we’d be better off saving for fighting adversaries that are actually strategically necessary. <a href="https://t.co/Q6fcyK9HmW">https://t.co/Q6fcyK9HmW</a>
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1160333751118913536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">You want to know how to solve the Afghanistan issue?
Set Afghan visas to zero. Maybe leave a few drones for easy aerial operations.
Done.
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1160352043191717888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
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By recalibrating our post-9/11 counterterrorism strategy to focus less on nation-building and more on genuine deterrence, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48120/hammer-d-day-was-good-versus-pure-evil-our-josh-hammer">clearly defining military missions for our men and women in uniform</a>, amping up border security at home, cutting immigration from the Islamic world, and conserving financial and military capital for future showdowns with the Iran-Muslim Brotherhood-Qatar-Turkey axis of Islamism, hawks will go a long way toward showing that they have learned the lessons of moralistic interventionism gone awry. In so doing, they will also begin the process of repelling the noxious rise within the conservative movement of those pernicious isolationists whose discredited ideas risk such profound harm.

9/11 Twin Towers

HAMMER: Never Forget 9/11. But We Need To Rethink How We Fight Radical Islamic Jihad.

Conservatism

George W. Bush

Immigrants

Immigration

The son of a woman killed when jihadist-hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center slammed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) during a 9/11 memorial on Wednesday for callously referring to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an event where &#8220;some people did something.&#8221;
&#8220;Good morning, brothers and sisters in good faith — listen, some people did something,&#8221; Nicholas Haros Jr. told a crowd during the annual anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero.
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&#8220;Some people did something, said a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota, to support and justify the creation of [the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)] — today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Madam, objectively speaking, we know who and what was done. There is no uncertainty about that. Why your confusion?&#8221;
Haros&#8217; remarks were in response to a keynote speech that Omar delivered in March to fundraise for CAIR. The Minnesota congresswoman faced massive backlash after a video from the event surfaced where she was shown urging Muslim Americans to &#8220;raise hell&#8221; and further downplaying what happened on September 11th, 2001.
&#8220;CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,&#8221; Omar said at the time.
While the comments received widespread condemnation, Omar’s fellow &#8220;Squad&#8221; members Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) swiftly came to her defense. Tlaib appeared on news programs accusing critics of taking Omar’s words out of context and having a bias against women of color.
Both Omar and Tlaib are vocal supporters of CAIR, a notable pro-Palestinian organization with longstanding ties to Islamic terror groups. The U.S. Department of Justice listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding millions of dollars to Hamas as part of the 2008 terror financing bust of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation.
Ocasio-Cortez also backed Omar after Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) called her comments &#8220;unbelievable.&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez fired back, accusing the former Navy SEAL of not properly supporting 9/11 victims and first responders.
Crenshaw, however, served five deployments overseas — and while on his third combat tour, he was hit by an IED blast during a mission in Afghanistan that destroyed his right eye and badly injured his left eye. After multiple surgeries, Crenshaw regained sight in his left eye and went on to deploy overseas two more times.
&#8220;On that day, 19 Islamic terrorists, members of al-Qaeda, killed over 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars of economic damage. Is that clear?&#8221; Haros said. &#8220;But as to whom, I was attacked, your relatives and friends were attacked, our constitutional freedoms were attacked, and our nation’s founding on Judeo-Christian principles were attacked.&#8221;
&#8220;That’s what some people did. Got that now? We are here today, congresswoman, to tell you and the Squad just who did what to whom,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Show respect in honoring them please. American patriotism in your position demands it.&#8221;
Omar and Tlaib became America’s first Muslim congresswomen after winning their respective elections in 2018. The duo, along with Ocasio-Cortez, have been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism and have expressed anti-American sentiments since taking office.

Ihlan omar

WATCH: 9/11 Victim’s Son Slams Omar During Memorial: ‘I’m Here To Respond To You Exactly Who Did What To Whom’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ilhan Omar

Rashida Tlaib

In 2016, We the People were promised &#8220;America First&#8221; — not &#8220;America&#8217;s Enemies First.&#8221;
Well.
Today, President Donald Trump, in what can only be described as a woefully myopic move straight out of the Barack Obama-John Kerry-Ben Rhodes axis of capitulation playbook, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51591/breaking-trump-boots-national-security-adviser-ryan-saavedra">effectively fired</a> longtime Iran hawk John Bolton from his lofty perch of national security advisor. The boneheaded move, which closely follows the fallout of the president&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51504/trump-reveals-secret-meeting-planned-taliban-heres-ryan-saavedra">aborted Camp David dalliance</a> with Taliban jihadist thugs, comes at a time when the Trump administration has been publicly doubling down in its alleged commitment to the goal of <a href="https://www.apnews.com/e6bd6334ff4148f2985de059f93dc390">&#8220;maximum pressure&#8221;</a> on the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43339/hammer-iranian-revolution-forty-years-old-stand-josh-hammer">terrorist</a> Iranian regime. Evincing the message discipline of a woebegone high-schooler, though, the president has combined such purported commitment to &#8220;maximum pressure&#8221; with his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/28/if-trump-wants-meet-irans-rouhani-both-allies-enemies-will-stand-his-way/">ceaseless</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-trump/trump-says-he-could-meet-with-iranian-president-rouhani-idUSKCN1VU25N">sycophancy</a> toward and expressed desire to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Bolton, who is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49313/hammer-inter-agency-fight-white-house-closes-door-josh-hammer">infamously hawkish</a> on the issue of jihadism and radical Islamic terror, strongly opposed the president&#8217;s dovish overtures on the Taliban and Rouhani alike. Such opposition, even amidst the purported &#8220;maximum pressure&#8221; campaign, appears to have cost Bolton his job.
Talk about cutting off one&#8217;s nose to spite the face. But hey — at least <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html">failed novelist</a> and Iran nuclear deal architect Ben Rhodes is happy, right?
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Bolton’s legacy is a wasteland of shattered US credibility, disorder, and abandoned democratic values. And a lot of people around the world suffered because of it. <a href="https://t.co/EAI6IOfZdw">https://t.co/EAI6IOfZdw</a>
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) <a href="https://twitter.com/brhodes/status/1171459608877006848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Today is a sad day for those firm opponents of the genocidal brand of Islamist jihadism that has been in a state of war against the West for <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/egypts-muslim-brotherhood">at least a century</a>. Today will be remembered as a shattering blow struck in the years-long cold civil war on the foreign policy — that between those hawks (even if <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43151/hammer-ted-cruzs-non-interventionist-hawk-foreign-josh-hammer">&#8220;non-interventionist&#8221; hawks</a>) who soberly assess the threat of radical Islamism, and those whose quixotic predilections toward ideological isolationism at any and all costs leads them to effectively shill for Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and so many other of the world&#8217;s unabashedly despotic regimes. Today is a loss for &#8220;maximum pressure&#8221; on Iran, a loss for Israel, a loss for Saudi Arabia and all of America&#8217;s other Sunni allies, and a loss for a free and secure West. Today is a victory for the increasingly ascendant Tucker Carlson wing of the foreign policy — an adamantly isolationist wing whose proper negative reaction to the excesses of Bush-era interventionist neoconservatism gone awry has led them to such extremes so as to make <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-homophobic-history-defended-tucker-carlson-glenn-greenwald-2019-1">common cause with America-hating leftists</a> in their joint pursuit of an emboldened Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis of evil. Today is a victory for the fifth column Deep State lackeys who have so effectively helped derail &#8220;maximum pressure&#8221;:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">The Deep State is hard at work, working to prevent this admin from dismantling the Iran nuclear deal completely &#8230; The Obama-Iran deal was a disaster when Obama implemented this policy &amp; if the Deep State prevails they will have deceived POTUS into making the same mistakes. <a href="https://t.co/jrGTRdWCKK">pic.twitter.com/jrGTRdWCKK</a>
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1169009668691320833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">I sincerely hope his leaving the White House does not mean that the deep-state forces at State and Treasury — who have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve the Obama Iran nuclear deal — have finally convinced the president to go soft on Iran.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/1171489429321437189?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The ramifications of Bolton&#8217;s ouster are potentially tragic. The jihadist regime in Tehran, augmented as it now is, will feel <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-exclusive/exclusive-iaea-found-uranium-traces-at-iran-atomic-warehouse-diplomats-idUSKCN1VT0L8">even more unrestrained to violate</a> the symbolic tatters of the Iran nuclear deal. Turkey and Saudi Arabia will expedite their nuclear bombmaking processes as part of their efforts to deter these newly unrestrained hegemonic ambitions of the world&#8217;s number one state sponsor of terrorism. Israel will feel increasingly isolated and increasingly willing to take unilateral action against Iranian nuclear facilities. Perhaps most distressingly, the United States has now once again shown — in true Obama-esque fashion — that it is less willing to protect its allies and is less willing to stand manifestly athwart its arch-foes.
Capitulations to genocidal tyrants have a long historical pedigree of working out precisely against the capitulators&#8217; expressed interests. Just ask Neville Chamberlain.
A U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation was exasperated by Bolton&#8217;s firing, exclusively telling The Daily Wire: &#8220;Trump is so thirsty for a meeting with Iran. It&#8217;s embarrassing. He was told that Iran will meet with him, but only if he throws Bolton under the bus. Bolton found out first and resigned so he could go out on his own terms. The worry is that now Trump has no one to save him from himself.&#8221;
Spot-on. Bad, bad, bad Trump.

Rouhani&#8217;s photo set behind image of weapons in Iran

HAMMER: BAD TRUMP: President’s Dismissal Of John Bolton Is A Capitulation To Terrorist Iranian Regime

John Bolton

Republican Party

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