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Archive for August, 2014

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August 21, 2014

ISIS, Hamas, Iran, and the West

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The beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley has raised concerns in the West about Islamist threats. But Israel has been facing this specter for decades and – given Israel’s proximity to the Islamist threat – the Jewish state is the West’s canary in the coalmine. But Gaza seems to be the Western blind spot, even though the Hamas-ISIS parallels are glaringly obvious.

Since beheadings are the current media focus, and ISIS has beheaded infants, it’s worth noting that Hamas praised the 2011 Itamar murders, which involved the decapitation of a baby. Islamist beheadings should surprise no one, given that they’ve been happening for much of (and despite) modernity – perhaps because “Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited…to legitimize beheadings,” according to this study.

While there have been no reported Hamas beheadings of journalists, the similarities between Hamas and ISIS are more important than their differences.

Both would like to establish a Caliphate. Hamas Interior Minister declared as much in this 2013 speech.

Both gain and keep power through savagery and fear. Hamas rose to power in Gaza thanks to its violent, 2007 coup, and recently planned a second putsch (in the West Bank). Hamas famously threw its political opponents off rooftops.

Like ISIS, Hamas uses clinics, schools, mosques, and charities to gain legitimacy, and inculcates children with the values of jihadi terror. A Vice documentary exposed how ISIS indoctrinates children for war, but Hamas has been doing so for years, educating children to worship death and using child soldiers.

Hamas’ use of human shields has been widely documented (and proven very effective in turning public opinion against Israel by exponentially increasing Gazan civilian casualties). ISIS used 500 Yazidi captives and 39 abducted Indians as human shields.

ISIS is known for its expulsion of Christians from Mosul and its genocidal murder of Yazidis and Christians who refuse to convert to Islam or pay the jizyah, and Hamas would undoubtedly behave the same way if Israeli Jews didn’t have the protection of a superior military, and if Hamas didn’t depend on international donations to Gaza that might dry up after a wholesale slaughter of the tiny Christian community there. But even with these checks on Hamas’ brutality, Hamas regularly practices and preaches religious hatred. For years, Hamas has attacked Christians, including defiling Christian graves, abducting and murdering Christians, and more recently using a Gazan church to launch rockets at Israel. Hamas preaches hateful incitement against Jews, has desecrated Jewish holy sites, and has murdered hundreds of Jews in terrorist attacks.

ISIS uses Sharia to justify its barbaric treatment of women. Also enamored with Sharia, Hamas treats women as second-class citizens and endorses honor killings.

Hamas advocates the death penalty for homosexuals, and (like ISIS) lets Islamic morality police govern economic activity. There have been no broadcast beheadings of homosexuals by ISIS yet, but such horrors can’t be far off, given that ISIS fighters include gay-hating Westerners.

Hamas condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and ISIS aspires to surpass him.

Yet, astonishingly, President Obama and liberals have continually called for restraint when Israel’s military has confronted Hamas (after Hamas’ countless attacks against Israeli civilians) and Obama has pressed Israel to negotiate with Hamas (as if the U.S. would ever negotiate with ISIS). Worse still, the Obama administration tried to advance Hamas’ negotiating position and recently pressured Israel into letting Hamas keep its military capabilities. Given the opportunity to obliterate ISIS’ terrorist infrastructure, would the U.S. ever spare any part of it?

Even more troubling – in terms of the perils involved – is Obama’s feckless strategy towards the Iranian regime, which is the world’s chief sponsor of Islamist terrorism (including by Hamas and Hezbollah). Like so many Islamist terrorist organizations, Iran executes homosexuals; mistreats women; persecutes religious minorities; employs barbaric, Sharia-law punishments (like amputation and stoning); and brutalizes political dissenters (among myriad other human rights violations). But unlike the terrorist organizations, Iran could theoretically acquire a nuclear capability in under two months. Imagine an Islamist state, which openly supports Islamist terrorists, possessing nukes. Alarmingly, Obama’s approach and over-eagerness to negotiate any deal he can get, have signaled weakness in a region that respects only strength and have improved Iran’s nuclear position.

Islamist groups like Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram all seek the destruction of Western values and civilization. The West ignores this fact at its peril, and should therefore support Israel’s war against Hamas, as the U.S. has rightly (albeit tardily and minimally) supported the Kurds in their fight against ISIS.

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August 19, 2014

Hamas’ Love Letter to ISIS (with Ten Tips)

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Dear Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),

Our leadership felt bad about all of the tough press you’ve been getting lately and – given our talent for ruining Gaza while enjoying endless love from the media – we thought we’d share some pointers with you.

We’ve been at this Islamist terrorism thing for decades now, so we can offer some helpful tips for your war to establish a Caliphate –a goal we LOVE. After all, if you overrun Jordan, we could even become allied forces in the West Bank, from which we can jointly conquer Israel.

So, during one of our tunnel-side chats, our most seasoned jihadists compiled this list of best practices, in the hope that these suggestions can improve your performance:

1)      If the U.S. ever insists that you participate in elections when there are no democratic traditions or institutions in place, say YES (we won over half of the legislature in Gaza’s 2006 election).

2)      But if power-sharing arrangements eventually cramp your style, try a violent coup. We did that with our 2007 takeover of Gaza, and were recently planning a second putsch (in the West Bank) and mega-terror attacks until those pesky Israelis foiled our plot. But gaining and keeping power through violence and fear is KEY. In 2007, we even threw our political opponents off rooftops for good measure. When in doubt, use brutality to quell any inconvenient dissent. Actually, you’re doing just fine on this point – keep it up!

3)      If you’re lucky enough to have peace-loving idealists hoping for your success and giving you income-generating resources, destroy their gifts to solidify your poverty credentials. Looters ruined more than 3,000 greenhouses that Israel left us in 2005 and this strengthened our image as economic victims that much sooner. And we attacked Israel so many times (including our tunnel-assisted abduction of Gilad Shalit and sometimes 30 rocket attacks per day on Sderot) that Israel had to seal Gaza’s borders to limit our weapons imports from Iran. But Israel’s silly desire to limit how we can kill Israelis did wonders for our victimhood because the media forgot all about the cause of the blockade and focused only on the hardship it causes us. It gets better: when Israel opens the blockade to send us humanitarian aid, we even bomb the crossing and NOBODY cares (or wonders if maybe we’re responsible for the blockade or Gazan misery generally). Pretty cool, right?

4)      We use clinics, schools, mosques and charities to gain legitimacy among our people and inculcate them with the values of jihadi terror. Oh wait, you do that too. Good job!

5)      But you should definitely use more human shields to protect yourselves from U.S. airstrikes. We LOVE human shields – they’re cheap and effective. Just remember to tell mourners how you fast-tracked the victims to heaven.

6)      You WANT dead babies. This is HUGE. The ever-shortening attention span fueled by social media is awesome because it relieves everyone of intellectual hassles like historical context, nuanced moral judgment, deeper analysis of cause and effect, etc. Just show that the people you’re trying to kill have caused baby deaths while defending themselves, and you win. It’s that simple.

7)      Another technique that we HIGHLY recommend is offending every rule of decency. That means:

a)      requesting cease-fires and then violating them,

b)      using hospitals and ambulances for military purposes,

c)      bombing your own people and then blaming your enemy (we killed nine Gazans and scared the media into faulting Israel; when an Italian journalist revealed the truth after he was safe from our threats, nobody cared),

d)      using child labor to build your terror tunnels (we killed about 160 in the process and nobody cared),

e)      teaching children to worship death and using child soldiers (props on your great work with kids, ISIS!),

f)       diverting humanitarian resources for terrorist use (we could have built at least seven skyscrapers with the concrete expropriated for our terror tunnels) while protesting your poverty even as your leadership lives well,

g)      intimidating and deceiving the press into promoting your narrative (if they don’t do so on their own, like when the BBC disseminated inaccurate photos of Gaza)

h)      using cease-fires to rearm (rather than rebuild) while executing your domestic critics and your tunnel-diggers.

8)      We also have some positive feedback for you, ISIS. You have impressively excelled at championing our core values! We’re all for: hateful incitement against religious minorities, treating women as second-class citizens and endorsing honor killings, giving homosexuals the death penalty, letting Islamic morality police govern economic activity, teaching war rather than human rights, and attacking Christians (or just using their church to launch rockets). You’re awesome at this stuff!

9)      We condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden as much as you aspire to surpass him. But PLEASE stop trying to involve the West (as you did with your threats against NorwaySpain, and especially the US – Obama just pressured Israel into letting us keep our military capabilities, so be nice!). The key here is to complete your domination of the Middle East by first eradicating its only democracy (Israel) and its moderate Arab states. You want to lull Europe and the U.S. into spineless passivity by reinforcing their naïve assumption that we’ll be appeased enough to stop at the Middle East. We need Western “powers” to cower away from our region long enough for Iran to get nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that you, our fellow Sunnis, have a thing against Shiites, but the Iranian regime hates Western infidels as much as we do, so we can all work together in the service of Jihad. Indeed, Iran is our main sponsor (we get our best missiles from them!). And once Iran has nukes, THEN we can go after the EU and U.S. But this game takes patience, guys – not that much because Iran (thanks to Obama’s “strategy”) could have nukes in two months. But until that happens (or you somehow help us to destroy Jordan and Israel beforehand), you really need to chill out on the rhetoric against the West.

10)  If you want to skyrocket your international popularity, you should attack Israel ASAP. You may hear some perfunctory condemnations but you’ll be secretly admired. Better still: compel Israel to defend itself militarily – that’s when you can literally surf a tidal wave of global support. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of having Israel as your opponent — anyone else really won’t do. Why do you think we rarely attack Egypt (which also blockades Gaza)? Because they’d flatten Gaza and nobody would care. Remember Ansar Dine? Our fellow Islamists in Mali were thousands of miles from France, but nobody cared when the French started bombing them in 2013 without any threat against France’s security. To guarantee world support for your Islamist ways, your enemy must be Israel. But DON’T use donkeys (as we do) to blow up Israelis because this will upset the animal-rights group PETA.

Destroying Western civilization is far easier than building it, but still requires a disciplined strategy, so we hope these pointers come in handy. Feel free to get in touch with any questions.

With love and support,

Hamas