Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Gatestone Update :: Ali Salim: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel: An Islamic Prophecy, and more


Gatestone Institute
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Jerusalem, Capital of Israel: An Islamic Prophecy

by Ali Salim
January 29, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Jerusalem is the capital of the Children of Israel, now called the Jews; and it is forbidden for Musims to demand it, just as a married woman belongs only to her husband. Is it possible that Allah, who on His infinite mercy, calls them the Chosen People, and promises them the Holy Land, also plans to murder them, using the Muslims in Palestine as His intermediary? Every Muslim knows that Allah does not break His promises.
If you listen in Arabic to the hate-speeches made by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi; or to Turkish President Erdogan; or to the calls made from Qatar by Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and from the Gaza Strip by the head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal for the killing of the Jews, you will understand why Arabs and Muslims believe Allah is punishing them by having them kill each other: It is because His prophecies are not being fulfilled.
For example, it is heresy and a violation of the will of Allah to sidestep calls for recognizing Jerusalem as official capital of the Children of Israel, and moving the American embassy there. It ignores the prophecy of the Noble Qur'an, which predicts the return of the Children of Israel to their land from the four corners of the earth, as it is written in Al-Isra, Verse 104, "And we said to the Children of Israel after him, "Dwell in the land, then, when the final and the last promise comes near, we shall bring you altogether as a mixed crowd."
Although the stance adopted by the leaders of the Western world in general, and the American administration in particular, may be the consequence of their desire to strengthen their image in the eyes of the Muslim countries, their image is seen only as reflecting their weakness and attempts to ingratiate themselves with both radical Islam and Christian anti-Semitism.
It is not my intention to state that the other monotheistic religions do not also have their place in the holy city of Jerusalem. But political lies come mostly from radical Islamist sources, then somehow become accepted facts. This violates the prophecies of the messengers of Allah, and especially those of the greatest of His prophets, Muhammad (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam).
The various distortions of history and religion by politically-oriented Islamic sheiks and leaders for the sake of false, infidel, political goals, are legion. The way the Salafist Islamic sheiks and members of the Muslim Brotherhood twist the Noble Qur'an to suit their narrow political goals makes me angry, as it also makes angry the millions of Muslims around the world who know the eternal truth written in Islam's Noble Qur'an.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, for example, invented the fabrication that Palestinians are the descendants of the Jebusites and other Canaanite tribes of the land of the at the time of the Book. Behind this fabrication was Arafat's attempt to "prove" that the Palestinians lived in the Holy Land before the Children of Israel, and that therefore they have a greater right to it,
According to the Qur'an, however, "a race of giants" lived in the Holy Land but were destroyed by the Children of Israel, led by Joshua with the help of Allah the Almighty. There were never "Palestinians" in the Holy Land, nor is there one word of them in the Noble Qur'an, nor any prophecy regarding their existence, nor any right to the Holy Land or any other place in the future or on Day of Judgment in the Noble Book of Allah.
The Palestinians are not mentioned or even hinted at in the Noble Qur'an, but the Children of Israel are mentioned countless times and they are mentioned as the Chosen People, as it is written in Al-Baqara, Verse 47, "O Children of Israel, remember My favor that I have bestowed upon you and that I preferred you over the worlds." They are mentioned as inheritors of the Holy Land which, according to all the Islamic commentators, is Jerusalem and the country around it. The Muslim claim that the Divine promise to the Children of Israel appears in the Noble Qur'an in the past tense and therefore is not relevant today is a malicious lie. Everyone knows that most of the Noble Qur'an was written in the past tense, but what was written about the Children of Israel was a promise and a prophecy, and Allah does not change His mind or break His promises.
Anyone who claims that what is written about the Jews is only relevant for the past and that the Children of Israel disappeared turns our beloved Prophet from prophet to mere historian who did not know what the future would bring. Anyone who claims that the "real" Children of Israel disappeared and that the Jews of today are not the genuine Children of Israel of the Noble Qur'an is a liar and a deceiver, because if there are no Children of Israel then the prophecy of Muhammad, (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him) (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam), is irrelevant and he did not foresee the return of the Children of Israel to their land for the third time and instruct them to settle it, and promise that if they did what was right in the eyes of Allah and acted well they would succeed, as it is written in Al-Isra, Verses 6 and 7, "We gave you back the power against them, and aided you with wealth and children, and made you larger in numbers. Now, if you do well, you will do well for your own souls; and if you do evil, it will only go against them…." And if one prophecy is false then all are false, and the Noble Qur'an has no value. Thus we have to admit that regardless of the mistakes the Jews make concerning our Palestinian brothers, they in fact act well, even to the Arabs in Israel, and they are charitable according to the tradition of Islam, and they are clearly more honest than the Arab and Muslim leaders today who oppress their own people and daily slaughter them and shed their blood.
To the eternal credit of Islam it must be said that in the seventh century the armies of Islam invaded Palestine and wrested it from the Byzantines, and that Jerusalem was turned over without a battle to the Muslims by the Christian Bishop Sophronius. This was the beginning of the Arab presence in the Holy Land, which ended and was renewed for years under various conquests, including the Crusaders, but ended for good nearly a century ago, when the Turks went back home. The Holy Land was then given back into the hands of the Children of Israel, according to the decree of the Noble Qur'an and the prophecy of Muhammad, (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam). The Children of Israel came from all the corners of the earth, as it is written in Al-A'raf, Verse 137, "And we caused the people who had been oppressed to inherit the eastern regions of the land and western ones, which We had blessed. And the good word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel because of what they had patiently endured."
The Palestinian claim that the Prophet Jesus was a Palestinian Arab is also a fabrication, unfortunately characteristic of Palestinian leaders who invent them and invest enormous sums of money to buy weapons, kill the Children of Israel, carry out terrorist attacks and launch Qassam rockets at civilians instead of rehabilitating the Palestinian refugees, their brothers, who, as a result of the establishment of Israel, actually returned to the bosom of the Islamic nation.
The more the Palestinians repeat the infamy that Jesus was a Palestinian Arab, the more likely it is that the Christians themselves will believe it, especially those who, by ignoring and denying the rights of the Children of Israel to Jerusalem, reveal their own baseness and lack of respect for their own religion, based on Judaism and begun in the Jewish capital of Jerusalem. According to such an absurdity, the Jewish prophet Jesus, son of Mary, who opposed the corrupt Jewish priests in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, was a "Palestinian Arab; " but it is just another way of denying the Jews the right to their land. Christians who ignore the Jewish right to Jerusalem are also denying their own religion.
From a religious point of view, the connection between Muslims and Jerusalem began with the "Night Journey," a dream that appears in the Noble Qur'an and was also reported by the Prophet's beloved child-wife, Aisha. According to the dream, Muhammad (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam), went on a night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem riding on a marvelous animal named Al-Buraq, and from Jerusalem to heaven, where he received the principles of Islam. Jerusalem was then temporarily designated as the "Kibla," the first direction for Muslims to face during prayers; but Muhammad (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) changed the direction to Mecca. Since that time Jerusalem has been considered as only the third most sacred place for Islam.
It is saddening to think that we deny the Jews, the modern-day Children of Israel, their identity, despite the fact that we know that they preserved their faith for thousands of years in the face of torture, rape, persecution, burning and genocide, all crimes committed against them because they were Jews and were determined to remain Jews. We, however, the faithful of Islam, accept into our ranks every criminal and murderer who converts, in or out of prison, who only has to say, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet;" all it takes is five minutes. This new Muslim is considered a good Muslim, but a Jew who has adhered to the history and faith of his Jewish ancestors, the faith kept for thousands of years, is not in our eyes a genuine Jew, a Child of Israel. How long will we deny the Islamic faith and the prophecies of our Prophet Muhammad, (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him) (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam)?
Unfortunately, even those among us who do believe that the Jews in Israel are genuine Children of Israel, the ones Muhammad (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam), referred to in his noble Surahs, the ones who have inherited the Holy Land promised to them by the Noble Qur'an, conduct themselves despicably. They adopt the counterfeit, apocalyptic, false sayings which do not appear in the Noble Qur'an and are falsely attributed to the Prophet of Allah. They adopt as genuine traditions those which are lies, and, contradicting the promises made by Allah in the Noble Qur'an, falsely prophesy the destruction of the Jews by the Muslims in Palestine.
These commentators, inspired by Satan, refer to the Jews as "Zionists," as though changing their name makes it permissible to kill the People of the Book and violate the words of Allah and His prophets. Is it possible that Allah, who in His infinite mercy calls them the Chosen People, and promised them the Holy Land, also plans to murder them using the Muslims in Palestine as His intermediary? Every Muslim knows that Allah does not break His promises. Therefore, his promise to the Children of Israel is both relevant and eternal. The Jews, weak and miserable, who came from all over the globe, victims of hatred and murder would not found their state in Palestine unless it were the will of Allah, who supports them.
Jerusalem is the capital of the Children of Israel and it is forbidden for Muslims to demand it, just as a married woman belongs only to her husband. Jerusalem is never mentioned by name in the Noble Qur'an, but it is mentioned there as the heart of the Holy Land given in perpetuity to the Jews. It therefore has to be capital of the Children of Israel in the Land of Israel and not of the planned state of "Palestine." If, as Muslims, we look into our hearts, we have to admit that a state called Palestine never existed but we need to help it come into being, with the help of Allah, next to Israel. Since there never was a state called "Palestine" or a Palestinian people, Jerusalem was never their capital or the capital of any people or country except for the current State of Israel. Therefore the Palestinians cannot demand Jerusalem as its capital, but they can demand the right for all Muslims to pray at Al-Aqsa mosque. Actually, the Jews allow freedom of worship to all the religions in Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa mosque is under the management of the king of Jordan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam).
In addition, nowhere in the world have Muslims turned a city holy to Islam into a capital. Neither Mecca nor Madinah is the capital of Saudi Arabia and Karbala and Qom are not the capitals of Iraq and Iran. Even Jordan, whose capital is Amman, did not turn Jerusalem into its capital when it controlled the city between 1948 and 1967.
Instead of the monotheistic religions' helping the Jews to construct Jerusalem in preparation for Judgment Day and as proof of the truth of the prophecies in the Noble Qur'an, the infidels protest construction of new housing. If the Muslims used the return of the Children of the Book to Israel as proof of the truth of the prophecy of the Noble Qur'an, they would succeed in fulfilling the mission of Muhammad, the prophet of the entire world (Peace and the blessing of Allah be upon him: sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) to Islamize the world. Whoever goes against the will of Allah will fail. The Christians as well suffer from the historical lie and from the denial of the rights of the Jews to Jerusalem. What is happening in the Middle East and the mutual bloodletting of the Muslims is not a consequence of the "problem of Palestine." It is a manifestation of Allah's anger at the infidels of the world who do not accept His prophecy regarding the return of the Jews to their land and establishing their capital in the united holy city of Jerusalem.
Related Topics:  Israel

Exposing the Palestinians' Anna Baltzer
Will Oxford Endorse a Fraud?

by Lee Kaplan
January 29, 2013 at 4:30 am
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Anna Baltzer -- apparently neither a Fulbright Scholar, nor a descendant of Holocaust survivors, nor an alumna of the Birthright Program -- appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak January 31st?
Anna Baltzer, a pretty lady who heads the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO) in Washington, DC., has developed a platform for herself going about the world lecturing as a Jew who once supported the State of Israel, but who had an epiphany and discovered that Israel and "Zionists" were exploiting and abusing the Palestinian people. The USCEIO is, in fact, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) renamed for the purpose of lobbying Congress in Washington. It was created by Huwaida Arraf, one of the co-founders of the ISM who also serves on the group's steering committee.
Placing Anna Baltzer as the titular head of the Campaign was intended to convince both Jews and non-Jews that opposition to Israel's existence is fine because even Jews such as her believe in the necessity of destroying the Jewish state, especially through boycotts and divestment. Anna Baltzer is a modern day Tokyo Rose for the ISM against Israel: she speaks at anti-Israel events and promotes boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel, in support of terrorist groups such as Hamas in its plans to destroy Israel any way it can. She has participated or helped at demonstations staged by Code Pink, Global Exchange, the Gaza Flotilla, Viva Palestina and other anti-Israel groups that make up the ISM.
USCEIO has been frantically sending out fundraising email blasts and announcing on its website that Ms. Baltzer will appear in a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be presented by the distinguished Oxford Union in England on January 31st. According to the Oxford Union's website, "The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe."
The Oxford Union has delivered these debates by distinguished academic, religious and national leaders from ex-President Ronald Reagan to the Dali Lama. The purpose of the debates is the furtherance of education and knowledge. The subject of this debate will be: "This House Believes That Israel is a Force for Good in the Middle East."
The announcement of the three debaters for the anti-Israel point of view, however, disturbingly advertises propagandists and fabulists such as Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi and most importantly, Anna Baltzer, who is billed on the Oxford Union's website as head of the USCEIO and who will apparently speak in opposition to Israel's right to exist.
Ilan Pappe has already been proven to be bankrupt as a scholar after it was proven in court he was involved in fabricating a phony massacre by Israeli forces of the Arab village of Tantura in 1948. In a defamation and libel lawsuit brought by veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade in Israel, Pappe's PhD student under his advice admitted on the witness stand that he fabricated the entire massacre with his supervisor's knowledge and that he was paid $6,000 by the PLO to do so.
The other speaker alongside Anna Baltzer will be Ghada Kharmi, a Palestinian academic at the University of Exeter, Britain, and the author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine. Her writings are merely polemics devoid of any history or facts with which to back them up. She claims, incredibly, for example, that Israel has never made a peace offer to the Palestinians, along with standard slanderous Palestinian propaganda and claims that masquerade as facts -- such as that Israel violates "international law" by the building of settlements, which are completely legal per UN Resolution 242, and the stopping of the Gaza Flotillas that was completely legal by international maritime law. Karmi encourages war by proxy, such as writing in support of the British boycott of Israeli academics and Israeli universities.
What is Karmi's intellectual solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which she also claims is the reason for al Qaeda? She says Israel must become one state called Palestine; must withdraw to the 1949 borders; must give the Palestinians half of Jerusalem, and then allow seven million Palestinians to move inside Israel, creating a flood of Muslims that would demographically overwhelm the current Jewish population there. As for terrorism, she glosses over it as the desperate actions of some extremists who are fighting "colonialism." Her writings hardly reflect anything in the way of solid research or intellectual balance.
Stephen Stotsky of CAMERA.org has written an excellent exposé of Baltzer's lies about Israel. However, new information has arisen about Baltzer's background and history as a Jew.
In her Wikipedia entry and various speeches she has presented, mostly to Christian churches, Ms. Baltzer has claimed she comes from a Jewish family in which her grandparents were Holocaust survivors; that she was a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia University, and that at first she was pro-Israel. After touring with Fulbright in 2003 in Turkey, she alleges she visited "Palestine," Syria and Iran and met "friends" who "educated" her on the suffering of the Palestinians at Israeli hands, so that today she is a dedicated anti-Zionist. She included a cry at the end of an interview taped in Ireland in 2010 on an anti-Israel radio station that it is her hope "Inshallah, to one day bring down Zionism" -- meaning to end the Jewish state.
More recently, Anna Baltzer, back in the United States, lent her name and prestige to an attempt by the Students for Justice in Palestine at UC San Diego to prompt the entire student body association there to boycott and divest from Israel. The appearance, presumably intended to be a springboard to spread the boycott and divestment to other campuses, failed. While the event was being debated at UC SAN Diego, Anna Baltzer made a video, which appeared on You Tube, in support of boycotts and divestments from Israel, and directed to the anti-Israel campaign at the UC Campus. In this video, she claimed that she went on a Birthright tour -- a program that provides free trips to Israel for Jewish college students and recent graduates -- in the year 2000 as an enthusiastic pro-Zionist Jewish girl. She claims that after finishing the tour, she researched the suffering of the Palestinians and became a supporter of the anti-Israel movement.
There is just one problem with this scenario: According to my research, Anna Baltzer never went on a Birthright tour of Israel in the year 2000 or any other time. Inquiries to the New York and Israel offices to ascertain if she went with Birthright, revealed absolutely no record of any Anna Baltzer attending the program ever, let alone in year 2000. In short, it seems that Anna Baltzer lied about her participation in Birthright to convey the false impression that she was once a loyal Jew who supported the Jewish homeland but had discovered the justification for Palestinians' goals to overthrow Israel.
Further, after researching Ms. Baltzer's claims of being a Fulbright Scholar from Columbia in 2003, it has been determined from both Columbia's and the Fulbright websites, as well as Fulbright officials, that Anna Baltzer was never a Fulbright scholar either. A list of Fulbright Scholars at the Fulbright website contains the names of all Fulbright scholars from the United States and abroad from the late 90's to the present. Ms. Baltzer's name is nowhere to be found.
Anna Baltzer's claims about her personal and academic background should come as no surprise: it has gained her entrée to speaking engagements at colleges across the US and abroad where she spreads lies against Israel. At her presentation at St. John the Worker's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California in 2007, Anna Baltzer recounted a tale of a pregnant Palestinian mother who, in an emergency, was taken by ambulance, but forbidden to pass a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers, who had told her that her ambulance could not pass through the checkpoint until 7 am, although she had arrived in an a Code 3 state at 6:30 am. Baltzer claimed -- drawing gasps from the audience -- that due to this delay, the woman miscarried twin fetuses. In an implicit comparison of Israeli soldiers to Nazis, she alleged the IDF soldiers kept telling the poor woman that they "were just following orders" -- a veiled reference to the Nazis' excuses, at the Nuremberg trials after the World War II, for their role in the death camps. There was no mention that the checkpoints had been erected in the first place to stop what had been incessant terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.
When asked the name of the woman who had miscarried, the location of the checkpoint, the time of day, the names of reliable witnesses and the outcome of any military investigation of such cruelty, she said that she did not know, that she had not been there. She even said she was surprised to hear that the Israeli army would have received a formal complaint if such an event had actually occurred. Pressed still further about the authenticity of her tale, in a book she was selling that supposedly contained her personal eyewitness accounts of Israeli atrocities against Arabs, Baltzer admitted she did not know the details because the story had been told to her second hand by Lamis Deek, a well-known Arab propagandist from the ISM. In the 2010 radio interview in Ireland, however, Anna Baltzer changed the story and said, after recounting the same tale, that she interviewed the poor Arab woman who had lost the two babies -- again with no names, dates or places.
The ISM with which Baltzer works regularly uses the imagery of Holocaust survivors who see the need to end the Jewish state. Hedy Epstein, in her eighties, is paraded around by the ISM at their boycott and divestment events in California colleges. Epstein also appeared on the ISM Flotilla Boats to Gaza, and has always been presented as a "Holocaust survivor" who is against Israel. Research has shown that as a child Ms. Epstein spent the war in the safety of England, and was never in a concentration camp or even on the European continent. Rather, in her youth, Ms. Epstein was party to several pro-Soviet communist movements, whose Stalinist leanings were anti-Zionist, and she even supported Pol Pot's regime of mass murder.
Using the same "Holocaust survivor" imagery, Baltzer claims she is the descendant of Holocaust survivors who instilled in her a need to support Palestinian aims against Israeli persecution. After researching her grandparents through the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, to see if her family were actually in concentration camps, nothing could be found. This, too, appears to be a fabrication by Baltzer, or at best an embellishment, like Hedy Epstein's, of being a Holocaust survivor.
The Oxford Union's President was distressed to learn these facts about Ms. Baltzer's academic fraud and said she would share such information with the faculty advisers with the possible outcome of her being removed from the debate.
An educational debate, especially at a university as august as Oxford, should feature academics or speakers who are genuine, not imposters or fakes planted to distort facts and slander and demonize a fellow democracy. Anna Baltzer seems to be neither a Fulbright scholar, not a descendant of Holocaust survivors nor an alumna of the Birthright program. She appears to be just a fraud and a fabulist. So why is Oxford having her speak?
If you would like to express your opinion to the Oxford Union about Ms. Baltzer's lying to them about her background, to pass herself off at an academic event, please email Oxford Union's President Maria Rioumine with your comments at President@Oxford-Union.org while there is still time left before this fraudulent "debate."
Related Topics:  Lee Kaplan

If Nukes Are So Useless, Why Are Iran, North Korea, China and Russia Building Them So Fast?

by Peter Huessy
January 29, 2013 at 4:00 am
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Senator Hagel, while signing up to the timetable for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, also said in the 2009 Al Jazeera interview, that nuclear weapons can be abolished because they no longer need to play a traditional deterrent role. As part of this strategy, Hagel proposes to "de-alert" our weapons, making them unusable in a crisis. This raises the question of why any adversary would also volunteer to put its nuclear warheads in reserve and significantly delay its own ability to use such weapons, especially when doing so is largely unverifiable.
The "Global Zero" campaign to "zero out" all nuclear weapons is pressuring the US to set an example for the rest of the world to follow, by dramatically cutting its nuclear forces even further to a level not seen since the dawn of the nuclear age 60 years ago.
This cutback is on top of the already considerable 90% reduction -- since the height of the Cold War in 1981 -- in our deployed strategic nuclear forces, as well as a similarly significant reduction in our reserve stockpile and our tactical nuclear weapons.
In proposing a larger reduction, a logical question has arisen: What is the role, if any, of the nuclear weapons we will keep prior to their elimination? In short, what is the function of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era, now seen as the post-9/11 era and its concern about terrorism?
A little history is in order. The essence of the US triad of missiles on land, submarines at sea and bombers ready to fly is that it is virtually impossible to take all of these forces out in one quick, sudden unexpected strike by the bad guys, which would leave us "naked", i.e., with no nukes left with which to deter or strike back.
The Global Zero forces have long wanted to eliminate the land based missiles -- at the height of the Cold War we had 1050 such missiles on land spread over 7 states; we have 450 now over five states.
Global Zero wants to get rid of the land-based Minuteman missiles and rely primarily on our submarines, both to save money and to demonstrate that we are truly dedicated to "going toward" zero weapons.
But we only have two bases or ports for our submarines, one in Washington and one in Georgia. Those subs in port can be destroyed by a cruise missile attack. But those subs at sea, usually four, in their patrol areas, cannot now be found by any adversary so they can survive to fire back at any adversary who might strike the US first.
But our Navy leaders believe anti-submarine warfare technology may in a number of years make it easier to detect and find them. Thus, prudence dictates we continue to make the fleet as quiet and survivable as possible, as well as maintaining the insurance policy of our land-based Minuteman missiles to ensure we can retaliate if attacked. The cost of the Minuteman program annually is roughly $500 million in research, development and acquisition, a bargain at less than $1 out of every $7600 spent by Uncle Sam.
If an anti-submarine warfare breakthrough occurred, our submarines over time could be eliminated while underwater on patrol. Under those circumstances, we would not know what country had taken them out.
This would be a deadly serious crisis, because the US President would be faced with the prospects of the United States losing its nuclear deterrent. This entire dilemma, however, can be avoided simply with the expedient of the US keeping all of our Minuteman missiles in their silos sustained and modernized.
The next strategy proposed by Global Zero involves a degree of sleight of hand. After proposing that 450 submarine-based warheads would remain in our inventory, they propose that the same warheads be "de-alerted". This would require making technical changes to the submarine missile-launchers. The submarine commander, upon receiving orders from the President to fire such weapons, would not be able to carry out such an order for upwards of seventy two hours or three days.
Since taking the missiles "off alert" is not verifiable, we would be hoping our adversaries did likewise. Instead of President Reagan's policy of "Trust, but verify", we would be in a new world of "Trust, don't verify, and hope".
Finally, the Global Zero advocates try to hide the weakness of their approach by proposing that if needed in a crisis, the submarines could add an additional 450 warheads to their missiles by returning to port and adding such warheads to their missiles from stockpiles stored nearby. The only problem is that, as experts have explained, such an endeavor would take many months. And the logical question arises, why would the "bad guys" wait around during a crisis for the US to re-arm?
In this context, the Global Zero campaign has now authored a proposal in which nuclear weapons would be eliminated by 2030 -- with the US leading the way by eliminating much of its current Nuclear Triad of bombers, submarines and land-based missiles. Some number of weapons would remain throughout the period leading up to the elimination of the rest.
Here things get confusing. What would be the doctrine upon which the current nuclear forces would rely? If not available for use in a crisis, what would their purpose be? And if other nuclear armed nations kept their weapons ready to use, we would enter every crisis potentially unprepared to deter war.
One author of the report, former Senator Chuck Hagel, now nominated to be the new Defense Secretary, asserted in a 2009 Al Jazeera interview that the doctrine of mutual assured destruction or MAD, was no longer relevant although it had been the doctrine of the US and the Soviet Union for much of the Cold War. What then would take its place?
The report itself, primarily authored by the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General James Cartwright, has underscored that nuclear deterrence still needs to be maintained, and has proposed that the US keep some 450 warheads for that purpose, with an additional 450 warheads "in reserve" on a reduced force of ten submarines and 20 bombers.
But the Global Zero report also calls for these 450 reserve warheads to be removed from their bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and stored elsewhere, a change which would require many months before they could be brought back from storage and used.
Why any adversary would also volunteer to put its nuclear warheads in reserve and significantly delay its own ability to use such weapons remains unexplained -- or what purpose would be served by bringing nuclear weapons to bear in a confrontation already underway for some time or possibly even already resolved?
Further, moving our deployed warheads off alert, so they could not be used for days or months after a crisis occurred, certainly would give incentives to other parties in a conflict to have nuclear weapons at the ready so they could be used to defeat everybody else.
There are adversaries of the US that have, or are urgently attempting to acquire, nuclear weapons; adversaries that include Russia, China and North Korea, with Iran now projected to have sufficient nuclear material for a weapon as early as 2014. Will all of these nuclear powers actually put aside their nuclear weapons, making them unusable in a crisis?
Any crisis could emerge involving any number of the current nine nuclear weapons states. In that light, the primary objective of the United States should be to ensure that no nuclear weapons be used, whether those weapons were to be used against the US and its allies or not. To do that, nuclear deterrence would be required. And such deterrence must be -- and appear to be -- both credible and stable. The Global Zero strategy is neither.
What then should a credible US nuclear policy look like? At a minimum, it should preserve nuclear stability, the guiding principal of which would be that during a crisis, the US would work to ensure that: (1) No nuclear weapons were used by anyone against anyone else especially while nuclear weapons remain in the arsenal of nations; and (2) That peace is preserved, and any aggression, even conventional, is avoided.
In that light, how do any of the Global Zero proposals make sense, especially in de-alerting those warheads that remain in our inventory while eliminating our ICBMs
Most problematic about the Global Zero strategy us that it relies upon verification measures -- not yet identified -- to preserve the peace in a non-nuclear world with many rogue states that have a strong propensity to cheat. In these circumstances, would war of any nature be less likely or more likely? Let's look at four key issues.
1. Assuming the US, and its allies would not completely trust a commitment by Iran, North Korea, China, Pakistan and others to get rid of their nuclear weapons, wouldn't it require extremely intrusive inspections -- including those made without notice -- to adequately verify such an eradication, as even the proponents of such an agenda admit?
What happens, however, even if we reach such a hypothetical condition of zero nuclear weapons? Would the Global Zero proponents also tell us that with nuclear weapons no longer available, war between countries -- including terrorist-sponsoring states and their terror allies -- would go away? As General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Council Adviser to President Bush, has asked: What part of the pre-nuclear era of World War I and World War II are folks hoping we go back to?
As conventional war would still be possible between nations -- and without nuclear deterrence, possibly even more likely -- wouldn't the benefit of getting nuclear weapons first, on the sly, be of enormous strategic advantage to a country seeking to commit aggression against another? Would verification be so foolproof that we could be certain such a surprise would not happen?
If North Korea were to invade South Korea solely with conventional forces -- even unsuccessfully -- would not South Korea be sorely tempted to secure nuclear weapons to ensure that such an attack would never happen again? Or what about a conflict between India and China, or Pakistan and India, or Iran and Turkey? Would nuclear weapons stay out of the geostrategic equation for long?
A nuclear-free world would also therefore be a world where very quickly there would be a rush to rearm, as the likely outcome, or attempted prevention, of any perceived potential conflict. The world would soon be awash in aspiring nuclear powers with the attendant instability this situation would entail with few "rules of the road" in operation.
2. Some advocates of nuclear zero also assert that nuclear weapons currently serve no usefully military purpose, in that they cannot be used for any militarily useful goal, and thus can safely be eliminated.
A recent essay by Ward Wilson, cited as further evidence that nuclear weapons have never been useful and thus can now safely be abolished, asserts that the Japanese surrendered at the end of World War II not because of the US use of nuclear weapons, but because the Soviet Union entered the war in early August 1945.
General Larry Welch, the former US Air Force Chief of Staff and Commander of the Strategic Command at the height of the Cold War, and one of the key authors of the initial US effort to reduce nuclear weapons to lower but more stable numbers, found such a proposition "at odds with the facts, even at odds with the information presented in Wilson's article."
"The Japanese emperor," Welch wrote me, "was the only authority in Japan to overrule the military and declare an end to the war. The use of nuclear weapons against Japan gave him the necessary leverage to surrender and to make it stick. ... The idea that the Soviets' entry into the war did the trick is not supported by any understanding of the facts at the time." He added, "The Russians had no significant capability facing Japan, and no naval capability. Their forces were concentrated in the European theater."
Welch also noted that, "The overwhelming evidence was that a US and allied invasion of Japan would have cost America 500,000 to 1,000,000 military casualties and 1-2 million subsequent Japanese casualties. After the war, we discovered very large caches of war material being readied to fight just such an invasion."
Wilson's claim that nuclear weapons had no role in the peace maintained throughout the Cold War – is "devoid of supportable rationales" said Welch.
"The very fact," Welch wrote, "that there was no armed conflict between two superpowers armed to the teeth, facing each other across an artificial border, is de facto evidence that nuclear weapons served a military purpose unparalleled in human history —-they played a major role in avoiding war for an extended period between two heavily armed adversaries, an accomplishment, let me emphasize again, largely unparalleled in human history."
The "whole point of deterrence was never to use these weapons" he continued. "The idea that the use of such weapons was wholly irrational and would not accomplish one's war aims was precisely the point of deterrence; the use of such weapons was so horrible to contemplate, their use by our adversaries was deterred."
3. The next issue is whether nuclear weapons serve no further purpose. "If nuclear weapons are so useless as he asserts," Welch continued, "why are rogue states and others seeking to acquire them?"
If nuclear weapons really serve no purpose, then it makes sense for the US unilaterally to take the lead and be the first to disarm: have the US get rid of its nuclear weapons unilaterally, before any of our adversaries do as well?
If, however, as even global zero advocates concede, nuclear deterrence remains essential, then the argument should be about what is needed for both strategic deterrence and for maintaining strategic stability.
In that regard, reference to the one treaty now in force that calls for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons would be useful. The whole purpose of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] was to reduce those nations with nuclear weapons, to stop proliferation and eventually reduce and then eliminate nuclear weapons.
The NPT, signed in 1968 and entering into force in 1970, also called for general disarmament of conventional forces as part and parcel of any such nuclear disarmament. The US nuclear umbrella was widely seen during the Cold War as keeping the peace in Central Europe, preventing a superior Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact conventional capability from being used on the continent. The US was hardly ready to give up its nuclear deterrent in Europe and leave in place a vastly superior Soviet conventional capability facing NATO across the Fulda Gap. Even today, leaders of countries from Germany, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, for example, credit the US nuclear umbrella for forestalling major proliferation pressures among US allies.
Nuclear weapons, then, have served a major purpose: stopping the very proliferation which the Global Zero campaign claims is one of its chief concerns. But with the removal of the US deterrent umbrella, including the remaining tactical nuclear weapons the US has in Europe,, proliferation will only be encouraged.
Proponents of Global Zero probably have to make up their minds: do or do not nuclear weapons give whoever possesses them a decided advantage in strategic affairs? If they do give such an advantage, pursuing Global Zero could actually be an unfortunate prelude to Global Proliferation, as nations seek to match or overtake smaller and smaller US nuclear forces. Global Zero could also lead to a world where just a handful of such weapons could obliterate other powers shortly after Global Zero had been reached. Again, a rush to rearm would result.
4. A key part of the Global Zero agenda is to "de-alert" the weapons of the United States, and implicitly those of Russia as well. This has sometimes been described as taking our warheads off of their missiles or removing them from bombers, then storing them separately from the platforms from which they would be launched, or delaying the time by which warheads on their respective missiles could be launched.
This has the purpose of not allowing nuclear weapons to be used for up to 72 hours after they have been de-alerted, and months for submarine-based weapons stored ashore. The first action cannot be verified and the latter takes so much time as to have no impact on a crisis or conflict already erupted. Thus, re-alerting and reconstituting our submarine force, for instance, would be a task taking not just days but in some instances months.
The first thing wrong with such a proposal is that it is, in large part, not verifiable. The second thing wrong is that the adversary's weapons could surreptitiously be "re-alerted." In a crisis, there would be the very same rush to rearm, which the very instability that the Global Zero push for no nuclear weapons is supposed to prevent.
Global Zero's recommendations would therefore produce the likelihood that nuclear weapons would be used against us and our allies. We would not cheat, but the other side well could.

Summary

The most worrisome part of the Global Zero agenda is its proposal to dismantle unilaterally most of our current stabilizing nuclear deterrent. Cartwright and Hagel both propose to eliminate our 450 land based missiles and most of our bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and then rely almost entirely on our submarines.
This may sound attractive but it is not. Our submarines are in two ports, in Georgia and Washington. A certain number (four) of these 12 Trident boats are, on an ongoing basis at sea, patrolling within their pre-assigned boxes. Some boats remain in port, while others transit from port to patrol area. They are considered highly survivable out at sea as an assured second-strike retaliatory capability. The submarines place no pressure on a President in a crisis to cross the threshold and use nuclear weapons.
According to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the highest ranking Naval Officer in the US, the quest by our adversaries to develop an underwater, or anti-submarine warfare [ASW] capability, is high on the list of his most worrisome possible future developments.
If acquired, this would put at risk our submarines out at sea, where they could be destroyed by underwater torpedoes -- with the US totally blind as to which nation might have carried out such an attack. Over time, our fleet could be targeted or eliminated, and with it our entire nuclear deterrent capability.
Today, while our submarines remain safe as they patrol at sea, we still maintain 450 Minuteman missiles in silos in the ground spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles in five states as a key insurance policy. To take out the Minuteman silos would require the "bad guys" to launch two warheads at each silo, which would require a massive attack. But even if all of our missiles in their silos did not survive--highly unlikely--our submarines at sea could retaliate. Thus any adversary would face the daunting task of simultaneously taking out our submarines in port and at sea as well as our land based missiles. Given the different flight times required to take out each element of our Triad, we would have sufficient warning of an attack and be able to strike back but only with all three Triad legs in place and sustained.
The presence today of 450 Minuteman missile silos spread over five states thus makes a pre-emptive attack on the US non-credible. Minuteman is thus a critically important strategic insurance policy, as is each element of our Triad. In a crisis, the bad guys know they cannot eliminate our ability to strike back , if necessary, with nuclear weapons. This maintains the strategic balance where no side is tempted to go first with nuclear weapons. That is what deterrence has to entail.
If the advocates of Global Zero really believed that relying primarily on our submarines made sense, they would not have admitted, as they did, that beyond 2040 an ASW or anti-submarine warfare breakthrough could occur that would put our entire underwater deterrent in fatal jeopardy.
Given the proposal to eliminate the Triad now, what would be the insurance policy upon which the US would rely to keep our needed deterrent if an ASW breakthrough occurred before 2040? The proponents of eliminating our Triad are either betting that our adversaries will not achieve any ASW breakthrough before then, or they are assuming that a lot of nuclear-armed lions will be getting along well with a lot of de-nuclearized lambs.
To claim the US deterrent is safe -- except for a technological breakthrough -- is less than prudent. Obviously a technological breakthrough, of which the US might not be aware, would alter the strategic balance, dramatically shifting the "correlation of forces" toward a nation which believed that eliminating the US nuclear arsenal would be to its advantage militarily and politically.
The proposal to eliminate the Triad brings with it -- as with other proposals by the people of Global Zero -- not peace, but a heightened geostrategic instability. Such a posture as Global Zero advocates would only encourage nuclear powers to seek to eliminate the US nuclear capability, while brandishing their own nuclear weapons to secure their own objectives. The use of nuclear weapons and planned aggression by an adversary may indeed become even more likely, and increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons might be used by someone other than the US in a crisis.
Global Zero would actually create the incentive for nations to bring nuclear weapons secretly back into their inventory; such weapons would once again become the "coin of the realm," sought by rogue state bullies as the ultimate weapon with which to secure their often totalitarian goals.
Tyrants and nations would rush to impose their will, and with it the loss of our liberty previously guaranteed by a nuclear deterrent, now removed.
Related Topics:  Peter Huessy

Yemen's Forgotten Christians

by Raymond Ibrahim
January 29, 2013 at 3:00 am
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"What do you think it will be like [for Christians], now that the Islamists are in power?" — Ibn Yemen
When one thinks of Yemen—the impoverished Arab country that begat Osama bin Laden, and is cushioned between Saudi Arabia and Somalia, two of the absolute most radical Muslim nations—one seldom thinks of Christians, primarily because they are practically nonexistent in such an inhospitable environment. Most tallies, in fact, suggest that Yemen's entire non-Muslim population is less than one percent.
A new Arabic report , however, discusses the existence of Christians in Yemen, and their plight—one that should be familiar by now, given the situation wherever Christian minorities live under Muslim majorities.
Unofficial statistics suggest that there are some 2,500 indigenous Christians in the nation, practicing their faith underground even as hostile tribes surround them. According to human rights activist, Abdul Razzaq al-Azazi, "Christians in Yemen cannot practice their religion nor can they go to church freely. Society would work on having them enter Islam."
He added that, as in most Muslim countries, "the government does not permit the establishment of buildings or worship places without prior permission," pointing out that Roman Catholic officials, for example, are currently awaiting a decision from the government on whether they will be allowed to construct a building and be officially recognized by the government in Sana.
A convert to Christianity from Islam—an apostate from Islam whose life is forfeit and who naturally prefers to remain anonymous, going by the pseudonym, "Ibn Yemen" (Son of Yemen)—expressed his fear of increased pressure on Christians, especially since the "Islamists now represent the dominant political faction, following the Arab Spring and the protests that brought the fall of President Ali Abdullah Saleh." He added that even though the old regime "was not Islamist, Christians were still subjected to persecution and scrutiny by the police apparatus under that regime. Authorities did not allow us to practice our religion openly or allow us to build a private church, all because of Islam's apostasy law. What do you think it will be like now that the Islamists are in power?"
Accordingly, and as another Christian interviewed in Yemen indicated, Christians pray underground in the members' houses on a rotational basis—as in the days of Roman persecution of Christians, when the Christians worshipped underground in catacombs. Along with Yemen's indigenous Christians, there are also between 15,000 and 25,000 non-native Christians living in Yemen, mostly refugees from Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, where the persecution of Christians is often even worse than in Yemen, especially Somalia, where Al-Shabaab ("the Youth") behead Muslim apostates to Christianity on a regular basis. Such Christian refugees from Africa often change their names to Muslim names to avoid harassment in Yemeni society.
Some Christian organizations and institutions do exist, mostly foreign ones, including the American Baptist Mission, which runs Jibla Hospital and a Church which provides services to orphans, the poor, and imprisoned women. These organizations work primarily to serve the community, not to facilitate Christian worship. Another study confirmed the previous existence of five churches in the southern city of Aden, three of which were Roman Catholic, one Anglican, and the fifth of unidentified affiliation: three of those five churches, which were built during the British occupation of southern Yemen, were neglected and left to crumble; the fourth became the property of the government; and the fifth was turned into a health facility.
The story of Yemen's Christians seems like a microcosm of the story of the Middle East's Christians in how it conforms to the current pattern of oppression for Christians under Islam: things were better for Christians—for religious freedom in general—in earlier eras under Western influence. As the Muslim world, which for a while was Western-looking, continues turning East, to Islam, and as the demands of Sharia Law [The Way] return, so does hostility to non-Muslim worship and apostates—as the "Arab Spring" has brought about wherever Islamists have come to power.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics:  Raymond Ibrahim

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