At a time when the world is wrangling with the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State and the resulting refugee crisis bringing an influx of Muslims into Europe, I am pleased to share that my most recent legal journal article was published this month by the International Journal for Religious Freedom (Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2014). The article is entitled, "Defending the freedom of expression: The danger and failure of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation’s campaign for global anti-blasphemy laws" (article starts at page 31).
There is no question that when it comes to an open discussion about religion, and more particularly, Islam, many in the Western world either hesitate or pause before sharing their legitimate questions, comments or concerns. However, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation ("OIC"), an international body representing the world's Muslim nations, has made a concerted effort to attempt to legally stifle any and all legitimate criticism of Islam, which it deems "blasphemy".
My article critically examines the OIC's campaign for global anti-blasphemy laws and argues that these laws once more
represent a dangerous legislative proposition that must be defeated by Western and
allied democracies. Take the time to read this carefully, and feel free to Tweet at me to discuss. I hope you enjoy reading my work.
Special thanks to Dr. Sauer and the editorial team at the IJRF for assisting with this publication.
To read my other Published Work, click here.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime" published by the Gatestone Institute
Pleased to share my latest article which was published today by the Gatestone Institute, a New York-based think tank. I am honoured to be published by the Gatestone Institute for the first time, alongside many distinguished writers, thinkers and political leaders.
The Iran deal represents a disconcerting transaction between the West and the radical Shi'a Islamist regime in Tehran. Please read and share widely. Special thank you to Nina Rosenwald for her assistance on the final draft. - R.O.
Gatestone Institute - July 28, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6237/obama-iran-gamble
In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.
But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.
Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House's defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.
Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria's Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia's Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.
Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran's massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress's opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.
There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House's blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.
Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to "war." This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents' fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran's weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to "close" the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.
Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran's vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran's uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime's finances.
Third, the gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi'a Islamism.
This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State -- a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi'a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.
The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran's rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.
In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that "the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure." Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?
President Obama's willingness to concede Iran's new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.
It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.
Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.
By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.
If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world's deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.
As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.
To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department's SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.
Next, while Iran's regional malignancy may run deep in the regime's veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
Third, those who argue that Iran's human rights record was not "on the table" in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West's moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.
At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?
In defense of Obama's approach, the deal's supporters point out that the Iranians are a "proud, nationalistic people," which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany's Third Reich.
The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.
The Iran deal represents a disconcerting transaction between the West and the radical Shi'a Islamist regime in Tehran. Please read and share widely. Special thank you to Nina Rosenwald for her assistance on the final draft. - R.O.
-----------
"Obama's Gamble with Iran's Theocratic Regime"Gatestone Institute - July 28, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6237/obama-iran-gamble
- Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
- Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.
- The gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi'a Islamism.
- A total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. An end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
- There is still time for a better deal that can be had.
In Europe, it seems, there is no debate to be had over the Iran deal; rather, it is a fait accompli.
But in the United States, the domestic debate is heating up, fueled by a Presidential primary campaign and increasingly justified bipartisan anxiety over the bill.
Independent of these political realities, however, the immediacy and tenacity of the White House's defense of the Iran deal (which now has its own @TheIranDeal Twitter account, no less), betrays an acute unspoken discomfort by many Democrats with the practical flaws and global security dangers that the deal presents.
Obama's Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President's fundamentally misguided worldview, one that wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
Haunted by his electorally-motivated premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; his refusal in 2013 to confront Syria's Bashar Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people; his betrayal by Russia's Vladimir Putin to whom he had offered a reset button, and his impotence in failing to respond to the aggressive expansionist moves of Russia, ISIS, Iran and China, the President and Democrat Party, in signing the Iran deal, seem to be trying to absolve the United States of its role at the forefront of the global fight against Islamic radicalism and other threats.
Citing the failed EU-led negotiations with Iran in 2005, which resulted in Iran's massive expansion of centrifuge production, defenders of the deal, such as Fareed Zakaria, have painted a bleak and zero-sum counterfactual argument. It is claimed that the result of Congress's opposition will be an international community that forges ahead on renewed trade relations with Iran, while leaving the United States outside the prevailing global reconciliation and supposed love-in with the Islamic Republic.
There are several serious problems with this defense, and similarly with the White House's blitzkrieg public relations campaign to fend off detractors of the Iran deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry commanding the preemptive, and often totally inaccurate, strikes against Congress. In consideration of the colossal failure represented by the North Korea nuclear precedent, let us consider the issues unique to Iran.
Foremost, opponents of the Iran deal are not universally suggesting the Iran deal be killed outright or immediately resort to "war." This is simply disingenuous. Instead, the opponents' fundamental premise is that a better deal was left on the table, and thus remains available. The very fact that the Iranian regime was at the negotiating table was indeed a sign of Iran's weakness; any timelines for the P5+1 to "close" the deal were artificial constraints that surely erased further achievable concessions.
Second, much ink has already been spilled about the technical weaknesses of the Iran deal. Namely: that Iran's vast nuclear infrastructure remains in place; that the most important restrictions expire in 10 years (a mere blip for humanity); that Iran's uncivilized domestic and regional behavior was a naughty unmentionable; and finally, that the deal undoubtedly initiated a regional nuclear arms race while supercharging the Iranian regime's finances.
Third, the gravest consequence of Obama's Iran deal, and the most damning of its continued defense, is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic's radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Twelver Shi'a Islamism.
This capitulation occurred precisely at a time when the West and the broader Middle East are facing off against the Islamic State -- a terrorist force which, when stripped of its social media allure, is ultimately a Sunni-branded spin-off of the extremist Shi'a Islamism that has ruled in Iran since 1979.
The Iranians may be convenient allies as enemies of our enemies today, but not for one second have Iran's rulers suggested their ultimate intent is anything other than the all too familiar "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" propaganda seen for the past 36 years. In what is objectively and wholly a strange deadly obsession, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been rousing crowds with calls for the destruction of two nation-states both during and after nuclear negotiations.
In spite of this public malice, defenders of the deal suggest that "the [Obama] administration is making a calculated bet that Iran will be constrained by international pressure." Why exactly then is Khamenei making clear the opposite?
President Obama's willingness to concede Iran's new-found normalized membership in the community of nations on the basis of this nuclear deal is an affront to the liberal, free, democratic principles that have stood against the forces of tyranny throughout American history.
It is also an affront the American political system and to the members of both parties who are now being cornered by the President into supporting, or not supporting, such an intrinsically dangerous and needlessly flawed bargain with an avowed enemy.
Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As a number of critics have pointed out, the Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make.
By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, President Obama has bound the United States under international law without Senate consent.
If the United States is to remain the vanguard of human liberty, President Obama must distinguish between the vain pursuit of his legacy, and the civilized world's deepest need at this consequential hour for the American President to defend comprehensively the fundamental principles that underpin the modern order. Unless his desired legacy is actually to destroy it.
As opponents of the Iran deal have noted, there is still time for a better deal that can be had.
To start, a total reversal of the Iranian regime's behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. Congress can lobby for this change, and should maintain American sanctions and applicable provisions in the U.S. Treasury Department's SWIFT terrorist tracking finance program.
Next, while Iran's regional malignancy may run deep in the regime's veins (through the many twisted arms of Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), an end to Iran's financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
Third, those who argue that Iran's human rights record was not "on the table" in Geneva have needlessly abdicated the West's moral and intellectual high ground to the forces of barbarism and hate that are now waging war across the region. Respect for international humanitarian norms should never be discarded in such negotiations.
At the end of the day, the deeper questions for Obama and the entire P5+1 are this: By whose standards were negotiations conducted? And whose worldview will rule the 21st century?
In defense of Obama's approach, the deal's supporters point out that the Iranians are a "proud, nationalistic people," which is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant, just as it was for the leadership of Germany's Third Reich.
The Iranian regime, by virtue of its radical religious nature, weak economy and political experiment with theocracy, should have borne the burden of coming to the negotiating table with the most to lose. Instead, President Obama, on behalf of the free world, is allowing this pariah state to guarantee its place among the nations, lavishly rewarded for having violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in all its about-to-be-well-funded lethality.
- Robert D. Onley is a lawyer in Ottawa, Co-Founder of the Young Diplomats of Canada and a "Global Shaper" in the World Economic Forum.
- Follow Robert D. Onley on Twitter
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
"Anti-Semitism and Jewish destiny" by: Robert S. Wistrich
Anti-Semitism and Jewish destiny
By: Robert S. Wistrich - Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Anti-Semitism-and-Jewish-destiny-403703Today’s anti-Semitism is a product of a new civic religion that could be termed "Palestinianism."
On Sunday, Robert S. Wistrich – the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – emailed the following column to ‘Jerusalem Post’ Editor-in-Chief Steve Linde, asking that it be published in the coming week. Wistrich died suddenly on Tuesday. We dedicate his last column to perpetuating his memory. May his words live on.
There are few topics of more pressing concern today to Jewish communities around the world than the current resurgence of anti-Semitism. Thus, there could have been no more appropriate time for the 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to meet than last week in Jerusalem. It was a large and impressive gathering of participants from all over the world, initiated by the Foreign Ministry, together with its Diaspora Affairs Department.
In my own remarks to the conference I emphasized the need to free ourselves from certain outdated myths. My first point was that even today, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are fixated on the dangers of far-right traditional anti-Semitism – whether racist, religious or nationalist. While neo-fascism has not altogether disappeared, it is in most cases a secondary threat.
Second, there is an illusory belief that more Holocaust education and memorialization can serve as an effective antidote to contemporary anti-Semitism. This notion, shared by many governments and well-meaning liberal gentiles, is quite unfounded. On the contrary, today “Holocaust inversion” (the perverse transformation of Jews into Nazis and Muslims into victimized “Jews”) all-too-often becomes a weapon with which to pillory Israel and denigrate the Jewish people. Hence the approach to this entire subject requires considerable rethinking, updating and fine-tuning.
Third, we must recognize much more clearly than before that since 1975 (with the passing of the scandalous UN resolution condemning Zionism as racism) hatred of Israel has increasingly mutated into the chief vector for the “new” anti-Semitism.
By libeling the Jewish state as “racist,” “Nazi,” “apartheid” and founded from its inception on “ethnic cleansing,” its enemies have turned Zionism into a synonym for criminality and a term of pure opprobrium.
Hence, every Jew (or non- Jew) who supports the totally “illegitimate” or immoral “Zionist entity” is thereby complicit in a cosmic evil.
Fourth, today’s anti-Semitism is a product of a new civic religion that could be termed “Palestinianism.”
The official Palestinian narrative seeks to supplant Israel with a judenrein Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. In the case of Hamas, this intent is absolutely explicit. With Fatah, it is partly veiled for tactical reasons.
But when it comes to the Palestinian ideology and the millions around the world who support it, virtually all actions of self-defense by Israel are instantly classified as “genocide,” demonized and treated as part of a sinister Jewish-imperialist conspiracy. Not surprisingly, then, pro-Palestine demonstrations, beginning in the summer of 2014, were often accompanied by ugly chants of “Death to the Jews” and anti-Semitic incidents.
My fifth point is closely related to this reality. Since the turn of the 21st century, anti-Semitism has undergone a process of growing “Islamicization,” linked to the terrorist holy war against Jews and other non-Muslims with its truly lethal consequences.
Yet most debates skirt around the issues of Iran and radical Islam.
However, if we do not confront the prime danger posed by radical Islamist and genocidal anti-Semitism, how can our common struggle hope to succeed? One of the symptoms of this vain policy of appeasement pursued by America and Europe is the almost Pavlovian reflex after every terrorist, anti-Semitic outrage to immediately disconnect it from any link to Islam. Of course, Islamist is not identical with Islam, only a minority of Muslim believers support terrorism, and stigmatization is wrong. Equally, we must empower moderate Muslims wherever we can.
But denial does not work. Levels of anti-Semitism among Muslims clearly remain the highest in the world, and the horrific consequences of jihadi movements like Islamic State for all minorities are impossible to ignore. Nothing can be gained by sweeping this threat under the carpet.
The Islamists are the spearhead of current anti-Semitism, aided and abetted by the moral relativism of all-too-many naive Western liberals.
My sixth observation relates to the need for Israelis and Diaspora Jews to rediscover, redefine and reassess their Jewish identity, core Jewish values and the depth of their own connection to the Land of Israel as well as to their historic heritage. I was privileged to have authored two years ago the exhibition “People, Book, Land – The 3,500-Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land” for the bold project initiated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center together with UNESCO. Against all the odds and in the face of predictable opposition, it opened at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in June 2014.
In April 2015, the exhibit was even shown at UN Headquarters in New York, and it will soon come to Israel. This is not merely a historical exercise, for it shows the extraordinary tenacity, cultural vitality, spirituality, and metaphysical as well as physical bonds of Jews and Judaism to the Land of Israel. None of this was intended, it should be emphasized, to negate the historical presence and significance of Christianity and Islam in this land.
But it sets the record straight.
My final reflection flows from this experience. I believe that in an age of Jewish empowerment, living in a sovereign and democratic Israeli state, we can and must first clarify for ourselves our vocation, raison d’être, moral priorities, and the deeper meaning of our near-miraculous return to the historic homeland.
This is the other side of the coin in our essential and relentless fight against anti-Semitism. As we celebrate Jerusalem Day let us be worthy of the scriptural promise that “the Torah will come forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Here, in the beating heart of the Jewish nation, where its body and soul come together in the City of Peace, we must be true to the national and universal vision of our biblical prophets. Anti-Semitism, the long shadow which has for so long accompanied our bi-millennial Diasporic tribulations, and nearly 70 years of renewed statehood, is neither “eternal” nor must it prevent Jews from fulfilling their ultimate destiny to one day become a “light unto the nations.”
Robert S. Wistrich
Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Anti-Semitism-and-Jewish-destiny-403703
Friday, April 10, 2015
The Iran deal: Anatomy of a disaster
Top notch analysis. My broader concern is that by engaging in negotiations that accept, at that outset, that the current Iranian government is a viable long-term entity which represents the will of its people, we are legitimating one of the most extreme, theocratic regimes on earth. Think North Korea, but supercharged by a supremacist, Millennial, eschatological interpretation of the Qur'an, and you have the current sitting government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran should be more isolated than ever for its support for terrorism, illicit nuclear weapons development, and unceasing anti-Western rhetoric, but today its leaders stand empowered by the tacit recognition we have given their End of Days regime through these negotiations. Charles Krauthammer sums up these concerns nicely below. - R.O.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Iran deal: Anatomy of a disaster
By: Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post - April 9, 2015
It was but a year and a half ago that Barack Obama endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program, these would have to go.
Yet under the deal Obama is now trying to sell, not one of these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure is kept intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade). Thus Fordow’s centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fedxenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they remain ready at any time to revert from the world’s most heavily (indeed comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.
In an agreement that he called "a long time coming," President Obama announced that the U.S., Iran and other countries have reached a historic framework to curb Iran's nuclear program. (AP)
And upon the expiration of the deal, conceded Obama Monday on NPR, Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear bomb will be “almost down to zero,” i.e., it will be able to produce nuclear weapons at will and without delay.
And then there’s cheating. Not to worry, says Obama. We have guarantees of compliance: “unprecedented inspections” and “snapback” sanctions.
The inspection promises are a farce. We haven’t even held the Iranians to their current obligation to come clean with the International Atomic Energy Agency on their previous nuclear activities. The IAEA charges Iran with stonewalling on 11 of 12 issues.
As veteran nuclear expert David Albright points out, that makes future verification impossible — how can you determine what’s been illegally changed or added if you have no baseline? Worse, there’s been no mention of the only verification regime with real teeth — at-will, unannounced visits to any facility, declared or undeclared. The joint European-Iranian statement spoke only of “enhanced access through agreed procedures,” which doesn’t remotely suggest anywhere/anytime inspections. And on Thursday, Iran’s supreme leader ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures.”
The IAEA hasn’t been allowed to see the Parchin weaponization facility in 10 years. And the massive Fordow complex was disclosed not by the IAEA but by Iranian dissidents.
Yet even if violations are found, what then? First, they have to be certified by the IAEA. Which then reports to the United Nations, where Iran has the right to challenge the charge. Which then has to be considered, argued and adjudicated. Which then presumably goes to the Security Council where China, Russia and sundry anti-Western countries will act as Iran’s lawyers. Which all would take months — after which there is no guarantee that China and Russia will ratify the finding anyway.
As for the “snapback” sanctions — our last remaining bit of pressure — they are equally fantastic. There’s no way sanctions will be re-imposed once they have been lifted. It took a decade to weave China, Russia and the Europeans into the current sanctions infrastructure. Once gone, it doesn’t snap back. None will pull their companies out of a thriving, post-sanctions Iran. As Kissinger and Shultz point out, we will be fought every step of the way, leaving the United States, not Iran, isolated.
Obama imagines that this deal will bring Iran in from the cold, tempering its territorial ambitions and ideological radicalism. But this defies logic: With sanctions lifted, its economy booming and tens of billions injected into its treasury, why would Iran curb rather than expand its relentless drive for regional dominance?
An overriding objective of these negotiations, as Obama has said, is to prevent the inevitable proliferation — Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states — that would occur if Iran went nuclear. Yet the prospective agreement is so clearly a pathway to an Iranian bomb that the Saudis are signaling thatthe deal itself would impel them to go nuclear.
You set out to prevent proliferation and you trigger it. You set out to prevent an Iranian nuclear capability and you legitimize it. You set out to constrain the world’s greatest exporter of terror threatening every one of our allies in the Middle East and you’re on the verge of making it the region’s economic and military hegemon.
What is the alternative, asks the president? He’s repeatedly answered the question himself: No deal is better than a bad deal.
Iran should be more isolated than ever for its support for terrorism, illicit nuclear weapons development, and unceasing anti-Western rhetoric, but today its leaders stand empowered by the tacit recognition we have given their End of Days regime through these negotiations. Charles Krauthammer sums up these concerns nicely below. - R.O.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Iran deal: Anatomy of a disaster
By: Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post - April 9, 2015
“Negotiations . . . to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability . . . ”— Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, the Wall Street Journal, April 8
It was but a year and a half ago that Barack Obama endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran’s heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program, these would have to go.
Yet under the deal Obama is now trying to sell, not one of these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure is kept intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade). Thus Fordow’s centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fedxenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they remain ready at any time to revert from the world’s most heavily (indeed comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.
In an agreement that he called "a long time coming," President Obama announced that the U.S., Iran and other countries have reached a historic framework to curb Iran's nuclear program. (AP)
And upon the expiration of the deal, conceded Obama Monday on NPR, Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear bomb will be “almost down to zero,” i.e., it will be able to produce nuclear weapons at will and without delay.
And then there’s cheating. Not to worry, says Obama. We have guarantees of compliance: “unprecedented inspections” and “snapback” sanctions.
The inspection promises are a farce. We haven’t even held the Iranians to their current obligation to come clean with the International Atomic Energy Agency on their previous nuclear activities. The IAEA charges Iran with stonewalling on 11 of 12 issues.
As veteran nuclear expert David Albright points out, that makes future verification impossible — how can you determine what’s been illegally changed or added if you have no baseline? Worse, there’s been no mention of the only verification regime with real teeth — at-will, unannounced visits to any facility, declared or undeclared. The joint European-Iranian statement spoke only of “enhanced access through agreed procedures,” which doesn’t remotely suggest anywhere/anytime inspections. And on Thursday, Iran’s supreme leader ruled out any “extraordinary supervision measures.”
The IAEA hasn’t been allowed to see the Parchin weaponization facility in 10 years. And the massive Fordow complex was disclosed not by the IAEA but by Iranian dissidents.
Yet even if violations are found, what then? First, they have to be certified by the IAEA. Which then reports to the United Nations, where Iran has the right to challenge the charge. Which then has to be considered, argued and adjudicated. Which then presumably goes to the Security Council where China, Russia and sundry anti-Western countries will act as Iran’s lawyers. Which all would take months — after which there is no guarantee that China and Russia will ratify the finding anyway.
As for the “snapback” sanctions — our last remaining bit of pressure — they are equally fantastic. There’s no way sanctions will be re-imposed once they have been lifted. It took a decade to weave China, Russia and the Europeans into the current sanctions infrastructure. Once gone, it doesn’t snap back. None will pull their companies out of a thriving, post-sanctions Iran. As Kissinger and Shultz point out, we will be fought every step of the way, leaving the United States, not Iran, isolated.
Obama imagines that this deal will bring Iran in from the cold, tempering its territorial ambitions and ideological radicalism. But this defies logic: With sanctions lifted, its economy booming and tens of billions injected into its treasury, why would Iran curb rather than expand its relentless drive for regional dominance?
An overriding objective of these negotiations, as Obama has said, is to prevent the inevitable proliferation — Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states — that would occur if Iran went nuclear. Yet the prospective agreement is so clearly a pathway to an Iranian bomb that the Saudis are signaling thatthe deal itself would impel them to go nuclear.
You set out to prevent proliferation and you trigger it. You set out to prevent an Iranian nuclear capability and you legitimize it. You set out to constrain the world’s greatest exporter of terror threatening every one of our allies in the Middle East and you’re on the verge of making it the region’s economic and military hegemon.
What is the alternative, asks the president? He’s repeatedly answered the question himself: No deal is better than a bad deal.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Krauthammer: "No peace in our time" - The Washington Post
Every once and a while, a writer completely nails a complex topic - succinctly, boldly, and accurately. This is one of those articles, on Israel and the Middle East, no less. Must read. - R.O.
"No peace in our time"
Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister.
I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.
This is not ancient history. This is 2000, 2001 and 2008 — three astonishingly concessionary peace offers within the past 15 years. Every one rejected.
The fundamental reality remains: This generation of Palestinian leadership — from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas — has never and will never sign its name to a final peace settlement dividing the land with a Jewish state. And without that, no Israeli government of any kind will agree to a Palestinian state.
Today, however, there is a second reason a peace agreement is impossible: the supreme instability of the entire Middle East. For half a century, it was run by dictators no one liked but with whom you could do business. For example, the 1974 Israel-Syria disengagement agreement yielded more than four decades of near-total quiet on the border because the Assad dictatorships so decreed.
That authoritarian order is gone, overthrown by the Arab Spring. Syria is wracked by a multi-sided civil war that has killed 200,000 people and that has al-Qaeda allies, Hezbollah fighters, government troops and eventhe occasional Iranian general prowling the Israeli border. Who inherits? No one knows.
In the last four years, Egypt has had two revolutions and three radically different regimes. Yemen went from pro-American to Iranian client so quickly the United States had to evacuate its embassy in a panic. Libya has gone from Moammar Gaddafi’s crazy authoritarianism to jihadi-dominated civil war. On Wednesday, Tunisia, the one relative success of the Arab Spring, suffered a major terror attack that the prime minister said “targets the stability of the country.”
From Mali to Iraq, everything is in flux. Amid this mayhem, by what magic would the West Bank, riven by a bitter Fatah-Hamas rivalry, be an island of stability? What would give any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement even a modicum of durability?
There was a time when Arafat commanded the Palestinian movement the way Gaddafi commanded Libya. Abbas commands no one. Why do you think he is in the 11th year of a four-year term, having refused to hold elections for the last five years? Because he’s afraid he would lose to Hamas.
With or without elections, the West Bank could fall to Hamas overnight. At which point fire rains down on Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and the entire Israeli urban heartland — just as it rains down on southern Israel from Gaza when it suits Hamas, which has turned that first Palestinian state into a terrorist fire base.
Any Arab-Israeli peace settlement would require Israel to make dangerous and inherently irreversible territorial concessions on the West Bank in return for promises and guarantees. Under current conditions, these would be written on sand.
Israel is ringed by jihadi terrorists in Sinai, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic State and Iranian proxies in Syria, and a friendly but highly fragile Jordan. Israelis have no idea who ends up running any of these places. Will the Islamic State advance to an Israeli border? Will Iranian Revolutionary Guards appear on the Golan Heights? No one knows.
Well, say the critics. Israel could be given outside guarantees. Guarantees? Like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which the United States, Britain and Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity”? Like the red line in Syria? Like the unanimous U.N. resolutions declaring illegal any Iranian enrichment of uranium — now effectively rendered null?
Peace awaits three things. Eventual Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish state. A Palestinian leader willing to sign a deal based on that premise. A modicum of regional stability that allows Israel to risk the potentially fatal withdrawals such a deal would entail.
I believe such a day will come. But there is zero chance it comes now or even soon. That’s essentially what Netanyahu said Thursday in explaining — and softening — his no-Palestinian-state statement.
In the interim, I understand the crushing disappointment of the Obama administration and its media poodles at the spectacular success of the foreign leader they loathe more than any other on the planet. The consequent seething and sputtering are understandable, if unseemly. Blaming Netanyahu for banishing peace, however, is mindless.
"No peace in our time"
By: Charles Krauthammer - The Washington Post
March 20, 2015
Of all the idiocies uttered in reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning election victory, none is more ubiquitous than the idea that peace prospects are now dead because Netanyahu has declared that there will be no Palestinian state while he is Israel’s prime minister.
I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.
This is not ancient history. This is 2000, 2001 and 2008 — three astonishingly concessionary peace offers within the past 15 years. Every one rejected.
The fundamental reality remains: This generation of Palestinian leadership — from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas — has never and will never sign its name to a final peace settlement dividing the land with a Jewish state. And without that, no Israeli government of any kind will agree to a Palestinian state.
Today, however, there is a second reason a peace agreement is impossible: the supreme instability of the entire Middle East. For half a century, it was run by dictators no one liked but with whom you could do business. For example, the 1974 Israel-Syria disengagement agreement yielded more than four decades of near-total quiet on the border because the Assad dictatorships so decreed.
That authoritarian order is gone, overthrown by the Arab Spring. Syria is wracked by a multi-sided civil war that has killed 200,000 people and that has al-Qaeda allies, Hezbollah fighters, government troops and eventhe occasional Iranian general prowling the Israeli border. Who inherits? No one knows.
In the last four years, Egypt has had two revolutions and three radically different regimes. Yemen went from pro-American to Iranian client so quickly the United States had to evacuate its embassy in a panic. Libya has gone from Moammar Gaddafi’s crazy authoritarianism to jihadi-dominated civil war. On Wednesday, Tunisia, the one relative success of the Arab Spring, suffered a major terror attack that the prime minister said “targets the stability of the country.”
From Mali to Iraq, everything is in flux. Amid this mayhem, by what magic would the West Bank, riven by a bitter Fatah-Hamas rivalry, be an island of stability? What would give any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement even a modicum of durability?
There was a time when Arafat commanded the Palestinian movement the way Gaddafi commanded Libya. Abbas commands no one. Why do you think he is in the 11th year of a four-year term, having refused to hold elections for the last five years? Because he’s afraid he would lose to Hamas.
With or without elections, the West Bank could fall to Hamas overnight. At which point fire rains down on Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and the entire Israeli urban heartland — just as it rains down on southern Israel from Gaza when it suits Hamas, which has turned that first Palestinian state into a terrorist fire base.
Any Arab-Israeli peace settlement would require Israel to make dangerous and inherently irreversible territorial concessions on the West Bank in return for promises and guarantees. Under current conditions, these would be written on sand.
Israel is ringed by jihadi terrorists in Sinai, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic State and Iranian proxies in Syria, and a friendly but highly fragile Jordan. Israelis have no idea who ends up running any of these places. Will the Islamic State advance to an Israeli border? Will Iranian Revolutionary Guards appear on the Golan Heights? No one knows.
Well, say the critics. Israel could be given outside guarantees. Guarantees? Like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which the United States, Britain and Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity”? Like the red line in Syria? Like the unanimous U.N. resolutions declaring illegal any Iranian enrichment of uranium — now effectively rendered null?
Peace awaits three things. Eventual Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish state. A Palestinian leader willing to sign a deal based on that premise. A modicum of regional stability that allows Israel to risk the potentially fatal withdrawals such a deal would entail.
I believe such a day will come. But there is zero chance it comes now or even soon. That’s essentially what Netanyahu said Thursday in explaining — and softening — his no-Palestinian-state statement.
In the interim, I understand the crushing disappointment of the Obama administration and its media poodles at the spectacular success of the foreign leader they loathe more than any other on the planet. The consequent seething and sputtering are understandable, if unseemly. Blaming Netanyahu for banishing peace, however, is mindless.
Monday, February 16, 2015
"Islam and the West at War" - NY Times
By: Roger Cohen –
Feb. 16, 2015
After a Danish movie director at a seminar on “Art,
Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression” and a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue were
shot dead in Copenhagen, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark,
uttered a familiar trope:
“We are not in the middle of a battle between Islam and the West. It’s not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s a battle between values based on the freedom of the individual and a dark ideology.”
This statement — with its echoes of President Obama’s vague
references to “violent extremists” uncoupled from the fundamentalist Islam to
which said throat-cutting extremists pledge allegiance — scarcely stands up to
scrutiny. It is empty talk.
Across a wide swath of territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in
Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, the West has been or is at war, or
near-war, with the Muslim world, in a failed bid to eradicate a metastasizing
Islamist movement of murderous hatred toward Western civilization.
To call this movement, whose most potent recent
manifestation is the Islamic State, a “dark ideology” is like calling Nazism a
reaction to German humiliation in World War I: true but wholly inadequate.
There is little point in Western politicians rehearsing lines about there being
no battle between Islam and the West, when in all the above-mentioned countries
tens of millions of Muslims, with much carnage as evidence, believe the
contrary.
The Danish filmmaker Finn Norgaard was killed a little over
a decade after another movie director, Theo van Gogh, was slain in Amsterdam
for making a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women. The Islamists’ war is
against freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press,
freedom of blasphemy, sexual freedom — in short, core characteristics of
democracies seen by the would-be rebuilders of the Caliphate as signs of
Western debasement.
Do not provoke them with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad,
some say, show respect for Islam, the peaceful faith of some 1.6 billion
people. But what, pray, was the “provocation” of Dan Uzan, the Jewish security
guard outside the Copenhagen synagogue?
Islam is a religion that has spawned multifaceted political
movements whose goal is power. Islam, as such, is fair game for commentators,
caricaturists and cartoonists, whose inclination to mock the depredations of
theocracy and political Islam’s cynical uses of the Prophet cannot be cowed by
fear.
Over the more than 13 years since Al Qaeda attacked America
on 9/11, we have seen trains blown up in Madrid, the Tube and a bus bombed in
London, Western journalists beheaded, the staff of Charlie Hebdo slaughtered,
Jews killed in France and Belgium and now Denmark. This is not the work of a
“dark ideology” but of jihadi terror.
On the right of Europe’s political spectrum, anger is rising
against Islam, against marginalized Muslim communities, who in turn feel
discriminated against and misrepresented, with cause. Several thousand young
European Muslims troop off to join ISIS. Europe’s Jews are on edge, with cause.
Israel calls them home. In the United States, three Muslim students were killed
this month by a gunman in a possible hate crime denounced by Obama as “brutal
and outrageous.” A tide of retaliatory menace rises.
Who or what is to blame? There are two schools. For the
first, it is the West that is to blame through its support for Israel (seen as
the latest iteration of Western imperialism in the Levant); its wars (Iraq);
its brutality, (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib); its killing of civilians (drones); its
oil-driven hypocrisy (a jihadi-funding Saudi ally).
For the second, it is rather the abject failure of the Arab
world, its blocked societies where dictators face off against political Islam,
its repression, its feeble institutions, its sectarianism precluding the
practice of participatory citizenship, its wild conspiracy theories, its
inability to provide jobs or hope for its youth, that gives the Islamic State
its appeal.
I find the second view more persuasive. The rise of the
Islamic State, and Obama’s new war, are a direct result of the failure of the
Arab Spring, which had seemed to offer a path out of the deadlocked,
jihadi-spawning societies of the Arab world.
Only Arabs can find the answer to this crisis. But history,
I suspect, will not judge Obama kindly for having failed to foster the great
liberation movement that rose up in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.
Inaction is also a policy: Nonintervention produced Syria today.
I hear the words of Chokri Belaid, the brave Tunisian
lawyer, shortly before he was gunned down by Islamist fanatics on Feb. 6, 2013:
“We can disagree in our diversity but within a civilian, peaceful and
democratic framework. Disagree in our diversity, yes!”
To speak of a nonspecific “dark ideology,” to dismiss the
reality of conflict between the West and Islam, is also to undermine the
anti-Islamist struggle of brave Muslims like Belaid — and these Muslims are the
only people, ultimately, who can defeat the black-flagged jihadi death
merchants.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Elected Curator of the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub
Pleased to share that yesterday I was elected Curator of the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub, part of the Global Shapers Community founded by the World Economic Forum, of which I have been a member for the last year.
I am honoured to have been provided this leadership opportunity, and look forward to leading and executing many more projects, such as Shaping Davos: Rethinking Politics, which the Ottawa Hub hosted on January 22/23. Congratulations as well to the Hub's new Vice Curator, Ms. Maria Habanikova, who I look forward to working with. Special thanks to outgoing curator, Komal Minhas, for her strong example and for encouraging me to run for the position.
Be sure to check out the links for more info. - R.O.
I am honoured to have been provided this leadership opportunity, and look forward to leading and executing many more projects, such as Shaping Davos: Rethinking Politics, which the Ottawa Hub hosted on January 22/23. Congratulations as well to the Hub's new Vice Curator, Ms. Maria Habanikova, who I look forward to working with. Special thanks to outgoing curator, Komal Minhas, for her strong example and for encouraging me to run for the position.
Be sure to check out the links for more info. - R.O.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Shaping Davos: Rethinking Politics
http://www.globalshapers.org/news/highlights-shaping-davos-ottawa
The World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Ottawa Hub is thrilled with the success of its inaugural event, Shaping Davos Ottawa: Rethinking Politics, after an engaging and informative panel discussion hosted at the Rideau Club in downtown Ottawa on Thursday, January 22, 2015. The event would not have been possible without key financial support from Invest Ottawa, Hill + Knowlton, and KoMedia. 
The evening was part of the Forum's global dialogue initiative called Shaping Davos, a new concept to bring the world to the WEF’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters (January 21-24, 2015), and in turn bring Davos to the world. The Ottawa Hub was selected as one of 40 cities globally to host a local event, which the Hub followed up on Friday morning with a virtual broadcast to Davos-Klosters via satellite with CBC Power & Politics host Evan Solomon from CBC Ottawa headquarters.
The evening was part of the Forum's global dialogue initiative called Shaping Davos, a new concept to bring the world to the WEF’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters (January 21-24, 2015), and in turn bring Davos to the world. The Ottawa Hub was selected as one of 40 cities globally to host a local event, which the Hub followed up on Friday morning with a virtual broadcast to Davos-Klosters via satellite with CBC Power & Politics host Evan Solomon from CBC Ottawa headquarters.
- Robert Onley, Curator of the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub, addresses the audience.
On Thursday, in front of a crowd of 100 select guests, we hosted a panel discussion moderated by the Friday host for CTV's Power Play, Mercedes Stephenson, about: “Canada’s Role in the Future of Governance: Open Government, Engaged Citizens." Opening the discussion were keynote addresses by Robert Greenhill, founder of Global-Canada and former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, as well as Peggy Taillon, President of the Canadian Council on Social Development. Panelists included:
- Paul Heinbecker, Canada’s former Ambassador to the United Nations
- Maryantonett Flumian, President of the Institute on Governance
- Ilona Dougherty, Founder, Apathy is Boring
- Giovanna Mingarelli, CEO and Co-Founder, PlayMC2 and Ottawa Global Shaper
- Bryan Smith, Co-Founder & Vice-President, ThinkDataWorks
- Bruce Lazenby, CEO of Invest Ottawa
Through its panel discussion, the Ottawa Hub was tasked with focusing on civic apathy in exploring how modern open data and open governance concepts can tackle the problem. Panelists assessed the need to provide citizens with information, engaging them in real time and empowering them to make decisions in their communities and concluded that such action is critical to improving governance. It is well understood that engaged citizens are critical to nation building, and the panel stated that Canada needs fresh thinking in its political system and engaged citizens can help this. To ensure that our government makes the best policies possible we need greater transparency, participation and collaboration. Canada cannot afford to miss doing this. A full summary of the dialogue will be produced in the coming weeks.
Capping the night, the CEO of Invest Ottawa, Bruce Lazenby, delivered a powerful snapshot presentation on the strengths of the City of Ottawa. For part 2 of Shaping Davos, the next morning at the CBC News headquarters, members of the Ottawa Hub met with CBC Power & Politics host Evan Solomon for the Hub's "Virtual Speaker" live-feed broadcast into the Davos Annual Meeting in Switzerland. Representing the Ottawa Hub on Friday, Solomon summarized the Thursday evening dialogue as part of a separate panel discussion in Davos moderated by Anne Marie Slaughter. Video of the Davos panel on Rethinking Politics, including Solomon's comments, can be viewed on the official Shaping Davos website here (click the "Rethinking Politics" video to watch).
- Evan Solomon, in-studio during the "Virtual Speaker" live stream into the Davos Annual Meeting.
Shaping Davos: Rethinking Politics was the first major World Economic Forum event directly connected with the Davos Annual Meeting that the Global Shapers Ottawa Hub has hosted in Ottawa. The Ottawa Hub looks forward to many more in the years to come. Check out the photos below for a peek at what transpired, and a full video of the panel will be uploaded soon.
By: Robert D. Onley, Curator, Global Shapers Ottawa Hub
Saturday, January 17, 2015
The Islamic State's Third Target - An Interview with Joel C. Rosenberg
This week I was honoured to interview New York Times bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg about his new novel, The Third Target. As a longtime fan and follower of Rosenberg's work, I was intrigued at the opportunity to speak with him again, following my first interview with him back in June 2010 in an article later published in the Jerusalem Post.
Below is my latest interview with Rosenberg, published today in the Times of Israel. Read it here: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-islamic-states-third-target/
The Islamic State's Third Target
By: Robert D. Onley - Times of Israel - January 17, 2015
Below is my latest interview with Rosenberg, published today in the Times of Israel. Read it here: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-islamic-states-third-target/
The Islamic State's Third Target
By: Robert D. Onley - Times of Israel - January 17, 2015
With reports indicating that Islamic State militants are managing to gain territory in Iraq and Syria in spite of US and coalition air strikes, the world is witnessing a nightmare scenario unfold across the Middle East: what if the Islamic State simply cannot be stopped?
In New York Times bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg’s latest novel, The Third Target, this troubling question is examined in serious, careful detail. Known for eerily prescient political thrillers whose plots accurately predicted hijacked airliners attacking the United States, the Iraq War, and the death of Yasser Arafat (among other major geopolitical events), Rosenberg and his books rocketed in popularity over the last fifteen years.
The Third Target
After writing extensively about radical Islam in both fiction and nonfiction, from Sunni jihadists with AK’s to Shia theocrats pursuing nuclear weapons, last year Rosenberg set out to examine whether a terror threat existed that he was not yet aware of, but ought to be.
Helping his investigative efforts, Rosenberg is a former advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu with an extensive network of friends and officials whom he tapped to explore the question above. In researching The Third Target, Rosenberg met with two former heads of the CIA, R. James Woolsey and Porter Goss, and the former head of the Mossad, Danny Yatom, among many other intelligence officials. Months before the Islamic State, or ISIL, burst onto the international scene, the answers Rosenberg heard separately from these intelligence chiefs were both unanimous and chilling.
“They each were concerned that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was morphing into something new, something more dangerous,” Rosenberg says. In early 2014, while President Obama went on the record claiming that ISIL was merely a “jayvee team” and hardly worth worrying about, Rosenberg stated, “These officials warned me that what kept them up at night was the rise of this Al-Qaeda offshoot, ISIL, and the reality that an Islamist-led overthrow of Jordan was a genuine worst-case scenario and a possibility.”
Rosenberg meeting with Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour in Amman as part of the research for “The Third Target.”
These foreboding comments prompted Rosenberg to dig further. After more meetings in Washington, he traveled to Jordan, meeting with Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, and Interior Minister Hussein Al-Majali to discuss regional threats. Mentioning potential plot ideas, including a chemical attack and the risk of an overthrow, Al-Majali responded to Rosenberg, “the King has appointed me to make sure the scenario that you are writing about will never happen in our country. But it is a plausible scenario, and that is the problem.”
“What if ISIL tries to set into motion attacks on a number of targets – and what if one of those targets was Jordan, Israel, or the United States?”
After digesting countless intensive interviews with Western and Middle Eastern officials, Rosenberg sat down to write The Third Target, which, soon after the first draft was finished and in light of ISIL’s rapid rise across the Middle East, had its release date pushed up by three months. Published early on January 6th of this year, The Third Target imagines a scenario in which ISIL captures a cache of chemical weapons in Syria, and threatens to deploy them against an unknown city. Rosenberg says,“The question I wanted to ask in this book was, what if ISIL tries to set into motion attacks on a number of targets – and what if one of those targets was Jordan, Israel, or the United States?”
As if the plot was ripped from the headlines and bringing the pages of The Third Target alive, Jordan’s King Abdullah recently stated publicly on CBS News that the battle against ISIL, is, in effect, “our generation’s Third World War.” But in order to stop ISIL and thwart any attempt to attack Jordan, Rosenberg believes that President Obama and the leaders of NATO must view ISIL as “such a significant threat to national security” that the US takes “decisive military action, with no more half measures.”
Rosenberg cites a long-list of realistic military actions that the US is not currently conducting to help destroy ISIL, including not allowing U.S. Special Forces on the ground to provide precise targeting for air strikes, and not permitting 24/7, 7-day a week airlifts of supplies to Kurdish troops fighting in northern Iraq, “even though the Kurds are the most aggressive fighters and the most immediately endangered by ISIL.”
Critiquing the Obama Administration, Rosenberg pulls no punches, saying of Obama’s half-hearted campaign against ISIL that, “This is not working. This is not decisive action. This is foreign policy by press release.” Arguably Obama’s failure to act decisively also lends credibility to the terrifying potential for the ISIL-led chemical weapons attack that is envisioned in The Third Target.
“Obama is also missing the greatest strategic alliance against radical Islam in history.”
But beyond the US not showing up in Paris to show solidarity following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Rosenberg notes that, “Obama is also missing the greatest strategic alliance against radical Islam in history.” Rosenberg believes three men emerging who are the “Winston Churchill’s of our time, and none of them are in London, Paris or Washington. They are all in the Middle East.”
Rosenberg lists Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and Egypt’s President el-Sisi, as the only global leaders who truly see the existential threat posed to them and to their people by two different, but equally radical Islamic forces: the Shia radicals in Iran, and the Sunni radicals of ISIL. “President el-Sisi and King Abdullah have no qualms calling this a battle against radical Islam,” Rosenberg pointed out, “while President Obama and his Press Secretary refuse to use the term ‘radical Islam’ for fear of being ‘offensive.’” The difference in mentality could not be more stark.
Not only is Jordan committed to fighting radical Islam militarily, Rosenberg says King Abdullah II and his team are also committed to deconstructing radical Islam theologically, stating, “I sat with the King’s men, who explained how they are rallying support among hundreds of Islamic scholars all across the Middle East and the world to explain their version of moderate Islam, and to deconstruct what they call takfiri Islam, which is what the radicals believe.”
“President el-Sisi told the imams that they “must revolutionize and reform modern Islam”, with Rosenberg adding, “Sisi did so at a real risk to his own life in Egypt.”
Rosenberg further cited Egyptian President el-Sisi’s recent speech to Muslim clerics on New Years Day, where el-Sisi told the imams that they “must revolutionize and reform modern Islam,” with Rosenberg adding, “Sisi did so at a real risk to his own life in Egypt.” Netanyahu similarly has spoken out against the threat of radical Islam on numerous occasions. All the while, Rosenberg says, “These are allies at risk, and Obama simply won’t help these men win the battle.”
As ISIL marches, the regular stream of their grotesque snuff films continues to inundate the mainstream news. On the surface, the incomprehensibly evil actions of ISIL seem to be the product of mass delusional hysteria – violence for the sake of violence. But Rosenberg hints at a deeper motive for ISIL and their ilk, one grounded in a strict interpretation of the Quran and hadiths.
“Both the radical Sunnis and Shias have an eschatology – or End Times belief system – that talks about establishing the Islamic Kingdom or Caliphate: the radical Shias are waiting for their Messiah while they build nuclear weapons, before picking an apocalyptic fight with the West or another nation in the region,” Rosenberg explains.
“ISIL…[is] building the Caliphate now, desperately trying to usher in End of Days by killing and enslaving those caught up in their apocalyptic, genocidal vision.”
However Rosenberg contrasts this belief with those of radical Sunnis, such as ISIL, who he says have decided not to wait: they are building the Caliphate now, “desperately trying to usher in End of Days by killing and enslaving those caught up in their apocalyptic, genocidal vision. I spoke to one Pastor in Iraq, who said to me: ‘Joel, this is demonic. When ISIL chops off someone’s head, this is not just terrorizing – these are blood sacrifices to the Islamic State’s ‘God’.’ These are the genocidal conditions emerging in Iraq and Syria.”
In writing The Third Target, Rosenberg hopes to bring readers into the ‘living room’ of the savage, barbaric mindset of ISIL, to help people see how urgent the threat is, and explore why we must act decisively to crush it, “When I started to write this book, I was thinking that the threat was 4 to 5 years away. It moved much faster than I expected.”
Underscoring the intensity of Joel Rosenberg as an author and advocate, and emphasizing his passion when speaking out about these issues, Rosenberg and his family recently made Aliyah to Israel after living their entire lives in the United States. As an evangelical Christian with a Jewish father, Rosenberg says that he wants to use his novels “to inform people in the West, generally, and Christians in particular, that now is the time to stand with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and all people of good will who will fight against radical Islam.”
He says that he is honoured to stand with Israel in this fight, and notes that in due time his sons will be drafted to serve to protect Israel, “I believe that there is a great movement of Christians around the world who love Israel, who are standing with the Jewish People, and that my role and contribution to Israeli society is trying to educate and mobilize that Christian support for Israel, especially at this time, when the battle against radical Islam is so urgent.” The Third Target is his latest salvo in that fight.
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