Kayla Meller, the American woman held hostage since 2013, has died, apparently, at the hands of her Islamic terrorist captors. I don’t even want to imagine what horrors she must have endured while in captivity or the method used to end her life. It is too horrific to imagine, especially while the images of the Jordanian pilot being burned alive are so fresh in my mind.
We have seen the Jordanian response to the death of their citizen. Jordan immediately executed two Islamic terrorist prisoners and has launched repeated airstrikes against ISIS.
I wonder what the USA response will be to this death of an American. The president has said, “No matter how long it takes, the United States will find and bring to justice the terrorists who are responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death. I can’t help but wonder if he said it going to or coming from the golf course.
Feb 10 2015
Another American hostage dead
Jul 26 2012
Jerry Springer Show for Jew hatred in Egypt
Watch all of this. It’s several clips from an Egyptian “reality show” which interviews celebrities, and tells them part way through the interview that they are on an Israeli TV show…. and see the hatred this evokes, the violent responses…. call it Jerry Springer for Jew-hatred. They celebrities aren’t REALLY on an Israeli TV show…. but the response that they have when they think that they are is very revealing…. and consider what this says about what Egyptian audiences find entertaining.
hat tip: hugh hewitt
Jul 10 2012
Iran and the bomb
Iran is accelerating its uranium enrichment program.
A position paper obtained by The Times of Israel, understood to have been used by Iran’s negotiators at last week’s technical-level talks with the P5+1 powers in Istanbul, makes plain the Tehran regime’s unyielding rejection of international efforts to negotiate safeguards and restrictions that would prevent Iran attaining a nuclear weapons capability.
Far from indicating Iranian readiness for a suspension or scaling back of its nuclear program, indeed, the document, made available by an informed source on condition of anonymity, includes references to Iran’s expansion plans. “Facing constant threats, we need a back up facility to safeguard our enrichment activities,” it states at one point, when discussing the Fordow enrichment facility, the underground complex built beneath a mountain near Qom where Iran carries out its 20% uranium enrichment.
A later point, related to the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), refers to the need “for at least 4 other research reactors because of the territorial extent of Iran and the short lifetime of medical isotopes.” The next clause in the document declares an Iranian ambition “to sell fuel complexes to other countries.”
The position paper, dated July 3, first sets out Iran’s objectives in the diplomatic process, which include obtaining international recognition of what it claims are its rights to enrichment activities, and securing “total termination” of all sanctions against it. It then details Iran’s bitter response to proposals from the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) for a negotiated agreement, notably including rejection of the international demand that it shut down its enrichment facility at Fordow.
Israel’s ambassador to the US on the threat:
America is a very large country with very big military capabilities. It’s not threatened with destruction by Iran the same way that Israel is. Israel is a small country with limited capabilities, and we’re in Iran’s backyard, and the Iranian regime never misses an opportunity to say that its finest dream is to wipe Israel off the map. They said it just yesterday again. And so given our capabilities, our timetable is much more limited that the United States timetable is, and it’s not determined by the American elections. It’s not determined even by the tempo of the contacts with the Iranians that have been going on in various capitols. It’s determined by the degree to which the Iranians are progressing on the nuclear program, moving parts of that program into fortified underground bunkers. And those are the clocks that we are looking at, and they will determine our actions.
That sounds to me like Israel has some internal clock running, some point of no return where it will probably attack Iran. I hope that point isn’t reached before the election of 2012 in the USA, which has the potential of changing everything about how the US and Israel cooperate in heading off an Iranian bomb.
I wish I was so sanguine about the prospects of Iran attacking the USA. How hard would it be for Iran to put a bomb on board a ship of another registry and sail it into New York Harbor? Would we even be able to be sure who did it? What about six or seven ports at the same time, each destroyed by a bomb on board a ship of a different registry? Again, how would we defend against this, and how would we even know who to retaliate against?
Not that retaliation would be much comfort after such a disastrous attack on the USA.
Jun 21 2012
Smart phones and missile defense in Israel
IRON DOME is the name of the Israeli anti-missile system that protects Israel from incoming missiles. Of course, no missile shield yet made can stop all incoming missiles…. but catching some is better than catching none. In any case, there is concern in Israeli defense circles that the frequencies used by some smart phones might interfere with the functioning of the IRON DOME. And you thought the airlines were paranoid about cell phones…..
IDF aims to shoot down smartphones over missile defense | The Times of Israel
The concerns come from the transmission frequencies used by some smartphones and tablet devices that could interfere with the finely tuned Iron Dome missile batteries as they home in on incoming missiles. Although an IDF representative raised the issue during the committee meeting at the beginning of the week, security officials refuse to reveal which specific devices or frequencies pose a problem. During the meeting, Communication Minister Moshe Kahlon dismissed the IDF’s concerns and said that changes in regulations have already been delayed several times in the past over security concerns.
What’s the takeaway? Israel is so much under siege as a nation that the possibility of smart phones interfering with missile defense is a story about economics…. not one about the psychology of a people who live under daily threat.
Sep 27 2011
Propping up an evil regime
Mr. President, could we please start drilling for our own oil so that in the future we won’t have to buy oil from Saudi Arabia?
Saudi woman sentenced to 10 lashes for driving car
A Saudi woman was sentenced Tuesday to be lashed 10 times with a whip for defying the kingdom’s prohibition on female drivers, the first time a legal punishment has been handed down for a violation of the longtime ban in the ultraconservative Muslim nation.
Normally, police just stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo.
Making Tuesday’s sentence all the more upsetting to activists is that it came just two days after King Abdullah promised to protect women’s rights and decreed that women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015. Abdullah also promised to appoint women to a currently all-male advisory body known as the Shura Council.
The mixed signals highlight the challenge for Abdullah, known as a reformer, in pushing gently for change without antagonizing the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population.
Abdullah said he had the backing of the official clerical council. But activists saw Tuesday’s sentencing as a retaliation of sorts from the hard-line Saudi religious establishment that controls the courts and oversees the intrusive religious police.
“Our king doesn’t deserve that,” said Sohila Zein el-Abydeen, a prominent female member of the governmental National Society for Human Rights. She burst into tears in a phone interview and said, “The verdict is shocking to me, but we were expecting this kind of reaction.”
The driver, Shaima Jastaina, in her 30s, was found guilty of driving without permission, activist Samar Badawi said. The punishment is usually carried out within a month. It was not possible to reach Jastaina, but Badawi, in touch with Jastaina’s family, said she appealed the verdict.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women—both Saudi and foreign—from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins.
Activists say the religious justification is irrelevant.
“How come women get flogged for driving while the maximum penalty for a traffic violation is a fine, not lashes?” Zein el-Abydeen said. “Even the Prophet (Muhammad’s) wives were riding camels and horses because these were the only means of transportation.”
Since June, dozens of women have led a campaign to try to break the taboo and impose a new status quo. The campaign’s founder, Manal al-Sherif, who posted a video of herself driving on Facebook, was detained for more than 10 days. She was released after signing a pledge not to drive or speak to media.
Since then, women have been appearing in the streets driving their cars once or twice a week.
Until Tuesday, none had been sentenced by the courts. But recently, several women have been summoned for questioning by the prosecutor general and referred to trial.
One of them, housewife Najalaa al-Harriri, drove only two times, not out of defiance, but out of need, she says.
“I don’t have a driver. I needed to drop my son off at school and pick up my daughter from work,” she said over the phone from the western port city of Jeddah.
“The day the king gave his speech, I was sitting at the prosecutor’s office and was asked why I needed to drive, how many times I drove and where,” she said. She is to stand trial in a month.
After the king’s announcement about voting rights for women, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al Sheik blessed the move and said, “It’s for women’s good.”
Al-Harriri, who is one of the founders of a women’s rights campaign called “My Right My Dignity,” said, “It is strange that I was questioned at a time the mufti himself blessed the king’s move.”
Asked if the sentencing will stop women from driving, Maha al-Qahtani, another female activist, said, “This is our right, whether they like it or not.”
Sep 15 2010
Lessons learned, questions unanswered
Lessons learned from the mildly idiotic plans of one Rev. Jones to publicly burn a Koran, regardless of the eventual shakeout (he’s been changing his mind a lot lately), the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero, and remaining unanswered questions:
1) Muslims expressing deep outrage over this have no sense of proportion. Death threats? Insinuations that US national security is at stake? Compare to the reaction of Christians to the “Piss Christ” “artwork”.
2) Virtually everyone seems to be afraid of making Muslims angry. Could that be because they know this represents a real danger? Why is no one afraid of making Christians angry?
3) Americans have largely forgotten 9/11, despite the many reminders in the press and news coverage recently. They have forgotten how they felt on 9/12. Sadly.
4) Christianity and Islam are not on equal footing as “religions of peace.” Not even close. Not by a country mile. They don’t inhabit the same galaxy.
5) Where is the “moderate” Muslim outrage AT the Muslims who expressed such virulent outrage and threatened violence against Rev. Jones?
6) Why does the mainstream media stress the great patience and understanding that Americans should have for the Muslim ambition to build a Mosque at Ground Zero (!), without also suggesting that Muslims should really just ignore nitwits like Rev. Terry Jones, and not get so excited about his loony plans?
7) Why doesn’t our president make the same connection? Where does he get off telling Rev. Jones how destructive his plan is, but still telling Americans they should be accepting of the Ground Zero mosque, as if that plan represents some great sensitivity to American feelings?
8) Obama’s great political insight and wisdom, his deep connection to the American people, his smooth way with an audience…. all of this is a crock, a media made-up just-so story, which the media got away with in order to get their Annointed One elected, but which the American people have largely seen through.
The biggest loser over the Ground Zero Mosque and Terry Jones stories?
Obama, I think.
Sep 12 2010
How much longer can Israel wait to do something about Iran?
It is clear that Obama’s foreign policy regarding Iran is failing, as a new report showing that Iran is on the brink of nuclear weapons is the headline du jour.
A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iranian nuclear scientists had made at least 22 kilograms of enriched uranium up to 20 per cent purity, a technical hurdle that is the hardest to overcome on the way to weapons-grade uranium.
Experts estimate that 20 kgs of uranium is a significant step toward arming a warhead. The uranium would still need to have its purity raised to 90 per cent, but that is a relatively easy process.
The agency’s report comes in spite of the recent imposition at the United Nations of a fresh round of sanctions against Iran and will heighten fears of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear plants. The prospect of an attack had receded only recently with American assurances that Tehran was more than a year away from acquiring a bomb.
The Vienna-based nuclear watchdog indicated Tehran had maintained its absolute defiance of international pressure to curb its programme despite the imposition of harsh sanctions in May. The IAEA has grown increasingly alarmed at Iran’s behaviour and the latest report, which will be presented to the agency’s governors at a meeting next week, lambasted Tehran on a series of fronts.
The country’s refusal to answer questions on its attempts to make a nuclear warhead that could be fitted on to its most advanced missiles was denounced as a violation of sanctions.
The agency also rebuked the regime for its repeated failure to co-operate with weapons inspections designed to ensure that material was held securely at Iranian plants.
Iran barred two weapons inspectors from the country in June after they reported undeclared nuclear activity by scientists. It has also systematically objected to other scientists on spurious grounds.
“The agency is … concerned that the repeated objection to the designation of experienced inspectors hampers the inspection process and detracts from the agency’s ability to implement safeguards in Iran,” the report said.
The acquisition of uranium will cause the most alarm however. Until February the Iranians were enriching uranium to levels of no more than 5 per cent at its plant in Natanz.
The government-funded Verification Research, Training and Information Centre, an expert body, has estimated that a weapons expert would have done much of the separative work to make a nuclear device from 20 kgs of 20 per cent enriched material with relatively few further obstacles.
The IAEA under Yukiya Amano, its new Japanese director general, has taken a much tougher line with Iran’s obstruction of international inspections. But the agency’s reports demonstrate that, while the Iranian economy has suffered from sanctions, the nuclear programme has not been impeded. Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, the feedstock of both civilian and military nuclear programmes, has risen by around 15 per cent since May to reach 2.8 tonnes.
Aug 23 2010
A true moderate Muslim who loves democratic government
I have mentioned Dr. Jasser in other posts, leader of a movement of Muslims in favor of American democracy, and I’ve linked to his website in the blog roll on the lower right of this page. If Islam is to free itself of an dangerous radicals who want to set the tone (sometimes all too successfully) for all of Islam, the reform must come from within, in the person of spokesmen like Dr. Jasser, who prizes liberty above Sharia.
Why the media keeps going to CAIR as a representative of “moderate Islam” instead of AIFD is beyond me… or maybe it isn’t. After all, most of the media are hostile to Israel, and so is CAIR. Listen to Dr. Jasser, and hope there are many more who will follow him.
Aug 21 2010
George Will’s take on Israel and Iran’s nuclear plans
Not having anything brilliant to say today (why should today be different than any other day?), I defer to George Will, in his piece titled Israel’s Netanyahu Poised to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Sites
When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.
To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself, a perfect victim.”
Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.
Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.
After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”
From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.
That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.
Since 2006, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.
Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.
Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.
Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”
If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?
He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.
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