Tuesday, February 24, 2015

PA and PLO found guilty of Terrorism

 
By Benjamin Weiser
 
The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.
The damages are to be $655.5 million, under a special terrorism law that provides for tripling the $218.5 million awarded by the jury in Federal District Court.
The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts, an effort that encompassed fights over jurisdiction, merit and even practicality: History has shown that it is difficult for victims of international terrorism to bring their civil cases to trial, let alone to recover damages.
While the decision on Monday was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it could also serve to strengthen Israel’s claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces were directly linked to terrorism.

The Palestinian groups said in a statement that they intended to appeal the verdict, but did not address their willingness or capacity to pay. In at least two previous cases, in which judges entered default judgments against them for more than $100 million, the groups reached confidential settlements, court records show.
Photo

Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families who fought a legal battle to hold the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization responsible for terrorist acts. Credit Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that if the Palestinian groups refused to pay, they were confident that they would be able to seize the groups’ assets, both in the United States and abroad.
The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial during which the jury heard emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, in which a total of 33 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.
“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families, said in a closing argument on Thursday, adding that the antiterrorism law “hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet.”
The case was brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American citizens who are victims of international terrorism to sue in the United States courts. The law was used in September by a Brooklyn jury to find Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism by Hamas. Damages in that case, filed by about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, are to be decided in a second trial, which has not yet been held. 
In the Palestinian case, Judge George B. Daniels rejected repeated defense arguments to dismiss the case in the years before trial. The plaintiffs included 10 families, comprising about three dozen members, eight of whom were physically injured in the attacks while the others were left with deep psychological scars, testimony showed.
The plaintiffs also included the estates of four victims who had been killed in the attacks, which occurred on the street and at a crowded bus stop, inside a bus, and in a cafeteria on the campus of Hebrew University.
“It was a terrible thing to see,” one plaintiff, Robert Coulter Sr., 78, testified as he described watching a news report about the cafeteria bombing and realizing his 36-year-old daughter, a New Yorker on a business trip, was one of the victims.
The defense had argued that their clients had nothing to do with the attacks. Mark J. Rochon, a defense lawyer, told the jury on Thursday that he did not want “the bad guys, the killers, the people who did this to get away while the Palestinian Authority or the P.L.O. pay for something they did not do.”

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the P.L.O.’s executive committee who testified for the defense, told the jury, “We tried to prevent violence from all sides.”
But citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority, and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and had made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.
The Palestinian Authority and the P.L.O. said in a statement that they were “deeply disappointed” in the verdict, calling the lawsuit’s charges “baseless.”
“We will appeal this decision,” Dr. Mahmoud Khalifa, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, said in the statement. “We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the U.S. legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing.”
“This case is just the latest attempt by hard-line antipeace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda,” he added.
He also called the decision “a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they could seek orders to have the defendants’ bank accounts frozen and to require them to turn over real estate and other property. The judgments could also be taken to other countries, where the defendants do business or have assets, Mr. Yalowitz, one of the lawyers, said.
“Once you have a judgment, the P.A. and the P.L.O., if they don’t pay, are like any other deadbeat debtor,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he expected the “international community to continue to punish those who support terrorism, just as the U.S. federal court has done, and to back the countries that are fighting terrorism.”

“Today as well,” Mr. Netanyahu added, “we remember the families that lost their loved ones; our heart is with them and there is no justice that can console them.” 

 


The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, had serious financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Palestinians’ move in December to join the International Criminal Court, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, another of the families’ lawyers, said the plaintiffs would also go after those taxes.
“Our goal is to get this judgment paid,” she said. “We did this before. We are going to do it this time again.”
The trial opened last month with testimony from a man who ran a flower shop in Jerusalem, who recalled the “utter destruction” after the bombing of the No. 19 bus in a 2004 attack that killed 11 people.
Karen Goldberg, a Brooklyn native, testified about how the death of her husband, Scotty Goldberg, who was on the bus, had caused their children to suffer from depression and anger issues, and to have trouble in school.
Their youngest of seven children, who was then under 2 years old, did not speak until he was 3, she said. One day, Ms. Goldberg said, he wandered into the kitchen and shocked her when he uttered his first words, “Did someone kill my father?”
“He wanted to know, ‘Where is the bad man?’ ” she added.
The lead plaintiff, Mark I. Sokolow, a lawyer, had escaped from the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The following Jan. 27, he and his family were in Israel to visit their eldest daughter.
He, his wife, Rena, and their two other daughters were outside a shoe store on Jaffa Road when a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing one Israeli and wounding more than 100 other people.

Ms. Sokolow testified that she found herself on the ground with her leg bleeding profusely and a bone sticking out. She said she looked to the right and saw a woman’s severed head lying about three feet away.
The youngest daughter, Jamie, who suffered a severe eye injury, told the jury, “My whole face felt like it was on fire.”
She added, “I kept saying to myself, ‘No, I’m 12 years old, and I’m from New York, and I’m going ‘No, I’m 12 years old, and I’m from New York, and I’m going to stay alive.’ ”
 
 

Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Great and Good: Bibi Goes To Washington

 
PolitiChicks.com
“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” ~Adolf Hitler
“I believe it is peace in our time.”  ~ Neville Chamberlain
“Iran is not your ally. Iran is not your friend. Iran is your enemy. It’s not your partner.” ~ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – Face The Nation
“Iran won’t pursue nuclear weapons because ‘it’s contrary to their faith.'”~ Barack Obama
“Saying ‘Death to America’ is easy. We need to express Death to America’ with action.” ~ Hassan Rouhani

The Gathering Storm

The Prime Minister of Israel has been asked to speak before Congress, regarding the danger of the impending nuclear deal with Iran that President Obama would very much like to strike, leaving what he believes, will be his legacy amidst a trail of foreign policy failures that have plagued his presidency.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is worried by what he and other top officials, including Henry Kissinger, former Ambassador Dore Gold and members of Congress have called an alarming deal that would give Iran access to nuclear capabilities as well as gain hegemony within the region, leaving Israel facing an existential threat.
The Washington Post posed three issues of great concern from this upcoming agreement taken from the Armed Services Committee Meeting:
  • First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.
    ●Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.
    ●Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.
Former secretary of state George P. Shultz added that Iran’s regional aggression in pronouncing himself “very uneasy” about the ongoing negotiations. “They’ve already outmaneuvered us, in my opinion,” he told the Armed Services Committee.
Additionally, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the committee, “such an arrangement would very likely prompt other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, to match Iran’s threshold capability. “The impact . . . will be to transform the negotiations from preventing proliferation to managing it,” he said. “We will live in a proliferated world in which everybody — even if that agreement is maintained — will be very close to the trigger point.”
Time is of the essence for Bibi to speak because the interim deal is set for March 24th, 2015. Intervening now is of vital importance and the Prime Minister knows it.
Like Churchill before him, Bibi is poised and at the ready to warn the entire world of this rising menace to the existence of Israel and the west.
Iran has been calling for Israel’s annihilation for a number of years and continues to fund terror proxie groups, Hezbollah and Hamas who actively pursue aggressive acts against Israeli targets.
An IDF report from May 2014 documents how Iran has funded Hamas terror activities on The Temple Mount in Jerusalem against Jews.
A recent Jerusalem Post article states:
“Iran has opened up six fronts against Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday at a send-off ceremony for outgoing Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz.
These fronts are Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Sinai, as well as Iran’s efforts to carry out terrorist attacks abroad, and its march toward nuclear weapons.
A delegation that met with Netanyahu in recent days following visits with a number of Arab leaders said that those leaders shared many of Israel’s concerns, and noted that Iran and its proxies have taken over four historic centers of the Arab world: Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and now Sanaa.”

Taking Negotiating Tips From Neville Chamberlain

Even with Iran’s past actions and the reports that they fund terror proxies within the Middle East and abroad, President Obama still clings to his naïve trust in Iran’s promises that they won’t use their nuclear program for nefarious purposes as it is against their faith.
The irony was not lost on those who pay attention to history, that the appeasement talks with Iran were held recently in Munich. Neville Chamberlain had his fateful meetings in Munich with Hitler leading to the unleashing of Nazism in WW2.
Not only have Obama’s failures had disastrous results all around the world but his blatant sympathy and appearing to side with Islamic Jihad have startled everyone as he goes to play golf after a beheading of an American; downplays and denies anti-semitic attacks by Jihadists; skips going to France for the solidarity march; takes selfies while Yemen falls to Iran and Marines are being surrounded by ISIS fighters in Iraq. His reticence at refusing to name the Islamic Jihad threat and create a winning strategy to defeat it is of major concern as well. At a time when real, clear leadership is needed Obama appears to be AWOL.
The latest reckless action taken by the Obama administration, as reported by the Jerusalem Post today, is that they have ceased updating Israel on the Iran talks in retaliation for Netanyahu’s upcoming speech, claiming that Israel is using the information in a manipulative and political way.
Clearly this President cannot be trusted to make a decision in favor of American or western interests. This is simply one more reason why a real statesman such as Netanyahu must step into the breach and work with Congress to thwart this deadly plan that puts Israel and the west in great peril.
Ambassador Dore Gold goes further in a recent Israel Hayom article stated:
“What Iran’s history with Zarqawi and the Taliban demonstrates however, is that Shiite and Sunni extremists cannot be relied upon to be locked into a permanent state of hostility, contrary to the oversimplified analysis about how the politics of the Middle East actually work. Moreover, a survey of the websites of the key Shiite militias in Iraq, supported by Tehran, shows unmistakably that they still harbor strongly anti-American sentiments. They argue that ISIS was created by and is still sustained by the U.S. Reflecting the line they hear from their Iranian sponsors, they certainly do not sound like they are about to embrace Washington as their new ally.
The U.S. would be making a terrible mistake if it comes to believe that it can replace its old Middle Eastern partners with a revolutionary Iranian regime, along with its proxy forces. For it must always be remembered that Tehran’s purpose since 1979 has been to reduce American influence across the entire area from Beirut to Bahrain in order to pave the way for its own military domination of the region as a whole.”
Supporting the existence of the Jewish homeland in the Middle East is of vast importance to all those who love freedom. The Jewish state is the only democracy in the Middle East and is a strategic partner to the west in fighting global Islamic Jihad. As we witness, once again, the rising tide of Jewish hatred we are reminded that the Jews now have a safe haven, Israel. This is the one and only homeland of the Jewish people and it must be protected.
We end with the words from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to Obama, “Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?”
Further Information:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Anatomy of a Bad Deal – Dore Gold http://jcpa.org/anatomy-of-a-bad-iran-deal/
Watch The Clarion Project:

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Global jihad


    By RobSmith 
           
  
The global jihad (sometimes referred to as World War III), from the Salafi-jihadist perspective, is a confrontation between the people of God[wp] and the enemies of God[wp] for control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Islam, and ultimately world domination[wp]. The victor is also granted the right to exploit the assets of the world's richest corporation, now known as Saudi Aramco[wp].
There are four primary belligerent[wp] groups, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Iran, and global infidels. This Essay is a summary categorization of the four dominant belligerents, their allies and proxies.
 

Dar al-Harb

Dar al-Harb (the Realm of Conflict), according to Salafists, is principally made up of the New World Order[1] as organized within the kufr member states of the United Nations. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a participating member of the U.N. and, despite its name, is considered to be among the unbelieving nations.

Global infidels

From the Salafi-jihadist perepective, global infidels are a diverse group who have not embraced the Prophet's message after 1400 years. Whether this is due to resistance among the kufrs or failure among the ummah to execute Allah's will is a matter of speculation and debate among scholars on both sides of the divide.
Global infidels, as of 2014, broadly follow alliance schemes set down during the Cold War, with a few alterations. China, Japan and India, three economic powerhouses relative to the combined output of all the competing Islamic belligerents, coupled with their burgeoning potential for military strength, are also reckoned among global infidels.

Comparative asset value of Saudi Aramco, the world's richest corporation against United States GDP, China, and total world economic output, in trillions, 2014.[2]

Global infidel alliance

Sheikh Abd al-Aziz bin Baz[wp], Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia from 1993 until his death in 1999, was ostracized by the Salafi-jihadists for his support of the New World Order, replacing Shariah with secular rule [3] and bringing Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques[wp], within the global infidel alliance.

Junior Nato Crusaders

Nato Muslim partners

Russia and non-Muslim federated Republics

Since its founding in 1992 the Russian Federation has fought several insurgencies against al-Qaeda affiliates within its borders.[5] Russia has provided assistance to Iran and the Alawites in the war against al-Nusra and ISIS. By virtue of its position among the five permanent members[wp] of the United Nations Security Council[wp], and its traditional Christian character, it properly belongs to the Realm of Conflict.

Muslim Republics of the Russian Federation

Dar al-Salam

The word 'Islam' is a contraction[wp] of the term, 'Dar al-Salam', usually translated as 'the Realm of Peace' or 'Abode of Peace'. Three factions within the Realm of Peace are presently at War with each other and the global infidels for the prize of Mecca & the assets of Saudi Aramco.[7]

  Iran


Extent of influence of a proposed Iranian Superpower.[8]
Because of its Shi'ite character, the Islamic Republic of Iran is referred to as Rafida[wp], or rejectionist of the orthodox Salafi traditions handed down thru Ibn Taymiyyah[wp], Abd al-Wahhab[wp], and others. While the government of Iran has been labeled as the leading state sponsor of terrorism[9], its official Shi'a brand of Islam stands in contrast to Sunni Salafi-jihadism, which regards Shiism not so much as a dissident sect, but rather heretical and treasonous.
Within the U.N framework of the "New World Order", as some so-called "Islamists" refer to it, Iran pursues its foreign policy objectives under the kufr Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations[wp] while covertly resorting to terrorism.
The Shi'a who look to the Islamic Republic of Iran currently are on the defensive in a genocidal campaign unleashed by the Islamic State. Iran is actively supporting the Assad regime of Syria against an insurgency by the Sunni Salafi-jihadists of al Nusra (al Qaeda) and ISIS. Iran receives support from the kufr regime of Russia[10], proving they are in bed with global infidels and are traitors to Islam.
Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been in a covert war with the House of Saud[wp]. They consider themselves more adept as Custodians of the Holy Places than the Saudis, who rely for their security on the Great Satan[wp], who has spread debauchery, Westernization, and Hollywood movies around the planet.

Shiite proxies

The Islamic State

The Salafi-jihadis[wp] of the Islamic State currently are at war with their brother Salafi-jihadis of al Qaeda, with the rejectionist Shi'a of Iran and its proxies, and with the global infidel alliance led by the United States. (Salafi-jihadis expound an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the global infidel alliance is led by Israel which controls the United States and all its crony proxies, stooges, and satellite regimes).
The Islamic State's design for global hegemony dates from a time when the earth was flat.

The Islamic State (official map).
Courtesy: The Islamic State
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, because of the threat Islamic extremists posed to Western commercial trading interests. For nearly a millenium prior to Mohammad, East-West trade between Europe, India, and China was facilitated via the Silk Route[wp]. With the rise of Islam, Western merchant caravans often were hi-jacked, their goods looted, and the tradesman enslaved or beheaded. After the failure of the Four Crusades to rollback the onslaught[11] of the new faith, Christopher Columbus devised a scheme to by-pass Islam and restore global trade. By sailing West to get East, Columbus accidentally discovered a new continent which proved to be a boon to the economic growth[wp] of Western civilization[wp] for the next 500 years.
Modern Salafists who aim to resurrect the first three hundred years of Islam (as seen in the map, upper right)[12] neglect the fact the world has somewhat changed since the Prophet Mohammad's day, and the existence of the Western Hemisphere hampers their plans for world domination making it more difficult and complicated[13].

Provinces

  • Wilayat al-Sinai[wp]
  • Wilayat al-Yaman
  • Wilayat al-Haramayn
  • Wilayat al-Libya[wp]
  • Wilayat al-Algeria[wp]
  • Wilayat al-Khorasan

Al Qaeda

The remaining Salafi-jihadis of al Qaeda currently are at war with their brother Salafi-jihadis of ISIS, with the rejectionist Shi'a of Yemen, and with some elements of the global infidel alliance, principally Russia in Dagestan and other Republics of the Russian Federation, and France in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack. Also, they are at war with the government of Pakistan, the Western satellite state of Afghanistan, and Christian villages of Nigeria.
Al Qaeda is now the Junior Varsity in the global jihad, a bit player, and motivated by the personal animosities and jealousies of its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri who was shunted aside for the role of Caliph by the upstart Baghdadi. Power struggles for the sucsessorship to Mohammad are as old as Islam itself. Why Allah honors certain caliphs who murder competitors to the successorship, and not others, remains a subject of debat

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