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January 2017

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The Case for a Kurdish State in the Middle East by Diliman Abdulkader

By on January 25th, 2017

Many of the Kurds affected by these ruling powers did not want to separate, but simply to be able to live a peaceful and stable life; the push for a state was the creation of the states themselves, through their oppression of the Kurds.

Kurdistan offers an opportunity for all its citizens to look towards an inclusive, pluralistic society where religious freedom is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

Kurds respect both the Sunnis and the Shiites within their territories and have strong ties with the only Jewish state in the Middle East. A Kurdish state has the potential to bring amity to an otherwise unstable region.

Many international bodies including the United Nations, the European Union, and the Arab League continue to push for a Palestinian state, while ignoring calls for a Kurdish one. For far too long, the Arab, Turkish and Iranian peoples and leaderships have used the Israeli-Palestinian issue as justification for their own problems.

Without acknowledging the “Kurdish question,” which spans four major states — Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey — the Middle East will have trouble achieving stability.

The goal of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been used by Arabs, Turks and Iranians in the Middle East as a cover to deflect criticism away from their own indifferent leadership. The 22 existing Arab States, along with Turkey and Iran, can easily establish a homeland for the Palestinians, but they are not interested in doing so. The goal of these states is not to create another Arab state, but to eradicate an only Jewish state.

Giving the Palestinians a state will not solve the Syrian civil war, the Sunni-Shiite divisions in Iraq will remain, the destructive Islamist path of Turkey’s President Erdogan will continue, the world will see continued Iranian aggression against Israel, Sunnis, and Kurds, and the hold hat both Iran and Saudi Arabia have on Islam will only strengthen.

The Kurds are large in number (an estimated 40-50 million) and have a unique language, culture, and identity that differs markedly from their neighbors. The main problems in the region center around Islam versus Islam (Arab-Arab, Arab-Iran, Arab-Turk, Iran-Turk) or Islam versus minorities, including Christians, Yezidis, Chaldeans, Alevis, Jews, etc.

Kurds embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom and human rights.

The Kurdish people have continually suffered in the Middle East.

The Turks, under the Ottomans killed tens of thousands of Kurds in massacres in Dersim and Zilan. By the 1990s, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed. According to Human Rights Watch, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced in Turkey.

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Trump’s Inaugural Prayer Service Included Koranic Condemnation of Jews and Christians Time to Ban Muslim Recitation of Koran 1:7 At All Government “Interfaith” Events Andrew Bostom

By on January 25th, 2017

Honoring a tradition that dates back to America’s first President, George Washington, in New York (described here, The Daily Advertiser, New York, Thursday, April 23, 1789, p. 2.), Saturday, 1/21/17, within 24-hours of his swearing-in, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Saturday prayer service was a modern “interfaith event” which included (as described here, “The National Prayer Service for The Fifty-Eighth Presidential Inaugural Saturday, the Twenty-First of January Two Thousand Seventeen The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Washington National Cathedral,” p.11), and seen in this video clip, a recitation by Sajid Tarar, Advisor, Medina Masjid (mosque), Baltimore, Maryland, of the Koran’s very brief first sura, or chapter, the so-called “Fatiha”, or “Opening,” consisting of 7 short verses (verses 1-6; verse 7). But as I noted in a tweet shortly after viewing Saturday’s event, riveting upon the recitation of verse 7, “At Natl Cathedral Today ,1/21/17, Koran 1:7, A Curse on Jews, & Rebuke of Christians Recited in Front of Pres Trump.”

This high profile ecumenical event illustrates starkly the conundrum of mainstream Islamic practice within our precious free, multi-confessional, but overwhelmingly non-Muslim, U.S. society. Pious Muslims repeat the Fatiha, including verse 7, up to 17 times per day during their 5 requisite prayer sessions, and the accompanying “subunits” of prayer (see pp.49-50). While verses 1-6 are confined to Muslims re-affirming their personal devotion to the Islamic creed, and its deity, Allah, verse 7 launches into open condemnation of other faiths, Judaism, and Christianity, specifically.

An authoritative modern Koranic translation by Drs. Muhammad al-Hilali and Muhammad Khan (p.12) of the Fatiha’s concluding verse 7 includes parenthetical references to the Jews (after the word “anger,” or in the translation distributed at the inaugural prayer service, p.11, “wrath”), and the Christians (after the word “astray’): “The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians).”

The Hilali-Khan translation of Koran 1:7 provides a detailed justification of its references to the Jews as those who have engendered Allah’s anger, and the Christians as the ones who have gone astray. As I will demonstrate, the specific references to Jews and Christians in the Hilali-Khan translation of the Fatiha’s final verse comports both with the canonical hadith (the sacred “traditions” of Muhammad and the early Muslim community) interpretation of these verses, and classical and modern Koranic commentary (“tafsir”) interpretations by the leading luminaries of this discipline in Islam—a consensus of thought stretching literally from the 7th, through the late 20th century. Moreover, I will further show that leading contemporary, mainstream scholars of Islam—both non-Muslim and Muslim linguistic and textual analysts—presently share this understanding of how Koran 1:7 is to be interpreted, with the authoritative Muslim commentators.

For over thirteen centuries, through our contemporary era, the consistent, collective understanding of Koran 1:7—the Fatiha’s last verse—is that Jews and Christians are being insulted, even cursed (especially in the case of the Jews), eternally, for their “spiritually aberrant” ways. Accordingly, utterance of this verse must be expunged from all federal, state, and local government events, and in an even more egregious breach of ecumenical civility, our Navy Military Funerals sea burial ceremony, and all comparable funeral ceremonies, conducted within the other branches of the US military.

Authoritative Muslim Commentators on Koran 1:7, Seventh Through Late Twentieth Centuries

Professor Andrew Rippin, an esteemed contemporary Koranic studies scholar, translated two of the earliest commentaries on Koran 1:7, by Ibn Abbas (d. 687), and Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767). Both commentators of course assert that Islam represents “the straight path” in Koran 1:6. Ibn Abbas continues, referring to Koran 1:7,

“Not those against whom You have sent your wrath”: other than the religion of the Jews against whom You have been wrathful and have abandoned…”Nor those who are astray”: nor the religion of the Christians, who err away from Islam.

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ISIS Unveils Weaponized Drone Program in New Video By Bridget Johnson

By on January 25th, 2017

ISIS supporters on social media were boasting that the terror group now has an air force after the Islamic State released today their first video showing weaponized drones being used against Iraqi forces.

ISIS has previously used drone photography in videos to capture aerial shots of battles, and they have also been using drone IEDs that have progressively gotten more advanced.

The 38-minute video, posted on YouTube and other content-sharing sites, had been teased for a day with a trailer released by ISIS. It largely features suicide bombers in vehicles, including one young teenager who can barely see over the wheel of the armored car. ISIS uses drone photography to follow the suicide bombers and film the attacks from the air.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The video uses photography from another drone to show a weaponized drone flying toward its target, and cameras on the weaponized drone itself show the impact from dropping an IED on a group of people in a street. When vehicles start to respond to the scene, a suicide bomber in a car drives in and detonates in a follow-up attack.

(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

ISIS continues to show a variety of other explosive drops from a drone’s vantage point, mostly targeting individual parked vehicles or small groups of people.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The blasts produced by the explosives are akin to grenades, appearing to inflict some injuries when aimed directly at people but seeming to have little effect when dropped on tanks.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

A reporter and a cameraman for U.S.-funded Al-Hurra were injured last week in an ISIS drone attack on eastern Mosul.

Iraq’s defense ministry announced that their forces are in control of eastern Mosul — a city divided by the Tigris River — and have begun planning operations to retake smaller but more densely populated western Mosul.

In mid-October, just after the Mosul operation began, Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky, commander of Combined Joint Forces’ Land Component Command for Operation Inherent Resolve and commander of the 101st Airborne, told reporters that ISIS drones were in use.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Samantha Power Reinvents Obama’s Record on Russia By Claudia Rosett

By on January 25th, 2017

By all means, let’s have a debate about the dangers of American presidents and their administrations purveying “alternative facts.” But could the members of the media most ostentatiously seething over President Trump — and now busy presenting their own alternative facts — please spare us the pretense that the White House is suddenly in danger of losing its credibility. What’s left to lose? We’ve just had eight years of the Obama administration beaming out alternative facts “narratives” to the mascot-media echo chamber, on the theory that saying something makes it so (“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; Iran’s “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program; the Benghazi “video”; etc.).

It is Trump’s job to reverse this rot, not to adapt Obama’s fiction techniques to suit himself. But if anyone’s curious about the kind of fakery that Trump and his team should strive to avoid — in the interest of integrity and good policy — Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has just given us a showcase example. In her farewell speech as UN ambassador, delivered Jan. 17 to the Atlantic Council, Power conjured an entire alternate universe, less by way of presenting alternative facts than by omitting a number of vital facts altogether. The result was to erase from the picture some of the most disastrous failures of the Obama administration, while insinuating that Trump is already complicit in the resulting mess.

Let me stipulate that Power did issue a warning that is valid, important, and urgent. Her topic, as she explained at the start of her speech, was “a major threat facing our great nation: Russia.”

Yep, no question about that. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a growing threat, as some of us have been arguing for more than a decade.

But it was on Obama’s watch that Russia became a mushrooming threat to a degree that even Obama and his team could not in the end ignore — welcoming Edward Snowden, snatching Crimea from Ukraine, moving back into the Middle East, backing the Assad regime and bombing in Syria, hacking hither and yon, and frustrating Power at the UN with its veto on the Security Council.

It was Obama himself, with his policy of “engagement,” who helped lay the groundwork for this rising threat — deferring to dictators, betraying allies, downsizing the U.S. military, and sneering at those who warned there would be hell to pay. Putin drew the logical conclusions, read this U.S. retreat as an invitation, and made his moves. One might have supposed that after years of Obama apologizing for America, Samantha Power in her swan-song lecture could have summoned the strength of character to apologize for Obama, and for her own role, as one of his top envoys. (Don’t hold your breath).

For Putin, Obama offered the opportunity of a lifetime — to roll right over that old “rules-based order,” which always depended on American leadership, and which Power now warns us is threatened by Russia. Obama began with the 2009 “reset,” including the gift to Putin of yanking missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. Obama went on to promise Putin “more flexibility” after his 2012 reelection. In the 2012 presidential campaign debates, Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s warnings about Russia, scoffing that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Readies Plan to Build Border Wall Proposals would ban people from countries deemed a terror risk, suspend refugee programBy Laura Meckler and Damian Paletta

By on January 25th, 2017

President Donald Trump is set to announce plans to expedite construction of a wall along the Mexican border, and is preparing orders that ban people from countries deemed a terror risk from entering the U.S. as well as suspend the U.S. refugee program.

Mr. Trump plans to travel Wednesday to the Department of Homeland Security, where he said he would be announcing his border-security plans. He will also include an order aimed at punishing so-called sanctuary cities where law-enforcement officials limit cooperation with federal immigration agencies and add 5,000 border agents, according to a person familiar with the planning.

“Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter Tuesday evening. “Among many other things, we will build the wall!”

Other executive actions involving the refugee program and immigration from nations deemed terror risks are expected Thursday, people familiar with the planning said.

Mr. Trump has given few details about his promise for a border wall, a project that is estimated to cost as much as $10 billion and possibly much more. Congressional Republicans have been considering appropriating funds in spending legislation that must pass by April to keep the government funded.

In hopes of beginning work sooner, Mr. Trump is expected to divert tens of millions of dollars in unspent allocations, said a second person familiar with the planning. Congressional leaders pointed Mr. Trump and his team to the money that may be available to be spent on border security, the person said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Trump’s State Dept. Holds Back Obama’s $221 million to the PA

By on January 25th, 2017

Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, is very upset with President Obama’s last-Friday-in-office decision to send the Palestinian Authority $221 million, because Granger had placed a hold on it, because the PA had broken its commitment to the US and sought membership in international organizations, according to an early Wednesday PA report. Those Congressional holds are not legally binding, but they are part of the ongoing business between the Administration and the branch of the legislator which holds the purse strings. Like disgruntled office workers on their last day at work, Obama and Kerry broke that trust because they no longer had any business with this body.

So now President Trump’s State Department says it plans to review the rule-breaking decision to send $221 million to a Palestinian Authority that also breaks the rules, AP reports. On Tuesday, the department said it would make adjustments to in this unruly payment, to make sure it complies with its new priorities.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Business Insider that “Congress had been looking at various behaviors from Palestine — unilateral attempts at statehood, corruption, incitement of violence, and paying salaries to people in jail for terrorism — and that’s why the hold has been there.”

An earlier AP story reported that the Obama administration had been pressing Congress to release the money for a while, saying it was needed for humanitarian aid, political and security reforms, and “rule of law.”

Granger said in a statement Tuesday: “I worked to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars would fund the Palestinian Authority unless very strict conditions were met. While none of these funds will go to the Palestinian Authority because of those conditions, they will go to programs in the Palestinian territories that were still under review by Congress. The Obama Administration’s decision to release these funds was inappropriate.”

The Palestinian Authority pays out an estimated $140 million a year to the families of suicide bombers and salaries to imprisoned terrorists, which is around 10% of their annual budget.

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The Comey Reprieve Trump keeps the FBI director on the job. Good luck. (Bad Move)

By on January 25th, 2017

Regrets, they’ll have a few. That’s our prediction for the Trump Administration on news that the White House has asked James Comey to stay on as FBI director.

“Extraordinarily competent” is how Chief of Staff Reince Priebus described Mr. Comey in a TV interview earlier this month. The director even got something approaching a hug from President Trump at a weekend event to honor law enforcement officials and first responders.

If experience is a guide, Mr. Comey is the sort of man to be embraced with extreme political caution. Democrats cheered last summer when he invented a legal distinction between extreme carelessness and gross negligence to give Hillary Clinton a legal pass for mishandling classified information. Now they blame him for throwing the election to Mr. Trump for informing Congress, 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the investigation.

Republicans have also been burned by Mr. Comey, not just over his Clinton gymnastics but also his efforts to undermine the Bush Administration’s antiterror efforts during a prior stint as Deputy Attorney General. Now he will be responsible for current investigations into suspected links between the Russian government and some of Mr. Trump’s close associates.

We believe as much as anyone that FBI directors should be willing to go after criminality irrespective of politics. The trouble with Mr. Comey is that he is nothing if not political, especially when it comes to opportunities to burnish his personal reputation by going after the objects of liberal wrath.

Ask Frank Quattrone, the investment banker wrongly targeted by Mr. Comey in the post-Enron prosecution frenzy; or Scooter Libby, victim of the Javert-like exertions of Mr. Comey’s close friend Patrick Fitzgerald during the Plamegate hysteria.

It’s possible the Administration decided to keep Mr. Comey to spite Democrats who want him fired, or perhaps to avoid another nomination battle, though former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would probably sail to confirmation. Maybe the Administration is also betting Mr. Comey will be a more pliable director if he feels a debt to the President for not firing him.

If so, that’s a bad bet. Mr. Comey has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to abuse his authorities in order to court Beltway favor. Whether or not that someday comes to haunt the Trump Administration, it makes him unfit to lead the FBI.

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No More Keystone Capers Trump liberates two pipelines but could kill them with new demands.

By on January 25th, 2017

President Trump is making short work of campaign promises, and on Tuesday he signed executive orders reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. The resurrection is good news for the economy, but one question is whether he’ll sink the projects with his protectionist impulses.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order inviting TransCanada to apply again for a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama Administration rejected to indulge the anti-carbon obsessions of Democratic campaign donors. Another Trump directive aims to expedite the Dakota Access pipeline, which is 90% finished but was halted by President Obama amid protests. A federal judge ruled that the government had met its legal obligations, but the Obama Administration suspended work anyway.

Such carve outs for progressive constituencies are one reason voters rejected Democrats in November, and the pipelines promise broader prosperity. Keystone is predicted to spin off 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs, many of them to be filled by union workers, and add $3 billion to GDP. The pipeline could move 830,000 barrels a day along the route from Alberta to Nebraska; up to 100,000 would come from North Dakota, where a glut of crude has to travel by rail to reach refineries built to process it. The efficiencies will ripple across the oil and gas industry.

The Keystone order directs the State Department to make a recommendation within 60 days for a prompt approval, though environmental groups will file lawsuits in every eligible jurisdiction. The objections are specious: President Obama’s State Department concluded on several occasions that Keystone would have no meaningful effect on climate or emissions. Moving oil by pipeline emits less carbon and is safer than trains.

As for Dakota Access, you may have noticed the months-long media rally around Standing Rock Sioux protests. The tribe claims the pipeline will harm its land and water, but this is fake news: Dakota Access does not run beneath the reservation. The route, which was altered 140 times in North Dakota to protect cultural resources, cuts along private land where other pipelines run. The tribe lost in federal court but has vowed to fight President Trump’s order.

One danger here is President Trump’s campaign promise to “renegotiate some of the terms” that included bromides about how “we’ll build our own pipes, like we used to in the old days.” He floated royalty payments during the campaign, and a separate order on Tuesday directed the Commerce Department to develop a plan to use U.S. steel and iron in all new pipelines. TransCanada has said in past months that it’s “fully committed” to Keystone XL, but the company may not be eager for another politician to direct its investment decisions.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Mr. Trump is looking to ensure taxpayers the best possible deal. Reminder: Taxpayers pay nothing. The State Department estimated that when Keystone is finished and pumping oil, local governments will collect more than $55 million a year in property taxes. About 70% of the resulting refined products from Keystone would stay in the U.S., which will push down gas prices as another benefit, according to a study from IHS. That already sounds like a good deal.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Fake News: Trump Caved to Arab Pressure on Jerusalem Embassy Move Claims that Trump administration caved to Arab pressure over the embassy move is fake news. By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

By on January 25th, 2017

Several Israeli-based media outlets are repeating a story from an Arab media outlet that the U.S. Embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is “off the table” due to Arab pressure.

But let’s look at the evidence thus far produced and line it up against reality.

The reports claiming the Trump administration has backed down from its stated commitment to move the embassy assert the reason that is happening is because of pressure placed on the new administration by the Palestinian Arab leadership.

A story in the Times of Israel quoted a report in the Arabic media outlet Asharq Al-Awsat. That report mentioned that assurances were given to Palestinian Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas and the PA’s perennial negotiator Saeb Erekat in a meeting held on Tuesday with “David Blum,” of the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

But there is no David Blum in the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

The US Consul General in Jerusalem (serving “Jerusalem, Gaza and the ‘West Bank,’ that is, not Jewish Israelis) is Donald Blome. In other words, there must have been a mistranslation going from Arabic to either Hebrew or English.

A quick search of the actual American diplomat in Jerusalem, Donald Blome, reveals that he was appointed in July, 2015 by President Barack Obama, not by President Donald Trump. Given that Blome’s alleged message of reassurance to the Palestinian Arabs that the new administration was bowing to their pressure, it beggars the imagination that Blome was speaking on behalf of Trump.

There is still more evidence that this explosive “evidence” is, at best, unofficial remarks from a sympathetic holdover from the last – exceedingly hostile – administration. In an updated version of the report on the matter from the very source of the rumor, there have been significant substantive changes in the report.

The first difference is that the name of “David Blum” no longer appears in the report. There is no longer any name associated with any American government office as the source of the claim. This is what the report now says:

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Left Lost Its Logic On Israel by Noah Beck

By on January 25th, 2017

Support for Israel among Democrats has plummeted in recent years, a new Pew poll shows, with about as many – 31 percent – saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, which garnered 33 percent support.

By contrast, 74 percent of Republicans surveyed sympathize more with the Jewish state. That is the widest partisan gap since 1978.

A similar poll last year found a deep divide within the party, with conservative and moderate Democrats favoring Israel over the Palestinians by 53-19 percent.

This trend has accelerated during President Barack Obama’s tenure. During Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, 61 percent of Democrats sympathized with Hamas and hundreds of left-wing historians openly sided with the terrorist group.

Bernie Sanders, whose liberal support nearly won him the 2016 Democratic primary, sought to empower anti-Israel figures like Cornel West – a supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement – and James Zogby of the Arab American Institute.

President Obama’s refusal to veto an anti-Israel U.N. resolution last month was ranked as the most anti-Semitic incident of 2016 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. When Congress condemned that resolution, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a leading contender to run the Democratic National Committee, voted against it.

This hostility toward Israel is not limited to the American Left.

In the UK, it often coincides with anti-Semitism. As Jonathan Tobin observed, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been “openly sympathetic with Hamas and Hezbollah,” has “campaigned for the release of terrorists convicted of attacking Jewish targets,” and “praised vicious anti-Semites.” The co-chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club resigned after the organization voted to endorse Israel Apartheid Week. The club has a growing record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents. Last May, Britain’s Labour Party secretly suspended 50 of its members for anti-Semitic and racist comments.

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