"Islam and the West at War" - NY Times

Islam and the West at War

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.

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

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.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 3 of 3)

I invite you to read the conclusion of my three-part series on "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL", published today by The Huffington Post. Be sure to read Part 1 and read Part 2 first. - R.O.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 3 of 3)
The Huffington Post
By: Robert D. Onley - October 16, 2014

Part 3 of 3 in a series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Defeating ISIL and its ideology
For peaceful democratic societies, the challenge is this: how do you stop a destructive force like ISIL, one which cherishes death? How do you convince the globe's Islamic radicals, and ISIL in particular, that life -- for its fighters, supporters, and its persecuted victims -- is in fact far better than death? Or is the only choice for Western and civilized societies one that grants these deranged men their wish, through laser-guided swift deaths which kill as many ISIL fighters as possible? As civilized nations which value the preservation of life, reaching this conclusion is as disturbing as recognizing the stark reality that it is in fact the only option.

Once more in fulfilling its role as the vanguard of global liberty, the United States has led air strikes against ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria in support of advancing Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers. In spite of President Obama's reticence in doing so, the United States government understands that the only way to stop the physical military advance of ISIL fighters is to use military force in kind. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is one of the few American leaders to public comment on ISIL's End Times goals, when he acknowledged that:

"[The Islamic State] is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated."

Hagel further added that ISIL is:

"...beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of ... military prowess... [that] is beyond anything we've seen."

As world leaders express their horror at ISIL's tactics, unrelenting oppression and brutality toward religious minorities, few leaders or media commentators have assessed why it is that such an evil group can recruit so many new soldiers -- and foreign fighters -- to begin with. Thus the need for a public discussion about Islamic End Times beliefs has never been greater.

Wake up to ISIL's End Times beliefs now
In attempting to understand this global enemy, Western leaders would be wise to consider the role that their governments must play in halting ISIL's End Times goals and in preventing the long-term survival of an "Islamic State."

ISIL fighters are under no illusion about what their ultimate objective is: to usher in the Islamic "End Times". Thus Western leaders and military planners must be equally convicted about their goals. President Obama's overdue assertion that ISIL "will be defeated" was a welcome show of Western resolve. ISIL territory cannot become a national safe haven for terrorists, and moreover the West cannot permit the theological notion that Caliph Ibrahim has in some way fulfilled the Qur'an's prophecies concerning the Islamic End Times. Indeed there is no doubt that the entire global Islamic community is watching to see whether ISIL will be defeated in Syria and Iraq.

It is ISIL's End Times beliefs and the urgency of their battlefield success which has inspired the growth of the terrorist organization. Unless stopped now, the terror group only has the potential to grow larger, fiercer, and more determined in achieving Allah's Judgment Day vision. Western foreign policy commentators must break out of their comfort zones and begin to speak publicly about the genuinely religious nature of the ISIL threat and against the beliefs which drive the movement.

Simply claiming that ISIL's acts are "un-Islamic" does nothing to respond to the deeply prophetic Islamic agenda that ISIL espouses. ISIL is an enemy clearly communicating its aims, blatantly using the Qur'an as its guiding doctrine. Rather than gloss over this fact, the foreign policy world needs its brightest lights to expose this doctrine and overpower its distorted message in response.

Providing proper analysis and with due regard for the sincere religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not seek to create a revived Islamic Caliphate under the repressive purview of Sharia law, it is possible to initiate global dialogue about the reality of ISIL's End Times goal, with candor, clarity and objectivity. Millions of lives are at stake in a battle that has already claimed countless innocent human beings. After the call from the UN for a humanitarian aid mission in Iraq, the international community has admitted that what was perhaps at first a domestic Iraqi counter-terror operation is now a global religious freedom and a human rights crisis which threatens to envelop more people and draw in ever more militant forces.

With the civil war festering in Syria claiming 200,000 lives, the two-month conflict between Israel and Hamas still smoldering, worsening strife in Libya and Pakistan, and ISIL's rampage across Iraq and Syria, the world is steadily marching toward an Islamist-driven End Times nightmare with global ramifications.

Stop for a moment to consider the intellectual weight of ISIL's extreme belief system: potentially hundreds of thousands of otherwise normal men have become "foreign fighters" who are convinced that a martyr's death in the cause of Allah offers a ticket to Jannah (Islamic heaven), a ticket upon which they are granted permission by their God to perpetrate the most grotesque violence imaginable in order to expedite the Qur'an's prophesied "End Time". President Obama rightly condemned this horror when he stated at the UN General Assembly that "no God condones this terror."

But not since Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf failed at establishing the Third Reich has the earth witnessed the murderous power of a single doctrine to unite tens of thousands of men toward executing terrifying plans of ideological and territorial conquest. It is imperative that the West understands the ideological threat posed by ISIL's End Times theology and knows how to stop both its fighters and the radicalized foreigners ready to join them. Otherwise these will indeed be the End Times for far too many people to come.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 2)

Part 2 of my three-part series on "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL" was published yesterday by The Huffington Post. Check out Part 1 here and read Part 2 below. - R.O.
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Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL

The Huffington Post

By: Robert D. Onley - October 13, 2014

Part 2 of 3 in a series. Read Part 1.

A Global Caliphate for Islam's messiah
Whether ISIL fighters are "brain-washed" or self-inculcated via the internet, the ISIL brand of radical Islam is turning men into remorseless killers. Western, African or Arab, these men are being deluded by End Times visions of reviving the Islamic Caliphate from which they believe that the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, or "Guided One", will one day rule and eventually conquer the world.

To that end, as a sophisticated, modern jihadist enterprise, ISIL has released its 3rd issue of Dabiq digital magazine. Its title, "A Call to Hijrah", likens Muhammad's "emigration" from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, which first established Islam as a militant state. As described in the Qur'an, it was in Mecca that Muhammad's message was shared as one of peace. However, in Medina, his message called for the violent overthrow of all non-Muslims. It is clear that ISIL is adhering to the call for the latter.

ISIL is further cognizant of Islamic prophecies found predominantly in the hadiths, which state that the Mahdi will return after a time of great turmoil and suffering upon the earth, and will establish justice and righteousness throughout the world by eradicating tyranny and oppression. The hadiths add that the Mahdi will lead a world revolution and establish a 'new world order' through military action against all those who oppose him. The fact that the hadiths also say that the Mahdi will rule the world from Jerusalem helps elucidate the perpetual fixation on conquering Israel which is espoused by nearly all global jihadist movements.

Comparatively, the prophetic emergence of the Mahdi would be to the majority of Muslims what the return of Jesus would be to Christians. These prophecies also state the Mahdi is the awaited final Caliph of the religion of Islam as a whole, and thus, of the "Islamic State". To date, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has not referred to himself as the Mahdi, perhaps understanding that many Islamic prophecies have yet to be fulfilled and moreover that discerning Islamists are carefully watching ISIL's actions before potentially joining the movement.

Nonetheless, it is the very prospect of an emergent future leader with the theological and prophetic capacity to unite Sunni and Shi'a forces which may serve to most prominently "fulfill" Islamic prophecies concerning the End Times.

Can the "Islamic State" unite Sunni and Shi'a Islam?
Much like Biblical scholarship on the prophesied end of humanity, interpretative views on Islamic "End Times" differ sharply between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

As a Sunni Islamic movement, ISIL is committed to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate with Jerusalem as the capital of the new global "Islamic Empire". Author Daniel Pipes, a recognized scholar on Islam and Islamic radicalism, has stated that while he does not expect ISIL to survive, it will "leave a legacy", adding:

No matter how calamitous the fate of Caliph Ibrahim [Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi] and his grim crew, they have successfully resurrected a central institution of Islam, making the caliphate again a vibrant reality. Islamists around the world will treasure its moment of brutal glory and be inspired by it.

It appears that Sunni Islamist militants are more than inspired; the total acceptance of these Islamic End Times views is geographically diverse and pervasive within radical Islamist groups. Islam's broader end of days themes have also been adopted by Israel's arch foes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah (albeit a Shi'a Islamic interpretation of the End Times), along with Boko Haram in Nigeria (which has also declared an "Islamic State"), al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the terrorist stalwart al-Qaeda.

While opposed to ISIL and joining the fight against the group, the Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Shi'a Muslim theocracy has also publicly stated that the return of Shi'a Islam's 'Hidden' Imam, or Mahdi, is imminent, and that the Mahdiwill kill all infidels. Such proclamations add contrast to ISIL's apocalyptic narrative, and also frame the Sunni-Shi'a prophetic divide as one which contains common and intriguing threads.

Beyond prophecy, on a tactical military level, ISIL's success is also attracting potential alliances from other terrorist organizations, such as with the Taliban's ally Hezb-e-Islami. Under unified leadership, whether from the current Caliph, or perhaps one day from another leader from Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Turkey, ISIL could theoretically bridge internal Sunni divides while co-opting disparate jihadist and resistance factions under a common banner.

Unified leadership could also quiet the vocal opposition to ISIL which has percolated up from within numerous Islamist factions who believe that Al-Baghdadi is an illegitimate 'Caliph'. But as Caliph Ibrahim's ISIL army continues to march in the face of air strikes, such speculation is within the realm of possibility down the road.

ISIL's Longevity
The bigger picture of Islamic eschatology and prophecy includes the return of Isa (Jesus), the rise of the Dajjal (Islam's anti-Christ), and the reign of the Mahdi (Messiah), all of which will usher in Allah's 'Day of Judgment'. Thus, if ISIL maintains even partial military success and territorial control for the foreseeable future, the allure of ISIL's End Times ideology will only become more intoxicating for foreign fighters and ISIL adherents around the world. Moreover, despite a UN Security Council Resolution, it is improbable to think that Western legislative measures will definitively halt the growing number of foreign ISIL recruits in the immediate term. This poses a serious threat to regional and global stability.

Add into this mix the possibility that the US and its "core coalition" could fail to conclusively stop ISIL in Syria and Iraq through military action. What exactly is the West's plan if ISIL manages to maintain its territorial grip, first for a year, and then a second year? Why have President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry been quick to assess that this battle will not require "boots on the ground"? (Pay no attention to the boots of military "advisors" already on the ground.)

If ISIL manages to maintain the semblance of a mini Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the complete picture of the Islamic End Times (set out above) would come into view for ISIL fighters and would-be ISIL members across the world. These fighters might perceive the continued expansion and existence of ISIL as the actual fulfillment of The Promise of Allah.

Policy planners must imagine and plan for the current or future ISIL Caliph calling for a Second Arab Spring of uprisings to overthrow the remaining dictators across the Middle East. Alternatively, the Caliph could call for these sitting leaders to form a military alliance with ISIL to wage war against Israel, or else face civil unrest stoked by ISIL provocateurs.

These possibilities may sound like a distant Islamist fantasy, but as the Western world struggles to agree on how to confront ISIL, let alone "defeat" it, the ISIL movement continues to grow more legitimate and capable of recruiting more supporters. Does comfortable Western civilization have the stomach to confront such a barbaric enemy?

Part 3 will be published soon.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL

It has been a few months since any updates here, and so on this occasion I'm pleased to share my first feature article for The Huffington Post, titled: "Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL". The article explores the underlying ideology of ISIL, examining the eschatological (study of the "End Times") roots of the conflict in Iraq and Syria today.
Enjoy. - R.O.

Why Foreign Fighters are Joining ISIL (Part 1 of 3)
The Huffington Post
By: Robert D. Onley - October 8, 2014

Part 1 in a 3 part series.

The beheading of American journalist James Foley by a British ISIL foreign fighter marked the first of several instances in which militant radical Islam appeared to defeat all precepts of Western civilization.

At the same moment, a revived "Islamic Caliphate" emerged as both a nascent "State" and a veritable threat to the free world. Even the president of the United States seemed caught off guard by ISIL's celebration of death, which is so counter-cultural and contrary to all that humanity has achieved and continues to achieve. Both Western governments and media outlets have been slow to acknowledge theabsolute threat posed by ISIL's belief system.

While minority Muslims, Christians, Yazidis, Turkomen and Jews across the Middle East are physically hunted by ISIL fighters, it is mosques across the Western world which appear complicit in churning out radicalized foreign fighters. These fighters reject all notions of a pluralist, free Western life, in favor of the most regressive philosophy on earth. But much blame can also be laid at the feet of the West's modern lifeblood: the Internet. Witness this terrifying example of a Canadian who self-radicalized, joined ISIL and now threatens terrorist attacks on New York City.

At such a troubled time as this, appreciating the core theology of ISIL is a necessity for Western policymakers, military planners, and media personnel, who are now scrambling for means to collectively defeat this most barbaric enemy after the bombing stops.

Understanding Islamic Eschatology
When global progress, both social and technological, is greater than ever, how is it possible that ISIL is growing around the world? What exactly are young Canadians,Brits, Scots, Frenchmen and Germans being taught in their Western mosques and online before being convinced to fly off to carry out jihad abroad?

The nebulous answers to these questions are found in a religious term which the secular Western mind and media might scoff at: eschatology -- that is, the branch of Islamic theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind. In other words, The Islamic End Times.

To understand why ISIL has so rapidly advanced -- both in its military and through its ideology - any serious observer of global affairs must explore the Islamic beliefs and statements about the "end of the world". This knowledge will facilitate a discerning perspective on the grave realities represented by the return of the"Islamic Caliphate" in Syria and Iraq, and will reveal the intellectual threat posed to the world by the ISIL ideology and its growing cadre of sympathetic followers globally.

Islamic Prophecies

On June 29, 2014, when Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared the creation of the "Islamic State", identifying himself as "Caliph Ibrahim," he was issuing a rallying cry to all Muslims, stating that the Qur'an's prophesied "Day of Resurrection", orYawm al-Qiyāmah will soon be upon humanity.

The gravity of the creation of ISIL is captured in the title of Caliph Ibrahim's manifesto: The Promise of Allah. Akin in spirit to the Charter of Hamas in its explicit hatred of Christians, Jews and non-Muslims, The Promise of Allah proclaims to the world:

Here the flag of the Islamic State, the flag of tawhīd (monotheism), rises and flutters... The Muslims are honored. The kuffār (infidels) are disgraced. Ahlus Sunnah (the Sunnis) are masters and are esteemed. The people of bid'ah (heresy) are humiliated. The hudūd (Sharia penalties) are implemented -- the hudūd of Allah -- all of them. The frontlines are defended. Crosses and graves are demolished... There only remained one matter, a wājib kifā'ī (collective obligation) that the ummah sins by abandoning. It is a forgotten obligation... It is the khilāfah (caliphate). It is the khilāfah -- the abandoned obligation of the era.

By speaking the "Islamic State" into existence, the Caliph asserted that the world's most powerful terrorist force believes that humanity, in 2014, will imminently face Allah's prophesied Judgment Day, Yawm ad-Dīn. Belief in Judgment Day is one of the six articles of faith in Islam, which underscores the theological importance of the revival of the Islamic Caliphate to the global ummah (Islamic community).

The appeal of the Caliph's simple end times narrative forms the foundation of an Islamist movement which is driving men to commit unthinkable acts of murder, genocide and suicide attacks against strangers with different religious beliefs. The Promise of Allah describes this disturbing, violent modus operandi in systematic detail, fuelling the expansion of the "Islamic State":

...We took it forcibly at the point of a blade.
We brought it back conquered and compelled.
We established it in defiance of many.
And the people's necks were violently struck,
With bombings, explosions, and destruction,
And soldiers that do not see hardship as being difficult,
And lions that are thirsty in battle,
Having greedily drunk the blood of kufr [infidel].
Our khilāfah has indeed returned with certainty
And likewise our state, becoming a firm structure.
And the breasts of the believers have been healed,
While the hearts of kufr have been filled with terror.

Through social media, internet forums and well produced promotional videos, ISIL's agenda is being broadcast to the world without hesitation. While Western powers recognize the terrorist threat posed by ISIL, aside from the United States and a few close allies, many Western European leaders remained convicted to avoid military action initially, lest they stir up unrest within their local Muslim communities.

But this is no problem for ISIL's growth. ISIL foreign fighters have already heeded the Caliph's call in The Promise of Allah that all Muslims must:

"disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the West, and rush to your religion and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and west will submit to you."

What exactly are the implications of Muslims heeding this call? Part 2 of this series will examine this critical question.

Freedom Fighter: One Man's Fight for One Free World

I have just completed reading Freedom Fighter: One Man's Fight for One Free World by Rev. Majed El Shafie, and must commend this book to you to read as well.

I met Majed in Toronto earlier this year, at an event organized by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) organization, on the topic of religious freedom. His talk sparked an interest in me to further investigate the issue of religious freedom around the world, and decided to read his book as a starting point. I'm glad I did.

Freedom Fighter takes readers on Majed's journey from being persecuted for converting to Christianity from Islam while living in Egypt, to where he is now, acting and speaking up on behalf of persecuted individuals around the world through his non-profit organization One Free World International. (Www.onefreeworldinternational.org)

Focusing primarily on Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the book details disturbing accounts of religious persecution and murder of people of all faiths. In light of recent terror attacks around the world which specifically targeted Christians and non-Muslims, as seen in Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq, the intense and sobering content of the book is highly relevant and worthy of careful review.

Majed is a gifted writer, providing strong, clear arguments for his policy proposals. Critically he has crafted his book in an accessible and logical manner. On issues that often seem to only affect people "over there", somewhere in the Middle East, Majed has managed to bring the violent problem of religious persecution right home to the reader.

Anyone interested in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the issues of religious persecution and religious freedom would do well to pick up Freedom Fighter.

R.O.

Time to Define Islamism as a Crime Against Humanity

"Time to Define Islamism as a Crime Against Humanity" - Jerusalem Post
By: Seth J. Frantzman
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Terra-Incognita-Its-time-to-define-Islamism-as-a-crime-against-humanity-326888

The attacks at Nairobi, Kenya’s Westgate shopping mall follow a familiar pattern to other attacks that occurred in the last few days: in Pakistan, where 81 were killed in the bombing of a church, and in Nigeria where 159 people were slaughtered by Islamists near Maiduguri.

The media and political reactions also follow a neatly crafted script we have all become accustomed to.

First Islamist terrorists attack civilians, attempting to sort out the Muslims from the non-Muslims so as to kill only one group. There are the condemnations of “senseless acts of violence” and appeals for “calm and unity.” Then all is forgotten.Those terrorists captured alive will be put on trial and perhaps executed. And life goes back to normal with the refrain, “terrorism will not prevail.”

The problem is that this script misses a central facet of Islamist terrorism: We must stop treating it as a simple isolated crime; even the word “terrorism” has begun to downplay its actual horror; rather it must be defined as a worldwide crime against humanity.

When the al-Shabaab attack began in Kenya, witnesses related that Muslims were permitted to leave. “They came and said: ‘If you are Muslim, stand up. We’ve come to rescue you,’” Elijah Lamau told the BBC.The Muslims put their hands up and walked past the gunmen. “One man with a Christian first name but a Muslim-sounding surname managed to escape the attackers by putting his thumb over his first name on his ID.

However an Indian man standing next to him who was asked for the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s mother was shot dead when he was unable to answer.”Similarly, in 2004, 17 al-Qaida terrorists attacked the Oasis compound housing oilcompany employees in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.Upon entering the compound, the terrorists waylaid the first Arab looking man they saw and said: “Are you Muslim or Christian? We don’t want to kill Muslims.Show us where the Americans and Westerners live.”

The killers then came upon a US citizen from Iraq named Abu Hashem. He later told reporters that the attackers were polite; “They gave me a lecture on Islam and said they were defending their country and ridding it of infidels.” “Don’t be afraid,” they told him, “we won’t kill Muslims, even if you are an American.”The murderers then proceeded to hunt down non-Muslims from the US, South Africa, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, Egypt and Sweden.

After a 24-hour siege, 22 of the residents were murdered and many others wounded. In another instance, on November 27, 2008, in the midst of the Mumbai terror attacks, the perpetrators received a call from their Pakistan-based masters, asking, “How many hostages do you have?” The terrorist responded that they had killed a Belgian hostage but had others.“I hope there is no Muslim among them.”“No, none,” replied the killer.

Later the Pakistani handlers called the terrorists at the Oberoi Trident Hotel and spoke to those located on the 10th floor. The intercepted conversation goes as follows: “Kill all the hostages, except the two Muslims, keep your phone switched on so we can hear the gunfire.”They reply, “We have three foreigners, including women from Singapore and China.”Then the terrorist can be heard telling the hostages to line up, asking the two Muslims to stand to one side. Gunfire reverberates, followed by cheering from the terrorists.

It is interesting how quickly reports of these attacks downplay the guilt of the attackers and filter references to the focus on non-Muslims and the allowing some Muslims to escape the carnage. In November 2009 Fareed Zakaria at CNN did a special on the Mumbai transcripts. Zakaria claims the men were sent from Pakistan with “instructions simply to kill.”

After playing one clip in which any reference to letting Muslims live is absent, he notes that “they were told to go to Mumbai and kill as many people as they could.” Actually they were told to go to Mumbai to kill non-Muslims.

Zakaria emphasizes that the terrorists were poverty-stricken children. “These are peasant boys,” he says. To his credit, he does play a transcript from the terrorist attack at Nariman house, where the Chabad center was targeted. The CNN host mentions the “animus against Jews” but then claims, “in the ’60s and ’70s most Indian Muslims would not even know where Palestine was.” He compares the actions of the terrorists to “brainwashing... it’s sort of the Manchurian Candidate writ large.”

Later in the program the presenter again attempts to emphasize how young the terrorists were “these are peasant boys... these kids seem like teenagers... it [their action] seems almost mercenary.”Note how often Zakaria stresses that these were “boys” – he calls them “boys” twice, “kids” twice and “teenagers” once. The only terrorist captured alive, Ajmal Kasab, was 21 at the time of the attacks.The oldest attacker, Nasir Abu Umar, was 28, while the youngest was 20.

Why the conscious effort to redefine these men as children? Why the conscious decision not to include the part of the transcript including the instructions not to kill Muslims, and to paint the attack as indiscriminate? The real story was that these men set out to kill as many non-Muslims as possible.

The media seeks to hide this facet to foster the narrative of “unity,” yet presenting Muslims and non-Muslims as the victims of terror obscures the genocidal nature of the crime.

When the radical, right wing Golden Dawn party gained popularity last year, the media highlighted the “antiimmigrant violence” it was involved in.There was no downplaying the members as “peasant boys” or obscuring of who the violence was directed at.

These three examples – Mumbai, Khobar and Nairobi – are only the tip of the iceberg. From southern Thailand, to Mindanao in the Philippines, to Syria and beyond, the Islamist or jihadist mentality leads to the mass killing of either non- Muslims, or sometimes to the sectarian slaughter of Muslims, usually Shi’ites.Hundreds of Shi’ites are massacred every year in Pakistan by the Taliban, for instance.

In many cases the terrorists separate Shi’ites from non-Shi’ites, usually identifying them by their first names. For instance, on August 17, 2012, it was reported that “gunmen wearing army uniforms checked the identification cards of the passengers, lined up the Shi’ite passengers on the roadside, tied their hands and then opened fire on them.”

Sound familiar? Many over the years have identified Islamism as “Islamo-fascism” and argued that it champions a form of genocide. But it has not sunk in. We don’t prosecute terrorists as war criminals committing crimes against humanity. Instead, we often obfuscate the nature of terrorist attacks, pretending that terrorists are “misguided youth” who “set out to kill as many as possible.”

The genocidal nature of this type of terror is downplayed. The New York Times described the Nairobi perpetrators as “Shabaab militant attackers.” Really? When they killed 78-year-old Ghanian poet Kofi Awooner and Kenyan radio host Ruhila Adatia-Sood, was that part of a “military” operation? The scenes of piles of dead women sprawled on the floor of the mall; is that “militant?”

In a Times article on the anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a church in 1963 the perpetrators are not called “militants.” Yet the objectives and methods of the KKK were no different than the Shabaab or Taliban: the killing of specific groups. No one pretends the KKK “set out to kill indiscriminately.”

The KKK is estimated to have killed 4,743 people between 1882 and 1968. The number of primarily sectariantargeted killings in Iraq in 2012 was 4,574.That’s just Iraq.Adding up the number of victims from attacks patterned along the lines of the one carried out in Kenya, or the ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims in places such as Egypt and Northern Nigeria, would bring the number up to tens of thousands in the past decade – millions in the past century.

This is a “soft” genocide, embodied by the firebombing of a church in Egypt or the shooting of Alawite truck drivers in Syria.It is time to stop hiding what connects Mumbai to Westgate and Khobar. It is a worldwide campaign of ethnic cleansing and murder, and the world community must define this as a crime against humanity and not just as “terrorism."

We Ignore Islamism at Our Own Peril

For any avid foreign affairs reader, the distinction between Islam and Islamism is critical to properly understanding the drama of the Middle East. Moreover a full appreciation of what it is that defines these concepts will facilitate a much broader understanding of the threat facing Western and Arab powers alike. As we watch the violence unfolding in Syria, and the protests rising in Egypt, read the following article and carefully assess the distinction. - R.O.

Headlines to watch:
- Egyptian President's Defiant, Confrontational Speech
- Syria loads chemical weapons into bombs; military awaits Assad's order
- Islamic Fighters in Northern Syria Not United
- Assad faces life or death choice
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Islamology 101: What's the difference between Islam and Islamism?
By: Clifford D. May - Dec. 6, 2012 - National Review Online

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan

Google “Islamist” and you’ll get more than 24 million hits. Google “jihadist” and you’ll get millions more. Yet I bet the average American could not tell you what it is that Islamists and jihadists believe. And those at the highest levels of the U.S. government refuse to do so.

Why? John Brennan, the top counterterrorism adviser in the White House, argues that it is “counterproductive” to describe America’s “enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.” To describe terrorists using “religious terms,” he adds, would “play into the false perception” that the “murderers” waging unconventional war against the West are doing so in the name of a “holy cause.”

I get it. I understand why it would be useful to convince as many of the world’s more than a billion Muslims as possible that Americans are only attempting to defend themselves against “violent extremists.” By now, however, it should be obvious that this spin — one can hardly call it analysis — has spun out. The unpleasant fact is that there is an ideology called Islamism and, as Yale professor Charles Hill recently noted, it “has been on the rise for generations.”

So we need to understand it. We need to understand how Islamism has unfolded from Islam, and how it differs from traditional Islam as practiced in places as far-flung and diverse as Kuala Lumpur, Erbil, and Timbuktu. This is what Bassam Tibi attempts in his most recent book, published this year, Islamism and Islam. It has received nowhere near the attention it deserves.

A Koret Foundation Senior Fellow at Stanford University, Tibi describes himself as an “Arab-Muslim pro-democracy theorist and practitioner.” Raised in Damascus, he has “studied Islam and its civilization for four decades, working in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa.” His research has led him to this simple and stark conclusion: “Islamism is a totalitarian ideology.” And just as there cannot be “democratic totalitarianism,” so there cannot be “democratic Islamism.”

Brennan and other American and European officials are wrong, Tibi says, to fear that “fighting Islamism is tantamount to declaring all of Islam a violent enemy.” As for the Obama administration’s insistence that “the enemy is specifically, and only, al-Qaeda,” that, Tibi writes, “is far too reductive.”

Tibi also faults Noah Feldman, the young scholar who advised the Bush administration, and who insisted, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that sharia, Islamic law, can be viewed as “Islamic constitutionalism.” Feldman failed to grasp the significance of the “Islamist claim to supremacy (siyadat al-Islam),” the conviction that Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are inferior and that their inferiority should be reflected under the law and by government institutions.

Tibi makes this important distinction: All jihadists are Islamists, but not all Islamists are jihadists. In other words, not all Islamists are committed to violence, including terrorism, as the preferred means to achieve their goals. He asks: “Can we trust Islamists who forgo violence to participate in good faith within a pluralistic, democratic system?” He answers: “I believe we cannot.”

Chief among Islamist goals, Tibi writes, is al-hall al Islami, “the Islamic solution, a kind of magic answer for all of the problems — global and local, socio-economic or value-related — in the crisis-ridden world of Islam.” Islamists ignore the fact that such governance has been implemented, for example, in Iran for over more than 30 years, in Afghanistan under the Taliban, in Gaza under Hamas, and in Sudan. It has never delivered development, freedom, human rights, or democracy. As for Turkey, Tibi sees it as “not yet an Islamist state” but heading in that direction.

Tibi makes some arguments with which I’d quarrel. For example, he views Saudi religious/political doctrines as a “variety of Salafism (orthodox, traditional Islam) not Islamism.” I would counter that Salafism is a variant of Islamism, albeit one based not on the writings of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, but on nostalgia for the glory days of the seventh century.

Nevertheless, the debate Tibi is attempting to initiate is necessary — and long overdue. During the Cold War there was a field of study known as Sovietology. It was taught in our most elite universities with strong U.S. government support.

Why isn’t Islamology — not Islamic theology, or “Muslim-Christian understanding,” or “Islamic thought” — a discipline today? For one, Tibi observes, because to “protect themselves against criticism, Islamists have invented the formula of ‘Islamophobia’ to defame their critics.” (How did Stalin not come up with Sovietophobia or Russophobia?) And of course if such slander fails to intimidate, there are other ways to shut people up: Tibi has “survived attempts on my life by jihadists.”

A second reason for the absence of Islamology: The U.S. government cannot back the study of an ideology it stubbornly insists does not exist. Finally, those who do fund anything to do with Islam on campus — for example, the Gulf petro-princes who have given tens of millions of dollars to Georgetown and Harvard — have a different agenda, one that does not include free and serious inquiry. We ignore what they are doing — and what Tibi is telling us — at great peril.

— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.

The Truth about Militant Islam

This is a must watch video for anyone concerned about the ongoing threat posed by al-Qaeda and militant Islam (skip ahead to about the 8 minute mark below if you want to get to the meat of her arguments).

Lara Logan is the CBS News reporter who was sexually assaulted by an Egyptian mob in Cairo's Tahrir Square a year and a half ago. Last week Logan was the keynote speaker at the annual luncheon of the Chicago Better Government Association last week, and she blasted the Obama administration for lying to the American people about the threat that they face from militant Islam. (Courtesy the Israel Matzav blog.) - R.O.

Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

...Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other officials. The event is a harbinger of our vulnerability, she said. Logan hopes that America will “exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”Unfortunately, I was not able to find video of Logan's talk on line. Two other speeches have been posted, but so far Logan's has not. I guess that President Obama still has friends in Chicago.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.ca/2012/10/video-cbs-reporter-lara-logan-blasts.html

Ahmadinejad calls for annihilation of Israel

(Does the world need any more reason to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program immediately? The Iranian regime is not only insane; it's demonic. Israel continues to make noise about an impending unilateral strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. While the United States has made recent declarations of its willingness to use military force to stop Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamian Netanyahu remains openly and publicly skeptical. Historic precedents suggest overwhelmingly that when the Israelis say they will stop a threat, they mean it. Is the world ready for some fireworks? [For further proof, check out Iran's game of denial and deception.]  - R.O.)

Ahmadinejad calls for annihilation of Israel

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
08/02/2012 15:49

In Ramadan speech to ambassadors from Islamic countries, Iranian president calls Zionism “plight of world history,” says liberating Palestine would solve all the world’s problems.


Photo: REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

In a speech published on his website Thursday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel.

Speaking to ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of ‘Qods Day’ (‘Jerusalem Day’), an annual Iranian anti-Zionist event established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and which falls this year on August 17, Ahmadinejad said that a “horrible Zionist current” had been managing world affairs for “about 400 years.”

Repeating traditional antisemitic slurs, the Iranian president accused “Zionists” of controlling the world’s media and financial systems.

It was Zionists, he said, who were “behind the scene of the world’s main powers, media, monetary and banking centers.”

“They are the decision makers, to the extent that the presidential election hopefuls [of the USA] must go and kiss the feet of the Zionists to ensure their election victory,” he added.

Ahmadinejad added that “liberating Palestine” would solve all the world’s problems, although he did not elaborate on exactly how that might work.

“Qods Day is not merely a strategic solution for the Palestinian problem, as it is to be viewed as a key for solving the world problems,” he said.

He added: “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.”

The Iranian president said that Israel reinforced “the dominance of arrogant powers in the region and across the globe” and that Arab countries in particular – he cited Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Turkey – were affected by Israel’s “plots.”

Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth, has previously called for Israel’s annihilation, in a 2005 speech in which he used a Persian phrase that translates literally as “wiped off the page of time.”

Iran Preparing Islamic Messiah's "Special Forces"

(Truly terrifying stuff. Is the West prepared to stop Iran's delusional messianic terrorist regime? Israel appears to be. You couldn't write a better thriller script. - R.O.)


IRAN PREPARING MAHDI’S SPECIAL FORCES

Army of operatives planning for terror, destruction of the West

07/30/2012

by REZA KAHLILI

The Quds Forces, a special Iranian unit of thousands of operatives tasked with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution, are being told to step up preparations for terrorism for the coming of the last Islamic messiah and the destruction of the West.

Ali Saeedi, the Iranian supreme leader’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, emphasized during a Friday sermon in Tehran that the Islamic republic must directly confront America so that the necessary environment is created for the reappearance of Mahdi, the Shiite’s 12th imam, who will kill all infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all corners of the world.

“In three points of history, God directly confronts the will of unruly humans in which, of course, the Right will overcome the False,” Saeedi said, according to the Sepah News, the Guards’ official publication. “The first point in history was during the era of pharaoh, the second era was Bani Abbas, and the third is our current era in which it seems that God has willed us to enlighten the world with the coming of Imam Mahdi.”

Saeedi, “Many of the signs [necessary] for the coming have taken place during the previous years; however, the main sign will take place right before the coming.”

There are five levels of readiness that have to be prepared for the coming, he said: “Individual readiness, the readiness for creating the environment, systematic readiness, the readiness in the region and the international readiness. This means Occupy Wall Street must take place, the Americans must lose hope with the Democratic Party and others, and lose faith in the U.N., while at the same time the unraveling in the Middle East, which was not ripe before, must have taken place before the coming.”

This is the first time a high-ranking Iranian official has stated on the record that the Quds Forces are not only involved in the region, but also internationally for a final confrontation with the West.

“The Revolutionary Guards are one vehicle for preparation for the coming, and in the current Islamic Awakening [the Arab Spring] in the region and on international arena, the Quds Forces play a major role in preparing the readiness of the human force needed for such an event,” Saeedi said. “The chief commander of the Guards and the supreme leader’s representative are tasked for preparing the individual readiness, regional readiness as well as international readiness for the coming.”

In another Guards’ weekly publication, Sobhe Sadegh, a front-page analysis explains that the opening of Iran’s geopolitics and the empowerment of its Islamic power are a reality in which Iran’s influence has expanded not only in the region, but also in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Asia and even in Europe and America.

As was the fall of socialism and the Eastern bloc, the analysis promises, so will be the fall of the capitalism and liberal democracy.

The analysis refers to the statements of the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:

• “I say with all certainty that the 21st century will be the century of Islam.”
• “I say with all certainty that Islam will conquer all key entrenchments of the world.”
• “I say with all certainty that Islam will defeat all world powers.”
• “I say with all certainty that the 21st century is the century where the oppressed will be victorious over the oppressors.”

While the Quds Forces have recently expanded their operations in shipment of explosives to Latin America, Africa and other places in the world, and at the same time have put terror cells on high alert for terrorist acts, the Islamic regime in Iran has expanded its nuclear program in which over 11,000 centrifuges are now running at two facilities, increasing its enriched uranium stock.

As of the last report in May by the IAEA, Iran had enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs, and despite all negotiations and recent sanctions, the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced days ago that there will be no turning back from the nuclear path.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award-winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

1948, 1967, 1973 ... 2012?

Israel Hayom | 1948, 1967, 1973 ... 2012?
The decision that will change everything

There are those who deem this critical argument that is being waged now as “the campaign of our lives,” and there are indeed various signs which attest to the fact that the moment in which a decision on the Iranian issue must be made is fast approaching.

Nadav Shragai

A ballistic missile is launched in a demonstration of Iranian military might. | Photo credit: Reuters

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In a country where there is never a dull moment, the media this week pushed the really critical issue of Iran off the front pages.

The real debate is happening behind closed doors. In simple Hebrew, the dilemma comes down to three words: p’tzatza o’ haftzatza (“An [Iranian] A-bomb or an [Israeli] bombing campaign”) but the reality is not that simple. In fact, it is far more complex. Defense Minister Ehud Barak says that Israel is currently “at the point in which security challenges are likely to become no less fateful than the challenges that stood before the founding fathers at the establishment of the state; no less fateful than the challenges that stood before the state’s leaders in the period leading to the start of the Six-Day War; no less fateful than the challenges that stood before the decision-makers who were called upon to lead in the days leading up to and during the Yom Kippur War.”

There are those who deem the critical argument that is being waged now as “the campaign of our lives,” and there are indeed signs attesting to the fact that the moment in which a decision on the Iranian issue must be made is fast approaching.

It is possible that we are talking about a matter of months. The public is not well-versed in the details, and perhaps it should be this way, but a concise summary of this dilemma is testament to the difficulty of this issue.

On the one hand, we have the alarming signals that are ringing louder as the prospect of a nuclear Iran becomes more real. Iran currently possesses 7,000 kilograms of enriched uranium up to 3.5 percent and 160 kilograms of enriched uranium up to 20%. To manufacture an atomic bomb, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his friends need enriched uranium of up to at least 90%.

If the Iranians decide to make a sprint — which they have done in the last few months — they could enrich uranium up to 90% within a matter of months. Leon Panetta, the American secretary of defense, confided to Israeli officials his fear that this January could mark the Iranians’ “finish line” in their race to attain the bomb.

In the last three months, Iran has enriched 700 kilograms of uranium. Since the current government came to power, the number of centrifuges capable of enriching uranium in Iran has doubled from 5,000 to 10,000. The technological mishap which slowed down the centrifuges caused by the Stuxnet computer virus has already been rectified.

There is almost wall-to-wall agreement that a nuclear Iran would render our lives here a living hell while posing a real threat to the existence of the State of Israel. The recent assessments even predict an arms race that would proliferate throughout the region. In response to Iran’s going nuclear, other Muslim countries such as Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia would make every effort to get their own atomic weapons.

On the other hand, there is the price that Israel would pay — namely, an Iranian threat to retaliate against any Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities — by launching rockets at Israeli cities. The projected number of casualties is vague, although it is expected to include “hundreds of deaths.”

There are also threats that a number of other fronts are liable to heat up as a result of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hezbollah, which is based in south Lebanon, possesses an arsenal of 60,000 rockets capable of hitting any point in the north. It also has a few thousand missiles that are capable of reaching the center of the country, and hundreds that can threaten towns in southern Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas continues to grow stronger. It and other armed organizations possess some 8,000 rockets, a few of which could reach central Israel. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and, more importantly, the recent events in Syria, make the Iranian story even more complex. For Israel’s decision-makers, there are other factors that come into play. If Israel decides to strike Iran, it could find itself under assault on a number of fronts.

Attack as long as it’s possible

Over the past year, Israel and the West have developed a strategy that Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit calls “the third way” — a combination of economic sanctions and covert activity. The problem is that the third way does not eliminate the Iranian threat. It simply postpones it to a later date. There is a growing sense among members of the Israeli establishment that this option has been all but exhausted.

Professor Yehezkel Dror (83), a member of the Winograd Commission which probed the decision-making process up to and during the Second Lebanon War, had firsthand access to two Israeli prime ministers (Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres). His expertise lay in the planning and decision-making process in the diplomatic, security, and public spheres. Behind the scenes, he helped craft a number of strategic processes of great importance for the State of Israel.

A few weeks ago, Dror authored a policy paper on behalf of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. In short, Dror came out in favor of an attack on Iran, adding that he recommended combining a military offensive with a regional diplomatic overture for peace. The position articulated by Dror — who is renowned as one of the world’s foremost thinkers in the field of administrative science and policy doctrine thanks to many years of research which he devoted to the topic of decision-making processes, policy planning, statesmanship, defense doctrine, and Jewish policy — rocked the establishment.

Dror’s views, which have at times been critical of the manner in which sensitive decisions are made in Israel, carry great weight. Up to a year ago, Dror believed that Israel could live with a nuclear Iran. He thought Israel’s deterrent capability and the threat of a nuclear second strike was enough to make Iran think twice before attacking. Now he thinks differently.

“A sometimes expressed view is that initiating a preventive war is morally wrong, all the more so when one cannot be sure that without it a harsh war is sure to occur in the future,” Dror writes. “However, this view, though honorable, is primitive and should be rejected. It lacks understanding of the nature of policy as a tool that, by nature, must deal with the future, which is never certain; and it does not give any weight to the important value of preventing pain in the future. Furthermore, such a view clings to what is ‘certain,’ ignoring what ‘may come’ even when very likely or very significant, thus further negating every effort to influence the future, which is always contingent and uncertain.”

“The possession of nuclear weapons by Iran poses serious dangers to Israel because of the real possibility that the rulers of Iran may use them, directly or indirectly, against Israel,” he writes. “There also exists the likelihood that Iranian nuclear weapons will cause nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, further increasing the danger. Hopefully, international sanctions will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or the U.S. will launch a pre-emptive attack if necessary. But Israel cannot leave the future of its national security to the uncertain decision making of others. If Iranian advances towards construction of a nuclear weapon are not halted, Israel will have no choice but to attack Iranian nuclear and military facilities while they are still vulnerable.”

The professor acknowledges that while one can expect a violent reaction from Iran in the case of an Israeli attack, assessments of the damage should not be exaggerated. “Even pessimistic assumptions about the scope of Iranian retaliation make it clear that the expected damage to Israel will be less, by many orders of magnitude, than the destructive potential of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel,” he writes.

Dror’s arguments stirred up a firestorm, with many wondering whether it was possible to place the public’s faith in the hands of the current leadership. Just a few years ago, Dror said that Israel’s leaders were problematic and mediocre. Now, he posits: “If we cannot trust our leadership with regards to an attack against Iran, we cannot trust them also in the event that they refrain from taking a decision for such an attack.”

“The decision to refrain from attacking bears consequences and repercussions to the same extent as deciding to attack,” Dror told Israel Hayom. “Both of these decisions are far-reaching. So it’s irrelevant if I trust [the leadership] more or less. My personal tendency is to trust the current leadership. These are serious people who have plenty of experience. I don’t know, but I am convinced that they are doing very thorough staff work on this issue.”

In contrast with the criticism that others interviewed for this article have expressed regarding the public nature of the discussions surrounding the Iranian nuclear issue, Dror actually welcomes the debate. “On the one hand, as someone who filled a number of senior positions in the defense establishment, I told myself that once I left these positions I wouldn’t conceive of criticizing the government,” he said. “On the other hand, if those same people think that this is a dangerous decision, it is their duty to say so. As long as they don’t reveal classified information, it is their right.”

Still, Dror makes clear that public opinion is not a factor in his thinking. “The public knows nothing, and it has no factual basis to judge these things, and it is also impossible to present the public with all the facts on this issue,” he said. “So its opinion has no weight in my mind.”

Dror also doesn’t shy away from taking political considerations into account. “People at the time thought that taking action against the Iraqi nuclear reactor was motivated by electoral considerations,” he said. “I worked in Shamir’s office, and I also got to know Begin. I think that this is slanderous. On the Iranian issue, I believe that the aspects are weighed independent of political considerations, and the decision will be taken purely with the best interests of the future of the State of Israel in mind. Other factors, if they exist, will be particularly marginal, and they will not make the difference.”

Fact-checking and agreement

Dror is one of a number of public figures from whom we sought comment this week in an effort to examine the decision-making process during two other critical periods in Israel’s history — the days leading up to the Six-Day War and the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor — and to compare them with the critical juncture in which Israel currently finds itself as it relates to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Yeshayahu Gavish served as GOC Southern Command in 1967. He remembers well the tremendous pressure that the generals placed on the government to start the war after the Egyptians closed the Straits of Tiran and essentially cut off Israeli shipping to Africa and the east. Gavish acknowledges that he is not privy to sensitive information today, though he does note that at the time the key question was gauging the risk.

“Under these circumstances, you have to take into account, among other things, if you go with a pre-emptive strike or if you absorb an enemy blow,” he said. “In the Yom Kippur War, we didn’t hit them with a pre-emptive strike. In the Six-Day War, we saw this as the right solution. The question is not just risk assessment, but who is doing the assessment. In 1967, the generational gaps between the ministers and the generals were especially significant. The generals were young, 40-year-old men who were experienced in warfare. The ministers, almost all of them, were not born in the country, and they were relatively older.”

“We had to convince the government that there was no other solution,” he said. “Ben-Gurion was adamantly against the war, and he really had a moderating effect on Yitzhak Rabin, who was chief of staff at the time. I remember the major fear among the ministers who kept asking me whether I was certain of victory, and how we could be so certain we would succeed. They had serious concerns, but the argument was not public. The awareness of the importance of guarding defense secrets was much higher in those days. Today the excessive preoccupation and discussion of the Iranian issue doesn’t contribute to a weighty, serious discussion, in my opinion. Another key factor which we had to deal with then — and I assume that this is the case today as well — is the position of the U.S. Abba Eban, who was foreign minister at the time, thought that the U.S. would oppose our plan. It was only after Meir Amit returned from abroad that it became clear this wasn’t exactly the case.”

Shlomo Nakdimon, a journalist and renowned researcher, chronicled the decision-making processes in his book about the Six-Day War (“Towards the Zero Hour”) and the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor (“Tammuz in Flames”). He, too, notes the importance of the debate that unfolded between the generals and the politicians in those days.

“One of the generals, Ezer Weizman, even threw his ranks down on the desk of the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office,” he said. “The other generals, among them Ariel Sharon and Avraham Yoffe, lobbied hard, while Levi Eshkol, who wanted to exhaust all diplomatic options, told them: ‘Patience, children.’”

As for “Tammuz,” as the Iraqi nuclear reactor was known, Begin oversaw the portfolio from the moment he received it from his predecessor, Rabin. It was Begin who personally handled the affairs of this issue from that moment all the way until the actual bombardment. Begin left no stone unturned, even going so far as to appoint an external committee of inquiry headed by Maj. Gen. Aharon Yariv.

Coordination with the U.S., which the Israeli leadership sought to attain in each of the three cases, is certainly the common denominator. Today, Netanyahu naturally wishes to reach an accommodation with the U.S. to the greatest extent possible.

Nakdimon notes that the plan to bomb the Iraqi reactor was kept secret, while today the public freely discusses the consequences of an attack on Iran. “With regards to the Iraqi reactor, everything was under Begin’s control, and the key people who helped him were the commander of the air force, David Ivry, and the chief of staff, Raful (Rafael Eitan),” he said. “Today, Netanyahu is the minister responsible for the Mossad, and, with Ehud Barak, the defense minister, he is perfectly in synch. They are functioning flawlessly together, as if they were Siamese twins.”

“They have an outstanding group of seven ministers, three of whom have all the time in the world to devote to national security issues: Dan Meridor, Benny Begin, and Bogie Ya’alon,” he said. “They are also helped by the head of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror.”

This is the spearhead that will accompany Netanyahu every step of the way toward the final decision on whether to bomb Iran. It is a group that includes the chief of staff, the head of military intelligence, and the head of the Mossad. Nakdimon views the many years during which the Iranian nuclear issue was examined, the run-up to the Six-Day War, and the “nearly six-year-long” period during which the authorities carefully weighed and examined the circumstances surrounding the Iraqi nuclear reactor as a necessary time of due diligence.

Col. (res.) Ami Gluska, the author of “Eshkol, Give the Order!,” filled a number of senior positions in the military and civilian leadership. He notes that in contrast to the Six-Day War, in which the civilians held back while the generals agitated, the situation today is different. The military is holding back, while the civilians are hawkish. “Nonetheless, it is clear to all that if the government makes the decision, the army will do the deed,” he said.

Enough public chatter

One of the key figures who closely followed Begin just prior to the decision on bombing Saddam’s nuclear reactor was former minister Moshe Nissim, who today works as a private attorney and who is also an advisory member of the committee that recommends senior appointments in the civil service. He notes that disagreements over the bombardment of the reactor crossed military-civilian lines.

“The head of the Mossad, Yitzhak Hofi, was completely against,” he said. “His deputy, Nachum Admoni, was in favor. The chief of staff, Raful, was in favor. The head of military intelligence, Yehoshua Sagi, fought bitterly against it. His deputy, a former Hashomer Hatzair youth movement member Aviezri Ya’ari, was in favor. Mottke Tzipori, the deputy defense minister, opposed. Simha Erlich, a political dove, was very much in favor. Shustak Hentz was opposed.”

“Back then, there were also fears as to how the Iraqis would respond,” Nissim said. “There was a fear that Iraq would retaliate by bombing the reactor in Dimona, or by launching missiles at the civilian population, or launch a regional war. Those who opposed the plan were also concerned that Egypt may abrogate the peace treaty with Israel or that the U.S. might impose sanctions on us. The supporters, chief among them Begin and myself as well, were of the opinion that the U.S. would ‘punish’ us lightly, and that the chances for successfully carrying out the mission were quite high, and that Iraq did not possess the capability to retaliate. Obviously, the factors that one needs to take into consideration today [with regards to Iran] are much weightier.”

Nissim is incapable of understanding how public figures take it upon themselves to openly discuss the Iranian issue. He is particularly furious with former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin.

“What is going on today is an open-air market, and the statements made by Diskin and Dagan are irresponsible and they are causing immeasurable damage to Israel,” he said. “As people who occupied senior posts, they mustn’t be permitted to speak publicly.”

Deception as a tool

Gavish recalls that two hours before Israel’s opening salvo in the Six-Day War, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan appeared on a radio broadcast and declared that Israel had no desire for war. Gavish does not rule out the possibility that the Israeli leadership is using a similar tactic today, assuming a bellicose posture while behind the scenes spurring the U.S. and the international community to take action. “Deception is one of the tools used in this game,” he said.

In a detailed paper entitled “For a Slightly Different Mode of Thinking,” Dror raises the possibility that “it would behoove the U.S. for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, a move which would minimize the damage to U.S. interests.”

“The U.S. will intervene after the fact in order to ‘restore the peace,’ and it will take preventative measures to ensure that Iran does not restart its nuclear program,” he wrote.

Dror adds: “Many who oppose an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations on moral grounds, preferring to avoid exacting casualties in the present over the possibility of preventing even more massive casualties in the future, are enthusiastic supporters of taking definitive security risks in the present for the sake of a peace that is uncertain.”

Nonetheless, he says: “Mapping out a responsible policy requires avoiding this flawed line of thinking, both on a moral and a practical level, certainly when the topic at hand is one involving the fate of the nation.”

Dror recommends that “we give great weight to preventing risks in the future, even at the price of taking risks in the present.”

Barak backed up this opinion recently, saying: “Refraining from action ensures that Iran goes nuclear, and dealing with a nuclear Iran will be more dangerous than stopping it today. In other words, whoever says ‘later’ may find that ‘later is too late.’”