Convicted of dealing in crack cocaine, this freshly-freed prisoner received
a charming letter personally written by President Obama
[Image Source: New York Times, October 1, 2015]
It doesn't bear directly on terrorism which is our normal focus here but the discussion about Jonathan Pollard being paroled from US prison after serving a full and unabridged thirty year term is raising issues that, unfortunately, are familiar to us from past unpleasant encounters with Washington spokespersons. And from exposure to sanctimonious political double-talk.
A Washington Post article published yesterday ["Obama will not intervene to allow Jonathan Pollard to leave for Israel", Karen DeYoung, November 9, 2015] deals with how there are going to be restrictions on Pollard's freedom for a considerable time even after he walks out of his cell:
...Pollard must remain in the United States, under supervision, for five years. His supporters here and in Israel have suggested that Obama could use his executive power to waive that condition and allow Pollard to leave the country... [But] “President Obama has not intervened in the judicial process here in the United States, and that’s been his consistent approach,” Rhodes said. “With respect to the case of Jonathan Pollard, he’s made clear that he wants there to be fair treatment under the law, as there should be with any individual.” Obama, Rhodes said, “respects how important this issue is to many Israelis.” But the president’s non-intervention approach has not changed, he said. [Washington Post]
Should Obama change his long-standing and unvarying policy of "non-intervention" when it comes to Pollard? As it turns out, that's not so much the question.
A Jerusalem Post piece by Gil Hoffman said a few days ago ["White House closes door on Pollard aliya", Jerusalem Post, November 7, 2015] that Pollard, who is expected to be paroled on November 30, is then going to be subject to a ban not only on leaving the US for the next five years but also on giving interviews. Free he may be, but the freedom to speak in public will be forbidden to him. And since he's out on parole, the price of breaching the parole conditions is self-explanatory and high.
Intervening in justice system by '
commuting many more sentences in July 2015 [Image Source]
President Obama who maintains a strict non-intervention stance on such matters, could - but we are assured is not going to - change it for Pollard. Yet as the Jerusalem Post's Hoffman points out
Obama has commuted sentences of 89 people during his presidency, more than any American presidentsince Lyndon B. Johnson. He has granted full pardons to another 64 people. Most of the convicts who received clemency fromObama were drug dealers and thieves. When he has announced commutations, he has said that the sentence of the convicts did not fit their crime.Obamais expected to announce more commutations later this month in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday... [Jerusalem Post]
We did some quick checking of our own. Previous instances of President Obama's "non-intervention" interventions include these:
In connection with those March 2015 presidential interventions, note this:
"Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel... said Tuesday's commutations underscore Obama's "commitment to using all the tools at his disposal to bring greater fairness and equity to our justice system." ...Eggleston noted that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had commuted 11 sentences during his two terms.... [The Associated Press, March 31, 2015]
Then four months ago
President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders, more than double the number of commutations he granted earlier this year, as part of his effort to reform the criminal justice system. In a Facebook video posted Monday, the president said the 46 prisoners had served sentences disproportionate to their crimes... [Washington Post, July 13, 2015]
The beneficiaries of that latest intervention are named and described in this Washington Post backgrounder. The list shows most of them were imprisoned for distributing or dealing in cocaine and/or crack cocaine. Deaths of Americans from cocaine and crack cocaine use are significant - in the multiple thousands each year and rising: a February 2015 paper published by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse says the death toll from cocaine abuse in the US rose by 29% between 2001 and 2013. Crack cocaine is a drug so pervasive that (as the New York Times noted) even Washington’s mayor, Marion S. Barry Jr., was caught smoking it. The problem is vast and especially impactful on people under the age of 18.
Did any Americans die as a result of what Pollard did in the 1980's? If yes, the evidence has been kept very quiet. A reasonable view suggests the answer is no. So what are friends of Israel to make of the ongoing signs that, while the president declares a commitment to reform, fairness and equity in the justice system, aspects of Jonathan Pollard's case are, and have long been, handled in a disproportionate, opaque and discriminatory way?
Site of the child's death: Intensive IDF and Israel Police investigation
[Image Source]
In the wake of Friday morning's apparent attack on a sleeping Palestinian Arab family in their home, the death of their infant and widespread Arab rioting, there's a poisonous atmosphere of unrestrained incitement to revenge and further acts of violence and murder.
Not so much from the Israeli side: the president condemned the awful events, addressed an anti-violence-and-incitement rally in downtown Jerusalem on Saturday night and conveyed the same message to the Arabic media on Friday. The prime minister visited the injured family in hospital (as did the president) and told them and the media that
we’re shocked, we’re outraged,.. We condemn this. There is zero tolerance for terrorism wherever it comes from, whatever side of the fence it comes from. We have to fight it and fight it together. [Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2015]
During Saturday night, there were reports of incoming explosive missiles emanating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and directed at Israelis. Readers of this blog know better than most that rocket attacks by Palestinian Arab terrorists are very far from new in southern Israel, or rare, and those doing the firing have never needed a trigger like the death of a Palestinian Arab child.
Two rockets fell near the Israel-Gaza border fence late on Saturday night. No warning sirens were heard and the military was initially unsure whether the projectiles struck the Israeli or Gazan side of the border... The [IDF] army’s official policy is to retaliate to attacks based on their damage, not the attackers’ intent. Misfired rockets landing on the Gaza side of the fence do not generally elicit an Israeli response. [Times of Israel, today]
If, as is the case with many of the previous Gazan Fell Shorts (Palestinian Arab rockets that misfire and hit something Gazan instead of something Israeli) someone was hurt or something was damaged on the Arab side, this will almost certainly go unreported. (Check out some of our past Fell Short reports.)
Though no news channel, to our knowledge, quotes Gazan sources on the subject of last night's rocket attack, this morning we checked the European Union-funded GANSO website which we have mentioned numerous times in the past. Visit their Incident Alerts page right now, as we did (see image below) and you see their report of four, not two, Gazan rockets last night, all of which crash landed on the Gazan side of the border.
Was anyone killed? Were any houses destroyed? No one, but literally no one, seems ever to report on such Arab-on-Arab casualties. Why? Ask the foreign media reporting from there. They're sure to find a justification.
From the GANSO website, Sunday morning August 2, 2015. Published in Gaza, GANSO say 4 rockets were fired at Israeli targets last night, not just 2 as reported in Israel. And not one managed to get as far as the Gazan border. Our sympathies to the hapless Gazans who have to live with this kind of catastrophe daily/nightly.
In the background - the very distant background to judge by the almost entirely absent media news coverage - there have been dozens of attacks on Israelis during Friday and the Sabbath day. This Hebrew-language report provides a summary and a time line, replete with photographs depicting the aftermath at some of the attack sites. One of them [here] shows a fire bomb (a so-called Molotov Cocktail) being hurled at an Israeli bus inside Jerusalem on Saturday evening. Israel National News [here] provides its customary close-the-action reports on the weekend's wave of anti-Israel violence.
In the Palestinian Arab media, the call to arms is unmistakable:
Clashes broke out across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Friday night in response to the death of an 18-month-old Palestinian who was burned alive in an arson attack carried out by suspected Israeli settlers earlier that day... [Maan News, Saturday]
It's almost comical to witness the straight-faced reporting of old/new threats emanating from the terror-addicted ranks of the Islamist Hamas regime in Gaza whose rockets and thuggish "security" agents have been - and continue to be - the cause of so many Palestinian Arab deaths:
Hamas said Friday that every Israeli is now a legitimate target following the deadly terror attack in the village of Duma in which a Palestinian toddler was killed, Israel Radio reported. In an official message to the public, Hamas also called for a "day of rage" to protest the deadly terror attack and "in order to protect al-Aksa mosque..." Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces are on high alert in Jerusalem and the West Bank as Hamas calls for "day of rage." [Jerusalem Post, Friday]
Alert readers understand that declaring Israelis now to be legitimate targets for the rage and murderous hatred of the ranks of Hamas is a cynical joke. The Hamas Charter, its constitution, lays down the foundation for "legitimizing" the murder of Israelis, and virtually every public statement by its spokespersons reinforces the message. Friday's declaration is entirely directed at foreigners, and in particular foreign news reporters.
But not all. This Hamas statement was plainly directed at Palestinian Arab society:
Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri has accused Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas with bearing responsibility for the death of an Arab infant in the village of Duma in Samaria on Friday, which came during an arson attack the IDF suspects may have been committed by Jewish extremists. "I call on Abbas to stop pursuing Hamas in the (West) Bank, and place on him personal responsibility for the burning of the infant Ali Dawabsha, due to his harassment of resistance fighters," said the terrorist spokesperson. "If Hamas had a free hand to act in the (West) Bank, the settlers wouldn't be able to commit crimes like this and burn our children," claimed Abu Zuhri. [Israel National News, August 1, 2015]
Some other selected voices from this weekend (all direct quotes):
Palestinian officials say Israel is "fully responsible" for the death of an infant in an arson attack blamed on Jewish settlers... [T]he Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said it held the Israeli government "fully responsible for the brutal assassination" of the child, Ali Saad Dawabsha. "This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism," it said. [BBC, Friday] The head of the PLO is Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
Husam Badran, a key Hamas leader in Judea and Samaria... [said] that "this crime has turned IDF soldiers and settlers into legitimate targets, in any location and situation... Badran called for every "free person who can harm the occupier to start conducting revenge activities" because "the enemy doesn't understand anything but the language of force." [Israel National News, July 31, 2015]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the firebombing "an act of terrorism in every respect" and made a rare telephone call to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas... Abbas said he had ordered his foreign minister to file a complaint at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. "We want true justice, but I doubt that Israel will provide that," he said of the attack in Duma, near the northern city of Nablus. [AFP, July 31, 2015]
The US State Department condemned the "vicious terrorist attack" in "the strongest possible terms," urging Israel to "apprehend the murderers" and calling on both sides to "avoid escalating tensions". [AFP, July 31, 2015]
That last point causes us personal heartburn, and here's why.
The State Department and especially its now-departed spokesperson Marie Harf, have a history (with us personally) of being mystifyingly unable to label certain kinds of acts of murder as terror, let alone characterize them as vicious. That's astonishing (we feel) when you take into account the plain nature of the crimes of those people, determined in a court of law and with the terrorists mostly confessing to their savagery, and even taking credit for it. (For a reminder of the background: "14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance").
We're offering no prizes for readers who can figure out which vicious acts by which people are ranked as terror by State's clever professionals, and which are not. It's about as obvious and clear as such matters ever get. You have to be a certain sort of diplomat to be blind to the nature of what's happening.
Meanwhile. the intensive police and army manhunt for the perpetrators of the Duma village fire-bombing is still underway.
Ankara's mayor, Melih Gökçek
Funny-strange more than funny-ha-ha, and a conspiracist
to boot
Reports are circulating in the media today about the long-time mayor of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and the juvenile rudeness he has just directed against Obama administration officials in Washington. The Guardian reports it this way today:
The mayor of Turkey’s capital city has been accused of hypocrisy after tweeting a string of sexist and anti-American comments against a US official – but launching hundreds of lawsuits against people who use Twitter to criticise him. Melih Gökçek directed his remarks at Marie Harf, the acting spokeswoman for the US State Department, after a Turkish pro-government newspaper criticised her for being “silent” on unrest in Baltimore despite repeated US government criticism of Turkey during the violent crackdown on Gezi Park protestors in the summer of 2013. One of Gökçek’s tweets included pictures of Baltimore police tackling a protester, alongside an image of Harf, above the words: “Where are you stupid blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?” Above the image, Gökçek wrote: “Come on blonde, answer now!”
The Guardian's editors go on to recite some of the history of this "notoriously Ankara mayor". It also notes that he's a hypocrite and something of a coward who
"regularly lashes out at his opponents on Twitter [but] is less happy to be the subject of online criticism... Mayor of Ankara since 1994 and a veteran member of the ruling Justice and Development party (AK), Gökçek is one of the most polarising figures in Turkish politics."
US ambassador Bass and today's Instagram image
[Image Source]
The US ambassador to Turkey on Friday hit back at sexist remarks by Ankara’s maverick mayor to the US State Department spokeswoman in unusual style, posting a picture of himself with blond hair. Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek, a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had on Wednesday fired off an extraordinary diatribe on Twitter over the Baltimore rioting, telling the US State Department acting spokeswoman Marie Harf to “come on blonde, answer now.”...Harf herself had refused to rise to the bait of the comments, saying in Washington: “I really don’t think I’m going to dignify them with a response.” But US ambassador to Turkey John Bass took to Instagram to make his response, posting a picture of himself with his normally brown hair turned blond. “American diplomats: we’re all blonde,” he wrote in English and Turkish. [AFP, May 1, 2015]
Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek
has alleged that last week's deadly attacks on a French satirical magazine and
a kosher supermarket in Paris that left 17 people dead are the result of France
expressing support for Palestine, and that Israeli intelligence is behind
the attacks, the semi-official Anadolu news agency reported... Gökçek
attended the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Gölbaşı youth branch
fourth ordinary district congress on Sunday and mentioned the terrorist attacks
in France. He said Israel was annoyed with the lower house of French parliament
for voting for the recognition of a Palestinian state and with France's vote in
favor of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for the
same recognition.
“Israel certainly doesn't want this sentiment to expand in Europe. That's
why it is certain that Mossad is behind these kinds of incidents. Mossad
enflames Islamophobia by causing such incidents,” Gökçek said.He claimed that after the Paris attacks, around 50 mosques and some
Muslim individuals had been targeted but such incidents were not
reported on by the international media. “Palestine being recognized as a
state is why these [attacks] have taken place,” he concluded. [Today's
Zaman, a major Turkish newspaper,
January 12, 2015 - as quoted in our earlier blog post]
Half a year earlier, in July 2014 Gökçek supported the antisemitic tweet made by Turkish singer Yıldız Tilbe: "God bless Hitler, it was even too few what he did to the Jews, he was right" and "The Jews will be destroyed by Muslims, in the name of Allah, not much time left for it be done". [Source: Wikipedia]
When public figures, especially those in ambitious, aspirational states of the Middle East, take the lead in propagating anti-Jewish conspiracies against a background of murdered Jews. we don't have much of a sense of humour.
We wish the news-reporting industry took a little more trouble in the profiles they publish of jackasses like Gökçek. He's not a mere buffoon, and taunting him with dyed hair is missing the point: this is a rabble-rousing antisemite whose dignified public office provides him with cover to sow the seeds of anti-Jewish sentiment - as if there were not enough already - in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
Kerry and Iranian negotiators ("on the sidelines of a larger negotiating
session") at the UN, September 2013 [Image Source]
Dear Secretary Kerry,
This is not the first time we are writing to you. We don't really expect a reply this time either. If we take into account personal letters hand-delivered to your office, emails, Tweets and blog posts, we have gone through quite a number of failed attempts to get your attention on a matter that, at least to us and a handful of our friends, has a distinctly non-trivial nature.
This latest try comes after a volley of messages you and your staff initiated this weekend even while you are caught up in the super-sensitive matter of negotiating with the Iranian regime over their race to get a nuclear arsenal.
We don't envy you the pressure under which you are operating. The Iranians are a handful. The stakes could hardly be higher as we in Israel - living in their crosshairs and under a constant barrage of blood-curdling threats of our impending extinction - are only too aware.
Reuters reports this morning that the Iranian regime's Supreme Leader, Khamenei, whom it accurately calls the person who has "the last word on all matters of state", spoke publicly yesterday in ways that don't sound especially respectful or peace-like. In a harangue addressed to Iranians but probably aimed at you and the Obama administration, he squeezed in enough offensive war-like ideas to test even the coolest of diplomats.
Khamanei said his side would not be "pressured into giving in to Western demands", and do not accept "imposition and bullying from America". Reuters quotes him using the actual words "Death to America" (in his native tongue, natutrally). From where we sit, that sounds like a prediction, perhaps a threat, and not mere empty rhetoric. He said the US knows that the Iranians "are not pursuing nuclear weapons. But they just use that as an excuse to pressure the Iranian people." The US' aim is to "foment instability in the Middle East", which is an extraordinary thing to say when you take into account how many jihadist organizations owe their equipment, ideology, funding and existence to the man making those charges. Then in a surreal touch, he called Western countries "arrogant". That's because of their role in slashing world oil prices in half - an economic consequence that is evidently making his job more complicated than it was when free cash was gushing out of the Iranian dirt. [All italicized quotes are taken verbatim from the Reuters report.]
The Reuters editors wrap this up by mentioning Hassan Rouhani, Iran's president. Stepping around the vitriol of his boss, Rouhani calmly says there is "nothing that cannot be resolved". For some, that will have lightened the mood. He's not called "moderate" in the world's news media for nothing.
We don't actually see much that's moderate about Rouhani. We said why in a short post here two days ago ["20-Mar-15: This is how it looks when an Islamist state turns moderate"]. The depths of his disdain for the West are there for all to see, along with the things he has learned about dealing with Western governments. One of our posts from a month ago, "16-Feb-15: The duping and the dupees", looks at how fooling other people is something Rouhani claims proudly as a talent.
Why trouble you with all this now? Because of the bizarre steps your staff appear to have taken to convey some warm-ish sentiments ("deepest condolences") on behalf of the government and all Americans to Rouhani the "moderate". His mother passed away at the age of 90 a day or two ago. Anyone who has or had a mother understands the loss.
The persistent reporter ("Are you sending flowers as well? What do you hope to achieve...?") in the video is, as you probably know, the Associated Press staffer who covers the US State Department. The answers he gets from your spokesperson fall short of the quality of the questions he asks.
This rings bells with us because we and your State Department spokespeople have some history. It happens to be over terror and semantics. We wrote about it several times here on our blog. Click here for a summary.
The abbreviated version starts with what we posted (here) on August 14, 2013:
A persistent reporter tackled the State Department's deputy spokesperson Marie Harf... on whether the murderers being bused tonight into the waiting arms of the two Palestinian Arab regimes are (a) freedom fighters or (b) terrorists.
For most people, that's probably easy to answer. But it turns out that for the US government and its diplomatic service. it's not. After the reporter asked, a strange exchange followed. This account comes from Washington Free Beacon and from this video clip:
Persistent reporter: Do you have any thoughts or position on whether these people who are going to be released [today] are political prisoners or are they terrorists?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: I do not have a position on that.
Persistent reporter: Do you object to the Palestinians referring to them as political prisoners?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: I don’t have a position on that...
Persistent reporter: ...Most of these people [in fact all of them - TOW] have been convicted of murder, of killing people. And the Israelis are very clear on the fact that they think that these people are terrorists, even though they’re releasing them. The Palestinians say that they are political prisoners and... have instructed their ambassadors, all their representatives around the world to refer to them as freedom fighters, political prisoners. And I want to know, if you don’t have a position... if there isn’t anything that you call them, do you object to the Palestinians referring to them as freedom fighters?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: The answer is, I don’t know and I will endeavor to get an answer for you on that as well.
(As you might have guessed, the persistent reporter in the August 2013 exchange is the same one who challenged your spokesperson yesterday.) We said then and we still believe that something seriously wrong is going on here. Marie Harf, the State Department's spokesperson, was being asked to react in your name to the release of Palestinian Arab terrorists. All of them had been convicted of murder, and all had spent years in Israeli prison cells. She was being asked to react toa letter sent to you personally by a group of Israeli families whose children had been murdered by those and other Palestinian Arab terrorists. We happen to be among those families. We helped draft and send the letter. That 2013 letter expressed a sense of astonishment that the United States was pressuring Israel to free homicidal convicts, not one of whom had served out the prison term to which he has been sentenced. All of them were certain to be received as triumphant heroes, congratulated for their crimes, by the Palestinian Authority's leadership and that seemed, to us, to be a massive step backwards on the road to peace. (And that of course is precisely what happened.) So this was about facing up to terror - recognizing it when you see it, and understanding the price of turning a blind eye to it. As bereaved families, we were not asking for condolences or sympathy from anyone. We were angry, felt a tremendous injustice was being done, wanted your assurance that you and your people actually know what terrorism is, even while you were agitating for undeserved freedom for its perpetrators. What we did not expect was that, many months later, Marie Harf, your mouthpiece, would still not have managed to get back to anyone on those questions posed by AP and us. An online article at the time, referring to us by name, explained how:
Roth signed a letter sent Tuesday to Kerry asking him for a meeting. “Meet with us,” wrote Roth and 16 other family members of victims. “Let us explain why being complicit in turning the killers of our children into heroes and ‘freedom fighters’ must not be part of any policy befitting a great nation and moral exemplar like the United States...” Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the State Department, told The Daily Beast, “We’ve received the letter today, and we’re reviewing it.” [Eli Lake, writing in The Daily Beast, August 14, 2013]
We know the August 13, 2013 letter we and our friends wrotedid reach you. Marie Harf says so explicitly. It was a painful letter with a serious intent and it raised meaningful issues that are at least as relevant now, after the convicted killers were greeted as heroes back in their villages (guaranteeing more acts of terror), as they were then. Even more so, given that Iran's dedication to terrorism seems central to why we worry about their nuclear plans.
But as we noted, you and your team are still "reviewing" our letter. We followed-up numerous times. But no one from State has ever addressed what we raised. Or gotten back to us. Or even acknowledged what we said.
It's possible we over-estimated how seriously you and your staff relate to letters from bereaved Israeli victims of terror. If so, we want to respectfully remind you that those killings were in many cases directly linked to Iran and the violent extremism done by it and its clients - chief among them Hamas and Hezbollah. We will also mention that those murdered children (our daughter, for instance) included US citizens.
Now that Rouhani, coping with the grief brought on by his own mother's passing, has gotten the full benevolent attention of the US State Department in all its well-resourced splendor, it seems timely to point out again that being right or not right on terrorism has vast consequences. And dealing with the Iranians and their nuclear ambitions is about terrorism in the same way that the freeing of those Palestinian Arab killers of innocent Jews you told the government of Israel to do was about terrorism.
With tough negotiating opponents and an impending deadline, we're sure you and your team are under pressure. But having now seen the serious attention paid by State to the "moderate" Iranian in his moment of personal sadness, can we remind you that we are moderates too? Unlike the Iranians, we surely don't have "Death to America" on our lips. In fact, we don't know anyone more fervent about wishing you and your State and White House colleagues the greatest possible success in the Iran talks and in general than we are. Your success will mean everyone wins.
To us, terrorism is at the heart of those talks. Even when it's absurdly called violent extremism(the new preferred Washington euphemism), terrorism turns people's lives upside down in ways that are poorly understood outside the circle of those directly affected. It undermines basic notions of justice, embitters societies and has a painful impact on every aspect of the lives it hits. And it's hard to make the case that the civilized world is winning against it. For instance
The UN has never been able to agree on an international convention against terrorism because getting agreement on a definition of terror appears to be impossible. Astute observers say it never will get past this obstacle. The reasons don't need to trouble us here and now - you know them at least as well as we do.
The US State Department, as we have just pointed out, squirms and twists rather than call convicted terrorists by that name. People notice this - people with a vested interest in past and future terrorism.
Being vague on terrorism complicates and (we say) undermines negotiations with the world's most active promoter of terror. The former head of the CIA, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said this week in a Washington Post interview that ISIS is not the biggest threat facing the United States in Iraq. Instead, it's "the Iranian-backed Shiite militias". If you reach an understanding with them in Switzerland on a nuclear deal, will that go away?
We still (barely) have hopes that Marie Harf will get your instructions to respond unambiguously to AP's Matt Lee and to us bereaved families. We are patient. But we are also puzzled. It's hard not to observe the sharp contrast between the way we, terror victims, are treated publicly by State and how you deal publicly with the Iranian arch-terrorists. And even if you remain too busy to get your spokesperson to call terrorism by its name, we're hoping you let the Iranians know the US absolutely knows what it is and who is doing it, and holds them fully accountable for it.
Obama addresses CVE audience this week [Reuters screen shot]
Whether it's called a Violent Extremism problem ["18-Feb-15: Countering Vacuous Euphemisms"] or a global war to defend our societies against ideologically-driven terrorists, we're in the middle of something important enough for the United States to have convened a three-day White House summit conference this week. And to have asked leaders of 60-some invited countries to attend.
According to several media reports, the first of the principles enunciated by President Barack Obama was this:
Governments can and must act to dry up radical groups’ sources of funding [in Christian Science Monitor, "No religion is responsible for terror", today]
Among several worrying messages coming out of the White House gathering, we're concerned by the way the US is said to be fearful for the well-being of the Palestinian Authority according to an AFP report issued in the past hour:
US fears for cash-strapped Palestine | Agence France Presse | February 20, 2015 8:51 AM | The United States voiced fears that the Palestinian Authority may be teetering on the brink of collapse because of a lack of funding, as Israel withholds taxes and donor aid stalls. Washington has been in urgent talks with regional leaders as well as other stakeholders in the frozen Middle East peace process in a bid to try to release more funds. "It's true we're very concerned about the continued viability of the Palestinian Authority if they do not receive funds soon," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. Such funds would include the resumption of monthly Israeli transfers of Palestinian tax revenues, or additional donor assistance, she said... But the Palestinian economy has also been hit by a slowing of aid funds, as donors have failed to make good on $5.4-billion promised at a Cairo conference in October to help rebuild the impoverished Gaza Strip after last year's 50-day war... Psaki warned that if the Palestinian Authority ceased security cooperation with Israel "or even decides to disband, as they have said they may do as early as the first week of March," it could trigger a dire situation.,, "Hundreds of thousands of students could be without teachers, hospitals could cease to function... The cost to both Palestinians and Israelis could be immense in both financial and human terms."
Not a word about how officials of the Palestinian Arab government under Mahmoud Abbas systematically compute and arrange payment of financial rewards for terrorists captured or killed by Israel - among a long list of other forms of foreign aid mismanagement. We posted on that here: "08-Feb-15: Foreign money and the Palestinian Arab terror it buys". Not for the first time, we referred to the colossal sums of foreign aid money that have been funneled into bottomless Palestinian Arab regime accounts (and almost never discussed publicly by diplomats and politicians of the countries supplying it) even while serious unchecked improprieties like those found in a recent European Union audit go on. While Europe is the source of most of the cash that washes around in the ecosphere populated by Palestinian Authority insiders, it's not just Europe. The United States (as we pointed out here) shows unbearable and incomprehensible tolerance for the Abbas regime's passion (and Arafat's before it) for lionizing convicted murderers of Jews and placing them on pedestals. Anyone in doubt about that can click here: "14-Aug-13: Are the Palestinian Arab murderers who are being released at this moment, freedom fighters or terrorists? Let's check with the State Department".
We dream of the day when an indictment is issued connecting the organizations and the people - their names, their shames - with the evil that makes the Palestinian Arab empire of terror possible.
Meanwhile we're preoccupied with a nightmarish scenario in which the spokesperson for the State Department says
the long-term solution for dealing with Islamic State terrorists is to help them with economic opportunities — help them get jobs — saying that those who criticized that notion were perhaps not smart enough to understand [Washington Times]
It's troubling to see the gyrations being performed by the US government as it convenes a serious-sounding gathering of policy makers and others on a subject for which they have chosen a strikingly context-free title.
White House Prepares for Summit on Countering Violent Extremism | Maya Rhodan | Time Magazine | February 16, 2015 | The White House will host a long-awaited summit on countering the behavior that leads marginalized groups and individuals to join terrorist groups starting Tuesday... The White House was careful to not single out any particular group as the main culprit of extremism at home and abroad, but Muslim leaders have already expressed concern that the event will lead more Americans to express fear and hatred toward the community...
President Obama has an editorial in connection with this CVE ("Counter Violent Extremism") in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times ["Our fight against violent extremism"] in which it's hard not to notice that the word Islam appears just three times - and each time in a way that conveys a distinctly defensive connotation: (1) "peaceful nature of Islam", (2) "how terrorists betray Islam". and (3) "the lie that the United States is at war with Islam". (Naturally those are all direct quotes.)
If you're anxious to find a robust engagement with the realities of Islamist terror, then the bad news you are going to need to look for it elsewhere,
On Thursday, February 19, 2015, the Department of State will host Ministers and foreign leaders, senior officials from the UN and regional organizations, and private and civil society representatives to discuss a broad range of challenges facing nations working to prevent and counter violent extremism.
The word terror is not mentioned once on State's new CVE page. Nor are the words Islam, Islamist, Jihad, Arab, Moslem or Muslim, It happens that the State Department and we have some shared history on terror and semantic distinctions. It's something we have mentioned here quite a few times (here's a summary with links). The short version: on August 14, 2013, we wrote (here)
A persistent reporter tackled the State Department's deputy spokesperson Marie Harf [earlier today] on whether the murderers being bused tonight into the waiting arms of the two Palestinian Arab regimes are (a) freedom fighters or (b) terrorists.
Most people will think this is pretty easy to answer. But most people are not the spokesperson for the State Department. Here's an edited extract of the bizarre exchange that ensued (source: Washington Free Beacon; it's also captured in this video clip):
Persistent reporter: Do you have any thoughts or position on whether these people who are going to be released [today] are political prisoners or are they terrorists? State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: I do not have a position on that. Persistent reporter: Do you object to the Palestinians referring to them as political prisoners? State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: I don’t have a position on that... Persistent reporter: ...Most of these people [in fact all of them - TOW] have been convicted of murder, of killing people. And the Israelis are very clear on the fact that they think that these people are terrorists, even though they’re releasing them. The Palestinians say that they are political prisoners and... have instructed their ambassadors, all their representatives around the world to refer to them as freedom fighters, political prisoners. And I want to know, if you don’t have a position... if there isn’t anything that you call them, do you object to the Palestinians referring to them as freedom fighters? State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf: The answer is, I don’t know and I will endeavor to get an answer for you on that as well.
As we said then and believe now, something seriously wrong is going on here. This was a paradigm, a teaching moment, even if few people watching realized it. The Obama Administration State Department's spokesperson was being asked to react to the release of Palestinian Arab terrorists, all of them convicted of murder, all of them having spent many years in prison. More specifically, she was also being asked to react toa letter sent to Secretary Kerry by a group of Israeli families whose children had been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists and who were astounded that the United States was pressuring Israel to free the homicidal convicts, not one of whom had served out a complete sentence. We (the couple behind this blog) drafted and sent that letter a day earlier to the State Department on behalf of the other families.So naturally we paid close attention to what Marie Harf, speaking for John Kerry, said about it:
Roth signed a letter sent Tuesday to Kerry asking him for a meeting. “Meet with us,” wrote Roth and 16 other family members of victims. “Let us explain why being complicit in turning the killers of our children into heroes and ‘freedom fighters’ must not be part of any policy befitting a great nation and moral exemplar like the United States...” Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the State Department, told The Daily Beast, “We’ve received the letter today, and we’re reviewing it.” [Eli Lake, writing in The Daily Beast, August 14, 2013]
They are almost certainly still "reviewing" it. We barraged them with emails and Tweets in the hours and months that followed but, against all the laws of physics, politics and simple good sense, no one from State ever did answer.
It's possible we erred in asking Ms Harf and her boss whether the US sees those convicted and still unrepentant Palestinian Arab killers of unarmed Jews as terrorists. Maybe we should have let them say violent extremists. That might have pushed the State Department people into conceding that they have no idea what those words mean.
Nor do most people, which is probably why that's how they chose to characterize this week's Washington gathering.
State's Deputy Spokesperson has still not figured out
whether the US regards the convicted murdering
terrorists as freedom fighters in the way
that Abbas and his regime do. Yes, that's right: the
State Department of the United States. [Image Source]
Ha'aretz, and then numerous other news channels, have sized up the failed "peace" talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and identified the culprit. "Kerry places blame on Israel for crisis in peace talks", says Israel's newspaper of record. Others (the Jerusalem Post for instance, with "US clarifies: Kerry blames both Israel, Palestinians for breakdown in talks") take a slightly different view. Still, it's sadly obvious that there's no line of critics beating up on Mahmoud Abbas and his band of terrorism-loving insiders for their role in the outcome. What we are wondering is, what part did the US take in this foreseeable failure? How much responsibility does it bear? We are particularly troubled by the way in which the freeing of unrepentant, convicted and imprisoned terrorist felons ended up playing a central role in the PA's bill of complaints. (See for instance "Israel Halts Prisoner Release as Talks Hit Impasse" in the New York Times, April 3, 2014.) From our perspective, as we have written here many times in the past nine months, a peace process in which committed murderers are deliberately and repeatedly turned by one of the parties in the conflict into heroes whose homicidal exploits are celebrated as examples for others to follow, is no peace process at all but a march towards victory. This is why we are infuriated by the way the Kerry-led State Department has gotten away with a consciously ambiguous policy on Palestinian Arab terror. We are exasperated by the gall and the hypocrisy of the Washington bureaucrats who devised and executed it. And we are no less enraged by the passivity which the working media, the news reporters who know this and write nothing, devoted to keeping the matter quiet, at least for English-speaking news consumers.
In the Arab world, the studied indifference of the Kerry/Obama policy concerning the Abbas/PA lionization of terrorist killers of Jews served as an eloquent signal. They didn't need Arabic-language State Department press releases for the point to be driven home. Terrorism, when practised by Palestinian Arabs? That's not real terrorism. Ignore the Israelis. And certainly ignore the Israeli victims.
Here's where the rot first appeared. On August 13, 2013, an American journalist asked Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson in the State Department, this straight-forward question during a media briefing:
Do you have any thoughts or position on whether these people who are going to be released [today] are political prisoners or are they terrorists?
And we can confirm, from the silence that has thundered out of the State Department offices since then, that they still do not. (Readers still in doubt may want to watch this video of the exchange.) Despite our repeated enquiries since August 2013, asking both as interested individuals and as the parents of an American-citizen who was murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists who walked free without any intervention by the State Department, we have been comprehensively ignored. And so has the question. No one in the US administration is willing to admit, it is clear, that they have taken a position on this serious matter - at any rate, no one who was willing to speak to us, or for the record.
Then again, as the Arab world has noted, State, Kerry and the Obama administration have taken a position on whether those murdering terrorists are freedom fighters, political prisoners or mere felons. Was that signal integrated into the PA negativism that was so clear to anyone with eyes since the start of this latest "peace" process? We think the answer is pretty clear.
Sometimes, the anguish of ordinary people like the parents of a murdered child can be helpful in allowing others to see and hear what is being concealed from them.
Some questions for the US State Department and for Secretary Kerry: The Afghanistan government this morning freed some 65
prisoners [according toAssociated Press],
many or all of them "linked to attacks that have killed American troops...
American officials have questioned why President Hamid Karzai's government is
turning them loose". They "have ties to the most violent terror
groups in Afghanistan and were caught with weapons and materials for making
improvised explosive devices... "These
are bad men," said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.
"They've got a lot of blood on their hands. A lot of blood." ...All
65 were freed Thursday morning, prison spokesman Maj. Nimatullah Khaki told the
Associated Press. They were laughing and smiling as they boarded a bus to leave
the prison, Khaki said."
The New York Times, anticipating the release, said yesterday that the US military feels
And it's not only America's military which is angry and shouting, justifiably so. The State Department is too.
Jen Psaki, the spokeswoman for the State Department, criticized the release, saying that it undermined justice under Afghan law and that the detainees being freed were “dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes, including the use of improvised explosive devices, the largest killer of Afghan civilians.” ["With Release of Prisoners, Afghan Leader Again Defies U.S. Wishes", NY Times, January 9, 2014]
Now here in Israel, our government - under intense pressure from the US - has freed three out of four groups of murdering terrorists in the past half year. The fourth and final bunch of them is due to walk out in the next two weeks. Their reception in Palestinian Arab society has been a sickening, well-publicized orgy of public celebration of barbarism and savagery. The prime minister of the PA has led the parade, waving the freed killers' arms, declaring them heroes, honoring them with high ranks in his military apparatus (they don't call it an army but that's what it is) and granting them phenomenally large cash prizes plus ongoing salaries from his regime's bankrupt coffers. There's one big difference between the Afghani jihadists and the Palestinians that we should mention before we get to our question. Those prisoners in the Israeli system were all, every last one of them, put on trial with the assistance of legal counsel, and were convicted and lawfully sentenced. In Israel, the rule of law, the systemic administration of justice and the checks and balances which come with that, are all real. Not make-believe like the propped-up Afghan regime of Karzai, but real. So now how are we to understand the justifiable American fury and the State Department's gnashing of teeth over the release of alleged perpetrators when those same American voices are right behind the same kind of process that has delivered up unwarranted freedom for unrepentant Palestinian Arabs? (And do you have answers yet for some related questions we have been asking your staff for some months.)
If State believes (as Ms Psaki says) this undermines justice under Afghan law, do you, does she, do they at State, see that freeing Palestinian Arab murderers of innocent civilians, some of whom are Americans, does the same to justice under Israeli law?
Mr Kerry, as parents of a US citizen, aged 15 at the time she was murdered in a jihadist outrage, we have tried to have you hear our protests about the US spearheading the freeing of convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists - and have been comprehensively ignored.
We wonder whether you see what we are getting at. If yes, a reply would be much appreciated.
The main organizer of our daughter's murder, just to complete the background, is walking free today despite the 16 life terms to which she was sentenced. She's vociferously unrepentant, widely honored, and fully engaged in inciting globally for more murders of more people like our daughter. This may help you understand the passion and deep pain we bring to this issue and our questions. Hoping to hear.
A handful of observations here in the wake of the dismaying freeing of 26 convicted Palestinian Arab murderers in the dark of the night just ended.
From a piece by Maher Abukhater in the Los Angeles Times [source]:
"Right-wing Israelis who consider the prisoners terrorists staged a sit-in outside the Old City residence of one of the Jerusalem prisoners"
Abukhater and the LA Times editors evidently take the same view as the US Secretary of State whose Deputy Spokesperson told a media briefing that the question of whether the convicted killers being freed under intense US pressure by Israel are political prisoners, freedom fighters or terrorists was a toughie and that further enquiries would have to be carried out in the office. (Check this if you don't believe us: transcript, video, the whole thing.)
The man from the LA Times doesn't feel obliged to take a position on this either; it's enough to brand those Israeli outraged by the injustice of criminals being freed by politicians as "right-wing". We happen to know many of the people who are outraged by what the freeing of convicted felons stands for. Calling them right-wing is prejudicial, inaccurate and cheap.
"Dozens of cars followed the buses through Ramallah to the presidential headquarters, where Abbas and other officials greeted the prisoners, shaking hands with each and kissing them on the cheek. Abbas described the event as "a happy day for all of us and for our heroic prisoners, who have come out today to freedom to live as free people, even though they were also free when in prison."
What realistic prospect of peace, with the painful compromises that peace inevitably entails, can be expected from an aging and weak political figure like Abbas who kisses convicted murderers on the cheeks and calls them heroic? Many of the victims of the acts of murder for which they were tried, convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, were fellow Arabs. Arab family members of those dead victims must have been seeing this on their living room TVs this morning. Do they see a politician who wants to make peace with the Israelis, or a man who is telling them that victory is coming and any price, including the deaths of his fellow citizens, is OK? Are we closer to peace this morning, or yet another step further away?
"Adnan Afandi of Bethlehem, one of the freed men, had served 21 years in prison. "I feel that we came out from the grave and into life once again," he said."
It might have been journalistically valuable had the LATimes' readers been given a little more context. For instance, what if the writer had gone on to explain how the perpetually-bankrupt PA presided over by Mahmoud Abbas is about to hand Afandi and his fellow former grave-dwellers the sort of reward of which convicted murderers could never dare to dream? The details are here ["10-Nov-13: Who finances those savage acts of terror? And why is this so poorly understood?"]. Afandi is about to start "earning" a salary of $2,000 per month - among the most generous to be paid to anyone in the Palestinian territories. He will also be given a top job in the PA's civil service and a cash grant of an unimaginable $50,000. We explained this, with evidence, in "10-Dec-13: In Brussels, is the EU preparing to whitewash PA corruption?"
As for Afandi himself, might it not have been interesting to know he had been serving a term of thirty years. And that "political" offense of his? An attack, using a kitchen knife, on two unarmed, unsuspecting Israeli civilians. He was convicted of attempted murder. His prime minister calls his deed heroic. How close should we and our children stand, in the days to come, to Palestinian Arabs with access to kitchen knives? How can you tell when one of the Palestinian Arabs on the bus or standing in line with you at the post office or in a Jerusalem hospital ward has decided to become a hero? Or wealthy?
And on the subject of painful compromise, this from the Washington Post
Qadura Farres, head of the Palestinian prisoners, said that Israel was not doing the Palestinians any favors and that all these prisoners should have been released as part of the Oslo Accords, an agreement to establish a measure of Palestinian self-rule and partial withdrawal of Israeli troops. Despite this, Mr Farres said, he was happy about Monday's release, adding that it gives a "ray of hope for the release of all our other prisoners".
Not doing anyone any favours is a key message in an entitlement-based society like the one the Palestinian Arabs have constructed. Compromise? Peace process? Who's kidding whom? Fares is a close associate, according to Wikipedia, of the convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti's principal victim was a Greek Orthodox priest, murdered while driving his own car because his beard made him look too Jewish.
“They will participate in a special torch-lighting to celebrate the beginning of the new year,” Palestinian Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Karak said in an interview. “We are very happy for the release of our prisoners, who have spent 20 years in jail, and see this as a step towards freedom for all our prisoners.”
Did anyone, even John Kerry, imagine we would hear the PA's minister for convicted murderers say the release makes them happy because it's a step towards making peace? Is anyone paying attention to what Karak did say? He has just articulated his side's main goal: they are doing what they are doing so that their "prisoners", convicted felons and many of them cold-blooded murdering savages, can walk free. That's their program. And it's succeeding.
Any suggestion that peace forms some part of their strategic plan, as a succession of US government officials has been saying non-stop since the relentless pressure got underway, is 100% wishful thinking. If we're wrong, show us the evidence, please. Perhaps Marie Harf of the State Department has some for us?
