LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

August 04/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.august04.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today

You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13/10-17/:"Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing."

The believers from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us
Acts of the Apostles 28/,11-15/:"Three months later we set sail on a ship that had wintered at the island, an Alexandrian ship with the Twin Brothers as its figurehead. We put in at Syracuse and stayed there for three days; then we weighed anchor and came to Rhegium. After one day there a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found believers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. The believers from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 03-04/16
Democracy, Jobran Bassil style/Hussain Abdul Hussain/Now Lebanon/August 03/16
Israeli Spy, Yair Ravid, Catalogues Mistakes in Lebanon/Linda Gradstein/The Media Line/August 03/16
"Justice" in Pakistan: Asia Bibi/Lubna Thomas Benjamin/Gatestone Institute/August 03/16
The Pope and Holy War/Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/August 03/16
Flaws in the ‘Lone Wolf’ Analysis/
A.J. Caschetta/New English Review/Middle East Forum/August 03/16
Let us first go beyond the term ‘terrorism’/Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
Tolerance nourishes nations and individuals/Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
When your cousin gets arrested in Turkey/Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
How the Israeli govt is undermining democratic values/Yossi Mekelberg/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
Bahraini Media: The U.S. Is Working With Iran To Bring Down Bahrain, Other Countries/MEMRI/August 03/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on on August 03-04/16

Berri: First Dialogue Round Positive as for Taef Accord and Presidential Election
Second Dialogue Session Tackles Creation of Senate, Administrative Decentralization
Maronite Bishops Warn of 'Terrible Collapse', Urge Respect for Constitution
Geagea Downplays Dialogue Sessions as 'Big Tragedy, Small Distraction'
Report: Bourjerdi's Visit a Disguise for Informal Talks with Hizbullah
UK Minister Announces £60M to Reach All Children in Lebanon with Education
EDL Contract Employees in Bekaa Renew Strikes
Lifeguard, Summer Camp Supervisor Ordered Held after Kid Drowns
Reports: Qatar Mediator in Lebanon for Negotiations with IS over Held Troops
U.S. CENTCOM Counternarcotics Policy Director Visits Lebanon
Democracy, Jobran Bassil style
Israeli Spy, Yair Ravid, Catalogues Mistakes in Lebanon
Iran coordinating with Hezbollah on disputed border village: report
Aoun 'obvious solution' to presidential crisis: Geagea
U.S. Ambassador discusses new $6 million partnership agreement with ISF
Boroujerdi: Islamic Resistance will eventually defeat Israel
British Embassy: Patel announces £60m to reach all children with education
Kahwaji, Canadian official take up overall situation
Salam, Mokbel engage in general developments
You Stink holds People dialogue table in Tripoli to discuss electoral laws
 

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on August 03-04/16

Republican rift widens as Trump declines to endorse Ryan, McCain
British lawmakers criticize EU response to migrant crisis
Emirates airline plane crash-lands at Dubai airport
Syrian Regime Forces Roll Back Rebel Gains in Aleppo
Syrian govt considers stopping religious education from curricula
Turkey’s Erdogan presses US to extradite preacher Gulen
Calls to Turkey to follow human rights in crackdown on plotters
Iranian hard-line theorist arrested for criticizing the army
Saudi citizens told to be cautious while traveling to Brazil
Coalition planes pound ISIS-held Saddam palace: UK
Japan Says N. Korea Missile Test 'Outrageous Act'
Israel Approves Jailing 'Terrorists' from Age 12
U.S. paid “ransom” to free Americans prisoners in Iran - report
Iran: Hunger strike of political prisoners in Gohardasht prison protesting the mass execution of Sunni prisoners
Knesset committee recognizes Armenian genocide

Links From Jihad Watch Site for on August 03-04/16
Obama secretly paid 400-mill “ransom” to Iran that Democrats called “a deal for taxpayers”
Islamic State has “fully operational branches” in 18 countries
DC: Muslim transit cop stockpiled weapons, charged with aiding the Islamic State
Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” firebomb bus in Paris
Facebook blocks Michael Savage for posting news on Muslim migrant crime
Pakistan: Muslim group demands that jihad verses be included in school curriculum
ISIS to Pope: “Our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam”
Slate puts mother of 5-year-old Muslim migrant rape victim on trial
Donald Trump links to Jihad Watch story on Facebook

Latest Lebanese Related News published on on August 02-03/16
Berri: First Dialogue Round Positive as for Taef Accord and Presidential Election
Naharnet/August 03/16/Speaker Nabih Berri said on Wednesday that he had received “positive feedback” from the interlocutors at the dialogue session a day earlier in Ain el-Tineh, mainly their adherence to the Taef accord, An Nahar daily reported. “The dialogue session was very positive. Although there are differences and political divisions between the interlocutors, but I sensed more seriousness (in how they addressed various files) than any of the previous sessions,” said Berri to his visitors. “In the past I used to hear them bicker over many issues, but they avoided that in the first dialogue session,” he added. The Speaker pointed out that “discussions have emphasized on two major issues that garnered the approval of all. First, is the adherence to the Taef accord and thwarting all calls for a constituent assembly, and second is the need to elect a president.” “Wednesday's dialogue session will focus on agreeing on a new electoral system. If the intentions were serious and the discussions positive, we can agree on a new law within five days, “ Berri stated. Berri had stressed earlier that “there is no alternative” to the 1989 Taef Accord that ended the civil war while ruling out the possibility of holding a so-called constituent assembly in the foreseeable future. The first round of three consecutive dialogue sessions was held on Tuesday in the presence of heads of the parliamentary blocs, except for MP Michel Aoun who was represented by Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil and head of al-Mustaqbal Movement ex-PM Saad Hariri who was represented by MP Fouad Saniora. Berri inaugurated the session by “reiterating the need to agree on a package deal that begins with the election of a president.”

Second Dialogue Session Tackles Creation of Senate, Administrative Decentralization
Naharnet/August 03/16/The national dialogue session on Wednesday -- the second of three scheduled meetings -- focused on the issues of creating a senate and implementing administrative decentralization, state-run National News Agency reported. The session convened at Ain el-Tineh following a meeting a day earlier that media reports described as “positive,” although the outcome did not record a major breakthrough. Heads of the parliamentary blocs attended Wednesday's meeting except for head of the Democratic Gathering MP Walid Jumblat who was represented by MP Ghazi Aridi, and head of the Change and Reform bloc MP Michel Aoun represented who was represented by his son-in-law and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil. After the meeting ended, Kataeb party leader Sami Gemayel made a statement, he said: “Today decentralization has been addressed seriously which is a pivotal issue for the Lebanese. We have put this file on the right track today. “As for the election of a president and agreeing on an electoral law, I am sorry to say that we have been escaping the implementation of democracy for many years now, because a a president cannot be elected through an agreement between the interlocutors on the table but through a secret voting process, as stipulated in the constitution.”“Today's session was a deep and serious debate. The discussions opened the door wide on the development of the political system under the Taef accord,” said MP Ali Fayyad. "We will discuss the creation of a senate tomorrow," he added. For his part, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil dubbed Wednesday's meeting as “the most important session among all,” and assured that discussing an electoral law will begin tomorrow. The interlocutors met on Tuesday to tackle several pending and controversial issues including the election of a president, the formation of a new government and a new voting system. Berri had called for three successive dialogue meeting on August 1, 2 and 3 in a bid to solve the country's political impasse. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of President Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014. Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Maronite Bishops Warn of 'Terrible Collapse', Urge Respect for Constitution
Naharnet/August 03/16/The Council of Maronite Bishops warned Wednesday of a “terrible collapse” of the country should the protracting political vacuum continue, while reiterating its call for Lebanese politicians to abide by the Constitution. “Before the external and internal threats that the country is facing, the bishops feel extremely worried over the political procrastination and the failure that is paralyzing state institutions,” said the bishops in a statement issued after their monthly meeting in Diman under Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. The paralysis risks pushing the country into “an open-ended crisis that threatens the political, economic and social systems with a terrible collapse,” the bishops warned. “Despite this, the bishops wish success for the ongoing dialogue sessions and stress anew that the real solution to this crisis begins by abiding by the Constitution, which is the only protector of political regularity,” the bishops added, calling for “the election of a president who has the ability to revive state institutions according to firm constitutional and ethical foundations.”They also called for approving a new electoral law that ensures “fair and proper representation for all Lebanese groups.”Officials were upbeat after the second national dialogue session on Wednesday, which Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil described as “the most important national dialogue session ever.”The conferees have for the first time discussed the issue of creating a Senate and implementing administrative decentralization, which both were stipulated by the 1989 Taef Accord. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Geagea Downplays Dialogue Sessions as 'Big Tragedy, Small Distraction'
Naharnet/August 03/16/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Wednesday downplayed the ongoing national dialogue sessions as a “big tragedy” and a “small distraction.”“What's happening at the dialogue sessions ranges from a big tragedy to a small distraction,” Geagea tweeted. “May God help the Lebanese people and give them the power to overcome this difficult period and reach the shore of safety, which we will certainly reach,” he added. Earlier in the day, Geagea said his support for the presidential nomination of Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun is “the clear solution to resolve this crisis.”“I understand the stance of ex-PM Saad Hariri, who has rejected this nomination, but what I don't understand is the stance of Hizbullah which has spared no occasion to remind us that Aoun is its only candidate,” Geagea added. Officials were upbeat after the second national dialogue session on Wednesday, which Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil described as “the most important national dialogue session ever.” The conferees have for the first time discussed the issue of creating a Senate and implementing administrative decentralization, which both were stipulated by the 1989 Taef Accord. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Geagea to endorse his longtime Christian foe Aoun for the presidency after their two parties reached a political rapprochement agreement following months of deliberations. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Report: Bourjerdi's Visit a Disguise for Informal Talks with Hizbullah
Naharnet/August 03/16/The visit of Chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi to Lebanon was not a coincidence, but more to cover informal meetings that had been planned beforehand with Hizbullah to coordinate on several topics, An Nahar daily reported on Wednesday. Ministerial sources highlighted Boroujerdi's comments after his meeting with PM Tammam Salam that lashed at Saudi Arabia. They said that he deliberately criticized the kingdom at the gate of the Grand Serail to merely embarrass Salam, added the daily. “The Iranian diplomat's visit to Lebanon was no coincidence,” the sources said “his meeting with senior officials aimed to cover informal talks with Hizbullah to achieve several goals.”The goals of the visit are to “coordinate efforts with Hizbullah as for the issue of the Ghajar village in light of data relating to Israel's quest to annex the town, and to hold talks with the Palestinian factions to confront efforts aiming to hold Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” they added. Boroujerdi's visit also “aimed to mobilize the Palestinian forces against Saudi Arabia against the backdrop of the informal dialogue between the Kingdom and Israel.”In a speech on Friday, Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah attacked Saudi Arabia and accused it of normalizing ties with Israel. Turning to the Lebanese affairs, he called on the government to “take a stance over what is happening in the Ghajar village.”“Israel is imposing its hegemony over a Lebanese town and no one is addressing the issue. The Israelis admit that it is Lebanese territory and so does the U.N.,” he had said.An Israeli news website had recently revealed that Israeli authorities have informed the residents of the Lebanese part of the occupied village that Israeli construction laws would soon be imposed on the entire village. Boroujerdi made an official visit to Lebanon on Monday where he held talks with top officials. During his two-day visit he held meetings with Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc and Nasrallah.

UK Minister Announces £60M to Reach All Children in Lebanon with Education
Naharnet/August 03/16/The UK will continue to support Lebanon’s “stability and economic security while being at the forefront of managing the repercussions of the Syria crisis,” British Secretary of State for International Development Priti Patel said Wednesday at the end of a two-day visit to the country.As part of a wider visit to the region, her first overseas visit since taking office, Patel met with Lebanese ministerial counterparts to discuss the provision of UK aid and the relations between Britain and Lebanon. She also thanked the Lebanese government and people for their “continued generosity and support in hosting over 1.5 million Syrian refugees,” a British embassy statement said. During her visit, Patel announced a new £60 million program over four years to support the implementation of RACE2 (the Lebanese government’s Reaching All Children with Education II plan) with a focus on reaching the most vulnerable children with non-formal education, as a pathway into a formal school, and child protection. Under the RACE2 program, the UK is supporting the Ministry of Education and Higher Education via a World Bank managed education program to scale up access to quality formal education for refugees and vulnerable Lebanese. The UK is also supporting RACE II through government-endorsed “quality non-formal education” via UNICEF. Following her field visit, Patel said: "It was important to me to come to Lebanon on my first overseas visit as the UK's International Development Secretary -- to demonstrate the UK's commitment to our strong partnership with Lebanon.” “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the Lebanese people in dealing with the impacts of the Syria Crisis, including our vital partnership to reach all children with education,” she added. “Long-term stability and prosperity for Lebanon is in both the UK and the Lebanese national interest. We are working together to ensure the international community as a whole meets the commitments made at the London Conference," the minister went on to say. Patel had visited an Informal Tented Settlement and a school in the Bekaa to see how the UK is supporting Lebanon with its local and international partners. She was accompanied by Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, UNHCR Country Director Mireille Girard, UNICEF Country Director Tanya Chapuisat and British Ambassador to Lebanon Hugo Shorter. During the field visit, she met Syrian refugee students in a “catch-up program” to recover years of lost learning and prepare them to enter formal schools at the right learning levels. She also met with Syrian youths who shared their experiences of conflict and displacement, and their hopes to build a better future by enhancing their education and skills. During the two-day visit, Patel also met with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, and held a joint press conference with Minister Bou Saab. She also visited the UK Lebanon Tech Hub, an international initiative supported by the British Government aimed at supporting Lebanon’s knowledge economy.

EDL Contract Employees in Bekaa Renew Strikes
Naharnet/August 03/16/Contract workers of Electricite du Liban in Hermel and North Bekaa kicked off a strike on Wednesday pressing a demand for their full-time employment, the National News Agency reported. The employees closed the EDL offices to take part in a sit-in planned at 10:00 am in the area of Douros at the entrance of Baalbek, NNA added. In Deir al-Ahmar in the district of Rashaya, the workers briefly blocked the road protesting against the negligence of related parties to their long-standing demands.

Lifeguard, Summer Camp Supervisor Ordered Held after Kid Drowns
Naharnet/August 03/16/A lifeguard and a summer camp's supervisor were on Tuesday ordered held by the attorney general of the North district in connection with the drowning death of the child Kevin Metlej, media reports said. The toddler, 6, reportedly drowned during his participation in a summer camp at the Sawary Resort in the northern city of Batroun. In remarks to An Nahar newspaper, Kevin's uncle Imad Metlej launched negligence accusations against the summer camp's organizers – the boy's school – and the beach resort. The child's body “remained floating on the surface of the swimming pool for three minutes without anyone noticing,” he said. “Neither the trip's organizers nor the lifeguards paid attention to him as he was drowning, and had it not been for negligence, my nephew would not have died,” Metlej added. The child's parents have also decried perceived negligence.

Reports: Qatar Mediator in Lebanon for Negotiations with IS over Held Troops
Naharnet/August/03/16/Efforts have been resumed to secure the release of the nine Lebanese troops who are being held hostage by the extremist Islamic State group, media reports said on Wednesday. “Qatar's mediator Ahmed al-Khatib has reportedly arrived in Lebanon anew to seek negotiations with the IS militants in Syria's Qalamoun over the nine captive Lebanese army troops,” MTV reported. Meanwhile, Hassan Youssef, the father of captive soldier Mohammed Youssef, told al-Jadeed television that “an unofficial channel of communication has been opened with the group.”“We hope Mr. Nabil al-Halabi will be able to reach a solution for the case of the servicemen,” Youssef said. Al-Halabi, a Lebanese lawyer and the director of the Lebanese Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (LIFE), had played a role last year in negotiations for the release of servicemen held both by the IS and the jihadist al-Nusra Front group, which is now known as the Fateh al-Sham Front after renouncing its status as al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate. Al-Akhbar newspaper has on Tuesday quoted security sources as saying that contacts between the Lebanese state and the IS group have been severed for a long time now. The contacts were cut off after the IS refused to give mediators any clue about the fate of the abducted soldiers, said the daily. Al-Halabi himself said on his Facebook page that he had met an IS mediator three times before the negotiations to release the servicemen stopped. The hostages' families vowed this week to resume their street protests to press authorities to address the case. The fate of the nine servicemen has been shrouded with mystery for several months now and the families are demanding to know whether their sons are alive or dead. The nine troops were among more than 30 servicemen who were abducted during the deadly 2014 battle between jihadists and the Lebanese army in and around the northeastern border town of Arsal. While al-Nusra Front released 16 captives as part of a swap deal in December 2015, nine hostages remain in the captivity of the IS group and Lebanese officials have vowed to exert efforts to secure their release.

U.S. CENTCOM Counternarcotics Policy Director Visits Lebanon
Naharnet/August/03/16/The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Policy Director for CENTCOM Counternarcotics, Bob Vierkant, visited Lebanon from July 31 to August 3 to observe ongoing counternarcotics training for Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) units conducted by the United States, the U.S. Embassy said on Wednesday. “Vierkant and the OSD delegation met with several LAF units who regularly conduct counternarcotics operations in order to observe efforts and training,” the embassy said. “The visit underscores the United States' continuing support for the LAF’s efforts to secure Lebanon from threats, including the threat presented by the illegal narcotics trade,” it added.
Lebanon

Democracy, Jobran Bassil styleالديموقراطية على طريقة ومفاهيم الجلبوط التعتير جبران باسيل
Hussain Abdul Hussain/Now Lebanon/August 03/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/08/03/hussain-abdul-hussainnow-lebanon-democracy-jobran-bassil-style/
The new FPM chief has made it clear that dissent within the ‘democratic’ party will not be tolerated
There is nothing that insults the intelligence of the Lebanese more than the rise of Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. With no charisma, popularity or previous career success, Bassil is the epitome of Lebanon’s corruption and nepotism. Without his marriage to the daughter of Christian leader Michel Aoun, Bassil would have been just another engineer, probably living and working in the Gulf and visiting Lebanon on occasions. But this is Lebanon, where “change and reform” means taking corruption to a whole new level. The nepotistic practice of promoting sons-in-law is not new. Former Foreign Minister Fares Bouez was the son-in-law of late President Elias Hrawi. When the days of Hrawi ended, so did Bouez’s political career. Bouez was at least aware of his shortcomings and simply retired. Bassil is something else. He has yet to win an election. After his failing bids to win a seat in his home district of Batroun, Bassil was awarded high profile cabinet portfolios that included electricity, oil and foreign affairs.Throughout his ministerial tenure, Bassil has proven incompetent and corrupt. He forced the government to fund his $1 billion project to provide electricity around the clock, and launched a parallel media campaign to highlight his “vision.” A few years later, hours of electricity supply were cut across the country, while the $1 billion has gone unaccounted for.
With the oil and natural gas portfolio, Bassil promised a whirlwind of revenue for the state from hydrocarbon excavation and production in Lebanon’s coastal shelf. He then appointed a commission of cronies and gave them astronomical salaries. Lebanon has yet to extract any fossil fuel, whose revenue will most certainly line the pockets of the oligarchs. Lebanon ranks 123 out of 165 on Transparency International’s index of corruption. Bassil then moved to the Foreign Ministry, whose resources he has so far used to attend football games at the Brazil World Cup in 2014 and the France Euro Cup last month.
Meanwhile, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bassil has committed many blunders, often by going after Saudi Arabia, even more so than Iran. Because of his amateurish diplomacy, hundreds of Lebanese expats and their families have been deported from the Gulf.
And because Bassil has never been elected to office, his father-in-law made him king of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), putting him ahead of FPM’s stars — including those from the Aoun family, like Alain Aoun. Non-Aoun family FPM heavyweights, such as Ziad Abs, were thrown out, seemingly for their dissent. Yet the actual reason for ostracizing Abs had little to do with his performance. Abs, also an engineer, belongs to Bassil’s generation. At AUB, Abs was instrumental in forming the FPM (Tayyar). Shrewd and savvy, Abs built a formidable operation inside AUB that later spilled to other university campuses. He was repeatedly elected to AUB’s student government, and was often summoned to Syrian and Lebanese security offices, at times beaten.
The activism of Abs starting in the early 1990s puts that of Bassil to shame. If the FPM was a non-tribal democratic organization, Abs would have overtaken not only Bassil, but probably Aoun himself. Since his expulsion due to his revolt against Bassil’s joining of the March 8 - March 14 municipal election alliance in May, Abs has proven to be stronger than Bassil. With a loyal following, he tilted Beirut’s First District against the alliance, embarrassing the FPM leadership and showing that it has little influence in that district. In the FPM primaries, results showed that Abs' influence outweighs Bassil and the leadership.
Despite all the resources available to him within the party and from the state, Bassil is reeling in the face of his dissenters. This happens while Aoun is still around, which suggests that after Aoun, Bassil might be forced to further rely on Hezbollah’s resources to beat his rivals within the party.
Feeling the heat, Bassil dismissed his FPM opponents, saying that “the percentage of dissenters is very low,” and adding: “We will not remain silent facing those who offend the Tayyar from within… and let those who do not like it resign.” So the FPM wants to show that it is a genuinely democratic party by holding primaries. Yet Bassil insists that dissent is small and that he will not tolerate it anyway inside the party that he has inherited from his father-in-law. This, ladies and gents, is democracy as Bassil understands it: Nepotistic, corrupt and intolerant of dissent. And to think that the Lebanese can pin their hopes on their rising young leaders, like Bassil, who — in his bid to tighten his grip and eliminate internal opposition — proves that he is just another corrupt Arab autocrat, albeit a failing one.

Israeli Spy, Yair Ravid, Catalogues Mistakes in Lebanon
Linda Gradstein/The Media Line/August 3, 2016

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/08/03/linda-gradsteinthe-media-line-israeli-spy-yair-ravid-catalogues-mistakes-in-lebanon/
http://www.themedialine.org/news/israeli-spy-catalogues-mistakes-lebanon/
New Book Criticizes Israeli and US Policy
The Shi’ite Hizbullah movement this week released a new three-part documentary on the 2006 capture of two Israeli soldiers, which sparked a 34-day conflict between Israel and Hizbullah. The film includes interviews with several Israeli officials and an Israeli soldier wounded in the incident.
Israel’s Government Press Office, GPO, says it is investigating journalist Michaela Moni of the Italian ANSA news agency, for possible ties to the organization. Moni conducted the interviews, saying they were for Italian outlets, not Hizbullah. In any case, the fact that Hizbullah was able to arrange the interviews gave it a propaganda victory.
It was just the latest example of what is called in Israel, the “Lebanese swamp.” Israel fought two wars in Lebanon, in 1982 and 2006, and spent 15 years controlling a “security zone” in south Lebanon, before pulling out in 2000. In a book just translated into English, called Window to the Backyard, Israel’s former Mossad station chief, Yair Ravid, outlines a series of Israeli mistakes in Lebanon.
“There are several reasons for Israel’s failure in Lebanon,” Ravid told The Media Line. “Ariel Sharon (Israel’s Defense Minister in 1982) in his megalomania thought that he could get a separate peace with Lebanon, Menachem Begin (then Prime Minister) naively thought our help to the Christians would lead to a separate peace, and the Mossad on a political level didn’t understand Lebanon.”
Ravid, 71, was responsible for developing ties between Israel and the Christian villages in Lebanon. Those contacts eventually led to the creation of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), thousands of whom fled to Israel when Israel left Lebanon in 2000. About 2700 former SLA members live in Israel today.
“Israel divided the SLA into two groups – the officers and the regular soldiers,” Julie Abu Araj, whose father was killed fighting for the SLA and today lives in Israel told The Media Line. “The officers got a lot of assistance from the Israeli government, but the regular soldiers got much less.”
Araj came to Israel when she was 12, and speaks perfect Hebrew. She feels comfortable in Israel, although sometimes misses her home town. She has become active in advocating for the rights of former SLA fighters, some of whom feel abandoned by Israel.
Successive Israeli governments failed to understand the complexities of Lebanon, made up of Christians, Shi’ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Druze. Even today, Lebanon has been without a president since 2014, as the political blocs have been unable to agree.
Lebanon today is also struggling to house and feed more than one million refugees from Syria who have flooded the neighboring country of just four million. Hizbullah is the kingmaker in Lebanese politics, although Hizbullah is currently bogged down in fighting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Israeli intelligence has repeatedly warned that Hizbullah has upwards of 100,000 rockets that could hit any part of Israel. Israel in turn has warned Hizbullah it will destroy Lebanon’s infrastructure if there is another attack.
“Right now Hizbullah has no interest in heating things up because they are busy in Syria,” Ravid said. “They will only start up with us if it helps their sponsor Iran.”
Ravid’s book also offers some insights into what it is like to be an Israeli spy. He writes what it is like to recruit agents, describing what qualities a good spymaster needs.
“Among the most important characteristics an operator of agents must be equipped with are compassion and the ability to listen to their operatives’ difficulties and problems, alongside recognizing and understanding the operatives’ family structure and the relations within their families,” he writes. “On occasion an operator has to offer agents he operates a gesture. Bestow them with gifts for personal or family occasions, and during holidays. Tributes that are unexpected, that surprise the agents, bring fast return on the investment.”
He also snipes that the new generation of spies relies more on technology and les son human interaction.
“I see myself as one who belongs to the old generation of agents’ operators. This is the generation which maintained close ties and often friendly ties with the Arab population. I was and still feel at home in many Arabs’ households, and many Arabs are very welcome in my home. These kinds of relationships and connections give the operator the right tools to make him an Intelligence officer,” he writes. “The younger generation of agents’ operators which is currently active is disconnected from the field and from the Arab population. This generation knows the use of computers much better than my generation, but the remoteness of the field makes them intelligence technicians and not intelligence officers.”
**Ravid has not been back to Beirut since 1985. When asked if Israel currently has spies in Lebanon, he answered, “I certainly hope so.”
 

Iran coordinating with Hezbollah on disputed border village: report
Now Lebanon/August 03/16/BEIRUT – A top Iranian security figure reportedly visited Lebanon to discuss recent developments regarding Ghajar, a village that straddles Lebanon’s border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. An-Nahar reported Wednesday that Alaeddin Boroujerdi—the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security—used his trip to Beirut as a “cover for informal talks” with Hezbollah and Palestinian groups. Ministerial sources told the Lebanese daily that one of Bourjerdi’s objectives was to “coordinate with Hezbollah” on the issue of Ghajar, which Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned last week was the subject to an Israeli “annexation attempt.”  The Hezbollah chief on Friday called on the Lebanese government to “assume its responsibility preserving sovereignty on its land, especially in Ghajar.”His comments came after Hezbollah-affiliated media, including the party’s official Al-Manar television, took issue with a report by the Israeli Walla! news outlet that authorities in the Israel-controlled half of the village want to enforce their construction codes on all of Ghajar. An-Nahar did not delve further into the purported talks between Bourjerdi and Hezbollah on the disputed border village, with sources telling the paper that the Iranian official also held “informal” talks on two other hot-button issues for Tehran. According to the Lebanese newspaper, Bourjerdi met with Palestinian groups to discuss Saudi Arabia as well as “efforts to hold Palestinian-Israeli [peace] talks.”An-Nahar quoted the ministerial sources as saying that Bourjerdi aimed to “mobilize the Palestinian factions against Saudi Arabia” regarding recent allegations of informal talks between Riyadh and Israel. Iran and Hezbollah’s Nasrallah both claim that Saudi Arabia aims to normalize its relations with Tel Aviv, an accusation strenuously denied by the Saudis. The allegations arose after Haaretz reported last week that retired Saudi General Anwar Eshki visited Israel and met with Israeli officials. “While this wasn't an official visit, it was a highly unusual one, as Eshki couldn't have traveled to Israel without approval from the Saudi government,” Haaretz said at the time. Eshki, for his part, stressed that his trip “was not coordinated with the Saudi royal house” and that he did not receive “a green light from Saudi Arabia.”
NOW's English news desk editor Albin Szakola (@AlbinSzakola) wrote this report. Amin Nasr translated Arabic-language material.
 

Aoun 'obvious solution' to presidential crisis: Geagea
The Daily Star/August 03/16/BEIRUT: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea Wednesday said getting behind Michel Aoun's presidential candidacy was the "obvious" solution to end the two-year-long vacuum. "Our support for [Change and Reform bloc leader] Michel Aoun for the presidency is the obvious solution to this crisis," Geagea said in a statement carried by the National News Agency. "I understand [Future Movement chief] Saad Hariri's rejection of this candidacy, however what I don't understand is the stance taken by Hezbollah, which never threw away a chance to remind us that Aoun was its first and last candidate," he added. The LF accuses Hezbollah and regional ally Iran of being behind the presidential deadlock. Hezbollah and the FPM have boycotted all parliamentary sessions to elect a head of state. "I am now convinced that Iran and Hezbollah, not only don't want a president, but also do not want a republic in Lebanon altogether, and they will always use this card as a way to pressure the Arab and international community," he said. An Iranian official who was on a two-day visit to Lebanon this week denied that his country was interfering in the country’s presidency issue.
LF media officer Melhem Riachi earlier Wednesday said Aoun had informed them that he will deal with Hezbollah in his own way regarding the presidential deadlock. “Aoun requested that we leave it to him to solve Hezbollah’s issue with the presidency in his own way,” Riachi said in a televised interview.
"Instead of the decision (to elect a president) being Lebanese, today the matter is in the hands of external powers," Riachi added. "Iran is holding onto the presidency card for its own interests.”Riachi said there was a possibility of electing a president after the Maarab Reconciliation, referring to the detente between wartime foes LF leader Samir Geagea and Aoun last January. The settlement ended over 20 years of bitter ties between the two Christian leaders. It was also when Geagea officially endorsed his former rival. But despite the reconciliation, Riachi said, the election of a president continues to be obstructed.
Commenting on the national dialogue, Riachi said the whole thing was a waste of time, and that the false hope of the talks achieving anything was “Speaker Nabih Berri’s clever (political) strategy.” Rival leaders are holding three consecutive national dialogue meetings this month, the first of which took place Tuesday, in an attempt to reach a so-called full package on the country’s pressing issues, including the presidential vacuum and a new electoral law.

U.S. Ambassador discusses new $6 million partnership agreement with ISF
Wed 03 Aug 2016 /NNA - U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Elizabeth Richard, on Wednesday paid an acquaintance visit to Internal Security Forces General Director, Major General Ibrahim Basbous, in the company of U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Director, Diana F. Brown. Talks during the visit reportedly focused on the fruitful and ongoing cooperation between the U.S. and the Lebanese security forces. "This visit comes within the frame of a long-term strategic support plan to the ISF, coupled with specialized training and equipment that could help the ISF become more efficient," the U.S. diplomat said. Richard went on to explain that the INL has invested in more than $160 million since 2008 to train and equip the ISF. "As part of this commitment, we have discussed a new partnership agreement between the U.S. and the ISF. We are happy to announce that this $6 million program, funded by the INL, shall help the ISF achieve its long-term goals modernizing the ISF institution," Richard added. In turn, Basbous welcomed Richard and thanked the U.S. for its generous support to the ISF. "Thanks to the U.S. support, the ISF enjoys high quality specialized training. We now have competent officers within the fields of investigation, analysis, and raids," Basbous added, hailing the many achievements of the ISF in coordination with Lebanese Army. Basbous also expressed the ISF's willingness to cooperate and exchange information.

Boroujerdi: Islamic Resistance will eventually defeat Israel
Wed 03 Aug 2016/NNA - Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, visited on Wednesday the headquarters of the Islamic Scholars in Haret Hreik, in the company of Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammad Fathali. In a word he gave during the meeting, Boroujerdi said that the Lebanese resistance shall plant a thorn in the eyes of Israel and sap all its "malicious" conspiracies. He disclosed the fact that the resistance had a huge supply of rockets and missiles mounting up to tens of thousands, and anticipated a near end to the Syrian "conspiracy". "The Islamic Resistance of Hezbollah and the other resisting forces in the region possess tens of thousands of missiles. These forces have become an essential deterrent that has safeguarded Lebanese rights and those of the other honorable people in the region," Boroujerdi said. He accused the Israeli enemy of resorting to different malicious means of planting discord among the peoples of the region, through the Syrian battle field."Israel created extremist terrorist movements to draw a distorted image of Islam, but we are fully confident that God will eventually grant us victory," he added, listing the most recent field victories in Iraq and Syria. Also, the Iranian lawmaker went on to call on Saudi Arabia to beware any attempt at normalization of relations with Israel, holding Islamic religious scholars responsible for foiling such an erroneous attempt.

British Embassy: Patel announces £60m to reach all children with education
Wed 03 Aug 2016/NNA - On her First Overseas visit, UK International Development Secretary, Priti Patel, announced £60m to reach all children with education, stressing that "the UK will continue to support Lebanon's stability and economic security while being at the forefront of managing the repercussions of the Syria crisis."In a press release by the British Embassy in Beirut, it said: "As part of a wider visit to the region, her first overseas visit since taking office, Secretary of State Patel met with Lebanese ministerial counterparts to discuss the provision of UK aid and the enduring relationship between Britain and Lebanon. She also thanked the Lebanese Government and its people for their continued generosity and support in hosting over 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Patel announced a new £60 million programme over four years to support the implementation of RACE2, with a focus on reaching the most vulnerable children with non-formal education, as a pathway into a formal school, and child protection." Following her field visit, Patel said: "It was important to me to come to Lebanon on my first overseas visit as the UK's International Development Secretary - to demonstrate the UK's commitment to our strong partnership with Lebanon. The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the Lebanese people in dealing with the impacts of the Syria Crisis, including our vital partnership to reach all children with education."Patel added: "Long-term stability and prosperity for Lebanon is in both the UK and the Lebanese national interest. We are working together to ensure the international community as a whole meets the commitments made at the London Conference. The UK has been Lebanon's foremost partner in strengthening the country's education system since 2013, and the two governments share a common goal to ensure that there is 'No Lost Generation' by reaching all children in Lebanon with education. To date the UK has committed around £300m in Lebanon to support refugees and host communities since the beginning of the Syria crisis."The Secretary of State visited an Informal Tented Settlement and a school in the Bekaa to see how the UK is supporting Lebanon with its local and international partners. She was accompanied by Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, UNHCR Country Director Mireille Girard, UNICEF Country Director Tanya Chapuisat and British Ambassador Hugo Shorter. During the field visit, she met Syrian refugee students in a 'catch-up programme' to recover years of lost learning and prepare them to enter formal schools at the right learning levels. She also met with Syrian youth who shared their experiences of conflict and displacement, and their hopes to build a better future by enhancing their education and skills. UNICEF Country Director Tanya Chapuisat said: "The majority of the 340,000 out-of-school children in Lebanon require substantial educational support to help them get back to - and stay in - school," said UNICEF Representative in Lebanon, Tanya Chapuisat, "For these children, Non-Formal Education opportunities are lifelines providing a chance to enroll in public schools and the education they need to build better futures for themselves and their families. Many of them also need support to heal the wounds of a merciless war and protect them from violence, exploitation and abuse. The UK has been a committed partner in protecting the futures of these children and it is only through these continued investments we can hope to lessen the profound long-term consequences this crisis could have on Syria, the region."Press release added: "During her visit, Patel met Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, and held a joint press conference with Education Minister Elias Bou Saab. She also visited the UK Lebanon Tech Hub, an international initiative supported by the British Government aimed at supporting Lebanon's knowledge economy."

Kahwaji, Canadian official take up overall situation
Wed 03 Aug 2016/NNA - Army Commander General Jean Kahwagi met on Wednesday at his Yarzeh office with member of the Canadian Parliament, Ziad Abu Lteif, in the presence of Canadian Ambassador to Lebanon, Michelle Cameron. Talks reportedly dwelt on the overall situation in Lebanon and the broad region, in addition to cooperation relations between the armies of both countries. General Kahwaji also met with head of the Union of keserouan Municipalities, Head of Jounieh Municipality, Joan Hbeich, on top of a delegation, whereby they congratulated the General on Army's national day. The delegation hailed the efforts undertaken by the military institution in maintaining security and stability in the country.

Salam, Mokbel engage in general developments
Wed 03 Aug 2016/NNA - Prime Minister, Tammam Salam, met on Wednesday with National Defense Minister, Vice Prime Minister Samir Mokbel, with talks between the pair reportedly touching on the most recent security and general developments nationwide.

You Stink holds People dialogue table in Tripoli to discuss electoral laws
Wed 03 Aug 2016/NNA - "You Stink" campaign organized on Wednesday People's Dialogue table in Tripoli's al-Tal Square, with the participation of a number of young men, to discuss electoral laws currently under debate. The dialogue table included entries by representatives of "You Stink" campaign, shedding light on their viewpoints of electoral laws under discussion and hailing proportionality poll law. People's dialogue table is currently taking place in parallel to the dialogue session taking place in the country.

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on August 03-04/16

Republican rift widens as Trump declines to endorse Ryan, McCain
Reuters,Washington Wednesday, 3 August 2016/US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ratcheted up tensions in his party on Tuesday by denying two leading figures, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain, support in their re-election bids.Trump told The Washington Post in an interview that he could endorse neither Ryan, the top US elected Republican, nor McCain, a US senator from Arizona and a former Republican presidential nominee, as they face challenges in their states' primary contests ahead of the Nov. 8 general election. Both Ryan and McCain had criticized Trump’s feud with the family of Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died in the line of duty in Iraq in 2004 and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for bravery after his death. The discord comes just two weeks after the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that formally nominated Trump for president.It is the latest rift in a party already frayed by internal dissent over its standard bearer, seen in stark relief at the convention where McCain was among high-level party members who essentially snubbed Trump by choosing not to attend. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, and former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush also did not attend the convention. Trump has had a running dispute with Khizr and Ghazala Khan since they took the stage at last week’s Democratic convention to cite their son's sacrifice and criticize Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States.
The uproar has led many Republicans to distance themselves from Trump and voice support for the Khan family. Trump, mirroring the language Ryan used about supporting the nominee before his eventual endorsement, told the newspaper he was “not quite there yet” on endorsing Ryan in next Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, and that he had “never been there” with McCain, who will be on the ballot in primary elections in Arizona later this month.
McCain had a “very friendly” meeting with Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, on Tuesday in Arizona, where Pence was visiting, a McCain spokeswoman said. Trump said Ryan had sought his endorsement, but that as of now he is only “giving it very serious consideration.”
Ryan’s campaign office quickly responded that “neither Speaker Ryan nor anyone on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump's endorsement.”“And we are confident in a victory next week regardless,” campaign spokesman Zack Roday said in a statement.Ryan is favored to win against primary challenger Paul Nehlen, who Trump praised as running “a very good campaign.” In a mid-July survey by Harper Polling, Ryan was ahead of Nehlen by nearly 50 points. Trump, a former reality TV star, has troubled many in the Republican establishment with his off-the-cuff, often insulting style, and controversial policies, including the proposed ban on Muslims and his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants. President Barack Obama on Tuesday blasted Trump as unfit to be president and questioned why any Republican would support the New York businessman, who is seeking his first public office. “The question I think that they have to ask themselves is, if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable: Why are you still endorsing him?” Obama, a Democrat, said at a White House news conference with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

British lawmakers criticize EU response to migrant crisis
Reuters,London Wednesday, 3 August 2016/European Union attempts to tackle the migration crisis have been a failure, amounting to “too little, too late” with not enough being done to tackle people-smugglers, a committee of British lawmakers said on Wednesday. “Europe’s efforts to address this colossal refugee crisis have been lamentable,” said Keith Vaz, chairman of the British Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee. “The atrocious conditions in migrant camps within and on the borders of the richest countries on earth is a source of shame.”A flood of refugees from the Middle East and Asia, many escaping conflict in Syria and Iraq, has grown into Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two.The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday more than 257,000 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea this year and at least 3,000 others had died. Following a year-long inquiry, the British committee said the failure of members of the Schengen area system, which allows free passage between most EU states, had made the problem worse by failing to agree on control of its external borders. “The EU’s March 2016 agreement with Turkey on return of migrants is arguably a first step towards a meaningful response but it has come far too late and is itself highly controversial for a number of reasons,” the committee said. The lawmakers said too much was being left to the countries most affected, such as Italy, Greece and Turkey, and Vaz said naval deployments in the Mediterranean had failed to deter the migrant flows or disrupt people-smuggling gangs. “The EU’s response in combating people-traffickers who are exploiting, exacerbating and profiting from this crisis has been poor,” he said. Closer to home, the committee said recent figures suggested Britain was unlikely to meet its own target of resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, and said maintaining an agreement with France for British border checks at French Channel ports should be a priority for the British government. There has been speculation that the deal could be at risk following the vote in June for Britain to leave the EU. “Our priority is to offer humanitarian support to those most in need while maintaining the security of our borders,” said a Home Office (interior ministry) spokeswoman, adding that Britain was committed and on track to meet its target for Syrian refugees.

Emirates airline plane crash-lands at Dubai airport
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Wednesday, 3 August 2016
An Emirates Airline flight coming from India made an emergency landing at Dubai International Airport on Wednesday, the Dubai government media office said on its official Twitter account, adding that there were no reported casualties yet. Emirates confirmed that 282 passengers and 18 crew on board, in a statement posted to its official Facebook page. "Emirates can confirm that today, 3rd August 2016, flight EK521 travelling from Trivandrum International Airport in Thiruvananthapuram, India to Dubai has been involved in an accident at Dubai International Airport. There were 275 passengers and crew on board.
"Our main priority at this time is the safety and wellbeing of all involved and full co-operation is being extended to the authorities and emergency services managing the situation," the statement read. Footage on social media and re-posted by Dubai-based Gulf News showed smoke billowing from the aircraft. All passengers were reportedly escorted to safety. Dubai's Media office confirmed that emergency response teams at the airport fully extinguished the fire on the plane nearly two hours after the crash-landing. A company representative reached by Al Arabiya English said they could not comment further on the accident, but that all passengers and crew are safe. Al Arabiya News Channel correspondent in Dubai Abdullah Al-Muttawa said that all flights were “diverted either to Maktoum International Airport or Sharjah International Airport.”He added: “Authorities dispatched emergency personnel on the ground and were able to evacuate all passengers on board to safety and there are no reports of injuries or casualties up until now.Muttawa also said that there were reports of smoke onboard before the plane made an emergency landing. Meanwhile, all departure flights from Dubai international airport were delayed until further notice, Dubai authorities said. Commenting on the incident, Kuwait-based former pilot Sami al-Nusuf, told Al Arabiya: “Emirates airlines has proven itself from past incidents in handling high pressure situations. Its record has been clean so far.”When asked how it was possible to promptly evacuate so many people, Nusuf said: “What happens is that multiple trials and scenarios are practiced by the cabin crew before they are allowed to take flights. They are trained both in getting passengers out within 90 seconds and in handling widespread panic.”The relative of one of the passengers onboard the plane said some had “inhaled smoke.”"People have inhaled smoke. Those who left the plane early might not have. But those who went out later have inhaled smoke," Reji George told Gulf News."All of them in the hangar. We don't know how long it will take for them to come out."
The Twitter account of live air traffic monitor Flightradar24 said takeoffs and landings at Dubai had been suspended because of the incident, adding that the plane involved was a Boeing 777-300 A6-EMW.

Syrian Regime Forces Roll Back Rebel Gains in Aleppo
SourceAgence France Presse/Syrian regime forces bolstered by Russian air strikes recaptured territory overnight in the southwest suburbs of the battleground city of Aleppo, rolling back the short-lived gains of a rebel offensive. Rebels and their jihadists allies launched an assault Sunday in a bid to ease a more than two-week government siege of opposition-held districts of the city. But regime fighters have put up a fierce fightback, retaking several positions from beleaguered rebel forces, a monitor said Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces seized two hilltops and two small villages in the southwest suburbs of Aleppo late Tuesday. "The regime is launching counter-attacks to absorb the fierce rebel offensive," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. "The opposition offensive has not achieved the results that were expected at this stage," he said.An Agence France Presse journalist in east Aleppo said clashes and shelling could be heard throughout the night, followed by barrel bomb attacks and air strikes in the early morning. The groups waging the offensive -- including fighters from Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate and the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham -- have promised to end the government encirclement of eastern parts of Aleppo. They are seeking to capture Ramussa, a district in Aleppo's southwest suburbs, in a bid to cut off government forces and open a new route into the city for rebels. - 'Long and gruesome battle' -But they have struggled to hold newly-acquired territory in the face of heavy Russian air strikes, Abdel Rahman said. They have managed to keep control of at least four hilltops and one small village, he added. Longtime regime ally Moscow launched an air campaign in support of President Bashar Assad's forces in September. Wednesday's edition of Al-Watan, a newspaper close to the government, said government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, "advanced again south and southwest of Aleppo causing major setbacks" for rebel factions. And pro-regime website Al-Masdar News said an initial rebel advance into the Ramussa district was pushed back "following a long and gruesome battle". The Britain-based Observatory said more than 50 rebels and allied jihadists had been killed since the assault began, as well as dozens of regime troops. Overnight, at least 10 civilians, including four children, were killed in rebel shelling of government-controlled districts on Aleppo's southwestern edges, the monitor said. More than 40 civilians have been killed by shelling on government-held neighborhoods since Sunday. The battle for Aleppo -- Syria's second city -- is critical for both the regime in Damascus and the forces seeking to overthrow it. It was Syria's commercial hub until 2012, when clashes left it roughly divided between government troops in the west and rebels in the east. - 'Deeply flawed' plan -Eastern districts came under government siege on July 17, sparking concerns for the estimated 250,000 people still living there. Last week Russia announced the opening of "humanitarian corridors" to allow residents and surrendering fighters to flee for government-held territory. This was met with skepticism by residents and international observers, and 35 NGOs in a statement on Tuesday called the initiative "deeply flawed". The groups, including Save the Children and Oxfam, urged implementation of a UN call for a weekly 48-hour humanitarian pause in Aleppo. In the surrounding province, 24 people reportedly suffered breathing difficulties in Saraqeb, a town 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Aleppo, after a barrel bomb attack on Tuesday, the Observatory said. Residents said the attack had used chlorine gas, but the monitor could not confirm this. The incident took place close to where Russia said on Monday one of its military helicopters was shot down, killing the five people on board. Syria's conflict has killed more than 280,000 people and drawn in world powers on both sides since it erupted in March 2011. Half the country's population has been forced to flee their homes with an estimated five million seeking refuge in neighboring countries.

Syrian govt considers stopping religious education from curricula
By Staff Writer Al Arabiya Wednesday, 3 August 2016/The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad may cancel religious education in its schools, according to reports from activists and regime officials. Member of Parliament Nabil Saleh said on his official Facebook page that the parliament had discussed an item related to cancelling religious education from educational curricula in Syria. Previous media reports said sources in the past 24 hours said there had been a dispute among members of parliament regarding religious matters such as separating male students from female students during religious education classes. However, it later turned out that on July 28, the parliament discussed the possibility of cancelling religious education in schools. According to sources, the dispute erupted while discussing cancelling religious education as MPs Reem al-Saei and Farah Himsho, who are categorized as Islamists, stood against the proposal. Meanwhile, Saleh, said the parliament discussed this item related to cancelling religious education in Syrian schools and replacing it with a subject on “morals.”What’s known as a Russian-drafted constitution for Syria, and which is a draft constitution which sources close to the Assad regime confirmed it was submitted to the latter, has proposed cancelling the president’s sect from the Syrian constitution in addition to cancelling the name “Arab” from the “Syrian Arab Republic” so it’s only the “Syrian Republic.”The Russian-drafted constitution also proposes cancelling the inclusion of the word “Allah” from the oath section and writing “I swear” instead of “I swear by Almighty God.”Assad has not acknowledged there is a Russian-drafted constitution for Syria and reiterated there isn’t any. But a report published on June 17 by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is affiliated with the Lebanese Party Hezbollah, one of the Syrian regime’s close allies, there is a Russian-drafted constitution with the Syrian regime’s handwritten notes on it. News of the proposal to cancel religious education in Syrian schools has received feedback particularly by figures who have previously suggested replacing religious education with “national education.” Hossam Eddine Kholasi, a doctor and an academic from Aleppo and who’s close to the Syrian regime and who had called on the latter to shell Aleppo with missiles, has previously made such proposals.

Turkey’s Erdogan presses US to extradite preacher Gulen
AFP,Ankara Wednesday, 3 August 2016/Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed the United States in a television interview broadcast Tuesday to extradite preacher Fethullah Gulen, saying waiting to get the alleged coup plotter was “intolerable.” Erdogan complained in the interview with Televisa that US authorities were asking for documents for the extradition of Pennsylvania-based Gulen, whom he accuses him of being behind last month’s failed military putsch. “You have to be blind and deaf not to understand that he is behind all of this,” Erdogan said. “If we request the extradition of a terrorist then you should fulfill that,” he said. “If you start asking for documents and what not, then it’s a huge obstacle in our way of fighting terrorism.”“But at the moment we are running into the difficulty of not being able to receive a terrorist that we are asking to be extradited,” he said. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999 and has denied any involvement in the July 15 putsch bid. Turkish authorities sent a new package of documents to the American authorities for Gulen’s extradition, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said. “In terms of fighting against terrorism, we have no time to lose, six months or one year, that’s simply intolerable,” Erdogan said. US Secretary of State John Kerry said on July 18 that Turkey must present “genuine evidence” and “not allegations” against the Muslim cleric for his extradition.Already strained ties between NATO allies Turkey and the United States have been aggravated by the failed putsch, with some government ministers even alleging Washington could have had a hand in the plot, which US officials firmly reject. Turkish authorities have detained some 18,000 people in a post-coup crackdown.

Calls to Turkey to follow human rights in crackdown on plotters
Reuters, Ankara Wednesday, 3 August 2016/Turkey needs to take on those responsible for the failed coup last month, but this needs to be done in conformity with the rule of law and human rights, the head of human rights body the Council of Europe said on Wednesday.
Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland also said at a joint news conference with Turkey's foreign minister in Ankara that there had been little understanding in Europe on the extent to which a secret network had infiltrated the Turkish army and judiciary. Jagland is the most senior European official to visit Turkey since the failed July 15 putsch, when a faction of the army commandeered tanks, helicopters and fighter jets in an attempt to overthrow the government. Turkey blames followers of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen for the putsch. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, denies the charges and has denounced the coup. The double standards of secularism meaning between Erdogan and Al Sisi

Iranian hard-line theorist arrested for criticizing the army
The Associated Press, Tehran Wednesday, 3 August 2016/Iran’s official IRNA news agency is reporting that authorities have arrested a hard-line theorist for criticizing the Iranian army.The report Wednesday says Hassan Abbasi, the head of the Centre for Doctrinal Strategic Studies, a think-tank, was arrested on charges of “spreading lies” and “creating an atmosphere of skepticism about the armed forces.”In a video published on social media networks in Iran, Abbasi, who calls himself the “Kissinger of Islam,” criticizes the army for inaction, particularly when it comes to social and political issues. He later appeared in a military court, and defended his remarks. They drew strong condemnation from the army and the powerful hard-line military group, the Revolutionary Guards. Abbasi is known in Iran for his divisive speeches on subjects including economics, history, politics and cinema.

Saudi citizens told to be cautious while traveling to Brazil
Saudi Gazette, Riyadh Wednesday, 3 August 2016/All citizens who wish to travel to Brazil for Rio Olympics should be cautious in view of the high crime rate and the risk of Zika virus infection, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior has warned. The Foreign Ministry issued an advisory in this regard, said Director General of the Department of Relations and Information at the ministry Maj. Gen. Muhammad Almra’ol. Some 500,000 people are expected to visit the Rio Olympics, which have been overshadowed not only by Zika but also by concerns over crime. **This article first appeared in the Saudi Gazette on Aug. 3, 2016

Coalition planes pound ISIS-held Saddam palace: UK
AFP, London Wednesday, 3 August 2016/Coalition warplanes bombed one of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s palaces which was being used as a training base ISIS, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Wednesday. The palace in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq was attacked in a joint operation by the US-led coalition on Monday, with British Tornado jets targeting the headquarters buildings and a security centre. Extensive surveillance established that the ISIS group, also known as Daesh, was using the palace and its sprawling grounds as a headquarters and training centre for foreign recruits, the ministry said. Within the secure compound on the banks of the River Tigris, the main palace building was being used as accommodation and a meeting venue. The site also contained “a number of more discreet outbuildings used for command and control, training, internal security and repression”, it said. “A large coalition air package drawn from several nations conducted a carefully coordinated attack on the complex,” the ministry said in a statement. “The British contribution was a pair of Tornados, armed with the largest guided bombs in the RAF’s (Royal Air Force’s) inventory, the 2,000-pound (910-kilogramme) Enhanced Paveway III, which were used to target first the headquarters buildings, then a security centre. “Initial analysis indicates that the coalition mission was successful.”Mosul, Iraq’s second city, has been held by the ISIS group since June 2014. Iraqi forces are conducting operations to set the stage for an assault but the final push to retake it is likely still months away. As part of the international coalition, RAF Tornado and Typhoon jets are flying daily missions against ISIS in Iraq as well as in Syria from the British sovereign bases on Cyprus.“Daesh has been losing followers and territory for months, and emphatic strikes like this show that we and the coalition will not waver,” Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said after the Mosul bombing. “Daesh fighters, both foreign and home-grown, can see that they are targets inside this cultmid.”

South Sudan leader fires 5 ministers close to opposition
AFP, Juba Wednesday, 3 August 2016/South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has fired five ministers, according to an official decree, in a move that removed figures known for close ties to ex-rebel leader Riek Machar. Under a peace agreement signed in August 2015, Kiir headed the government while Machar was given the position of first vice president. Thirty ministerial posts were distributed between their two parties and others. But a presidential decree issued on Tuesday showed that cabinet posts including the interior and petroleum portfolios in the oil-rich state had been filled with allies of the new vice president, Taban Deng Gai. Deng, who leads a faction of Machar’s SPLM/A (IO) party, was named vice president by Kiir after being fired as a minister by his own party leader. Among those removed were water resources minister Mabior Garang, the son of the figurehead of South Sudan’s independence movement, and the minister for higher education, Peter Adwok, an influential ex-rebel. Their sacking strains the delicate balance of ethnicities in the government, analysts said. Garang is an opposition figure but a Dinka like the president, while Adwok is a Shilluk, a group which has now lost an important voice in government. Kiir did however retain powerful rebel figure Alfred Lado Gore in his government, moving him from the interior ministry to housing. Machar ally Gore hails from the Equatoria region, where the capital, Juba, is located and which is seen as a hotbed for opposition recruitment. The move also comes just days after Lam Akol, a minister representing another opposition grouping, resigned with the intention of organising the government’s opponents into a more consolidated force, he said, while declaring the peace deal dead. South Sudan’s political tensions date back to December 2013, just over two years after the state achieved independence from Sudan. Kiir accused Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that degenerated into a ruinous civil war. The two agreed a peace deal and power-sharing arrangement in August 2015, but problems have lurked beneath the surface. Renewed fighting in July led the UN Security Council to consider a visit this month to Sudan and South Sudan to push for a return to peace efforts. Machar has not returned to Juba since the clashes.

Japan Says N. Korea Missile Test 'Outrageous Act'
Agence France Presse/August 03/16/Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday condemned a North Korean test missile that landed 250 kilometers (155 miles) off Japan's coast as an "outrageous act" which threatened his country. "It's a serious threat against our country's security," Abe told reporters. "This is an outrageous act that cannot be tolerated." Defense minister Gen Nakatani said the missile landed in the Sea of Japan off the north coast in the country's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) -- the first time a North Korean missile has landed in Japan's EEZ since 1998. It was the first ever North Korean missile to land in Japan's EEZ in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) facing the Korean peninsula. The North Korean missile in 1998 landed in Japan's EEZ in the Pacific Ocean after having flown over the country's territory. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesman, also harshly criticized the launch. "There was no early warning," he told reporters."From the perspective of the safety of aircraft and ships, it is an extremely problematic, dangerous act," he added. "We immediately launched a strong protest against North Korea and condemned (the launch) in the strongest language" through diplomatic channels, he said.

Israel Approves Jailing 'Terrorists' from Age 12
Agence France Presse/August 03/16/Israeli lawmakers approved jailing children as young as 12 convicted of "terrorist offences" in the wake of repeated attacks by young Palestinians, the parliament said on Wednesday. "The 'Youth Bill,' which will allow the authorities to imprison a minor convicted of serious crimes such as murder, attempted murder or manslaughter even if he or she is under the age of 14, passed its second and third readings... Tuesday night," an English-language statement said. It added that the seriousness of attacks in recent months "demands a more aggressive approach, including toward minors."
The statement quoted Anat Berko, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party and the bill's sponsor, as saying "to those who are murdered with a knife in the heart it does not matter if the child is 12 or 15."Violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel since October has killed at least 218 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese, according to an Agence France Presse count. Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities. Many of the assailants were young people, including teenagers. Other youths have been shot dead during protests and clashes with security forces. Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked gave the "Youth Bill" full backing when it came before a ministerial committee last year. "Youths, such as Ahmed Manasra, who engage in terror and seek the death of Jewish civilians will not be shown mercy by the law," media quoted her as saying. Manasra, a 14-year-old Palestinian, was convicted in May of the attempted murder of two Israelis in a knife attack last October. He was 13 when he carried out the attack and is yet to be sentenced. Along with a 15-year-old cousin he stabbed and seriously wounded a 20-year-old and a 12-year-old boy in the Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Pisgat Zeev in annexed east Jerusalem. The cousin was shot dead by security forces, while Manasra was hit by a car as they fled. Manasra, an east Jerusalem resident, was the youngest Palestinian to be convicted by an Israeli civilian court in the current round of violence.

U.S. paid “ransom” to free Americans prisoners in Iran - report
NCRI Iran News/ Wednesday, 03 August 2016/
The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward. Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said. The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with the Iranian regime to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, The Wall Street Journal wrote on Wednesday.The report added that the settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”
But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian regime’s negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.” “This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said. Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans, the report said. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months. At the time of the prisoner release, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House portrayed it as a diplomatic breakthrough. Mr. Kerry cited the importance of “the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks.”
Iranian state media reports have quoted senior regime defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment. The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with the Iranian regime in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law. Sanctions also complicate Tehran’s access to global banks.
“Sometimes the Iranians want cash because it’s so hard for them to access things in the international financial system,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the January cash delivery. “They know it can take months just to figure out how to wire money from one place to another.”
The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars. Lawmakers have expressed concern that the cash would be used by the Iranian regime to fund regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization. The U.S. and United Nations believe Tehran is subsidizing the Assad regime’s war in Syria through cash and energy shipments.
The U.S. and the Iranian regime entered into secret negotiations to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Iran in November 2014, according to U.S. and European officials. Switzerland’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, offered to host the discussions. The Swiss have represented the U.S.’s diplomatic interests in Iran since Washington closed its embassy in Tehran following the 1979 hostage crisis. The Iranian regime’s security services arrested two Iranian-Americans during President Obama’s first term. In July 2014, the intelligence arm of the regime’s Revolutionary Guards detained the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, and charged him with espionage. A fourth Iranian-American was arrested last year. A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Robert Levinson, disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in 2007. His whereabouts remain unknown.
The Swiss channel initially saw little activity, according to these officials. But momentum shifted after Tehran and world powers forged a final agreement in July 2015 to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of most international sanctions. A surge of meetings then took place in the Swiss lakeside city of Geneva in November and December. The U.S. delegation was led by a special State Department envoy, Brett McGurk, and included representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to U.S. and European officials. The Iranian regime’s team was largely staffed by members of its domestic spy service, according to U.S. officials. The discussions, held at the InterContinental Hotel, initially focused solely on a formula whereby the Iranian regime would swap the Americans detained in Tehran for Iranian nationals held in U.S. jails, U.S. officials said. But around Christmas, the discussions dovetailed with the arbitration in The Hague concerning the old arms deal.
The Iranian regime was demanding the return of $400 million the Shah’s regime deposited into a Pentagon trust fund in 1979 to purchase U.S. fighter jets, U.S. officials said. They also wanted billions of dollars as interest accrued since then. President Obama approved the shipment of the $400 million. But accumulating so much cash presented a logistical and security challenge, said U.S. and European officials. One person briefed on the operation joked: “You can’t just withdraw that much money from ATMs.” Mr. Kerry and the State and Treasury departments sought the cooperation of the Swiss and Dutch governments. Ultimately, the Obama administration transferred the equivalent of $400 million to their central banks. It was then converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane. On the morning of Jan. 17, the Iranian regime released the four Americans: Three of them boarded a Swiss Air Force jet and flew off to Geneva, with the fourth returning to the U.S. on his own. In return, the U.S. freed seven Iranian citizens and dropped extradition requests for 14 others.
U.S. and European officials wouldn’t disclose exactly when the plane carrying the $400 million landed in Iran. But a report by an Iranian state news site close to the Revolutionary Guards, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.
Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.
Members of Congress are seeking to pass legislation preventing the Obama administration from making any further cash payments to the Iranian regime. One of the bills requires for the White House to make public the details of its $1.7 billion transfer to Iran. “President Obama’s…payment to Iran in January, which we now know will fund Iran’s military expansion, is an appalling example of executive branch governance,” said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who co-wrote the bill. “Subsidizing Iran’s military is perhaps the worst use of taxpayer dollars ever by an American president.”

Iran: Hunger strike of political prisoners in Gohardasht prison protesting the mass execution of Sunni prisoners
NCRI/ Wednesday, 03 August 2016/A number of Sunni political prisoners on death row, who have been transferred on Monday, August 1st from Ward 10 of Section 4 of Gohardasht prison to solitary confinement of the IRGC section of this prison, launched a protest against execution of a number of their cellmates by shouting slogans. The henchmen severely beat these prisoners whose hands and feet were shackled in chain. At the same time the prisoners of Ward 210 of Section 7, who are also Sunnis, went on hunger strike on Tuesday August 2 to protest the mass execution of Sunni political prisoners. The Revolutionary Guards who have taken the control of large section of prison sound the alarms in order to intensify the atmosphere of intimidation and terror and to prevent prisoners’ protests. The wards’ doors and prison yard are still closed. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, described the mass execution of Sunni prisoners in Gohardasht Prison “an appalling crime against humanity” and called on Iranian youths to rise up in support of and in solidarity with the families of the victims. She asked the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council to bring the record of the Iranian regime's crimes before the International Criminal Court so that perpetrators of these crimes are brought to justice. On the other hand, simultaneous with the execution of Sunni political prisoners, a number of other political prisoners including Saleh Kohandel, Mohammad Ali Mansouri and Afshin Baymani have been transferred from Ward 12 of Section 4 of Gohardasht prison to an unknown location. Ruthless henchmen did not even allow the families of victims to come close to the bodies of their children and in fear of popular protests; they prevented their transfer and burying them in their hometowns in Kurdistan. Suppressive forces buried the bodies of those executed scattered in section 305 of the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery. From Tuesday morning intelligence agents, plainclothes and motorcyclist Revolutionary Guards have emptied this section and have brought it under strict control. Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran/August 2, 2016

Knesset committee recognizes Armenian genocide
Jerusalem Post/August 03/16/The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee announced on Monday that it recognizes the Armenian Genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by Ottoman Turks during WWI. “It is our moral obligation to recognize the Holocaust of the Armenian nation,” committee chairman MK Ya’acov Margi (Shas) said. Margi expressed regret that the Knesset had yet to recognize the genocide and called on Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein to declare that the Israeli parliament recognizes the Armenian Genocide. Last year Edelstein told the education committee that he would try to promote the issue and said he hopes that “MKs will know the right way to vote in the moment of truth.”“I visited one of the Armenian memorial sites and it is very hard to ignore what I saw there,” Edelstein recounted. “I expect that I and the Knesset behave appropriately so that we can make decisions according to the moral standards of a democratic state.”Georgette Avakian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee in Jerusalem, told the Knesset committee that after 101 years, the time had come for the Knesset to join parliaments around the world and the 31 countries who have already recognized the Armenian Genocide. “The Knesset and the president of the state must recognize the genocide of our nation,” she said.
As Israel waits to normalize ties with Turkey, following an agreement reached last month, it is highly unlikely the government will pass a resolution describing the Turkish massacre of Armenians as genocide. Such a move would immediately poison the ties between the two countries.
Turkey recalled its ambassador to Germany in June after the German parliament passed a resolution on the matter.Israel, it should be noted, refrained from such a move even during the six years following the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident when relations between the two countries were at their lowest point. It is unlikely, therefore, to imagine that it would do so now, as ties are improving. MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) who initiated the committee meeting said that “each year we instill false hope in the people who are sitting here.”“It dishonors the Knesset to continue to go on and on about this issue, year after year, without reaching a decision that the State of Israel and the Israeli legislature recognize the genocide of the Armenian people.”While Israel made no move toward recognizing the Armenian Genocide during the breakdown of ties with Turkey, some Jewish groups in the US – which hesitated in the past, partly because of concern about how this would impact Israeli-Turkish ties – started to do so. In 2007 ADL head Abe Foxman fired the organization’s regional director in Boston for telling a newspaper he opposed the ADL’s long-standing refusal to recognize the massacres of the Armenians as genocide. Foxman came under a harsh criticism for the move, and backtracked, but then came under fire from some in Israel concerned that this would negatively affect Israel-Turkey ties. Turkey’s ambassador to Israel at the time, Namik Tan, told The Jerusalem Post that Ankara expected Israel to “deliver” the American Jewish community, and ensure that the US Congress does not pass a resolution on the matter. Seven years later, in 2014, the ADL recognized the genocide, and the American Jewish Committee did the same a short time later. In 2015 the Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted a resolution on Armenian Genocide that called on the US Congress and the president to recognize the genocide. **Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.
 

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on on August 03-04/16

"Justice" in Pakistan: Asia Bibi
Lubna Thomas Benjamin/Gatestone Institute/August 03/16
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8603/pakistan-asia-bibi

"I believe in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?" — Asia Bibi, the words for which she is on death row, for "blasphemy."
Mobs attacking blasphemy victims in Pakistan know that nothing will happen to them.
According to a recent report, "Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan" published by the Center for Research and Security Studies, 247 blasphemy cases were registered between 1987 and 2012; 52 of the people involved were killed extrajudicially.
The history of Pakistan is filled with hatred and intolerance toward the people who raise their voices against the blasphemy laws: Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab Province, and Shahbaz Bhatti, the federal Minister of Minority Affairs, were murdered for supporting Asia Bibi and protesting the blasphemy laws.
For the first time since her arrest in 2009, Asia Bibi saw a sign of hope on July 22, when the Supreme Court of Pakistan gave her permission to appeal the death sentence she was served twice: first by the High Court in 2010 and again in 2014. She is, however, still waiting for justice.
Asia Bibi, 50, and a mother of five, was accused of blasphemy in June 2009 by her coworkers in a dispute over bowl of water. They told her that, as she is a Christian, she could not drink water from the same bowl as they were. The argument that ensued led to an angry mob assaulting her, and her arrest on the charge of "blasphemy" -- that she allegedly had uttered derogatory remarks about the Islamic Prophet Mohammad.
Bibi became the first woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan. Since her arrest, her family has also faced threats which have forced them to move to an undisclosed location.
Bibi was charged with violating section 295-C of Pakistan's Penal Code, which states:
"Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to a fine."
The words that Asia Bibi said to her coworkers, in response to their remarks against her, were: "I believe in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?"
It was the last sentence that apparently incited the mob before the police arrested her. Mobs attacking blasphemy victims in Pakistan know that nothing will happen to them. The situation is common -- the incidents of Shanti Nagar, Gujran and Badami Bagh involved large-scale mob violence against the Christians and their communities in Pakistan.
Asia Bibi and two of her five children, pictured prior to her imprisonment on death row in 2010 for "blasphemy."
Blasphemy cases against Christians in Pakistan increased when the late military dictator, General Zia Ulf Haq, harshened the blasphemy laws during his rule (1978 -1988). Since then, the blasphemy laws have daily threatened the Christians of Pakistan.
According to a recent report, "Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan" published by the Center for Research and Security Studies, 247 blasphemy cases were registered between 1987 and 2012; 52 of the people involved were killed extrajudicially.
The report also compared the severity of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan to those in other Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Iran and Malaysia. The report found that the blasphemy laws are far more moderate in those three countries than in Pakistan.
Although the Supreme Court's move to suspend Bibi's death sentence has brought hope, the common fate of so-called blasphemers in Pakistan is often death anyhow -- by mob violence. Asia Bibi, even if she is acquitted, will not necessarily be safe.
In the case of another Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, 14, also charged with blasphemy, the evidence was doctored by a religious cleric, Khalid Chishti, who was arrested but later released: the witnesses refused to testify against him. The case highlighted the weakness of the judicial system, which, succumbing only to public pressure, put behind bars even a minor. Based on the doctored evidence, the court later acquitted Masih.
In Bibi's case, her lawyer has proven that the evidence against her was manipulated by way of the delayed registration of the "first information report." The other weakness in the case is the witness: the main accuser against her is an Islamic imam who was not even present at the incident.
The trial of Asia Bibi, the longest blasphemy case in Pakistan, spotlights the urgent need for international leadership, and superhuman national leadership within Pakistan, which would call for the review of the blasphemy laws.
The history of Pakistan is filled with hatred and intolerance toward the people who raise their voices against the blasphemy laws: Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab Province, and Shahbaz Bhatti, the federal Minister of Minority Affairs, were murdered for supporting Asia Bibi and protesting the blasphemy laws.
The blasphemy laws need to be reviewed and debated at the national level, instead of being exported to the free world, as Pakistan -- with the help of the UN Human Rights Council's Resolution 16/18 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Istanbul Process -- were trying to do.
The international community, the so-called human rights groups and the somnolent media urgently need to protect Christians and others against these blasphemy laws so that this sort of "justice" can be stopped.
*Lubna Thomas Benjamin, recipient of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship for the year 2011-12, was a television producer in Pakistan and has worked at CNN Atlanta. She is currently a freelance writer in the United States.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The Pope and Holy War
Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/August 03/16
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8604/pope-holy-war-jihad

The West that jihadists now terrorize has allowed itself to be weakened. A combination of political correctness, fear of giving offense, fear of combat, and a reluctance to upset illusory stability has led to an incredible series of opportunities for the jihadists.
We have dropped our guard and turned away. Not because we have no security forces. We do. But because we often are not looking at the right things: the texts and sermons that prefigure radicalisation.
"[T]he Noble Quran appoints the Muslims as guardians over humanity in its minority, and grants them the rights of suzerainty and dominion over the world in order to carry out this sublime commission. ... We have come to the conclusion that it is our duty to establish sovereignty over the world and to guide all of humanity to the sound precepts of Islam and to its teachings..." — Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
On the morning of July 26, a priest serving mass, an elderly man of 85, Father Jacques Hamel, was butchered before his altar by one of two knife-wielding devotees of the Islamic State. His killer slit his throat and might very well have proceeded to behead him, as is the wont of many jihadi executioners. The followers of a faith that honours murderers as martyrs (shuhada') created a martyr for quite another faith.
In both Greek and Arabic, the terms "martyr" and shahid mean exactly the same thing: "a witness". Father Hamel was the latest in a long line of Christian martyrs who have been slain by men of violence, supposedly in order to attest to the sole truth of their faith. Many Muslim martyrs have died in much that way, but even more have given their lives while waging war (jihad) to conquer territories for Islam.[1]
The flag of the Islamic State reads "la ilaha illa'llah, Muhammadun rasulu'llah". The words mean: "There is no God but God; Muhammad is the prophet of God". Those two phrases are known as the shahada, the bearing of witness. You see it everywhere today, now in Syria, then again in France or the UK. But shahada also means martyrdom. And martyrdom while committing violence is what the killers of an innocent man of God achieved on that day when armed police found them and shot them dead outside the church they had desecrated.
On the following day, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, issued a statement on the event, and for a moment it seemed that he had finally got things right. He said the world was now at war. Decades after the war started, here was a religious leader and statesman who seemed to have awakened to the fact that Western countries have been unwillingly and ineffectively failing to wage a war against Islamic radicalism. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Islamic radicalism has been waging a war with us.
But then he blew it. What he then said was:
"It's war, we don't have to be afraid to say this ... a war of interests, for money, resources. I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don't want war. The others want war."
What? Is slaughtering a priest at his altar linked to "interests, money, resources"? Were the killers driven by a longing for social justice, for more money, for access to greater resources? Did they think the violent death of a harmless priest would bring them any of that? They had not gone to steal any of the valuable altar table objects, the censers, the candlesticks, the crucifix, the monstrance. The killers had been shouting "Allahu akbar", literally "God is greater" (than everything, especially, to Muslims, the supposedly non-monotheistic Christian Trinity and the Church). As we know only too well, "Allahu akbar" is a religious phrase that Muslims use often. It is the beginning of the call to prayer, the adhan, repeated six times, five times a day, preceded and followed by the shahada. It has been ringing in Western ears every time Muslims in Europe and North America carry out attacks or as a prelude to a suicide attack. It is precisely because Muslims believe that their God (named in Arabic as Allah) is superior to all other gods, because to them Islam is the greatest of all religions and lastly, because Islam is destined to conquer the world either by conversion or through violence.
What did Pope Francis mean when he said "Religions don't want war. The others want war"? This is a man with access to endless colleges of scholars, to academics worldwide, to specialists in Islam and the Middle East. It is simply not true. To begin with, who are these "others"? Non-religious people? Atheists? Agnostics? Protestants?
In order to win a war, you have to be able to identify your enemy, understand his motives, figure out just what drives his soldiers to risk their lives in battle, know for what cause mothers and wives should send their sons and husbands to fight, knowing they may never return. Ignore all that, invent false motives for the enemy, or fail to know his ultimate aims, and you will lose. "If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles", said the great Chinese general, Sun Tzu, in his Art of War.
A day after that remark, the Pope sadly compounded his ignorance. A report in a Catholic magazine, Crux, stated that:
The pope said that in every religion there are violent people, "a small group of fundamentalists," including in Catholicism.
"When fundamentalism goes as far as murdering ... you can murder with your tongue and also with the knife," he said.
"I believe that it's not fair to identify Islam with violence. It's not fair and it's not true," he continued, adding that he has had a long conversation with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the Cairo-based Islamic university often described as the Vatican of the Sunni world.
"I know how they think. They look for peace, encounter," he said. [Author's italics]
Unfortunately, it is clear that the Pope (along with hundreds of politicians and religious leaders in the West, although not in Israel) does not know his enemy at all. If he thinks that "religions do not want war," it is also clear he has never studied Islam or received truthful instruction in it from anyone. Here is why.
The later chapters of the Qur'an contain dozens of verses calling on the believers to go out to fight jihad or to use their resources to pay others to do so. The purpose of jihad is "the strengthening of Islam, the protection of believers and voiding the earth of unbelief".[2]
According to a modern expert on jihad, "the Qur'an... presents a well-developed religious justification for waging war against Islam's enemies".[3]
Islam is not merely a religion; it is a system of governance. Here is Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the ubiquitous Muslim Brotherhood:
Islam is a comprehensive system which deals with all spheres of life. It is a state and a homeland (or a government and a nation). It is morality and power (or mercy and justice); it is a culture and a law (or knowledge and jurisprudence). It is material and wealth (or gain and prosperity). It is an endeavour and a call (or an army and a cause). And finally, it is true belief and worship.[4]
What does this mean for non-Muslims? Banna again makes this clear:
This means that the Noble Quran appoints the Muslims as guardians over humanity in its minority, and grants them the rights of suzerainty and dominion over the world in order to carry out this sublime commission. Hence it is our concern, not that of the West, and it pertains to Islamic civilization, not to materialistic civilization. We have come to the conclusion that it is our duty to establish sovereignty over the world and to guide all of humanity to the sound precepts of Islam and to its teachings, without which mankind cannot attain happiness.[5]
Pope Francis (right), recently said that "I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don't want war," and "I believe that it's not fair to identify Islam with violence. It's not fair and it's not true." Hassan al-Banna (left), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that "the Noble Quran appoints the Muslims as guardians over humanity in its minority, and grants them the rights of suzerainty and dominion over the world in order to carry out this sublime commission."
The Islamic Tradition literature, found in the six canonical collections, lays down descriptions of jihad and instructions on how to fight it. Please do not be misled by the oft-repeated obfuscation, "The greater jihad is a struggle with the self, a spiritual war". There is no mention of this idea in the classical texts.[6] For centuries, jihad has meant physical warfare. Even the mystical Sufi brotherhoods have engaged in that extremely physical struggle.[7]
The Islamic prophet Muhammad led his men into battle on many occasions and sent out around 100 raiding parties and expeditions.[8] His successors, the caliphs, did the same. In the half-century after Muhammad's death in 632 C.E., Muslim forces had conquered half the known world. Jihad wars continued to be fought on an annual basis by all the great Islamic empires, with no exception.
The first two major Islamic empires, that of the Umayyads (661-750) and their successors under a new dynasty of caliphs, the Abbasids (750-1258) carried out annual expeditions (usually two or more per year) against the Byzantine Empire (based in Constantinople). These raids were an ongoing tradition based on the earliest jihad wars in both the West and the East. They were never haphazard, but well planned. There were usually to two summer campaigns, often be followed by winter expeditions.
The summer jihads usually took the form of two separate attacks. One onslaught was called the "expedition of the left". It was launched from the border fortresses of Sicily, whose troops were mainly of Syrian origin. The larger "expedition of the right" would be carried out from launched from the eastern Anatolian province of Malatya, deploying Iraqi troops. These jihad expeditions reached their height under the third major empire, that of the Ottomans, who conquered Constantinople in 1453, thereby bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul and its chief basilica, Hagia Sophia, was turned into the imperial mosque of the Ottomans.
Today's jihadist organizations, from the Islamic State to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Islamic Jihad, Jabhat al-Nusra, Boko Haram, Hamas, al-Shabaab and hundreds of others are simply carrying out, on a broader canvas, the jihad wars of the nineteenth century.[9]
Jihadists seem to do this in preference to missionary work (although other groups such as the Pakistani Tablighi Jamaat do plenty of that) because their wars hark back to the days of Muhammad and his companions, the first three warlike generations. The term salafi, used now for the most radical Islamic groups, comes from salaf, or "ancestor," but with a specialized meaning of the first three generations of Islam. Muhammad, his first followers, their children and grandchildren. Jihadists do it because, having lost military strength since the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, they seem still to feel compelled to fight back against the power of the West, the triumph of the Christians (or in Israel, the Jews). God, in their eyes, promised his followers, the Muslims, that they would one day rule the world,[10] and for many centuries, Muslims may have thought that was actually happening. Then such hopes were dashed. Western empires started conquering, colonizing and ruling Muslim states, such as northern India, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and elsewhere -- a reversal quite unthinkable.
To fight back, jihadists have chosen to use the best weapon at their disposal: terrorism. Worse, the West they now terrorize has allowed itself to be weakened. A combination of political correctness, fear of giving offense, fear of combat, and a reluctance to upset illusory stability has led to an incredible series of opportunities for the jihadists.
The young Islamist who killed the priest in France, for example, had been twice arrested for trying to head to Syria to serve with the Islamic State. At the time of the murder, the kindly authorities had forced him to wear an ankle bracelet with which to be monitored -- but his curfew was only overnight. During the day, he was allowed to wander the streets freely. On that fateful morning, he decided to walk with his companion into a nearby church and fulfil his longings for martyrdom and for killing a Christian.
Unfortunately, Pope Francis could not be more wrong. One religion has wanted to fight wars from its inception. We have had more than 1400 years to guard ourselves against that, as when the Ottoman Empire was stopped at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. Now, we have dropped our guard and turned away. Not because we have no security forces. We do. But because we often are not looking for the right things: the texts and sermons that prefigure radicalisation.
Why do young Muslims turn from ordinariness to recruitment for the extremists? Young Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and Baha'is do not move in that direction. Could it be because so many young Muslims, first in the Islamic countries, now in the West, are taught from an early age that Islam aspires to domination, that jihad is not an evil but rather an expression of their faith, that they suffer as victims of "Islamophobia," that Western women are immoral, and that other religions are false?
It is time to wake up. We are indeed at war, whether we like it or not. "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you", Leon Trotsky said.
Our enemy is an extremist version of Islam that has yet to undergo a reformation, one that takes Muslims not back to the seventh century, but forwards to the twenty-first and possibly beyond.
**Dr. Denis MacEoin, based in England, is an expert on Islam.
[1] "The concept of martyrdom developed differently in Islam than it did in either Judaism or Christianity. Martyrdom in Islam has a much more active sense: the prospective martyr is called to seek out situations in which martyrdom might be achieved." David Cook, Understanding Jihad, University of California Press, 2015, p. 26.
[2] Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History, The Hague, 1979, p. 10
[3] Cook, p. 11.
[4] Hasan al-Banna, Message for Youth, trans. Muhammad H. Najm, London, 1993, p. 6
[5] Wendell Charles (trans), The Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna (1906-1949), University of California Press, 1978, pp. 70-73.
[6] "Traditions indicating that jihad meant spiritual warfare... are entirely absent from any of the official, canonical collections (with the exception of al-Tirmidhi, who cites 'the fighter is one who fights his passions'; they appear most often in the collections of ascetric material or proverbs." Cook, p. 35.
[7] "This paradigm persisted into medieval times, where we often find the Sufi groups fighting the enemies of Islam. For example, after defeating the Crusaders under Guy de Lusignan at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin (1187), the Muslim leaders Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi [Saladin] (1169-91) gave the captive Crusaders to several of his Sufi regiments to slaughter." Cook, p. 45.
[8] A comprehensive and fully annotated list is available at Wikipedia.
[9] For details of these, see Rudolph Peters, passim.
[10] "He (God) it is who sent his Messenger [Muhammad] bringing guidance and the True Religion in order to make [Islam] dominant over all other religions" (Qur'an 9:33). The fifth verse of that same sura is known as the "Sword Verse", because it is the first to encourage physical attacks on non-Muslims.
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Flaws in the ‘Lone Wolf’ Analysis
A.J. Caschetta/New English Review/Middle East Forum/August 2016
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/08/03/a-j-caschettamiddle-east-forum-flaws-in-the-lone-wolf-analysis/
Beginning in the late twentieth century, the West became enthralled by the term “lone wolf” and began using it to denote perpetrators of particularly heinous crimes who act without the assistance of other criminals. The term has become practically ubiquitous with journalists, analysts and politicians now instinctively applying it not only to psychopaths like Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes and Newtown, Connecticut child-killer Adam Lanza, but also to jihadists, even when they attack in pairs, like roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik. Rarely has a term so frequently used been so inconsistently applied.
Whatever originality or dubious benefit it might have brought to the study of political violence, the lone wolf analysis has ceased to be useful. There little consensus over its meaning, and it is illogical and misleading when used to describe jihadists. In the age of Obama it has become a red herring detracting attention from the growing global jihad movement.
Rhetorical Analysis
The logic of the term “lone wolf” derives from observation of the common wolf (Canis lupus). Wolves are social animals, living in packs that act in concert to achieve common objectives like hunting and killing prey. From time to time, an adult male challenges the leader of the pack, and the loser is ejected, becoming a “lone wolf.” A lone wolf is a less effective killer than an organized pack, but its atypical behavior makes it dangerous in other ways. It is also more difficult to track one wolf than it is to track a pack of wolves. Applied to criminals, the term insinuates a dangerous unpredictability.
Zimmer’s etymological history jumps from popular literature to law enforcement, overlooking the mediating role of the press, but the lone wolf analysis is more the product of the media than of law enforcement. The dispassionate field of criminology is focused on collecting, analyzing and classifying data in order to create profiles, whereas press outlets compete with one another in order to sell stories. They create metaphors and analogies seeking to entertain and sensationalize. Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister of CNN call the lone wolf “the unknowable face of terror.”In 2014, Ben Zimmer of the Wall Street Journal examined the history of the term. He found its origins in the Native American Kiowa tribe, from whence it became a figure in British literature (Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells) and American literature (Stephen Crane, Louis Joseph Vance) and was subsequently picked up by law enforcement agencies to denote “a criminal not associated with a gang.”
An examination of the media’s use of the term shows great inconsistency. A solitary criminal who commits theft is not called a “lone wolf thief.” No one has ever been called a “lone wolf rapist.” The “lone wolf” label is reserved for murderers, but even then the term is inconsistently applied. A solitary murderer of one individual is not called a “lone wolf murderer.” A solitary murderer of a series of individuals is called a “serial killer.”
The media applies the ‘lone wolf’ label to any terrorist not caught or killed with multiple comrades.
Only when the crime is mass murder or terrorism does the entire media spectrum from left to right reflexively reach for the “lone wolf” label. Lately that reflex is strong, as it seems any terrorist not caught or killed with multiple comrades, in flagrante delicto, and not in the possession of either a valid ISIS passport or Al-Qaeda photo-ID, is considered a “lone wolf.”
The term has been applied to too many different kinds of attackers to retain a stable meaning. Probably the only thing that the Columbine shooters and Timothy McVeigh have in common is being described as lone wolves (and none of them acted alone). Jeffrey D. Simon considers “active shooters” and “assassins” to be lone wolves, and he lists such activities as hijacking and product tampering as examples of the kinds of attacks carried out by five specific types of lone wolf terrorists: “secular, religious, single-issue, criminal, and idiosyncratic.”
Used to describe the truly unknown, unpredictable solitary attacker, the term “lone wolf” is not logically objectionable. While completely unnecessary, the terms “lone wolf” and “lone wolf attacker” are at least not illogical to describe psychotic killers like movie theater shooters James Holmes (Aurora, CO) and John Russell Houser (Lafayette, LA), both of whom carried out attacks unpredictable by law enforcement and without assistance. But since they also acted without any discernable political or religious motives, their crimes do not amount to terrorism, and they were not “lone wolf terrorists.” Even Jared Lee Loughner, the man who shot Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others was driven by insanity and not politics.
Two indisputably “lone wolf” terrorists: Ted Kaczynski (left) and Anders Breivik.
For all its overuse, the term “lone wolf terrorist” is only applicable when the crime is terrorism and the criminal works alone. Therefore, there have only been two lone wolf terrorists: the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and Norway’s most famous terrorist, Anders Breivik. Both of these killers acted alone and committed, as per the FBI’s definition, “unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
It may be that Micah Xavier Johnson will turn out to be the third lone wolf terrorist, but at this writing it is still too soon to conclude that he acted alone. Every other known terrorist has had connections that make the “lone wolf” label incongruous. Analysts tempted to add Eric Rudolph should consider that he almost certainly had help hiding from the massive seven-year manhunt after he bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The Unabomber’s younger brother turned him in after recognizing his delusional fantasies in the “Manifesto” published by The Washington Post and The New York Times. That’s about as “lone” as a wolf can get.
Critics of the Term
There are some indications suggesting that the cliché is on the decline. In January 2015, Michel Moutot of the Agence France Presse challenged the lone wolf analysis as “an intellectual creation that appeared in the United States as part of the Bush administration’s global war on terror’ in 2001.” Moutot believes the “fantastical figure” of the lone wolf was invented to facilitate Bush’s portrayal of “an internal enemy, who is elusive and everywhere [which] justified draconian policies like the Patriot Act.” But Moutot is wrong on several counts. First, his chronology is off. The term predates the Bush administration and became a cliché after Bush left office, starting in the Summer of 2009 when the Obama administration launched the “Lone Wolf Initiative.” The term has flourished under Obama, partly because it offers a way to discuss Islamist terrorism without mentioning Islam (a priority). And ACLU hyperbole notwithstanding, the Patriot Act’s “Lone Wolf Provision” (also known as the “Moussaoui Fix“) was far from draconian.
Other critics, like Nabila Ramdani, believe it is too often used to equate Islam with terrorism. Ramdani argues that since “anyone can claim a link with ISIS or Al Qaeda” we should be skeptical of such claims. Instead of labeling Jihadist murderers like Yassine Salhi and Seifeddine Rezgui “lone wolves” she calls them “micro-terrorists” – sick men “whose affiliation with Islam seems based mostly on a twisted attempt to justify their barbarity.”
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan (now of the Soufan Group) finds the term misleading for another reason. Since so many of the reputed “lone wolves” are “individuals with well-known patterns of violent extremist or criminal behavior and connections” Soufan believes we should instead call them “known wolves.” But not everyone designated a “lone wolf” is known to law enforcement. Some fall into a category Anne Speckhard calls “clean-skin terrorists” whose lack of criminal records make them hard to detect.
“The lone-wolf fallacy,” according to Paul Sperry, is the failure to account for the killers’ family and community contacts.
A surprising critique comes in the form of a Reuters study on the phenomenon, under the headline: “Wolf Dens, Not Lone Wolves, the Norm in U.S. Islamic State Plots.” “The lone-wolf fallacy,” as Paul Sperry calls it, is the failure to account for the killers’ contacts in “family, local mosques and the larger Muslim community.”
In the days following Omar Mateen’s attack in Orlando, Florida, Sebastian Gorka appeared on Fox News offering audiences the boldest criticism yet: “‘Lone Wolf Terrorist’ is a phrase designed to make Americans stupid.” The following week he elaborated in print, calling it a “weasel term…designed to dissuade the public from thinking there’s a link between all of these attacks, a connective tissue that ties them to 9/11, Fort Hood, Chattanooga and the Boston bombings. But that link exists: It is global jihadism.”
The ‘Lone Wolf Islamists’
With some reluctance we might accept the terms “lone wolf attackers” (Lanza, Holmes) and “lone wolf terrorists” (Kaczynski, Breivik), but we should reject all forms of the term for jihadists. As former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a critic of the lone wolf analysis for years now, has observed (and tweeted) “the lone wolf has become a pack of wolves and the pack of wolves has a common ideology.” Whether or not they attack with the assistance or direction from an entity on the US State Department’s list of specially-designated terrorist organizations under Executive Order #13224, today’s jihadists are part of a global community that came into existence in 1979 and began expanding exponentially with the advent of the Internet.
Whether they attack alone or with others, jihadists are part of a global community with a massive support system.
Days after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 Abdullah Azzam (a future co-founder of Al-Qaeda) issued a fatwa declaring jihad Fard Ayn – that is, a “compulsory duty on every single Muslim.” He called on all Muslims to defend both their brothers in Afghanistan as well as Islam itself. Azzam’s subsequent treatise, Join the Caravan (c. 1987), elaborated on the earlier work and presented Muslims with a narrative of an embattled Islam, under worldwide attack and therefore requiring a worldwide response from all Muslims. These two works dominate the Jihadist mind.
Following the argument of Mohammad Abdus Salam Faraj’s treatise The Absent Obligation, Azzam’s Join the Caravan argues that the Ummah abandoned jihad and thus brought about its own problems. The urgency of the 1979 fatwa gives way to impatience with the neglectful: “What is the matter with the scholars … propagators … students … imams … mothers … fathers?” The list culminates with “What is the matter with the Muslims?” and then turns into a metaphorical exhortation: “draw your sword, climb on the back of your horse, and wipe the blemish off your Ummah.”
Abdullah Azzam
Over and over again, Join the Caravan stresses that “jihad is a collective act of worship.” Every individual has a role to play. Some will fight in the lead and others will follow. Those who are too weak or ill to fight (“such as the cripple”) can still support the fight by “working in other spheres.” Or Azzam advises they “go out to swell the ranks for this will help terrorize the enemy.”
Azzam’s rhetoric endures largely unchanged today. The caravan metaphor recurs in the ISIS online magazine Dabiq which follows Azzam’s rhetoric closely, frequently cites his words and uses his image. Issue #10 urges English-speaking readers to “Join the Caravan of Islamic State Knights in the Lands of the Crusaders” and shows images of 13 jihadists who struck in the US, Europe and Australia.
The global jihadist movement has a massive support system, both real and virtual. A jihadist may attack solo but he is always supported by a community that believes he is partaking honorably and piously in a 1400-year old tradition. The battle cry “Allahu Akbar” is a sign of that community; those who shout it during an attack are not “unaffiliated,” and they are not “lone wolves.”
In Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance (2012), George Michael uses the terms “lone wolf jihadist” and “lone wolf Islamist.” These are oxymorons: the jihadist-Islamist ideology is a bond that, as Azzam put it, “unites the ummah.”
Those who shout the battle cry ‘Allahu Akbar’ during an attack are not ‘lone wolves.’
Some came to this ideology as converts (the beltway snipers, Nolen, Couture-Roleau, Zehaf-Bibeau, Thompson) while others were previously unobservant Muslims taken with what Daniel Pipes calls “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” (Taheri-azar, the Tsarnaev brothers, Rezgui, Abdulazeez). All decided to follow Osama bin Laden’s 1998 call to wage “jihad against the Jews and crusaders.”
Aside from a shared ideology, today’s jihadists are united in their motivations, targets, and tactics. Following Azzam, they act out of a sense of loyalty forcing them to right perceived wrongs committed by non-Muslims against Muslims, whom they must defend and avenge (Kamal, Taheri-azar, Brown, Tsarnaev brothers, Kouachi brothers). They especially prize attacks on members of the military (Muhammed, Hasan, Couture-Rouleau, Abdulazeez), intelligence (Kansi), and law enforcement (Thompson), whom they believe are directly responsible for injuring Islam. But they also choose “soft” targets, such as civilians in “gun-free zones.” And of course they target Jews (Nosair, Hadayet, Haq, Merah, Nemmouche, Coulibaly, El-Hussein).
The Cyber-pack
Though initially dubbed “lone wolves,” Najibullah Zazi (left), Faisal Shahzad (center), and Mohammed Bouyeri (right) turned out to have extensive links to terrorist groups.
Often, those quickly dubbed “lone wolves” during or shortly after their attacks are proven to be affiliated with terrorist groups. “Lone wolf” Najibullah Zazi, who attempted to detonate bombs in the New York City subway system, admitted to being an Al-Qaeda operative. “Lone wolf” Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, was found to be a part of Tehrik-e-Taliban. Theo Van Gogh’s killer, “lone wolf” Mohammed Bouyeri, turned out to be a member of the Hofstad Group, the Dutch Al-Qaeda.
Even when law enforcement cannot prove membership or even physical contact between jihadists and terrorist organizations, there is often a great deal of evidence to show virtual contact. In 2003 Rita Katz and Josh Devon pointed out that “Yahoo! has become one of al Qaeda’s most significant ideological bases of operation.” Some of the earliest Al-Qaeda websites encouraged “Muslim Internet professionals to spread and disseminate news and information about the jihad through email lists, discussion groups and their own Web sites. The more web sites, the better it is for us. We must make the Internet our tool.” A pioneer in this area was Anwar al-Awlaki, leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (left) and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab (center) were personally coached by Anwar al-Awlaki (right).
Both the Fort Hood shooter, “lone wolf” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, M.D., and failed underwear bomber “lone wolf” Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab were personally coached and guided by al-Awlaki with no evidence that they were ever in the same room with him. In Lone Wolf Terrorism, Understanding the Growing Threat (2010), Jeffrey D. Simon calls Roshonara Choudhry “the purest of lone wolves” because she was “radicalized” by “downloading more than a hundred sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki.”
Speaking four days after the June 12, 2016 Orlando jihad attack, CIA Director John Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA has “not been able to uncover any direct link between…Mateen, and a foreign terrorist organization.” Then he implicitly undercut the importance of direct links by conceding “that inspiration can lead someone to embark on this path of destruction.”
With the newest generation of ISIS jihadists, the connection to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the ISIS leadership may be exclusively an online one. FBI director James Comey told a Senate hearing on July 9, 2015 that ISIS is “not your grandfather’s Al-Qaeda.” Like Brennan, he implicitly acknowledged that direct ties to the organization are no longer necessary, as inspiration has become more important than “membership.” As Comey put it, ISIS inspires attackers using social media like “a devil on their shoulder all day long saying, ‘kill, kill, kill, kill.’” That devil does not require attendance at an ISIS boot camp in Raqqa.
ISIS is not alone in its use of online magazines, Facebook and Twitter accounts to recruit and train. Tamerlan Tsarnaev may or may not have been physically trained by Al-Qaeda in his trips to Chechnya and Dagestan, but to construct the bombs he used to attack the Boston Marathon, he followed the plan in an Inspire article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
Perhaps the best illustration of the cyber pack is Yassine Salhi whose July 2015 attack in France was widely described as the work of a “lone wolf.” After killing and decapitating his victim, Salhi paused to take a “selfie” posing with the severed head which he then shared (via WhatsApp) with his community. Then he left two homemade ISIS flags at the scene.
Jihadists Take Up the Term
This obsession with referring to Jihadists as “lone wolves” began with journalists and law enforcement officials and then was taken up by academics and analysts. Then came scores of articles, book chapters and full-length books of lone wolf analysis. After achieving full cultural saturation, the term is now becoming accepted and even adopted by terrorists themselves, completing a self-perpetuating media loop. The final stage of this loop is now underway, as the propagandists at corporate headquarters are being nudged into using the alien term.
Al-Qaeda has only just begun using the term. In 2013 when AQAP (publisher of the English language online magazine Inspire) released an online guide for jihadist attackers in the West, the “step to step guide on how to become a successful lone mujahid” was titled Lone Mujahid Pocketbook – not Lone Wolf Pocketbook.
In September 2015, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio statement (in Arabic) on the Jihad forum Al Fida’ urging competing groups in Syria and elsewhere to stop fighting each other and unite in battle against the common enemy. His call for individual Muslims in the West to attack was widely translated, including by the venerable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), as a call for “lone wolf attacks,” but Zawahiri did not use the term. MEMRI’s editors confirmed for me that “Zawahiri doesn’t use that literal term or any other colloquial equivalent. Rather he calls on individuals to engage in uncoordinated attacks of the type that have commonly come to be referred to in English as ‘lone wolf.’”
In the Summer 2015 edition of Inspire magazine (Issue #14) the terms “lone jihad” and “lone mujahid” are found throughout various articles, but no lone wolves. The issue begins with an “Editor’s letter” that announces:
We at Inspire, and in the cause of the events of 9/11 encourage the Muslims in the West to join the Lone Jihad caravan. The caravan that has and will always continue to trouble and bring nightmares to the west. In this issue, we have presented for the Lone Mujahid ways and methods to enable him to give victory to the religion and prophet.
Here Azzam’s influence is obvious, though the caravan metaphor nullifies the adjective “lone.” And though the term “lone wolf” was absent in AQAP’s rhetoric, Western analysts inserted it anyway.
Even the respected Site Intelligence Group fell into the pattern. In its analysis of Inspire Issue #14, a Site commentator inserted “lone wolves” for the original’s “Lone Mujaheed.” It did the same with Dabiq Issue #10.
It was probably inevitable that ISIS, with its emphasis on reaching English language speakers, would adopt the term that had achieved such widespread acceptance in the American media. Though difficult to pin down precisely when this happened, it seems to have begun late in 2015.
ISIS has begun using the term “lone wolf” in propaganda materials.
A turning point came on November 23, 2015 when ISIS released a video in Russian that not only used the Russian terms “Lone Wolf” and “Lone Wolves” (again, as confirmed to me by MEMRI editors), but also featured an image of a wolf in the video.
In early 2016 ISIS released an updated English-language version of a 64-page booklet called Lone Mujahid, but the word “wolf” was added to form the new title: Lone Wolf Mujahid.
By May 2016 when Issue #15 of Inspire came out, Al-Qaeda had begun using the term. An article titled “The Lone Jihad, Between Strategy and Tactic” begins with an epigram of sorts: “And this individualism and independence is the main reason for it (Lone Jihãd) to be termed as a Lone Wolf attack.” The article by Sheikh Nasser Al-Anisi uses the term “Lone Wolf” once, “Lone Wolves” once, “Lone Mujahid” three times, and “Lone Jihad” 18 times.
The media loop had come full circle but only in terminology. Al-Anisi shows that he uses the term merely as a convenience. He undercuts its logic by advising the successful “Lone Jihad to return to his fellow Mujahid brothers and coordinate with them in order to unite the efforts,” demonstrating that the “Lone Jihad” is not really lone at all.
A Better Metaphor
The phenomenon of the lone mujahid cries out for a better metaphor, based on a social structure that more closely resembles the character and rhetoric of the global jihad. Rather than the social world of wolves and pack life, the social world of bees and hive life suits the situation much better.
A lone wolf is an individual. Its strongest instinct is self-preservation, and it can survive alone. But a solitary bee is a member of a community that instinctively works to grow and defend that community. Each bee will sacrifice its life in defense of the hive and die for the colony without which it cannot survive. Azzam came close to this metaphor when he wrote that “it is necessary that the whole body of the Islamic Ummah rally together to protect this organ.” Azzam’s Islam rejects most expressions of individuality, favoring an all-encompassing collectivism and a hive mentality. As he put it “Jihad is a collective act of worship.”
Even Al-Anisi’s description of the lone mujahid returning to coordinate with his brothers “to unite the efforts” seems like a description of a worker bee returning to the hive to communicate to the colony and plan the next step.
Conclusion
After decades of overuse, the lone wolf analysis is probably not going away quickly. At best, the public will continue to be mildly titillated by its sensationalism and, at worst, continue to be led astray by it. Politicians and law enforcement officials have been guilty of both. When he was still Attorney General, Eric Holder said that fear of a lone wolf is “frankly what keeps me up at night.” Last year, Director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson told ABC news that “we’re very definitely in a new phase in the global terrorist threat, where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment.”
Lately the lone wolf analysis has crept into political campaigns with Hillary Clinton promising to be the president who will stop lone wolves and Chuck Schumer bringing the lone wolves out in the latest battle of his ongoing war against gun ownership: “It’s a new America, with ISIS preying on lone wolves who can easily get guns. That has to stop before there’s another Orlando.”
The idea that a terrorist group could successfully call on its sympathetic global constituency to carry out attacks as “lone wolves” shows how unstable the term’s logic is. And yet its use continues.
The ‘lone wolf’ construct is a useful tool for those seeking to disconnect Islam from jihad attacks.
Ultimately the “lone wolf” analysis provides a useful tool for anyone seeking to disconnect Islam from jihad attacks. In spite of Omar Mateen’s mid-attack pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, US Senator Bernie Sanders said that we may never know what inspired him to attack. Portraying the growing legion of attackers as “lone wolves” is a way of denying the existence of the global movement Azzam started. The Obama administration uses the term “lone wolf terrorist” to denote an unaffiliated and unconnected terrorist “wannabe” rather than a member of a movement. Much of the federal government seems puzzled by the threat, crippled by a fear of offending Muslims, and guided by a president who continues to insist that ISIS is not Islamic.
By refusing to look for jihadists, and then after their attacks looking for reasons other than jihad, we make it easier for them to hide.
Sebastian Gorka might be overstating the origin of the term “lone wolf” by declaring it designed to make Americans stupid, but he just might be correct about its effects.
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Appendix: Jihadists Misidentified as “Lone Wolves”
The following list is by no means complete. The focus is on the West – mostly North America and Europe. Including Asia, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula would obviously make the list much longer.
There are some ambiguous entries, such as Volkert van der Graaf who murdered Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn. Van der Graaf had mixed motives and psychological problems in addition to his Islamist motivations (he said he acted “to protect Muslims”).
There are also ambiguous omissions, such as Timothy McVeigh – the most famous “lone wolf” ever, even though he acted with at least one fellow wolf and maybe more. McVeigh’s known partner, Terry Nichols, was named by the leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group as a participant in Ramzi Yousef’s Al-Qaeda bomb-making seminars at Cebu City in the Philippines where Nichols spent a great deal of time.
El Sayyid Nosair, who gunned down Rabbi Meir Kahane in November 1990, was no “lone wolf.”
And finally, only in the most extreme cases have I included thwarted attempts. Again, the list would be much longer if it included all of the jihadists caught by law enforcement before carrying out their planned attacks or those whose behavior led to FBI sting operations.
The very first member of Azzam’s global jihad to whom the misnomer “lone wolf” was applied was probably El Sayyid Nosair who shot and killed Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990. The FBI eventually realized that Nosair was no lone wolf at all, and he was later also convicted of participating in the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center attack which he helped orchestrate from prison. Then came a long procession of “lone wolves.”
http://www.meforum.org/6164/flaws-in-lone-wolf-analysis
January 23, 1993: Langley, Virginia, Mir Aimal Kansi shot 5 people, killing 2, outside the CIA Headquarters.
February 23, 1997: New York City, Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian from Ramallah, shot 7 people on the 86th floor observation deck at the Empire State Building.
December 22, 2001: Richard Reid attempted to blow up American Airlines flight #63 with a shoe bomb.
May 6, 2002: Amsterdam, Netherlands, Volkert van der Graaf killed Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn.
July 4, 2002: Los Angeles, California, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet shot 6, killing 2, at the El Al ticket counter at LAX airport.
October 2002: Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., “Beltway Snipers” John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shot 13 people over a 3 week period, killing 10.
November 2, 2004: Amsterdam, Netherlands: Mohammed Bouyeri killed satirist Theo Van Gogh.
March 3, 2006: Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove his SUV into a crowd of people on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, injuring 9.
July 28, 2006: Seattle, Washington, Naveed Afzal Haq shot 6 women, killing one, at the Seattle Jewish Federation.
June 1, 2009: Little Rock, Arkansas, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot 2 soldiers at a military recruiting center, killing 1 and injuring the other.
November 5, 2009: Fort Hood, Texas, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, MD, killed 14.
December 25, 2009: Detroit, Michigan airport (DTW), Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight #253 with a bomb hidden in his underwear.
February 2010: New York City, Najibullah Zazi attempted to detonate bombs in subway system.
May 2, 2010: New York City, Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate car bomb in Times Square.
March 11-19, 2012: France, Mohammed Merah killed a soldier in Toulouse on March 11. He killed 2 more soldiers in Montauban on March 15. On March 19 he attacked the Ozar Hatorah Jewish Day School in Toulouse, killing a Rabbi and 3 children.
April 15, 2013: Boston, Massachusetts, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and wounding 260.
May 22, 2013: London, UK, Micheal Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale murdered and beheaded British Soldier Lee Rigby.
April to June 2014: USA, Ali Muhammed Brown killed 4 people on a multi-state killing spree.
May 24, 2014: Brussels, Belgium, Mehdi Nemmouche killed 3 and wounded 1 at the Jewish Museum.
September 24, 2014: Moore, Oklahoma, Alton Nolen beheaded a woman in the Vaughan Foods plant.
October 20, 2014: Ottawa, Canada, Martin Couture-Rouleau ran over two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing both men.
October 22, 2014: Ottawa, Canada, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed an unarmed guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and then attempted to kill Parliamentarians.
October 23, 2014: New York City, Zale F. Thompson attacked 4 NYPD officers in Manhattan with a hatchet.
December 15, 2014: Sydney, Australia, Sheikh Man Haron Monis held hostages and killed 2 at a café.
January 7, 2015: Paris, France, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi killed 12 at the headquarters of the French paper Charlie Hebdo.
January 8, 2015: Paris, France, Amedy Coulibaly killed 4 in a Kosher Deli.
February 14-15, 2015: Copenhagen, Denmark, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein shot 4 killing 1 in an attack at the Krudttonden Cultural Centre, apparently targeting Lars Vilks who was speaking there on the evening of the 14th. Hours later El-Hussein attacked the Great Synagogue in Krystalgade, shooting 3 police and security officials, killing 1.
May 3, 2015: Garland, Texas, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were killed during an attack at the AFDI’s “First Annual Muhhamad Art Exhibit and Contest,” wounding one police officer.
June 27, 2015: Tunisia, Seifeddine Rezgui killed 39 vacationers on a beach.
July 18, 2015: Lyon, France, Yassine Salhi killed and beheaded Herve Cornara.
July 2015: Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez attacked a military recruiting center and then a Navy Operational Support Center, killing 4 and injuring 2.
December 2, 2015: San Bernardino, California, husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 and injured 22 at a Christmas party at Farooq’s workplace.
June 12, 2016: Orlando, Florida, Omar Mateen shot over 100 people, killing 49, at a nightclub.
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
TWITTER

Let us first go beyond the term ‘terrorism’
Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
Le Monde and other French media outlets have decided to no longer publish photos of terrorists, because they want to deprive terrorist organizations of the potential effect of glorification. This means if an attack similar to those in Nice and Rouen happens, photos of the perpetrators will not be published, and we will not know much about what led them to commit atrocities. Is it really possible to no longer publish photos and biographies of perpetrators, particularly in our open world where photos and information are circulated by smart phones before they are broadcast and published by media outlets? Such a decision may have been up for discussion 10 years ago, but in today’s world it seems like surrender to the massive chaos of information via social media. These statements are not targeted against the seriousness of the decision, which many French media outlets have rejected and deemed useless. The central problem is how the media should deal with these attacks. This discussion will not be set right before we finalize our stance on the term “terrorism,” and on the repercussions of the media’s stances on perpetrators and approach toward them.
Double standard
Terrorism has dozens of definitions. The term is used to condemn the violence we reject, not all forms of violence. When people who belong to a group we disagree with are murdered, it is not always viewed as terrorism. There are endless examples of this in the Middle East, but this double standard also exists in the West, including France. The term is used to condemn the violence we reject, not all forms of violence. When people who belong to a group we disagree with are murdered, it is not always viewed as terrorism . Horrific crimes must be condemned, but describing them as terrorism while excluding what certain military forces are doing is unjust. Are coalition airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians in Manbij, Syria, less horrific than the murder of civilians in Nice or elsewhere? Is the massacre that Satoshi Uematsu committed in Japan, where he killed 18 patients in their sleep in a care home, a terrorist attack?
Perhaps the media should stop using the word terrorism, because it has been horrifically misused to distort and manipulate the truth. The term has even been exploited to present biased stances to the public, instead of providing information about an incident itself. Any act of murder is terrorism, regardless of the aims and cause of the murderer. Therefore, the media’s handling of any crime must be based on the same principle. Getting to know Uematsu is as important as getting to know Adel Kermiche, who killed the priest in France. Their biographies and experiences are necessary for public opinion and decision-makers, as they provide knowledge that helps us understand how to prevent similar crimes. Knowledge and a calm approach can clarify what is going on. Accuracy and attention when broadcasting sensitive news does not mean the media should present the audience with what it wants to hear - by doing so, we would end up with an incomplete, inaccurate and misleading story.
**This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on July 25, 2016.

Tolerance nourishes nations and individuals
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
In June, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its readiness to launch a charter for tolerance and coexistence, and a center for studies. Thus the national tolerance program presented by Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi, minister of tolerance, was approved. Big ideas start from small initiatives. During the past Eid al-Fitr, UAE Prime Minister and Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid noted the links between Eid and tolerance, as Eid involves greetings, financial contributions, checking on others and ending disputes. Tolerance remains one of the most important concepts produced by the human mind. Philosophically, it is one of the selfless concepts as it is linked to contributing with others to build a less aggressive and less divisive reality. One of the most significant philosophers to address the concept of tolerance was John Locke. In “A letter concerning toleration,” he wrote: “No private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion. All the rights and franchises that belong to him as a man, or a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him.” He added: “We must not content ourselves with the narrow measures of bare justice. Charity, bounty and liberality must be added to it. This the Gospel enjoins, this reason directs, and this that natural fellowship we are born into requires of us.” In other words, tolerance is a formula of relations between man and his surroundings - it is unfortunate when a society lacks this.
Implemetation
Mocking how someone is dressed or his or her religion, sect and culture must be stopped. It is important to have a social and official will to achieve this. It is impossible to make tolerance a major approach that governs society and its individuals unless by legal methods and a comprehensive institution with programs, projects, systems and an agenda for implementation. Tolerance, as practiced in Europe for centuries now, provides social mannerisms that reflect on reality and can thus be seen in people’s daily lives and activity in society. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said: “I need the mediation of the other in order to be what I am.” Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said: “The self is other than itself.” Emirati society has maintained tolerance since its establishment, as mingling with other communities and cultures is an original part of its commercial culture. Tolerance is thus linked to altruism with others. Tolerance toward the self and taking it to the level of altruism grant it a social dimension, as one cannot but be tolerant if he or she wants to achieve a complete existence among individuals who form the society. The UAE is fortunate to have a ministry of tolerance, and to have an official and legal approach toward creating a tolerant reality, classifying individuals’ rights and guarding their privacy. This has economic and political benefits. However, Emirati society has maintained tolerance since its establishment, as mingling with other communities and cultures is an original part of its commercial culture. It is by tolerance that nations live and individuals’ characters flourish. This article was first published in al-Bayan on Aug. 3, 2016.

When your cousin gets arrested in Turkey
Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
In Istanbul, I met friends who are close to the ruling AK Party. I told them that claims that Fethullah Gülen’s group was the main force behind the failed coup in Turkey were exaggerated. I told them that I thought the government was using the coup attempt to get rid of its rivals. However, my friends were convinced of his involvement. “If Gülen wasn’t behind the coup, the Republican People’s Party and the Kemalists wouldn’t have stood against him,” one of them said. “If the army alone was behind the coup, they would’ve supported it as they had done before. Like us, they rejected the coup organized by Gülen’s movement because it’s a totalitarian group.” Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Republican People’s Party and of the Turkish opposition, stood with the government against Gülen, who he accuses of plotting the coup. Kılıçdaroğlu even supports Ankara’s request that the United States hand over “the terrorist leader in a military suit” - as Gülen is now called in Turkish media - and the soldiers involved with him.
Concerns
However, Kılıçdaroğlu has expressed concerns about the large wave of arrests, warning the government against arresting innocents. Many AK Party members share those concerns, though they express them quietly out of solidarity with their party. However, the feeling is that had the coup succeeded, it would have been worse than the one in 1980 that led to the arrest of hundreds of thousands, 10,000 of whom are still missing. “We would’ve certainly not allowed or accepted such a thing, and we started discussing an underground resistance plan, but our problem is that we don’t have a secret organization like our rivals,” Turan Kashlakji, former manager of state broadcaster TRT’s Arabic channel, told me. The AK Party “is used to working in public since its establishment. We felt threatened, but we took to the streets with the people to resist the coup. We didn’t wait for directions and orders from the president and party leaders.” They feel the government is being fair in its efforts to dissolve Gülen’s movement to protect democracy and the state, but they are worried about the consequences. What has been said or done so far is only the beginning. Everyone is awaiting carefully what will happen next.
Discussions
I was invited to a dinner hosted by Mustafa Joksho, advisor to the director of the Investment Support and Promotion Agency (ISPAT) who lives in Riyadh. The dinner was attended by Saudi investors in various real estate and tourist projects in Turkey, some of whom live in Istanbul. They all support Turkey’s government, which has facilitated the growth of their business there. I had a side conversation with a Turkish university professor, who told me that families are divided. “My wife and her father are members of [Gülen’s] party, and our relationship isn’t good anymore,” he said. “Some of my wife’s relatives have been arrested or fired from their jobs. She doesn’t want to believe that [Gülen] and his group are involved in the coup. She says it’s a big lie despite all the facts. They’re brainwashed, and I don’t know how our family will overcome this crisis.”Gulen’s supporters are not like those of ISIS, they are normal, religious followers therefore, it is very difficult to identify them. I have been told stories about the infiltration by Gülen’s organization of the army, security forces and all governmental institutions. This explains why employees from everywhere - not only from the security forces and educational institutions - have been dismissed from their jobs. Even Turkish Airlines employees have been fired. Gülen’s supporters are not like those of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who criticize the government publicly, accuse people and societies of being infidels, and resort to violence. They are normal, religious followers, or as someone jokingly described them to me, “slightly religious.” Therefore, it is very difficult to identify them except by finding their names in lists of secret social networks that are now in the hands of the Turkish intelligence, to be used to identify those involved in the coup attempt.
I went through the translated scripts transmitted between army members of the group. I noticed that military officers were using Islamic terms while exchanging directives for the failed coup, asking God for victory and luck. These expressions do not belong to the school of Kılıçdaroğlu, as the translator told me.
He then spoke of their decades-long infiltration of the military, saying some officers pretend to be liberal and Kemalist but are in fact Gülen loyalists. The translator showed me videos of Gülen preaching about the art of infiltration. He even allowed members of his group not to pray or wear the veil just to achieve their goals. The strangest thing I saw was the group’s magazine Sizinti, which means “infiltration.”
Understanding
It is a story that looks like a conspiracy plotted by secret groups such as the Freemasons. It needs a Turkish mentality to understand how an army that considers itself the guardian of secularism can be affiliated to an organization that perceives its idol Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as being the anti-Christ, but rejects political Islam (this is what differentiates Gülen from the AK Party). Kemalists believe that their Republican People’s Party represents the moderate Islam needed by the West to coexist with Islam. Maybe the simplest way to explain this complicated situation is to compare Gülen supporters to those of Egyptian preachers Amr Khaled and Khaled al-Jendi, who infiltrated the rich and educated social classes in Egypt by using the ideology behind the speech of former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, who hates political Islam but supports the hierarchical structure of the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the AK Party’s leaders expressed fears that Gülen’s group would shift from government institutions to the business sector, since its members are not short on expertise and financial means. Some estimate that the group has access to more than $100 billion. Others are concerned by Ankara’s disregard of other organizations, such as the Sufis, which are now siding with the government and have a presence in police departments. The solution - according to Mohammad Zahid Gul, a political analyst close to the AK Party - is “establishing more democracy when the state, not the party, takes control of the system and dissolves all secret organizations.”A leader in the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), the biggest beneficiary of the coup’s failure, told me: “I’m optimistic. The Turkish state was able to accommodate 3 million Syrian refugees, has integrated many of them into its economy, and gave them access to free education and hospitalization. It will definitely be able to control a few hundred thousand Turkish rebels now. It’s a difficult phase, but it shall pass.” Nobody disagreed with him.
**This article first appeared in Al-Hayat on July 30, 2016.

How the Israeli govt is undermining democratic values
Yossi Mekelberg/Al Arabiya/August 03/16
Continuously and persistently the current Israeli government is eroding the democratic values of the country. It does it through limiting freedom of speech, threatening legislators with sanctions, harassing human rights organisations and constantly attacking the High Court of Justice. By defining the state as Jewish it became a very difficult task to be democratic and pluralistic from the outset. Bestowing privileges on the Jewish population that others do not necessarily enjoy, and introducing immigration laws that almost exclusively favour those with Jewish origins, created an inherent tension with what most expect of a democracy. Some of these discriminations were justified, though not always very convincingly, by the history of the Jewish people and the state of war with the surrounding Arab countries. Yet, despite these profound democratic shortcomings, somehow this nascent democracy managed to plough along and develop democratic traditions of freedom of expression, the universal right to vote and run for office and an independent judicial system. However, there have always been elements in the Israeli society that resented that everyone could enjoy all rights equally – regrettably their representatives constitute the majority of those in government and in power right now. It would be unwise not to relate these worrying trends to the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians. The nearly five decades long occupation of another people, while violating its civil and political rights, gradually creeps into Israeli society itself.
In three separate, though not unrelated acts, the Israeli coalition government demonstrated little regard for civil and political rights. First the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, passed a bill, which is misleadingly called the "transparency bill" by its sponsor, far-right Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. It requires NGOs to give details of overseas donations if more than half of their funding comes from foreign governments or official bodies such as the European Union or US Government. Ostensibly, this is a measure that equally affects all civil society organisations. A closer examination reveals that this is far from being the case.
Israel inside pre-1967 borders still has strong democratic tenets, but recent trends represent a slippery slope.
Financial support from official international bodies goes for the most part to human and civil rights organisations and those who are pro-active in advancing peace with the Palestinians. On the other hand, private donors and the Israeli government support NGOs on the right side of the political map, including those from within the Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. This piece of legislation is a clear attempt to muzzle the human rights and pro-peace watchdogs of the Israeli society. Ms Shaked and the other legislatures that supported the bill may play innocent and claim that transparency is what they were after, but what in fact transpires is that this is a blunt attempt to delegitimize inconvenient criticism of the government and its policies. History is replete with brutal attempts to silence dissenting voices by associating them with foreign interests, instead of addressing what are perfectly legitimate concerns.
Challenge the opposition, don’t silence it
The so called “transparency bill” is not an isolated case. Last month after a stormy debate in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament passed another contentious piece of legislation that enables the expulsion or ousting of a lawmaker for incitement to racism and support of armed struggle against the state. Although as such it does not look that ominous, in the specific context of Israel it could be cynically exploited to curtail the freedom of expression of elected members of parliament. It leaves dangerous room for the majority to discard with opposition. It is impossible to escape the strong feeling that the bill is intended to target Arab legislators; it could almost be called the Haneen Zoabi bill. Ms Zoabi is an Arab-Israeli member of parliament, who is known for her radical views and being very articulate in expressing them. Many, including within her own constituency, would have wished her to be more nuanced and accept the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as rather more complex than the way she approaches it. Yet, the strength of a genuine democracy and a pluralist society is to challenge her arguments, not to try and silence her, or other members of Knesset with opposing views through undemocratic legislation.
Whereas opposing legislators and civil society organizations irritate the Netanyahu government, no sector does more to upset it than the media. Media networks and journalists are on the receiving end of venomous verbal attacks by members of the coalition for what can only be regarded as fulfilling their public duty of overseeing government activities and informing the public. Recently the commander of the Army Radio was summoned for a ‘chat’ by the Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to discus the radio station’s broadcast of a program that discussed the works of the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish. The outraged Lieberman, not known for his subtlety or sophistication as a literary critic, compared airing the poems of Darwish to the “glorification of the literary marvels of Adolf Hitler.”Mahmoud Darwish, may be controversial in Israel, but his works are still taught in high schools in Israel. Moreover, what value is there to a pluralist society if it cannot at least intelligently discuss, in a civilized manner, political art, even if it challenges or even upsets part of that society? Comparing Darwish’s work to that of Hitler’s reflects a loss of grip on reality and borders on the verge of hysteria; even by the standards of a politician that feeds on division, fear and hatred. This is a small litany of Israeli government acts, through formal legislation or verbal bullying, to diminish the freedom of expression and limit debate within its own society. Israel inside pre-1967 borders still has strong democratic tenets, but recent trends represent a slippery slope, if not proactively resisted might change the face of the country for the worse.

Bahraini Media: The U.S. Is Working With Iran To Bring Down Bahrain, Other Countries
MEMRI/August 03/16
August 3, 2016 Special Dispatch No.6554
In recent months, U.S.–Bahrain relations have been increasingly strained over the issue of the ongoing conflict between the Bahraini regime and the Shi'ite opposition in the country, which is led by the Al-Wefaq Society, the largest Shi'ite opposition body. Bahrain accuses the U.S. of supporting the opposition in both statements and actions and thereby interfering in Bahrain's domestic affairs and working to destabilize its regime.
Bahrain's Sunni regime describes the Shi'ite opposition activists as terrorists and traitors who are loyal to Iran and who are undermining the Bahraini monarchy with the aim of turning the country into an Iranian proxy. Tensions between the regime and opposition have been high especially since the 2011 wave of protests demanding the ouster of the regime and the implementation of political reforms in the country.[1] Tensions escalated even further in the recent months following a series of measures taken by the regime against the opposition and its leaders: on May 30, the sentence imposed on Al-Wefaq leader 'Ali Salman was extended from four years in prison to nine years;[2] on June 14 a court ordered to suspend Al-Wefaq's activity, shut down its offices and freeze its assets,[3] and on July 17, the court convicted Al-Wefaq of harming Bahrain's national security and instigating the 2011 riots and ordered to dissolve the society and liquidated its assets.[4] Earlier, two other opposition associations, Al-Risalah and Al-Taw'iya, were also dissolved.[5] On June 20 the government stripped Shi'ite cleric 'Isa Ahmed Qassim of his Bahraini citizenship on the grounds that he served as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's man in Bahrain and is the spiritual leader of the outlawed Al-Wefaq.[6]
These measures against the opposition, in particular the revoking of Qassim's citizenship, sparked criticism from the U.S., which condemned what it characterized as the suppression of nonviolent opposition and called on the Bahraini regime to dialogue with the opposition instead.[7] In addition to criticizing the Bahraini regime's steps against the opposition, U.S. officials recently met with representatives of the Shi'ite opposition in Bahrain. For example, on April 7, 2016, U.S. State Secretary John Kerry met with an opposition delegation during his visit to Bahrain, and implicitly criticized the regime by saying that "respect for human rights and an inclusive political system are essential" in Bahrain.[8] The U.S. ambassador in Bahrain also met with opposition elements, including Al-Wefaq officials, even after the suspension of this society's activity.[9]
The U.S. criticism of Bahrain's steps against the opposition, and the meetings of U.S. officials with opposition elements, evoked furious responses from the Bahraini regime.[10] Rage was also expressed by the Bahraini press, which published dozens of articles slamming the U.S. and its officials, accusing them of dishonesty and hypocrisy, of betraying Bahrain and supporting terrorism, of collaborating with Iran against Bahrain and other Arab countries, and even of complicity in the terror attacks perpetrated by Shi'ites in Bahrain.
The following are excerpts from these articles in the Bahraini press.
U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain meets with Shi'ite opposition elements (Image: Bahrainalyoum.com, June 30, 2016)
While Outwardly Friendly To Bahrain, The U.S. Is Secretly Supporting Its Enemies
On April 9, 2016, after the U.S. State Department announced that during his Bahrain visit, Secretary of State Kerry had met, on April 7, with a Bahraini opposition delegation, and after Kerry called on the Bahraini regime to respect human rights and to incorporate all elements in the governing of the country, columnist Faisal Al-Sheikh wrote in the Bahraini daily Al-Watan that the U.S. is supporting terrorist elements inside and outside Bahrain: "For many decades, Bahrain has acted in good faith and complete transparency vis-a-vis the American side, and the minimum it expects in return is for its 'friends' to reciprocate – instead of one day discovering in WikiLeaks documents that the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain is in contact with oppositionists who have revolutionary records and blatant loyalty to foreign elements, with the aim of weakening Bahrain's legitimate regime...
"John Kerry made unambiguous statements about Bahrain's elections, and placed on the revolutionary associations... the blame for the increasing sectarian tension in Bahrain because of their position regarding the elections.[11] This is true, but Kerry should have clarified his statements more, and proved to us his credibility even more clearly. This is because the events that took place in Bahrain five years ago – that is, the slogans [calling] to violate the law, the spread of an atmosphere of chaos and terrorism, and the clear Iranian [pro-opposition] mobilization that came with them – were not hidden from the U.S. and its intelligence apparatuses. As a result, Mr. Kerry, Bahrain suffered from systematic terrorism, and some of the leaders, and backers, of this terrorism and the instigators of this failed coup [were given] American aid...
"Therefore, the time has come to reexamine this American policy that operates by outwardly growing close to countries in the name of friendship while secretly working to support entities and groups with agendas that harm those same countries. History tells us about several of these groups, relating that Al-Qaeda emerged after Osama bin Laden achieved success because he received various types of aid from the U.S. to fight the Soviets. [History proves] that even ISIS was a U.S. creation.
"Oh, Mr. Kerry, in order to fight and stop terrorism, the U.S. should first and foremost stop supporting it and those who champion terrorist and extremist religious ideology in their countries. Perhaps you now have a chance, starting with Bahrain, to stop [your] aid to those... who harmed the symbols of the state and to all those who cheered [the slogan] 'Down with Bahrain' – which, Allah willing, will never fall."[12]
The U.S. Is The Greatest Violator Of Human Rights – It Should Not Be Lecturing Others
On June 5, 2016, following U.S. criticism of the heavier sentence handed down by the appellate court to Bahraini Shi'ite opposition leader 'Ali Salman, columnist Ibrahim Al-Sheikh wrote in the official daily Akhbar Al-Khaleej: "The world's modern history has never seen a country that harms human rights and kills millions like America. Despite this, we see that it is interfering in every aspect of our [Arab] countries, sparking internal strife within them. [America] pretends innocence, and calls for human rights when it itself is far removed from such things. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby's statement regarding the verdict against 'Ali Salman...[13] is provocative and harms a sovereign nation with an independent judiciary [by] ordering it to release one of its prisoners. [Such a statement constitutes] a self-righteous lecture to [this sovereign nation] on who it should and should not imprison, and on what the rules for participating in peaceful protests should be. Yes, this is the same America whose security forces two years ago arrested over 500 protestors who opposed the war in Iraq.
"And while we are on the subject of Iraq, then America should be ashamed of itself, since it dons a priest's robes before the world while in reality it acts like the leader of a criminal, murderous gang that destroyed and plundered Iraq, harmed the honor of its dignified women, and committed every shameful act [imaginable]... and then lectured us on morality."[14]
U.S. Should Worry About Human Rights Violations At Home Instead Of In Bahrain
On June 20, 2016, following State Department spokesman Kirby's expression of concern regarding Bahrain's decision to suspend the activity of the Al-Wefaq Society,[15] Akhbar Al-Khaleej editor-in-chief Anwar 'Abd Al-Rahman wrote in an open letter to Kirby and the U.S. government: "Dear Mr. Kirby, it would be better if, instead of criticizing the Bahraini government like this, you were 'extremely concerned' about what is happening in your own country. The reality there, which you never speak of in your statements, is absolutely horrifying. For example, in 2015 alone, police in your country killed 965 American citizens, yet the police received no punishment befitting their crime. Or, for instance... the horrific crime and shocking violation of human rights – I am referring to the fact that women prisoners in American prisons were forced to have sexual relations with guards in return for improved conditions, and that in the past decade 57 women were murdered in the prisons...
"The grim picture in your country does not end there. There are additional terrible facts: Over 88% of black Americans are exposed every day to discrimination and humiliation by white police officers; 68% of black Americans experience negative racist and cruel treatment in courts...
"Oh, Mr. Kirby, Bahrain is afflicted by none of the social maladies of the U.S. In Bahrain we are all equal, and there are no differences among the citizens. The situation in our country is several times better than that in yours, where all the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 1% of its tycoons.
"You said that you were concerned about the suspension of the activity of a political society [in Bahrain], so I ask you: Would you in the U.S. allow the activity of a political society that incites violence, hatred, and terrorism? Would you allow the activity of a society whose supporters are mostly children and teen boys who are encouraged to throw firebombs at police, terrorize society, and undermine its security and stability?... Why aren't you issuing a statement expressing concern over the long list of human rights violations in your own country? Or do you want us to see that you consider the U.S. a model of perfection and the embodiment of Plato's ideal republic? When we compare our situation with yours in the U.S.... then we have the right, Mr. Kirby, to ask: 'Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?'
"In conclusion: Mr. Kirby, you must know that our country of Bahrain is a good and kind land, far from the cruelty and barbarism you know in your own nation. Despite this, it is the duty of the Bahraini government to protect its citizens and residents from the dangers of the Al-Wefaq [Society] and the perils of the forces of evil and crime in Iraq, who fund and support Al-Wefaq and who do not hesitate for an instant to spark murderous chaos in our country."[16]
The U.S.'s Values Of Liberalism Need To Be Questioned
The Bahraini press also featured a series of articles harshly critical of the U.S., following the State Department's censuring of Bahrain for revoking the citizenship of Shi'ite sheikh 'Isa Qassim. Journalist 'Abd Al-Mun'im Ibrahim wrote: "The country is doing its duty for the security of the citizens who are the ones harmed by the violence and fire [of the Shi'ite opposition]. Therefore, there is no way out of taking substantial measures, rather than superficial ones – not merely bandaging the wound but eliminating the cause of the crime – the knife – which over the past 15 years has been destroying the homeland and killing its citizens. I am referring to the Al-Wefaq Society and its spiritual leader 'Isa Qassim.
"If some of the superpowers, particularly America, believe that the legal measures taken by the Bahraini government – that is, closing Al-Wefaq's headquarters, confiscating its assets, and revoking 'Isa Qassim's Bahraini citizenship – are improper and ask [Bahrain] to reverse them, then their faith in values of liberalism should be questioned... The Al-Wefaq Society and 'Isa Qassim do not believe in the values of liberalism, but rather in Iranian [Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's] Rule of the Jurisprudent and the clerics' autocracy... If America or any other European nation relinquishes its liberal values and supports theocratic societies, treating them as democratic, then this means that all their political slogans and the humanitarian principles that they talk about of are nothing but false cover for how they treat others!
"The Bahraini government does its duty to protect the security of its citizens from terrorism and from those who incite violence – while America and the West need to clarify their stance vis-à-vis theocracy, that is, the regime of the clerics and the Iranian Rule of the Jurisprudent."[17]
U.S., Iran Work Together To Spread Terror In Arab Countries To Bring Them Down
Bahraini journalist Al-Sayyed Zahra also addressed the U.S.'s criticism of Bahrain's revocation of 'Isa Qassim's citizenship. Accusing the U.S. of collaborating with Iran to incite and spread terrorism in Bahrain in order to cause its collapse, he wrote: "A while ago I warned in several analysis articles that a new American-Iranian alliance is forming in the region, whose main and tangible driving factor is a convergence of the Iranian and American plans for the Arab region. Both of these plans converge in their opting to destroy and divide Arab countries and spark internal sectarian strife and chaos [in them]. More accurately, this new alliance is one of [spreading] terrorism in Arab countries, mainly by encouraging sectarian and terrorist forces and organizations [there]...
"Bahrain too was used as an arena for the convergence of the American and Iranian positions on the developments in the country... Even prior to the attempted sectarian coup in Bahrain in 2011, there was a confluence of American and Iranian voices supporting the revolutionary sectarian elements, expressing the same opinions that could undermine Bahrain's security and stability.
"Let us take a good look at the positions declared by American and Iranian officials regarding recent events in Bahrain, and analyze their precise meaning. As we know, there have recently been reports on verdicts [handed down] by the Bahraini legal system and on state decisions, both of which aim to ensure the country's security and stability and block sectarian forces tied to foreign [elements] in order to prevent them from implementing known terrorist agendas.
"It is neither strange nor surprising to discover that only two countries in the entire world – Iran and the U.S. – were the first to immediately declare nearly identical hostile positions regarding these developments. Regarding the verdict handed down to 'Ali Salman, the suspension of the activity of the Al-Wefaq Society, and the decision to revoke the citizenship of 'Isa Qassim – regarding all these affairs, officials in Iran and the U.S. had the same position, as expressed in their official communiqués and statements...
"Therefore, it would not be excessive to say that these positions by Iran and the U.S. embody the new terrorist alliance between the [two countries]... [But] we must not forget that Bahrain already managed to thwart the grand coup plot that Iran and the U.S. tried their best to support, and proved that it was stronger than any pact or plot and can crush any conspiracy to death and bury it."[18]
U.S. Ambassador's Meeting With Bahraini Shi'ite Clerics Related To Terrorist Attacks In The Country
On July 1, 2016, a roadside bomb killed a woman in the village of Al-Ekar near the Bahraini capital of Manama. Several days prior, the U.S. ambassador to Bahrain met in Manama with representatives from the Shi'ite opposition, some of them members of the Al-Wefaq Society.[19] A July 3, 2016 article in Akhbar Al-Khaleej by writer 'Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Ziyani, written in the wake of these two events, stated: "We can by no means separate the meetings that were held and are [still] being held by the American ambassador to Bahrain with Shi'ite clerics from the terrorist attacks that kill passersby in the streets. Any lay citizen who sees these meetings, and who sees and hears about the attacks that came in their wake, makes the connection between the two. Otherwise, why would the American ambassador hold meetings with clerics at this precise timing, just as happened during the 2011 events?[20]
"It is improper for a country to remain silent over the interference of the American ambassador in its domestic affairs. It is not his business, and this behavior is improper and is not in line with international agreements and treaties that outline the role and duties of ambassadors. This situation repeats itself, yet the country does not take a decisive and aggressive stand on this matter, which troubles Bahrainis. It is clear that this [recent] meeting [between the ambassador and Shi'ite oppositionists] was made in coordination with the Al-Wefaq Society, which has been outlawed... The involvement of any ambassador from any country [in Bahrain's affairs] should stop. This is unacceptable and [the importance of] matters concerning Bahrain's sovereignty must not be downplayed..."[21]
Endnotes:
[1] On the 2011 unrest in Bahrain and the media war between Iran and the Gulf states at the time, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 678,
The Bahrain Situation: Media Clashes Between the Iranian-Shi'ite Camp and the Saudi-Sunni Camp, March 17, 2011; on protests by the Shi'ite opposition in 2013, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1007, "Bahrain Prepares For August 14 Anti-Regime Protests Planned By 'Tamarrud Bahrain' Movement," August 13, 2013.
[2] Salman was arrested in December 2014 on charges of agitating for the overthrow of the regime and inciting sectarianism and non-compliance with the law (Al-Wasat, Bahrain, May 30, 2015).
[3] Al-Wasat (Bahrain), June 14, 2016.
[4] Al-Wasat (Bahrain), July 17, 2016.
[5] Al-Wasat (Bahrain), June 15, 2016.
[6] Qassim was accused of establishing organizations subordinate to an external religious and political authority (i.e., Iran) while taking advantage of his religious status; harming coexistence in Bahrain; encouraging extremism and sectarianism; calling for a theocracy, and raising funds by illegal means (Al-Wasat, Bahrain, June 20, 2016). It should be mentioned that the measure of revoking citizenship was also used against other Shi'ite oppositionists in the country, both before and after Sheikh Qassim. For example, on June 19 Bahrain imposed this penalty on 11 Shi'ites convicted of forming a terror cell (alarabiya.net, June 23, 2016) and on June 27, on a group of five other individuals for forming ties with terrorist elements (Al-Quds Al-Arabi, London, June 27, 2016).
[7] On May 31, 2016, following the extension of Salman's sentence, U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby said: "The United States is deeply concerned by the sentencing of the secretary general of Al-Wefaq society, Sheikh 'Ali Salman, to nine years in prison on charges of public incitement and hatred. We believe that no one should be prosecuted or imprisoned for engaging in peaceful expression or assembly... We strongly urge the Government of Bahrain to abide by its international obligations to respect and protect freedom of expression, to reject these charges against Sheikh 'Ali Salman, and to release him..." (state.gov, May 31, 2016). On June 14, after Bahrain suspended Al-Wefaq's activity, Kirby said, in a similar vein: "We are deeply troubled by today’s alarming move by the Government of Bahrain to dissolve the opposition political society Al-Wefaq... and we urge Bahraini officials to reconsider this decision... Peaceful criticism of the government plays a vital role in inclusive, pluralistic societies (state.gov, June 14, 2016). On July 17, following Bahrain's dissolving of Al-Wefaq, U.S. State Secretary John Kerry said that the United States was deeply concerned by this decision and by other "steps to suppress nonviolent opposition," which, he said, would only "undermine Bahrain’s cohesion and security, as well as the region’s stability," and called on Bahrain to reverse this measure (state.gov, July 17, 2016). The U.S. State Department also strongly condemned "the Government of Bahrain’s decision to revoke the citizenship of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim," adding, "We remain deeply troubled by the Government of Bahrain’s practice of withdrawing the nationality of its citizens arbitrarily [and by] the overall precedent that this case could establish... We worry that this case, as well as other recent actions by the Government, will further divert Bahrainis from the path of reform and reconciliation" (state.gov, July 20, 2016).
[8] Uk.reuters.com, April 7, 2016.
[9] Bahrainalyoum.com, June 30, 2016.
[10] Responding to Kerry's statements condemning the dissolution of Al-Wefaq, the Bahraini foreign ministry said that it constituted this unacceptable intervention in Bahrain's affairs and in the decisions of its judiciary, and an unjustified display of bias in favor of "those who pursue extremism and terror" (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, July 19, 2016).
[11] In a press conference with his Bahraini counterpart on April 7, Kerry said that the opposition erred when it decided to boycott the 2014 parliamentary elections, and that the regime expressed willingness to hold free elections in 2018 that would include all elements without violence or threats. Mirror.no-ip.org, April 7, 2016.
[12] Al-Watan (Bahrain), April 9, 2016.
[13] The State Department asked Bahraini authorities to dismiss Salman's charges and release him. State.gov, May 31, 2016.
[14] Akhbar Al-Khaleej (Bahrain), June 5, 2016.
[15] On June 14, Kirby said that the U.S. was extremely concerned by Bahrain's decision to dismantle the Al-Wefaq Society opposition body, urged it to reconsider the move, and stated that any nonviolent criticism of the government plays a vital role in constructing inclusive and pluralist societies. State.gov, June 14, 2016.
[16] Akhbar Al-Khaleej (Bahrain), June 20, 2016.
[17] Akhbar Al-Khaleej (Bahrain), June 23, 2016.
[18] Akhbar Al-Khaleej (Bahrain), June 23, 2016.
[19] Bahrainalyoum.com, June 30, 2016.
[20] The writer is referring to accusations that the U.S. embassy in Bahrain held ties with the Al-Wefaq Society prior to the Shi'ite uprising in the country in February 2011, based on documents published by WikiLeaks.
[21] Akhbar Al-Khaleej (Bahrain), July 3, 2016.