LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
July 03/15

http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.july03.15.htm

Bible Quotation For Today/Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees Which is their teaching
Matthew 16/05-12: "When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’They said to one another, ‘It is because we have brought no bread.’And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, ‘You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread?Do you still not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How could you fail to perceive that I was not speaking about bread? Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!’Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

Bible Quotation For Today/Through Jesus forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
Acts of the Apostles 13/26-39:"My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled those words by condemning him. Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you."As to his raising him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, "I will give you the holy promises made to David."Therefore he has also said in another psalm, "You will not let your Holy One experience corruption."For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, died, was laid beside his ancestors, and experienced corruption; but he whom God raised up experienced no corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.?

LCCC Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 02-03/15
Bashar is already out of power in Syria/Michael Young/The Daily Star/July 02/15
Will the ISIS threat force a new strategy for Syria?/Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya/July 02/15
Egypt's Evolving Salafi Bloc: Puritanism and Pragmatism in an Unstable Region/Jacob Olidort/Washinton Institute/July 02/15
UK Police Knew and Did Nothing to Protect Girls from Muslim Predators/Raymond Ibrahim/FrontPage Magazine/July 02/15
Palestinians: More Missed Opportunities/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/The Islamic State Caliphate Turns One/July 02/15
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi/The Huffington Post/Iran's Intentions: In Defense of Pessimism/Jeffrey Herf/The American Interest/July 02/ 2015
A lesson from Cuba to Iran/Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya/July 02/15
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia: Who is the target?/Mohammed Fahad al-Harthi/Al Arabiya/July 02/15

LCCC Bulletin itles for the Lebanese Related News published on July 02-03/15
Lebanon tells U.S. mediator it won’t yield its waters to Israel
Six foreigners arrested in Bekaa Valley drug bust
Geagea: 'We agree with Kataeb on 99 pct of matters'
Heated Lebanese Cabinet session ends in dispute
Furious Aoun warns of 'explosive' response to Cabinet decision
Gunmen target e.Lebanon police station over construction license
Policeman killed in north Lebanon shooting
Hostage families block roads in south Lebanon, Beirut over stalled talks
Report: Army Thwarts Terrorist Plot in North Bekaa
Mustaqbal Sources: Saadiyat Incident Highlights Significance of Dialogue
Agencies Say Syrian Children as Young as Six Working in Lebanon
Hezbollah launches offensive in Zabadani

LCCC Bulletin Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 02-03/15
Minister Nicholson Condemns Boko Haram’s Latest Terrorist Attacks in Nigeria
At least 97 dead in new 'Boko Haram' attack in NE Nigeria: witnesses
Egypt airstrikes kill 23 militants in Sinai
Egypt vows to wipe out 'dens of terror' after ISIS attacks
ISIS threatens to topple Hamas in Gaza Strip
ISIS destroys statue outside Syria's Palmyra museum

Jehad Watch Latest links for Reports And News
Raymond Ibrahim: UK Police Knew and Did Nothing to Protect Girls from Muslim Predators
FBI has arrested 30 Muslims on U.S. soil this year for Islamic State plots
Obama Administration blocks attempts to fly heavy weapons to Kurds to fight the Islamic State
Denmark: Muslims get two months in prison for whipping woman in the face with iron chains
UK: Muslim convert to Christianity persecuted for 19 years
Robert Spencer in FrontPage: France Beheading: Jihad, or Personal Issues?
Pamela Geller in Breitbart: Muhammad Cartoon in the New York Times? Of Course Not.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Morocco: Muslim convert to Christianity arrested on charges of ‘proselytizing’
Zanzibar: Muslims Target Two Churches
Italian woman converts to Islam, promotes hate and beheading

Lebanon tells U.S. mediator it won’t yield its waters to Israel
Osama Habib/The Daily Star/ July. 02, 2015
BEIRUT: Lebanon told a senior U.S. official that it would not make any concessions on the disputed maritime border zone with Israel believed to contain large quantities of natural gas, but expressed willingness to demarcate the area with the help of the U.N. and all concerned parties, sources and experts said Wednesday. “The message to the Americans was very clear: Lebanon will not give up an inch of its rights in the 870-kilometer maritime zone which is close to Israeli territorial waters. But the government expressed willingness to demarcate the zone with the help of the U.N. and all concerned parties,” a source who attended the meetings between Lebanese officials and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Diplomacy Amos Hochstein told The Daily Star.
Hochstein met Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Energy and Water Minister Arthur Nazarian in a bid to explore Lebanon’s views on the disputed maritime area after Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri accused Israel of planning to build an oil platform close to Lebanon’s official territorial waters.
Hochstein is scheduled to meet Berri Thursday to exchange views on the issue of the maritime zone. Earlier, Berri warned that Israel is capable of siphoning off the part of Lebanon’s potential gas reserves horizontally, hinting that such a move could trigger a war between the two countries. Technically and legally, the United Nations does not have the mandate to demarcate disputed borders between countries.However, Lebanese officials insist that the U.N. has an interest in taking steps to avoid an open conflict between Lebanon and Israel.
“Amos [Hochstein] listened carefully to the position of the Lebanese government and this was one of the few times there was a general agreement among all politicians to demarcate maritime zone with Israel,” the source said. “And this proposal was not raised previously due to the pretext that all of the so-called disputed zone belongs solely to Lebanon.”
The disputed zone comprises 870 square kilometers of waters off Lebanon’s southern coast.
Israel has constructed a platform 40 kilometers away from the zone but there were unconfirmed reports that the Israelis may build another platform 10 kilometers away from the Lebanese blocks. “If we continue arguing among ourselves over trivial issues, then Israel may seize this opportunity to install the platform very close to the Lebanese territorial waters. For this reason, we have to get our act together and demarcate this zone before it’s too late,” another source familiar with the talks told The Daily Star.Sources said that Hochstein did not make any proposal to the Lebanese officials. “But we are wanting the United States to intervene and act as a good Samaritan and help us solve this problem. Demarcating the zone is one of our top priorities now,” the source said.
He added that Washington could exert influence on Israel to accept the principle of demarcation. “It should be clear that Lebanese sovereignty over all the country’s territorial waters is not subject to negations or compromise. The only way out is demarcation and Lebanon will accept all the results of the demarcation,” another source explained. An oil expert who spoke on condition of anonymity said Israel may accept the idea of a demarcation to avoid a confrontation with Hezbollah. “Israel seems to be aware that Hezbollah has long-range and accurate missiles that can hit any oil platform near the Lebanese territorial waters,” the expert said. Hochstein told Al-Jadeed TV that Israel was not building any rig or platform near Lebanese waters. He added that the U.S. firm Nobel Energy, which is building the platforms for Israel, will avoid building a platform near the Lebanese waters to avert a dispute with Beirut. Hochstein reiterated that no international oil company is willing to drill for gas in any disputed area. The U.S. official advised the Lebanese government to invite international companies for a licensing round so they can choose the blocks they want to explore. But Hochstein was confident that none of the oil companies would bid for disputed blocks. He also denied reports that Israel has plans to siphon off gas from Lebanese reserves, describing such scenarios as technically and geologically impossible to achieve.

Six foreigners arrested in Bekaa Valley drug bust
The Daily Star/July 02, 2015/BAALBEK, Lebanon: Three Americans and three Koreans have been arrested for buying illegal drugs from a local resident in the Bekaa Valley in east Lebanon, security sources told The Daily Star Thursday. The sources said police, after receiving a tip-off, arrested the six men after a Tuesday evening raid on the house of local drug dealer known by his family name Ismail, near a Syrian refugee camp site in Telya in eastern Baalbek. “They were buying drugs from him [Ismail],” one source said, adding that the detainees have been taken to Beirut for investigation. An-Nahar newspaper said in a report earlier Thursday that 30 suspects - three Americans, three Koreans and 24 Syrians - had been arrested in east Lebanon after the Lebanese Army thwarted a major terror plot targeting civilian and religious sites in the Bekaa. The security sources said 24 Syrians had been arrested in separate raids on Syrian refugee camps in Telya over the past few days. They are still being held at the police station in the Bekaa Valley town of Brital.
They were still in police custody because they either lacked proper identification cards or because they had entered Lebanon illegally, according to the sources. Separately, Several Syrian men were arrested in the Baalbek town of Al-Ain Wednesday night on suspicions of belonging to a terrorist group, the state-run National News Agency said. The report did not reveal the number of detained suspects.

Geagea: 'We agree with Kataeb on 99 pct of matters'
The Daily Star/July 02, 2015/BEIRUT: The Lebanese Forces and Kataeb Party remain firm allies, the leaders of both Christian groups said Thursday, dismissing rumors of a rift between them. They also insisted that their alliance would not be shaken by LF’s rapprochement with the Free Patriotic Movement. “We agree on 99 percent of matters in terms of political vision and agenda,” LF leader Samir Geagea said in a joint news conference with Kataeb’s newly elected chief Sami Gemayel. “With the Kataeb, we agree on the strategic issues and disagree on some tactical ones,” Geagea said. “While with FPM, we agree on tactical matters and disagree on strategy.” Gemayel, in turn, expressed support to any rapprochement between Lebanese political groups, especially between Christian parties.
He hoped that all “personal ambitions and partisan interests” would be put aside to find an exit to the country’s political crises. Geagea explained that the FPM-suggested poll to determine the most popular presidential candidate is not an official referendum, but rather a poll that does not require government approval. “Nobody can stop others from holding opinion polls,” he added. “It is not a constitution[al amendment] and does not force anybody to do anything.”He praised the progress already achieved with the “declaration of intent” between his party and the FPM, saying the relationship between two had reached “level zero” after the announcement, climbing from level “minus 70.”

Heated Lebanese Cabinet session ends in dispute
The Daily Star/July 02, 2015/BEIRUT: A split Cabinet convened for the first time in nearly a month Thursday and ended in a quarrel between ministers after they failed to reach an understanding over the issue of security appointments.But the body did manage to pass a proposal to allot $21 million to help farmers and truck drivers export agricultural goods. “We could not reach an agreement in Cabinet,” Education Minister Elias Bou Saab said after the meeting. “We know that Prime Minister Tammam Salam is seeking national interest and the interest of the Lebanese people but the disruption isn’t here,” Bou Saab, one of two Free Patriotic Movement ministers, added. He said those behind the paralysis of Cabinet are the forces responsible for “disrupting national partnership.” Thursday’s session mainly focused on questions relating to the decision-making system in Cabinet and the authority given to ministers who are assuming the prerogatives of the president, Bou Saab said. The education minister said that in the absence of the president there is no clear outline for the authority of ministers. The president decides when agenda items can be discussed and when they can postponed, he noted, hitting out at Salam who is now authorized with determining what topics are discussed.
The meeting ended in a “dispute” and “opposing statements” were exchanged between ministers, Bou Saab noted. The debate was sparked when Prime Minister Tammam Salam raised one of the agenda items he wanted to resolve. Thursday’s dispute, according to Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb, resulted when FPM ministers opposed discussions on a plan he proposed to give cash and logistical assistance to truck owners exporting to the Gulf by sea. But the bill was passed by ministers Thursday, Cheyaheb said, noting that Salam had previously approved it to be on the agenda list. After intensive lobbying by the agricultural minister, Cabinet allotted $21 million for the export of agricultural products. The sum would grant every truck owner $2,000 per trip to help them take the marine route instead of the traditionally used land roads, and then also provide help in their return to Lebanon. A jubilant Chehayeb congratulated farmers and exporters after the meeting, thanking Salam and his colleagues for supporting the “national issue." The FPM ministers have insisted that they would not allow the Cabinet to discuss any topic before it addresses appointments of new security chiefs. The two ministers are backed by their allies in Hezbollah, the Marada Movement and the Tashnag Party. The four parties have six ministers in the 24-member Cabinet. The last Cabinet session took place on June 4. Justifying his decision to cancel three consecutive sessions, Salam said in the meeting that he sought to “make way” for further discussions that could solve unresolved issues. The prime minister, however, realized that the disputes needed to be studied in Cabinet due to the split between ministers, according to a statement released by the premier’s media office. These conflicting viewpoints should not lead to paralysis, Salam added, saying that he would still give priority to consensus in Cabinet decisions as long as this “consensus doesn’t lead to unproductive disruption.”Ministers then engaged in three-hour-long discussions on the reasons that plunged Cabinet into paralysis earlier this month. The “exhaustive” talks also delved into Cabinet’s agenda, the constitutional prerogatives relating to the agenda, and the topic of security and military appointments.

Furious Aoun warns of 'explosive' response to Cabinet decision
The Daily Star/July 02/15/BEIRUT: The Free Patriotic Movement is set to take “explosive” measures against Cabinet for passing a "non-consensual" agenda item, party chief Michel Aoun announced Thursday. "Cabinet today raised a non-consensual agenda item and Prime Minister Tammam Salam withdrew from the session and now we hear that the law has passed,” Aoun, simmering with anger, said after the parliamentary Change and Reform Bloc held a special meeting to assess the results of Thursday’s Cabinet session. “And if this is true, then [Cabinet] is pushing us into responding with an explosive [reaction],” he added. “We have never feared confrontation,” Aoun warned. “So no one push us because we are not afraid of anyone.” Aoun did not reveal which bill he was referring to, but Cabinet Thursday managed to pass a proposal to allot $21 million to help farmers and truck drivers export agricultural goods. The FPM chief lambasted ministers for surpassing the limits of their authority, calling the move a revolution against the state. The majority of ministers, he noted, have followed this model and have overstepped their prerogatives as ministers and the authority of the president which they are acting on behalf of. He also criticized the executive body for “neglecting” vital issues such as the case of Syrian refugees and the security threat on Lebanon's eastern border. Aoun did not disclose exactly what measures will be taken in response to Cabinet’s “neglect” of FPM ministers, saying that he would assess the issue with his party before making any decision. Thursday’s Cabinet session ended nearly a month of paralysis caused by disagreements over the appointment of senior military and security officers. FPM ministers have insisted that they would not allow the Cabinet to discuss any topic before it addresses appointments of new security chiefs. Thursday’s meeting ended in a quarrel between ministers after they failed to reach an understanding over the issue. The FPM ministers opposed discussions on a proposal to give cash and logistical assistance to truck owners exporting to the Gulf by sea, but the bill passed anyways.

Gunmen target e.Lebanon police station over construction license
The Daily Star/ July. 02, 2015/BEIRUT: Gunmen sprayed a police station in east Lebanon with bullets Thursday, after policemen raided an unlicensed construction project and destroyed its foundations. A security source told The Daily Star that the gunmen, sent by the project’s owners, fired their machine guns at the station in the Baalbek district village of Boudai. No casualties were reported. The eastern village is infamous for hosting one of the most notorious drug dealers in the Bekaa Valley, the source said, but it was not clear whether he was involved in the incident. Illegal armed groups still enjoy a wide presence in east Lebanon, despite the security plan that was launched for the Bekaa Valley earlier this year.

Policeman killed in north Lebanon shooting
The Daily Star/July. 02, 2015/BEIRUT: A Lebanese policeman was shot dead and two people were seriously wounded when an unknown person opened fire on them in a village in the northern Akkar district Thursday, the National News Agency reported.
Internal Security Forces member identified as A. Khouwailed succumbed to his wounds upon arriving to a hospital in the district afer being shot in the village of Bebnine. Two other people were also wounded by the shooting. A man identified as Sh. Khouwailed was moved to Joseph Medical Center in Halba in “critical condition” after receiving a bullet in his belly, and another man identified as H. Khouwailed was moved to Akkar-Rahhal Hospital. The shooter remained at large, NNA said.

Hostage families block roads in south Lebanon, Beirut over stalled talks
The Daily Star/July 02, 2015/DAMOUR/BEIRUT: The families of Lebanese servicemen held hostage by Islamist militants since August blocked the Sidon-Beirut highway and Beirut’s Saifi road simultaneously during Thursday's Cabinet session. The families called in a statement on Qatar, Turkey and the Lebanese state to exert efforts to release the captive soldiers and policemen. “We will hold (Prime Minister Tammam) Salam responsible for any harm that happens to our sons,” the statement read. The families called on the state to prioritize the case of the captives. The families had blocked the Sidon-Beirut highway near the Damour exit, and Downtown Beirut’s Saifi road near Martyrs’ Square with burning tires. Protesters later opened all roads after causing bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Bahia Zebian, sister of Seif Zebian who is held captive by ISIS, warned officials against further delays in the case. “Captives should be released before Eid al-Fitr, or they will not have an Eid,” she told The Daily Star. Spokesperson for the families Hussein Youssef said that the maneuvers came in light of the false hopes given by the state. "We want the case to be on the Cabinet's agenda,” warning of escalatory measures if officials didn’t cooperate.“[General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim] told us that the state is waiting for the abductors to seal the deal,” Youssef revealed. He urged the Nusra Front to finalize a prisoner swap deal with the Lebanese government, calling on Qatar to exert more efforts to release the servicemen. “It’s an appeal ... We want to know the results of the negotiations with the kidnappers,” Nizam Mogheit, brother of captive serviceman Ibrahim Mogheit, said. “We don’t want your money ... I want my brother back,” Marie Khoury, the sister of abducted soldier George Khoury, angrily told reporters near Saifi.
She revealed that the families of the captive servicemen have been receiving money from the government in support. “They want us to remain silent ... but we won’t anymore,” she said. She urged Qatar to intervene to resolve the ongoing issue, apologizing to those who were stuck in traffic, but said there was no other way to press for the release of the abductees. At least 25 hostages are being held by ISIS and Nusra Front militants. They were captured when militants briefly overran the northeastern town of Arsal last August. Since then the families have held several protests and blocked roads across the country to pressure the government into expediting negotiations. The original number of captives was 37, but the Nusra Front has since released eight and shot dead two, while ISIS has beheaded two.

Report: Army Thwarts Terrorist Plot in North Bekaa
Naharnet/July 02/15/The Lebanese army has thwarted a terrorist plot to target areas in North Bekaa with dozens of rockets, An Nahar daily reported on Thursday. The newspaper said that the army arrested 30 people, three of them holding the U.S. nationality, after it received information about the plot. Three of the suspects are Koreans and the remaining 24 are Syrians, it said. Their arrest took place in the town of Talya east of Baalbek after tips that the suspects were plotting to target sensitive residential areas and religious centers by launching simultaneously dozens of rockets from a land in Sahel Talya, An Nahar added. All of the suspects were transferred to Beirut for questioning. On Wednesday, An Nahar said that investigations with a Syrian female detainee revealed that she had a scheme to carry out a suicide attack in the southern suburbs of Beirut during the month of Ramadan. It also said that two suspects were arrested after they were tasked by the Islamic State group to carry out an attack in a crowded area in Beirut taking advantage of the lack of heightened security during the current phase, a security source told the newspaper.

Mustaqbal Sources: Saadiyat Incident Highlights Significance of Dialogue
Naharnet/July 02/15/Al-Mustaqbal movement confirmed on Thursday the necessity to continue the dialogue with Hizbullah mainly after al-Saadiyat incident, prominent sources told As Safir daily. “We adhere to the dialogue with Hizbullah in commitment to the directions of chief Saad Hariri (the movement’s leader). Al-Saadiyat incident showed the importance of the talks between al-Mustaqbal and Hizbullah,” the sources stated. They warned that the incident could have triggered a dangerous security clash that could have spread tension to all Lebanese regions if it was not for the dialogue lingering-in between the two parties. “The Lebanese army carried out its duties and restored normal life to the area,” they said, adding “the dialogue session number 14th should defuse all wicks and try to address the real reason.” Highlighting that the incident reflects the general situation in the country and in Syria, they warned against similar incidents in the future mainly if Wednesday’s clashes were not a mere coincidence but a test carried out by Hizbullah for future steps it plans to take.
For his part, al-Mustaqbal MP Mohammed Hajjar said: “What happened in Saadiyat was the result of a decision taken by Hizbullah to set military sites in its name and in the name of the Resistance Brigades in all Lebanese regions under different slogans and pretexts, defying the people, the military and security apparatuses.”ashes erupted early on Wednesday in Saadiyat between al-Mustaqbal and Resistance Brigades supporters leaving scores of people injured, including an army personnel.
Reports have said that the clashes erupted when assailants fired at a cafe where a number of youth were having their Suhour.

Agencies Say Syrian Children as Young as Six Working in Lebanon
Naharnet/July 02/15/The number of Syrian children being forced to work is increasing with those as young as six reportedly working in some parts of Lebanon, the U.N. children's agency and Save the Children warned on Thursday.One 13-year-old Syrian refugee, who harvests potatoes in Lebanon, reported having to carry a bag weighing more than 10 kilograms when full and getting beaten with a plastic hose if he left any potato behind, said UNICEF and Save the Children. “The Syria crisis has dramatically reduced family livelihood opportunities and impoverished millions of households in the region, resulting in child labor reaching critical levels,” said Roger Hearn, Regional Director for Save the Children in the Middle East and Eurasia. “As families become increasingly desperate, children are working primarily for their survival. Whether in Syria or neighboring countries, they are becoming main economic players,” he stated. The report finds that a spiraling number of children are employed in harmful working conditions, risking serious damage to their health and well-being. “Child labor hinders children’s growth and development as they toil for long hours with little pay, often in extremely hazardous and unhealthy environments,” Peter Salama, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said. “Carrying heavy loads, being exposed to pesticides and toxic chemicals, and working long hours – these are just some of the hazards working children face every day around the region,” he added. On Wednesday, the World Food Program said it had to cut food aid for Syrian refugees in Lebanon in half because of a funding crisis and may soon have to halt all food support for most refugees in Jordan.

Food Aid to Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Cut in Half amid Funding Crisis
Naharnet/July 02/15/The World Food Program said Wednesday it had to cut food aid for Syrian refugees in Lebanon in half because of a funding crisis and may soon have to halt all food support for most refugees in Jordan. Lebanon and Jordan are among five countries that host some 4 million Syrian war refugees. The U.N. refugee agency warned last week that with the Syria conflict in its fifth year, funding levels for refugee aid programs dropped to a dangerous low in 2015. Many refugee families have been struggling to get buy, and cuts in food aid are having a devastating effect, said Joelle Eid, spokeswoman for the WFP in Amman. "Today, parents have to make decisions that no parent around the globe should be making," she said. "They are forced to skip meals. They are accumulating a lot of debt. They are moving their children from school and even sending their children to work." The WFP, which had to reduce food aid in the past because of the cash crisis, said that in July refugee food aid in Lebanon is being cut in half, to $13.50 per person per month. About 440,000 refugees in Jordan who live outside refugee camps and currently receive food aid are escaping cuts this month, but could be left empty-handed if funds don't arrive by August, Eid said. The WFP said it needs $139 million to continue helping Syrian refugees in the region through September.Associated Press

Hezbollah launches offensive in Zabadani
The Daily Star/July 02, 2015 /BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters moved into the outskirts of the Syrian border town of Zabadani Wednesday, engaging in fierce fighting with Syrian rebel factions, according to a Lebanese security source. Before launching the attack on the western outskirts of the town, Hezbollah heavily shelled the militants’ positions with rockets and mortar bombs, the source added. Hezbollah had prepared to wage an all-out offensive on Zabadani by sending large quantities of weapons and ammunition into Lebanon’s eastern mountain range earlier this week. Zabadani is one of the largest towns in Syria’s Qalamoun region, and one of the Syrian rebels’ last strongholds along Lebanon’s border. Security sources told The Daily Star that the decision to launch the offensive came after negotiations with rebels failed to secure the militants’ withdrawal from the area, which is located 50 kilometers northwest of Damascus. The town bears strategic significance for Hezbollah since it once served as a logistical hub for supplying the party with Iranian weapons. It also served as a base for party fighters and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who had entered Syria to fight alongside the regime. The capture of the town of Zabadani would add to Hezbollah’s field victories in recent weeks since its offensive began in Qalamoun last May.
Last month, Hezbollah advanced into the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal from the south and east, tightening its grip around Nusra Front militants encamped in the area. North of Arsal, Hezbollah is also fighting ISIS for control of the outskirts of Ras Baalbek, a Lebanese Christian border town. In other developments, Hezbollah field commander Jamil Fakih, who oversaw a unit fighting in Syria’s Idlib province, was proclaimed dead, according to media reports. Separately, the Lebanese Army shelled militants on the outskirts of the Baalbek-Hermel village of Fakiha. The Lebanese Army also said it killed five Syria-based militants trying to infiltrate Arsal overnight. The National News Agency said the militants belonged to the Nusra Front. A military statement said troops clashed with the militant group, killing five. It identified one of the victims as Syrian Ghaleb Saeed Ghiyeh. Also, Arsal resident Tarek Mohammad Hujeiri was detained Tuesday trying to sneak Syrian Ahmad Khaled Baraqi into Arsal, the Army said in another statement. Baraqi confessed that he belonged to a “terrorist organization,” it said.

Minister Nicholson Condemns Boko Haram’s Latest Terrorist Attacks in Nigeria
July 2, 2015 - Ottawa, Ontario - Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement:
“Canada condemns in the strongest terms Boko Haram’s latest jihadi terrorist attacks in the Nigerian towns of Monguno on June 30 and Maiduguri on July 2.
“On behalf of all Canadians, I offer my sincere condolences to the families and friends of those killed and wish a speedy recovery to the injured.
“Canada listed Boko Haram as a terrorist entity on December 2013. Attacks such as these serve only to strengthen our resolve to fight jihadi terrorism and work toward upholding the fundamental right to religious freedom.”

At least 97 dead in new 'Boko Haram' attack in NE Nigeria: witnesses
Agence France Presse/July 02, 2015/MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: Suspected Boko Haram militants killed close to 100 people in attacks on homes and mosques in a northeastern Nigerian village, witnesses said Thursday. "The attackers have killed at least 97 people," a local from Kukawa village, who gave his name as Kolo and who said he had counted the bodies, told AFP. A fisherman who witnessed Wednesday's attack corroborated the death toll. "They wiped out the immediate family of my uncle ...They killed his children, about five of them, and set his entire house ablaze," Kolo said. Another witness called Babami Alhaji Kolo who fled to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state where the attack took place, said more than 50 militants stormed the village early Wednesday evening. "The terrorists first descended on Muslim worshipers in various mosques who were observing the Maghrib prayer shortly after breaking their fast," he said. "They... opened fire on the worshipers who were mostly men and young children. "They spared nobody. In fact, while some of the terrorists waited and set most of the corpses on fire, others proceeded to houses and shot indiscriminately at women who were preparing food," he said.

Deadly clashes shake Yemen's Aden
Agence France Presse/July. 02, 2015/ADEN: Fighting raged Thursday in Yemen's battleground southern city Aden, a day after the United Nations declared its highest level humanitarian emergency in the war-torn country. The new clashes left seven rebels and five pro-government fighters dead, a military official said. It comes after rebel rocket fire on a residential district of Aden killed 31 civilians Wednesday and left more than 100 others wounded, according to a medical official. Rebel shelling on a western district of Aden early Thursday damaged several homes and left casualties, residents said. Meanwhile, a port near the Aden oil refinery came under rebel artillery shelling for a fifth consecutive day and a blaze continued in the area, said Aden Refinery Company spokesman Naser al-Shayef.
In the adjacent Lahj province and nearby Shabwa, Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out several overnight strikes against rebel positions, residents said. The coalition has been bombing the Iran-backed Houthi rebels since March 26 in support of Yemen's President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia. The United Nations Wednesday declared Yemen a level-three emergency, the highest on its scale, as aid chief Stephen O'Brien held talks to discuss the crisis in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.
More than 21.1 million people - over 80 percent of Yemen's population - are in need of aid, with 13 million facing food shortages.

Egypt airstrikes kill 23 militants in Sinai
By Staff writer | Al Arabiya News/Thursday, 2 July 2015/Egypt launched airstrikes on Islamist militant targets in the Sinai peninsula on Thursday, killing 23 fighters a day after the deadliest clashes in the region in years, Reuters reported security sources as saying.
The sources said those killed had taken part in Wednesday’s fighting in which 100 militants and 17 soldiers, including four officers, were killed, according to the army spokesman. Sinai-based insurgents, affiliates of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have stepped up attacks on soldiers and police since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Islamist President Mohammed Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Sisi, now Egypt’s elected president, says the pro-ISIS group Sinai Province, and other militant factions, pose an existential threat to Egypt, other Arab states and the West.
Bank guard shot dead in Egypt
In the latest attacks against Egyptian security forces, officials said gunmen shot and killed a security guard in front of a bank in Fayoum, 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Cairo. It was not immediately clear if Thursday’s shooting was a criminal or militant attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media. This week has been especially troubling for Egypt, a strategic U.S. ally which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the Suez Canal, a vital global shipping lane.
The militants’ assault, a significant escalation in violence in the peninsula between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal, was the second major attack in Egypt this week. On Monday, a car bomb killed the prosecutor-general in Cairo, the highest-profile official to die since the insurgency began.
Egypt military ‘in full control’
Meanwhile, Egypt’s military spokesman said Wednesday that the situation in North Sinai was back in control. Mohamed Sanir, who was speaking by phone to state television, said that the northern part of the peninsula was “100 percent under control.” Sanir’s statements came shortly after the ISIS-linked militant group struck Egyptian army outposts in Sinai. Wednesday’s fighting on more than 15 security sites was the deadliest in decades.It followed the assassination of Egypt’s chief prosecutor and a vow by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to step up the legal battle against Islamic militants. (With Reuters and Associated Press)

Egypt vows to wipe out 'dens of terror' after ISIS attacks
Jay Deshmukh/Abdelhalim Abdallah/ Agence France Presse/02 July/15/CAIRO: Egypt Thursday pressed its campaign to crush an escalating insurgency in Sinai, vowing to wipe out "dens of terror" on the peninsula after a spectacular attack by jihadis killed dozens. The violence poses a major test for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who has pledged to eliminate the militants. The military deployed F-16 warplanes Wednesday to bomb the ISIS fighters who battled security forces on the streets of the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweid after launching a surprise dawn blitz on army checkpoints. It said 17 soldiers and 100 militants had been killed, but medical and security officials said the death toll was at least 70 people, mostly soldiers, as well as dozens of jihadis. On Thursday the military carried out search operations around Sheikh Zuweid, security officials said. The military says it is "leading a vicious war against terrorism." "We have the will and determination to root out this black terrorism," it said Wednesday, adding: "We will not stop until Sinai is cleansed of all the dens of terror."On Thursday, telephone and Internet services were cut in Sheikh Zuweid along with electricity supplies, an AFP correspondent reported. The White House condemned the unprecedented wave of attacks, which came two days after state prosecutor Hisham Barakat was assassinated in a Cairo car bombing, the most senior government official killed in the jihadi insurgency. The U.S. National Security Council said it "will continue to assist Egypt in addressing these threats to its security."
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi urged the international community to "support the Egyptian government's efforts in fighting terrorist groups."
State-owned newspapers rallied around Egypt's army.
"Victory or martyrdom," said a front-page headline in Al-Ghomuriya. "Revenge," said a headline in Al-Akhbar. The military spokesman posted photographs on Facebook of militants killed in the fighting. On Thursday gunmen on a motorbike shot dead a policeman in the town of Fayoum, south of Cairo, police said. The Sinai attacks were the most brazen in their scope since jihadis launched an insurgency in 2013 after the army, under Sisi's command, overthrew Islamist president Mohammad Morsi. Militants took over rooftops and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police station in Sheikh Zuweid after mining its exits to block reinforcements, a police colonel said. "For hours the terrorists moved freely in the streets which they had mined," Ayman Mohsen, a resident from Sheikh Zweid who witnessed Wednesday's clashes, told AFP. "They fired rockets and bullets at the army camp in Zuhour and the Sheikh Zuweid police station." "This is war," a senior military officer told AFP. "It's unprecedented, in the number of terrorists involved and the type of weapons they are using."ISIS said its jihadis surrounded the police station after launching attacks on 15 checkpoints and security installations using several suicide car bombers and rockets.
Troops regularly come under attack in the Sinai, where jihadis have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi's overthrow.
Wednesday's attack was similar to a series of ambushes on April 2 in which dozens of militants attacked checkpoints, killing 15 soldiers. In January, a rocket and car bomb attack on a military base, police headquarters and residential complex for troops and police killed at least 24 people, most of them soldiers. The attacks have come despite stringent security measures in the Sinai, including a night-time curfew and the creation of a buffer zone along the Gaza border. Analysts said the army lacked expertise in fighting the insurgents.
"It's not putting in the right units. The groups need to be chased by special forces and what the army is doing is that it is deploying regiments. Sending F-16s does not work," said Professor Mathieu Guidere, a specialist on jihadi groups at France's University of Toulouse.
Egypt responded to the growing insurgency on Wednesday by passing a controversial anti-terror law and requesting the appeals process be shortened, in measures it said would "achieve swift justice and revenge for our martyrs."
Sisi has vowed to toughen laws and suggested fast-track executions following the state prosecutor's assassination.

ISIS threatens to topple Hamas in Gaza Strip
Reuters/Jul. 02, 2015/CAIRO: ISIS insurgents threatened Tuesday to turn the Gaza Strip into another of their Middle East fiefdoms, accusing Hamas, the organization that rules the Palestinian territory, of being insufficiently stringent about religious enforcement. The video statement, issued from an ISIS stronghold in Syria, was a rare public challenge to Hamas, which has been cracking down on militants in Gaza who oppose its truces with Israel and reconciliation with the U.S.-backed rival Palestinian faction Fatah. “We will uproot the state of the Jews [Israel] and you and Fatah, and all of the secularists are nothing and you will be overrun by our creeping multitudes,” said a masked ISIS member in the message addressed to the “tyrants of Hamas.” “The rule of Shariah [Islamic law] will be implemented in Gaza, in spite of you. We swear that what is happening in the Levant today, and in particular the Yarmouk camp, will happen in Gaza,” he said, referring to ISIS advances in Syria, including in a Damascus district founded by Palestinian refugees.ISIS has also taken over swaths of Iraq and has claimed attacks in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Hamas is an Islamist movement that shares the militants’ hostility to Israel but not their quest for a global religious war, defining itself more within the framework of Palestinian nationalism. Deemed a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, and viewed by the neighboring Arab power Egypt as a regional security threat, Hamas’ struggle against ISIS-linked militants has not won sympathy abroad. Israel’s intelligence minister, Israel Katz, accused Hamas Tuesday of partnering with ISIS affiliates in the Egyptian Sinai – a charge long denied by the Palestinian group. “There is cooperation between them in the realm of weapons smuggling and terrorist attacks. The Egyptians know this, and the Saudis,” the intelligence minister told a Tel Aviv conference organized by the Israel Defense journal. “At the same time, within Gaza, ISIS has been flouting Hamas. But they have common cause against the Jews, in Israel or abroad,” Katz added.

ISIS destroys statue outside Syria's Palmyra museum
Agence France Presse/Jul. 02, 2015/BEIRUT: ISIS jihadis have destroyed a famous statue of a lion outside the museum in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the country's antiquities director said Thursday. Maamoun Abdelkarim said the statue, known as the Lion of Al-Lat, was an irreplaceable piece and was apparently destroyed last week. "ISIS members on Saturday destroyed the Lion of Al-Lat, which is a unique piece that is three meters (10 feet) tall and weight 15 tons," Abdelkarim told AFP. "It's the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra's heritage," he said. The limestone statue was discovered in 1977 by a Polish archeological mission at the temple of Al-Lat, a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess, and dated back to the 1st century BC. Abdelkarim said the statue had been covered with a metal plate and sandbags to protect it from fighting "but we never imagined that ISIS would come to the town to destroy it." ISIS captured Palmyra, a renowned UNESCO World Heritage site, from government forces on May 21, prompting international concerns about the fate of the city's antiquities. So far, the city's most famous sites have been left intact, though there are reports ISIS has mined them. Most of the pieces in the city's museum were evacuated by antiquities staff before ISIS arrived, though the group has blown up several historic Muslim graves in recent weeks. Also on Thursday, the group released photos showing its members in Aleppo destroying several statues from Palmyra that were being smuggled through the northern province. "An ISIS checkpoint in Wilyat (region of) Aleppo arrested a person transporting several statues from Palmyra," the group said in an online statement. "The guilty party was taken to an Islamic court in the town of Minbej, where it was decided that the trafficker would be punished and the statues destroyed."
The statement included photos showing several carved busts being destroyed with sledgehammers. Abdelkarim said the busts "appear to be eight statues stolen from the tombs in Palmyra.""The destruction is worse than the theft because they cannot be recovered."
ISIS' harsh version of Islam considers statues and grave markers to be idolatrous, and the group has destroyed antiquities and heritage sites in territory under its control in Syria and Iraq. On Wednesday, the head of the U.N. cultural organization UNESCO urged a campaign against ISIS' "culture cleansing." "Extremists don't destroy heritage as a collateral damage, they target it systematically to strike societies at their core," Irina Bokova said in a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London."This strategy seeks to destroy identities by eliminating heritage and cultural markers."

Bashar is already out of power in Syria
Michael Young/The Daily Star/Jul. 02, 2015
While the calls for President Bashar Assad to step down continue, in many respects the Syrian president has already lost power. Assad has become a figurehead as Iran has taken control of Syria’s regime and its praetorian military units, and is even manipulating sectarian dynamics in parts of the country. That’s why the death of Mohammad Nassif last weekend had symbolic importance. Early on Nassif had been the link between the Islamic Republic and Syria, but it was a different Syria then. No less a criminal enterprise than today, Hafez Assad’s regime was yet more selfish about its sovereignty. For a time Bashar replicated this attitude, which, for instance, shaped Syria’s approach to Ayad Allawi after the Iraqi elections of 2010. Whereas Syria wanted Allawi to form a government, Iran successfully backed his rival, Nouri al-Maliki. This led to momentary tensions in the Iranian-Syrian alliance. As the Assad regime lost ground in the aftermath of Syria’s 2011 uprising, however, political survival took precedence over principles of political affirmation. Syrian-Iranian interaction reverted completely to a relationship of dependency and domination, with Bashar Assad finding himself on the bottom.
As was their way in Iraq, the Iranians built up their power in Syria on two pillars: the effective partitioning of the country and the deployment of pro-Iranian militias. Partition weakened the credibility of the Assad regime, while virtually ensuring that the Alawite community would pursue a sectarian agenda in defense of its core zones of control, which only benefited Iran. The proliferation of militias allowed Tehran to create an alternative power structure to that of Syria’s regime, giving it the latitude to circumvent the Syrian authorities when needed. According to unconfirmed media reports, the Russians have expressed concern to Syrian officials about this situation and the way it has spread sectarianism. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Russian and Iranian strategies in Syria are different. Russia always seemed more concerned about ensuring that the Syrian security hierarchy remained intact to stabilize the country, whatever happened to Assad himself. Iran’s aim has been to undermine this security network and replace it with one entirely under its own sway, even if it means that Syria is broken up into sectarian entities and becomes debilitated.
At the heart of these different paths are considerations of power. And here someone like Mohammad Nassif could have been useful. Hafez Assad’s cronies had an instinctual sense of power and how to retain it. While their state was based on brutality, the old regime was less prone than Bashar and his entourage to resort to violence when alternatives existed. That’s not to say that Nassif disagreed over how to address the 2011 uprising, but that in his day Syria was in better health in the sense of crime, to borrow from the writer Leonardo Sciascia. As someone astutely remarked, Bashar probably does not realize how superfluous he has become; he imagines that he will be able to reassert his influence in the future. He doesn’t seem to see that in wanting so desperately to preserve his power, he created a situation virtually guaranteeing he would be unable to do so.
This message should have been obvious a decade ago, when the Syrians either ordered or signed off on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. This had followed their systematic efforts to weaken Hariri through the services of President Emile Lahoud. But what the Assad regime didn’t grasp was that in marginalizing then eliminating Hariri, it also undermined the foundation of Syrian rule over Lebanon, namely the Syrian-Saudi understanding that came after the Taif Accord and that had earned American approval.
Things were little different in Deraa in 2011. The incident that sparked the Syrian uprising, namely the arrest and torture of school children who had written anti-government slogans, could have been managed in a more subtle way, without humiliating the families and immediately reaching for a gun. But to Bashar Assad power means violence, when his father shrewdly sensed that the essence of power was ensuring that violence only remained latent. He knew that once force was employed, it could unleash unpredictable dynamics.
What does Bashar’s future hold? Nothing that should reassure him. At best he may remain the nominal leader of a rump Syrian state, his survival determined by a foreign power playing the role of puppet master. His Alawite minority, meanwhile, will have lost everything thanks to the hubris and blunders of their president. They will continue to play second fiddle to Iran and the Shiites after decades of dominating Syria, their main purpose to ensure that Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, enjoys geographical and strategic depth in any conflict with Israel. No wonder Assad has no intention of falling back on the Alawite heartland. If he does the mirage of his power will dissipate, so that the Alawites themselves may do him in. But the price to pay for remaining in Damascus is that the Iranians are reportedly changing the sectarian physiognomy of the capital, installing imported Shiites on the southern edges of the city to act as a barrier against a possible rebel offensive. Assad has become an afterthought, so the insistence on removing him from power may be overdone. No one will regret his departure, but can Syrians accept what replaces him? That’s unlikely in the long term. Syria may have been ravaged by decades of Assad rule, but it is a country with an honorable past. To be Iran’s pawn is not a destiny Syrians will readily accept.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

Will the ISIS threat force a new strategy for Syria?
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya
It is becoming difficult to keep track of all the atrocities committed by ISIS, the biggest beneficiary of the Arab world’s severe crisis of sovereign statehood. Beyond Syria and Iraq, only over the last seven days its followers killed dozens of innocent civilians in Tunis, North Sinai, Kuwait City, Sanaa and Lyon. Yet the expansion of ISIS, and its followers’ ability to strike across the region and beyond, might achieve what the death of more than a quarter of a million people in Syria and the suffering of many millions more did not: turn the Syrian tragedy into an absolute priority for the international community.The regional and potentially global repercussions of the expansion of ISIS may force a change of approach on Syria. This change might already be in motion
Different priorities
Four years into the Syrian war, various players with capacity to shape events on the diplomatic, political, military and economic fronts have not done enough. The U.S. administration remains stuck between its obsession with the nuclear deal with Iran, and the belief that the current talks with Tehran have to be insulated from all other crises. Russia has been too preoccupied with challenging the Western sphere of influence, despite being very active diplomatically on the Syrian file. European Union heavyweights such as Germany and France have been bogged down with the Greek financial crisis and Europe’s slow economic recovery. In the Middle East, Ankara has been unable to distinguish between the very different nature of the threat posed by ISIS and the challenge of its relations with the Kurds. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) naturally remains reluctant to focus all its military power on a full confrontation with ISIS, while the majority of the Sunni populations of Syria and Iraq remain trapped between a brutal Assad regime and myriad ruthless militias backed by Iran.
However, the regional and potentially global repercussions of the expansion of ISIS may force a change of approach on Syria. This change might already be in motion. Reports emerged this week of Jordan’s preparations to set up a buffer or protection zone in the southern Syrian provinces of Deraa and Suwayda for refugees and moderate opposition forces.
The prospect of ISIS occupying areas on its border with Syria seems to be the main driver of the Jordanian decision. Nevertheless, it would inescapably be a blow for the Assad regime. It would provide a safe haven for the moderate opposition groups trained in Jordan with Western support, and represent one of the strongest statements so far that the Assad government has lost all credibility. In Syria’s northern neighbor Turkey, there is intense debate between the outgoing government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition about the prospect of taking military action in Syria.The creation of a buffer zone by the Turkish armed forces following a government directive is allegedly being delayed by talks to establish a coalition government. Yet the AKP seems to be at least as concerned with the territorial gains of the Syrian Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) as with the presence of ISIS militants on its border.
Speculation
Recent weeks have also been rife in speculation about a possible modification of Russia’s stance on the Assad regime. On the one hand, there are reports that Moscow is already reducing its military, economic and logistical support to the regime as it considers a future without President Bashar al-Assad. On the other, a couple of Russian analysts with close ties to the government have rejected the idea that the Russian position on Syria has changed at all. What is certain is that Moscow is increasingly concerned about the threat that radical Islamists can come to represent to its own security, and is willing to compromise provided its basic interests in Syria are safeguarded. This means that the Russians might already be recognizing the flaws in the notion that the Assad regime is the last bulwark against ISIS.
With some of Syria’s neighbors increasingly inclined to do their share to contain ISIS’s expansion and push for a solution for Syria, what is still missing is the trigger to bring in a more decisive strategy to deal with the problem. That will not come from a more flexible Iranian approach on Syria if and when a nuclear deal is signed, as some commentators oddly expect.

Egypt's Evolving Salafi Bloc: Puritanism and Pragmatism in an Unstable Region
Jacob Olidort/Washinton Institute
Posted on June 30, 2015
A survival instinct and backing from foreign governments are among the factors that can trump ideology in guiding Salafi parties' actions.
As Egyptian president Abdul Fattah al-Sisi's government engages with nearby threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) -- first, from the group's Sinai Province and, later, from its Libyan satellite -- the country's Salafi political parties have diverged on whether or not to entrench more deeply with the secular military regime to ensure their survival, a move that could entail compromising on doctrines and allegiances with other domestic Islamic groups.
Ultimately, with Arab states banding together to confront perceived sources of the region's spiraling instability, Salafi groups will be forced to choose between security partnership and ideological puritanism. In other words, to win credibility with the Sisi regime and Egyptian voters, Salafi parties will need to demonstrate that they represent the interests of both, even if those interests conflict with aspects of Salafi ideology or could isolate them from other Islamist parties.
The current internal debate among nonviolent Salafi groups in Egypt can be set in a broader, longer-standing regional context. As ideological cousins to ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, these communities are understandably concerned about increased government scrutiny of their activities, as happened following the September 11 attacks, when they were lumped alongside Salafi-jihadists as threats to stability and sources of terrorism because of their shared theological views with al-Qaeda. In Jordan, for example, home to a jihadist hub in Zarqa, heightened concern about jihadism inspired a slew of writings and conferences by members of the nonviolent Salafi community in which they sought to distinguish themselves from jihadists and demonstrate how Salafism is integral to Jordanian society and history. Indeed, such leaders were so prolific that they gained the reputation from local jihadists of being the king's pawns.
In the Egyptian context, this partnership is achieved today through representation in parliament. Political parties, anathema to the principles of Salafism -- since, by definition, they did not exist during the time of the Prophet Muhammad and are therefore, according to traditional Salafi doctrine, forbidden -- became rebranded by Egyptian Salafists as a way to market their views.
Indeed, thus far al-Nour, the most prominent Salafi party, seems to have also been the most successful in establishing a self-preserving partnership with the Sisi government. On July 3, 2013, al-Nour parted ways with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist mainstream by siding with Sisi in his ouster of the country's Brotherhood-affiliated president, Mohamed Morsi. Since then, al-Nour has progressively cast itself as a Sisi ally both in providing Egyptians with better services and in helping the government confront domestic and regional challenges posed by jihadism in general and ISIS in particular.
Alongside its desire to survive under the Sisi regime, al-Nour's pragmatism is tied to the strengthening regional security alliance between Saudi Arabia, its main sponsor, and Egypt; the two countries launched simultaneous March offensives in Yemen to offset the progress of Houthis rebels. Reaction by al-Nour's base to such stances will only become clear following the next election, which has been delayed but is tentatively set for later this summer.
Al-Nour's Salafi Competition
Indeed, al-Nour's grand gestures and statements in support of the Sisi government differ from those of some other Salafi groups. One example is the Watan Party, established in January 2013 by al-Nour founding member Emad Abdel Ghaffour, who broke with al-Nour over its refusal to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood during its year in power. All the same, Watan has consistently sought to claim a distinct identity and voter base by projecting itself as not just an Islamic party but also a representative of the Egyptian people. Alongside the implications of its name, which means "country" or "national homeland," the party describes itself on its official Facebook page as "the political arm of all Egyptians." Likewise, its political campaigns almost entirely omit references to Islamic concepts or scriptures, and party leaders, in recent statements, have addressed "the Egyptian citizens." Moreover, in its policy recommendations, Watan has argued for greater Egyptian self-determination in regional affairs. On March 28, in a likely attempt to gain favor with the Sisi government, the party criticized the Saudi government for intervening in Yemen without first building a coalition with other Arab states.
At the other end of the spectrum stands the Asala Party, which, like al-Nour, was formed after the 2011 uprisings but, unlike both al-Nour and Watan, aligns with the Muslim Brotherhood and calls vocally for Sisi's removal. Significantly, Asala leader Ehab Shiha supported Qatar's criticism of the 2013 ouster of Morsi as a "coup," and party meetings and demonstrations center on unseating the current president. Asala, which holds true to its theological doctrines, also uses religiously charged terms in its foreign policy statements, calling politics "a process of principles and ethics." In a carefully crafted five-point Facebook post on March 27 responding officially to the events in Yemen, Asala called for intervention only if it restores order and minimizes sectarianism.
Conclusions
Two internal and two external factors can account for the wide-ranging postures taken by these Salafi political parties that adhere to the same doctrinally rigid ideology:
Internal Factor 1: Political stances are not always based on doctrine. Although the foundations of Salafism, particularly with respect to law and creed, are indeed nonnegotiable -- and serve as justification for their excommunication of Shiites, Ahmadis, and some non-Salafi groups -- the political stances that Salafi groups take vary widely and are not always based on doctrine.
Internal Factor 2: Political stances are often based on the survival principle, not dogma. Salafi parties' political calculations, both domestic and regional, are often based not on Salafi theology or law per se but rather on which position best ensures the survival of the Salafi community, and therefore the ability to proselytize to other Muslims. In the political domain, particularly given Sisi's aggressive anti-Islamism, this approach usually means taking whichever step will get more votes and consequently curry more favor with the government.
External Factor 1: Salafists are adaptive and responsive to local and regional changes. Notwithstanding their theological and legal commitments, Salafists are incredibly responsive to local and regional changes -- in particular, actions committed by jihadists, since the two share ideological roots. Those Salafi voices that successfully retain their credibility and voter bases have usually done so not because of uncompromising ideological stances but rather because of a politically adaptive quality that allows them to understand and respond to the interests of their followers and the local environment.
External Factor 2: Policies and statements by Saudi Arabia and Qatar matter -- but not always because of ideology. While Salafi political posturing in a particular country is very much responsive to local communities, it is based equally on the maneuverings of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In the context of support for the Sisi government, as noted, al-Nour's vocal support also derives from Saudi Arabia's backing of both Sisi and al-Nour. Likewise, Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood accounts in part for Asala's criticism of Morsi's ouster and continued calls for Sisi's own removal from office. Here, one must bear in mind that not only are the Saudi and Qatari postures integral to understanding the dynamics of Egyptian and other Salafi groups but, furthermore, that Salafi reactions to Saudi and Qatari policies are usually connected to which party each country supports rather than sheer ideological similarity.
**Jacob Olidort is an adjunct fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on the history and ideology of the Salafi movement and on Islamist groups in the Middle East.

UK Police Knew and Did Nothing to Protect Girls from Muslim Predators
Raymond Ibrahim/July 2, 2015/FrontPage Magazine
Not only do recent revelations concerning the endemic sexual grooming of British girls by Muslim men demonstrate how crippling political correctness is, but they show how political correctness complements the most abusive elements of Islamic law, or Sharia.According to a June 24 report by the Birmingham Mail, as far back as March 2010, West Midlands Police knew that Muslim grooming gangs “were targeting children outside schools across the city—but failed to make the threat public.”A confidential report obtained under a Freedom of Information Act indicates that police were well aware that British pupils were being targeted by mostly Muslim men. Several passages from the report make this clear: In one heavily redacted passage, entitled ‘Schools’, it states: “In (redacted) a teacher at a (redacted) that a group of Asian males were approaching pupils at the school gate and grooming them. Strong anecdotal evidence shows this MO (modus operandi) is being used across the force.”
The 2010 report also reveals how these “Asian” gangs used victims to target other girls. For example, by using “a young girl in a children’s home to target and groom other residents on their behalf…. The girl’s motivation to recruit new victims is often that the provision of new girls provides her a way to escape the cycle of abuse.” Other victims were systematically “forced into prostitution and high levels of intimidation and force are used to keep the victims compliant.”
Although police knew all this, the Birmingham Mail said it “is unaware of any police public appeals or warnings from that time”—appeals and warnings that no doubt would have saved many girls from the Islamic sex rings.
So what paralyzed police from any action, even warnings to the community? The report sheds light:
The predominant offender profile of Pakistani Muslim males… combined with the predominant victim profile of white females has the potential to cause significant community tensions…. There is a potential for a backlash against the vast majority of law abiding citizens from Asian/Pakistani communities from other members of the community believing their children have been exploited. Once again, then, political correctness—this time under the pretext of fear of a “backlash”—was enough to paralyze the police from arresting Muslim sex predators and releasing their victims. And what if a “backlash” were to occur? Why is it okay for innocent children to be plied with drugs and passed around in kabob shops and taxicabs while police standby—but it’s not okay for the so-called “majority of law abiding citizens from Asian/Pakistani communities” to ever experience anything negative? Maybe if they did, they’d actually reign in the sexual predators of their community—some of whom are, in fact, “pillars of their community.” Maybe they’d implore their imams in the UK—the majority of whom reportedlypromote the sexual grooming of “infidel” children—to change their tune. In reality, the great fear is that a backlash would demonstrate once and for all that multiculturalism—especially in the context of Islam—is an abysmal failure; it would be an admittance that even the West is part of the “real world,” one full of ugly truths that must be combatted, not merely “understood” or appeased.
Better sacrifice some British kids on the altar of multiculturalism than overturn the altar altogether. It’s also interesting to see that political correctness not only exonerates Islamic-inspired crimes, but has a symbiotic relationship with the supremacist elements of Sharia.
For example, some know that, while Islamic law bans any mockery of its founder, Muhammad, so too does Western censorship in the name of political correctness accommodate this Sharia statute (meanwhile, Islamic teachings—based on the precedent of Muhammad—holds it the right of a Muslim to curse, mock, and desecrate other religions). In the case of Muslim-led sex grooming rings in Britain, just as Islamic law permits the sexual exploitation of “infidel” women, so too does Western political correctness allow it to flourish in Western lands.Worst of all, it’s not just politicians and other jesters who are engaging in this form of Sharia-enabling political correctness. In the UK, it’s the very police departments themselves

Palestinians: More Missed Opportunities
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute
July 2, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6023/palestinians-missed-opportunities
It was Palestinian who hurt themselves: When Israelis were not able to hire Palestinian workers, they simply turned to foreign workers, prefabricated construction and other industrial innovations.
If the boycott of goods made in the settlements is successful, thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians will find themselves unemployed, hungry, and ripe for radicalization.
The world will never give up its computing, medical, agricultural and start-up products for us. The Israelis will continue to prosper. They have already found other markets.
Mahmoud Abbas is afraid of Hamas and afraid to enter the Gaza Strip. As a result of rumors that Hamas was working privately to reach a cease-fire agreement with Israel, Abbas is threatening to dissolve the national unity government.
We Palestinians continue to miss one opportunity after the other. Now, we are about to miss yet another opportunity for peace.
The geographic and political reality of the Middle East does not smile on the Palestinians. The countries that, until the Arab Spring, exerted the most pressure on Israel to negotiate with us have become weak. Some of them are disintegrating and others, in this world of strange bedfellows, consider the Israelis partners in the struggle against their common enemy, Iran.
Our Arab brothers now consider us a nuisance, marginal to their struggle to survive in the face of the threats from the Ayatollahs' increasing nuclear power in Iran and radical Islamists such as ISIS.
We Palestinians do not understand the enormous changes in the region. We do not know how to turn them to our own advantage. Until now, every time the Israelis offered us an attractive proposition, the leaders of the Arab League vetoed it. That happened at Camp David, when Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat unprecedented concessions, including some in Jerusalem. The Arab leaders opposed the deal, mired us in our current misery, and we gained nothing. While the current regional chaos has weakened both the Arab states and the Palestinians, there might also be opportunities for compromise with Israel.
Saudi Arabia has recently revived the Arab initiative of 2002. Such a move means the Arabs are now prepared to allow Palestinians to compromise on painful issues, among them Jerusalem, borders and refugees.
The problem is that we still refuse to relinquish the demand to return all the refugees to the Palestine of 1948 or to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Our obstinacy has made the Israelis turn a cold shoulder to the Saudi initiative yet again. Since the Jews unsurprisingly seem unwilling to sign their own death warrants, it is only rational that they refuse to agree to any arrangement that would include the demand of the refugees' "right of return" to Palestine as dangerously overwhelming Israel's demography.
Furthermore, both the Jews and many Palestinians worry that another Hamas or ISIS state will be established in the West Bank. Both already have a "nose under the tent" there and are trying for more.
It was not fair of us to try to have the Israelis suspended from FIFA simply on the grounds that they inspect athletes leaving or entering the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas. Only recently, Ms. Sanaa Muhammad Hussein Hafi from Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip was caught smuggling funds from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank for Hamas prisoners. In addition, the Palestinian athlete, Sameh Fares from Qalqiliya, was caught carrying money from Qatar to finance Hamas activity there as well.
When ISIS operatives in the Gaza Strip continue to attack Israel with sporadic rocket fire, Hamas does nothing to prevent them. If you look at the current escalation, the conduct of the Palestinian Authority (PA) must seem hypocritical, at best: On the one hand, the PA cooperates with Israel to keep terrorist weapons and funds from abroad out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and on the other, it attempts to have Israel boycotted internationally because Israel has tightened its inspections of athletes for security reasons.
Then the PA accuses Israel of mixing sports with politics, even as the Palestinians mix sports with politics all time, and throw in terrorism. It was the Palestinians who killed 11 Israeli athletes in Munich. Ever since, the PA routinely has organized sporting events to glorify the Palestinian terrorist "heroes" who blew themselves up in suicide bombing attacks, killing hundreds of Israelis.
If we were honest with ourselves, we would realize that while we fuss with boycotts and taking petty jabs at Israel, the Israelis continue to become stronger.
Under our very noses, Israel has become an energy, high-tech, industrial and agricultural power. In our foolishness, we try to inflict minor damage, yap at their heels and annoy them. We delude ourselves into thinking that a boycott and international political extortion will change their positions on any given issue. The boycott only makes them more efficient. They simply find other markets for their goods, such as microchips, scientific innovations, medical devices and pharmaceuticals, most of which the world can no longer do without. They will no doubt win the next battles as they defeated the attempt to suspend them from FIFA.
Most importantly, we have not yet understood that our efforts to harm Israel do not improve our own situation; they make it worse. Our efforts to bring about a boycott only make us look petty, like peevish children who would cut off our noses to spite our faces. We keep trying to hurt them in ways that only hurt us. And we do it while neglecting the most important issue: negotiations for peace, which would actually improve our lives.
Our inability to better our future is fueled by disinformation. We think that because the West hates the Jews, it therefore supports us. We take comfort in minor successes, such as hurting Israel occasionally in the UN and other international institutions, but are we really willing to poke out both our own eyes if we think the Jews will lose just one? Will their pain make us feel better even if we are blind?
For the Israelis, not only does life go on, but also continues to improve. Our current miserable situation is an illustration of the old Arabic proverb: "When the camel falls, he will be set upon with many knives."
During the first and second intifadas, the Palestinian leadership called for a boycott of Israeli products and for Palestinians not to go to work in Israel. The result was that we continued to buy Israeli products on the black market at double the ordinary price; on top of that, tens of thousands of Palestinians, who worked in construction and other fields, followed the PA's instructions and lost their jobs in Israel forever. Since then, some of them have infiltrated back in illegally, and work for half the salary.
It was we who hurt ourselves: When the Israelis found themselves without Palestinian workers, they simply turned to foreign workers, prefabricated construction and other industrial innovations. Thus, we were responsible for tens of thousands of Palestinian families going hungry and staying hungry. That is exactly the kind of catastrophe we Palestinians will visit upon ourselves again if the boycott of goods made in the settlements is successful. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of Palestinians, will find themselves unemployed, hungry, and ripe for radicalizing. We are again carried away by the fantasy that the vengeful West will support us to harm the Jews, but again, it is the Palestinian workers in the settlement factories who will be fired. The Israelis will continue to prosper. They have already found other markets.
The occasional response to the Palestinian call for boycotts is fooling us yet again into thinking that we have backed a winning horse. In reality, there is no basis in fact for our satisfaction: the world will never turn its back on Israeli products and innovations, from flash drives to Waze to cardiac artery-enlarging spirals and the rest of the ingenious inventions that are the fruit of not only Israel within the 1967 boundaries, but of the West Bank settlements as well. We should stop being naïve. The world will never give up its computing, medical, agricultural and start-up products for us.
The only people who will be satisfied with our call for a boycott are the Islamists in Europe. Since geopolitical policies are based on interests, the Arab-Muslim world secretly collaborates with Israel on sensitive security issues, while behind our backs laugh at us and our ineffective boycotts. Israel has trade agreements with Arab countries worth tens of millions of dollars. It pastes fake stickers on its products, the Arab countries know it and do not care; the merchandise is good, they buy it, smile and keep quiet.
By stubbornly adhering to our positions, we are playing into Israel's hands and enabling it to avoid genuine peace negotiations with us -- negotiations that would commit Israel to making concessions and establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Israeli prime minister is currently riding a wave of popularity because he has invited Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table, while the Palestinian leader refuses and, acting out of pettiness and thinking he will hurt Israel, gives Netanyahu what he wants.
Mahmoud Abbas is fully aware that beyond causing minor tactical damage, he has no chance of changing Israel's positions and transparent political maneuvering.
Mahmoud Abbas is afraid to enter the Gaza Strip and afraid of Hamas. As a result of the rumors that Hamas was working privately to reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel, Abbas is now threatening to dissolve the national consensus government.
In March 2015, Abbas's advisor, Mahmoud Habbash, called on the Arabs and Muslims to attack Hamas the way the Saudis and their allies had attacked the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. In the meantime, senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil accused the Palestinian Authority of responsibility for a car bomb targeting the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
Let's agree not to try to kill each other...
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (right) shakes hands with Hamas's leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, during negotiations in 2007 for a short-lived unity government. (Image source: Palestinian Press Office)
This is no way to build a Palestinian state. While we twiddle our thumbs, ISIS gains power in the Gaza Strip and fires rockets into Israeli territory. There are now pockets of ISIS operatives in the West Bank as well. As the threat of radical Islam looms large over the Middle East, we continue to dither and tread water, and make impossible demands that reduce to zero the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state at any time in the future, and miss yet another opportunity.
**Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

The Islamic State Caliphate Turns One
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi/The Huffington Post
July 02, 2015
Originally published under the title, "Dear Media: ISIS Is Neither Winning nor Losing Despite the Sinai Attack and Others It Claims."
A year after its proclamation, assessments of ISIS's caliphate fluctuate greatly.
As we pass the one-year anniversary since the announcement of ISIS's so-called "caliphate" demanding the allegiance of the world's Muslims and ultimately sovereignty over the entire world, much of the commentary has been far too ephemeral. The media has had a tendency to take whatever comes out immediately in the news -- such as the attack today in Sinai claimed by ISIS and its threat to Hamas in Gaza -- as indicative of long-term trends.
This is true both on the ISIS home fronts in Iraq and Syria and on the international stage as a number of official "province" (wilaya) affiliates have been announced in Sinai, Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan/Pakistan and, most recently it seems, the Caucasus area. In addition, the international export of the ISIS brand has recently seen a wave of ISIS-claimed (but not confirmed) massacres in Sinai, Kuwait and Tunisia.
Illustrating the problem of the tendency to jump on developments as they come are the various proclamations that ISIS is either winning or losing in Iraq and Syria. For instance, the claim that ISIS is winning/on the march was renewed in the wake of ISIS's capture of Iraq's Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi and various towns in the Syrian Homs desert, including the ancient locality of Palmyra/Tadmur.
ISIS faces little local opposition in the heartland of its territories, including the cities of Mosul and Raqqa.
What such a generalized assessment fails to take into account is some broader context: first, as emerged from documentary evidence circulating on the ground since the end of April, ISIS leader Baghdadi had ordered for a mobilization in the Syrian provinces to reinforce the fighting fronts in Anbar and Salah ad-Din provinces, particularly calling for would-be suicide bombers and operative commandoes. Unsurprisingly then, a wave of suicide bombings proved key in throwing Iraqi forces in Ramadi into disarray. Second, the Assad regime's loss of towns in the Homs desert reflects more its own forces' weakness than ISIS's strength, as the regime has also lost other peripheral areas – in the south, on and near the border with Jordan, and in the north in Idlib province – to an assortment of Syrian rebel forces.
However, while ISIS could mobilize forces in Syria to reinforce fighting fronts in Iraq, it logically follows that ISIS can only focus on so many fronts at once. At the same time, largely unnoticed was the Syrian Kurdish YPG's push with coalition air support towards the key northern border town of Tel Abyad, which ISIS has now lost. Further, ISIS attempted to keep up momentum by launching a new offensive in the north Aleppo countryside in late May, aiming to retake its one-time "Emirate of Azaz" from which it strategically withdrew in February 2014. However, that offensive has largely stalled as various rebel groups including al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra mobilized reinforcements to halt further ISIS advances, leading ISIS to resort to economic siege by preventing trucks carrying fuel extracted from ISIS-held areas from entering rebel zones.
An ISIS fighter plants a flag in the northern Syrian village of Sawran, May 2015.
The picture that thus emerges is an organization that is neither winning nor losing: rather, like any long war, there is much ebb and flow. Yet some constants have definitely become clear. Most notably, in the heartland of ISIS territories, including control over major cities like Mosul and Raqqa, there is a lack of local opposition to fundamentally undermine its rule, and that dynamic is highly unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. In part, this is because of ISIS's comprehensive state presentation and bureaucratic structure that bring a sense of order amid years of chaos. The internal security apparatus and intelligence gathering is also rigid, being able to suppress signs of rebellion within ISIS's own ranks and playing members of the same tribe against each other, helping to suppress a repetition of the "Sahwa" phenomenon that rolled back ISIS's predecessor Islamic State of Iraq in the Iraq War.
Airstrikes on oil infrastructure have not critically undermined ISIS finances.
Linked to the state presentation is the problem of ISIS financing. Since ISIS assumes all aspects of a state from education to services, there are plenty of avenues for income beyond oil and gas infrastructure and antiquities smuggling: foremost in taxes, ranging from school registration fees to garbage disposal and landline phone subscriptions. This is by far the most important revenue for ISIS, and thus the state presentation, while needing critical analysis, also needs to be taken more seriously in this context.
Airstrikes on oil infrastructure have not critically undermined ISIS finances, as ISIS has simply responded by raising taxes in various parts of its territories. The problem is compounded by the fact that ISIS territories do not exist in isolation from their wider milieu. People in rebel-held areas, for example, readily do business in ISIS territory, finding the security situation there ideal, as one contact in Azaz put it to me. This prevents the drying up of the cash flow in ISIS-held areas.
The growth of the ISIS brand outside of Syria and Iraq has been greatly exaggerated.
In short, don't bet on a collapse-from-within of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But what of ISIS on the international stage and its competition with al Qaeda for leadership of the global jihad? The list of countries where ISIS now has officially claimed affiliates may seem impressive at first sight, but in truth, the growth of the ISIS brand has been greatly exaggerated. Since ISIS presents itself as a state, true success in measuring the ISIS affiliates abroad depends on the emergence of a state structure on the model of governance in Iraq and Syria, embodied in the various Diwans (state departments) of ISIS. Only two known locations outside Iraq and Syria have seen ISIS affiliates replicate this structure to a reliable degree: the cities of Sirte and Derna in Libya.
However, already that structure in Derna has been virtually dismantled by other rebel factions in the city that became fed up with the ISIS presence. That should tell a lot about ISIS as a brand abroad, where it is more accurate to see it as a terrorist threat, but nowhere nearly as entrenched as in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, that should not come as much of a surprise: ISIS does not have the same organic roots and financial means in areas outside Syria and Iraq.
None of this is to downplay ISIS as a problem inside and beyond Iraq and Syria. But overall, some sober perspective is needed when one can fall for ISIS's impressive media strategies to garner attention. ISIS as a brand is here to stay with us for the long-term, but it does not constitute an existential threat, nor is it a mighty juggernaut.
**Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a research fellow at the Middle East Forum's Jihad Intel project.

Iran's Intentions: In Defense of Pessimism
 Jeffrey Herf/The American Interest
July 02/ 2015
 Since 1979, the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have said many despicable things about the state of Israel, including that they want to see what they call a "cancer" removed from the Middle East. They repeat a now familiar litany of abuse composed of a mix of Nazi propaganda, Islamist ideology, and a peculiarly Iranian vision of world domination.
The convergence of this torrent of abuse with Iran's desire to possess nuclear weapons has led many observers, including myself, to fear that we are facing the specter of a second Holocaust. We do not do so because we are pessimists by nature, nor because we make simplistic comparisons between the Nazi years and our own. Rather, we take that view because we see sufficient similarities between the years preceding the Holocaust and our own time to err on the side of pessimism. Now, as then, a medium-sized power undergoing processes of rapid modernization has brought forth a powerful movement that embraces modernity's technology, rejects its liberal values, and aims its hatred at the United States, the Jews, and, yes, the Communists as well.
Optimists argue that Iranian hostility competes with a capacity for rationality and cost-benefit analysis.
Yet in Washington and the capitals of Europe, and even by some former officials of Israel's intelligence service, we are told that our fears are misplaced and even a bit hysterical because, after all, the Iranians have a state and, like all state powers, care about their own survival. Yes, the Iranians say hateful and absurd things about the Great Satan and the Little Satan, but the optimists in Washington argue that these absurdities compete with a capacity for rationality and cost-benefit analysis that other nuclear powers in the past displayed.
The Iran debate has never been about Right and Left in any conventional sense of those terms. It has been about whether the leaders of the United States government actually believe that the Iranian leaders believe what they say again and again, or whether our leaders assume Iran's rulers are as cynical and, in the narrow sense of the term, as rational as all other leaders who understand that using nuclear weapons brings with it a very high risk of committing national suicide. At its core, the debate about Iran is one about how we interpret the core beliefs of the Iranian regime and whether we take these ideas seriously as its guides to policy.
Why did some of the most intelligent, well-informed, and sophisticated observers of the day underestimate Hitler?
Hitler is dead. Nazi Germany is gone. We can rest assured that "never again" will Hitler destroy two-thirds of the Jews of Europe. The issue is whether the Iranian regime will use nuclear weapons in the future to attack the state of Israel and, for that matter, perhaps the United States as well—for in modern history those who hate the Jews also, always, despise the United States. Yet in the face of these dire prospects, many of the same intellectuals and policymakers who express pessimism about irreversible climate change due to human activity, oppose nuclear power because it is, in their view, too dangerous, and consider economic globalization to be more a curse than a blessing turn into remarkable optimists when it comes to Iran and the bomb. They call their optimism "realism" and assume that things will turn out just fine unless the United States does something "stupid" like use its military power to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or intensify economic sanctions unless Iran agrees to a deal that permits "anywhere, anytime" inspections.
Though Hitler is dead and Nazi Germany is gone, the problem of underestimating the role of ideology in politics remains very much with us. A few key facts about what Hitler and the Nazis said and how the Allies responded bear repeating. First, on numerous occasions beginning in 1939, Hitler publicly announced that he intended to "exterminate the Jewish race in Europe." He made the German nouns for extermination and annihilation (Vernichtung and Ausrottung) world-famous. Contrary to some conventional wisdom, he did not keep his policies about the Jews secret, nor did he speak in euphemisms. He spoke bluntly and often about his intention to exterminate the Jews.
As is well known, on January 30, 1939 Hitler first made what he called a prophecy about what would happen if a political subject he called "international Jewry...once again" pushed the world into war. The result, he said, then would be "the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe." On January 30, 1941 in a speech to the Reichstag he repeated a version of the prophecy and predicted that "the role of Jewry in Europe would be finished...Today, they [the Jews] may still be laughing about [that statement], just as they laughed about my earlier prophecies." Yet Hitler claimed that "now our racial knowledge is spreading from people to people," which offered hope that "those who are still our antagonists will one day recognize the greater domestic enemy and will then make common cause with us: against the international Jewish exploitation and corruption of nations!"
The following day, The New York Times lead editorial "When Hitler Threatens" illustrated the difficulty its editors were having in taking Hitler's ideas seriously. It offered a classic example of the realist temper. They wrote that
inside Germany or outside, no one in the world expects truth from Adolf Hitler. For eight years he has wielded absolute power of a people whose voice is submerged, as it was yesterday at the Sportpalast by the mechanical clamor of the Party clique. In all that time there is not a single precedent to prove that he will either keep a promise or fulfill a threat. If there is any guarantee in his record, in fact, it is that the one thing he will not do is the thing he says he will do. For eight years, he has been the sole and uncontradicted spokesman for Germany—and today the word of Germany is worthless.
We know now that the editors of the Times were mistaken. Hitler kept many of his promises and fulfilled many of his threats. I cite the Times editorial because the habits of thinking and the definition of political sophistication evident in "When Hitler Threatens" remain part of our political and intellectual world today.
Hitler with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938
Yet why did some of the most intelligent, well-informed, and sophisticated observers make such a blunder? Why, for example, did Franz Neumann, the director of the Division of Research and Analysis in the U.S. Government's Office of Strategic Services write in his 1944 work Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism that the Nazis would not kill the Jews because they needed them as a scapegoat onto which they could divert the frustrations caused by capitalism? Why, for that matter, did Neville Chamberlain think Hitler could be appeased with the license to gobble up German-speaking territories? Why did Stalin believe that Hitler would uphold the terms of the non-aggression pact he had signed with him in 1939 and thus not invade the Soviet Union in 1941? Conversely, why was Winston Churchill right about Hitler's intentions when so many other people were wrong?
In the mid-1970s, the German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher famously wrote that the history of National Socialism had been the history of its underestimation, an underestimation that was common across the political spectrum in the last years of the Weimar Republic and then appeared again in the era of appeasement and the non-aggression pact. The cause of these failures of interpretation lay deep in the heart of our intellectual traditions and in a conventional understanding of what it means to be a sophisticated observer of history and politics.
In the Western tradition, "realism" means not taking the ideas of others seriously as guides to their actions.
In the Western tradition as reflected in the writings of Thucydides, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx, among others, sophistication or "realism" about the ways of the world means the refusal to take the ideas of others seriously as guides to their actions. It means viewing the ideas of others as tools, instruments, techniques, and methods in the service of other unstated but actually far more fundamental purposes. For the realist and sophisticate in this sense, to take the ideas of others seriously, especially when these ideas offend our understanding of common sense, is a sign of naivety and gullibility. Marx told us that ideas were actually mere ideology masking class interest. Hobbes and realist thinkers in international politics dismissed ideological statements as mere fluff compared to the presumably obvious definition of national interests. For the post-Marxist left, the French historian Michel Foucault suggested that all ideas were rationalizations about the preservation of power, especially power of presumably repressive Western societies. Politicians in a liberal democracy accustomed to the peaceful cynicism that is the fuel of parliamentary and congressional compromises seem rarely to have met a fanatic who will walk away from a good deal. The cynicism both of theory and of practice in our traditions inclines us to not take the views of fanatics seriously.
To believe that men like Hitler actually believed the nonsense they uttered was to arouse suspicion that one was a gullible fool.
These core elements of the Western political tradition contributed to making the history of National Socialism, in part, the history of its underestimation and of the dismissal of its vocally expressed ideas. To take Hitler's ideas seriously, to believe that he would make good on his threats, was to sound unsophisticated and to arouse the suspicion that one was a gullible fool willing to believe that men like Hitler could actually believe the nonsense they uttered. Churchill, you will recall, was dismissed as a man of the 19th century—a romantic, unsophisticated, not fully modern man—precisely because he took Hitler's threats seriously.
Among intellectual and political historians of modern Europe of the generation preceding my own, including scholars such as George Mosse, François Furet, Saul Friedlander and Karl Bracher, a different view of these issues emerged. Both their generation and mine, their heirs and successors, view the dismissal of the causal import of ideas in politics as what we call a "rationalist bias." By that we do not mean a bias in favor of reason but rather a bias in favor of the idea that human beings are fundamentally rational in the sense in which that term is understood in modern economics: that their preeminent desire is to survive and prosper—to be happy, healthy, and enjoy full, long lives. Thus, when fanatics assert that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Jews run the world, or when they proudly declare that they love death more than life, the inclination of students educated in powerful currents of Western thinking leads many to insist that these fanatics can't possibly believe such rubbish. We historians have argued that, especially in view of the events of Europe's 20th century, such underestimation of the role of ideology rests on an untenably optimistic understanding of human nature. It neglects Freud's understanding of the conscious and unconscious wishes that lead people to believe in illusions of various sorts. From a historian's longer-term perspective, it ignores the variety of deeply held religious beliefs that exerted profound influence on politics from the wars of religion of the 17th century to the wars of secular religion of the 20th—and now again in our time, when religious fanaticism is again ascendant.
Obama finds the ideology of the Iranian regime repellent, yet does not believe it stands in the way of rationality.
Seen from the perspective of this journey through some conceptual issues that concern historians of German history, the tension between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does replicate the debates of the 1930s, when the cool rationalists thought Hitler could be contained and appeased while the emotional Churchill sounded like a voice from a less-sophisticated era. The President, a product of our country's elite intellectual institutions, finds the ideology of the Iranian regime repellent, yet does not believe it stands in the way of rationality as he understands it. The Prime Minister, evoking Churchill at many opportunities, takes the Iranians at their word when they say publicly that they want to destroy the state of Israel. The New York Times today sides with the President in the same spirit of apparent sophistication and worldliness with which it expressed skepticism that Hitler would make good on his threats.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the rise of the various permutations of radical Islam that evoke memories of Nazism is that like the Nazis, the Islamists publicly declare their murderous intentions for all to hear. It is not necessary to risk life and limb in order to print English translations of Ayatollah Khamenei's statements to his followers or accurate summaries of the Hamas Charter of 1988. The documents are readily available on numerous websites. Yet, like the very famous and very public texts by Hitler and Goebbels, they are too rarely subject to close textual interpretation. Like the speeches of Hitler and the essays of Goebbels, the truth of their intention is hiding in plain sight.
So it was that in 2006, when I published The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, the close reading of some famous texts came as news to fellow scholars and general readers alike. That work sought to advance our knowledge by elaborating the Nazis' anti-Semitic interpretation of World War II as a "Jewish war" begun and escalated by an international Jewish conspiracy rooted in Washington, London, and Moscow, whose purpose supposedly lay in the extermination of the German people. The Nazi response was to present the murder of the Jews as an act of self-defense.
Did Goebbels genuinely believe the Holocaust to be an act of self-defense against Jews — an "extermination which they had intended for us" — or was this just propaganda?
My elaboration of the Nazis' interpretation of World War II was received in the profession as an important addition to our knowledge about the Third Reich. Historians had previously paid little attention to Hitler's repetition of the famous prophecy and Joseph Goebbels' public announcement that the Jews were, in November 1941, "now suffering a gradual extermination which they had intended for us." New as well as a subject of scholarship were the wall posters distributed on a weekly basis all over Germany, many of which repeated Hitler's public determination to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The truth about Hitler's determination to murder the Jews of Europe had been hiding in plain sight for seven decades while many scholars had turned their attention elsewhere. Perhaps the rationalist bias, the conviction that Hitler did not really mean what he said in public, had discouraged closer examination of what he and others had said about what they were planning and, once it was underway, why they were in the process of murdering the Jews of Europe.
We must avoid the condescension inherent in the belief that others don't really mean what they say.
Though Nazism was defeated, the anti-Semitic impulse persisted, most blatantly in the traditions of Islamism. In addition, for most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its allies waged an international campaign against "Zionism and imperialism" which amounted to an effort to damage the moral legitimacy of Israel and aid those seeking to destroy it by force of arms. In part, our current era's addiction to euphemism and refusal to speak frankly about radical anti-Semitism in Islamist form are the gifts of the Communists and radical left of the Cold War era to Islamic radicals, their successors in hatred. The political warfare of the secular left in those years softened up the West and weakened its defenses. It is an irony that despite the West's victory in the Cold War, it became possible for the most reactionary of ideas to find shelter under the protective umbrella of leftist anti-imperialism and more recently behind accusations of racism or advocacy of "Islamophobia." The result is a central irony of recent years, namely that, with important exceptions, it is the political center and right, more than liberals and leftists, who have led the criticism of Islamist ideology, a set of ideas that bears closer similarity to Nazism and fascism than to Communism.
Taking the ideas of others seriously, especially when we find those ideas repugnant, is not an expression of racism or Islamophobia. On the contrary, it manifests our desire to treat everyone involved in politics equally and to avoid the condescension inherent in the belief that others don't really mean what they say or that we should not pay close attention to exactly what it is they are saying. Understanding why an actor acts is not synonymous with empathizing or agreeing with his or her beliefs. It is rather to acknowledge rightfully that others, our enemies as well as our friends, have beliefs that guide actions. Hitler was exceptional in many ways but he was not unusual in history in acting on the basis of firmly held beliefs. Previous generations found it hard to take those absurdities with the seriousness they deserved. We have no excuse for repeating their blunders or for reassuring ourselves optimistically that things will turn out for the best.
*Jeffrey Herf, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. This essay draws on a talk delivered to CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, on May 3, 2015 in New York. His work in progress, At War with Israel: East Germany and the West German Radical Left, 1967–1989, is forthcoming in 2016 from Cambridge University Press.

A lesson from Cuba to Iran
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya
In a historic announcement yesterday from the White House, President Obama stated that the United States and Cuba have struck a deal to open embassies in their respective capitals. It seems that U.S. President Barack Obama has one eye on Havana and another on the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Tehran in Vienna. The Obama declaration on a sunny day in Washington came as the P5+1 and Iran’s negotiators were grappling with verifications and inspections, in an attempt to reach a comprehensive deal with another old adversary of the U.S. and before the July 9 Congress deadline. But unlike Havana, Tehran’s regional behavior and deteriorating relations with all the GCC countries and Turkey, constrains the longterm prospects of any deal (if reached) and makes the Cuba model closer to Eastern Europe than the Middle East.
Cuba vs. Iran
Obama’s triumph in reestablishing relations with Cuba could not have happened without the gradual integration of the Castro regime in the inter Latin-American system. Just few hours before Wednesday’s announcement, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff hailed from the White House, the U.S.-Cuba thaw calling it a “very decisive milestone in U.S. relations with Latin America.” Cuba’s regional trajectory in the last two decades offers a key lesson to Iran: nuclear programs and proxy militias bring about neither peace nor economic prosperity
The end of the 55-year adversarial policy between the U.S. and Cuba is step B in a process that the Castro regime has undertaken since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The Cuban government faced with economic pressure had no choice but to open up economically and politically to Latin America and Europe, as well as terminate its nuclear ambitions and slowly abandon the empty rhetoric against the West and Washington. This stands in contrast with Iran whose supreme leader still resorts to “Death to America” chants to rally his supporters and is engaged in an unprecedented number of conflicts across the Arab world.
Cuba’s regional trajectory in the last two decades offers a key lesson to Iran: nuclear programs and proxy militias bring about neither peace nor economic prosperity, only a political shift and a change in behavior can translate into a realignment on the international stage. In that sense, and absent of a major modification in Iran’s regional behavior, the nuclear deal if reached will remain strictly an arms control agreement with economic benefits. The Cuba model remains unrealistic with Iran given its destructive behavior in the Middle East, by supporting the Assad regime, funding sectarian militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and seeking a bigger role in Yemen.Cuba’s “normalization” process within the Western hemisphere, granted it a seat at every presidential inauguration in Latin America in the last twenty years. Also, Havana’s participation in several regional summits starting with the Ibero-American summits in 1991 and normalizing ties with all of the countries in Latin America stands at complete odds with Iran’s path in the Middle East. Iran is seen as a threat and a disruptive player among its GCC neighbors, and is excluded from most of the major summits whether the topic is Arab-Israeli peace, inter-Gulf relations or the Geneva conferences on Syria. In contrast Cuba’s role was instrumental in mediating conflicts such as the border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and recurring tensions between Colombia and Venezuela.
Rethinking the Revolution
The Cuba transformation was also prompted by the dire economic crisis that hit the country in the 1990s forcing Raul Castro to implement economic reforms and open the island’s economy to trade and investment from the European Union, Latin American countries and China. The communist era that brought Fidel Castro to power is gradually fading as property laws change, the talk on exporting the revolution is history, and as the political charged environment against the West dissipates.
In that context, the wind of political change in Cuba away from the communist revolution does not have an equivalent yet in Iran. The regime in Tehran is more determined to pursue and expand the Islamic revolution that brought it to power in 1979, to a point that one presidential adviser declared Baghdad as the new capital of “the Iranian empire.” Iran’s hegemonic ambitions across the Arab world and increasing influence in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are in line with the revolution’s core principles and not against it. While a nuclear deal could go a long way in offsetting Tehran’s program, it won’t mark the end of the revolution or cripple its powerful elite. Iran’s delicate playbook is designed as such today to implement a balance with the West, agreeing to discuss nuclear matters, but without letting go of regional expansionism and the ideological pillars of the revolution.
Also, the negotiations with Iran are targeted to contain the nuclear threat, while the process with Cuba is aimed at international recognition and normalization. There is a long determination on the part of the international community that the embargo on Havana has failed and it’s been voted down 17 times at the United Nations General Assembly. In contrast, the sanctions on the Iran have international backing, and will be ramped up if no deal is reached in Vienna.
Deal or no deal with Iran on its nuclear program next week, the Cuban model underscores the significance of regional integration as a bridge to transform international relations and end hostilities. Iran’s success at changing its global standing and ending its isolation, will be as dependent on modifying its regional behavior as it is on curbing its nuclear ambitions.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia: Who is the target?
Thursday, 2 July 2015
Mohammed Fahad al-Harthi/Al Arabiya
The Arab world is living through a difficult time in its history. Mosques are bombed during prayer; there is terrible sectarian polarization; terrorists misuse the name of Islam and call themselves a state. Some Arab lands have unfortunately become failed states and terrorism seems to be everywhere. Last Friday, there were tragedies in countries on three continents — in Kuwait, Tunisia and France. People wonder what can possibly be done and what is next.
The concept of nation states in the Arab world is weak because the understanding of citizenship is weak. Arab regimes that rose to power after independence did not succeed in instilling the idea of citizenship and consequently, they gave too much attention to the top of the political pyramid and forgot other people. They failed to realize that glorifying leaders and parties and placing a great emphasis on security would lead people to believe they were just numbers rather than citizens of a nation state.
The tragedies should push us all to be alert to the upbringing, thoughts and paths of our children
In a way, the media also contributed to glorifying leaders and maintaining the power of various regimes. The West, meanwhile, dealt with this situation in an opportunistic way. So long as its interests were met, the West chose to be blind and ignore both violations and corruption.
Human rights scarecrow
Even the human rights scarecrow was employed according to need. So when these regimes fell, Iraq was divided into three parts, Syria was split into cantons, Libya became two parts, eastern and western, and Yemen became an open field where regional bodies could exercise their power. This loosely structured internal system with only a basic educational level and no sense of belonging left citizens vulnerable to terrorist propaganda and groups as they were attracted by false promises and illusions. Poverty made people desperate and fortunes were spent on fake heroes, making them easy prey.
On the other hand, in the Gulf states, things were different. They were blessed with enormous oil wealth and political stability. The Shiites have always been a part of the Gulf’s unified and coherent social fabric in spite of ISIS’ attempts to create sectarian divisions from within. Gulf communities, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in particular, showed a great image of national unity after the recent terrorist bombings. Shiites and Sunnis showed their sense of belonging and citizenship. The funerals of the martyrs and the public mourning showed the depth of the feeling of national unity.
The puzzling question, however, is why young people are being lured into committing such terrorist attacks. Blocking the source of extremist thought is not enough; we must also look at the social structure in addition to people’s lifestyles if we are going to produce confident youth, immune to polarization. It is important to reform our youth as we consider the change that has happened in the world and the information revolution that has brought with it new parameters. For example, we can no longer say that previous generations were immune to extremism and terror. The environment has changed.
Self-criticism
Intelligent communities practice self-criticism from time to time and look for solutions. Developing education and awarding scholarships is an important step in the new generation’s development and thinking. Young men and women must develop their personalities, be given confidence and use arts and hobbies to empower them so that they can resist terrorism.
The Gulf states are being targeted. With so much in common, a unified approach can have international influence. Last Friday’s events were surely tragedies but they should lead us all to careful thought and logical reasoning. The tragedies should push us all to be alert to the upbringing, thoughts and paths of our children. We should know what our children are doing and whose influence they may have fallen under.
This requires a review of old methods as well as open, clear and transparent discussion of issues. It will not be easy to solve the problem and we must use different ways from those which, as Albert Einstein observed, caused the problem in the first place. This will require change from the bottom of the pyramid instead of from the top.
This article was first published in Arab News on July 1, 2015.