The Right of Return

In the latest issue of Commentary magazine, Michael J. Totten writes on "the mother of all quagmires" (i.e. the Arab-Israeli Conflict) including the so-called "right of return":

Fatah Party leader Mahmoud Abbas is clearly more moderate and reasonable than the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but even he can't compromise on the “right of return,” the so-far non-negotiable demand that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants from the 1948 war be allowed to return to settle in Israel. Israel would become an Arab-majority country if that were to happen, and most of the would-be arrivals have been radicalized in politically toxic refugee camps. The “right of return” would ignite a civil war worse than Lebanon’s.

Listen to Ran Cohen, Member of the Knesset for the left-wing Meretz Party and former leader of the Left Camp of Israel peace movement. “Even I refuse the right of return,” he said. “It's impossible. It's the opposite of a solution. Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and the others know our position on the right of return. Who are they going [to] negotiate this with? Not me, not Meretz, not Peace Now. Who? The Communist Party? Not even the radical left supports this."

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The Obama al-Arabiya interview

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent analysis of Obama's first interview as president, at RealClearPolitics:

And nothing is offered here (other than our lack of a colonial past) about the actual impressive record: amazing American good will in saving Kuwait, objecting to the Kuwaiti deportations of thousands of Palestinians, speaking out against Russia on behalf of the Chechens, trying to save the Somalis, bombing a Christian European Serbia to save the Kosovar and Bosnian Muslims, helping the Afghans against the Soviets, removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and trying to invest a $1 trillion in fostering democracy in their places, billions in disease relief for black (and often Muslim) Africa, timely help to the Muslim victims of the tsunami, and liberal immigration laws that welcome in millions of Arabs and/or Muslims. I could go on but you get the picture left out that America, far better than China, Russia, or Europe, has been quite friendly to the Muslim world.

[...]

We should also remember that the Bush record was often quite good: we have not been hit in over seven years; Pakistan's nuclear proliferation was stopped; Libya gave up its nuclear program; Syria is out of Lebanon; Hamas and Hezbollah have suffered a great deal of damage as a result of their aggressions; there are constitutional governments at work in place of the Taliban and Saddam; the leadership of al Qaeda is scattered and depleted and its brand is diminished in Iraq. The fact that Middle East authoritarian governments might not like all of that; or that radical Muslims find this disturbing; or even that the spokesmen for the unfree populations of the Arab world object--simply does not change the truth. I wish President Obama better appreciated that simple fact, because he surely is a beneficiary of it.

Read it all.

Commentary Magazine focuses on one particularly worrisome line in the speech (hat tip: Jihad Watch):

"America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.”

So said our new president in his interview Tuesday with Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language satellite news channel. At first the words washed over me. Then I did some simple math. Let’s see… 20 or 30 years ago… that would be 1989 or 1979.

What was happening in relations between America and the Muslim world back then? Not relying on memory alone, I consulted Bernard Grun’s reference book, The Timetables of History.


It turns out that in 1989 U.S. fighters shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, creating a vacuum that would eventually be filled by the Taliban. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death for “blasphemy.” Hundreds died in Lebanon’s long-running civil war while Hezbollah militants were torturing to death U.S. Marine Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, who had been kidnapped the previous year while serving as a UN peacekeeper in Lebanon.

And 1979? That was an even darker year-in many ways a turning point for the worse in the Middle East. That was, after all, the year that the shah of Iran was overthrown. He was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who launched a war against the West that is still unfolding. One of the first actions of this long struggle was the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and all of its personnel as hostages. The same year saw the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the growth of the mujahideen, some of whom would later morph into Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This was also the year that Islamic militants temporarily seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, an event that drove the Saudi royal family to become ever more fundamentalist.

In other news in 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was hanged by General Zia al-Hak, inaugurating a long period when Pakistan would be under the effective control of the army in alliance with Islamic militants. That year mobs also attacked U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world from Kabul and Islamabad to Tripoli. The one bright spot in 1979 was the signing of the Camp David Accord between the US, Egypt, and Israel, which did not, unfortunately, auger a “new” Middle East as many optimists hoped.

So this is the sort of “partnership” between the U.S. and the Middle East that President Obama would like to see? If his predecessor had suggested any such thing he would by now be a subject of ridicule for late-night comedians and daytime talk show hosts, and rightly so.

This is actually a revealing slip. To wit, it reveals two things: First, Obama’s profound ignorance about most aspects of foreign policy, including the recent history of the Middle East. A second, and related point, is his tendency to blame the ills of the region on the previous administration-something that is only possible if you started following the Middle East around 2001 and have little idea of what came before. It is then all too easy to claim, as Obama did on the campaign trail, that it was George W. Bush’s “disengagement” from the peace process and his “disastrous” war with Iraq that messed up the Middle East. Only someone with a longer view would realize how profoundly messed up the region was long before Bush came into office....

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The most horrific Arab anti-Semitism ever

On Egypt's Rahma TV, a cleric shows footage from the Holocaust and states, "This Is What We Hope Will Happen But, Allah Willing, at the Hand of the Muslims." Warning: graphic footage.

Remember, Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel and receives billions in foreign aid from the United States every year.



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Stanford Gaza protest - Update

The latest issue of the Stanford Review has just been released, with coverage of the events of January 8 and 9.

From SOS' own Jonathan Gelbart:

The interminable Israeli-Palestinian conflict has entered its latest round, and with it have come the now-familiar demonstrations around the world generally condemning—but occasionally supporting—Israel’s decision to go to war in Gaza. Earlier this month, Stanford saw a combination of the two, first with a vigil the night of January 8 and then a protest the afternoon of January 9, both organized by Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI). Emotions ran high at times, but as a whole, both events ran relatively smoothly.

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Brace yourselves

In the eyes of President Obama (and many on the Left as a whole), all of the Bush administration's tactics in the War on Terror were completely unjustified, illegal power-grabs whose ultimate goal was the annihilation of the civil rights of ordinary Americans.

The people with this mindset will get their rude awakening soon enough.

From The Washington Post (hat tip: LGF):

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

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Geert Wilders charged for exercising right to free speech

It is by now already common knowledge that Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the stalwart anti-Islamist Party for Freedom, has been charged by Dutch authorities with "insulting groups of people" and "inciting hatred against people of a certain faith." The supposedly offensive material was in speeches Wilders had made as well as in his short film released last year, Fitna, which juxtaposes verses from the Qur'an with Islamist terrorist attacks. This blatant attack on freedom of speech does not bode well for the future of Europe.

One feature of this incident not as well-known, however, is that the prosecutor had initially declined to file charges, until nine people filed complaints with the Dutch Court of Appeal. Nine people.

Small groups can make a big difference. Remember that.

And watch Fitna, if you haven't already, and decide for yourself if the movie itself is "insulting" or "inciting," and not the quotes presented therein:



You can contribute to Geert Wilders' legal defense fund at geertwilders.nl.

(Hat tip: Jihad Watch)

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Debating political Islam in Qatar

Peter Townson of the Gulf Times reports on a debate held recently in Doha, Qatar on the motion "This house believes that political Islam is a threat to the West." More interesting than the fact that this debate was held, however, was one of the participants:

Speaking for the motion was former member [of] Hizb-ut-Tahrir and current director of the UK-based Quilliam Foundation which works to counter extremism, Maajid Nawaz.

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Nawaz was first to speak and he emphasised the need to distinguish between “Muslims involved in politics,” and “political Islam.”

“We are not arguing that Muslims should not participate in the political process – far from it, as we are all Muslims who are politically involved, but we are arguing that Islamism, which has a fixed agenda and uses scripture to justify its political aims, is a threat to the West,” he said.

That last quote certainly got our attention. We've heard very few Muslims put things so bluntly. So we did a little research on this Quilliam Foundation.

According to their home page, the foundation "aims to generate creative thought paradigms through informed and inclusive discussion to counter the Islamist ideology behind terrorism." The group seemed to be a model moderate Muslim organization, until we discovered that they invited CAIR's former national legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, to speak at their launch event last April. Nevertheless, the formation of the group is definitely a step in the right direction, and something to keep an eye on.

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ISI training women to be terrorists in Kashmir

Remember when Pervez Musharraf assured the audience during his speech at Stanford that ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, was doing its best to fight terrorism? Here's more evidence he was sorely mistaken, from the Times of India. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch)

The revelation of a Pakistani woman, Asiya Bibi (23), who is in J&K [Jammu & Kashmir - ed.] police's custody, that ISI is training about 100 women for terror assignments in the state has sent the security establishment into a tizzy.

Asiya, arrested from Rajouri along the LoC in November last year, told her interrogators that the women fidayeen were undergoing arms training in various terror camps at Bimbar, Kotli and Sena in PoK. "In Bimbar, dozens of women are receiving arms training along with men,'' an interrogator quoted Asiya as saying. "Pakistan army soldiers are training women in Sensa and Kotli while ISI men are incharge at Bimbar.''...

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Ending the West's Proxy War Against Israel

Excellent article in the Wall Street Journal, by Gunnar Heinsohn, explaining the role of UNRWA, the United States, and the European Union in perpetuating the Gazan problem and setting the stage for another generation of war against Israel.

Most interesting quotes:

The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well.

[...]

The West pays for food, schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at Israel since 2006. While this gruesome activity has slowed the Palestinian internecine slaughter, it forced some 250,000 Israelis into bomb shelters.

[...]

If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war.

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Stanford Gaza protest

Stanford got its own piece of the worldwide intifada last week. Here's SOS' report.


The festivities began on Thursday, January 9, with a "vigil" for the victims of the conflict. The picture above shows the size of the crowd. It was actually pretty substantial. Unfortunately, the vigil was little more than a parade of anti-Israel speakers, with the Raging Grannies thrown in for good measure.


The three speakers were Professor Hilton Zimmerman, Professor Khalil Barhoum, and local reporter Eduardo Cohen. The first and last speakers were actually Jewish, but that didn't stop them from decrying the "massacre" in Gaza and, in the case of the latter, spout conspiracy theories about how the entire situation was planned years ago by Ariel Sharon. The only non-Jewish speaker, Professor Khalil Barhoum, has become somewhat of a regular at pro-Palestinian events. Professor Barhoum introduced Palestinian Ambassador to the United States Afif Safiyeh when he spoke at Stanford last year, and was also the keynote speaker at an anti-Israel film screening at Foothill Community College last spring. He is pictured below standing with Fadi Quran, president of Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).


The following day was the actual protest against what is going on in Gaza. A fair number of protesters and a significant amount of counter-protesters showed up and...mostly stood around doing nothing. First, though, the two sides came together and shook hands, at the request of Fadi Quran, president of Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel. A video of this is included below. If only solving problems were really that easy...



After that, there were chants from both sides for several minutes, and scattered heated arguments, but nothing too crazy.

I thought it was ironic that the pro-Palestinian side was standing in front of the blood donation truck.

Pro-Israel demonstrators walk past the line of Palestine supporters.

Better view of the pro-Palestinian side's signs.

Leaders of the Stanford Israel Alliance being interviewed by local media.

The pro-Israel side.

Take a look at the Stanford Daily's article on the protest.
Check out Palo Alto Online's coverage (with video).
Check the Stanford Review Web site the week of January 25 for their article about the events.

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Pervez Musharraf speaks at Stanford

Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan, spoke at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium today, thanks to the ASSU Speakers' Bureau and Stanford in Government.

The very first utterance Musharraf made, even before "Thank you for the introduction," was "Bismillahi al-rahmani al-rahimi." That is, "In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful." This is the first sentence of every chapter of the Qur'an (except Chapter 9) and is the first line of the constitutions of many Islamic countries. By beginning with this line, Musharraf wanted everyone present to know that he was not only making his statements as a Muslim, but as a pious Muslim. I have never personally heard any speaker begin with this phrase, and I have heard many Muslims speak at Stanford, including a past president of the Shariah Scholars’ Association of North America.


Given this beginning, it is not surprising that Musharraf, throughout his speech, consistently refused to link terrorism to Islam in any way. Instead he singled out "Islamophobia" as "very dangerous" in the fight against terrorism. He spoke of the need to "uproot" the "tree of terrorism" and not merely cut off the "branches and leaves." But what is the root cause of terrorism according to President Musharraf, former leader of one of the largest incubators of terrorism in the world? Illiteracy, desperation brought about by autocratic governments, and political grievances.

First of all, it is laughable that President Musharraf would condemn oppressive governments, having led one himself for nine years. Second, if illiteracy and desperation at heavy-handed government were truly the root causes of terrorism, we would be facing hundreds of millions of terrorists from Sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, we see Muslim doctors and medical students blow themselves up in order to kill innocent civilians around the world, from Scotland to Iraq. These people are far from illiterate or desperate. Now, to be fair, the illiterate masses in the Muslim world do provide fertile recruiting ground for radical groups. However, this is not a root cause of terrorism. This is merely a branch on Musharraf's figurative tree. The root cause lies with the people doing the recruiting. They are motivated by something else.

That brings us to Musharraf's third "root cause" of terrorism: political grievances. Musharraf singled out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dispute over Kashmir as particularly strong recruitment tools for Islamist terrorist organizations. If these conflicts were resolved (the first with a two-state solution, the second as the result of an unclear "peace process"), much, if not most, terrorism would end, according to Musharraf. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan have expressed similar views. That fact, however, does not make this outlook more correct. Does anyone truly believe that if, say, Israel did not exist, Iran would stop funding terrorist organizations, al-Qaeda would close up shop, and the hordes who cry "death to America" across the Middle East would magically disappear? Does anyone truly believe that, were but the Kashmir issue resolved, India's 154 million Muslims would suddenly live in perfect harmony with their Hindu neighbors and relations between India and Pakistan would normalize overnight? This belief is mere fantasy.

But I digress. Musharraf continued his speech by affirming that the Pakistani army and intelligence service (ISI) are completely trustworthy organizations doing their best to fight Islamist terrorism under the leadership of the Pakistani government. He also stated that anyone who believes otherwise is sorely mistaken, since it is "in the best interest of Pakistan" to fight terrorism; the people are tired of the constant bombings and death. ISI's history makes this statement hard to believe. Take a look at this backgrounder by the Council on Foreign Relations for a roundup of the accusations leveled at the group.

After his speech, Musharraf faced what could be termed an interrogation by political science professor Scott Sagan. Musharraf adroitly avoided answering every single question. The most notable question asked was regarding Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group that has been accused of carrying out the attacks in Mumbai last November and has suspected ties to ISI. Musharraf's answer was to bring up the bombing of the Samjhauta Express (a train that goes between India and Pakistan) in 2007, which was supposedly perpetrated by a radical Hindu colonel in the Indian Army. Even if this charge is true, it does not change the fact that Lashkar-e-Taiba (let alone the dozens of other terrorist groups based in Pakistan) has conducted numerous deadly attacks in recent years, including the 2005 Delhi bombings, the 2006 Varanasi bombings, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, and the 2006 blasts at Malegaon. Musharraf made no mention of these attacks.

Professor Sagan then opened the floor for the audience to ask questions. Indian and Pakistani students rushed to the microphones to grill Musharraf on the toughest issues facing their respective countries and the region as a whole. Unsurprisingly, Musharraf repeatedly denied that Pakistan was responsible for any of the region's ills, stated that all of his actions as dictator were taken in accordance with the Pakistani constitution, and blamed India for the recent deterioration in relations between the two countries. He went so far as to state that India "wants war," claiming that a "war hysteria" had swept through the country. He added, ominously, that Pakistan "does not want war," but would not shy away from it if it was thrust upon it.

Two students asked questions about Islamist terrorism, the first asking why most terrorist acts around the world are perpetrated by Muslims, and the second asking how we can fight terrorism while remaining respectful towards Islam. After stating that the number of attacks carried out by Muslims "needs to decline," Musharraf once again brought up the Israeli-Palestinian issue, arguing that if that issue were resolved, "extremism" would see a sharp decline. He also brought up the Samjhauta Express bombing again as an example of non-Islamist terrorism.

Overall, Musharraf's presentation was disappointing, especially because of his refusal even to name Islamism as a vitally important factor in Pakistan's recent destabilization. He instead only referred to "terrorism" or "extremism" and made only one passing reference to Pakistan's 13,000 madrasas, or Qur'an schools, which are notorious for serving as incubators for radicalism and terrorism. Musharraf's insistence that most of the region's problems were the fault of India was also disheartening.

Nevertheless, it was enlightening to hear about these issues from someone so deeply involved in them, and it was encouraging that my fellow students had the courage to ask the tough questions that need to be asked. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that spirit on this campus.

The Associated Press has its own (much less detailed) coverage of the event.

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The birth of the SOS blog

Welcome to the official blog of Students for an Open Society at Stanford University. In the coming months (and hopefully years), this space will be regularly updated with information about newsworthy events going on at Stanford as well as helpful links for people concerned about the spread of radical Islam around the world.

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