As Erdogan's Facade of Secularism Slips, Will The West Either Notice or Care?

The following by Sam Nunberg is reposted here with permission of The Legal Project:

Silencing a secularist in Turkey
Erdogan has abandoned his moderate facade

by Sam Nunberg
The Washington Times
August 8, 2013
http://www.legal-project.org/4175/silencing-a-secularist-in-turkey

The Turkish criminal courts have increasingly been used to further Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist agenda through hate-speech prosecutions. The May 22 sentencing of Turkish-Armenian Sevan Nisanyan continues this disturbing trend of strangling political and social discourse.

Efraim Karsh On The Truth Behind The Myths Fabricated By and About "Lawrence of Arabia"

The following by Efraim Karsh is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Seven Pillars of Fiction

by Efraim Karsh
The Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3577/lawrence-of-arabia-fiction

Efraim Karsh

The modern Middle East was born when the European powers exploited the declining Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I to gobble up its lands. They did so by duping naive Arab nationalists to rise against their Ottoman suzerain and then cheated the Arabs of the fruits of their uprising.

So goes the popular narrative about the origins of the region's troubles. It's an emotionally gripping tale, but it's also the inverse of truth. It wasn't British officials but a Meccan potentate, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of the Hashemite family, who in the summer of 1915 hatched the idea of overthrowing the Ottoman Empire. Impressed by Hussein's promises to raise the Ottomans' Arab subjects in revolt, Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt, tentatively accepted Hussein's vision of an Arab successor empire and facilitated the revolt that began in June 1916.

Hussein never came close to fulfilling his end of the bargain.

Raymond Stock: Obama, McCain and Graham Make a 'Huge Mistake' in Egypt

The following by Raymond Stock is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Obama, McCain and Graham
Make a 'Huge Mistake' in Egypt

by Raymond Stock
Fox News
August 8, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3576/egypt-obama-mccain-graham

On their current trip to Cairo, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), two of President Barack Obama's most persistent critics on everything in foreign policy from Syria to Benghazi, have found common cause with him at last.

All three fear that the anti-American (and generally anti-human) Muslim Brotherhood (MB), whom they mistakenly see as "moderate," will disappear from the halls of power in Egypt, our most important Arab ally. They also evidently worry that the MB's leading figures, such as now-deposed (and arrested) President Mohamed Morsi—who had awarded himself powers greater than any previous ruler in Egypt's history—will not be free to plot a return to power in an ancient nation that he had nearly destroyed in only one year.

Raymond Stock: Does Obama want Egypt to choose between aid and freedom?

The following by Raymond Stock is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Does Obama want Egypt to choose between aid and freedom?

by Raymond Stock
Fox News
July 26, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3573/us-egypt-aid

Raymond Stock

On Friday, the chief of Egypt's military, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, has urged all Egyptians to come out on the street to give him a "public mandate to face up to terror" in confronting the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafi allies.

A military source told Cairo's ahramonline that these demonstrations will be "as big almost" as the fifteen-to-thirty million thought to have marched against President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood on June 30.

Those protests, called the largest in human history, prompted al-Sisi to remove the Islamist leader on July 3, just over a year after Morsi was very narrowly elected and sworn into office on June 30, 2012.
At the same time, President Obama, citing a law that automatically cuts off aid to any regime installed by a military coup against an elected government, withheld the scheduled shipment of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt this week.

Though the Bright Star joint training exercises between our military and theirs will apparently go on as planned, The New York Times said on July 24 that the administration "wanted to send …a signal of American displeasure with the chaotic situation there, which has been marked by continued violence, the detention of Mr. Morsi and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a transition that has not included the Brotherhood."

Thus Obama is not so much following the law as bending it for his own purposes.

Do US Embassy Closings Unwittingly Give Al Qaeda Victory Over The Muslim Brotherhood?

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of MiddleEast Forum

The Return of Al Qaeda and Jihad

by Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
August 8, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3575/al-qaeda-return

Raymond Ibrahim

With the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al-Qaeda has been vindicated and the terror-jihad exonerated, in the opinion of many Islamists, that is.

According to the Associated Press, in a new video, al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri "said the military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi provides proof that Islamic rule cannot be established through democracy and urged the Islamist leader's followers to abandon the ballot box in favor of armed resistance [i.e., jihad]."

In fact, in the Arabic video, Zawahiri gloats over two points that he has championed for decades despite widespread opposition: that the Brotherhood was foolish to engage in democracy and elections in the first place, and that the triumph of Islam can only be achieved through jihad.

Arlene Kushner: Israeli Victim of Murderer Daoud Adal Hassan Mahmad Speaks Out On His Release

From Arlene Kushner

August 8, 2013

Unbearable

I am not sure I know a better word to describe the current situation.  I'm going to begin with a message put out by Adi Moses, which has gone viral on the Internet.  Adi was wounded in a terror attack perpetrated by Daoud Adal Hassan Mahmad that took the life of her mother and her brother, and left her physically and emotionally wounded.  Daoud is scheduled to go free as part of the release of prisoners that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Cabinet agreed to.

Just in case you haven't seen it, I share it now. 

Is Hollywood Afraid Of Portraying Muslim Antagonists In Its Films?

The following by Hillel Zaremba is reposted here with permission of Islamist Watch:

In Hollywood, It's Déjà Vu All Over Again

by Hillel Zaremba  •  Aug 5, 2013 at 4:44 pm

http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2013/08/in-hollywood-it-deja-vu-all-over-again

This time, Hollywood collaborates with Islamists

Author Ben Urwand has ignited a controversy with his claim that Hollywood effectively collaborated with Hitler's Nazi regime in the late 1930s to expunge any material that might depict Germany and the Fuehrer damagingly. Fearing a loss of an important revenue stream, Jewish film moguls like Louis B. Mayer (MGM) and Darryl Zanuck (20th Century Fox) cut scenes, ran scripts by Nazi censors for approval and abandoned promising film projects in an attempt to placate Berlin. While Brandeis professor Thomas Doherty challenges this characterization of Hollywood's behavior (especially the use of words like "collaboration" and "pact" in the book's title), Urwand backs up his assertions with compelling documentation.

Fast forward to the 21^st century where violent Islamists have, by one estimate, perpetrated over 21,000 deadly terror attacks worldwide since 9/11. And while the studio system may be gone, it is undeniable that once again Hollywood is largely afraid of depicting totalitarians as the "bad guys."

Video and Paper: International Peacekeepers Cannot Replace the IDF in the Defense of Israel

Dore Gold

Dore Gold has published a paper describing the dangers to Israel's security created by allowing international peacekeepers into the West Bank as part of an agreement with the Abbas regime, including a focus on the importance of having the IDF remain in the Jordan Valley.

This topic is especially important now since the subject may well develop into a major point of disagreement between Israel and the US as negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs continues.

Entitled International Peacekeepers Cannot Replace the IDF in the Defense of Israel, Dore Gold emphasizes 5 key points:

Raymond Ibrahim: Al Qaeda Flag Flies High Above Christian Churches

The following by Raymond Ibrahim is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Al Qaeda Flag Flies High Above Christian Churches

by Raymond Ibrahim
Gatestone Institute
August 7, 2013
http://www.meforum.org/3572/al-qaeda-christian-churches

Raymond Ibrahim

Days ago, al-Qaeda's Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a "Crusader" campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt.

Since then, not only are Egypt's Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda's black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history, the 2010 Baghdad church attack where nearly 60 Christians were slaughtered (click here for graphic images), that al-Qaeda is singling out Egypt's Christians bodes ill.

Arlene Kushner on Palestinian Mockery Of Netanyahu's Release of 104 Palestinian Terrorists

Arlene Kushner:
August 7, 2013

Will We Ever Learn?

There are times when it must be doubted.

The Israeli government agreed last week to release 104 Palestinian Arabs in Israeli prisons since before Oslo; many are vicious killers of innocent Jews.  Let's leave aside for the moment whether this was a good idea or an abysmally bad one.  The stated goal was to bring the PA to the table, for this was Abbas' bottom line demand.  (See Minister Silvan Shalom on this: Netanyahu Offered, PA Rejected Yesha Building Freeze)

Without question, the decision by our government was made in response to considerable arm-twisting by the Obama administration; Kerry, in particular, was so eager for the "victory" of bringing the parties to the table.       

Got it? To bring the PA to the table. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Now let's take a look at what Khaled Abu Toameh tells us about the Israeli agreement to release those prisoners (emphasis added):