Monday, July 9, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Soeren Kern: Islamic Jihadists Using Switzerland as Base, and more


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Islamic Jihadists Using Switzerland as Base

by Soeren Kern
July 9, 2012 at 5:00 am
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Swiss analysts say the initiative of "Ummah Schweiz" is an effort to establish "parallel" legislative body in Switzerland that will be a mouthpiece for the Islamic fundamentalists, who are seeking to impose Sharia law on the country. With representatives in all 26 cantons, the group will be fully functional in 2013.
Radical Muslim groups are using Switzerland as a base from which to promote Islamic jihad in Europe and beyond.
Islamists in Switzerland are providing jihadists with logistical support, and also stepping up their use of Internet websites there to spread Islamic propaganda as well as to incite their supporters to commit acts of terrorism and violence.
Swiss authorities have identified at least 10 trips by Islamists from Switzerland to jihadi training camps overseas just during the past 12 months.
One finding of Swiss Federal Police Annual Report for 2011 (in German), published in Bern on June 21, is that although Switzerland was not a direct target of Islamic terrorism in 2011, the Swiss Federal Police Office, also known Fedpol, did investigate a Swiss convert to Islam who used the Internet to discuss a terrorist attack involving explosives against an American installation in Germany. Although the report does not provide further details about the investigation, it states that the suspect's being Swiss proved that "not only people with immigrant backgrounds could be supporters of jihad."
In response to the rising threat from radical Islam, Fedpol, recently launched a new specialist IT research department to intensify efforts to monitor jihadist websites and their operators. Fedpol also strengthened its cooperation with the Swiss Federal Intelligence Services.
In a related move, the Swiss Federal Justice Ministry on June 30 announced that Switzerland has refused to take back a Jordanian refugee who, after he was found to have links to Islamist rebels in Somalia, had been given asylum.
The refugee, 19-year-old Magd Najjar, had been caught in May and charged in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 6 for links to Islamist Al-Shabaab rebels affiliated with al-Qaeda, and who openly state that they want to impose Islamic Sharia law in Somalia.
"Clear evidence shows that he visited regions of Somalia where jihadist groups are involved in conflict (against the government). It also appears that he had contact with Islamist elements in Switzerland," the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
Swiss law states that refugees can lose their asylum status if they threaten or compromise national or international security.
Separately, leading Islamic groups in Switzerland say they want to establish a single national representative body that will enable all of the country's Muslims to "speak with one voice."
The organizers say their new "parliament" will be called "Umma Schweiz" [The Islamic Nation in Switzerland"] and be based on the principles of Islamic Sharia law. The headquarters of the organization will be located in Basel with "representatives" in all 26 cantons (or "states") of Switzerland. The first "test vote" of Umma Schweiz will be held in the fall of 2012; the group will be fully functional in 2013.
Ummah, an Arabic word that means "nation," refers to the entire Muslim community throughout the world. In recent years, Muslims have stepped up efforts to unify the globally fragmented ummah in an effort to revive an Islamic Caliphate or empire. Many Muslim scholars view the political unification of the ummah as a prerequisite to the consolidation of global Muslim power and the subsequent establishment of an Islamic world order.
Swiss analysts say the initiative is an effort to establish a "parallel" legislative body in Switzerland that will be a mouthpiece for Islamic fundamentalists, who are seeking to impose Sharia law on the country, according to an exposé published by the newspaper Basler Zeitung.
"Umma Schweiz" is being spearheaded by two of the leading Muslim groups in Switzerland: the Coordination of Islamic Organizations of Switzerland (KIOS), led by an Iranian; and the Federation of Islamic Umbrella Organizations in Switzerland (FIDS), led by a Palestinian.
The effort to unify Muslims in Switzerland comes amid calls by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to establish an umbrella organization for all Swiss Muslims to counter discrimination.
The OSCE, which sent three observers to Switzerland in November 2011, warned that Muslims in the country are being exploited by "the extreme right and populist parties." The OSCE also noted that Muslims in Switzerland are increasingly unifying around their religious identity, according to the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. "Groups like Bosnians and Albanians, who were previously defined by their ethnicity, are now identified by their religion," the OSCE report says.
Currently, there are more than 300 Muslim associations in Switzerland, and several umbrella organizations, but none is regarded as representative of Muslims as a whole.
The Muslim population in Switzerland has more than quintupled since 1980; it now numbers about 400,000, or roughly 5% of the population. Most Muslims living in Switzerland are of Turkish or Balkan origin, with a smaller minority from the Arab world. Many of them are second- and third-generation immigrants firmly establishing themselves in Switzerland.
The new Muslim demographic reality is raising tensions across large parts of Swiss society, especially as Muslims become more assertive in their demands for greater recognition of their Islamic faith.
In January 2012, another Swiss Muslim group, the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (IZRS), announced that it was trying to raise money from countries in the Persian Gulf to build a 20-million franc ($21 million) mega-mosque in Bern.
With three floors, the planned mosque would be the biggest in Switzerland. In addition to a prayer room for more than 500 worshippers, the building would have conference and training rooms, shops, underground parking and a garden.
Swiss citizens have been pushing back against the rise of Islam in their country. In November 2009, for example, Switzerland held referendum in which citizens approved an initiative to insert a new sentence in the Swiss constitution stipulating that "the construction of minarets is forbidden."
The initiative to ban minarets was approved 57.5% to 42.5% by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of Switzerland's 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, thereby granting the double approval that now makes the minaret ban part of the Swiss constitution. The minaret ban represented a turning point in the debate about Islam in Switzerland.
In a related victory for free speech in Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Court in Lausanne on May 21 ruled that a citizens group called Movement against the Islamization of Switzerland (SBGI) has the legal right to set up information booths in Swiss cities and distribute literature that is critical of Islam.
The City of Freiburg had prevented the group from setting up an information booth because it said that by doing so it would provoke violence and unrest.
The Federal Court upheld SBGI's complaint that the authorities had impinged on its freedom of expression as well as on freedom of information. Although Swiss law does grant local authorities powers to ban demonstrations from public spaces, the court confirmed that they may not do so simply because they disapprove of the ideas being communicated.
Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  Soeren Kern

Syria: UN's Newest Champion of Human Rights

by Arsen Ostrovsky
July 9, 2012 at 4:45 am
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Syria is now running for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. The U.S. caved in to the demands of Syria's allies, who also abuse human rights.
According to UN Watch, an independent human rights group based in Geneva, Syria is now running for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council: "The murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad is a declared candidate for a seat on the 47-nation U.N. body, in elections to be held next year at the 193-member General Assembly."
The Syrian regime will be one of four nations from the 53 block of Asian nations running as part of a fixed slate of "faux elections" for the Council, in which regional groups plan, devise and orchestrate uncontested elections -- precisely the same way some of the current human rights luminaries on the Council, such as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and Cuba "won" their positions.
Unless another Asian country is nominated, Syria will win a three-year term on the UN body charged with strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the world. As the decision is up to the block of Asian nations themselves to determine who will run, the United States cannot propose an alternative candidate. The US can, however, put "pressure" on the United Nations – if it wished -- and as it supposedly did in 2011 after receiving news about Syria's original attempt for a seat on the Council. Kuwait then ran instead, and Syria agreed to put its application on hold.
News of Syria's candidacy broke after UN Watch discovered that Syria was vying for a seat from a US-sponsored and EU-backed draft resolution, debated last week in Geneva. The resolution sought to pre-empt Syria's candidacy by declaring it ineligible on the basis that it "fails to meet the standards for Council membership" as set forth in its founding charter.
According to Hillel Neuer, the Executive Director of UN Watch, no sooner was the draft resolution submitted, than it was met with immediate resistance by Syria's allies and fellow human rights abusers on the Council, including Russia, China, Cuba and Egypt -- all of whom were "totally opposed."
These nations may well have deduced that if a human rights violator such as Assad could be declared ineligible, they could be next.
In what can only be described as a pitiful display of U.S. foreign policy which has become the hallmark of this Administration, the U.S. caved in to the demands of Syria's allies who also abuse human rights; the U.S. in the final resolution dropped the reference calling for Syria's ineligibility. The watered-down resolution was ultimately adopted Friday by a vote of 41 in favor, 3 against (Russia, China and Cuba) and 3 abstentions (India, Philippines and Uganda).
It is unclear if the U.S. received any concessions in return for dropping the clause. At the very least, one would hope that the American vote was linked to an undertaking that a fifth Asian nation would run for UNHRC elections in 2013, thereby necessitating an actual vote instead of automatic appointment for Syria. However, this remains to be seen.
After the vote, Eileen Donahoe, the U.S. Ambassador in Geneva tweeted that she was "celebrating" because "today was a good day." No, a cause to celebrate would have been if the U.S. had stood its ground to ensure that Assad would never have a chance to sit on the Human Rights Council.
Syria's candidacy should not have come as a major revelation: it had declared its intention to run for the Council over a year go, in May of 2011. Although the Syrian regime at that time stepped out of the race at the last minute to make way for another champion of human rights, Kuwait, Syria's UN Ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari, made clear that the regime was "reconsidering our priorities" and would run for the Council again in 2013.
At the time that Syria first declared its candidacy, which happened to coincide with the beginning of Assad's murderous rampage, Ja'afari said, "Promotion and protection of human rights are of the highest importance to Syria." The actions of the Syrian regime, however, speak otherwise, with as many as 18,000 people having been mercilessly slaughtered by Assad's forces.
But for Ja'afari and the regime which he represents, the term "human rights" does not even enter their lexicon; Ja'afari previously said, "[t]he so-called turmoil does not affect our candidacy." He added, "[t]hese are two different issues." If the UNHRC's record is anything to judge by, he is right.
That Syria is even able to be nominated for the UNHRC, let alone stand in a strong position to win a seat, is reflective of the endemic problem with the body: not only is disregarding human rights no barrier to becoming a member; even actively assaulting human rights is no barrier to becoming a member.
The UNHRC was formed in 2006 specifically to create a new body to tackle human rights abuses in light of the failures of its discredited predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission, which was largely criticized for its one-sided obsession with Israel and the make-up of its members, which included the likes of Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia. Libya even chaired the Commission in 2003.
The "new" Commission, the Council, however, is nothing more than a carbon copy of its predecessor: it continues its obsession with Israel, passing resolution after resolution repeatedly attacking the sole democracy in the Middle East, while giving a pass to wholesale abusers of human rights such as China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.
It is high time that the U.S. stopped lending legitimacy to, and funding, a non-transparent and unaccountable body that is adversarial to both human rights and the West. The U.S. should withdraw its involvement (and funding) from the Council altogether -- as had been the policy under the Administration of George W. Bush.
President Obama has apparently decided instead to seek a second term on the Council, while American taxpayers continue unconditionally to fund 22% of the budget of the United Nations, which has increasingly become the antithesis of everything the United States stands for: free speech, rule of law, equal justice under the law, democracy, separation of religion and state, and individual liberty and human rights.
In announcing the decision last March to seek a new term, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "We believe that U.S. engagement in the Human Rights Council has directly resulted in real progress." The reality could not be any more different. The Council has maintained its unremitting anti-Israel obsession. Violators of human rights, who have an automatic majority at the UN, continue to sit in judgement of democracies, including the United States. Meanwhile around the world, the pleas of millions of the real victims of human rights abuses go unanswered.
The Administration's attempt to reform the Council are at best naïve, at worst damaging to United States' national security interests, and illustrative of the Obama Administration's willingness to outsource American foreign policy to unaccountable international organizations.
It is time to disband this inversion of moral values and replace the entire organization with a United Democratic Nations before it makes an even further mockery of human rights.
Related Topics:  Arsen Ostrovsky

Who Is Being "Intransigent"?

by Michael Curtis
July 9, 2012 at 4:30 am
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The Israeli cabinet also agreed that east Jerusalem would not be returned to Jordan, which had ruled it; that Egypt had no greater claim to Gaza than Israel has, and that Jordan had no greater claim to the West Bank than Israel has, as all three countries had acquired the areas through war.
Forty-five years after the Six Day War, declassified transcripts were released this June of the Israeli cabinet and government committee meetings in the days after war that ended on June 10, 1967. The documents provide a breathtaking insight into the efforts of Israeli leaders to reach a peace settlement with the countries and groups which had been at war with Israel. The evidence of the hard work and the varied opinions on the part of the Israeli ministers, all eager to reach a peace treaty and an understanding with the Palestinians and Arab states, presents a revealing contrast to the long-term refusal of the Arab parties to come to the negotiating table -- an attitude that was reiterated at the summit meeting of the Arab League on September 1, 1967 in Khartoum, Sudan. As has now been revalidated by the declassified transcripts, the Israelis were ready to negotiate land for peace; the Arab leaders instead issued their statement of the three "nos:" no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel -- an unconditionally negative position taken by Arab leaders that still persists.
The Arab and Palestinian intransigence, the refusal to accept a peace agreement, has a long history and is all too familiar. In 1922 the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine was officially established. Under it a Jewish Agency, set up in 1929, and composed of representatives of world Jewry, would assist the British administration in establishing the Jewish National Home in Palestine. The Jewish Agency then organized an infrastructure of political and social institutions that became the basis for the state of Israel. The Arabs refused the offer to create a similar Agency.
In 1922 the Arab leaders who refused to participate with the Jews in any plan or in a joint legislature, in which anyone other than the Arabs would have been the majority; rejected the proposal for a Palestinian Constitution with a Legislative Council in which the Arabs would have formed the majority, and boycotted the election for the Council.
In 1937 the Arab Higher Committee rejected the idea of two states, first officially proposed by the British Peel Commission Report. The Report had recommended a Jewish state in about 20 percent of Palestine, about 5,000 square kilometers, while most of the rest was to be under Arab sovereignty. The Report also suggested a transfer of land and an exchange of population between the two states. The Peel Commission Report was accepted, in principle, by the Jewish Agency, even though it meant that the Jewish state would be a small one, but it was totally rejected by the Arab Higher Committee, which called for a single state in all of Palestine.
In 1939, in the last attempt before World War II, to reach some agreement, the British Colonial Secretary organized a Round Table Conference in London that February. Failure was inevitable: the representatives of the five Arab states and the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine who were present refused any direct contact or discussion with the Jewish representatives -- even to sit in the same room with them.
The Arabs also refused to accept United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of November 29, 1947, which adopted the recommendation of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) that Western Palestine -- the area outside of Jordan -- be partitioned into two states, one Jewish, one Arab, with an internationalized Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, or separate body. The Jewish state would have about 55 percent of the area, but not the historic areas of Judea and Samaria. The Resolution was accepted by the Jewish leaders, but rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and by six of the seven member states -- Jordan being the exception -- of the Arab League, which at that time had replaced the League of Arab States.
Arab refusal to enter into peace negotiations persists to this day, inflexible as ever. The Palestinians decline to enter into negotiations with Israel unless Israel first accepts the "pre-1967 borders" (borders that have never existed; they are merely the armistice line of where the fighting stopped in 1949), agrees to Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and ends all construction in areas acquired by Israel as a result of the 1967 war.
In the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel achieved a remarkably rapid victory over its Arab opponents; it left Israel in control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza which had been ruled by Egypt, the Jordan River, the Suez Canal, and the West Bank, so named by Jordan which had "annexed" the area despite almost unanimous international disapproval.
The Israeli documents just released also show among Israeli leaders a startling readiness to compromise, which contrasts with the total disinclination of Arabs and Palestinians to compromise. The documents show clearly that, while there were acute differences among the Israelis about the fate of the territories captured in 1967, almost all Israelis were eager to trade land for peace.
The discussions and proposals were not initially intended to be policy proposals; they were directives to Israel's Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, who was participating in New York in the Special Session of the UN General Assembly, called to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. The ministerial discussions have to be put in the context of Israeli concern about any UN action after the memory of at least two issues. The first occurred when Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai after the Suez war of 1956 and had to rely there on United States guarantees and the UN Emergency Force (UNEF), which proved ineffective. The second was the speedy compliance in May 1967 of U Thant, Secretary–General of the UN, without the required approval of the UN General Assembly, to accede to Nasser's demand that the UNEF troops in the Sinai be withdrawn. The Israeli ministers feared that pressure would again be exerted on the state as in 1956 and May 1967, leaving Israel vulnerable.
It is also relevant that the Israeli government was a unity one under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, and included members of Gahal (Menachem Begin and Yosef Safir) and the Rafi party (Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan). Not surprisingly, there were strong differences of opinion on the issues of security, borders, refugees, and water -- all of which prevented agreement.
Consensus was reached, however, on some issues. First, Israel should withdraw from captured territories only if the Arab states agreed to make peace and end the boycott of Israel. Most important, Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for either a peace treaty or strong security guarantees. The Israeli cabinet also agreed that east Jerusalem would not be returned to Jordan, which had ruled it; that Egypt had no greater claim to Gaza than Israel had, and that Jordan had no greater claim to the West Bank than Israel had, as all three countries had acquired the areas through war.
Some ministers thought that the demand for peace treaties was unrealistic. In the desperate effort to find positions that would both lead to negotiation and also also protect the state of Israel, they grappled with a variety of contradictory alternatives: control over the Gaza Strip, freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran; demilitarization of the Sinai and of the Golan Heights; control of the sources of the Jordan River; rule over the West Bank; end of any Israeli rule in the West Bank; military rule during a transition period; and self-rule for the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank while Israel still concerns itself with foreign affairs and national security.
Although there were differences on the issues of the destiny of the West Bank, and on whether peace treaties should be based on international frontiers, ministers all spoke of peace with security arrangements. The positive answer to the security issue was finally approved by a majority of one, 10 to 9: it was decided that a peace agreement should ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Suez Canal; the freedom of flight over them, and the demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula.
The formula agreed to by unanimity on June 19, 1967 was that "Israel proposes the conclusion of peace treaties with Egypt and Syria on the basis of the international frontiers and Israel's security needs." This proposal was presented to both Egypt and Syria, but no positive response came from either. Instead, the Arab Summit leaders at Khartoum announced on September 1, 1967 the three "nos."
As a result of Khartoum, Prime Minister Eshkol wrote a month later, "I doubt whether the government would approve the decision of June 19 exactly as it stands." In view of the continuing Arab leaders' refusal to negotiate, the decision did indeed become invalid.
What these newly released Israeli documents show in dramatic fashion is the eagerness of all the Israeli leaders, no matter how they differed on specific issues, to reach peace agreements with their Arab neighbors. If there is any hope for peace at this time among the Palestinians, they might wish to reconsider.
Michael Curtis is author of Should Israel Exist? A Sovereign Nation under Attack by the International Community.
Related Topics:  Michael Curtis

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