And I thought the USSR was bad - look at Facebook!

 

The photo which tells all you should know about the Israel-Gaza conflict

 

They have changed the access to this remarkable report. Now the only way to get to it is through a direct link to youtube. 

https://youtu.be/baBCZ8xUsjg

I've never seen a more concise, precise  and accurate comment on the Israel vs Palestinian Islamic JIHAD/Hamas war than this report from Sky News Australia. It is brilliant!  A truly watershed event.  Bravo to Rowan Dean! 

Democracy versus Jihad

 

Palestinian Islamic JIHAD/Hamas rockets on the right and Iron Dome interceptors on the left.  (Photo by ANAS BABA / AFP)

Hamas Charter, Article 13: There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad

The mind-boggling ignorance of most of the Israeli political establishment, let alone the world, to understand and explicitly say that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are waging a jihad even when the very name of their organization says so,  comes from their profound ignorance of Islamic history and conquest. The same ideology which conquered Jerusalem, Persia, Anatolia, the Balkans, north Africa, Sindt, India and Andalusia is at work today. We have a clear case of a democracy fighting jihad yet nobody wants to point to the elephant in the room.

Source

Update May 16, 2021. From the response I received I realize that a definition

of  jihad is necessary.

Ibn Warraq:

"It is common nowadays for the apologists of Islam, whether Muslims or their Western admirers, to interpret "Jihad" in the non-military sense of "moral struggle," "moral striving." But it is quite illegitimate to pretend that the Koran and the books on Islamic Law were talking about "moral crusades." Rather as Rudolf Peters says in his definitive study of Jihad says, "In the books on Islamic Law, the word means armed struggle against the unbelievers, which is also a common meaning in the Koran." Apologists of Islam, even when they do admit that real battles are being referred to, still pretend that the doctrine of Jihad only talks of "defensive measures," that is, the apologists pretend that fighting is only allowed to defend Muslims, and that offensive wars are illegitimate. But again, this is not the classical doctrine in Islam; as Peters makes clear, the Sword Verses in the Koran were interpreted as unconditional commands to fight the unbelievers, and furthermore these Sword Verses abrogated all previous verses concerning intercourse with non-Muslims.

Dictionary of Islam

In the Dictionary of Islam (1885), Thomas Patrick Hughes, offers this definition of Jihad: “Lit. “An effort, or a striving”. A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad. It is an incumbent religious duty established in the Qur’an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims”.  

Peace or Jihad, Abrogation in Islam

Chapter 9 of the Qur'an, in English called "Ultimatum," is the most important concerning the issues of abrogation and jihad against unbelievers. It is the only chapter that does not begin "in the name of God, most benevolent, ever-merciful."[54] Commentators agree that Muhammad received this revelation in 631, the year before his death, when he had returned to Mecca and was at his strongest.[55] Muhammad bin Ismail al-Bukhari (810-70), compiler of one of the most authoritative collections of the hadith, said that "Ultimatum" was the last chapter revealed to Muhammad[56] although others suggest it might have been penultimate. Regardless, coming at or near the very end of Muhammad's life, "Ultimatum" trumps earlier revelations.

Because this chapter contains violent passages, it abrogates previous peaceful content. Muhsin Khan, the translator of Sahih al-Bukhari, says God revealed "Ultimatum" in order to discard restraint and to command Muslims to fight against all the pagans as well as against the People of the Book if they do not embrace Islam or until they pay religious taxes. So, at first aggressive fighting was forbidden; it later became permissible (2:190) and subsequently obligatory (9:5).[57] This "verse of the sword" abrogated, canceled, and replaced 124 verses that called for tolerance, compassion, and peace.[58]

S1E72 / A World Wide Web of COVID Conspiracies

 

18:12 into the audio: “I would argue that where we can most directly see the impact of some of this Russian vaccine disinformation is actually in Russia itself.” Judy Twigg again “ Russia’s actions here have backfired and impacted their vaccine uptake at home, so that now we have a situation in Russia where supply of Sputnik V actually exceeds demand, especially in Moscow. In Moscow you can walk up to just about any clinic and get vaccinated with Sputnik V right off the bow without having to pre register, or wait in line because there are so few people who are lining up to take the vaccine” 

Judy says vaccine confidence is low in Russia because of the speed of Sputnik V approval and all the accumulated vaccine disinformation the government has been pumping out all these years.  “They shot themselves in the foot. At the very beginning they launched Sputnik V with such aggressive fanfare that it people inside Russia and of course many outside Russia, to distrust the product, and months later we learned that the product is in fact safe and effective but it has been very hard for it to shed that aura of questioning around it.”

WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden's Push to Revive the Iran Nuclear Deal

 

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'Mossad behind cyber attack against Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility’

Israeli politicians and Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”

Jerusalem Post, Letters to the Editor, March 31. 2021

Regarding “Sa’ar, Bennett’s Arab vetoes may give PM first mandate” (March 30), even Blue and White leader Benny Gantz does not see anything wrong with the Islamic parties being in the coalition? 

“He called on Sa’ar and Bennett not to rule out a coalition with parties in the bloc, a reference to the Joint List and Ra’am (United Arab List).” 

Gil Hoffman quotes Gantz as saying: “When I meet with them, I will tell them that it is okay to have principles, but it is also necessary to display the flexibility needed to enable the formation of a government and the replacement of Netanyahu.”

This reminds me of Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”

Ra’am is the political wing of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement. In 1999, Raphael Israeli wrote about the Islamic Movement:

“A Muslim is not supposed to respect and act according to secular laws made by humans, but follow the Shari’a, the law which emanates from Allah himself. Thus, when the Muslim movement in Israel participates in local elections and elects Islamic mayors, they do not need to swear allegiance to the State of Israel. 

“Moreover, under Israeli law, local councils are entitled to adopt bylaws, for example, governing the separation of sexes at school or forbidding the sale and consumption of alcohol. From the fundamentalist point of view, this is not an enactment of law but merely an application of the law of Allah. However, participation in government at the national level would require acceptance of the secular laws of the Jewish state and behaving in accordance with them instead of cultivating a separate patrimony in isolation and segregation.”

How can Gantz, Yair Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu ignore this? Has political survival made our politicians abandon all their principals?

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC 

Beersheba

Weekly Commentary: What If Bernard Lewis Was RIght About Nuclear Iran? MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement

 

IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 13 March 2021

"mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the
Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general
destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the
dead -- hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with
this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement."
Bernard Lewis - The Wall Street Journal Aug. 8, 2006

Amos Yadlin remarked in a live Zoom tonight with Minister of Defense Gantz
that the odds the Iranians would actually nuke Israel if they had nuclear
weapons was 1%. Gantz nodded in agreement.

Unfortunately, these policy makers and analysts simply cannot comprehend
that Iranian Twelvers could actually welcome an apocalypse set into motion
by an Iranian nuclear strike and the response that would follow. Without
saying it explicitly, they are arguing that there is some set of universal values that
has some kind of veto power over belief systems when adhering to those
beliefs can have unsavory results when judged by these "universal values".

This is not an inconsequential academic disagreement.

The attitude of policy makers and analysts towards the threat of a nuclear
Iran would be radically different if they thought that there was even a 25%
chance that Bernard Lewis is correct.

Yadlin and Gantz both appeared to say in the session that Israel cannot act
outside of the bounds of what a sitting American president supports a
priori.

I daresay that if they gave Bernard Lewis the weight his opinion deserves
that they would not advocate allowing America to stop us from preventing Iran
from having nukes if it came to that.

________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il