Dear Family & Friends,

So, it’s Day 400 of the ongoing Gaza War Diaries. Why am I still using that name? It should be over already. Right? No. Sadly, it isn’t over. We’re still in it. The ICC (UN’s International Criminal Court) is still beating us over the head with it. Our wounded soldiers are still suffering. Families of those killed, wounded & maimed for life are still suffering. America is ‘using’ it to push us around – especially as they try to ram the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPA, down our throats…as in [paraphrased]: “…if Congress votes it down it’s Israel’s fault because Israel wants war.” Who said that? High American Administration officials.

So, it’s Day 400 & counting. Those who disagree, get over yourselves. You don’t have to read it. However, if you care at all about reality, I humbly suggest you re-consider. What I am sending you is an almost daily archive of crucial on-going events. It’s not complete but, it’s a definite touchstone of that Day.

Today is mostly Iran plus 5 articles on key issues for Israel’s survival.

If you don’t want to receive it, please advise & we shall unsubscribe you. But, we hope you stay for those times when you might want to know.

Meanwhile, have a sweet night, a wonderful day as the heat wave abates.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Obama: “Netanyahu only foreign leader ‘I can recall’ forcibly interfering in US policy”

2.Netanyahu to US Jews: Iran deal ‘will bring war’

3.Ya’acov Amidror: Iran nuclear deal likely will lead to use of force

4.Skeptics of Iran deal express offense at Obama tactics

5.Mr. President, Iran is the enemy, not Israel

6.Obama’s failed speech by Uri Heitner

7.Top Republican senator lays out case against Iran deal

10.Sharia-ism Is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else

12.

1.Obama: “Netanyahu only foreign leader ‘I can recall’ forcibly interfering in US policy” By Tovah Lazaroff JPost.com Aug. 9, 2015

Ayatollah publishes book calling to wipe out Israel, give Iran full reign in the Middle East.

Hoyer to ‘Post': US Israel ties stronger than Iran rift.

Key Jewish Democrats in Congress say they will vote against Iran deal.

The US president reiterates the strong ties with the US before saying that Netanyahu is wrong in his stance on Iran.

US President Barack Obama speaks at American University. (photo credit:screenshot)

US President Barack Obama charged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the only foreign leader he could recall who had forcibly interfered in a foreign policy debate in Washington.
He spoke about Netanyahu in an interview that he gave to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Thursday about the Iran deal, which will be aired in full on Sunday night.
In a clip released ahead of the interview, Zakaria asked Obama a question about Netanyahu’s stiff opposition to the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program that was worked out between Tehran and the six world power; the US, Russia, China, France, Great Britain and Germany.
Congress is expected to vote on the deal by September 17. Netanyahu has mounted a public campaign against the deal which he believes is a historic mistake because it legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program and leaves it with the ability to produce atomic weapons.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has injected himself forcefully into this debate on American foreign policy in Washington. Can you recall a time when a foreign head of government has done that. Is it appropriate for a foreign head of government to inject himself into an American debate,” Zakaria asked.
Obama responded, “I do not recall a similar example.”
He added: “Obviously the relationship between the US and Israel is deep. It is profound. It is reflected in my policies. But as I said in the speech yesterday on the substance, the prime minister is wrong on this.
“I can show that basic assumptions he has made are incorrect. If in fact my argument is right, that this is the best way for Iran not to get a nuclear weapon, that is not just good for the United States, that isvery good for Israel.”
In a major speech Obama delivered on the Iran deal he singled out Netanyahu, when he spoke about opposition to the deal.
“I recognize that prime minister Netanyahu disagrees, disagrees strongly. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I believe he is wrong. I believe the facts support this deal. I believe they are in America’s interests and Israel’s interests, and as president of the United States it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally,” Obama said.
“I do not believe that would be the right thing to do for the United States, I do not believe it would be the right thing to do for Israel,” he said.

3.Ya’acov Amidror, Ex-National Security Advisor: Iran nuclear deal likely will lead to use of force By Yaakov Lappin JPost.com Aug. 6, 2015

Satellite imagery reportedly shows Iran ‘sanitizing’ Parchin nuclear facility.

Report: China set to provide Iran with fighter jets based on Israeli technology of the Lavi fighter jet.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror says when Iranian nuclear program rears its head again, it will be a problem several times more serious; Hezbollah will receive thousands of precise missiles.

An aviation ordinance-man gets ready to load a couple of GBU-24 2000 pound “Bunker Buster” bombs onto aircraft on the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in the northern Gulf. (photo credit:REUTERS)

The Vienna agreement signed between world powers and Iran will “likely and necessarily lead to the use of force against Iran, at some stage or another, in order to halt its race toward a nuclear weapons program,” the former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, has warned.
In a detailed paper published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, where Amidror is a senior research fellow, he wrote, “It is clear that the agreement was signed in order to delay the Iranian nuclear bomb program, not to end it. And thus, when the program rears its head again it will be a problem several times more serious and far harder to deal with.”
He added, however, that “there is no cause for hysteria. The agreement will not bring about Israel’s downfall, and in the best case scenario may even buy Israel some time to better prepare for confronting the Iranian challenge. Nevertheless, the map of reality should be read correctly, and not through rose-tinted glasses… The reality facing Israel (and the world) following the signing of the agreement is significantly more threatening than before.”
Amidror has served 36 years in senior IDF posts, including as commander of the Military Colleges, military secretary to the minister of defense, director of the Intelligence Analysis Division in Military Intelligence, and chief intelligence officer of the Northern Command.

In his latest paper, he argued that it is impossible to claim that the agreement should be supported even if it is imperfect, since it has put the region on a path to military confrontation with a future Iran that will be significantly more powerful.
This “will take place in far worse conditions than before the agreement, against a far stronger Iran,” he cautioned.
“The Vienna agreement has made the situation more complex and dangerous, not less so. Even if Iran completely abides by the terms of the agreement, when restrictions and sanctions come to an end fifteen years hence, it will emerge much stronger, militarily and economically. This situation will almost assuredly lead to the use of force against Iran, because Iran undoubtedly will try to produce nuclear weapons; be much better able to withstand foreign pressures; and hold significant sway across the Middle East. The conflict that will ensue will take place in conditions far worse from a Western perspective than before the agreement, pitting the West (and/or Israel) against a much-stronger Iran,” he wrote.

Looking at the agreement itself, Amidror said it allows Iran to keep its military nuclear program, achieve sanctions relief, and gain international legitimacy.

“As a basis for discussion it is important to emphasize that the Iranian nuclear program has no civilian element, and no justification other than as a military program. This is the consensus of all the international experts, some of whom will only say so privately, but most of whom are explicit in this. There is no serious expert who thinks that Iran is developing its capabilities for civilian purposes,” said Amidror.

“On the basis of this understanding, which was accepted by the American experts as well, American policy was initially clear: the agreement should dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities. This was the term used by the Americans themselves. But at some stage the US decided to move from a policy aimed at dismantling Iran’s nuclear capability, to a policy aimed at delaying Iran’s ability to achieve nuclear weapons by ten to fifteen years,” he added.

From the moment that the policy in Washington changed, and there was no longer any intention of actually dismantling Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it was clear to the Americans that it would be impossible to include Israel in the negotiations. The US therefore shifted to conducting secret negotiations that it hid from Israel, he recounted.

“As soon as the US decided to make do with delaying Iran’s getting the bomb, by a fixed time period, then Israel was left on the outside – not because of the strained relations between the president and the prime minister, but because of significant differences of opinion. Subsequently, although the American negotiators did make use of Israeli experts, Israel was not involved in the central deliberations,” Amidror said.

Now, Israel must maintain its freedom of action, the former national security adviser stressed.

“The fact that the powers signed an agreement must not be allowed to paralyze Israel. The country’s security is at stake, and on this issue we should take the advice of the current president of the US: ‘Israel must be able to defend itself, by itself; even if the agreement makes this a more complex proposal.”

Amidror predicted that Iran will keep to the agreement during its early stages of implementation of one to two years.

“During this period Iran’s supreme interest will be the lifting of sanctions. Around 60% of the agreement deals with the lifting of sanctions and the dismantling of the mechanisms used to enforce them. The removal of sanctions will allow Iran to rebuild and significantly strengthen its economy as billions will flow into Iran, even though a proportion will be lost to the dark abyss of entrenched Iranian corruption,” he wrote.

“The lifting of sanctions will also serve to release a great amount of Iran’s energy and money which can be redirected toward furthering its interests in the Middle East and beyond. Here, the beneficiaries will be Iran’s allies – Hezbollah, Hamas, the Alawites in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen. For all these reasons it can be expected that, initially, Iran’s efforts will be invested in removing the burden of sanctions and becoming stronger, both internally and externally.”

After this initial stage, two possible and realistic scenarios emerge. In the first scenario, Iran will feel sufficiently strengthened to begin to cheat, ” initially on peripheral issues, and then as they gain confidence, on more substantial issues.”

Simultaneously, as other problems arise elsewhere in the world, “the quality of intelligence about Iran will deteriorate,” Amidror said. “After a while, once it is seen that Iran is indeed keeping to the agreement, there will naturally be a slow but steady transferral of intelligence resources to other burning problems… Against a state with which there is a signed agreement, intelligence operations are conducted at a lower level of risk. A complicated operation that, if discovered, might embarrass the US will be authorized for a hostile, dangerous state, but not for one with which a signed agreement exists.”

“The result,” he said, “will be potentially disastrous for the agreement.”

“It is clear that Iranian cheating will not take place at the declared facilities which are under IAEA inspection, but at sites unfamiliar to the international community, whose location can only be discovered through gathering high-quality intelligence. The combination of the American concession on surprise inspections of such sites, and the inevitable decline in intelligence quality, offers an excellent foundation for successful Iranian cheating,” he said.

“The IAEA, for its part, will be as unwilling as in the past to make use of external intelligence (even when presented with it) in order to conduct non-agreed inspections of sensitive facilities, out of fear of being accused of acting as an agent of Israel or the US. Hence it will need to invest a great deal of time and effort in order to build an independent dossier that will stand up to scrutiny, which will be sufficient for it to conduct more confrontational inspections at undeclared facilities. It is difficult to see how the IAEA might develop such capabilities.”

All of this has led Amidror to cast doubt on the American claim that “a year will be sufficient in order to respond appropriately” to Iranian cheating.
“It is not difficult to imagine US intelligence staff presenting information about Iranian violations and being rebuffed by decision-makers, using learned explanations. This would continue until they provide the impossible ‘smoking gun,’ or until it is simply too late. In most similar cases intelligence services have needed more than a year from the moment at which a violation begins in order to identify it, understand it, and persuade the decision makers about it, and for these to then decide and act,” he warned.

“Based on the experiences in almost all similar cases in the past, it must be assumed with a high degree of probability that if the Iranians make an effort to cheat and to hide the evidence, it is almost certain that they will be able to develop their first nuclear device before the West can respond.”

“Alternatively, Iran will abide by the agreement to the letter, until the end of the 10 – 15 year sunset clause. They will not cheat, but will use the time to expand their knowledge and capabilities, in theory and in practice,” he wrote.

“In such a scenario it is reasonable to assume that at the end of the period, after more than a decade, Iran will have the expertise to produce centrifuges that are 10 or 20 times faster. This is a very realistic prospect, and seemingly would not represent a violation of the agreement, as long as it is done with the appropriate caution,” Amidror added.

Since the embargo on conventional weapons will be lifted after five years, the Iranians will work to significantly improve their anti-aircraft defenses. They can expect help from Russia, which needs the money to be gained from these projects, which are defensive in nature and therefore “acceptable.”

Three years later the embargo on the Iranian missile project will also be lifted, and Iran will make every effort to progress in its development and production of precise missiles, particularly long-range ones that would allow it to threaten Europe initially (at a very early stage), and later the US.

According to Amidror, there is little doubt that within ten years, and certainly once the embargo is lifted, Iran will achieve these capabilities. It will be better protected from any aerial threat, and able to carry out missile strikes on many areas of the world.

“In parallel, determined efforts will be made to develop the Iranian economy so that, after a decade, it will be able to withstand outside pressures. For example, Iran will stockpile spare parts for sensitive systems, Iranian banks will hold more foreign currency, and there will be more partnerships with large international companies – making any future sanctions program more difficult.

In short, all the lessons will be learned from the last sanctions regime, and Iran will be better prepared for a similar situation in the future,” he argued.
Hezbollah will receive thousands of precise missiles, while enjoying Iranian backing and Hamas will receive more aid. These organizations will feel stronger being supported by the new regional superpower, Iran, and will thus be less hesitant to act. And of course, Iran’s widespread terror network around the globe (according to reports from the US State Department) will be more active than ever, as an irritant and a deterrent, he added.

Answering President Obama’s question of what the alternative is to the Vienna agreement, Amidror said that “there is a clear answer. The alternative was increasing the pressure of sanctions, conducting stubborn negotiations, and making serious preparations for military action that would crystallize all options on the table. Together, these would achieve a better agreement… Why the six powers agreed to a bad agreement is an interesting historical question. In the meantime, we are left to deal with its consequences, which for Israel, and in my opinion for most of the world, are extremely dangerous.”

4.Skeptics of Iran deal express offense at Obama tactics By Michael Wilner JPost.com Aug. 6, 2015

Obama: “Whole world has expressed support for Iran deal.”

Senator Gillibrand of New York declares support for Iran deal.

WASHINGTON – Republican lawmakers are crying foul over US President Barack Obama’s tactics in defending the nuclear agreement reached with Iran last month, saying that congressional Democrats share many of their concerns.
Rhetoric over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it is formally known, has sharpened in recent days ahead of a month-long congressional recess. In a speech targeting critics of the deal at American University in Washington on Wednesday, Obama questioned the motives of critics and compared the Republican caucus to hard-liners in Tehran who chant “Death to America.”
“When we carefully examine the arguments against this deal, none of them stand up to scrutiny,” the president said. “That may be why the rhetoric on the other side is so strident. I suppose some of it can be ascribed to knee-jerk partisanship that has become all too familiar; rhetoric that renders every decision that’s made “a disaster, a surrender.”
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we’re living through a time in American politics where every foreign policy decision is viewed through a partisan prism, evaluated by headline-grabbing sound bites.”
Republicans are virtually united in opposition to the agreement. Several – including presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee – have accused the president of facilitating terrorism through sanctions relief on Iran, and comparing the deal to a set of decisions that preceded the Holocaust.
But the president’s fight for votes is over Democrats – a plurality of whom are undecided, and who have expressed a host of concerns based on their examination of the accord thus far, over the first 18 days of a 60-day review period.
Several congressional leaders pushed back against the deteriorating tone of the debate on Wednesday and Thursday, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), both of whom called for a “dignified” debate on the Senate floor before the vote in September.
The president is “treating this like a political campaign, demonizing your political opponent,” McConnell said on Thursday. “This is not your typical political debate. This is an enormous national security debate.
“The rest of us will be dealing with the consequences of it” once Obama leaves the White House in a year and a half, McConnell added.
“Tone down the rhetoric and let’s talk about the facts.”
McConnell has moved procedurally toward a vote in September on a resolution of disapproval of the agreement. For such a vote to pass with any force of law, both the Senate and House of Representatives will have to reject the agreement, and then, following the president’s promised veto, reject the agreement again, this time by a two-thirds margin in each legislative body.
“I just want to say how disappointed I was in the president’s comments yesterday,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) said on Thursday. “What the president did yesterday by saying that Senator [Ben] Cardin [D-Maryland], our ranking member, who has questions about the Iran deal; Senator [Robert] Menendez [D-New Jersey], who has questions about the Iran deal – by the way, both of which voted against the Iraq War, if I remember correctly.
“We are being compared to the hard-liners in Iran because we have concerns,” Corker continued. “I think everyone has concerns. And people are going to have to make a decision. This is going to be one of the toughest decisions. But he’s trying to shut down debate by saying those that have questions – legitimate questions – are somehow unpatriotic.”
Obama hosted Cardin at the White House on Wednesday night, urging the senator – a key player on foreign affairs and a senior Jewish lawmaker – to vote to approve the agreement. Cardin said he would take his time reviewing the deal and called their meeting “cordial.”
“It’s not what the president says, it’s not what the prime minister of Israel says, it’s not what one interest group or another interest group says,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Cardin said his decision would be based on independent analysis of the agreement and “talking to the people of Maryland.”
One think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is also pushing back against the tenor of the debate. Its executive director, Robert Satloff, has taken to Twitter in recent days to discourage “ridicule” and “name calling.” And its top analysts published a follow-on analysis of the deal this week, after the White House touted a previous study paper by the institute, released on June 24, as an objective standard for reviewing the agreement.
“The JCPOA has several major achievements, especially the long-term restrictions on key aspects of Iran’s declared nuclear program that – if fully implemented, monitored and verified – are likely to prevent Iranian nuclear breakout for up to 15 years,” the new paper asserts. “At the same time, we assess that critical aspects of the JCPOA may fall short of the standards outlined.”
What happens when, at various points in the future, several provisions of the agreement expire, is of primary concern to several lawmakers and experts. Obama says Iran has made permanent commitments not to develop nuclear weapons technology; but critics say the accord legitimizes its work toward an industrial-sized uranium enrichment program, such that the Islamic Republic will become a nuclear threshold state.
In such a scenario, Tehran would have all the material required for a nuclear weapons program – thousands of advanced and operating centrifuges, a growing stockpile of uranium and a delivery system in the form of ballistic missiles, after an embargo on them ends – without recourse.
But the president says that, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran has been a member since 1970, Tehran cannot ever legitimately weaponize that program.
And Iran restated its commitment to that end in the JCPOA, the administration says.
Obama is arguing that critics of the JCPOA are the same people who supported the Iraq War – in his speech on Wednesday, in a conference call with supporters of his 2008 presidential campaign and in a private meeting with Jewish- American leaders at the White House on Tuesday night.
In that meeting, he noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the war and disapproved of the JPOA, an interim nuclear deal that structured the comprehensive negotiations, before supporting it.
Several Jewish groups have expressed concerns over the comparison.
And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is aggressively fighting the deal on Capitol Hill, rejected the assertion in a statement to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“AIPAC took no position whatsoever on the Iraq War nor did we lobby on this issue,” said Marshall Wittmann, spokesman for the organization.
At American University, Obama said that some critics are motivated, in part, by a “sincere affinity for our friend and ally, Israel,” and the concerns of its political leadership.
He said he shares that affinity, but fundamentally disagrees with the validity of the concerns.
Obama said that Israel is the only state in the entire world publicly opposed to the deal.
US Secretary of State John Kerry told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on Wednesday that if Congress were to shoot down the Iran nuclear agreement, it would be “the ultimate screwing” of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Kerry rejected Israel’s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying it “is as pro-Israel” as it gets.
Reneging on the nuclear agreement, which has the support of the major world powers, would constitute a setback for Washington and justify anti-American animus in Iran, he said.
“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said. “[Having Congress vote down the nuclear pact] will be the ultimate screwing.
“The United States Congress will prove the ayatollah’s suspicion, and there’s no way he’s ever coming back. He will not come back to negotiate. Out of dignity, out of a suspicion that you can’t trust America. America is not going to negotiate in good faith. It didn’t negotiate in good faith now, would be his point.”
Kerry commented on the vociferous opposition to the deal expressed by Israel, which the secretary referred to as “visceral” and “emotional.” He was adamant that the agreement was good for Israel’s geopolitical standing.
“I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets,” he said. “And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.”
Kerry said that he was “sensitive” to Israeli concerns over Iran’s long-term aims, but he rejected arguments made by Jerusalem that the Islamic Republic was planning its annihilation.
“I haven’t seen anything that says to me [that Iran will implement its vow of wiping Israel off the map],” he said. “They’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.
“I operate on the presumption that Iran is a fundamental danger, that they are engaged in negative activities throughout the region, that they’re destabilizing places and that they consider Israel a fundamental enemy at this moment in time,” Kerry said. “Everything we have done here [with the nuclear agreement] is not to overlook anything or to diminish any of that; it is to build a bulwark, build an antidote.”
The secretary said that the nuclear deal is even more imperative if Israel’s fears that Iran is plotting its destruction are true, since the agreement, according to him, effectively neutralizes Tehran’s nuclear program.
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

AIPAC tells Post that it rejects the assertion that it supported the Iraq War.

It is still difficult to predict how big of a majority in Congress, if it all, will reject the nuclear deal with Iran on September 17. This weekend, however, U.S. President Barack Obama suffered a setback when senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer decided to oppose the deal and jeopardize the Obama legacy.

And Schumer is not alone. In the House of Representatives, Congressmen Eliot Engel (New York), Steve Israel (New York) and Brad Sherman (California) have declared their opposition to the deal. Sherman, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, was the sixth Jewish Democrat to voice his opposition. He compared the deal to the movie “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” saying: “I might be willing to accept the good with the bad during the first year of the agreement. But we must force modifications of the agreement, and extensions of its nuclear restrictions, before it gets ugly.”

What, then, will Obama say now? Will he reiterate the petty and extremely political comparison he made last week in a speech at American University, when he said, “It’s those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.” Is it possible that the Democratic party also consists of these “hard-liners”?

Perhaps the president will continue playing the game, no less dangerous than the deal itself, in which he draws a connection between the “supporters of the Iraq war” to those opposing the deal, simultaneously sending a conspicuous hint to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC? Is the president unaware that at stake is the most important international agreement of the modern era? Does he not understand that this isn’t about a country’s economic fate (Greece), but a country’s existence (Israel)? And does the president not understand that since its establishment in 1951, this is perhaps AIPAC’s moment of truth?

Beware the revenge campaign

It’s a shame Obama is making the Iranian nuclear issue personal. Whoever is not with him is against him. Iran is the enemy, Mr. President. Not you. Iran is the enemy — not Israel. America is still the “Great Satan,” Israel is still the “Little Satan” and the ayatollahs still aren’t holy. Even the prominent Democratic supporter, Haim Saban, has understood the danger and has joined the opposition.

It is exceedingly rare for Congress to reject an administration decision related to foreign policy. To recall an instance of the Senate rejecting an agreement, we must go back to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the 14 Points plan proposed by one of the greatest American presidents, Woodrow Wilson (also a Democrat, also a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize that same year). That was nearly 100 years ago.

Obama needs to understand that this is not personal. All he has to do is peruse the comments made by supporters of the deal in order to understand why people in Israel, and in America, are very worried. Let’s take, for example, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York, who supports the deal. She admits the deal is “not perfect” and believes Iran will continue to lie and continue to get stronger. Could it be that the deal’s detractors aren’t actually “ignorant,” as the president, according to commentators, tried painting them as in his speech at American University? Perhaps they are simply seeing clearly?

And if someone is failing to understand why the polls suddenly flipped on Saturday — it’s because people have only just begun discovering the details of the deal. The Americans, for example, were stunned to learn during Secretary of State John Kerry’s congressional hearing that he was not versed in the details of the secret deal between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The important thing, however, is that here in Israel there are also those who support the deal. Maybe they know things that Kerry does not?

Obama already has the support of 16 Democratic senators. He needs 34 to back his presidential veto, which is certainly an attainable goal. We must pay attention to three scenarios:

• The first, and most likely, is that both houses of Congress reject the deal by less than a two-thirds majority. The president vetoes the decision, and manages to enlist a one-third minority of supporters. The deal passes, but with a large warning sign from Congress, which rejected it. The president compensates Israel with a handsome aid package and takes its views into account.

• The second and less likely possibility is that after 60 days, on September 17, Congress accepts the deal. This would be a magnificent achievement for the president, and a resounding failure for Israel. We can assume that in this scenario as well Israel would receive a compensation package, perhaps sweetening the bitter pill it has swallowed.

• The third scenario is that Congress rejects the deal. The president tries issuing a veto, but fails to enlist the required one-third minority of 34 senators. This would lead us to two possibilities. The first being that Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton comprehend Israel’s influence in Washington. Israel would be more involved in the Iranian issue. Iran would be free of the deal, but not from sanctions. But there is also the possibility that Obama, a lame and battered duck, would engage in an aggressive and bitter vengeance campaign (in the U.N. Security Council among other places). Could this prove to be more damaging than the nuclear deal itself? This campaign, however, would come with an expiration date, as election season has already begun in the United States. And according to television ratings for the Republican debate on Friday, America is already showing interest in the next president — man or woman.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dismisses President Barack Obama’s claim that only alternative to deal is war • “Real decision is whether Congress believes this deal is in our national interest,” Corker says.

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

The head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Saturday made the Republican case for blocking the nuclear deal reached last month between world powers and Iran.

In the weekly Republican party address, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee warned that the deal will give Iran access to hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, some of which he said the Iranian regime will use to fund terrorism.

“Iran will go from a weakened state to an economically robust country, without being forced to change any of its roguish, destructive behavior,” Corker said.

Corker said the Senate needs to have a thorough and thoughtful debate over the agreement, which he said “could be one of the most consequential votes” senators may cast during their time in Congress.

Congress has until Sept. 17 to consider a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal, which would eliminate U.S. President Barack Obama’s ability to waive all sanctions on Iran imposed by Congress, a key component of the agreement.

Corker dismissed Obama’s claim that the only alternative to the deal is war.

“The president has said repeatedly that this is a choice between accepting this deal or going to war,” Corker said. “It is not. Throughout the negotiations, the administration routinely asserted that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ and threatened to walk away if necessary. So clearly there was always another option for the White House — and it wasn’t war. Our nation’s top military general also confirmed that such a stark choice between this deal or war was never discussed during his conversations with the president. … The real decision for lawmakers isn’t this deal or war. The real decision is whether Congress believes this deal is in our national interest.”

Meanwhile, in a CNN to be aired on Sunday, Obama said a constructive relationship with Iran could be a byproduct of the deal to limit its nuclear program, but it won’t happen immediately, if at all.

Obama told CNN that Iran’s “nuclear problem” must be dealt with first. He said the agreement reached last month by Iran and six world powers to remove economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program achieves that goal “better than any alternative.”

Republican lawmakers largely disagree with the president’s assessment that the deal blocks Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, as do some of Obama’s own Democrats.

Obama says resolving the Iranian nuclear issue makes it possible to open broader talks with Iran on other issues. He named Syria as an example.

“Is there the possibility that having begun conversations around this narrow issue that you start getting some broader discussions about Syria, for example, and the ability of all the parties involved to try to arrive at a political transition that keeps the country intact and does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations. I think that’s possible,” Obama said, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms. “But I don’t think it happens immediately.”

Obama was interviewed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last Thursday, hours before Chuck Schumer, one of the Senate’s leading Democrats, announced that he would oppose the agreement. Obama has promised a swift veto if Congress rejects the deal. Lawmakers would then have to find enough votes to override the president.

The CNN interview was set to air as Obama vacations on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Obama was not expected to spend much, if any, time reaching out to lawmakers on the Iran nuclear deal while he is away from Washington.

“I think most of the president’s time on Martha’s Vineyard will be spent with his family or on the golf course or a bit of both,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. [Gail Sez: “Nero fiddles while Rome burns?!]

In the interview, Obama did not answer directly when asked whether he would have to use military force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon if the deal falls through.

“I have a general policy on big issues like this not to anticipate failure,” Obama said. “And I’m not going to anticipate failure now because I think we have the better argument.”

Obama also commented on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fierce opposition to the Iran deal, asserting that Netanyahu’s “interference” in U.S. affairs was unprecedented.

On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday he “profoundly disagrees” with the reasoning behind decisions by two prominent Democratic lawmakers to vote against the nuclear deal he negotiated with Iran.

Kerry said the facts do not bear out the arguments made by [Charles] Schumer and Eliot Engle, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Kerry said he respects the right of lawmakers to make their own decisions about the merits of the deal, but said rejection does not offer any alternative other than a drumbeat to conflict.

Schumer and Engel, both from New York, made their announcements on Thursday. Schumer was the first Democratic senator to say he will vote no on the deal.

Schumer, who is Jewish, complained that the pact does not allow inspections “anywhere, anytime” and that the U.S. cannot demand inspections unilaterally.

Kerry said he has great respect for both Engel and Schumer, and called Schumer a friend, noting he served with him in the Senate.

I obviously profoundly disagree with the judgements made,” Kerry said. He said that, with 25 years of uranium tracking, “it is physically impossible to build a bomb.”

“It’s a question of eliminating options in a realistic way,” he added. “I would respectfully suggest that rejection is not a policy for the future, it does not offer any alternative.”

Kerry said that if the deal is rejected, “there will be a hue and cry about Iran’s continued activity and that will lead people to put pressure on military action since the United States would have walked away from the diplomatic solution.”

At the Republican presidential debate on Thursday, candidates were nearly uniform in their condemnation of the Iran deal. Donald Trump, the eccentric businessman currently leading in the polls in the Republican race, called the deal a “disgrace” that would “lead to destruction in large portions of the world.”

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s favored candidate, said, “We need to stop the Iran agreement, for sure, because the Iranian mullahs have their blood on their hands.”

At Thursday’s debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if he is elected president.

8.The Lie that Broke Israel’s Back by Steve Apfel

Turn Middle East wars and laws upside down and any way you like, but the ‘West Bank’ is neither occupied nor Palestinian. Except that the world believes the Big Lie.

Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com Published: Sunday, August 09, 2015 12:50 PM

Steve Apfel The writer is a management accountant, lecturer, consultant, columnist and author based in Johannesburg. His books include, ‘Hadrian’s Echo: The whys and wherefores of Israel’s critics (2012); ‘War by other means’ (Contributor, Israel Affairs 2012), and the latest book, ‘Enemies of Zion’ to be published this year. A novel, ‘Balaam’s curse’ is in the pipeline.

It was November 2012, in the dead of winter, when the ghoul of a lie came back to haunt Israel. The specter, a paper tiger with young biting teeth, appeared in the assembly hall of the United Nations where diplomats are perpetually at daggers drawn. The ghoul was called ‘Observer with non-member status.’ This made it not quite real but not imaginary either, hence young teeth indicative of the latent threat it posed. But just for now Israel had to contend with a quasi-state called ‘Palestine.’

“A victory for the values of truth,” exclaimed Sudan’s diplomat after UN members voted to give Palestine that halfling status. In General Assembly ‘speak’, what he meant was a defeat for truth and a victory for a lie of long standing. For Israel it meant a threat, of historic proportions. For international law it meant relegation to a fun league. For the ruling clique that wanted the UN to create a new state it meant second prize. For nine-tenths of member countries it meant one step closer to rescinding the right of Israel to exist. For America and Europe it meant a new arm-twisting lever to get Israel to do their bidding. For all players it meant a whole new ballgame.

Now you see it now you don’t, OPT is a trick of smoke and mirrors, the stuff of mumbo jumbo.

The world body was called on “to create the state of Palestine on the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.” No one blinked. There is a catchphrase for every cause, and the anti-Israel cause can boast the Coca Cola of catchphrases, a mantra for many. ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (OPT) has the power to mesmerize. The mantra recurred some dozen times in a resolution that recalled many things and reaffirmed many others. And no one in that great assembly batted an eye, not even the Ambassador for Israel. Repeated ad nauseam, nonsense can pour into sense, plot can merge with policy, and fiction can turn to wisdom. The catchphrase-mantra made Israel’s defeat a long time in the making. When defeat came her ambassador took it stoically. A forty-year lie can do that – slip into the skin of truth with barely a sigh.

Historically, there’s never been Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy. Legally, Israel snapped up the territories fair and square from Egypt and Jordan. Logically, how can Israel be an occupier when no one else holds a lawful claim? Turn Middle East wars and laws upside down and any way you like, but the ‘West Bank’ is neither occupied nor Palestinian.

Expelled from one dugout, pro-Palestinians will scamper to another, firing the next volley from that landmark Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968. It’s the one that required Israel to withdraw from territory (only some) it snapped up in six days of war. The Palestinian camp says, ‘No; Resolution 242 told Israel to withdraw from all the territory.’ Some or all – quite how it connects to the narrative of OPT is not well explained, if at all. It may be a bridge too far for those that want ‘Palestine’ to prevail. But it cannot.

Resolution 242 nowhere refers to Palestinians. How could it? One, they were not a belligerent in the Six Day War. Two, the drafters of 242 may have looked to Israel the victor to give back territory, but to the defeated Arab belligerents, not to Palestinians. Three, not until a year after Resolution 242 do we find those people popping up in records. Four, no binding UN resolution, before or since, nor any treaty or agreement lent the Palestinians a legal leg to stand on. In sum, to speak of OPT is to speak in riddles, or to engage in wishful thinking. Yet, even encyclopedic law buffs are caught doing that.

Take Professor John Dugard, at one-time a sort of policeman-prosecutor for the UN Human Rights Commission. As Rapporteur his job was to investigate, rebuke and report on Israel’s bad conduct in the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories.’ That term again. OPT in his job title was bad enough without recurring in Dugard’s rebukes. “The Wall being built by Israel in the name of security penetrates deep into Palestinian territory.”

I took the liberty of asking Dugard to clarify: would he quote law to the effect that Israel occupies Palestinian territory? His answer came. With more holes than a ripe Swiss cheese.

‘I think it would be helpful if you were to read the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 9 July 2004 and the judgment of the High Court of Israel in the Beit Sourik case of 30 June 2004. They will provide you with answers to most of your questions and give you a better understanding of the legal norms that govern the situation.”

One advisory opinion and a case relating to Israel’s security barrier: they seem like nothing compared to the enormity of setting a country’s boundary. And there’s the problem of timing. The man started at the Human Rights Commission back in 2001. So from 2001 up to his two cases in 2004 he had no law to go by, meaning that he worked under a fake title and, like a doting father, took land from the bad boy (Occupied Palestinian Territories) to present to his favored boy. The verdict? For three years a legal authority quoted ad nauseam to give anti-Zionists the legal high ground, was acting as a law unto himself.

And that advisory opinion and that judgment? Do they “provide you with answers and give you a better understanding?“ They’re as fake as the UN lawyer’s grand title. To quote the High Court of Israel in the Beit Sourik case: The fence “is a security measure for the prevention of terror attacks and does not mark a national border or any other border”. As for the opinion of the ICJ, it stinks. It contained no rebuttal of the Israeli court’s judgment. There was no mention of the Israeli court’s judgment. In the ICJ’s opinion that judgment simply never was, and never will be, amen.

There’s not the faintest inkling that Professor Dugard was making law and history to order; that he was feeding a bias with more power than a sober professional judgment. No doubt he’d love Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ to have ‘Palestine’ stamped over them; but law and history are against ideologue Professors. They clamber onto an oh so plebian platform. They are more than premature; they’re presumptuous. Dugard and his successor Richard Falk anticipate a land swap agreement between two parties. They go over the head of the one in possession – Israel with 9/10 of the law in its favour. What makes professors behave like freshmen? Come to that, what makes a legal expert parade, fake title and all, like an avenging angel? “Israel will be held accountable for its violations of humanitarian law and human rights law.”

Better than law professors, the king of Jordan handled the big hoax honestly. King Hussein grasped why steps had to be taken to give OPT respectable clothes. As he told the 1988 Arab League summit in Amman: “The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.” The monarch was explaining why a new and distinct people had to be concocted in 1968. After all, what Arab leader liked the thought of the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza belonging to Israel by dint of war and law?

The task of dressing the coveted land in respectable clothes was given to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a clique led by a badly-shaved Egyptian in keffiyeh and khaki drills. Smartly, it went to work on the PLO covenant. Article 24 was the big one. Erasing words here, inking new words in there, the inner circle soon unpacked a people still with straw clinging to beards…And gave them a holy mission. On July 17, 1968 the Palestinian people sprang from the PLO Charter, claiming the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza as an ancient birthright and heritage.

How was it all done? Step-by-step, with eraser and ink. The first thing that had to be erased was an obsolete declaration that the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza were not occupied (by Jordan and Egypt.) This made it possible to declare that the territories were occupied (by Israel.) Now for the coup de grace. The Palestinian people were sworn to liberate their Israeli occupied homeland.

But an important finishing touch had to be made. Article 24 of the Charter contained the offending words, “Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians.” Of course Palestinian Jews were an impossible thing. After erasing them for posterity, the PLO men wrote in a definition with a grudge. Palestinians were now people, “who had resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion.” At a stroke Palestinian Jews thus became invaders.

Immediately world spotlights turned on the new people, dispossessed, and on the new culprit. Leaders in perpetuity lost no time decorating, enlarging and tidying up a tale of Jews who had swept down from Europe to put indigenous Palestinians under their colonial boot. From there it was but a quickstep to the accepted wisdom of Occupied Palestinian Territories.

But OPT developed into more than a risible lie. It acquired the power to create facts on the ground. For one thing, the international community, hung up on the notion of ‘consensus’ backed by kangaroo opinions in and out of court, adopted OPT. For another, a vocal section of the Diaspora, and Israelis even, nailed their colors to the mast. For a third, an economic bubble developed around OPT. Monthly pay slips of untold thousands of UN staffers came to depend on that real estate. UNWRA alone developed into an employment agency on a grand scale. In the private sector, hundreds of human rights entities and workers would be the poorer without OPT. The world over it’s the article of faith on which anti-Zionists peg their zeal. Their god demands little: hate Zionism and revere occupied Palestinians. Hence the daily invocations: Label products from OPT. Boycott Israel and divest from OPT.

9.Questions to the Enemies of Israel by Giulio Meotti

An open letter with hard questions that need answering on the ground.

Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com Published: Sunday, August 09, 2015 7:14 AM

by Giulio Meotti, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. R. Halevy co-authored this article.

Israel has many enemies around the world, not only in Gaza and in Teheran. There are many also in the Western media, in the “humanitarian” NGOs and legal forums, in the European Parliaments and United Nations, in the US Congress and think tanks, and in Israeli society itself.

This is a kind of open letter to them. Against their hypocrisy and thinly veiled hatred.

Which is the only country in the world that has its very existence and legitimacy constantly denied and disputed by the nations of the world?

Which is the only country in the world whose capital city is not recognized by those nations?

Which is the only country in the world that has its very existence and legitimacy constantly denied and disputed by the nations of the world?
Which is the only country in the world, where a certain city council could authorize the construction of a few houses and apartments, and all those nations would rise up in anger and protest, while hundreds of thousands of people are being killed for decades in countless places (some of them quite close to that small country) because of cruel wars, without attracting any interest?

Which is the only country in the world that allows a citizen to be elected as a member of parliament, who would publicly vow for the annihilation of his own country and its invasion by alien armies, without his being arrested, summarily tried for treason and expelled?

Which is the only country in the world which hosts and embraces over 400 (four hundred!) non-governmental organizations funded by their worst enemies’ dirty money and, who, with their blood-stained hands, work non-stop, 24 hours a day, to propagate globally the de-humanization of their own people and the illegitimacy of the ownership of their own land?

Which is the only country in the world that grants religious freedom to the worshippers of any sect, religion or group, except for the citizens that profess their major, millennial faith?

Which is the only country in the world which has in the very heart of its capital (its holiest site) a huge area kept under the operational control of a foreign hostile entity, the result being that in this most holy place their own citizens have no freedom of movement, expression or worship?

Which is the only country in the world where an innocent youth publicly declares that “The Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One” and he is immediately arrested for that, by the police who receive their salary from him, to protect him?

Which is the only country in the world where a terrorist (known among the liberals as “freedom fighter”) cowardly kills dozens of innocent people, gets arrested and jailed in a five-star prison – much more comfortable than his own house, where he can graduate and get his master and doctor degree if he wishes, at the expense of the families of his very victims?

Which is the only country in the world that, invaded by several hostile nations which try to destroy it, manages to defeat them in a humiliating way and, shortly after winning the defensive war gives to one of the defeated aggressors – totally free of charge – a part of its territory larger than its own final area, in exchange for a worthless piece of paper, while the citizens of the country which received the gift keep on distilling their historical hatred, more than 30 years thereafter?

Which is the only country in the world which fully respects the rights of women and every kind of ethnic, religious and gender minorities, notwithstanding it is unanimously condemned by so-called “liberals” throughout the world, accused of being the worst violator of human rights?

Which is the only country in the world, accused of “apartheid”, where citizens belonging to all minorities enjoy full civil and voting rights, access to public education, health, social security, college education and every other possible rights?

Which is the only country in the world that, upon trying to restrict illegal immigration of foreign citizens who infiltrate through its borders – exactly as every other country in the world does – is globally accused of discrimination and racism?

Which is the only country in the world where the defense forces distribute millions of leaflets to the enemy, warning them to evacuate their civil buildings used as weapon caches, before attacking them, and the enemy sends their own children, women and elderly people to the rooftops, to die in place of their cowardly leaders?

Which is the only country in the world where the army warns the enemy before bombing their ammunition storages, and the world media depicts is as “cruel” and “inhuman”?

Which is the only country in the world which, in order to avoid civilian casualties among their enemy, sends its own beloved sons to death on land missions, instead of simply carpet bombing the enemy as all other nations do?

Which is the only country in the world that would propose to make peace with an enemy who openly declares before the world media, verbally and in writing, his intention to annihilate it and to seize all its territory “from the river to the sea”?

Which is the only country in the world that would, in exchange for the remains of two young rank-and-file soldiers, who perished in combat several years ago, liberate from prison dozens of bloodthirsty terrorists jailed for murdering innocent children?

Which is the only country in the world that uproots thousands of peace-loving and hard-working citizens from a territory conquered in a legitimate self-defense war, then gives this land to the defeated enemy – once more, totally free of charge – and in gratitude receives tens of thousands of rockets, but still doesn’t bomb the enemy to the point of their unconditional surrender?

Which is the only country in the world whose boundaries, conquered with blood throughout several wars always initiated by the enemies, are continuously challenged by all nations – from the major democracies until the lowest, tiniest underdeveloped dictatorship – while history books clearly show us that the boundaries of all modern countries achieved their current status (still changing) through successive wars and conquests, as very seldom has a peace treaty resulted in significant return or exchange of land between winners and losers?

Which is the only country in the world where a terrorist could slay dozens of innocent civilians in a traitorous attack, get severely wounded, have his unworthy life saved by those he hates and, shortly after recovering his health, commit new deadly terror attacks?

Which is the only country in the world that received directly from the Creator of the Universe its land, by means of an irrevocable, eternal covenant recorded in the most read and revered book of all ages, yet the same mankind who daily reads such book, and even swears upon it, do not recognize its right to such land?

Which is the only country in the world that sends the enemy thousands of trucks loaded with cement and other materials, in order to help him build houses, schools and hospitals, and those who receive such gift use it to make tunnels designed to invade the country and kill its innocent children and civilian population? (and that insane country keeps on sending more and more trucks!!)

Which is the only country in the world that, in order to recover alive a single soldier kidnapped for five years by the enemy, grants freedom to five hundred terrorists with blood in their hands (including the blood of babies), and those beasts right away start to kill more innocent people a few days after obtaining their freedom?

Which is the only country in the world that builds underground shelters to protect the civilians from war against the enemy and, when attacked by rockets, promotes the immediate evacuation of their citizens into the shelters, only to hear a general protest from the nations: “how is it possible that so few of them died??”, while the enemy uses its own women, children and elder people as a shield, exposing them to death in the highest possible number, so that they may shed crocodile tears before the nations about the “disproportionality of the conflict”?

Which is the only country in the world where the government would supply millions in generous subsidies and sponsorships to all kinds of cultural, sport, religious, political etc. causes (including toxic activities which damage the population’s and the country’s image), and yet a significant part of their population even dedicates their whole lives and energies, night and day, to strangle and cut down the modest budget allocated to a small fraction of their own brothers who consecrate their lives to the study and practice of the Holy Scriptures?

Which is the only country in the world that performs amazing technical and scientific research, which revolutionizes the world daily and improves the quality of life of billions of people, in the areas of agriculture, health, computers, airspace, telecommunications etc., and as a great thank-you from the nations that enjoy such benefits, obtains worldwide campaigns for boycotting their fruits, flowers and all kinds of products – even against their musicians, orchestras, theater groups and university professors! – all in the name of a supposed solidarity to a certain people “oppressed by cruel occupation”?

Which is the only country in the world that had its people expelled, tortured and persecuted throughout millennia by the nations, who would say to them “you don’t belong here; go away to your own land!!” and now that this people has returned to its historical land, the hypocritical nations say: “leave that land!! It doesn’t belong to you, you are illegal occupants!!”?

Well, at this point everyone should know the answer to all questions above.

I’d suggest each reader analyze the facts, check whether there is any inconsistency or injustice in their way of thinking, and arrive to his/her own conclusions about this tiny country and its people, who only wish to be left alone and live in peace on the land the Creator promised them, and to coexist in harmony with all nations of the Earth.

Questions to the Enemies of Israel by Giulio Meotti

10.Sharia-ism Is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else

by Joy Brighton Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus, Special to IPT News, August 6, 2015

A short 15 years ago, the larger American public was completely ignorant of the vocabulary of jihad.

Now some terms that once were italicized and considered foreign—because they were foreign—have become woven into our daily consciousness and news vocabulary.

But to still far too many, the terms introduced by the terror tsunami of the past decade and a half are still fuzzy. In Sharia-Ism Is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else, author Joy Brighton brings clarity, citations, history and important supportive documentation to bear to clear up any uncertainty as to the differences between Sunni and Shi’a, laws and customs, and the whole directory of confusing terms.

Until now, most citizens of the land of the free and home of the brave didn’t have a handle on what those words scrawled on walls in the Middle East, on placards during carefully planned “protests” calling for Death to America, Death to Israel!, or shouted down to audiences from mosque pulpits around the Umma (Arab world) even denote. Taqiyyah? What’s that?

When you know the words, you can describe the problem, address the situation, define a solution, and debate the disposition. But Brighton does far more than just provide a critically needed clarification to the arcana of Arabic terms and misunderstandings swirling in the media cloud since the horror of 9/11 struck the innocence of the country like razor lightning.

Sharia-Ism Is Here digs deeper than a dissection and clarification of Islamic idioms and vocabulary. The author analyzes the underpinnings of Sharia-ism, a term she crafted to represent the despotic system of Islamic laws that routinely runs counter to the U.S. Constitution and western egalitarianism, while demoting women to second-class citizens and non-Muslims to even less. She asks, Is Sharia-ism a religious movement against the West or is it a political one?

We must, of course, learn the words. Brighton provides clear descriptive explanations in graphics, with helpful charts and useful photos. Terms that were mysterious challenges in Scrabble 20 years ago, such as “dhimmitude,” “da’wa,” “zakat,” “jizya,” “taqiyyah” and the many faces of apostasy are laid out not only with explanation, but documentation of when and how they are used in media, speeches by the clerics, documentation for the faithful, in the news columns.

Brighton outlines the witting and unwitting enablers of sharia-ism in this country, focusing on former Vice President Al Gore. When Gore originally sold the rights to his TV network to al Jazeera, with an enormous ready-made audience of some 40 million Americans (plus some Canadians), many defenders objected to characterizations of al-Jazeera “news” as distorted, biased, anti-West and anti-Semitic: Its modus operandi has been to promote false and incendiary stories about the U.S., Israel and the moderate Arab world within a false veneer of trying to seem like a legitimate news outlet.

Several years of programming have proved these detractors right. Many journalists hired from legitimate news outlets have left in disgust, as the original mandate for unbiased news has disintegrated. Staffers now admit that the channel is biased against the West, against the U.S., against Israel and any faith group other than Islam. Several are pursuing lawsuits against the network elites because, true to form and the dictates of Sharia-ism practice, women are mistreated, ignored, paid less, and discounted for raises or promotions.

If you have hearkened up to al Jazeera and have this handbook, you have won half the battle. Before its publication, few had the goods to dispute what was being broadcast with attractive news anchors, their silken voices and well-coifed heads mouthing one thing in English, quite another in declarative Arabic.

This is a book that provides an in-depth response to that new legal stranglehold exerted on those who dare to spill the truth about Sharia manifestations in the country and the world. Legal “lawfare” is limned, with some of its recent victims, a slow-but-steady strategy to silence those who dare to criticize Islam or any of its savage and primitive manifestations. Lawfare stealthily and expensively aims to vitiate the First Amendment, using often flimsy and tenuous excuses for lawsuits attacking well-researched and noble authors seeking to tell the truth about scurrilous regimes, dictatorial excesses against women and children. Or the blatant censorship of TV icons like the satiric geniuses of “South Park” and “Draw Mohammed” conferences such as the one held in Garland, Texas, which drew two would-be assassins to murder the free speech organizer of that event, Pamela Geller, and its attendees. We read the advent of “libel tourism” whipping scholars like Rachel Ehrenfeld in a landmark case that spurred protective legislation.

If you shut down writers by bankrupting them in court, you win the battle to mute their criticism.

Chapters on certain imams in U.S. mosques include charismatic indoctrinators in Jihad and recruiters for terrorist plots on American soil, notorious campus derelictions, even terrorist front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), born directly out of Hamas, but invited to the White House, State Department and treated uncritically by the mainstream media under their patently false veneer as absurdly re-invented “civil rights” groups.

Readers get the pillars of the terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt and the States: “Jihad is our way; Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Unique on the library and bookstore shelves, the book is a handsome must-have. It charms the reader to browse through chapter after chapter, study the colored flags, diagrams, personalities, call-out quotes and famous celebrities on the multi-various aspects of the insidious Sharia-ism arena. After a thorough browse, the book is an invaluable tool to refer to when newspaper op-eds – or the current pro-Islamist/anti-Israel White House administration, in speeches long on fantasy, short on fact – whitewash the dangers of radical Islamism, refusing even to utter that term.

This is a must-have book that will dispel the phobias, ignorance and PC’isms annexed to the cauldron of Islamism today. Armed with this comprehensive reference, one can fight back the deliberate apologists for radical Islam in today’s PC culture.

This is an account that is politically imperative and historically critical to read and even memorize if one wants to join a new cultural war designed to roll back the insidious growth of Islamism throughout American society.

As many savvy pols have noted, he who defines terms wins the battle. Which is where Brighton starts: Words? Phrases. Shibboleths. Speakers of the words? Spinners of the lies. As well as defenders of democracy. Brighton does not shy away from naming those who fail to combat or recognize the reality of the entire spectrum encompassing the threat of radical Islam from politicians to the high priesthoods of mainstream journalism from the editorial boards at the Washington Post to the New York Times that reflexively embrace the Islamists’ fabricated claims of “Islamophobia,” a term designed with one purpose only: to intimidate, silence and smear the critics of radical Islam. Our leaders fail to identify the reality of jihad and so many of the extremist ideological fanatics bent on world conquest.

Just so, Brighton’s book aims to de-fang the opposition, ignorance, by slicing away at the fuzzy foundations of poor understanding.

Brighton holds nothing back in setting out the degrees of difference in those seeking to establish their woeful global caliphate. It’s a preemptive stare at the works of the juggernaut Ozymandius, what it takes to keep it all in bloody motion. More than one pundit has predicted its implosion and demise. The jury, however, is still out.

Take-away: A pleasing, uniquely sized, soft-cover guidebook with pages of photos and the necessary evidence of an ultimately planned destruction of the West.

Marion DS Dreyfus writes frequently for major publications on terrorism, politics and immigration; art, film and theatre. She teaches at the college level in the New York area and travels extensively, learning about the subjects she writes by extensive personal research.

12.

Can Mort Klein Doubt Veracity of Duma Village Arson Stories without Being Dubbed ‘Jewish Extremist?’ Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein on Tuesday cautioned against jumping to conclusions on the Duma arson. By: JNi.Media JewishPress.com Published: Aug. 6, 2015

Graffiti on the burnt house in Duma.

(JNi.media) Israeli Right-wing Jews who also consider themselves sane, even liberal-minded, have been hit recently by three painful events that brought on a portrayal of faithful Jews as bloodthirsty, xenophobic and homophobic terrorists.

There was the mid-June burning of a portion of a Catholic Church near the Kinneret, which, thank God, did not claim any lives, and then, last Thursday came the mad stabbing of six gay pride parade marchers in Jerusalem, which left a 16-year-old girl dead, and last Friday the burning of a house in the Arab village of Duma, that resulted in the death of an infant.

And while the case could be made that the crazed stabber, Ultra-Orthodox Yishai Schlissel does not represent anyone, the entire world is convinced at this point that “extremist Jews” were responsible for the criminal arson in Duma.

Except that, so far, Israel’s law enforcement agencies, which have focused enormous resources on the case, are unable to show any proof as to the identity of the suspect.

And so, is it possible the perpetrators were not Jewish? Moreover, is it possible for one to make such a suggestion and not be immediately cast aside as an apologist for Jewish extremism, or even of being a Jewish extremist himself?

The fact by itself that Jews have not been caught over the Duma case does not mean that it wasn’t committed by a “Jewish extremist,” because the loosely organized, mostly young Jews who are filed under this category are difficult, if not impossible to penetrate. This is the reason Israel’s government this week decided to apply to them its most anti-democratic legal means, administrative detention, which, essentially, punishes a person not for the crimes he committed, but for the crimes police know he wants to commit.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Netanyahu government—much like right-wing Jews everywhere—is under a fierce and relentless attack over the Duma case, which was a dream-come-true for those engaged in anti-Israeli propaganda.

The Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo agreed on Wednesday to call on the UN to protect the Palestinians from “terrorist crimes” by Israeli settlers.

Now, Israeli settlers face daily terrorist attacks on the highways, in bus stops, in their fields. Only two days ago a young Jewish woman was firebombed in her car in Jerusalem by an Arab and was rushed to hospital with severe burns on 20% of her body. The story didn’t make any of the world’s news outlets. It was barely covered in Israel.

As many have pointed out, the Duma baby death is a classic “Man bites dog” story.

And yet, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insists that “the Arab Group (at the UN) must act to submit a draft resolution to the Security Council concerning terrorist crimes by Israeli settler groups against the Palestinian people.”

The question remains, though: is it possible to suggest that the arson in Duma village may not have been committed by Jews?

Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein on Tuesday cautioned against jumping to conclusions on the Duma arson.

“It is inappropriate to rush to cast blame on Jews for the fire at an Arab home in Duma in last week in view of the minimal, contradictory, and questionable evidence reported thus far – and in view of the numerous instances in which Arabs have fabricated attacks or blamed Jews for Arab violence against other Arabs,” Klein said, demanding that “a full investigation should be done to determine responsibility. And of course, whoever is responsible for this attack – whether Jew or Arab – should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

However, he added, the available evidence “raises strong suspicions that the fire last week was the continuation of an 18-year-old feud between two Arab clans in Duma.”

The Dawabsha family house stands in the middle of Duma, making it “extremely difficult for Israeli Jews to reach and then to depart from the center of a hostile Arab village without being detected,” Klein wrote.

And then there’s the matter of the Hebrew graffiti. Over the past few years, a similar “extremist” Jewish element has gained notoriety for their “Price Tag” operation, where they would graffiti intimidating messages on the walls of homes belonging to Israelis on the left, and cause damage to Arab property, also accompanied by nasty graffiti.

In several cases involving arson against mosques, monasteries and churches, the Hebrew graffiti looked suspicious, both in terms of vocabulary and handwriting analysis. One of the two graffiti slogans on the walls of the Duma house, stating “Long live the King Messiah,” with a little, slanted crown over the last word, is also questionable, as has been pointed out by some experts.

The choice of the slogan itself, which is decidedly related to the Chabad Chassidic movement, is curious, although it doesn’t rule out the possibility that an “extremist Jew” wrote it.

The handwriting has four suspicious features:

1. The letter Khaf at the end of Melech was clearly first written as a mid-word khaf, and then a line was added, to make it a final-khaf. It’s an afterthought, possibly by someone who is not well versed in writing Hebrew.

2. The two letters Heh in the beginning of the second and third words are completely different from one another.

3. Likewise the two letters Chet in the first and third words.

4. Likewise the two letters Mem in the second and third words. Again, not being well versed in handwritten Hebrew does not rule out a Jewish perpetrator, but it certainly raises the possibility that they weren’t Jewish.

Klein noted a case this week, in Lod, Israel, where a local Arab blamed three “settlers” for attacking him, describing them down to their knitted yarmulkes and fringes, only to admit eventually that he was actually beaten up by local Arabs.

“Palestinian Arab terrorists have repeatedly borrowed from [the] Nazi playbook, staging and fabricating incidents to blame on (non-existent) Jewish ‘extremists’ and Israel,” Klein wrote.

“If it turns out that Jewish individuals were responsible, those individuals should be arrested, prosecuted, and punished to the full extent of the law. However, if this incident turns out to be another ‘blame the Jews’ Arab hoax, the facts should be broadcast with the same fanfare that blame was precipitously cast on Israeli Jews,” Klein insisted.