Off topic: World War I 1914-1918

The assassination that triggered  a series of events that led to the  First World War happened exactly one hundred years ago, today.  What follows is the presentation given in school two years ago by my then  8-year-old son Eitan, reproduced here with his permission:

Slide 1

                           Word War I   1914-1918

Slide 2

How did it all start?

A Serbian man by the name of Gavrilo Princip  assassinated  Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne

Caption under the photos:   The assassinated, the assassin

Slide 3

Following the assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Empire  declared war on Serbia

Allied powers: England, France, Italy, Russia,  United States, Serbia    vs

Central powers: Austro–Hungarian Empire, Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria

Slide 4

Map of Europe before the war

Slide 5

Map of Europe after the war

Slide 6

After the war the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated and the following countries were born: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Hungary

Slide 7

The First World War was a war in the trenches

 Slide 8

What did they fight with?

British tank                             German gun – Big Bertha

British airplane                         German airplane

 Slide 9

A part of the war even took place in Be’er Sheva . On 31st October 1917 the Australian Light Brigade arrived to take the city from the Turks

Slide 10

On 11th of November 1918 at 11 a.m. the armistice was signed between the Allied and Central powers. This was a very deadly war - 15 000 000 people were killed

 Slide 11

The Treaty of Versailles was signed of 28 June 1919.

 Slide 12

The End                                       By  Eitan

And a slightly different perspective, from Winston S. Churchill’s  "The World Crisis", Volume I, pages 204, 205, Charles Schribner's Sons, New York 1923, renewed in 1951.

The discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was about to separate, when the quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice were heard reading a document which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. He had being reading or speaking for several minutes before I could disengage my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just closed. We were all very tired, but gradually as the phrases and sentences followed one another impressions of a wholly different character began to form in my mind. This note was clearly an ultimatum; but it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times. As the reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible graduations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.

I always take the greatest interest in reading accounts of how the war came upon different people; where they were, and what they were doing, when the first impression broke on their mind, and they first began to feel this overwhelming event laying its fingers on their lives. I never tire of the smallest detail, and I believe that so long as they are true and unstudied they will have a definite value and an enduring interest for posterity...

Update May 5, 2018

Here is an excellent presentation on the causes of WWI by Christopher Clark

Update May 26, 2018

Now that I am half way through it, I realize Christopher Clark's book has become indispensable to the understanding of the mess that led to WWI 

A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat

From the New English Review

Does Iran/ North Korean Nuclear & ICBM Development Preclude A P5+1 Agreement?

Reuel Marc Gerecht, Senior Fellow of the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies published a book review in Friday’s Wall Street Journal by former Pentagon official, Matthew Kroenig, A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat. Matthew Kroenig is an Associate Professor and International Relations Field Chair in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Kroenig, who served under former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, presents a thesis that the only way to stop the Islamic regime in Tehran from achieving nuclear hegemony is for the US, not Israel, to bomb several key facilities in Iran. The suggested targets are the centrifuge enrichment centers at Fordow and Natanz, the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, and the plutonium producing heavy water reactor at Arak. Why? Because as Gerecht relates, the sanctions regime has not deterred Iran from investing over $100 billion in the project to achieve nuclear hegemony replete with the means of delivery. Further, as he points out in his review, the US has the means to seriously cripple those facilities with 30,000 pound bunker busting deep penetrating bombs. The hoped for Stuxnet malworm and other cyber warfare is past. Gerecht notes in his review, they have only “gummed up” the whirling centrifuges enriching weapons grade uranium. Neither does he believe that targeted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, allegedly by Mossad, has put a dent in Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear capability. Given that the current P5+1 discussions with Iran seeking to perfect a final agreement with a deadline of July 20^th, Gerecht makes this prediction:

Next month in Vienna, Iran and the P5+1 world powers will extend the interim agreement they struck six months ago on Iran's nuclear program. Secretary of State John Kerry will hold a press conference, offering both sides solemn praise for finding common ground. All the while, through this tough compromise and historic collaboration, the Islamic Republic's 9,000 spinning centrifuges will keep on enriching uranium; the other 10,000 installed centrifuges won't be dismantled. Eventually these centrifuges, or thousands of new-and-improved ones, will be able to produce bomb-grade fuel.

Kroenig cautions:

Why would anyone believe that we would fight a nuclear war with Iran if we didn't even have the stomach for a conventional war with a nonnuclear Iran?

Gericht’s conclusion from his review of Kroenig’s, A Time to Attack:

Mr. Kroenig readily admits that there will be costs for preventive military action. Tehran will likely respond with terrorism, directly or through proxies. But Mr. Kroenig contends that those costs are much lower than allowing Iran to go nuclear. Whether or not he's right, we will soon find out.

Watch this May 12, 2014  C-SPAN Book TV discussion with Prof. Kroenig about A Time to Attack.

Problem is that the Obama Administration failed to foster regime change in Iran in the fraudulent elections of June 2009. Israel and many others concerned over Iran’s rising hegemony in the Middle East believe that America doesn’t have the will and the unity to undertake what Kroenig suggests. Just look at the President latest tracking poll numbers; less than 37% of American thinks that he is pursuing foreign policies protecting our nation’s interests.

Claudia Rosett in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal  published an op ed, Iran Could Outsource Its Nuclear –Weapons Program to North Korea. Rosett commented:

The pieces have long been in place for nuclear collaboration between the two countries. North Korea and Iran are close allies, drawn together by decades of weapons deals and mutual hatred of America and its freedoms. Weapons-hungry Iran has oil; oil-hungry North Korea makes weapons. North Korea has been supplying increasingly sophisticated missiles and missile technology to Iran since the 1980s, when North Korea hosted visits by Hasan Rouhani (now Iran's president) and Ali Khamenei (Iran's supreme leader since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989).

In the March edition of the NER, we published a piece entitled, Has Iran Developed Nuclear Weapons in North Korea?  We wrote:

The UN nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA has no access to North Korean nuclear facilities. These developments corroborate the assessment of private intelligence and national security analyst Ilana Freedman. See The Freedman Report on Januay31st, "A Friendlier Iran? Or Have They Just Moved Their Nukes to North Korea?“

Rosett in the WSJ op ed lays out the case for what the NER article demonstrated was a plausible means of evading sanctions. The evidence for that we noted was North Korean/ Iranian cooperation with Assad’s Syria creating a plutonium reactor on the Euphrates at Al Kibar destroyed by Israel’s Air Force in September 2007. We drew attention to Iranian/ North Korean joint development of large rocket boosters sufficient to loft nuclear MIRV warheads and the likelihood that Iran might have that capability within a few years. In June 2014, The Algemeiner reported an Iranian official announcing that it possessed a 5,000 kilometer (approximately 3,125 miles) range missile that could hit the strategic base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean:

“In the event of a mistake on the part of the United States, their bases in Bahrain and (Diego) Garcia will not be safe from Iranian missiles,” said an Iranian Revolutionary Guard adviser to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Majatba Dhualnuri.

Kroenig wrote in his book:

Iran is building ICBMs No country on Earth, not even the United States, mounts conventional warheads on ICBMs. Traditionally, ICBMs have had one purpose: to deliver nuclear warheads thousands of miles away. If Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, then why does it have such a robust ICBM development program?

The clock is ticking on  P5+1 and Iran endeavoring to reach an agreement by July 20^th. Five days of talks in Vienna ended yesterday. They will reconvene on July 2^nd and may or may not conclude with an agreement on July 20^th.  The Wall Street Journal in a report on those negotiations contrasted the views of US Negotiator, Deputy Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, with those of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.  It noted that the talks ended without a joint statement. Sherman said: “We are at a very crucial moment in these negotiations. Our Conversations this week have been very tough but constructive.”  Zarif commented that only a deal could emerge if the US backed away from what he termed were “excessive demands.” “I advised them to think more seriously and to be realistic and to look for a solution.” Translated that means, we are poles apart. Meanwhile those centrifuges at Fordow and Natanz keep whirling enriching uranium while Iranian/ North Korean joint ICBM and MIRV development continue.  If we were bettors, we’d put even money on Gericht’s prediction: no agreement by July 20th or even six months hence. 

Off topic: Abdication has a price

By  CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office.

Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obama’s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.

By 2009, al-Qaeda in Iraq had not just been decimated but humiliated by the U.S. surge and the Anbar Awakening. Here were aggrieved Sunnis, having ferociously fought the Americans who had overthrown 80 years of Sunni hegemony, now reversing allegiance and joining the infidel invader in crushing, indeed extirpating from Iraq, their fellow Sunnis of al-Qaeda.

At the same time, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned the Iraqi army against radical Shiite militias from Basra all the way north to Baghdad.

US President Barack Obama speaks on the situation in Iraq on June 19, 2014 in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC

The result? “A sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” That’s not Bush congratulating himself. That’s Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it “an extraordinary achievement.”

Which Obama proceeded to throw away. David Petraeus had won the war. Obama’s one task was to conclude a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to solidify the gains. By Obama’s own admission — in the case he’s now making for a status-of-forces agreement with Afghanistan — such agreements are necessary “because after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains” achieved by war.

Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obama’s determination to “end the war.” He had three years to negotiate a deal and didn’t even begin talks until a few months before the deadline period.

He offered to leave about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, a ridiculous number. U.S. commanders said they needed nearly 20,000. (We have 28,500 in South Korea and 38,000 in Japan to this day.) Such a minuscule contingent would spend all its time just protecting itself. Iraqis know a nonserious offer when they see one. Why bear the domestic political liability of a continued U.S. presence for a mere token?

Moreover, as historian Max Boot has pointed out, Obama insisted on parliamentary ratification, which the Iraqis explained was not just impossible but unnecessary. So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.

The result was predictable. And predicted. Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq. The day after the U.S. departure, Maliki ordered the arrest of the Sunni vice president. He cut off funding for the Sons of Iraq, the Sunnis who had fought with us against al-Qaeda. And subsequently so persecuted and alienated Sunnis that they were ready to welcome back al-Qaeda in Iraq — rebranded in its Syrian refuge as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — as the lesser of two evils. Hence the stunningly swift ISIS capture of Mosul, Tikrit and so much of Sunni Iraq.

But the jihadist revival is the result of a double Obama abdication: creating a vacuum not just in Iraq but in Syria. Obama dithered and speechified during the early days of the Syrian revolution, before the jihadists had arrived, when the secular revolt was systematically advancing on the Damascus regime.

Hezbollah, Iran and Russia helped the regime survive. Meanwhile, a jihadist enclave (including remnants of the once-routed al-Qaeda in Iraq) developed in large swaths of northern and eastern Syria. They thrived on massive outside support while the secular revolutionaries foundered waiting vainly for U.S. help.

Faced with a de facto jihadi state spanning both countries, a surprised Obama now has little choice but to try to re-create overnight, from scratch and in miniature, the kind of U.S. presence — providing intelligence, tactical advice and perhaps even air support — he abjured three years ago

His announcement Thursday that he is sending 300 military advisers is the beginning of that re-creation — a pale substitute for what we long should have had in place but the only option Obama has left himself. The leverage and influence he forfeited with his total withdrawal will be hard to reclaim. But it’s our only chance to keep Iraq out of the hands of the Sunni jihadists of ISIS and the Shiite jihadists of Tehran.

Political correctness as euphemism for political cowardice

Miloš Zeman, the president of the Czech Republic, in his speech on Israel’s Independence Day said:

“There is a term, political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly.”

  

He was right. More than three weeks after this remarkable speech these words have been validated by the very country he so valiantly defended - Israel. His speech, as far as I know, has not been published in full by any Israeli mainstream paper or site. No political analyst commented on his speech. His speech remains virtually unknown to Israeli readers. He is apparently considered a hot potato.  

The reason jihadists like Hamas have such an impact on Israel is not their inherent strength but our political correctness i.e. political cowardice to point to what they believe in.  Even today, with Hamas accused of kidnapping the three Israeli teens, I have yet to see an Israeli paper which would quote Article 7 of the Hamas Charter:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

Or even less likely, quote the Hadith where Article 7 is taken from:   

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

When will we see an Israeli politician’s staff answer the way Milos Zeman’s did?

" For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text.”

Iran and the Bomb - Bret Stephens - The Wall Street Journal

Dry Bones: Crazy

Enabling Iran's Nuclear Program while Vowing to Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

Andrew McCarthy, the Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the Blind Sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman), has just published a book Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment

On Iran, he writes: (page 125)

ARTICLE IV

FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Enabling Iran's Nuclear Program while Vowing to Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

The president and his subordinates have engaged in diplomatic negotiations that facilitate Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons despite his oft-repeated public pledge that the United States, under his leadership, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he and his administration have concealed from the American people an agreement with the Iranian government - a longtime, avowed enemy of the American people - about how a "Plan of Action" enabling Iran to enrich uranium will be implemented.

Having turned a deaf ear to the Iranian people in 2009 when they were being crushed while attempting to rise up against their totalitarian regime - the leading state sponsor of jihadist terror - President Obama reached out in 2013 to the Iran's regime new front man, President Hassan Rouhani.

Despite numerous prior public assurances that the United States, under his leadership, would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the president and his subordinates have entered an "interim" agreement with the Iranian regime that enables Iran to continue enriching uranium. The express concession that Iran may enrich uranium guts years of UN Security Council resolutions against Iran's uranium enrichment activities. It further concedes the Iranian government's claimed right to enrich uranium.

The Iranian government aptly regards this agreement as a “surrender” by the United States. Rouhani publicly boasted in a tweet that “world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will." Moreover, Iran’s  foreign minister insists that, contrary to Obama administration claims, the regime “did not agree  to dismantle anything” in its nuclear or ballistic program.

In November 2013, the president and his subordinates and the administrations of five other major nations, struck a “Joint Plan of Action” with Iran, which was released publicly. But the president and his subordinates also agreed to a side deal with Iran regarding how the “Joint Plan of Action” would be implemented. The Iranians maintain that if the people want to know what the side deal actually says, they should read the text. The president and his subordinates, however, have refused to publish the text to the American people – releasing only a “summary,” which the Iranian maintain is inaccurate. It is known that Iran was required to make no concessions regarding is promotion of revolutionary jihadist terror – the chief reason why it its acquiring nuclear weapons is not acceptable.

Andrew McCarthy’s points on Iran are similar to my own here.

Faithless Execution      

Andrew McCarthy

Impeachment is a matter of political will, not high crimes and misdemeanors. 

By Andrew C. McCarthy

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column is adapted from a speech I gave in New York City on May 29, announcing the publication of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.

Faithless Execution is about presidential lawlessness.

Specifically, my new book, which Encounter Books will release this week, is about how the Framers of our Constitution fully anticipated that a president could fail to honor his core duty to execute the laws faithfully — could fail to meet his basic fiduciary obligations to the American people.

Viewing the Obama presidency through the prism of these constitutional norms,Faithless Execution argues that we are experiencing a different kind of presidential lawlessness than our nation has ever known: a systematic undermining of our governing framework, willfully carried out by a president who made no secret of his intention to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

What is the president trying to transform?

Well, the constitutional framework he is undermining enshrines two core principles: separation-of-powers and accountability.

The first is the foundation of a free society. President Obama presumes the power to decree, amend, and repeal laws as he sees fit, effectively claiming all government power as his own. But as James Madison, the principal author of our Constitution, put it, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” And so it is.

Accountability, the second constitutional principle at issue, is how our system holds a president singularly responsible for executive lawlessness. The Constitution vests all executive power in a lone elected official — the president. Not in the broad, dizzying array of executive-branch agencies; in the president himself.

Meaning that if the IRS harasses the president’s political opposition in violation of their First Amendment rights; or if the Justice Department recklessly orchestrates the transfer of thousands of guns to violent Mexican gangs, resulting in the murder of a Border Patrol agent; or if administration officials willfully defraud the American people about the cause of the Benghazi massacre or about being able to keep their health insurance; it is the president whom our Constitution holds responsible. Not Lois Lerner or Susan Rice. Not Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, or Eric Shinseki. The president.

The president does not get to vote “present.” The Constitution does not permit him to be a mere spectator to abuses of power by his subordinates. It holds the president accountable, whether he quietly engineered the administration’s lawlessness or stood idly by while others ran amok.

The subtitle of Faithless Execution — “Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment” — has caused something of a stir. But any serious discussion of these issues has to consider impeachment. As a number of legal scholars testified at a congressional hearing late last year, impeachment was quite intentionally included by the Framers as the ultimate check against presidential lawlessness.

This is where “high crimes and misdemeanors” comes in.

As Faithless Execution recounts, at the time of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, this standard was well established in British law. The Framers thus borrowed it in order to address not only intentional abuses of power but gross negligence or incompetence.

Contrary to popular belief, the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” does not refer to ordinary crimes. It does not mean a president has to be indictable before he is removable. Instead, high crimes and misdemeanors are the political wrongs of high executive officials in whom great public trust is reposed.

Again, it is all about separation-of-powers and accountability. The idea is that the president is fully responsible: not just for criminal acts, but for abuses of power committed by himself and his subordinates — abuses of power that very much include misleading the public and stonewalling Congress.

A watershed speech by Czech President Miloš Zeman

From Gates of Vienna

Miloš Zeman, the president of Czech Republic, gave the following speech last Monday at a reception to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. Many thanks to Gemini for the translation from the official text posted at the Czech government’s website.

Speech by the president of the Czech Republic at the reception held to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day

May 26, 2014

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me thank you for the invitation to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. There are dozens of days of independence being celebrated every year in the Czech Republic. Some I may attend, others I cannot. There is one I can never miss, however: it’s the Israeli Independence Day.

There are states with whom we share the same values, such as the political horizon of free elections or a free market economy. However, no one threatens these states with wiping them off the map. No one fires at their border towns; no one wishes that their citizens would leave their country. There is a term, political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly.

It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilisation. It is international terrorism linked to religious fundamentalism and religious hatred. As we may have noticed after 11th of September, this fanaticism has not been focused on one state exclusively. Muslim fanatics recently kidnapped 200 young Christian girls in Nigeria. There was a hideous assassination in the flower of Europe in the heart of European Union in a Jewish museum in Brussels. I will not let myself being calmed down by the declaration that there are only tiny fringe groups behind it. On the contrary, I am convinced that this xenophobia, and let’s call it racism or anti-Semitism, emerges from the very essence of the ideology these groups subscribe to.

So let me quote one of their sacred texts to support this statement: “A tree says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. A stone says, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” I would criticize those calling for the killing of Arabs, but I do not know of any movement calling for mass murdering of Arabs. However, I know of one anti-civilisation movement calling for the mass murder of Jews.

After all, one of the paragraphs of the statutes of Hamas says: “Kill every Jew you see.” Do we really want to pretend that this is an extreme viewpoint? Do we really want to be politically correct and say that everyone is nice and only a small group of extremists and fundamentalists is committing such crimes?

Michel de Montaigne, one of my favourite essayists, once wrote: “It is gruesome to assume that it must be good that comes after evil. A different evil may come.” It started with the Arab Spring which turned into an Arab winter, and a fight against secular dictatorships turned into fights led by Al-Qaeda. Let us throw away political correctness and call things by their true names. Yes, we have friends in the world, friends with whom we show solidarity. This solidarity costs us nothing, because these friends are not put into danger by anyone.

The real meaning of solidarity is a solidarity with a friend who is in a trouble and in danger, and this is why I am here.

— Miloš Zeman, president of Czech republic, Hilton Hotel, 26th of May 2014

Update ,  June 14, 2014

The  Organization of Islamic Cooperation did not like Milos Zeman’s speech, but without quoting  from the "sacred text",  asked that he apologize:

The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Iyad Ameen Madani, expressed his disappointment at the reported statements made by the Czech President, Miloš Zeman, on 26 May 2014 at the Israeli Embassy in Prague that “Islamic ideology rather than individual groups of religious fundamentalists was behind violent actions similar to the gun attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.” 

"I believe that this xenophobia and this racism or anti-Semitism stem from the very nature of the ideology on which these fanatical groups rely, I know about an anti-civilization movement that calls for the massive murdering of Jews," the Czech President was quoted to say. 

Mr. Madani stated that the Czech President's recent statements on Islam are in line with the previous statements the President made in the past, where he linked "believers in the Quran with anti-Semitic and racist Nazis"; and that "the enemy is anti civilization spreading from North Africa to Indonesia, where two billion people live”. 

Such statements, said Mr. Madani, not only shows President Zeman's lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of Islam, but also ignores the historical facts that anti-Semitism and Nazism are a European phenomena through and through. They have no roots in Islam, neither as a religion nor as a history or civilization. The Holocaust did not take place in the area from North Africa to Indonesia, Madani said. 

President Zeman's statements are nothing more than misinformed stereotyping and Islamophopic, the Secretary General added. 

Madani stressed that such statements, issued even before the identification of culprits and motives, are not only irresponsible but also feed the existing stereotyping, incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence against Muslims based on their religion. It also runs contrary to the ongoing global efforts to strengthen dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions to promote multiculturalism, understanding, acceptance and peace. 

The Secretary General reiterated that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and that terrorism should not be equated to any race or religion; a stance upheld by all major UN texts on the subject of countering terrorism. He added that the OIC countries share a profound respect for all religions and condemn any message of hatred and intolerance. 

It is only appropriate that President Milōs Zeman apologizes to the millions of Muslims worldwide for his deeply offensive and hateful anti Islam statements. 

Mr. Madani urged the international community to take strong and collective measures to promote peace, harmony and tolerant co-habitation among peoples of diverse religious faiths, beliefs, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. He also called upon all political, secular or religious leaders to join hands and strengthen their efforts in promoting dialogue and mutual understanding, which will prove that “what joins us together across religions and regions is far greater than what separates us”. 

President Miloš Zeman refused  to apologize:

The translated excerpt from idNES.cz  from the Gates of Vienna

:

President Miloš Zeman is not going to apologise for his statements in which he linked Islamic ideology with violence. His words were conveyed by his spokesperson Jiří Ovčáček: “President Zeman definitely does not intend to apologise. For the president would consider it blasphemy to apologise for the quotation of a sacred Islamic text.”

The scared Islamic text president Zeman  was referring to was  Hadith Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him

Article 7 of the Hamas Charter reads:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. 

Does the law of transitivity apply to Obama’s Middle East policy?

transitive law,  in mathematics and logic, statement that if A bears some relation to B and B bears the same relation to C, then A bears it to C.

Since Article 13 of the Hamas Charter reads:

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad"

while article Article 7 of the Hamas Charter reads:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

and   U.S. Will Work With New Fatah-Hamas Unity Government, State Department Says

what is one to conclude about the Obama administration’s view on jihad and the killing of Jews?   

As for the State Department legitimized the arrangement, declaring that it would work with the new government because it “does not include members affiliated with Hamas", the real question is how can the Israeli government tolerate this level of imbecility coming from the US?