Smooth Stone

Former South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who led the United Nations “fact-finding” commission into the events of Operation Cast Lead in the Goldstone Report, wrote in a Washington Post column published on Friday:

“We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report,”

Goldstone wrote, adding:

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

Haaretz writes: 

The former South African jurist said that while “Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”

While Israel has shown to probe itself “to a significant degree” over Gaza war actions, Goldstone wrote, Hamas, who has been in control of the coastal enclave since 2007, “has done nothing.”

The former jurist also criticizes the UN Human Rights Council’s anti-Israel bias, saying that he had hoped that the report could “begin a new era of evenhandedness at the UN Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.”

Goldstone was assisted in his anti-Israel bashing by an orchestrated campaign led by powerful NGOs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Al Haq.

Goldstone’s Washington Post article has exposed these campaigns as nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda.

Via WND: Additional links added by Smooth Stone.

A staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.  As WND first reported, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world’s leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine’s main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros.

The doctrine and its founders, as WND reported, have been deeply tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

Now it has emerged that Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi served on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect.

That commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “Responsibility to Protect,” while defining its guidelines.

Ashrawi is an infamous defender of Palestinian terrorism. Her father, Daoud Mikhail, was a co-founder of the PLO with Arafat. The PLO was engaged in scores of international terrorist acts and was declared a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1987.

During the First Palestinian Intifada, or war of “resistance” against Israel, in 1988, Ashrawi joined what was known as the Intifada Political Committee, which sought to advance Palestinian goals through both politics and “resistance.” She served there until 1993.

Discover the Networks notes Ashrawi has long defended the Hamas terror group as a legitimate component of the Palestinian “political spectrum.”

She has stated she does not “think of Hamas as a terrorist group.”

“We coordinate [with Hamas] politically,” she said in April 1993, “the people we know and talk to are not terrorists.”

In 1998 Ashrawi founded MIFTAH, a nonprofit that seeks to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and refers to that Jewish state’s 1948 creation as “Al Nakba,” or “The Catastrophe.”

Read more: Holocaust denier at heart of Obama’s Libya doctrine

…there is absolutely no proof whatsoever of the existence of an ancestral Palestinian Arab homeland, while archeology, anthropology, history, and oral traditions all prove categorically that Israel, Judea, and Samaria make up the ancestral Jewish homeland.

…a person cannot be a colonialist in his/her ancestral homeland.

…there is no evidence of the existence of a Palestinian people (as a collective group) before the birth of Zionism.

…since the Jewish people, as an ethnic group, originate from Israel and surrounding areas, they best fit the truest definition of aboriginal/indigenous.

…Palestinian Arabs are native to Israel and surrounding areas, meaning they were born there, but they are not actually indigenous to the area, meaning they do not in fact originate from there.

…Jews have constituted the majority in Jerusalem since at least 1830.

…the Temple Mount, where the al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock sit, was largely unused and in disrepair before the birth of modern Zionism.

…no Arab or Muslim leader ever bothered to go and pray at the al Aqsa mosque while it was under Arab national control from 1948 to 1967.

…the notion of Jews ethnically cleansing Israel and surrounding areas of Arabs is false as proved by the overwhelming population growth of Arab communities post-Zionism.

…if Zionism were cruel toward Arabs, there wouldn’t have been thousands upon thousands of Arab immigrants flocking to Palestine in the years shortly before Israel’s declaration of independence because people don’t move to areas where they are being abused to live and look for work.

…anti-Zionism has no plan whatsoever to make the lives of any individual person, group, community, region, or the world-at-large better, which shows it’s merely a power-grab.

…anti-Zionism has no plan whatsoever to safeguard the holy sites and archeological treasures that may come under Palestinian Authority rule.

…anti-Zionism has shown no interest whatsoever in allowing for the existence and protection of minorities that should be allowed to live under Palestinian Authority rule.

…there are numerous officially Judenrein nations in the Arab League based upon institutionalized bigotry against Jews.

…Arab nations have never done one thing to enfranchise Palestinian Arabs.

…Palestinian Arabs are discriminated against in every single Arab League nation which shows that Arab nations are hostile toward Israel for reasons other than Palestinian Arab human rights.

…Arab nations built and forced Palestinian Arabs into refugee camps and invested nothing in their society while confiscating whatever land they could for themselves from 1948-1967.

…Israel never put one Arab into a refugee camp.

…the Middle East is not exclusively, “Arab land,” but is the ancestral homeland of millions of indigenous non-Arab minorities.

…many indigenous Middle Eastern minorities are friendly toward Israel, such as Copts, Kurds, and Phoenicians, and see the conflict between Jews and Arabs as a tribal war instead of a colonialist one.

…”Fatah,” the organization that Arafat started in the late 1950s before Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza, means “Conquest” in English? You do the math.

…gay and lesbian Palestinian Arabs from the territories flee to Israel to escape persecution.

…Israel is the only nation in the world that creates human rights organizations specifically to protect their adversaries.

…Israel is growing increasingly more integrated into the world daily, given that she is forging new diplomatic relations and opening new trade offices with nations she has not historically had any relationship whatsoever…

Originally published: Sept. 16, 2009.

Reference: Washington Times

Obama continues to obliterate the United States’ alliance with Israel.

Throughout his insufferable presidency, Obama is emboldening Islamism.

He has undermined President Hamid Karzai‘s government in Afghanistan, enabling the Taliban to make significant inroads.

He has turned a blind eye as Turkey becomes increasingly Islamic and as Hezbollah lengthens its deadly roots in Lebanon.

In 2009, he was silent regarding the pro-democracy, pro-American movement in Iran. In fact, Obama publicly stated Washington should not “interfere” in Iranian “internal” affairs.

Curiously, as brave Iranian democrats battle the forces of tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president cannot muster the indignation he demonstrated toward former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Obama refuses to demand that the Iranian madman, Admadinejad, step aside as he did with the Egyptian Mubarak.

Obama’s political identity with the radical Muslim world is getting in the way of his ability to make correct decisions.

Obama = FAIL

Via JPost:

A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel, according to the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist.

Muhammad Ghannem reportedly told Al- Alam that the Suez Canal should be closed immediately, and that the flow of gas from Egypt to Israel should cease “in order to bring about the downfall of the Mubarak regime.” He added that “the people should be prepared for war against Israel,” saying the world should understand that “the Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.”

The following article is why as Americans we should never run into the brink, like Obama and the State Department want us to regarding Egypt and call for a peaceful revolution because it will inevitably lead to catastrophe.  Obama, undoubtedly the worst president this country ever had, should not support revolution for revolution sake nor should he support overthrowing one of America’s allies.  Via the Vanouver Sun via the Daily Telegraph:

Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11″.

Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.

Thousands of classified American cables obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph detail the international struggle to stop the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the globe.

The following is from DiscoverTheNetworks.  Please click on DiscoverTheNetworks for a fully link-enabled page of what appears below:

URL: http://www.ikhwanweb.com

* Influential Islamist organization
* Ideological forebear of Hamas and al Qaeda
* Supports imposition of Shari’a law
* Approves of terrorism against Israel and the West

Founded in 1928 by the Egyptian activist Hasan al-Banna, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is one of the oldest, largest and most influential Islamist organizations. Egypt has historically been the center of the Brotherhood’s operations, though the group maintains offshoots throughout the Arab-Muslim world — including in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian territories (Hamas), Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Sudan — and is also active in the United States and Europe. Islam expert Robert Spencer has called the Muslim Brotherhood “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.”

The Brotherhood was founded in accordance with al-Banna’s proclamation that Islam be “given hegemony over all matters of life.” Accordingly, the Brotherhood seeks to establish an Islamic Caliphate spanning the entire Muslim world. It also aspires to make Islamic (Shari’a) law the sole basis of jurisprudence and governance. Toward this purpose — encapsulated in the Brotherhood’s militant credo: “God is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations” — the Brotherhood since its founding has supported the use of armed struggle, or jihad. The Brotherhood supports the waging of jihad against non-Muslim “infidels,” and has expressed support for terrorism against Israel, whose legitimacy the Brotherhood does not recognize, and against the West, particularly the United States.

In the 1930s, the Brotherhood was largely an underground organization. Paramilitary in nature, it stockpiled weapons and operated clandestine camps that provided instruction in military and terrorist tactics. In part due to its call for a return to traditionalist Islamic values, and in part because of the unpopularity of the Egyptian monarchy, the Brotherhood’s membership swelled throughout the Thirties, with some scholars placing its net membership at a half a million.

In the 1940s, the Brotherhood became more assertive in challenging Egypt’s ruling authorities. As a result, the government, under the direction of Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi Nuqrashi, forcibly dissolved the organization in 1948. In response, a Brotherhood member assassinated Nuqrashi. The government retaliated shortly thereafter: In 1949, Hasan al-Banna was killed by Egyptian police forces in Cairo and an official crackdown was launched against the Brotherhood. Thousands of members were imprisoned and many others were confined to detention camps.

With Gamal Abdel Nasser’s revolutionary seizure of power in 1954, the Brotherhood split into two factions. One, led by Hasan al-Hudaybi, favored working with the government to gradually move the country toward Islam. A more radical faction, led by the writer and ideologue Sayyid Qutb, advocated armed revolution against corrupt Middle Eastern regimes and more broadly against unbelievers in the Western world. Dividing the world into the “Party of Allah and the Party of Satan,” Qutb declared that Egyptian society under Nasser was contrary to Islam, that it would have been opposed by the Prophet Muhammad, and that Muslims therefore had both a right and an obligation to resist it. A direct challenge to the views of mainstream Sunni theologians, who extolled the Islamic tradition of deference to the state and ruler, Qutb’s writings are now cited by many scholars as one of the first formulations of political Islam. A corollary of Qutb’s fundamentalist critique of Egyptian society was his abiding contempt for Western society, especially the United States, which he regarded as spiritually vacant, decadent, idolatrous and fundamentally hostile to Islamic piety. Executed in 1966 on charges of plotting to overthrow the Egyptian Government, Qutb nonetheless inspired a widespread following within the Brotherhood. Terrorist groups like al Qaeda have today embraced his call for violence in the service of Islam.

Outlawed in Egypt in 1954, the Brotherhood temporarily receded as a political force. It re-emerged under Anwar Sadat, a sympathizer of the group. Taking advantage of the Brotherhood’s militant aversion to secularism, Sadat sponsored it against his communist and socialist political opposition. Later, however, the Brotherhood joined the political Left in opposing Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel, believing the normalization of relations with Israel to be a betrayal of Islam.

With the assassination of Sadat in 1981 by a smaller radical Islamist group, the Brotherhood charted a more mainstream course, and in 1987 won many government seats in an “Islamic Alliance” with other parties. Although it remains officially banned, the Brotherhood actively participates, with success, in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, running candidates as “independents” under the slogan “Islam is the Solution.”

In Iraq, the Brotherhood is represented by the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP). As a member of Iraq’s governing council, the IIP has campaigned for the imposition of Shari’a law and, while publicly distancing itself from al Qaeda, has supported what it calls the “heroic Iraqi resistance” to coalition forces. Banned in Syria, the Brotherhood works clandestinely to foment opposition to the ruling government. In the Palestinian territories, Hamas in January of 2006 defeated the rival Fatah party to win the Palestinian legislative elections, becoming the first branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to control an official government.

Outside the Middle East, the Brotherhood has expanded its operations to the United States. Muslim activists affiliated with the Brotherhood have founded the Muslim Students’ Association, the North American Islamic Trust, the Islamic Society of North America, the American Muslim Council, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The Brotherhood also reportedly exercises a strong influence in Muslim communities throughout Europe.

In May 1991 the Muslim Brotherhood issued to its ideological allies an explanatory memorandum on “the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” Explaining that the Brotherhood’s mission was to establish “an effective and … stable Islamic Movement” on the continent, this document outlined a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for achieving that objective. It stated that Muslims “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.” The Brotherhood listed some 29 likeminded “organizations of our friends” seeking to realize the same goal. These included:

* American Trust Publications
* Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers
* Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America
* Audio-Visual Center
* Baitul Mal, Inc.
* Foundation for International Development
* International Institute of Islamic Thought
* Islamic Association for Palestine (parent group of the Council on American-Islamic Relations)
* Islamic Book Service
* Islamic Centers Division
* Islamic Circle of North America
* Islamic Education Department
* Islamic Housing Cooperative
* Islamic Information Center
* Islamic Medical Association of North America
* Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
* ISNA Fiqh Committee
* ISNA Political Awareness Committee
* Islamic Teaching Center
* Malaysian Islamic Study Group
* Mercy International Association
* Muslim Arab Youth Association
* Muslim Businessmen Association
* Muslim Communities Association
* Muslim Students Association
* Muslim Youth of North America
* North American Islamic Trust
* Occupied Land Fund (later known as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development)
* United Association for Studies and Research

In recent years, the Brotherhood has attempted to forge a reputation as a moderate and reformist Islamic group that has renounced its violent past. Lending plausibility to this reputation has been criticism of the organization by radical Islamist groups, who have condemned the Brotherhood’s willingness to participate in the political process as heretical. These groups have also criticized the Brotherhood for supposedly abandoning violent struggle as a means of establishing an Islamic empire.

However, numerous statements by the Brotherhood’s leadership belie its moderate posture. Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni, the leader of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly disavowed violence while concurrently pledging his support for the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah. Muhammad Mahdi Othman Akef, a prominent leader of the Brotherhood, has expressed his support for suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq “in order to expel the Zionists and the Americans.” He has also denounced the United States as a “Satan,” saying: “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission.” Many other leaders of the Brotherhood have likewise justified terrorism against Israel and the United States, with many defending the September 11 terrorist attacks against America. Jews are another common object of the Brotherhood’s hatred. Of the Jewish people, Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, has written: “There is no dialogue between them and us other than in one language — the language of the sword and force.”

Even as it is deemed insufficiently militant by some Islamist groups, the Brotherhood has had a discernible influence on contemporary jihadist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, was a member of Muslim Brotherhood. More prominently still, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood preacher, was a mentor to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In 2006, Rajab Hilal Hamida, a Muslim Brotherhood member serving in Egypt’s parliament, said:

“From my point of view, bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri and al-Zarqawi are not terrorists in the sense accepted by some. I support all their activities, since they are a thorn in the side of the Americans and the Zionists….[On the other hand,] he who kills Muslim citizens is neither a jihad fighter nor a terrorist, but a criminal murderer. We must call things by their proper names!”

Via WND:

The Egyptian government suspects elements of the current uprising there, particularly political aspects, are being coordinated with the U.S. State Department, WND has learned.A senior Egyptian diplomat told WND today the regime of President Hosni Mubarak suspects the U.S. has been aiding protest planning by Mohamed ElBaradei, who is seen as one of the main opposition leaders in Cairo.

ElBaradei, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief, has reinvented himself as a campaigner for “reform” in Egypt. He is a candidate for this year’s scheduled presidential elections.

ElBaradei arrived in Cairo just after last week’s protests began and is reportedly being confined to his home by Egyptian security forces.

He is seen as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt.

The Brotherhood seeks to spread Islam around the world, in large part using nonviolent means. Hamas and al-Qaida are violent Brotherhood offshoots.

Last week, ElBaradei gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the Brotherhood.

“We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. … [They] have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them,” he said.

The Egyptian suspicion of U.S. involvement in the unrest in Egypt is not the first report of the Obama administration’s alleged interference there.

Via WND:

Egypt and Israel have information a large quantity of weapons, including new and sophisticated firepower, was smuggled from Egypt into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in the last two days, according to informed Middle East security officials.

Israeli security officials fear a growing state of anarchy exists along the Gaza-Egypt border, with Islamist groups there taking advantage of the chaos in Egypt amid mass protests threatening the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian security forces have been focused largely on quelling the riots.

“Something big was brought into the Gaza Strip,” said an informed security official.

The official said it was not known yet exactly what was transferred into Gaza, but he speculated it may have been a large quantity of antiaircraft missiles.

Via PMW:

A video on official Hamas TV calls for Allah to kill Jews, Christians, Communists and their supporters. The video asks Allah to “count them and kill them to the last one, and don’t leave even one.”As Palestinian Media Watch has reported this call for the killing of non-Muslims was a regular pronouncement by both Palestinian Authority (Fatah) and Hamas political and religious leaders for many years starting in July 2000.

For years, sermons by religious leaders on official Palestinian Authority TV under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas routinely presented the killing of Jews as a religious obligation and a fulfillment of the Islamic ideal.

Due to PMW’s exposure of these sermons, which led to international criticism and pressure, Mahmoud Abbas, whose office controls PA TV, has been forced to prevent the broadcast of sermons calling for extermination of Jews on PA TV.

The latest sermon of this nature on PA TV was in January 2010.

Click here to see the section on PMW’s website documenting the PA and Hamas depicting the killing of Jews as an Islamic obligation.

The following is the transcript of the Hamas video clip:

“Allah, oh our Lord, vanquish Your enemies, enemies of the religion
[Islam] in all places.
Allah, strike the Jews and their sympathizers,
the Christians and their supporters,
the Communists and their adherents.
Allah, count them and kill them to the last one, and don’t leave even one.”

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Dec. 3, 2010]

Watch the video, witness the hatred: