Showing posts with label Jordan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jordan. Show all posts

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Islamic State Conducting a Real 'War on Women' (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Report: Islamic State's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Raped U.S. Hostage Kayla Mueller Before Her Death (VIDEO)."

From Aaron Goldstein, at the American Spectator, "ISIS IS CONDUCTING A REAL WAR ON WOMEN":




On Friday, it was revealed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had repeatedly raped American relief worker Kayla Mueller while she was in captivity.

Mueller was kidnapped in Syria two years ago and would never get out alive. ISIS claimed she had been killed as a result of Jordanian bombing of ISIS positions in Syria, but this is a most dubious claim. While ISIS was eager to claim she did not die at their hands they were not so eager to say their leader is a sexual sadist.

Baghdadi is hardly the only ISIS leader to engage in such evil. ISIS often kidnaps women, particularly the Yazidis, and forces them into sexual slavery. Earlier this month, 19 brave women who refused to have sex with ISIS leaders were executed.

I don't ever want to hear Democrats accuse Republicans of engaging in a war on women because ISIS is conducting a real war on women. A war in which women are actually raped and murdered. Our energies should be spent fighting the real enemy.

Islamic State's Female Enforcers: The Sharia Crackdown in Raqqa, Syria (VIDEO)

NBC's Richard Engel reports:



Monday, February 23, 2015

Kayla Mueller's Parents Say U.S. Ransom Policy Came First

We don't pay ransom for hostages, simple as that.

And it's kinda sad.

The U.S. did attempt a rescue mission, however. So that should count for quite a bit, you'd think.

And I don't care if Ms. Mueller was a brainwashed anti-Israel leftist. She's certainly not the only one to die at the hands of Islamic State. I would't wish this upon anyone.

Still, her parents are wrong to fault the U.S. government's refusal to pay ransom. Sure, it's their own child. But in the long run, it's better not to reward terror.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Missed Chances Doomed #ISIS Captives

At the Daily Beast, "ISIS hostages were held in same place for months, creating a wide window for rescue that the U.S. failed to exploit, according to security sources."

Well, considering the Obama White House's alacrity, this is a real surprise.

Europe's New Terrorist Normal

At the Wall Street Journal, "Islamist Attacks Are Becoming Routine on the Continent":

Omar el-Hussein photo body_3200252c_zpsapmlcf86.jpg
Islamist violence visited Denmark twice on the weekend, underscoring Europe’s new terrorist normal. Homegrown or immigrant Muslim terrorists targeting innocents and the Western way of life are becoming a feature of Continental life.

The alleged assailant didn’t choose his victims at random. First he fired dozens of rounds at a cafe in Copenhagen during a debate on free speech, killing one and wounding three. Police believe the same man attacked a synagogue hours later, killing a Jewish civilian guard and maiming two officers. Early Sunday police killed the man they believe committed both attacks. Witnesses heard him cry “Allahu Akbar” during the cafe assault.

Among those attending the debate at the Krudttoenden cafe was Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats and an al Qaeda bounty since the 2007 publication of a cartoon he drew that mocked Muhammad. A failed suicide bomber attacking downtown Stockholm in 2010 mentioned Mr. Vilks’s name in an email explaining his motives, and later that year the cartoonist’s home was the target of arson. He lives under police protection.

Denmark is also home to Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that set off days of Muslim rage world-wide in 2005 by publishing Muhammad cartoons. Five suspected terrorists were arrested in 2010 and four later convicted for plotting to murder Jyllands-Posten staffers, and an ax-wielding Somali tried but failed to murder one of the newspaper’s cartoonists at his home.

The 8,000-strong Danish Jewish community has also been besieged by anti-Semitism from the country’s Muslim quarters. In 2012 Israel’s Ambassador to Denmark warned visiting Israelis not to wear kippahs and other visible religious symbols.

Elite hostility to Israel amplifies street-level anti-Semitism. The Danish government has disbursed millions of kroner to anti-Israel activists and agitprop campaigns in recent years, according to NGO Monitor, an Israeli civil-society organization. Perhaps Danish officials will now spend less time henpecking Jerusalem about efforts to prevent terrorism and devote more energy to protecting their own citizens from the same forces.

They might look to France, where since the attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket, the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls has ramped up counterterror powers...
France? Meh. At least Valls is trying. Hollande couldn't give a crap.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Nothing 'Random' About Copenhagen Attacks

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:
Many media accounts are referring to last night’s shootings in Copenhagen as a “copycat” episode in which the perpetrator sought to emulate the atrocities committed by Islamists last month in Paris. But whether or not the Copenhagen shooter was specifically motivated by the ones who committed the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Hyper Cacher market, this crime must be understood as being one more example of the twin trends of Islamist violence and anti-Semitism that have spread across Europe. Even more importantly, it demonstrates the folly of the mindset of the Obama administration that continues to be resolute in its unwillingness to confront the sources of terrorism and the reality of its role in violent Jew-hatred.

The Copenhagen shootings provide important context for the interview of President Obama published last week in Vox. In it, he acknowledged that it was legitimate for people to be concerned about terrorism, but he spoke of it as a secondary concern that gained headlines merely because of the lurid nature of the crimes committed by those involved. Likening his job to that of a “big city mayor” who needs to keep crime rates low, he spoke of terrorism as merely one more problem on his plate and not the most serious one. Obama not only refuses to acknowledge that the spread of ISIS in the Middle East is fueled by a form of religious fundamentalism that has strong support in the Muslim world; he also quite deliberately refused to label what happened in Paris last month an act of anti-Semitism, a stand that was echoed by the press spokespersons for both the White House and the State Department last week.

I wrote last week that, contrary to Obama, there was nothing “random” about an attack on a kosher market in Paris: the assailants were clearly seeking out a place where they could kill Jews and succeeded in that respect. The same is true of the Copenhagen shooter’s decision to attack a synagogue after spraying bullets at a café where a cartoonist who had drawn images of the Prophet Muhammad was speaking. One person was killed at the café and a Jewish voluntary security guard at the synagogue (who was there protecting the celebrants at a bat mitzvah being held at the time).

The Copenhagen attacks are one more reminder that the debate about whether there is such a thing as Islamist terrorism or if attacks on Jews are “random” isn’t about semantics. The refusal to address the religious sources of terrorism—a point on which some Arab leaders have begun to be heard—inevitably renders American efforts to do something about the problem ineffective. Just as importantly, denying the connection between this form of Islam and anti-Semitism seems to be causing the administration to also refuse to acknowledge that Jews in Europe are being targeted because of their identity and not simply due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If the U.S. were to begin to tell the truth about the Islamist roots of terror and the connection with anti-Semitism, that might be the start of a re-examination of mistaken policies that have, albeit unwittingly, led to the rise of ISIS as well as a determination to retreat from the Middle East...
More.

And see Tom Gross, at the Weekly Standard, "Nothing Random Here":
Yesterday evening’s Copenhagen synagogue shooting is yet another attack on Jews as Jews -- just as we have witnessed such attacks at the Toulouse Jewish primary school, the Brussels Jewish museum, the Paris kosher supermarket, the firebombing of the synagogue in the German city of Wuppertal, and at many other places in recent years, from the Jewish communal centres in Mumbai and Casablanca, to the ancient synagogues in Istanbul and Jerba.

Yet only last week President Obama and his spokespeople were suggesting that it was just some kind of “random” accident that Jews were being killed.

The Obama team has consistently demonstrated a willful lack of understanding about the nature of Islamism, about anti-Semitism, and about the intentions of the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. They seem more interested in disparaging the prime minister of America’s ally Israel than in preventing the regime in Tehran going nuclear – a regime which has already de facto taken control of large swathes of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Its terrorist actions outside the Middle East spread to, among other places, Thailand, Bulgaria (where Jewish tourists were blown up in 2012) and Argentina, where 85 people were murdered at the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. Only last month an Iranian diplomat in Montevideo was expelled from Uruguay for planting a bomb designed to kill Jews. (This foiled attack was barely reported on outside the Uruguayan and Israeli media.)

As Middle East scholar Bassam Tawil wrote last week: “Does Obama really want his legacy to be, ‘The president who was an even bigger fool than Neville Chamberlain’?”

Part of the Obama team’s attitude, it seems to me, is derived from the misreporting of the New York Times, a paper whose claim to be “the paper of record,” they presumably take seriously.

At the present time, over a dozen hours after other media (such as The Guardian) reported prominently on the specifically anti-Semitic nature of yesterday’s attack in Copenhagen and on the fact there was a Bat Mitzvah going on in the synagogue while it was being attacked (with over 80 people including many children inside), the lengthy report on the New York Times website on the Copenhagen shootings doesn’t mention the word “anti-Semitism” once. Instead New York Times correspondent Steven Erlanger writes in his piece “anti-Muslim sentiment is rising in Europe.”

Nor does the New York Times mention the bat mitzvah. There are not so many Jews in Denmark and not many bat mitzvahs -- it seems the terrorist had done his research carefully. Yet the New York Times website home page says, at the time of writing, that the shooting was “near a synagogue”. It wasn’t near a synagogue. It was at a synagogue. The synagogue was the target. Which is why a Jew guarding the synagogue was shot dead. With the New York Times’ reporting one starts to understand how Obama and his spokespeople could say the kosher attack in Paris was “random” even though the perpetrator – interviewed live on French radio during the attack – proudly boasted that he had come all the way across Paris in order to kill Jews gathering before the sabbath.

(None of this is new, of course. Even during the Holocaust, the New York Times did all it could to avoid mentioning that those being deported to Auschwitz and other camps were being deported because they were Jews.)

One can only imagine how many children might have died had the gunman managed to enter the bat mitzvah celebration yesterday...

Netanyahu Urges Europe's Jews to Move to Israel

Watch, at Euronews.

PREVIOUSLY: "Copenhagen Attacks Reignite Debate About Safety of Jews in Europe."

Copenhagen Attacks Reignite Debate About Safety of Jews in Europe

I don't see why Copenhagen should "reignite" the debate on the safety of the Jews in Europe. It's been barely a month since the Paris attacks.

I mean God, have we forgotten already? Is the West that cynical?

Safety of Jews? What safety?

At the Wall Street Journal, "Netanyahu Invites Jews to Seek Refuge in Israel; Others Call for Increased Effort to Fight Terrorists":
Denmark’s Jewish community was in shock Sunday after a gunman attacked a Copenhagen synagogue, in a weekend of violence that echoed the deadly events in Paris last month and rekindled a debate over the dangers of being a Jew in Europe.

Police said they shot and killed the gunman, who killed a guard and wounded two policemen at the synagogue a day after attacking a seminar on free speech that featured a Swedish cartoonist who has lampooned Islam. One man, a participant in the conference, was killed and three policemen were wounded in the first assault.

At the synagogue, the gunman killed 37-year-old Dan Uzan, who was guarding the door of a bat mitzvah ceremony in a parish hall. None of the reported 80 guests were injured.

A stream of Danes converged on the synagogue to pay their respects to the victims, laying flowers along a stone-and-iron fence.

“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday after the Copenhagen attacks. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: ‘Israel is the home of every Jew.’”

Mr. Netanyahu, who had made a similar declaration after the Paris attacks, in which four Jews were killed at a kosher store, said his government would launch a $46 million plan to prepare for “mass immigration” from Europe to Israel.

Several Jewish leaders said the call by the Israeli Prime Minister was ill-timed. “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel,” Jair Melchior, Denmark’s chief rabbi, told the Associated Press, adding he was “disappointed” by Mr. Netanyahu’s comment.

Some said authorities need to do more to protect Jewish communities. European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor called on European authorities to form a pan-European task force with legal authority and financial resources dedicated to taking the battle to the radical Islamist enclaves, hunting terrorists down before they act.

“The threats against Jews and the inability of governments to defend them are forcing Jews out of Europe,” Mr. Kantor said. “Intelligence-gathering, surveillance and protection must be amassed and shared by all nations and terrorists need to be hunted down before they act. Now is the time for all EU member states to act swiftly and effectively.”

About 8,000 Jews live in Denmark, a nation of 5.7 million, according the European Jewish Congress...
More.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

More Foreign Fighters Traveling to Syria to Join Civil War

At WSJ, "Counterterrorism Officials Worry Fighters Could Carry out Attacks When They Return Home":

WASHINGTON—The number of foreign fighters traveling to Syria to join in the country’s civil war is increasing despite months of bombardment by the U.S. and its allies, stoking worries among counterterrorism officials they could carry out attacks when they return home.

Officials from the National Counterterrorism Center, Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation plan to tell the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that more than 150 U.S. citizens or permanent residents have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria to join extremist groups. Previously, officials had said about 100 Americans had fallen into that category. They are part of a larger group of 3,400 Westerners who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria, the officials plan to say.

Meanwhile, more than 20,000 foreign fighters from over 90 countries have traveled to Syria, according to prepared testimony by Nicholas Rasmussen, the Counterterrorism Center’s director. That is up from previous U.S. estimates of about 19,000 foreign fighters.

The rate of fighters traveling to Syria is unprecedented, exceeding the rate of such travel to conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia, Mr. Rasmussen plans to tell the committee.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The Roots of Obama's Appeasement

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review:

Obama Enemy's Friend
Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” And “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” or “man-caused disaster” better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency.

What is the point of such linguistic appeasement?

The word “appeasement” long ago became pejorative for giving in to bullies. One side was aggressive and undemocratic; the other consensual and eager to avoid trouble through supposedly reasonable concessions.

But appeasement usually weakened the democratic side and empowered the extremist one.

The architect of appeasement — for example, Neville Chamberlain, former prime minister of Great Britain — was predictably a narcissist. Chamberlain believed that his own powers of oratory, his insights into reason, and his undeniably superior morality would sway even a thug like Adolf Hitler.

President Obama currently is convinced that his singular charisma and rare insight into human nature will convince the Taliban to peacefully participate in Afghan politics. Obama will supposedly also win over the Iranian theocracy and show it how nonproliferation is really to everyone’s advantage.

“Reset” diplomacy with Putin was supposed to lessen tensions — if, after the 2012 election, Putin just had more exposure to a flexible statesman of Obama’s wisdom.

Throughout history, without the vanity of the conceder, there would never have been appeasement.

Appeasement also always subordinates the interests of vulnerable third parties to the appeaser’s own inflated sense of self. When Chamberlain and the French prime minister Edouard Daladier signed the 1938 Munich Pact, they worried little about the fate of millions of Czechs who lost their country — and less about millions of Poles who were next in line for Hitler’s Blitzkrieg.

Reset diplomacy with Russia in 2009 was not much concerned about the ensuing danger to Crimeans or Ukrainians. When the Taliban takes over, hundreds of thousands of reformist Afghans will die.

Obama sees a deal with Iran as a way to cement his legacy as a breakthrough statesman. In comparison, the long-term consequences of a nuclear Iran on the security of tiny Israel or on the stability of the largely Sunni Arab Middle East are future and more abstract concerns for others.

Even major concessions never satisfy aggressive powers. It is a traditional Western liberal delusion — brought on by our wealth, leisure, and the good life — that autocrats appreciate magnanimity rather than see it as timidity to be exploited further...
More.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Friday, February 6, 2015

Voters Criticize Obama's Response to ISIS 'War Crimes'

At iOTW Report.

It's "what response?" at this point.

PREVIOUSLY: "'People Committed Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ...'"

Islamic State Claims U.S. Hostage, Kayla Mueller, Killed in Airstrike

At the Los Angeles Times, "Jordanian airstrike kills U.S. hostage, purported militant statement says":
A purported statement from Islamic State militants said Friday that a Jordanian airstrike had killed an American aid worker who was being held hostage in the northeast Syrian city of Raqqa, an extremist stronghold.

There was no immediate confirmation of the report from Washington or means of verifying whether the militant claim was true.

In a message posted on social media, Islamic State purportedly declared that midday “crusader” airstrikes on Raqqa resulted in the death of the hostage. The post also gave the woman’s name, email address, phone number and a home address in Arizona.

It had been publicly known for months that a U.S. aid worker identified by the militants as Kayla Jean Mueller was being held.

News media had withheld Mueller's name out of concern for her safety. The 26-year-old woman did not appear in any of the hostage videos that Islamic State released in recent months.

“The crusader criminal air force struck a site outside of Raqqa city today at noon during Friday prayers, and the strikes lasted for one hour,” the purported Islamic State message said. “And we have confirmed the death of the American hostage by the bombs that fell on the site.”

In the purported post, Islamic State blamed the woman’s asserted death on the Jordanian air force, which has reportedly been conducting airstrikes on Islamic State targets in recent days.

“The losing Jordanian Air Force kills an American hostage,” read the headline of the message, sent via a Twitter account associated with Islamic State.

The group also posted a photograph of a bombed-out building compound identified as the site where the woman had been held. The message said nothing about other victims...
 More. (Also at Memorandum.)

Various reports have questioned the authenticity of Islamic State's claim, although Jordan today did indeed conduct airstrikes on ISIS jihadis inside Syria. See USA Today, "Jordan pounds Islamic State targets inside Iraq, Syria."

Obama: 'We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends...'

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs:
Our religion? What religion is that? Islam is not my religion, Mr. President. Is it yours?

Obama’s speech today at the prayer breakfast continues to send shockwaves through this country.

Contrary to his claims that Christians were slaughtering in the name of Christ, we see none of that. Nowhere do you see Christians beheading, setting alight, or crucifying non-Christians while screaming “Christ is greatest!” Obama had the unmitigated gall to bring up the Spanish Inquisition and what was done at the end of that 800-year-old war, as well as the Crusades (which Obama mentioned as well), which was against the Muslim hordes close to 1000 years ago. Had it not been for Charles Martel beating back the Muslim armies, Europe would look like the hellhole that much of the Middle East looks like today.

Obama freely brought up Christianity’s ancient history, but did not mention Islam’s 1400-year bloody history of jihadi war, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements. He failed to mention the 1,400 jihad against the Jews raging still today against Israel and Jews across the world. And of course he did not discuss the religion’s bloody jihad now. On the contrary, he falsely claimed it was being “hijacked.” Hijacked, how? Jihadists are citing Quran chapter and verse. They are using Muhammad as their “perfect example.” Obama never said Christianity had been hijacked a thousand years ago. But he did make the outrageous claim that Jim Crow and slavery were sanctioned in the name of Christ.

Jesus did not behead, kill, rape or steal from conquered people, calling the theft righteous booty. Jesus did not marry a six-year-old. Mohammed did. And he slaughtered untold numbers, with his mujahadeen raping and pillaging every bloody step of the way.

Those of us who saw this coming back in 2008 and 2009 were excoriated, ridiculed, and marginalized for speaking the truth about Obama’s past. In 2007 I wrote an article for Israel National News entitled, “Op-Ed: Obama, the Muslim Thing, And Why It Matters.” Before Obama’s election, anyone who used his middle name Hussein was labeled a racist-anti-Muslim-Islamophobic-bigot. And yet the first call he made to a foreign “leader” after he was inaugurated was to terror leader Mahmoud Abbas. The first interview he gave was with al Arabiya television. His first world tour was an apology tour to the Muslim world, culminating in a speech from the leading Islamic university in Cairo, Al Azhar. He invited the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group to his speech in Cairo, despite the fact that it had been banned for decades. Then President Mubarak and his cabinet, America’s 30-year ally in that troubled region, could not attend Obama’s speech because of the terror presence.

It’s why I wrote my 2010 book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.

And now eight years later, with the global jihad roiling the world thanks to Obama’s support and sanction, he deigns to tell us what our religion is.

President Dawah. The more jihad rages, the more Obama proselytizes for Islam. Muslim countries like Jordan are taking a much harder line than the USA. It’s outrageous...
More.

PREVIOUSLY: "'People Committed Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ...'"

Obama Slamming Christians, Protecting Islam

Yep, that's what he's all about.


PREVIOUSLY: "'People Committed Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ...'"

Thursday, February 5, 2015

'People Committed Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ...'

This is just one more iteration of the president's moral equivalence, and worse, his refusal to name the religion, today, that is committing unspeakable atrocities in the name of faith.

At the Weekly Standard, "Obama: 'People Committed Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ'."

And Laura Ingraham is interviewed at Gretchen Carlson's show, on Fox News, "Pres Obama: People Committed Terrible Deeds In Name of Christ - ISIS - Laura Ingraham."

We've had almost a month of non-stop, high-profile Islamic jihad, death and terror. And our president is talking about the "terrible deeds" committed in the name of Christ? Who buys this anymore? I mean, who besides the hardcore Islamo-enabling partisan left, like the ghoulish John Amato at Crooks and Liars?

Among likely Republican and Democrat caucus-goers in Iowa, there's little disagreement on the need for more aggressive military action against the threat. See USA Today, "New Iowa Poll finds surge in GOP focus on terrorism":
When polled on a list of specific actions, Republicans and Democrats align on two points: more aggressively pursuing terrorists in this country and abroad to prevent more attacks, and cutting back on surveillance programs that collect data on phone calls of ordinary Americans.

On pursuing terrorists, 91% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats want more aggressive action. The desire to curtail surveillance is nearly equal at 60% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats.
I guess they didn't talk to the horrible, horrible ghouls at Crooks and Liars.

Hayat Boumeddiene Calls for New Terrorist Attacks on France?

Well, she was whisked away through a terrorist network out of France, so why not?

At Telegraph UK, "Hayat Boumeddiene 'appears in Islamic State film'":
Hayat Boumeddiene, widow of Paris killer Amedy Coulibaly and dubbed France's most wanted woman, appears in Isil film calling for more attacks against native country, report says.

Hayat Boumeddiene photo hayat_3189707b_zpssyowxahz.jpg
A young woman seen in an Islamic State propaganda video may be Hayat Boumeddiene, widow of one of the gunmen behind the Paris killings, it has been reported.

The video, titled Blow Up France 2, was released on Tuesday by French-speaking Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters and features a militant calling for new attacks in France.

A woman clad in camouflage clothing and holding a weapon is seen standing next to the speaker.

"French authorities are investigating the possibility this woman could be Hayat Boumeddiene," a security source told CNN. French authorities have not confirmed her identity.

Boumedienne's husband, Amedy Coulibaly, was killed by police on January 9 after he had killed four Jewish hostages in a kosher supermarket and a policewoman.
More.

Vindicating Chris Kyle

At the Wall Street Journal, "Islamic State proves the late sniper was right about the ‘savage’ enemy":
‘Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq.” Those were among the words the late Chris Kyle, of “American Sniper” fame, used to describe the enemy he and fellow veterans of the Iraq war faced. After seeing images this week of Islamic State jihadists murdering a caged Jordanian pilot by burning him alive, can there be any real doubt that Kyle was right?
Of course not.

But keep reading.