If This Is War, Then Fight Like It Is One

by Avi Davis

In January of this year, after the horrific attacks on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris, I wrote several pieces in which I predicted that the attack was only the beginning of the war in which the citizens in Western capitals would become directly  and irrevocably involved.

Of course it was not the true beginning at all.  That distinction belongs to the French riots of 2005 and the Danish cartoon riots of 2006  in which the depravity of Muslim-European conduct was put on full televised display.

What I did not foresee in January this year  is how rapidly my prophecy would transform into reality by November.  Only eleven months and Paris,  the gleaming jewel of Europe, is again the victim of a massive assault.  Yet this time  a far more sophisticated and damaging  one than almost anyone could have expected.

Why Paris yet again?  Because it is a soft target and difficult to defend; because it is a symbol of western hedonism with its theaters, concert halls, side walk cafes, rock concerts and galleries; And because, along with Berlin, it represents to the Islamic fundamentalist mind the core of the European experiment in Western unity.  To inflict pain on Paris is to blast a hole through western confidence  –  an objective that the attacks on Friday have surely achieved.

So now what?  French president Francoise Hollande has labeled the attacks an act of war, and has vowed vengeance. And indeed over the weekend the French air force in Syria carried out a range of sorties against Islamic State targets in Syria. The G20 meeting in Turkey also committed itself to greater coordination in the assault against Islamic State.

But since the Charlie Hebdo attacks there were plenty of crises to remind us of the continuing war against the West waged by Islamic terrorists. In April, Garissa University in Northeastern Kenya was the victim of a merciless assault by terrorists associated with al Shahab – an African offshoot of al Qaeda, which resulted in the deaths of 147 students.  This was followed with massacres by Boko Haram in Nigeria, a powerful suicide bombing earlier this month in Beirut and of course the downing of a Russian airliner in Sinai on November 1st – both claimed by Islamic State.

The fact that these events are occurring around the world and not just in France should remind us of the global nature of the conflict.

In other words, this newly declared war, if anyone IS still truly in doubt, is nothing less than a world war between an atavistic death cult and what we know as Civilization.  It is not a clash, in Samuel Huntington’s famous epigrammatic conception, of civilizations.  It is rather a true Manichean struggle between the forces of life and the forces of death.

And how is such a world war prosecuted?  Well perhaps we should  think back to the last one and consider how it was successfully waged.

It was waged unconditionally and ruthlessly, so that the full weight, power and resources of the countries whose civilian populations were in direct peril, was brought to bear against the enemy. This included military force leveled at the the enemy’s territorial strongholds;  Intelligence services which were freed from all constraints in order to gather as much information as they needed, from whatever sources were available and employing whatever technology was then current, in order to interdict enemy plots; And, of course, the operation was governed by a united command, under the aegis of the United States, whose civilian leadership was absolutely committed to the task before them and would not flinch nor be deterred from the mission of achieving unconditional surrender.

But that would be only the measures to be taken against the enemy in its lair.  What about the enemy at home?  How can any citizen of the West fail to be alarmed by reports from the survivors of the Bataclan Theater that  the perpetrators of the killings spoke fluent, unaccented French and were later revealed to be French citizens?

The French, British, Swiss and German governments can no longer afford to speak blithely about the politics of inclusion and lean on the excuses of poverty and ill-education as the source of the incipient terror igniting in their suburbs.  Undercover agents must penetrate the banlieus of France, the outer suburbs of Malmo and the breeding grounds of terrorism in Birmingham and Manchester.  Mass arrests of Imams preaching violence must be conducted and their cohorts and congregations should be made fully aware that further incitement to violence will no longer be tolerated.  And European immigration policy must be completely overhauled to prevent young Muslim males from gaining entry to European countries without first having committed unequivocally to the democratic values of those nations.

And one more thing:  Isn’t it time for  the Europeans to recognize that the State of Israel, which has been fighting the same war on its own turf and its under own terms for decades, is not the nemesis of  Europe but rather its ally and perhaps even its savior?  Israeli counter-intelligence, Israeli security technology and Israeli cyber skills – all among the best resources of their kind in the world, should now be graciously accepted  by the Europeans in their struggle to defeat a common enemy.

Is any of the above likely to happen?  Regretfully, I have little hope for it.  The titular leader of the West, the American president, has no stomach for such engagements and has staked his presidency and its legacy on the idea that only a small band of malcontents, whom he won’t even label as Islamic, are responsible for the horrific events which have roiled world capitals for the past ten years.  No other world leader, besides perhaps Vladimir Putin, seems prepared to take the draconian steps necessary to destroy the scourge which threatens the lives of their citizens.  Neither David Cameron in Britain, nor Angela Merkel in Germany, nor Francois Hollande in France will ever be true or effective war time leaders.

And so, at a time in history when the civilized world cries out for fiery, determined  leadership, we are saddled with lack luster also rans, schooled in politically correct nostrums and the traditional liberal aversion to military engagement who have fostered a climate of passivity in the face of unrelenting aggression.

It is not a prescription for victory.

Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles and the editor of the Intermediate Zone

If the Oslo Accords Are Dead, Then So Might Be Mahmoud Abbas

by Avi Davis

 

When, two weeks ago, Mahmoud Abbas stood before the United Nations and declared the Oslo Accords dead, he was only confirming what had been obvious to Israelis ( if not the world)  for more than 15 years.  The Accords, signed with such pomp, ceremony and optimism 22 years ago at the White House  had long since been ignored by the Palestinian Authority for their primary purpose – building  the framework for a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.  Rather, the  reversion to terror, the stock-in- trade of Fatah and its kleptocratic mafiosa who returned from Tunis with Yasser Arafat in 1993 – has been the only consistent policy of the Palestinian leadership over the intervening 22 years.

 

So now arrives the 15th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Intifada and almost on cue, a new round of violence has erupted in Israel  – this time without question instigated by the Palestinian leadership.  Anyone caring to read the highly reputable Palestinian Media Watch or the redoubtable MEMRI, both of which offer reports and translations of the statements of Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian media,  will find hard evidence of the incitement to murder and the lies of leaders such as Abbas and Erekat who have trafficked for years in the absolute falsehood that the Jews are seeking to change the status quo on the Temple Mount.

It is nothing new. Over the past 95 years, whenever the Palestinian leadership has sought to build political capital either domestically or abroad they have regularly resorted to the allegations of the Al Asqa Mosque’s defilement  as their casas belli. 

It happened in April, 1920 during the Nebi Musa riots in the Old City of Jerusalem; in August, 1929 prior to the Tarpat massacres in Hebron; it was a precursor to the Arab revolt of  1936 and to the War of Independence of 1948; and most recently in 2000 the allegation was used when Ariel Sharon decided to visit the Temple Mount. Each time, the war cry, carried vociferously over the airwaves and into every Palestinian home, was the threat of a Jewish takeover of the Dome of the Rock.  It galvanized thousands of young men to murder their friends and neighbors.

The accommodations that the Israelis have afforded the Arab leadership on the captured Temple Mount, the holiest location in Judaism  -yet a far less holy shrine to Islam – has been remarkably forthcoming, but in the end self-defeating.  The Arabs have repaid this generosity with murder, mayhem and an attempt to destroy any archeological evidence that verifies a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount.

Now Abbas ignites another Intifada, not out of hopelessness as so many in the Western media are pontificating, but out of calculation.  Having consistently dodged any attempt to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict peacefully through open negotiation; having failed to unilaterally obtain U.N. sanction for a Palestinian state based on the 1949 cease fire lines, Abbas is following the model of previous Palestinian leaders –  the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini  and Yasser Arafat in leading a glorious revolt against the Palestinians’ so-called  Jewish oppressors.

But there should be deep caution in such an approach.  Both  al Husseini and Arafat set back the Palestinian cause years, if not generations, when they urged their followers to resort to violence.  Haj Amin al Husseini was eventually deported  by the British  and ended his life in exile in Egypt and Lebanon, where, for the remaining 35 years of his life, he exerted very little influence over the course of events in his homeland.

Arafat ended his life a virtual prisoner in his Ramallah compound, unable to do much but make ineffectual public statements that not even his own people paid much attention to. He died with his plans for winning his Palestinian state through war in ruins, thousands of his own people dead and with diminishing world sympathy.

Mahmoud Abbas now faces the prospect of  a similar fate. The Israeli leadership will not long tolerate a Palestinian leader who publicly incites his people to murder Jews and bestows his blessing on the perpetrators.  The irony is, of course, that Abbas has known for years that it is the Israeli military who keeps him safe and in nominal control of the West Bank. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2006, has long plotted his usurpation.  In a Hobson’s Choice he has relied on the Israelis to prop him up, since his Palestinian ‘moderation’ is presented as a far more propitious alternative than that of a  genocidal monster licking its chops on the outskirts of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

But this may soon end. Seen as permanently abandoning diplomacy, the Israeli government may abandon him as well, and re- establish administrative control over the areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority now reigns.  This is an uncomfortable and highly problematic choice for the Israelis, fraught with diplomatic peril, but in the end there may be no other means to ensure the safety and security of Israeli civilians.

Abbas’ fate in such a scenario is anyone’s guess.  But ending up in exile like al Husseini or in virtual prison like Arafat, might not be too bad an option when considering the alternative planned for him at the hands of Hamas.

 

 

The U.S. Enters Uncharted Territory in Yemen

 By Avi Davis

On January 20th, just as Barack Obama was delivering his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, a key statement he had made about U.S. foreign policy was about to explode in his Administration’s face.

“I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership. We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now — and around the globe, it is making a difference.

First, we stand united with people around the world who’ve been targeted by terrorists — from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris. We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we’ve done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies.”

A central plank in that promise was the cooperation of the Republic of Yemen with which the United States was coordinating its confrontation with  al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group which claimed responsibility for the Paris massacre in the first week of January.

When the American-backed government of Yemen abruptly collapsed on that Tuesday, the  country was left leaderless as it became convulsed by an increasingly powerful force of pro-Iranian insurgents.

This collapse should not have been  unexpected.  The Houthi are a Ziadi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen’s mountainous northern region. Originally a Shia oriented youth movement formed in the mid-1990s and attracting thousands of young, disaffected Yemenis, it soon developed a political wing which was distinctly anti- American and anti-Zionist.  It gained inspiration – and even financial support – from the Iranian republic.

In November 2011, Houthis were said to be in control of two Yemeni governorates and close to taking over a third, which would enable them to launch a direct assault on Saa’ana, the Yemeni capital.

By May 2012, it was reported that Houthis controlled a majority of  three more governorates, had gained access to the Red Sea and had started erecting barricades north of the capital Sana’a in preparation for new conflict.

In September 2014, the Houthis made their advance on the capital.   By the time Obama was stepping to the podium to deliver his  State of the Union address, the rebels had already taken the presidential palace in the capital Saa’ na and forced President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s resignation.

Yet the resignation of the president, prime minister and cabinet took American officials completely by surprise and heightened the risks that Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, would become even more fertile breeding ground for al Qaeda , which had claimed responsibility for hundreds of anti-Western attacks.

Now commentators are predicting that former President Saleh who had been ousted in a coup during the Arab Spring in 2011 is poised to make a comeback as an ally of  the Houthi.

But don’t hold your breath for that eventuality.  The more likely development is civil war, with the South, which is strongly Sunni, attempting to break away from the now Shia dominated north.

How could the Obama Administration have so cavalierly allowed this to happen?  Most Administration officials on the day after the attack seemed stunned by the developments, since they always seemed to believe that the Yemeni government was sufficiently in control to prevent America’s interests being compromised.

For Obama, Yemen has represented something like a real war – one he seemed willing, finally, to get behind.

In the course of his administration there have been over 130  drone attacks in Yemen on al Qaeda targets, as well as a further 15 U.S. strikes using other forms of weaponry such as cruise missiles.

Indeed, Obama vastly accelerated the drone campaign in Yemen in 2011 and 2012, just as CIA drone strikes in Pakistan began to slow. Forty-seven strikes took place in Yemen in 2012, marking the first time the number of drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan reached comparable levels.

One reason for the acceleration in drone strikes in Yemen may have been Obama’s authorization in April 2012 of the “signature” strikes that had been approved the previous year for use in Pakistan’s tribal regions. He must see it as effective military tool against AQAP. Indeed how the American born terrorist sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted and eliminated in September 2011.

 The U.S. bases and the drone strategy in Yemen are now in peril.  As of this writing, the Administration has yet to outline how it intends to cope with the new situation on the ground.  Its continuing negotiations with the Iranian regime only complicates its relations with Yemen, given the leverage the Iranians now exert over this area of the Arabian peninsula. Iran can, quite feasibly, hold Yemen hostage in exchange for generous terms in its agreement over  the disposition of its nuclear program.

Needless to say, this is not the most  comfortable situation for the United States to be in.

One then has to wonder exactly how much “smarter” this new version of American leadership is going to turn out to be.  Remember these words – “We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we’ve done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies.” And then measure them in six months time against the U.S.’ ability to act in Yemen.

Perhaps then the ‘new American leadership’ will not look quite as smart as the President has presented it to be.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

In Like Flynn

By Avi Davis

The sense that the United  States is not receiving adequate leadership in the war against terrorism is gaining steam from an even more audible group of critics.

On Monday, Michael Flynn, the former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency slammed the Obama administration as paralyzed and playing defense rather than offense in the fight against Islamic militancy.  He said the administration is unwilling to admit the scope of the problem, naively clinging to the hope that limited counterterrorist intervention will head off the ideological juggernaut of religious militancy.

His calls were echoed by Gen. Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of the Army who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that al Qaeda’s influence has grown exponentially over the past several years and despite the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the hydra headed movement is threatening American Interests all over the world and not just in the Middle East.

Flynn’s and Keane’s comments reinforce calls by other former Obama administration officials such as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta who say that while in office they urged more intervention earlier in the Syrian conflict but met with a deafening silence from the Obama Administration. Repeated demands for a greater commitment in those theaters went unheeded.   No doubt Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, once his own inevitable memoirs are published, will amplify the criticisms of his two predecessors. It is no secret  in Washington DC that Hagel was dumped because of his strident advocacy of greater American military involvement in Iraq and Syria.

All of which is anathema to this president.  His decision to pull all troops from Iraq – and to leave only a handful in Afghanistan – after years of American sacrifices in both countries to bolster regimes friendly to the United States,  was more than  just the fulfillment of a campaign promise;  it was the practical reflex of an ideology which harbors only contempt for what he sees as  imperialist or internationalist missions and views America  as far too extended. He sees no good national interest advanced by the presence of U.S. troops in any theater of conflict and is viscerally opposed to the kind of nation building and interventionism which became a hallmark of the Bush Administration.

But as the world situation develops it is becoming clearer that the United States  – just like  every other Western nation – can no longer hide from the reality that if the war is not fought on foreign soil it will be fought on our own soil.  The Kouachi brothers in Paris two weeks ago brought back what they had learned about ambush strategy and tactical frontal assault warfare from their training and experience with ISIS in Northern Iraq and executed a technically perfect raid on the Charlie Hebdo offices in central Paris; ISIS inspired plots have been uncovered in Australia, Indonesia,  the U.K. and of course France.

What is patently clear is that the contagion of ISIS is going to bounce back to the United States.   We cannot leave a vacuum in the Middle East and expect it not to be filled by al Qaeda , ISIS and a host of other insurgent forces dedicated to undoing the work of the United States and using the countries in the region as platforms for striking out against the West. We can also not expect ISIS and al Qaeda to fail to export their military successes to the streets and boulevards of our cities and our leaders would be foolish to blindly turn away from this eventuality.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

Don’t Worry France, the Obama Administration Loves You

by Avi Davis

I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I was not viewing an SNL spoof.

Here was John Kerry, Secretary of State of the United States, speaking to a gathering of French dignitaries in the wake of the most deadly Islamic terrorist attack in France in modern times, an atrocity which took the lives of 17 and whose shock wave has not yet even receded.

After sounding the obligatory notes of condolence and emphasizing  America’s steadfast support for France, Kerry turned the stage over to twee voiced troubadour James Taylor who proceeded to croon the Carol King song ” You’ve Got a Friend” for the assembled Frenchmen.

Earlier Kerry had said: “I really wanted to come here and share a hug with all of Paris, with all of France.”   There was more awkwardness when Mr Kerry, several inches taller than the French president, did attempt to hug Francois Hollande in the courtyard of the Elysee presidential palace.

Is it just me or others utterly perplexed by this abdication of good sense and absence of seriousness on the part of the Secretary of State and the Administration he represents?  Already reeling from criticism that the United States could not bring itself to send a senior member of the U.S. government to the 3 million person solidarity march in central Paris last week, the Obama Administration had an opportunity to demonstrate forthrightly that it was prepared to resume the war against Islamic terror and to make all of its resources available to European countries to execute it effectively.

Instead it resorted to banal and trite words of condolence, the kind of tribute that high school students in the United States would offer one another.

I have nothing against James Taylor, nor the song.  But can anyone say, in the light of the devastating massacre in France last week, that singing this song (in English, mind you, not French) with a microphone that was way too short for the 6′ 3″ Taylor  –  whose thin voice hardly carried for the first 30 seconds of his performance –  was any way to express rock solid solidarity with the French people and mourn their very significant loss?

It would be as if the French had sent us a box of chocolates after  9/11 with a casual note reading ‘Get Well Soon.’

The episode betrays a fundamental problem with the West’s response to the events of January 7th and 9th in Paris.  There is still no evidence that French or American leaders get it: they continue to fall back on old prescriptions for dealing with their internal Muslim problem – including better education for Muslims and reaching out to Muslim leaders in an effort to have them control the epidemic of extremism which has spread throughout their communities.

Meanwhile it should not be lost on anybody that the 3 million person crowd last week contained proportionately very few French Muslims;  that the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo – featuring a teary eyed Mohammed on its cover was widely condemned by Muslims around the world who did not voice their approval, as expected, of the exercise of French free speech but condemned it;  that the spotlight has been shone of Belgium, which interdicted a terrorist attack last week  – and Sweden and Norway, where Muslims have been celebrating the massacres as just retribution for  the defamation of the prophet.

It should lead to a thorough questioning of why French leaders’ search for answers for the racial problems which have beset their country consistently leads back to the French peoples’ own bigotry – a situation which can only be addressed by a greater level of openness and tolerance.

Or why the French still remain so mystified by the riots of 2005, which ransacked France for three entire weeks, and was met then with resolutions by the government to simply increase funding for the banlieus that ring Paris and other major French cities?

In this willful blindness, they truly do have a friend in the White House – a man who insists that his underlings never speak the words ” Islamic”  and ” terrorism” in the same sentence and who has gone to tremendous lengths throughout his Presidency to avoid any sense that Islam – not ‘radical’ Islam nor ‘militant’ Islam – poses the greatest threat to the survival of the civilization of which he is the reputed leader.

Four years years ago, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers upon resigning his office, commented that from his perspective there did not seem to be any grown ups running things at the White House.

From John Kerry’s juvenile attempts to console a grieving France to his and his bosses’ adamant position that Islam itself remains a religion of peace and could never condone the depredations we witness daily on our television screens, we have more proof than we have ever needed that his assessment is correct.

 

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of  The Intermediate Zone

 

 

The BDS War Against Israel: A Review

by Avi Davis

Authors: Jed Babbin and Herbert London

Paperback: 98 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition

Publication Date:  May 28, 2014

Review Date:  January 14, 2015

The most revealing moment in Jed Babbin and Herbert London’s exposé of the BDS movement comes near the middle of the book, when the authors quote Omar Baghouti, founder and director of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement – the international effort to isolate Israel economically.  Claiming that his organization accepts Israel’s right to exist but is only focused on applying enough pressure  so that it abandons what it refers to as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, Barghouti makes clear that even if Israel retreats entirely from the West Bank, the BDS movement will continue on:

“Even if the Israelis remove all their settlements and dismantle their military installations and return to the 1967 borders, the BDS movement will continue because there will still be 5 million  Palestinian refugees who are prevented from returning to their homes.”

With such a statement this Palestinian celebrity makes clear that the Boycott Divestment  and Sanctions Movement is not, as its literature and website declare, concerned with just forcing the State of Israel to give up the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to allow a State of Palestine to come into existence.  Rather it is about the destruction of the Jewish state itself since Bargouti and his international claque are well aware that permitting 5 million or so Palestinian refugees to take up residence in Israel proper can lead to nothing but the tilting of the demographic balance in the Palestinians’ favor.

This is the dirty little secret that such fellow travelers as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and actresses Emma Thompson and Jane Fonda all wish to hide from you:  they believe that Israel as a Jewish state is illegitimate and should not exist.  Every other statement – about Palestinian rights, justice for the refugees, claims of apartheid like conditions in the West Bank – are all smoke and mirrors to disguise the true agenda behind this malicious movement and its perfervid attempts to drive a wedge between Israel and the rest of the civilized world.

The State of Israel had in fact experienced a boycott movement even before its creation in 1948.  Arab boycotts have existed since the 1920s, aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to what was then Palestine.     Soon after the conclusion of Israel’s War of Independence in January 1949, the Arab League called for a boycott of any dealings of Arab nations with the Israeli government or Israeli civilians; a restriction of any non-Arab corporation or individual who does business with Israel and a prohibition of any Arab League member and its nationals who deal with a company who deals with another company that does business with Israel.

Almost from the beginning the Arab League boycott was a non-starter as within a few years it would have essentially required the 22 Arab nations to stop doing business with the rest of the world.   Today that boycott, still officially in effect, is regarded as a joke since nearly all the Arab countries have found a way to circumvent it.

But the new Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement is not a joke and in the course of its ten years of operation has done real damage – if not to Israel’s booming economy, then to its international reputation.  Springing from the U.N.  Tehran Conference on Racism and the Word Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in September, 2001  several hundred NGOs – such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Doctors without Borders convened to draft a universal declaration against racism.  The latter conference spiraled into an ugly hatefest against Israel – involving  the resuscitation of anti-Semitic canards.   Israel and the United States stormed out in protest.

But the die was cast and being located in South Africa, the locus of so much of the left’s boycott efforts in the 1970s and 80s, the conference provided a perfect opportunity to zero in on what was alleged to be the  apartheid regime of Israel and its brutal handling of Palestinians.  Accusing Israel of having perpetrated war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing, while having also  instituted illegal blockades and partition barriers which , it was claimed, vitiate against international law, the NGOs successfully launched a world wide campaign aimed first at college campuses around the world  and then at major corporations and then governments.

 

To date the movement has had almost no visible  effect on Israel’s trade relations with the rest of the world.  A Knesset report, issued last week, indicated that the minimal impact was due to Israel’s growing high tech ties with countries and corporations around the world, who see no utility in the effort to interfere with Israel’s economic progress:

“So far, the attempts to boycott Israel have not hurt the Israeli economy on the macro scale. … The boycotts are able to hurt largely the end products of certain Israeli brands. However, since the majority of Israeli exports are intermediate goods, there has not been significant harm done to them,” the report said.

However on another level it is success is quite impressive. Its ability to win the support of certain high profile journalists, trade unions, academics, leading actors, actresses and rock stars has given the movement a luster it clearly does not deserve..  These groups and individuals  have been drawn to BDS’ anti-colonial message and its supposed platform for the underdog  – ignoring of course the lies upon which the movement was established as well as the continuing incitement to violence encouraged by Palestinian leaders and terrorist operatives.

Yet, the movement has succeeded in misleading many  influential journalists such as world renown physicist Stephen Hawking and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman into believing that BDS is, simply, an “Intifada propelled by non-violent resistance and economic boycott, seeking to advance a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” However, far from offering solutions, the movement has only served to extend and intensify the conflict as it has encouraged Hamas’ three violent wars with Israel over the past ten years and has justified Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ continuing rejection of any accommodation with Israel.  In the meantime it has demonstrated its complementarity with Palestinian terror, its acceptance of Iranian threats to destroy Israel and the continued Arab resentment of Israel’s prosperity.

As such, BDS is merely a recent variant of centuries -old anti-Jewish boycotts that the Arab powers and other nations once embraced well before the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in 1948.  And in this way it ties directly into traditional antisemitic tropes providing a seamless connection between Tzarist disinformation efforts, Nazi propaganda and the present day campaigns aimed at thedelegitimization of the Jewish state.

Authors Babbin and London provide a fitting exposé of this malign movement, indicating how it is funded, who are its collaborators and where and why it succeeds or fails.

The picture which ultimately emerges is of a cadre of vengeful ideaologues, who hate the West as much as they hate the State of Israel and would be pleased to see both disappear.

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of the Intermediate Zone.

.

Paris Attacks Prove that Anti-Semitism and Anti-Western Sentiment Are the Same Thing

By Avi Davis

How did Ahmed Coulibaly, the Muslim gunman who invaded the Hyper Cacher grocery market in East Paris on Friday and killed four Jews shopping there, choose his target?

 

Only two days before, 10 members of the staff of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hedbo had been assassinated in cold blood by the Kouachi brothers – Muslim jihadists.

So why a kosher market?   Surely, there are far more visible and significant targets in Paris at which to have taken hostages.

Coulibaly, who is now known to have been a co-conspirator with the brothers, aimed to use the hostage crisis as a means of leveraging assistance to the two assassins on the run.

But the choice of the attack on the market in East Paris, conducted in such close proximity in time to the horrific events of only two days before, was an explicit statement to the West: that  the Jews and the citizens of the West are the same thing –  we are against them both –  and we will kill them both indiscriminately in order to advance our cause.

It is no secret that anti-semitism runs deep in the Muslim banlieues of Paris. It has been in evidence repeatedly in the past few years – and most particularly over the summer of 2014  when the Don Yitzchak Abarbanel Synagogue in the 11th arrondissement became the target of a near pogrom led by a mob of Palestinian supporters, angered by Israel’s incursion into Gaza.   From the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2005, to the killings by Mohammed Merah in Toulouse in 2012,  and the repeated brutal gang attacks by Muslims on Jews, there  is consummate evidence of a raging storm of anti-semitic animus swirling in Muslim society which will not be quelled by polite words requesting calm or by calls for unity.

It dovetails, in many ways with the rising antisemitism of  secular French society itself which masquerades under the guise of anti-Zionism.   Antisemitism, of course, has had a long history in France, reaching its peak 120 years ago during the infamous Dreyfus trial, when throngs of protestors (none of them Muslim, mind you) could be heard screaming the words “Death to the Jews.”

Perhaps that antisemitic animus, which still curdles in the French breast, is best expressed today  by France’s coddling of the rejectionist, terror sponsoring Palestinian Authority and as well as the French government’s flat refusal to outright condemn genocidal terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah who attack Israeli citizens indiscriminately

But the gunman who killed the staff of Charlie Hebdo and one who killed the four victims in the hyper market did not make these distinctions:  both Jewish and non-Jewish Frenchmen are now being targeted  in an explosion of hate, the like of which the French have never seen.

The Paris atrocities therefore prove that the attempt to snuff out free speech –  a key pillar of Western civilization,  is exactly the same thing as the attack on Jews and Zionists.    Jews/ Zionists/French journalists/Frenchmen  – these labels are interchangeable because all these identities stand in the way of the re-establishment of an Islamic Caliphate.

Isn’t it then about time that the  French government  dropped its hypocritical, even handed stance towards Israel and the Palestinians  and unite with the Jewish state in an effort to confront  a common enemy?  What more pressing alliance could there by than being enjoined to defeat the forces that wish to destroy their mutual civilization?  Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS,  Boko Haram, al Qaeda  – it doesn’t matter what the name –  they all  drink from the same ideological trough, share the same values and preach the same hatred of Israel, Jews and the West.

But you still wouldn’t know this if you listen to the French foreign ministry.  When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed a willingness to fly to France this week to express solidarity with the French, he was discouraged by a senior official close to the French President on the pretext that it would stir animosity.  However when Netanyahu insisted on traveling (considering that two of his ministers – Avigdor Liberman and Naftali Bennett, would be attending), the same officials told him that if he did, they would be compelled to also invite Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

Even in the face of the most devastating evidence of Muslim treason and rejection of French civilized norms, the French leadership still feels compelled to placate their restive Muslim population with a sycophantic policy of even handedness that will return them nothing but greater hatred.

Coulibaly, upon bursting into Hyper Cacher on Friday morning apparently shouted to the terrified shoppers: “Do you know who I am?”

The answer from Frenchmen, Israelis and all freedom loving people around the world  should now be thunderously thrown back at him:

” Yes, you are Death but we are Life and are united now to destroy you.”

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate  Zone

 

 

Bernard Henri Levy and His Prescription for French Unity

by Avi Davis

In the wake of  the attacks on both the Charlie Hebdo offices on January 7 and the Kosher market on January 9, many commentators are declaring that most Muslims are as appalled by the carnage as the rest of the French people.  Any television news program on over the past two days seems to have always included a Muslim representative expressing his own horror and indignation at the terror attacks.

French liberal apologists around the world are in fact scrambling with the means to assuage their consciences and assure their fellow citizens that all French citizens – save for a tiny minority – stand united in their condemnation of the atrocities.

Indeed, that sentiment is taken up in French philosopher and celebrity Bernard Henri Levy’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, January 9.

In it he avers that Muslims throughout France are not generally complicit in this terrible crime and that the instigation for it came from  a sector of their society which is on its fringe.

And so he offers  a test:

 “Those whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion. Too often have we heard that France’s Muslims should be summoned to explain themselves. They don’t need to explain themselves, but they should feel called to express their tangible brotherhood with their massacred fellow citizens. In so doing, they would put to rest once and for all the lie of a spiritual commonality between their faith as they know it and that of the murderers.

They have the responsibility—the opportunity—before history and their own conscience to echo the “Not in our name!” with which Britain’s Muslims dissociated themselves last year from the Islamic State killers of journalist James Foley. But they also have the even more urgent duty to define their identity as sons and daughters of an Islam of tolerance and peace.”

In other words, the Muslims who are against this terrible carnage must come out and say so – vocally and defiantly.

This will now become the new Rorschach Test of Muslim loyalty  – and a means of stressing that the multicultural policies of 30 years have not failed.

But are Muslims in the banlieues – those no-go zones where French police do not even dare to tread –  really likely to stage their own mass rallies with hundreds of thousands of them appearing arm in arm  in the Place de la Republique  sporting tri-color arm bands and belting out, teary-eyed, La Marseillaise?  Do Henri-Levy and other French intellectuals truly believe that  French papers are going to be filled any time soon with angry letters from Muslim mothers and fathers decrying the atrocities of their co-religionists and swearing that they are neither inspired nor catalyzed to action by the depredations against their own society?

 

It is a foolish expectation and it fails to appreciate the unbridgeable divide that now separates most of French Muslim society and the secular French world.

What you will see, however, is a limited range of French Muslim leaders, imams and intellectuals (almost certainly on the liberal fringe of their own communities) speaking out as individuals,  distancing themselves from the horror of  the Wednesday and Friday attacks.  But to believe that this will represent  mainstream Muslim opinion and sentiment is self-delusional.

Henri Levy refuses to acknowledge that the short sighted European multicultural policies of the past 30 years have essentially cut off a broad swathe of the Muslim population from French culture and any sense of their obligation towards  it.  It is far more likely that a majority of French Muslims see the attacks in Paris last week as an assertion of Muslim power and as a just and welcome response to the years long perceived insults received from satirists like Charlie Hebdo and French society in general.

So, now, what if  they don’t come out and say it? What if the Muslims stay home and remain mute about the atrocity?  What if Bernard Henri Levy’s optimism about the sense that these Muslims are as French as he is proves just as unfounded as the suspicion that Muslims in general were against the carnage?  Bernard Henri Levy provides no consequences and that is the problem with his and other liberals’ view of the situation.  The failure of the French intellectual and political elite to grapple with the fundamental problems of race and religion within their society, ignoring the drive of Muslims for power and control over France while pretending that at heart they are all good Frenchmen, is very much like believing that telegenic moderate Muslims – few and far between- represent mainstream Muslim character.

President Francois Hollande, in his address to the nation, did not once mention Islam.  The word has barely crossed the lips of commentators and other politicians. But the word must be spoken if France is to come to terms with the terrible demographic mess it is in.   If French society is to prevail over the menace to its survival, then the French police, if not military, will almost certainly need to make sweeping arrests in the Muslim banlieues, break up communities and possibly even strip many French Muslims of their citizenship.   That may sound harsh to the ears of the French liberals who have long felt that economic prosperity and the extension of  the values of  liberté,  égalité and fraternité  to minorities would solidify French society.

But in the 21st Century it would appear that in order to secure  fraternité  the citizens of the Fifth French Republic may well have to surrender elements of their blessed liberté, and égalité .

History will tell us whether they had the courage to do so.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

 

 

 

Will Western Leaders Really Encourage Free Speech?

by Avi Davis

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is adamant. In the wake of the brutal massacre of the staff of the Charlie Hebdo Magazine in Paris on Wednesday, he referred to the media rights exercised by the satirical French magazine as “not just a pen, but a pen that represents an instrument of freedom, not fear.”

Well said, but does he believe it?   In fact do any of the Western leaders who stood up and condemned one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in the history of Paris, believe that, that when it comes to examinations of Islam, the West either has a truly free press or that it should have one?

If their past conduct and views is any guide, the answer would be almost certainly no.

President Barack Obama, for instance, thinks that there are certain criticisms which are out of bounds.  In September 2012 at the United Nations and in the wake of his administrations’ assertion that the Benghazi attacks had been solely provoked by an American made video which pilloried Mohammed, the President announced:  “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”   This extraordinary statement, wherein the reputed  leader of the Free World allowed himself to be co-opted by Islamic propaganda ( for such words would surely have been comfortable in the mouth of Ayatollah Khoemieni) was a telling sign of where free speech is headed in the Western world.

For years the Islamic nations have fought to obtain a worldwide ban on the defamation or criticism of religion.  It is a subtle – and clever – attempt to prevent the West from identifying the scourge which now assaults it.

Yet, many Western liberal leaders seem to agree with that sentiment.   While in office, former French president Jacques Chirac had been particularly vocal about the criticism of Islam and had even encouraged law suits against the very same magazine whose editorial staff was slaughtered by Muslims on Wednesday.   In fact, in 2006 he recommended his personal lawyer to the Muslim agitators in order to sue the magazine.   While the case did not proceed, it is in stark contrast to the treatment received by former actress and now animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot who has been convicted repeatedly for criticizing Muslim halal slaughter practices.

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, has stated his view that the defamation of Islam is in fact a defamation of the U.K. itself.  He has pledged that upon his ascension to the throne, that he will be a defender of the faith(s), rather than the traditional defender of the Christian faith.

Meanwhile those politicians brave enough to stand up and bring attention to incitement in both European and American mosques and the threat that the spread of Islam represents to their societies have been prosecuted and otherwise ostracized for hate speech.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was brought to trial for his repeated warnings about Islam and even prosecuted for his film Fitna – a wordless presentation of the scriptural writings in the Koran.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born Muslim and at the time a Dutch parliamentarian, was forced to flee the Netherlands because the Dutch government could not guarantee her safety.  Many politicians considered her an outright racist for her condemnations of Islamic intolerance.

Sweden’s Democrat Party politician Michael Hess was sentenced on May 8th last year to a fine for hate speech after having connected the religion of Islam with rape.

Rather than give the press a green light to provide an intense investigation of Islam and the way it has and is being used to advance an anti-Western agenda,  Western politicians have fallen over themselves in recent years  to not only assert that Islam is a religion of peace but that they can say so because they happen to be experts on the matter .

So therefore, John Kerry, lately so determined to ensure that the Western media can freely criticize or attack Islamic intolerance (as Charlie Hebdo has done) went so far last month as to say ” ISIL does not represent Islam and Islam does not condone or honor such depravity. In fact, these actions are a reminder that ISIL is an enemy of Islam.”   How  good it is to see our Secretary of State so thoroughly versed in the hadith that he can distinguish between good and bad Islam.

Meanwhile we should all acknowledge that the events in Paris on January 7th were perpetrated, not by Arab terrorists nor foreign nationals – but by Frenchmen – three men who were born and raised on French soil.  One must assume that they had all been exposed to the great benefits of a free society – the pinnacle of which is freedom of speech.  That they despised that right and wished to exterminate it, should be deeply disturbing to any Western politician.

Is it possible now that our leaders understand, if they did not before, that the heart of Western Europe is riddled with a threat they have not even begun to meet let alone identify?   European leaders and the West in general will never accomplish this unless writers and commentators are given the license to openly, without fear of prosecution or any other form of retribution, investigate the reality of Islam today.

Sadly, I harbor few hopes that our present crop of pusillanimous leaders are up to that challenge.

 

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

.

‘The Terror’ Returns to the Streets of Paris

by Avi Davis

“Terror” has  worn many faces in Paris over  the past 225 years.

First there was la Terreur, in the early 1790s when the French Revolution spiraled into a orgy of bloodletting.  Then came the extra judicial executions of the brief Paris Commune of 1871;  The 1890s witnessed the rise of the anarchists who planted bombs in the French Chamber of Deputies and in French cafes;  The Second World War saw the French Underground’s relentless sabotage of German occupied Paris before its liberation in August, 1944 and in the 1970s, a host of  European and Arab terrorist groups including  the Red Army, Baader Meinhof Gang , the PLO and the PFLP slipped through the city, threatening kidnappings, hi-jackings and bombings.

Barricades during the  reign of the Paris Commune 1871

In every instance citizens of  Paris always seemed to believe that the latest outbreak was only a temporary virus that would soon enough pass through their system and be expunged.

The blood had not yet dried in the editorial meeting room of Charlie Hebdo Magazine in Paris on Wednesday, before commentators were making the very same assumptions, labeling the Parisian atrocity as an isolated attack unconnected to either the rise of militant Islam or the civil disturbances which have streaked European society with blood in the past ten years.

In some ways  they are right, but in a more nuanced way.   The attack was singular because it is no longer the kind of terror to which we have become accustomed.  It is actually something very different.

As of this writing the full Muslim affiliations of the three killers is unknown.  But what investigators  may well uncover is that these men, much like Man Haron Monis in Sydney last month,  Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale – the beheaders of British soldier Lee Rigby in May, 2013  and  Mohammed Merah, the murderer of four Jews in Toulouse in 2012 are freelancers, not officially connected to any one Islamic militia or terrorist group, but nevertheless acting in their general name.

Which is to say that al Qaeda and Islamic State in the short time of their existence, have created an international brand which they have now successfully marketed and franchised to young jihadists.  In this new world of Islamic jihadism, the description ‘terror’ is almost passé.  It belongs to another age when terrorism operated largely as political theater – spectacular missions carried out to bring attention to a cause –  with the death of individual citizens only incidental to the publicity value of an attack.

The New Jihadists however are not interested in publicity.  They are only concerned with enforcement. Specific individuals are targeted for assassination for crimes of having violated a religious precept or  defamed the religion’s central inspirational leader.  This may end up being a crime as simple as wearing a revealing skirt on a subway or reading a secular newspaper which has at one time or another produced editorials critical of Islam. In such instances,  judgment and execution is swift and merciless.  It resembles the summary and spontaneous justice of the Brown Shirts rather than the planned  revenge killings of Black September or the Red Brigades. In this way, the New Jihadism becomes a political instrument, a means of imposing compliance through the spread of absolute fear.  The New Jihadists do not need to win an election to accede to power. In this new world, what we consider as traditional political power is superfluous.  What counts is who rules the streets – and those who rule the streets are the ones prepared to enforce their own view of the world in as a draconian manner as possible.

What it means for the media is that those columnists, commentators, cartoonists and satirists who would think of addressing the rise of militant Islam in their writings and editorials must think twice and thrice about it. And they must not only think about their own lives – but also the lives of their families, of their editors and of even their readers.  The effect is to send a shiver of dread down the spine of a democratic society and to shutter free speech behind a wall of fear.

In the wake of the Charlie Hedbo massacre Western leaders remain defiant, but that defiance looks and sounds hollow.  Throughout the West, we have seen how Britain’s libel laws, which have acted as an effective means to squelch free speech, have been exported to the continent and transformed into nonsensical sensitivity laws, which essentially forbid any verbal or written connection between Islam and terrorism.

This only serves to freeze resistance to the Islamic stranglehold enveloping Europe and to create a climate of passivity in the face of the most brutal atrocities.

We have watched too long as European leaders increasingly succumbed to the giddy romance of multiculturalism, certain that their Muslim populations would eventually assimilate into mainstream European civilization.  That they have not and have turned hostile to their host countries, is as much an indictment of failed policies as it is of the weak kneed and facile individuals who lead the continent today.

But beware. If the history of Paris is any guide, the citizens of that city won’t tolerate weak leadership for long.   Parisians have consistently risen in open rebellion when they felt betrayed by their rulers. Today they may not choose to build barricades on the streets of Paris, but aggressive anti-Muslim agitation, where the city’s inhabitants take matters into their own hands so as to defend their way of life, is almost certain to erupt if the country’s leaders do nothing.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

This article first appeared in The American Thinker on January 9, 2015