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Why
Abbas Will (Again) Say No
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Now Abbas is going to mislead
Obama into thinking that he is coming to meet with him not only as the
"rightful" leader of the Palestinians but also as a
representative of the Arab world. Never mind that the Arab League, which
issued the statement, is considered extremely inefficient and incompetent
and that no one in the Arab world takes it seriously.
But the Obama Administration does
not seem to care. Obama and Kerry seem to want a deal at any cost, even
if it is with a president who lost his legitimacy many years ago and even
if the deal will unravel the day after.
Abbas also believes he can say no
to Obama because the U.S. Administration will not take any retaliatory
measures against the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians do not take
Obama seriously, especially in light of his failure in dealing with the
crises in the Arab world and Ukraine.
On the eve of his meeting with President Barack Obama, Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has won the backing of the Arab League
for his positions and demands.
The Arab League support is exceedingly important for Abbas: it gives
him the power and energy to resist any pressure from Obama to soften or
change his position.
The Arab league's announcement came after a meeting of its foreign
ministers, in Cairo, attended by Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister
Riad Malki, who urged his
counterparts to show their support for Abbas on the eve of his meeting
with Obama, scheduled to take place in Washington on March 17.
The Arab League announcement allows Abbas to turn down any request
from Obama under the pretext that he is not authorized by the Arab
countries to make any concessions.
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President Barack
Obama meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the
Oval Office in 2009. (Image source: Official White House photo)
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Obama should therefore not expect to hear anything new from Abbas, who
continues to insist there will be no peace agreement until Israel and the
U.S. comply with all his demands.
By requesting the backing of the Arab countries, Abbas is seeking to
show Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that there is no point
in exerting pressure on him because the Arab countries will not accept
any concessions to Israel.
Abbas has actually tied his own hands before the meeting as a way of
avoiding pressure.
Abbas's predecessor, Yasser Arafat, resorted to the same tactic during
the miscalculated Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Then, Arafat
too claimed that he did not have a mandate from the Arab and Islamic
countries to make concessions to Israel and that was why he would not be
able to strike a deal.
The Arab League announcement also allows Abbas to tell Obama that he
is speaking not only on behalf of Palestinians, but the entire Arab world
as well. However, many Palestinians would argue that Abbas does not even
have a mandate from his people to negotiate, let alone sign, any peace
agreement with Israel.
But the Obama Administration does not really seem to care whether
Abbas, who recently entered the 10th year of his four-year
term in office, is authorized by his people to sign a deal with Israel.
Obama and Kerry seem to want a deal at any cost, even if it is with a
president who lost his legitimacy many years ago and even if the deal
will unravel the day after.
So now Abbas is going to mislead Obama into thinking that he is coming
to meet with him not only as the "rightful" leader of the
Palestinians, but also as a representative of the Arab world.
As Abbas's foreign minister, Riad Malki, explained
following the Cairo gathering, "When President Abbas arrives in
Washington, he will be talking not only on behalf of Palestine, but on
behalf of all the Arab countries."
In other words, Abbas is going to pretend that the entire Arab world
has authorized him to speak on its behalf during his meeting with Obama.
Never mind that the Arab League, which issued the statement backing
Abbas, is considered extremely inefficient and incompetent and no one in
the Arab world takes it seriously.
In any event, the Arab League announcement in support of Abbas is
going to make his mission to Washington even more difficult.
The announcement reiterated the Arab countries' refusal to recognize
Israel as a Jewish state, insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal to the
pre-1967 lines and rejected any attempt to "resettle"
Palestinian refugees "outside their homeland."
Now that he has won the backing of the Arab League for his positions,
Abbas will feel more confident to say no to Obama. The Arab League has in
fact authorized Abbas to resist all forms of pressure from the U.S.
Administration.
Yet Abbas is also full of self-confidence because he and many
Palestinians are encouraged by what they perceive as increased boycotts
of Israel in the international arena.
The Palestinians also do not take Obama seriously, especially in light
of his failure in dealing with the crises in the Arab world and Ukraine.
Abbas believes that he can say no to Obama because the U.S.
Administration will not take any retaliatory measures against the
Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials in Ramallah pointed out the threats by the U.S.
Administration to impose financial sanctions if Abbas sought unilateral
recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations two years ago.
"President Abbas feels satisfied with the comprehensive campaign
of boycotting Israel in the academic and economic fields," explained
Palestinian political analyst Hani Habib. "This means that the
international public opinion is today supportive of the Palestinian
position."
Arab political support and anti-Israel boycott campaigns around the
world have emboldened Abbas to a point where he feels that there is no
need for him to make any concessions for the sake of peace.
From
Radical to Terrorist
The "Conveyor Belt"
to Violent Extremism
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The individuals attached to the
radicalization of the Woolwich killers were not unabashed advocates of
terrorism, but so-called "soft Islamists" – afforded money and
responsibility by the government in the vain hope that
"non-violent" extremists would temper the more visible
consequences of violent extremists. In truth, "moderate"
Islamism seems to act as a "conveyor belt" to violent Islamism.
The greatest obstacle remains the
failure of government, media and academia to accept that some
"moderate" Islamists are frequently the cause, and Adebowale
merely the symptom.
The progression from being a radical to being a terrorist has been referred
to as the extremism "conveyor belt." Although the government
has acknowledged the fundamental role of so-called
"non-violent" or "soft Islamist" extremists in this
progression, taxpayers continue to fund extremist groups.
Michael Adebowale, one of the two British jihadists found guilty of
murdering soldier Lee Rigby near London's Woolwich barracks in May 2013,
has recently attributed his radicalization to Islamic preacher Sheikh
Khalid Yasin.
According
to the Daily Mirror newspaper, Adebowale, who refused to give
evidence during his trial, stated that he converted to Islam after
listening to cleric Sheikh Khalid Yasin's lectures, which he said taught
him "the purpose of life."
Yasin, an American-born Islamic preacher, claims Christians
and Jews are "kuffar" [infidels] and their beliefs are
"filth." Yasin has called for the killing of
homosexuals and claims
that "Christian groups" have deliberately infected Africans
with the AIDS virus. He further adds that the Koran gives men permission
to beat women.
Adebowale is not the first violent extremist to name Yasin as his
muse. In 2011, Khalid Yasin was invited
by three men, later convicted of inciting terrorism, to address a meeting
of young Muslims in Manchester.
While Yasin's views are rejected by many, he is by no means a pariah
figure. In February 2011, the BBC interviewed Yasin for a documentary on
Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The program introduced
the Sheikh as a "moderate" preacher "engaged in
de-radicalising youth."
It seems to be self-proclaimed "moderate" organizations and
mosques that are involved in the radicalization of young Muslim men. In
May 2013, The Daily Telegraph reported:
[Adebowale's] mother was advised by a neighbour to take him to the
head of the Woolwich mosque for spiritual guidance. He was converted to
Islam by the head Imam, and taken for weeks of "further
training" at a centre near Cambridge. When he returned, however, he
was even more "radicalised" and his mother could no longer
"get through to him".
In 2010, a Freedom of Information request revealed that, since 2007,
the local Government had provided
the very same Woolwich Mosque, also known as the Greenwich Islamic
Centre, with a public grant of £62,500, supposedly to counteract
violent extremism.
The media's curious habit of separating extremist preachers from the
very terrorists they appear to have inspired has previously been examined;
journalists and politicians, however, seem unable to accept that some
Islamist groups might say one thing in public but promote a very
different thing behind closed doors.
The Muslim Association of Britain, for instance, responded to the
Woolwich killing by stating
that they "deplored the horrific attack, murder and mutilation
upon an off-duty soldier ... They deserve punishment with the full force
of the law."
The president of the Muslim Association of Britain, however, has endorsed
the killing of troops in Israel and Iraq; and Dr. Azzam Tamimi, another
senior member of the Association, has expressed
his desire to become a suicide bomber.
Angel Rabasa, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, has observed:
"In our own studies of radical recruitment in the Middle East, we
found that individuals recruited into Salafi or Muslim Brotherhood groups
decide at some point that their mentors are not Islamic enough and move
on to even more extreme and violent groups. This progression from
religious radicalism to violent extremism is made possible by the absence
of firewalls between mainstream Islam and radicals and violent
extremists. Violent extremists can derive scriptural justifications for
their actions."
Woolwich terrorist Adebowale also attended sessions at the Glyndon
Community Centre, where another extremist, Usman Ali, presented sessions.
Ali had
previously used the Woolwich Mosque to show children videos of the
9/11 attacks while chanting: "God is great." The local government
authority owns the Glyndon Community Centre, and the charity that manages
the centre is largely
taxpayer-funded.
Ali was a member
of the centre's managing committee the same year that the council
provided a grant of £137,000. Ali was later employed by a local public
hospital as the official Muslim chaplain.
The individuals attached to the radicalization of the Woolwich killers
were not unabashed advocates of terrorism, but so-called
"soft Islamists" -- afforded money and responsibility by the
government in the vain hope that "non-violent" Islamism would
temper violent Islamism.
This process seems also to have occurred, for instance, to Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, the failed "underwear bomber," who attempted to
detonate an explosive device he was wearing on Northwest Airlines 253 on
December 25, 2009.
Years earlier, Abdulmutallab had been a student at University College
London, where he was president of the Islamic Society. After the bomb
failed to detonate, he told his arresting FBI officers in Detroit that he
was seeking martyrdom for the glory of al-Qaeda. At the time of his
arrest, he was the fourth
president of a London student Islamic society to attempt an act of
terrorism in three years.
While Abdulmutallab was in charge of his university's Islamic society,
he did not invite barefaced extremists involved with violent acts to
address students; instead, he invited
dozens of popular, well-known British Islamist preachers, who still
frequently speak
on university campuses, share
platforms with British politicians and are frequently invited
by the media to give comment
on "moderate" Islam.
These preachers included:
Murtaza Khan, who claims
women who use perfume should be flogged; Abdurraheem Green, who has spoken
of a "Jewish stench" and says it is permissible to beat women
to "bring them to goodness;" Haitham Al-Haddad, who describes
Jews as "pigs and apes;" and Yasir Qadhi, who claims
the Holocaust is a hoax and has said: "Why are Jews studying Islam?
There is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy
us."
By Abdulmutallab's own admission, it was these "non-violent"
Islamist preachers who radicalized him. In 2008, in a short
autobiography, he cited
the influence of Haitham al-Haddad. The same year, Abdulmutallab had
attended seminars organized by the Al Maghrib Institute in both London
and Houston. The Institute's founder, Muhammad Al Shareef, has written a paper
entitled, "Why the Jews Were Cursed" -- in which he claims that
Jews control the media and were responsible for the murder of prophets. A
number of the Institute's staff, described as extremist
preachers, frequently speak on platforms provided by British Muslim
groups.
In 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged the problem of
"the conveyor belt," during a much-discussed speech in Munich,
and signalled
that the government's approach would change:
"As evidence emerges about the backgrounds of those convicted of
terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were initially
influenced by what some have called 'non-violent extremists', and they
then took those radical beliefs to the next level by embracing violence.
... Some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to
the Muslim community are showered with public money despite doing little
to combat extremism. As others have observed, this is like turning to a
right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist
movement."
Following this testimony, however, taxpayer-subsidised extremism did
not meet a sudden end. Since Cameron's Munich speech, for example, the
East London Mosque, has received
at least £150,000 of taxpayers' money. In December 2013, the East London
Mosque invited
Shakeel Begg, who describes jihad as "the greatest of deeds,"
to speak at the institution.
Moreover, in 2012 – after the Prime Minister's Munich speech and the
year in which £150,000 of public grants were provided – one invited
speaker at the Mosque was Saad al-Beraik, a "prominent [Saudi]
government official cleric," who refers
to Jews as "monkeys" and has said: "Muslim brothers in
Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their
blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take,
legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why
don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them?"
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The East London
Mosque, which receives government funding, hosts extremist speakers.
(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
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The greatest obstacle remains the failure of government, media and
academia to accept that some "moderate" Islamists are
frequently the cause and Adebowale merely the symptom.
Policy makers and academics, however, continue to insist that
"non-violent" Islamists should be part of the fight against
radicalization.
Several months after the Prime Minister's Munich speech in 2011, Lord
Carlile published
his review of the government's counter-terror program, a report that
further affirmed the importance of countering "non-violent"
extremists. Nonetheless, since the review was published, even though
official funding from the government's counter-terror program has dried
up, taxpayer money continues to find its way into the pockets of
extremist Islamist groups through other means, such as taxpayer-funded
interfaith programmes and publicly-funded faith
schools.
The author and political commentator Douglas Murray has noted
that the failure properly to confront the danger presented by
"non-violent" extremism is primarily a political one:
Shortly after Mr. Cameron's [Munich] speech, the Liberal Democrat
leader (and Deputy Prime Minister) Nick Clegg gave an almost exactly
opposite speech in Luton. He argued, among other things, the importance
of engagement with nonviolent extremists.
Academia, too, seems blind to the problem: the inquiry set up by the
University College London to examine Abdulmutallab's presence at UCL, for
instance, included Muhammad Abdul Bari on its panel of experts. In 2006,
while Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, Bari offered
the East London Mosque as a platform to Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, the
Jamaat-e-Islami vice-president who has since also been sentenced to death
in Bangladesh for his involvement in acts of genocide during the 1971 War
of Independence. Muhammad Abdul Bari has also defended
the East London Mosque's decision to host an event with Anwar Al-Awlaki,
the late Al Qaeda leader.
The process of radicalization seems institutionalized within Britain's
leading "moderate" Islamist groups. Until the government
chooses seriously to challenge the extremism promoted by these
organizations, withdraws all public funding and puts a stop to the
inclusion of "non-violent" extremists in the discussion of
public policy, the "conveyor belt" will continue to release
more and more radicalized youth onto the streets of British cities.
Send
a Letter to a Political Prisoner in Iran for Nowruz
by Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in
Iran
March 11, 2014 at 3:00 am
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The Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran (CFPPI) has initiated
a campaign during Nowruz (the Persian New Year), which is on March 22 and
is also the first day of spring. This year, CFPPI would like to invite
everyone to send a New Year greeting card or letter to political
prisoners in Iran, especially those who are deprived of medical
attention.
Hundreds of political prisoners have been deprived of being with their
families and loved ones during the New Year or any other occasions in
Iran. Many of these prisoners have not seen their families for months and
even years. They have been tortured and many sentenced to death.
Receiving a New Year greeting letter or letter could be a sign of robust
support for these prisoners. You can send a massage of hope and
solidarity to the political prisoners in Iran.
You can send your letter or card to one or several prisoners during
the month of March. The list of names and the addresses of some of the
prisoners are included below. You also can leave the sender's address
blank if you wish to be anonymous. We would like to encourage you to send
as many greetings as possible to the prisoners.
This action is a show of solidarity with political prisoners in Iran.
This will also sends a clear message to the Islamic regime: We don't
let their heartbeats stop
** This campaign is part of Don't Let Their Heartbeats Stop campaign.
List:
Names
and details of some of the prisoners. You can choose names from this
list or send your letters to any other political prisoner.
Addresses:
For addresses of some of the prisons in Iran click
here.
Sample greeting massages and postcards , created by individuals and
other campaigns:
Following are some sample New Year greetings in Persian and English
for prisoners. Feel free to use them or write your own. Please add your
massage on teh CFPPI blog as well. For more information please contact
Shiva Mahbobi:
Email: shiva.mahbobi@gmail.com
Phone: +44 (0) 7572356661
With Nowruz greetings to you in the blackest periods of Iranian
history, you are holding alive the flame of strength and stability and
hopes towards victory. Warm greetings to our beloved imprisoned dears who
herald the break of the winter. Congratulations to you as pioneer of
spring freedom.
با تبریکات نوروزی به شما که در سياه ترين ادوار تاريخ ايران، با مقاومت و
استواری امید به پیروزی را را زنده و شعله ور نگه داشته آید .تبريک به شما عزیزان
در بند که که هر روز شکستن زمستان را نويد می دهید
با تبریک به شما طلايه داران بهار آزادی
The thought of you turns my spring, into spring. The beating of
your heart renews my season, so keep me alive with the beats of your
heart. Nowruz 2014
Postcard:
به ياد تو بهارم بهاى ميشود,با نفسهايت فصلم تازه ميگردد , پس با تپشهاى
قلبت زنده ام بدار
نوروز ١٣۹٣
Dear …
Happy spring and happy new year. You are in the hearts and minds of
millions of people in Iran and all around the world. We will continue
fighting for your freedom and will not let your heartbeats stop.
Lots of love and happy New Year
فرارسيدن بهار و سال جديد را به شما تبريك ميگويم. بدانيد كه شما در قلب
ميليونها نفر در ايران و سراسر دنيا هستيد. براى آزدى شما هرگز از پاى نخواهيم
نشست و نخواهيم گذاشت قلبتان از تپش باز ايستد.
دوستتان دارم , سال نو را به شما تبريك ميگويم
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