“47 years ago the [Fatah] revolution started.  Which revolution?  The modern revolution of the Palestinian people’s history.  In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, 637 CE], and continuing today, and until the End of Days.  The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says: “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.  The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.  Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…”

-PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein, PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2012

There is nothing particularly surprising about the above statement, made so recently by the Palestinian Authority (PA) funded Palestinian Mufti, who is the leading Sunni Muslim religious authority in the PA.  In fact, it is well representative of the state of current Palestinian society (which I described more fully in a previous column), with its government sponsorship of hate against Israelis and Jews, its promotion of terrorism, its production of murderous children’s television shows, and even its advocacy of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  Unfortunately, beginning in 1994, with the removal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian areas, the governing Palestinian group Fatah received control the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, (although the Hamas terror group seized control of Gaza in 2007).

Palestinian leaders could have taken advantage of their new power to develop the economy, produce jobs, provide support for its disadvantaged, and develop an agricultural base.  Instead the Palestinian leaders cancelled democratic elections,  cracked down on free speech and  religion, tortured and killed their own people, and funneled money into personal bank accounts or into support for terrorism against Israel.

A distinction can be made between Fatah and Hamas. Fatah, subsidized by the U.S., international organizations, Europe, the Gulf States, and even Israel,  is the more secular of the two even though it continues to fund Muslim religious events demonizing Jews, and paying the salary for the anti-Semitic Palestinian Authority Mufti. Fatah continues to glorify terrorism on television, including praising vicious murderer of an Israeli family, including two children and an infant.

This ought not come as a surprise, since for forty years Fatah was the personal fiefdom of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, the man who introduced the world to airline skyjackings.  (Unholy Alliance, David Horowitz, pg.145) Arafat spent much of his diplomatic career walking away from peace deals that would have given him a viable Palestinian state, the very thing he claimed to want, when speaking to a western audience. Under their current leader, Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah has continued to avoid any final settlement of the peace process. Just this month, the Abbas appointed terrorist Mahmoud Awad Damra to serve as a PA official, despite his recent release from jail for attacks which killed Israelis and Americans. Last month, Abbas pushed for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the UN, in an effort to bypass bilateral peace negotiations and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The other ruling Palestinian regime is the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which now dominates the Egyptian parliament. Hamas and the Brotherhood’s goal is to implement Sharia (Islamic law), with all of its mandated 7^th century punishments including flogging, stoning and amputation. Hamas has a strong claim of legitimacy, having defeated Fatah in Palestinian elections in 2006, and because its genocidal covenant is strongly grounded in traditional Islamic anti-Semitism and contains the exact hadith uttered by the PA‘s Mufti. In fact, it is so identified with virulent anti-Semitism that the foreign travels of its leadership have led to mass demonstrations throughout the Arab world reminiscent of the demonstrations 1930’s Nazi Germany.  Hamas is led by a triumvirate of terrorists: Khaled Mashal, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar. Mashal has praised Osama Bin Laden and condemned Bin Laden’s killing. Al-Zahar has reiterated that Hamas will “never give up its armed struggle against the Zionist enemy.” Nor is such talk likely to end, as each member of the leadership attempts to outdo the other in demonstrations of their terrorist credentials and Jew-hatred in an effort to emerge victorious in an internal Hamas power struggle.

Because of these factors, Hamas manages to be even more repressive and destructive to the hopes of a stable Palestinian society than Fatah. When the Israelis removed their settlements from the Gaza strip in 2005, it was Hamas which led the Gazans in riots to destroy the agricultural industry Israel left behind. Hamas has spent its three years cracking down on the rights of women in the Gaza Strip, harassing its tiny Christian community into exile, and suppressing free speech.  There has been some growing resentment of the authoritarian and fundamentalist Hamas among young Palestinian Muslims. As a result Hamas has resorted to conducting a “charm offensive” in Gaza to win back public support.

Recently, “President” Abbas and Khaled Meshaal met to discuss reconciliation between the two groups. They agreed to hold presidential and legislative elections by May of 2012, and to initiate some confidence-building measures. But so far negotiations have not resolved the issue of forming a unity government, nor who would lead it. Hamas remains adamant that the West Bank’s Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, popular in the West for his statements in favor of developing a more economically advanced and democratic Palestinian entity, be removed, while Abbas is pretending to support him to keep the foreign aid flowing.  If the two sides do eventually come together, it will be to produce a government which shares the values which unite the two parties, namely, terrorism against Jews, government corruption, and opposition to free speech.

Until there is a fundamental change in the nature of Palestinian society, negotiations will never succeed. All moderation will continue to be “English-only” meant to purchase western aid to facilitate corruption and terror.  Palestinian leaders will continue to compete with each other over the support of a Palestinian public, in order to show that they are the party that best represents the principle, “there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s election victory indicates strong support for Islamism and for Sharia law. Sharia law does not tolerate free speech or protests against the government, and it exploits and suppresses minorities.  Muslim Brotherhood has expressed their goal to see the newly-formed government, “evolv[e] into a rightly guided caliphate.”

This naturally alarms Israel because the Brotherhood is closely allied with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for murdering hundreds of civilians, including Americans, in Israel. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s prime minister, has described his organization as the “jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face.” Haniyeh stated recently that “our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity.”

The parliamentary elections will soon be followed by a rewriting of the 1971 constitution which will take place prior to the presidential elections.  That will ensure that the power will reside in the Islamist-dominated parliament. In any case, most of the current presidential contenders have a similar agenda to the Brotherhood, calling for imposing Sharia law in Egypt and modifying the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

The 1979 peace treaty was negotiated by Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, and Israel is rightly concerned about whether the document will be honored.  Odds are slim, since the ruling military junta, The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) plans to put the Camp David accords on the ballot for a national referendum. The Brotherhood has vowed never to recognize Israel as legitimate.

As Islamists were swept into power throughout the Middle East, what was the White House doing? It was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Islamists. As the revolution in Egypt evoked Western fears (now proven to be prescient) of a Brotherhood rise to power, the administration dispatched Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to announce that the Islamist group was “largely secular.” The U.S. government provided election training to Egyptian Islamist parties.

The N.Y. Times reported that the Obama administration accepts the Muslim Brotherhood’s assurances that it will build a democracy that respects individual rights, free markets and free speech. On January 4, the administration began to “forge closer ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that once was received as irreconcilably opposed to U.S. interests,” the newspaper said.  The White House is giving the Brotherhood international legitimacy, based on the platitudes the latter expresses in English, while in Arabic it has demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and called for preparations for war against Israel.

At the same time, the White House has represented the Egyptian military as a pro-Western and secular force which will restrain Islamist elements. In reality, the Egyptian military has used deadly force against civilian protesters. In response to a Coptic protest in the Cairo neighborhood of Maspero, SCAF unleashed armored vehicles, which deliberately ran over protestors. Protestors were assaulted and beaten as Egyptian troops yelled “Allahu akbar” at those they called “Christian sons of dogs.”

These recent attacks by the military and their Islamist allies against Coptic Christians (who make up 10 percent of the 82 million Egyptians) give us a preview of what is to come when the Islamists impose Sharia law:

“The Islamists have been unleashed,” says Nasri, a Copt pharmacist who is hoping to leave Egypt.  “You’re talking about no rights for women.  No rights for Coptic Christians.  They’ll make us more of a minority.  It will be like living centuries ago.”

Red lights are flashing and sirens are blasting, but the Obama administration does not sense the threat. That is not for lack of information. EMET predicted early-on that the Brotherhood would take power and that the Egyptian military would not stand for democracy and minority rights. Unfortunately, President Obama believes that America’s role in the world is far too aggressive and arrogant in promoting democracy. As a result, he apologizes for our supposed failure to understand others, our alleged selfishness in pursuing U.S. interests instead of global interests and showing far too much concern for U.S. independence and freedom of action.

Perhaps Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sees the danger in Obama’s support for Egypt’s incoming government. Traditionally, Washington appropriates $1.3 billion a year to Egypt, plus additional support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Senator Leahy has sponsored a bill in the Appropriations Committee that calls for restrictions in military aid to Egypt. Leahy also calls for funds to be earmarked to promote democracy and limit military power there. The Egyptian military has lobbied aggressively against the Leahy legislation, and it upped the ante by raiding Western pro-democracy Non-governmental organizations.  According to The Washington Post, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also opposes these restrictions, and the State Department has proposed an additional billion dollars in debt relief, to provide funds for the Egyptian government’s “transition.”

The seismic wave of change in Middle East has swept Sharia advocates into power, and the Obama Administration has been a contributor to that outcome. Now, freedoms of speech and of minority rights are threatened. So is Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, which long has stood as the only democracy in the region. The White House has settled for the democracy of “one man, one vote, one time,” thus bringing even worse regimes to power than had previously ruled in the region. Who will take a stand and promote real democratic values?

With Republican Congressman Ron Paul coming in a close third in the Iowa presidential caucus, we must look seriously at his foreign policy views, particularly on the Middle East and Israel, and ask whether such views are suitable for a commander-in-chief charged with the security of the United States during a period of conflict with a determined Islamic enemy.

Much attention has been paid, since Paul’s strong showing in Iowa, to statements issued in Rep. Paul’s newsletter publications. Many of these newsletters contain material on domestic matters (such as race relations) that may be objectionable, but one of the most troubling statements on the foreign policy front relates to credence given to a conspiracy theory blaming the Mossad for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. From an April 1993 edition of the newsletter:

It was only a matter of a few days after the World Trade Center bombing before Mohammad A. Salameh was arrested. Is he guilty? Who knows? Recall that shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and accusations were made. Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.

This statement shows a susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking, which, while contrary to any good analysis, is particularly dangerous when considering the Middle East. The Arab world is fraught with all manner of ludicrous and delusional conspiracy theories about the Jews and Israel, and that a potential American Commander-in-Chief would give them any credence is deeply troubling. Even if, as Rep. Paul claims, he was not the author of the newsletters in question, then at the very least he hired and supervised, or failed to supervise, individuals who maintained these beliefs. Anyone who genuinely considers the possibility that Israel would intentionally bomb an American civilian building for the sole purpose of framing Islamic terrorists, cannot ever be an ally of or, indeed, even neutral in regards to Israel.

The other interesting element of the quote is the use of the word “retaliation.” The assumption that any act of terrorism committed by Muslims must be the result of U.S. behavior, and, therefore, justifiable is a hallmark of Paul’s policies and is deeply troubling. A perfect illustration occurred in Paul’s remarks during the December 15th Iowa Republican debate. “… [T]o say all Muslims are the same is dangerous talk,” he stated. “They don’t come to kill us because we are free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean that’s absurd.”

Of course all Muslims are not the same. No one is suggesting that they are. Paul’s claim that Muslims want to harm us “because we are bombing them” ignores the reality that Islamists have deeply-held religious and ideological beliefs that mandate jihad against non-believers, the spread of Sharia, and the dominance of an Islamic caliphate. We know this because not just Islamic terrorists, but Muslim jurists, thinkers and policy-makers say so routinely, as evidenced by a wide collection of Arabic-language video and transcripts available from translation services like MEMRI.

Ironically the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police recognizes better than does Rep. Paul the reality of jihadist motivations, writing in a 2006 report summary, that Switzerland was both home to, and a target for, Islamist terrorists.

Furthermore, which Muslims exactly does Paul claim the United States bombed prior to the 1993 “retaliation” bombing?

Paul blames Israel for much of the faults of the Middle East and, according to former Paul staffer Eric Dondero, has privately expressed his wish that Israel not exist. Dondero writes,

He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the American taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

Paul has attempted to create the impression that his stance on Israel is motivated not by anti-Zionism, but, rather, by a principled position on independent national sovereignty. He points to his voting against condemning Israel for the 1981 Osirak reactor bombing, and claims that our “interference” with Israel is to their detriment. Said Paul in a November presidential debate in Washington,

We interfere with them when they deal with their borders. When they want to have peace treaties, we tell them what they can do because we buy their allegiance and they sacrifice their sovereignty to us. And then they decide they want to bomb something, that’s their business, but they should, you know, suffer the consequences. When they bombed the Iraqi missile site, nuclear site, back in the ’80s, I was one of the few in Congress that said it’s none of our business and Israel should take care of themselves.

EMET believes that a close American-Israeli security alliance is to the benefit of both nations, but we understand that one could make the opposing argument that Israel is burdened by its American alliance in good faith. However Paul’s stance is disingenuous, as evidenced by his remarks on the House floor on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza that began in December 2008. Paul claimed that Hamas was “encouraged by and really started by Israel,” much as he blames the U.S. for the rise of Al Qaeda. In interviews with Iranian state television, Press TV, he described Gaza as a “concentration camp.” Far from wanting to free Israel to see to its own national security, Paul seizes upon occasions when Israel acts to ensure its security, as in Operation Cast Lead, to condemn it and, by extension, the United States.

Paul prefers pat answers that blame America and Israel to conducting serious investigation of the motivations of our self-declared enemies. Indeed Paul’s belief in American-centric grievance terrorism denies agency to other countries and cultures. He refuses to take into account any historical, cultural or political developments prior to America’s rise to superpower status. Paul’s only solution is a return to American isolationism as a foreign policy.

Paul believes that if Washington ceases to support and ally itself with the Jewish state, then a large number of America’s problems with the Muslim world will disappear. But suppose that a President Paul initiated a foreign policy in which the U.S. government didn’t defend Israel in the United Nations Security Council, recognized “Palestine” as a nation, called on Israel to negotiate with that state, and stopped the sale of American weapons or technology to the Jewish state. Would these actions prompt the Islamist or Muslim worlds to reward us with better behavior?

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they would not, just by examining the past three years. President Barack Obama is markedly less supportive of Israel than was President George W. Bush. Obama made improved relations with the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy, as delineated in his Cairo declaration in 2009. Based on the Paul logic, positive results should come from the Muslim world, but we see no evidence of its becoming more supportive of the United States. Have the Palestinians been more willing to compromise? No. The Palestinian Authority seems to be approaching the even more extreme and radical group, Hamas, with which it now plans to merge. Also, the PA has unilaterally pushed for statehood recognition by the United Nations, an effort the Obama Administration has opposed. And has the rest of the Muslim world become more cooperative with the United States? Not at all. Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden until we found and killed him, and it continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia still produces textbooks and religious materials filled with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry. And Iran still pushes ahead with nuclear weapons production.

We have every reason to suspect, therefore, that the Middle East’s reaction to an even softer Ron Paul approach to diplomacy would be greater intransigence.

Paul pretends that this reality does not exist or that it does not matter. Osama bin Laden should not have been killed, under Paul’s reasoning. Iran is not trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, he claims, and if it were, that’s Teheran’s choice. “If I were an Iranian, I’d like to have a nuclear weapon, too, because you gain respect from them,” he told Iowans.

Paul’s foreign policy has a seductive attraction. If all the troubles America endures are because of her actions, then ceasing these actions is a cure-all. But this is simply not so. A retreat to some mythical isolationist foreign policy is as impossible as it is undesirable. It would cede regional hegemony to national and non-state actors who have their own innate motivations for wishing death to those they label “infidels,” and make the world, America, and Israel, infinitely more insecure.

— William Butler Yeats

By all accounts, 2011 has been a cataclysmic year in the Middle East. What began with a government official’s harassment of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, and ended in his self-immolation on December 18,2010, sparked riots that led to what has been dubbed “The Arab Spring” but that we at EMET have more appropriately entitled “The Arab Tsunami.”. The events in Tunisia resulted in a wave of protests that has shaken up the Arab and Muslim worlds, stretching all the way from Morocco to Yemen.

As anyone who has not been asleep for the greater part of this year is aware, what transpired in the region in 2011 has been more dramatic than anything to occur in the Middle East since the days after World War I, when French diplomat Francois Georges Picot, together with British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, carved up the region for their countries.

What has happened since last December 18 has  awakened the populations throughout the region to protest their countries’ poor economic conditions and total lack of human rights, as well as corruption  within the region’s leadership. That then led, among other astonishing developments, to the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia; the end of the 33-year reign of  Yemenite President Ali Abdullah Saleh;  the overthrow and death of Libyan strongman  Muammmar Gaddafi and, most astonishingly, the end of the 30-year, iron-clad reign of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

As of now, more than 37,000 people have died in these protests, and the region is still awash with blood. What will be the final outcome of these cataclysmic events is difficult to predict. Sometimes, revolutions result in more freedom, as defined from the liberal, Western point of view. The French Revolution took decades and finally resulted in more freedoms. A revolution, however, might result in a more oppressive regime within an overarching system, such as occurred in the Russian Revolution of 1917, or the  Iranian Revolution of 1979.

We at EMET have long seen the rising tide of radical Islamism and have expressed the fear that what began with the Facebook generation by a few young, freedom-loving activists (in the Western sense of the concept) would lead to elections  ushering in Islamist regimes. That is because the people who truly have the political power and infrastructure control the mosques.

We are witnessing now, as in Germany in 1939 and in Gaza in 2006, the reality that one election does not a democracy make.

EMET has stressed throughout this year that democracy entails the chance to have second, third and fourth elections, and that the institutions that allow a person to dissent without fear of one’s very life must already be in place: a free and independent press, a free and independent judiciary, freedom of assemblage. And, as Natan Sharansky has written: the freedom to scream from the middle of the public square and criticize those in power, in the government.

So, where are we today? Just looking at this week’s headlines, I’d like to present an overview of a few hot spots in this troubled region.

Syria

More than 6,200 people have been murdered by the brutal boot of the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad within the last several months of the uprising, including  hundreds of children. Hundreds, if not thousands, more have disappeared from the streets, perhaps languishing in jail, where God only knows the abuse to which they have been subjected, if they even remain alive.  The Syrian government claims that the uprising was orchestrated by “foreign terrorists.” As I write these words, residents of the besieged city of Homs cry out for the world to come and witness the endless bloodshed, which has killed more than 100 residents over the past few days. Videos posted throughout the Internet show blood-soaked streets in that city, with bodies lying about. Homs has been cut off from food and electricity, and, in a scene reminiscent of the film Schindler’s List, the regime’s soldiers take pot shots at people leaving their homes  during certain hours. The brave dissidents there, despite, the level of brutality that this oppressive regime has stooped to, have not given up.

EMET has been urging strong American sanctions against Syria, as well as covert or overt help for the dissidents. Replacing the Assad government has got to be better than the current situation. Furthermore, Syria is part of the Iranian constellation, and anything that weakens Teheran’s sphere of influence is a good thing.

Egypt

The results of the long-awaited second of the three rounds of parliamentary elections are finally in, and no surprises occurred. As EMET predicted, the Islamist parties received more than 75 percent of the vote. The highest percentage of votes went to Salafist parties that are even more extreme than the horrific Muslim Brotherhood. This all but paves the way for a radical Sharia state to Israel’s immediate west and the continuation of an open smuggling corridor of goods, weapons and fighters into Hamas-controlled Gaza. The eight million Coptic Christians in Egypt have long endured persecution, but since Mubarak’s overthrow, this minority has endured massacres and unspeakable abuses.

The Egyptian military that has maintained control since the ouster of Mubarak has  been exceedingly brutal, particularly in abusing female protestors, who, when arrested, have endured humiliating and painful “virginity tests,” which the army claims protects the women from the charge of prostitution.  This week, millions of viewers were stunned by the YouTube video of a female demonstrator savagely beaten by the Egyptian military; her abaya (cloak) was opened, with her bare midriff and her blue bra appearing as an Egyptian officer prepared to stomp on her with his boot.

I am certain that when the Tahrir Square demonstrations began earlier this year, none of the organizers thought it would have come to this.

Israel has no assurances that there will not be a radical, Sunni Islamic state along on its border or that Egypt will — despite public pronouncements due to diplomatic and economic factors — uphold the fragile 1979 Camp David peace treaty with Israel. In fact, both of the major Egyptian parties have stated that the treaty has to be reexamined.

Since the Camp David Accords was signed, America has elevated the Egyptian military from a C-, Soviet-equipped force to an A+, American-equipped one. EMET has been alone on Capitol Hill in arguing, ever since the demonstrations began in Tahrir Square last winter, that America should withhold further military aid until the results of the elections are known. The results show that, as predicted, Sharia has swept through the region. EMET calls for an immediate cessation of all military funding and weapon shipments to Egypt.

Palestinian Authority-Hamas

Taking a cue from the success of its Islamist brothers in Egypt, Hamas decided this week to  enter into the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary  elections in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, if you will), which are due to take place in May. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar has expressed every confidence in winning the elections.

Beyond that, last Thursday, the Palestinian Liberation Organization — which many world bodies, including the United Nations, feels has the sole legitimacy for representing the Palestinian people — held a historic meeting in Ramallah, where an accord was reached to open up its umbrella group to “activate and reconstruct” it to include organizations that do not currently belong. This paves the way for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to join the PLO.[1]

Just as the Salafists participated in the Egyptian elections not to share power, but to dominate, Hamas is now entering into a relationship with the PLO to dominate it.

I am certain we will soon hear pundits inside the Washington Beltway saying that now is the time for Israel to make dramatic concessions for peace, to buoy Fatah’s chances of winning in the upcoming elections.

Yes, you heard it right: Israel will be asked to sacrifice her own strategic depth, once again, in this tumultuous and rapidly growing Islamist region of the world, for the sake of internal Palestinian politics and to inject a transfusion into the moribund peace process.

Or, borrowing a page from Yasser Arafat’s and Abu Mazen’s playbook, it will not take long before we begin to hear the talking heads telling us that there is a “moderate faction” to talk to in Hamas.

Do not be fooled: Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s newly dubbed foreign minister, told the Al-Quds newspaper: “Anyone who thinks Hamas has changed its positions and now accepts the PLO’s defeating political position is living under an illusion. Hamas cannot make a mistake that proved to be a failed one. … By moving toward reconciliation with the PLO, we are reconstructing the organization and reconsidering its failed program.” So as not to be misunderstood, he added: “Hamas’s goal is first and foremost the liberation of our lands from the sea to the river and achieving the right of return.”[2]

Or, as Khalil Abu Leila, another Hamas official, stated, “Hamas will not join the PLO political program. Rather, a major task of the Hamas provisional leadership will be to bring the PLO back to its correct path and the goal for which it was established, mainly, the liberation of Palestine.”[3]

Iran

Against this rising tide of Sunni Islamist fundamentalism throughout the region is the Iranian quest for hegemony and for the reclamation of the triumph of Shiite Islamism.

One particularly horrifying way Iran has engaged in this quest is through its pursuit of nuclear weapons. None of us was surprised when the International Atomic Energy Agency reported last November that Iran now has the ability to create nuclear weapons, having mastered the “critical steps involved in the process.” The report further stated that a Soviet scientist tutored the Iranians about detonation reactions, and that North Korean and Pakistani nuclear scientists were also available to lend their knowledge and expertise.

This of course totally refutes the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, which stated:

We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran  halted its nuclear weapons program. …We judge with high confidence that  the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguars Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing the international scrutiny and pressure  resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

First lesson: Do not trust any accord signed by a despot or a dictator. One barometer of whether or not a ruler means what he says is how he treats his minorities and his dissidents. It is all directly related to an underlying premise of one’s respect for the dignity of human life and the basic rights of man.

Speaking of dissidents: There was a moment of opportunity, when the brave, young Iranian dissidents were out on the streets, en masse, and the leader of the free world, President Obama, said nothing in their support for a full two weeks, while skulls were being crushed and people were disappearing from the streets. Most people in Iran are under 30. They were born after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, despise the theocracy and are feeling suffocated by its choking stranglehold.

The Iranian prisons are bursting with such protestors.  Taking a page from the Soviet Jewry movement, in which names like Natan Sharansky became household words in the West, we should all know the names of people like 26-year-old Hossein Ronaghi Malkhi, a blogger and human rights activist, who was arrested for fomenting the demonstrations in June 2009. He was sent to the notorious Evin Prison, where he has beaten and tortured and needs a kidney operation.

The Iranian nuclear program has led to a more rigorous pursuit of nuclear weaponry within such Sunni Arab states as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They, of course, have the petro dollars to buy scientists, technology and nuclear material.

All of this adds to the destabilization of an already volatile and unpredictable region, where human rights abuses are on the rise along with Sunni and Shiite Islamism.

Lessons for 2012

This has been a traumatic year for the entire region. It is a time of chaos and instability, in which we should have learned:

1) The United States has only one stable, reliable ally in the Middle East — the State of Israel, which .should be strengthened against the rising tide of radical Islamism. It is also time we learned that, whether we like it or not, radical Islamists perceive of America as the Great Satan.  As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once warned, our projection of our values onto the world simply does not work. We must understand the sociological and tribal structure of the Middle East before we enter into any further agreements with governments of the region.

2) Appeasement and groveling to despots and dictators have not enhanced America’s standing in the region, but has weakened it immensely.  America’s outstretched hand for dialogue has not  prevented Iran from reaching its goal of nuclear capability and regional dominance one iota.

3) The United States appears like a sleeping giant that unconditionally dishes out our precious and rapidly dwindling resources — foreign aid — to unfriendly, unreliable parties in the region without any leverage, making us appear even more  embarrassingly pathetic there. This applies to our aid to Pakistan and certainly has been the case with the Palestinians. Ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, we ostensibly conditioned our aid to the Palestinians on very basic principles, all of which they have continuously ignored. Rather than doing away with U.S. aid to the Palestinians, we have done away with enforcing the funds’ conditionality.

4) This is the time to finally stop our military aid and weapons shipments to Egypt, or we will be forced to confront these American-made armaments’ possibly use in attacking our one ally in the region, the State of Israel, or American soldiers and sailors on the Sixth Fleet.

5) Now, in the midst of all this regional chaos, is precisely not the time to pressure Israel to take more risks for peace. The growing radical Islamism is a time for stability, at least in one tiny sliver of the region, the State of Israel.

6) We should be helping and propping up the voices of the dissidents within Iran, and those within the Iranian constellation of power, such as the brave, besieged Syrian dissidents. Not to do so will strengthen the menacing hand of Iran and is nothing short of immoral.

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

However, a significantly more powerful pro-Israel organization was also on the Hill at the same time arguing the total antithesis — that now was the time to speed up military aid to Egypt. They based their argument on the idea that the Egyptian military is the most Western and moderating of all Egyptian institutions and that supporting the military was our way of “buying a seat at the table.”

What good is a “seat at the table” when we put masking tape over our mouths? The United States has seldom been successful in utilizing our arms shipments to exert influence or leverage over countries that have taken billions of our dollars and our weapons — just look at the U.S.’s disastrous relationship with Pakistan, whom we are currently supporting with billions of dollars in aid and extensive shipments of the most modern arms, while their military actively supports the Taliban and assists in attacks on U.S. forces.

Since the Camp David Accords were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979, America has  rebuilt the Egyptian military from being  a Russian equipped C- army to a powerful American trained and equipped A+ army  with the most advanced and sophisticated equipment.  Now all that technology and firepower will be in the hands of radical Islamist forces who fully support Hamas and Hezbollah and seek to destabilize the remaining friends of the U.S. in the Middle East.  Behind the scenes the Muslim Brotherhood has had a long and deep relationship with the Egyptian military.  Now, if the Muslim Brotherhood comes to political power in Egypt, it will be openly embraced by the military, producing a potentially disastrous mix of a religious/political ideology and a powerful military machine.

The “seat at the table” argument did not work during the 1979 Iranian revolution when we had to immediately halt our arms shipments to Tehran, nor has it worked with the Lebanese Armed Forces which has been completely over-run by Hizballah.

Anyone with any understanding of the Middle East knows that a.) Armies also want to survive and that the way that they survive is by aligning themselves with the biggest bully in the playground; b.) The Egyptian military is a professional military, and like all professional militaries they do not create policy, but carry it out; and c.) Armies are made up of human beings who are not impervious to the influences of the street.

The revolution that swept through Tahrir Square was initiated by the young, savvy and independent, Facebook crowd, but these idealistic young people lack the deep political infrastructure of the Muslim Brotherhood, the charismatic influence of the Imams and mosques and the deep conservative religious ethos of the Egyptian populace.

Now that Egyptians have gone to the polls, the question is not whether the radical Muslim Brotherhood will win a plurality of seats in their Parliament, but by how many.  The election’s final results will probably not be known until January, but it does not look as though Jeffersonian democracy will spring up in Egypt, or anywhere else in the Muslim and Arab Middle East.

The results of the Moroccan election of November 25^th are no more promising. The Islamist Justice and Development Party, (PJD) easily trumped all the others.  Nor are the October 23^rd Tunisian election results, which shows the Ennahda party, also Islamist, winning a clear plurality of the votes.

As our people painfully learned in 1932, when Hitler came to power through the process of a democratic election and then again in 2006, when Hamas came to power through another process of democratic elections in Gaza: one election is not sufficient to create a vibrant democracy.

Democracy means the ability to have a second, a third and a fourth election.

It means that the institutions of the government are in place that protects the rights of religious and other minorities, that there is an independent judiciary and an independent press. It means, as Natan Sharansky said, “the freedom to stand in the public square and criticize those in power without fearing for one’s life.”

We are facing the beginning of a long, chilling Middle East winter, where their supporters of America will be few and far between and the rights of the individual remain an even more distant dream. The young and idealistic revolutionaries of the Facebook generation must be feeling bereft, as many of them might soon be forced to conceal their yearnings for independence behind oceans of homogeneous abayas and hijabs.

And our one fellow vibrant democracy in the Middle East, Israel, becomes further isolated in a rejectionist sea of radical Islamism.

Firstly, the commander killed was Major Gen. Hasan Moghaddam, a senior IRGC commander with responsibility for the “Self-Sufficiency” unit of the Iranian’s missile forces, in particular surface-to-surface missiles. Moghaddam is said to have been a favorite of Ayatollah Khamenei, and it strains credibility that he was engaged in such a routine activity as personally supervising the transfer of munitions when the “accident” occurred. Secondly, according to an Israeli news report, Moghaddam had close ties to assassinated Hamas arms provider Mahmoud Al–Mabhouh, which suggests that, if Moghaddam was killed by the Mossad, they may be working their way up al-Mabhouh’s list of associates, possibly using intelligence gained from the terrorist’s interrogation before he was killed.

Western intelligence sources are confident that the explosion was indeed a successful Mossad operation.  The assassination of Moghaddam is just the latest in a series of shadowy attacks against Iran, specifically related to the missile program. Explosions have also killed Iranian missile technicians, an IRGC base where Shabab missiles are stored, and convoys transporting missiles, probably intended for Hezbollah.  Numerous nuclear scientists have been assassinated in the past two years, including Russian nuclear scientists killed in a plane crash in June.

Coincidentally, the Iranians also admitted Sunday that they had suffered from another computer virus attack, called “Duqu”, which is closely related to the previous Stuxnet virus. The Iranians claim to have “neutralized” Duqu before any substantial damage was done, but considering that Duqu is primarily designed as an information-gathering device, rather than a weapon of sabotage, it seems likely that whoever injected the code into the Iranian computer systems probably already got what they came for. “Duqu” would represent the third such virus attack against Iranian systems, including Stuxnet, and another virus program which the Iranians called “Stars”.

Lest one think that Iran is some hapless victim, the Islamic Republic is active in the shadows as well. Former CIA spy Reza Kahili’s Iranian sources tell him that the operation which included the assassination plot against a Saudi Ambassador on U.S. soil, and Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and Buenos Aires, were hatched at the direction of Iran’s supreme leader. Bahraini intelligence claims they successfully intercepted a plot to bomb Saudi targets in the small Gulf country, and destroy the causeway which connects Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. On November 3^rd, an Afghan suicide bomb team targeted a construction company in Herat, Afghanistan. The likely commander of that operation, Samihullah, has close ties to Iran’s Al-Qods force.  Iranian support for the Taliban in Afghanistan has been publicly known for some time, and is a great concern for U.S. forces. Closer to home, Iran is heavily active in Latin America, expanding Al Qods and Hezbollah forces, ties with anti-American regimes, and even drug cartels. The Iranians have also been active in promoting and cheerleading the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, in the exact same manner they did the Arab Spring protests. Iran routinely host U.S. based Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as CAIR, MPAC and MSA, on their Press TV propaganda outlet.

When we consider the on-going covert conflict with Iran, it becomes readily apparent that the two sides have vastly different objectives. The West (including Israel and the United States, and other western allies who may be assisting in intelligence activities) are almost wholly focused on the nuclear weapons issue. Targets are those actively involved in the Iranian nuclear weapons project, or increasingly, involved in the delivery systems for such weapons, meaning surface to surface missiles.  The operations against Iran are largely technocratic. The elimination of particular scientists or arms suppliers, target specific reactors and centrifuges.  Success or failure can best be measured by Iran’s progress towards nuclear weaponization.

Are we succeeding? The recently released IAEA report contained intelligence information from ten countries, all leading to the conclusion that Iran has constructed and “cold tested” all the components of a nuclear warhead, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that the up to date intelligence places Iran further ahead than would be suggested by the already alarming U.N report. And despite the skill and ingenuity displayed by Western Intelligence in attempting to disrupt Iranian nuclear efforts, such efforts are likely doomed to failure. As U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen stated in February of last year, even an overt military strike would not stop the Iranian nuclear program for good.

By contrast, the Iranian objectives appear to be primarily about spreading influence and ideology, both regional, vis-à-vis its chief competitor Saudi Arabia, but also globally, seeking to hamper U.S. interests. The Iranians are clearly willing to engage in any theater, including the U.S. capital itself. The Iranians are a revolutionary opponent, focused on the spread of their Islamic revolution. They firmly believe that any action which upsets the status quo, and which creates chaos or dissension is to their advantage. As Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, “… [Iran] builds something you can’t respond to: Ethics, decency, monotheism and justice.” In other words, Ahmadinejad views the Iranian ideology as its most powerful weapon.

Viewed in these terms, can the Iranians then said to be achieving their objectives? One would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. The new Islamist Prime Minister of Tunisia has called for a new Caliphate and hosts Hamas. The head of Tunisia’s new ruling Islamist party, Rachid Ghannouchi has publicly declared that he “quite likes” Hamas’ rocket attacks against Israel. Even a leading Saudi thinker is calling the recent upheaval in the Middle East, “The Muslim Brotherhood Spring”. Prior to Mubark’s overthrow in Egypt, Egyptian intelligence warned the U.S. of Iran’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in June of last year, according to a Wikileaked State Department cable. In the UAE, the Crown Prince warned of the risk of elections in any country with an organized Muslim Brotherhood presence.” Despite this the U.S. says it would be “satisfied,” with a Muslim Brotherhood victory, and trains Islamists in electioneering techniques.

Arguably then, Iran is achieving its broad objectives, even as particular operations, such as the Saudi Ambassador assassination fail and their hand is publicly revealed. By contrast, the efforts by the Western covert agencies have been operationally successful, and their fingerprints largely wiped cleaned. But despite numerous operational successes, the Iranians continue on undaunted, inching ever closer towards a nuclear weapons arsenal.

The West must adopt a far broader effort if it hopes to best Iran in this shadowy conflict. While operations delaying or hampering the Iranian nuclear project are positive, (as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said of the Iranian explosion, “May there be more like it”) but these acts are merely to buy time, they do not represent an actual strategy against Iran’s global ambitions. Nuclear weapons play a role in these ambitions, but they are not a goal in and of themselves. The goal is worldwide Islamic revolution with Iran as its leader.

The West must set as its own goal, not merely the prevention of Iran’s nuclear weapons, but the overthrow of the regime, and the defeat of Islamism as an ideological force. To do that will require a willingness to combat Iran in every sphere of endeavor, and on every continent where they are operational. The U.S. must immediately cease cooperating with Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist parties, and equip liberals and democrats with the tools and training necessary to be successful against their Islamist opposition. This idea that the U.S. must support all parties equally in the interest of a free and fair election is deeply misguided.  Refusing to intervene in our own interest means only that Iran’s preferred parties and Islamist fellow-travelers are allowed to dominate. We should instead act, as we did when CIA operations affected the outcome of the Italian election of 1948, keeping the Communists from power in Italy. Even with the opportunity of the Iranian protests in 2009 squandered by an Obama Administration at pains to keep open negotiations with Iran, we can still work within Iran with opposition parties and dissidents to undermine and eventually defeat the regime.

Until such a strategy is devised and executed, we will find that the west can succeed at all of its covert operations, and yet still lose the shadow war.

According to reports, the army was joined in attacking Christians by gangs of Muslim men armed with knives and clubs. A young Copt told Reuters that the violence was reserved for Christians, and that Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups were not attacked when they conducted similar protests.  Egyptian State-controlled media broadcasted calls for Muslims to take to the streets against Christians, even as the Prime Minister blamed “outside forces” a code word which usually implies alleged Israeli or American interference.

But in truth all the American “interference” is on the side of the Egyptian junta squashing protests and targeting minority Copts. The United States provides approximately $2 billion in military aid to Egypt every year, including for the purchase of armored vehicles like those turned on the Copts. Just two weeks the Egyptian government lodged a protest with the Obama Administration, after the Senate appropriations bill, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), included limitations on military aid, including requiring certification that the Egyptian government was respecting freedom of expression and other democratic norms. Secretary Clinton promised the Egyptians that the Obama Administration opposed the restrictions, according to the Washington Post. Following the clashes Sunday, White House Spokesman Jay Carney said the President urged “restraint on all sides,” as if there was some moral equivalence between peaceful protestors and those running them down.   Despite the violence the White House is pushing for the election to continue on schedule; an election which the well established Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to dominate. Even as the Obama administration opposes the Senate appropriations bill, which would provide money for democracy promotion in Egypt and impose limitations on the army, the Obama State Department has held high-level talks with members of the Muslim Brotherhood according to a State Department official last week.  This has occurred despite the Brotherhood’s own electoral alliance with Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiya, an affiliate of Al Qaeda involved in the first World Trade Center attack, and #11 on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Whether done by design or incompetence, one cannot help but believe that the Administration’s policy is on course to ensure the rise of an Islamist anti-Western, Egypt.

EMET has made numerous warnings that the military was far more likely to side with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups, than it was to support minority rights, democratic activists and peace with Israel. Despite this, the administration, and even some pro-Israel organizations have continued to lobby for military aid to Egypt to continue to flow uninterrupted, oblivious to the facts on the ground, motivated by a failed understanding of the dynamics at play within Egyptian society. The events that occurred Sunday, are not the first Egyptian Army outrage. As we have previously reported, the Egyptian Army has conducted virginity checks against protestors, attacked Coptic monasteries, and committed other reprehensible acts against civilians.

Unfortunately there is no reason to imagine that the Obama Administration will reverse course following the tragic events in Maspero. However Sen. Leahy’s appropriations bill, with its restrictions on aid, are the beginning of a sign that those in Congress are beginning to sit up and take notice. However it seems likely that if the administration is granted any leeway by the legislative branch, it will continue its disastrous policy of arming the Egyptian military while at the same time reaching out to Islamists within the Egyptian political process. The U.S. Congress should act immediately to halt all transfers of funds to Egypt for arms, and demand an immediate halt to outreach to the Brotherhood members and other Islamists in Egypt. That is the only course which will provide religious minorities or Egyptian secularists even a modicum of a chance to prevail against the Egyptian Islamist-military alliance.  Until that happens, U.S. Taxpayers will continue to find themselves funding these sorts of massacres in the streets throughout Egypt.

In an attempt to understand the events of that day, the immediate comparison was to Pearl Harbor., the starting point of America’s entry into the conflict which defined the 20th century. 9/11 had much to compare itself with Pearl Harbor after all. Both from the surprise nature of the attack, to the number of casualties, and the sheer rarity of an attack upon the American homeland. Perhaps the comparison also drew hope of a united America dealing an overwhelming and certain defeat to a determined foe. And perhaps it brought to mind the apocryphal quote from Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, that to attack America was, “to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

As the American people learned more about the foes that struck us that day, it became clearer that this was not a 20th century conflict. It was, simultaneously something both new and ancient. In western minds it conjured up images of a bold new threat. The risk was seen as one of asymmetrical warfare against shadowy transnational groups. But in the minds of our enemy there was nothing new about 9/11. This was ancient warfare, reborn. 9/11 was a razzia, a raid, into the heart of Dar-Al-Harb, the abode of war, the lands of the infidel. This was the same jihad in pursuit of the same age-old goal. They sought to impose a global Caliphate and the ultimate domination of Islam in the world. As the 9/11 Commission report made clear at the time, there was no method of modern statecraft which might appease this enemy. “[A]l Qaeda’s answer [to the question of what American could do to avoid such attacks] was, “America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture…”

As America became more familiar with this enemy ideology, they realized that it was not merely the held belief of a few hijackers, or even a few thousand terrorists spread across camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to billions in petro-dollars provided by Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia, it was the curriculum for generations of young men educated in madrassas from Indonesia to east Africa. It could even be found within Europe and the United States itself. Its adherents were inculcated in the belief in the righteousness of Jihad, in the status of non-Muslims as infidels and oppressors who must be fought. Among those brought up to believe America and the West were their mortal enemies, were citizens of nations that America thought to be friends and allies. The 9/11 investigation revealed the extensive role played by our so-called allies in financing this jihad war against the West. These facts were revealed to the American public despite the millions of oil dollars the Gulf nations were spending with America’s largest public relations and lobbying firms to convince the American people otherwise.

Even as the depth of the problem became more easily understood by the average American, American leaders were at pains to limit the public’s exposure to certain realities about the nature of the challenge before us. The phrase “the religion of peace,” has been used so often by politicians that it has come to be regarded as a mostly risible and ironic phrase. “Thereligionofpeace.com” for instance, is a website that tracks attacks by terrorists committed in the name of Islam since September 11, 2001, at a current count of 17,710 world-wide. But both the Bush and Obama administrations insisted that any question of the role of religious doctrine or ideology or how widely such ideology might be held, was a dangerous distraction and that outreach to Muslim communities at home and abroad would be the center-piece of the resistance to Al Qaeda, not understanding and countering the enemy’s doctrine.

However in 2004, in the basement of Ismail Elbarasse, were discovered the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The same Muslim Brotherhood whose principle ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, was featured in the 9/11 Commission’s explanation of Osama Bin Laden’s origins and intentions. The documents found there would later be used as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, perhaps the most important terrorism finance trial ever to take place, where several Muslim Brothers were indicted, and convicted of funding Hamas. The documents entered into evidence, and stipulated to by the defense, illustrated to the public a decades’ long “civilization-jihadist” program against the West, to be waged by the Brotherhood. As part of this campaign, the Brotherhood had created numerous front-groups. Now they were marked as unindicted co-conspirators for terrorism, in a federal court.

In the years since 9/11, it was these unindicted co-conspirators that had been sought out by the government as sensitivity trainers, and outreach partners for their anti-terrorism efforts. Even after 2004, despite the government’s knowledge, the Brotherhood remained responsible for certifying the chaplains of America’s prisons, and her military, and remained a close partner for reaching out to Muslim communities. A loud outcry from concerned citizens groups and a few astute lawmakers led to a few of these M.B. organizations being excluded. But federal departments soon were opening up new associations with other Muslim Brotherhood groups — which ironically were also were listed as unindicted co-conspirators for supporting terror organizations.

Since the arrival into office of the Obama administration, this matter of Muslim Brotherhood subversion, once worrisome, have now reached levels of the deepest concern. Administration officials now openly praise the brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization and have squashed future prosecutions against the Muslim Brotherhood and its support for terrorism.

Where once the 9/11 commission openly discussed Islamic history and Bin’ Laden’s ideological motivations, now there is only “violent extremism,” a shapeless meaninglessly vague threat. Where once some complained that the denotation “the War on Terror” was too vague and ill-suited, now there are only “overseas contingency operations” aimed at preventing “man-caused disasters.” These bland characterizations have not stuck with the American public however. Today, more than ever, the American people understand the depth of the threat from the theocratic political doctrine, Sharia, which unites Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and others that pose a threat to the American way of life.

The only way to judge the status of our struggle, is to ask whether Al Qaeda and those who share their beliefs, are closer, or further from their goals? We must say in fairness that they are closer. Secular regimes across the Middle East are in turmoil, and may yet be replaced by Islamic governments. Western academic elites proudly and publicly declare that the very totalitarian law which Al Qaeda and the Brotherhood would impose is neither threatening nor undemocratic. In western countries free expression about the nature of Islam, and those who commit terrorism in its name has been sharply curtailed. In the United States of America, cartoonists are censored, even sent into hiding, because they have violated some Islamic stricture against so-called blasphemy. What’s worse, the government has now partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (formerly Islamic Conference) and Muslim countries to institute global speech codes aiming to brand any critical statements, even those made by apostates or reformers of Islam, to be hate speech and therefore illegal.

Ten years after, we are not a sleeping giant anymore. The public is more awake now, certainly more aware now, of what is happening then it has ever been. We see far more clearly than we did that day in September. But yet we find that despite the awakening of the American people, the organs of our national power do not respond, do not take the appropriate action, despite the warnings. We are a giant suffering under a local anesthetic. A potent mixture of infiltration, subversion, and cowardly political correctness saps our national will. In whatever ways this conflict differs from modern wars of the past century, until America restores its “terrible resolve”, we remain no closer to resolution of this great conflict of the 21st century.

The lone wolf scenario is so frightening because all of the usual windows of opportunity for security and intelligence officials to become of aware of and interdict the plot are smaller in scope and narrower in time span.

Consider the timeline of a “normal” Islamist terror attack. Muslims sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s cause are radicalized and are encouraged or take it upon themselves to travel to areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia or other places where AQ has successfully established training camps. Over a period of months the subjects receive intensive indoctrination in Islamist ideology, weapons training, bomb-making, terror tactics and other important terrorist skills.  When their training is completed they are released back into the world. New identities or travel papers may have been prepared for travel to their target countries. Reconnaissance may begin on selected targets and money may be transferred to the terrorists to keep them operational. The weapons for the attack must be acquired, prepared and  possibly tested before the terror attack can begin.

A good example of this sort of timeline is the attempt to bomb the New York City subway by Najibullah Zazi. Zazi traveled to Pakistan will several fellow Muslims in August of 2008 with the intention of joining the Taliban but was instead recruited by Al Qaeda and trained for U.S. operations. He returned to the United States in mid-January of the following year. Zazi became a member of an active cell of terrorist operatives and communicated with them — communications which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials were able to intercept. Zazi began researching bomb-making materials in June and began purchasing critical materials in August. He conducted tests in late August and early September. Then he drove to New York City where he became aware of FBI and police surveillance.  In a panic, he fled back to his home in Denver and was arrested. From recruitment to (failed) execution took slightly more than a year.

Consider in comparison the case of the 1993 shooting outside the Langley offices of the CIA, when Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani native, opened fire on a line of parked cars waiting to enter America’s intelligence headquarters. Kansi quickly killed two people and wounded three others before fleeing to Pakistan.  Kansi had resided in the United States since 1991. He had acquired the AK-47 automatic rifle with which he committed the crime through an ordinary gun store only three days prior to the shooting. The gun store owner later said that Kansi appeared unfamiliar with the weapon and had to be instructed how to assemble and disassemble it. It is unclear when exactly Kansi was radicalized, but when he was finally arrested in Pakistan in 2002, he claimed to have had “friends among the Taliban” and to have shaken hands with Osama Bin Laden. He told investigators that he wanted to strike at the United States for its “Pro-Israel, Anti-Muslim” policies.

With an unclear period of radicalization and only three days from acquiring the weapon to the attack, the time frame for law enforcement to discover and capture a “lone wolf” like Mir Aimal Kansi is too short.  Law enforcement had only two very brief chances to become aware of the lone wolf. Early during his radicalization before he had, in fact, committed any crime and during the time he acquired the weapon. In fact, Kansi had committed a crime by illegally purchasing a firearm since Kansi was not an American citizen and was thus prohibited from purchasing a firearm.  Still that crime took place only three days before the attack.

Not much to go on.

Even less so, in the North Carolina case of Reza Taheri-azar, a UNC-Chapel Hill student and Iranian immigrant who ran over 9 people in a rented sports utility vehicle selected for that deadly purpose. Fortunately no one was killed. Taheri-azar later told police that he wanted to, “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world,” and told the judge during his trial that he was “thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.” Up until the point Taheri-azar put his foot on the gas pedal instead of the brake he had committed no crime. What chance did law enforcement have of interdicting such an attempt?

Only during radicalization, when the attacker has been exposed to and internalized an Islamist worldview which encourages violent and murderous jihad, is there any chance to intercept such a plot before it is executed.

Perhaps a strategy which educated law enforcement and security officials on the nature of the Islamist ideology, its language, heroes and ideologues and its history and methods might prove a worthwhile endeavor. For instance, if that had been done, perhaps more attention would have been paid to Dr. Nidal Malik Hassan.  The Fort Hood shooter killed thirteen and wounded almost thirty more in a shooting rampage but not before he conducted a PowerPoint slide presentation for senior army doctors entitled, “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” which included Islamic justifications for suicide bombings and featured the common Islamist slogan, “We love death more than you love life.” In a Political Correctness-laden report, The Department of Defense’s follow up report on the attack made no mention of Islam or Nidal Hassan’s ideological motivations.

Recently the Obama Administration released its strategy to deal with the lone wolf threat.  Predictably, it proposed the exact opposite of what is needed. Instead, the recent Administration report, incomprehensibly and meaninglessly entitled, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, is a 4,600 word whitewash completely devoid of meaning or educational potential.  As Professor Daniel Pipes sums up the report:

Nature of the problem? “Neo-Nazis and other anti-Semitic hate groups, racial supremacists, and international and domestic terrorist groups.”

Name of the enemy? The paper itself never mentions Islam or even radical Islam. In fact the report’s title, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, avoids the mention of the word “terrorism.”

Appropriate Federal law enforcement response? “Just as we respond to community safety issues [such as gang violence, school shootings, drugs, and hate crimes] through partnerships and networks of government officials, Mayor’s offices, law enforcement, community organizations, and private sector actors, so must we address radicalization to violence and terrorist recruitment through similar relationships and by leveraging some of the same tools and solutions.”

A decade after the attacks on 9/11, rather than create a policy that come to grips with the evolving tactics of the fanatical ideological enemy we are fighting, we now have a counterterrorism policy that refuses to even use the word “terrorism,” and treats perpetrators of terror attacks in the same vein as perpetrators of gang violence.

More than just incompetence is at work here.

While Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States was released in early August, its faulty assumptions read identically to those published by the Homeland Security Advisory Council in a report titled,  “Countering Violent Extremism Working Group” and published at about the same time last year.  Both reports are so similar that they utilize the same comparison between terrorism and gang violence and propose using community-policing to “stop violent behavior regardless of the motivation.”

Included, in that working group was the president of at least one Muslim Brotherhood front group, Imam Mohamed Maghid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (although he is not recognized in that capacity in the PowerPoint slide describing the working group’s members) and Mohamed Elibiary, who once shared the platform during a “tribute to the great Islamic visionary” the Ayatollah Khomeini, and who argued against describing the preeminent  radical Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, the late Sayyid Qutb, as either radical or dangerous.

In other words, the government has asked the very proponents of the ideologies that have radicalized  Western Muslims as well as leaders of organizations which have been named as unindicted co-conspirators for the funding of terrorism, to propose government policy for countering the inevitable “violent extremism” that results from the ideological beliefs which these people themselves apparently hold.

So deeply has our government involved our ideological enemy in our OODA loop that they are now effectively in control of nearly every stage of our decision-making process regarding counterterrorism. They are the advisors to whom our national authorities look for advice and direction in forming our national strategy. They are, according to a former FBI agent, inside members of the executive branch department responsible for implementing U.S. anti-terrorist policy. They encourage our security and law enforcement officials to work alongside community organizations — which they themselves control. And they control the public relations organizations and “civil rights” groups which then heaps praise upon the Administration for following their advice.

The lone wolf threat helps to encapsulate the reality that the greatest threat is not from bombs or guns or rented sports-utility vehicles.  It is a threat springing from a violent belief system — a radical ideology. Our law enforcement and intelligence officials must be given the tools to recognize the signs of that belief system as it manifests itself in human actors. That is the only counter-terror strategy with a hope of success against a lone wolf or against any terror attack. This system can be analyzed and understood. The violent Koranic citations, the hadiths and Sharia jurisprudence which forms the foundation upon which ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and Anwar al-Awlaki build, can be read and understood. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission Report did exactly that, albeit in a limited and imperfect way.

The tragic question many asked that fateful day on 9/11 was, “Why did they do this to us?” A decade later, thanks to our government’s inability to name our adversaries or call out their ideology, the wolves in sheep’s clothing within our own government have us moving even further away from an answer.

First off, the sobering results of a recent poll, taken by  Zogby International together with the Arab American Institute; this poll, which was released on July 12th, surveyed 4,000 people in six Arab nations, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon , Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, indicates that the respondents actually view the U.S. less favorably today than they did during the last year of the Bush administration

When President Bush left office 9 percent of Egyptians had a favorable attitude towards the United States. Today, only 5 percent of Egyptians surveyed said they have a favorable opinion of the United States and its president. Similar figures were reported throughout the region.

And remember: President Bush had initiated the wars in the Muslim states of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Arab world is reacting to the lack of leadership they see coming out of the White House. A reaction resulting from the falsely high expectations President Obama had given them in his initial Cairo speech.  He assured them that Israel, America’s one stable and reliable regional ally, would not only cave in on concessions and be delivered to them but would also be returned once again to the indefensible pre-1967 boundaries.

The delivery on this promise would have signaled a clear victory for the Palestinians, for Hamas and for radical Islam while weakening the only democracy in the region.

While the U.S.’s reputation in the Arab world suffered when it could not fulfill the unrealistic expectations that were generated about the U.S. delivering Israel to them on a silver platter, it was the killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S. special forces that sent the poll numbers charting Arab feelings toward the U.S. plummeting to devastatingly lows. The killing of Osama Bin Laden was described as the final “coup de grace” by the 4,000 Arab respondents surveyed.

Which leads us to the following obvious questions about our “Moderate Arab allies:” Are they with us or are they with the terrorists?

It has been difficult for the Obama administration, who began its term in office as the “anti-Bush” president, to come to grips with the lesson that appeasement does not guarantee friendship (or even allies) and only raises the stakes for more concessions.

What else has this administration’s self-described “leadership from behind” brought forth?

The Obama administration also disdained and disregarded the 1979 Camp David Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians — which America also guaranteed with its signature.  According to an article in Monday’s New York Times, the Accords had banned smuggling of weapons by the Palestinians are being completely ignored as smuggling from the Sinai into Gaza has only accelerated and continues to be brazen and rampant.

In addition, all polls indicate that the Islamist parties that hate the West and seek to destroy Israel (including the Muslim Brotherhood which is far from moderate), are in position to win in the upcoming Egyptian parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall. Anti-American sentiment in Egypt has become so overwhelming that the head of USAID in Egypt was forced to leave Egypt abruptly because of a dispute over whether our aid could be given to pro-democracy groups.

And also in the region, Turkey under Prime Minister Erdogan is getting more and more Islamicized and radicalized and has turned against both Israel and the United States. The Turkish Islamic Government of Erdogan has just undermined the Turkish army, which historically has been the guarantor of a secular state since the days of Ataturk.

For the first time in Turkish history, hundreds of army officers are being put on trial on trumped up charges of “conspiracy to overthrow the government” — in a reprise of Stalin’s infamous purges. General Bilgin Balani has had to appear before a civilian court, together with 27 other army officers in what the Turkish government has entitled, “Operation Sledgehammer.” Until three months ago, General Balani was to have been appointed commander of the Air Force.

This is the method ideological tyrannies have historically used to remove their political opposition — create an imaginary crisis and liquidate the opposition under the guise of “protecting the state” — and this is the same pattern the Erdogan Turkish Islamic government has now copied to destroy its secular political opposition.

In Afghanistan, as the U.S. is getting ready to withdraw its troops, the Taliban is re-emerging as a force to reckon with. They have steadily been chipping away at the root of what the U.S. and its NATO allies had tried to put into place to remain after we leave.  According to an excellent article by Khalid Nasir in Pajamas Media, the U.S. has relied too strongly on tribal strongmen who have proven to be both corrupt and unreliable.

In even more worrying news, according to Khalid Abu Toameh of the Hudson Institute, the Palestinian Authority is planning another uprising in the fall, irrespective of whether or not the US vetoes a unilateral resolution for statehood.  Just two weeks ago, Nabil Shaith, Foreign Policy Head of the P.A., went on Lebanese television, saying that, “We will never accept a two-state solution, whether it is a French plan, a Czechoslovakian plan or an American plan.” Yet Obama continues to push his idea of a two-state solution as though the leader of the Palestinians had never uttered these defiant words.  If the Palestinian government and its people will never accept a two-state solution — what is everyone negotiating about?

In Syria, the blood bath continues.  Well over 1,000 people have been murdered in cold blood for participating in peaceful, democratic  protests. As the administration tries to figure out what to do with the situation, the rampant horror and arbitrary arrests, systemic torture and executions continue.  Syrian tanks continue to gun down protestors in the streets.

These are Syrian crimes against humanity.  The Arab League just held an emergency session concerning Syria just today. And even though the Arab governments are recalling their ambassadors to show their disapproval — the U.S. ambassador remains.

The administration is still dithering about what to do in Syria. Our lack of any firm resolve has already emboldened the regime of Bashir Assad. Another  speech about considering further sanctions by Secretary of State Clinton is far too little — and far too late.

As Winston Churchill once said, “There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words and timid policies offer a path to safety.”

Such is the price of appeasement.