IRIS Blog

Hamas Kidnaps, Kills Fatah Leader; 5 Killed in Clashes

Wanted Tanzim Terrorist Killed Near Tulkarm

Baghdad Economy Starting to Boom
Newsweek called this "the mother of all surprises." In science, surprises in the results of an experiment are known as a "disproof of the hypothesis." Liberalism is full of surprises.

In Abbas, Western Hopes Hang on Thin Reed
When even the New York Times admits this "surprise" in the hypothesis of funding the lesser of two terrorist evils, the situation must be quite critical. They will possbily adapt, however, to the accomodation of "authentic" Islam.

Hillary Clinton Says She Wouldn't Have Voted For Iraq War
"If I knew back then what I know now"--will she play that game with her marriage also?

Israeli Intelligence: Hamas Gunmen Being Trained in Iran
The evidence is overwhelming. Iran is at war with Israel. When will Israel join in?

Tsunami Disaster Aid Money Going to Sharia Implementation Efforts
Colin Powell explained that the tsunami relief was supposed to win Muslim hearts and minds, but did not quite imagine that it would subsidize the whipping of women in public.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom, and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust. I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward, and pray to Allah to destroy them.

This is the Saudi Arabia whose thinly veiled "peace plan" for the obvious destruction of Israel is what Amir Peretz calls a "good starting point" for the next "peace process."

For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it. For generations, the leaders of Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed. In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust - not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.

Prior to the Gaza pullout, I predicted that the territory would flourish as a Taliban-style hub of international terror now that Islamists had taken control. The evidence continues to mount:

I am sitting somewhere in Gaza City - I'm not allowed to know where - and opposite me is a huge beaming picture of Osama bin Laden, with the smoke from a burning World Trade Center forming a black halo around his head. He is surrounded by a gaggle of jihadi angels: some Chechen fighters, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Britain's own Tube bomber, Mohammed Sidique Khan. "Would you like to see our weapons?" a masked jihadi says cheerfully, before thrusting a grenade into my hand.

"I want to kill and kill and kill again. I want to be a killing machine until, inshallah [God willing], I become a martyr," said Abu Ahmad, 27. He has just described how he slashed the throats of four female Israeli soldiers in 2002. "All the Jews have to be killed," he says. The Holocaust did not happen, he says, "but it should have." "I love Osama bin Laden," he said to me as we parted, slapping me on the back.

Meanwhile, Gaza Weapons Smuggling Flourishes, and they are talking about the anti-tank weapons that humiliated the IDF in Lebanon, not guns. Of course the key line in the story is:

The Palestinians have done nothing, despite a promise by President Mahmoud Abbas to shut down the weapons pipeline as part of a Gaza cease-fire reached last month, said Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

The Israeli leaders from Chelm are not powerless, however. They still have the ability to threaten dire consequences:

The smuggling, Eisin added, could easily bring down the truce. "We don't build a cease-fire on luck," she said.

Elder of Ziyon has more on the story.

Here is an update to Olmert's strategy of preventing Iran from funding the Hamas-ruled Palestinian Authority by overwhelming it with alternative funding:

Iran: $250 Million to PA

The original story is a must-read, but here are the highlights:

The centerpiece of Kadima's response to the landslide Hamas victory was financial. Israel would lobby governments to cut off funding to the PA. Yes, Israel turned over $50 million, but vowed that "with Hamas in power, not even one shekel will be transferred to them." One of the wise men of Chelm pointed out the logical flaw, however. "Then they will get money from an enemy like Iran." Today the decision was therefore made to accept the funding of Hamas. "The aim is to prevent funding of the PA by Iran, or moneys collected by radical Islamist movements around the world." I kid you not. Preventing the collection of money by sending them money.

Michael Freund quips that this strategy will only work if "Hamas' bank account has a limit on accepting donations."

Due to the services of a pioneering neurologist with a hobby of investigative medical detective work, IRIS made news by publishing an accurate assessment of Ariel Sharon's stroke eighty times faster than the first report in the mainstream media.

Now he is at it again, so I will be publishing any of his insights into the medical case that could determine control of the Senate. Caveat: This entry will only be updated when medically significant information is released, which may be quite slow. During the Sharon case, most of the medical reporting was noise: insignificant, recycled or inaccurate.

Dec. 14 (11 am Eastern):

It sounds like he was suffering from the arteriovenous malformation shunting blood away from part of his brain to the point that part of the brain was not working. It sounds like no brain cells were lost in the incident while on the telephone, so one could argue this was a transient attack rather than a stroke. However, worse episodes can develop and the doctors were probably right to intervene.

He may do fine, he may have some impairment, he may die. We just don't have enough information to know.

The Islamist template is quite simple: attack, cry foul (victimization) when prevented in an "excessive" manner from attacking, counterattack as a result of the offense, and finally, push through a pro-Islamist policy change as a result (such as Muslim education in schools to prevent "Islamophobia").

In this case, there is apparently one voice in the mainstream media who is pursuing the Flying Imam story: Katherine Kersten. She is a rare conservative journalist, who happens to have a local column in the Flying Imam hometown paper. In this piece, she identifies the pro-Islamist policy change in the Islamist template above as the End Racial Profiling Act. This is, of course, championed by Democrats, who have frequently allied themselves with Islamists. (See here for one of many examples.)

On Dec. 1, a curious report on the grounded-imams incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport appeared on the website of the Iranian Quran News Agency. The report quoted extensively from Madhi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. The foundation is the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, ?the world?s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group,? according to the Chicago Tribune.

Bray?s initial statement about the incident had an all-American, see-you-in-court ring. He demanded ?large financial compensation for the imams,? adding, ?We want US Airways and any other airline displaying this type of behavior against Muslims to be hit where it hurts, the pocketbook.?

The report echoed statements made by the imams themselves. Omar Shahin, their spokesman, has portrayed the incident in a way that?s consistent with a lawsuit and a public relations offensive. He?s called for a Jesse Jackson-style boycott of US Airways, and applied classic civil-rights rhetoric to the incident: ?This is prejudice; this is obvious discrimination,? the Star Tribune quoted him as saying. ?I cannot change the color of my skin,? he told Newsweek.

But the report on the Iranian website, which has appeared on a variety of Muslim websites worldwide, had a larger primary focus. After the imams incident, it quoted Bray as saying Muslims want ?new, broad-sweeping legislation that will extract even larger financial and civil penalties for any airline that participates in racial and religious profiling?....

One piece of legislation in the works is the End Racial Profiling Act. It is an important priority of Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, whose district includes one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. Conyers introduced the bill in 2004 and 2005, but it went nowhere. Now the alignment of forces may be changing. Conyers will probably be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when the new Democratic-controlled Congress convenes next month.

Nancy Pelosi, who called herself a ?proud? cosponsor of the Profiling Act in 2004, is the incoming House speaker.

Palestinian Rocket Fire Continues
The Gaza rocket attack "ceasefire" does not need more time to "take hold," more money for Abbas or more good-faith gestures from Israel. It is a complete fraud, like every other aspect of the Owellian "peace process."

Peres: Israel to Transfer PA Taxes Only If Hamas Stops Funding Terror
This is a lie. The taxes are accruing as a trust fund for Hamas, who will simply get them at some future time, as a "good-faith gesture" by Israel.

Majority of Peretz's Labor Party Think He Should Resign

Turkish Airlines Staff Sacrifices Camel at Airport

America's Christians are generally good and decent, and have led much of the the world to freedom and prosperity, as well as an improvement in morality. But they should also be ashamed of themselves for failing to stand up for their own. Christians are regularly massacred and oppressed as a matter of official policy throughout the Muslim world. Dwindling population figures prove how they are fleeing from Egypt, Lebanon, the Palestinian areas, Malaysia, etc.

American Christians can redeem themselves, however, according to the Biblical verse that "Those who bless you I will bless, and those who curse you I will curse." America has been the kindest nation to Jews in history, as well as the most blessed. (Here is a must-read containing the evidence.) Iran has announced the nuclear destruction of Israel, as well as America. Take your pick--do you want to save what Christians define as "God's chosen people," or do you want to save yourselves? Either way, there is only one logical way to do it, as Michael Freund explains:

The clock is ticking, yet no one wishes to hear it. The countdown to a nuclear Iran has begun, and with each passing day the nightmare scenario draws ever closer to becoming a reality.

In just a few months' time, if all goes according to plan, the tyrant of Teheran will preside over a celebration of terrifying, and history-altering, significance.

His goal, as he has stated repeatedly in recent weeks, is to complete the installation of thousands of centrifuges, the devices used to enrich uranium, by the end of March 2007.

This will give the ayatollahs the ability to start producing nuclear weapons, and to spread nuclear terror far and wide, threatening the existence not only of Israel, but of Western civilization itself.

The would-be Hitler of Persia has already made it abundantly clear that he plans to wipe Israel and its millions of Jews off the map. And last week he told Western leaders that their turn would soon be next: "If you do not respond to the divine call," he warned, "you will die soon and vanish from the face of the earth."

Three months. That's all we've got. That's all that stands right now between the world as we know it, and one in which the Persian executioner will be able to put his finger on the nuclear button.

This can not be allowed to happen. The danger is too great, the peril is too real.

Now is the time for all those who love Israel to stand up and be counted. Now is the time for pro-Israel Christians everywhere, and especially in the US, to rise up and cry out on behalf of God's people.

Storm the heavens with your prayers, and the White House with your pleas. Speak out now and urge US President George W. Bush to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all.

BY NOW it should be clear: Nothing less than US military action is going to deter Teheran from pursuing its nuclear goals. Threats of sanctions and finger-wagging have failed to do the job.

The Sudanese government, which is currently perpetrated an genocide against the black population in the south, has given $10 million dollars to the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Although it is covered up in the mainstream media, the fact is that the perpetrators view the genocide as jihad.

Why exactly would the genocidal jihad in Sudan want to support the Palestinian group whose announced aim is another Jewish genocide? Could it be that the jihad is global?

Hamas Judge Gunned Down in Gaza
The root cause of the problems in the Muslim World lie in the culture of violence

Palestinians Fire Five Rockets at Israel Despite Gaza Cease-Fire
The only thing the "truce" actually covers is the firing of missiles. Yet again, another big Middle Eastern lie, universally proclaimed. Olmert is busy protecting the country, but the problem is that he believes national security is defined by lines in the sand.

UN Investigator: Hariri Murder Linked to Other Attacks in Lebanon
There's a shock

CAIR Urges Muslims Making Pilgrimage to Mecca to File Civil Rights Complaints against Airlines
CAIR does this regularly, including on behalf of someone expelled from a flight pre-9/11 for attempting to open the cockpit door twice

James Baker's Fiasco, by Daniel Pipes
A must-read, patiently shreds the ludicrous Iraq Study Group Report

The overwhelming evidence that the Flying Imams were the opposite of the victims the Democratic party and the mainstream media have tried to make them out to be continues to mount. This article, by a blogger, spells out much of what IRIS posted at least a week ago. But there is one interesting new development. It turns out that another member of the spokesman's terror-linked mosque, al-Qudhai'een, was investigated for trying to open cockpit doors twice on one flight as a potential 9/11 "dry run." al-Qudhai'een also achieved mention in the 9/11 commission report for training in how to conduct "Khobar Towers"-type bombing attacks in Afghan terrorist camps in 2000.

Of course, al-Qudhai'een shared at least one practice with his better-known mosque leader: after being investigated, al-Qudai'een filed a lawsuit for racial discrimination along with a CAIR-led boycott of the airline:

The America West incident attracted national attention in 1999. In 2000, the two Saudis filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination by the airline. "What happened to us was based on racial and religious discrimination," al Shalawi told the Arizona Republic. CAIR hired the Saudis' attorney for them, and urged a boycott of the airline. America West won the lawsuit. Al-Qudhai'een was later deported to Saudi Arabia.

Amazing. Pre-9/11 America West was vindicated in expelling someone from a flight for attempting to open the cockpit door twice.

The Palestinian areas have become the epitome of violence, as one would have expected as the result of handing governmental authority to a terror organization:

Palestinian gunmen killed the three young children of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer Monday, pumping dozens of bullets into their car along a street crowded with schoolchildren ? an apparent botched assassination attempt that could ignite widespread factional fighting.

Although this is being universally reported as the presage of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, there is good reason to be suspicious.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the drive-by shooting, which left the white car riddled with bullets and the children's schoolbags and a small plastic bag with a sandwich covered in blood....The attack came early Monday morning when gunmen in two vehicles riddled the car carrying the children with some 60 bullets, Palestinian security officials said. Balousheh's three sons ? Osama, 9, Ahmed, 6 and Salam, 3 ? were killed, in addition to their driver, hospital officials said. Balousheh was not in the car.

The car was soaked in blood. A children's backpack, emblazoned with cartoon characters and the word "Friend," lay on the front seat, covered in blood. Another schoolbag was in the back.

Four more people were wounded in the attack on Palestine Street, which is lined with nine schools. The attack sent nearby children running for cover. Some dropped to the ground, others fled in panic.

"We saw fire coming from one car. We started screaming and children started running," said Fadwa Nablus, 12, who had been walking to school with her 9-year-old brother....

During the funeral procession, mourners shouted "God is great" amid the sound of gunfire.

Translation: terrorists fired into the air, which often causes casualties when the bullets land. Perhaps the Palestinians can initiate a "gravity awareness campaign" to curb the practice.

One boy had 10 bullet holes in his head....Gunmen had twice before tried to kill Balousheh.

To understand this phenomenon, rely on this must-read by Evelyn Gordon:

A Culture of Violence

The theory of Israeli-Palestinian centrality is not only false, it is dangerous - because it prevents the world from addressing the real root cause of all these conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one: a widespread culture in the Muslim world that views violence and threats of violence as legitimate means of resolving disputes....

If the West really wants to solve its Muslim problem, it must adopt the opposite approach - making it clear that violence, far from being rewarded, will be penalized. By instead seeking to appease the Muslim world in Israeli coin, it merely proves that violence pays.

And it will thereby reap more of the same.

Reuters: David Duke a "US Academic"
Reuters also refers to the lunatic extreme Neturei Karta as simply "Jewish rabbis"

Students Heckle Ahmadinejad as a 'Dictator'
Caroline Glick is right to exploit internal dissent as a solution to the impending nuclear Holocaust

Experts Puzzle Over Halt of Bird Flu
One of the reasons that the West is so complacent about the Global Jihad is that the Left has cried wolf so many times before (acid rain, breast implants, heterosexual AIDS, Alar, global cooling, global warming, etc.)

Democrats? New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda
Westerners are suicidally complacent about the Global Jihad

Lesbians and Single Mothers to Get Free IVF Treatment in UK
The average cost of IVF for a woman over 40 is $132,000Fathers are, of course, optional in the European paradise that American liberals long for

Iran has announced an imminent nuclear holocaust for Israel. Presumably, American cities may be attacked on the same day. As depressing as the topic may seem, it is worth reading one article on the subject (by Caroline Glick) and following its prescriptions:

When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear.

With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at the expense of America's allies.

Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq and throughout the world - Iran and Syria - in the hopes that they will be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an "honorable" American retreat from the country.

Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq, Baker also asserts - in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008 presidential primaries.

The main incentive Baker advocates offering is Israel.

Former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick has passed away, a servant of her nation who honored it with her courage and moral clarity. In memory, here is her classic 1979 article Dictatorships and Double Standards, considered "one of the three most famous essays in the history of American foreign policy." (Here is a summary as well.)

In that article she made the prophetic statement that:

The American commitment to "change" in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with...Yasir Arafat.

This was fourteen years before Bill Clinton changed the US law defining interaction with the PLO as a crime and began funding it as a government.

This led to the globalization of the PLO inventions of airline hijacking and suicide bombing, which ironically victimized the US in the from of 9/11.

After absorbing constant propaganda, the majority of Palestinian children, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, essentially answer "a dead murderer." Despite the formalization of genocide as the Palestinian charter through the landslide election of the mask is off Hamas, the US is still funding them, along with the EU and the UN.

Today's freedom fighters such as Natan Sharansky and George W. Bush grew up under the influence of Kirkpatrick's idea, which is as relevant today as ever.

Unlike most liberals, her long-term forecasts were accurate, such as this one:

Jeane Kirkpatrick Warns that Creating Palestinian State will be Catastrophic

It would be a step backward in America?s fight against international terrorism?When we accept a terrorist state as legitimate, we strengthen terrorist groups," she said. Dr. Kirkpatrick said that while the Oslo accords were supposed to bring Israel peace and safety, "the situation is more dangerous for Israel now than it?s ever been." She emphasized that "The destruction of Israel and expulsion of the Jews has been the goal of the PLO since its beginning in 1964 and continues to this day.

Update: Soccer Dad sent me a must-read article predating this one by thirteen years detailing exactly the "catastrophe" that has come to pass since:

The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one....But having succeeded so well over the years in its campaign to legitimize itself and delegitimize Israel, the PLO might yet also succeed in bringing that campaign to a triumphant conclusion, with consequences for the Jewish state that would be nothing short of catastrophic.

On a personal note, one of the great regrets of my life involved Ambassador Kirkpatrick. I had arranged to host a panel dicussion consisting of her, Margaret Thatcher, Dr. Laura Shlessinger and Joseph Biden for a live broadcast on my Israeli talk radio show. It was to be held at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. I was so stunned when my radio station reneged on its commitment to pay the small expense to transmit the audio feed for what was probably the most high-powered radio event in Israeli history that I cancelled the whole event in spite. I missed the chance to express gratitude to her in public on behalf of a nation she loved and protected.

See also: Jeanne Kirkpatrick