ALERT

America Looking Good

“There are several reasons for this passionate international focus on things American, which comes paradoxically just as the most fashionable global intellectual pursuit is the prediction of inevitable American decline.” Read More of Roger Cohen’s opinion on why the world is fascinated by U.S. presidential primaries.

Running Out of Conservatives

“…it is not so much that McCain converted conservatives, but that Romney ran out of them — there weren’t enough of them to give him the Florida delegation.” Read More of Dick Morris’ take on McCain’s Florida victory.”

McCain’s Got What It Takes

“In a time of Republican confusion, Sen. John McCain, reviled as an unreliable maverick, has won three GOP primaries. Florida showed why he’s winning.” Read More of Daniel Henninger’s analysis of the dynamics behind McCain’s win in the Sunshine State.

The times they are a changin’ and we who view the Islamist threat as the primary challenge facing the U.S. in the coming decades need to be aware that our concern is, at least for now, being sidelined, as evidenced by a shift in perceived priorities this election year.

In the New York Times, David Brooks, who as always has an accurate finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, analyzes in generational terms the Kennedy family’s embrace of Obama in a fascinating commentary that constitutes an astute slice of social history.

In the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto critiqes Bill Clinton’s unfortunate linking of Barack Obama with Jesse Jackson by giving a comparison between the two that illustrates the distance we have come since the campaigns of the Eighties.

And let us remember that, the above photo op of the president and the preacher notwithstanding, it was Bill Clinton’s centerist stance that moved the Democratic party beyond the influence of the Jesse Jackson’s. Now there is a new voice in the land that is making the former president appear as outmoded as the Reverend. The times they are indeed changing.

A New York Times blogger attributes the probable demise of the Giuliani bid for the Republican nomination not to faulty strategy but to the fact that the candidate’s political identity has been wrapped in what is no longer a central issue of the campaign.

We wonder whether the weight of the personal and political baggage he carries might have sunk Rudy even if his major claim to candidacy had not been marginalized. In fact, it has amazed us that the same forces which made Bill Clinton’s private life such a political issue really thought that a man with Giuliani’s personal history could be elected president.

As for these changing times, while we are, of course, deeply concerned to see the terrorist threat marginalized, we also have seen a danger in this concern being viewed as the province of a particular political ideology. It should be possible to be for health care reform and also to view the Jihad threat as the menace that it is.

Remembering

January 27 2008 –sixty-third anniversary–of Auschwitz liberation is International Day of Commemoration of Victims of the Holocaust. These photographs were taken by the Soviet Army in early February 1945 as the soldiers who liberated the camp on Jan 27 did not have cameras with them. Read about this year’s ceremonies at the United Nations.

Three years ago, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation, the writer of this blog was at a meeting of a peace group in the Rocky Mountains hearing a Presbyterian pastor from Denver talking about that church’s imminent divestment (later rescinded) from holdings in companies doing business with Israel. His talk elicited a stream of anti-Semitic comments that growing up in post-war America I had never heard publicly expressed.

I realized then that not only was this not a peace group like those I remembered from the Vietnam era, but that something new, actually not new at all, a neo-hatred of Jews was bubbling beneath the surface of concern about the Palestinians. Thus I parted company from the complacency that comes with myopia. This is why I keep urging the readers of this blog to send its link to anyone who might be receptive to the message of ALERT.

Participating

“For the first time ever, representatives of Great Britain’s largest Muslim umbrella organization will take part Sunday in the international Holocaust Memorial Day. Two months ago, the Muslim Council of Britain (MBC) decided to put an end to their six year boycott of the Memorial Day.” Read More

Tallying

“The annual global report on anti-Semitism…points to a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Germany, Australia, the United States and Ukraine together with an overall decrease in Western Europe. The largest number of incidents were recorded in Britain, followed by France…The report, a joint government and Jewish Agency project, indicates a decline in anti-Semitic incidents in 2007 after the steep jump registered for 2006 in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. In countries where an increase did occur, such as Germany and Australia, this was tied to the strengthening of the radical right, along with aggression by local Muslim communities.” Read More

Manipulating

“A Dutch Jewish organization last week condemned the distribution of a postcard showing a manipulated image of Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian kaffiyeh, calling it “a tasteless falsification of history.” The company that published the postcard described it as an idyllic image of peace.” Read More

A lot more than a photograph is being manipulated in this outrageous graphic which depicts the Palestinians as victims of genocide and distorts Anne Frank into an icon of the enemies of the Jewish state. The publishers of this offensive postcard may see it through the fanciful lens of wistful hopes for an elusive peace but their fuzzy perspective is being manipulated by highly focused terrorist sympathizers. Tampering with the original photograph is truly “a tasteless falsification of history.”

Red Balloons Made a Point

“As the United Nations Security Council debated a response to the situation in the Gaza Strip and Sderot, Israel’s New York Consulate held a protest in front of UN headquarters on Thursday, in which they placed 4,200 red balloons on the UN’s doorstep. The number of balloons signified the 4,200 Kassam rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement from the Strip.” Read More

Questions Persist about Obama & Israel

“Obama also has quite a few supporters in the Jewish community, but those opposing him are fairly vocal, and seem to be even more so as the campaign progresses.” Read More

Saudi Money Buys Influence on U.S. Campuses

“Some would like to consider money given by Saudis and other Arab nations to American universities as generous gifts to those U.S. universities who have educated their elites. A closer look reveals a different picture that includes incitement, anti-Semitism and a skewed view of Islam.”

FrontPage Challenges Feminists

“Join us in sponsoring a campus tour on the Oppression of Women in Islam with speakers such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Form academic committees to provide curricula on these subjects in Women’s Studies courses. Devote a major segment of your V-Day demonstrations to the plight of Muslim women. Join us during Islamo-Fascism Week II this spring in appealing to campus Muslim organizations to condemn these practices.” Read More

Methodists May Divest from Israel

“The nation’s largest and most prominent mainline Protestant denomination, the 11 million-member United Methodist Church — whose members include both President Bush and Senator Clinton — is set to take up the issue of whether to divest from companies that do business with Israel.” Read More

French Editor Back in Court

“Editor of a French weekly, acquitted last year on charges of offending Muslims for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, appeared before an appeal court.” Read More

Israel Advocacy & U.S. Election

“Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, found a short letter in his mailbox two days ago. The sender: Barack Obama. The subject: The Security Council meeting regarding the situation in Gaza.” Read More

Battle Front/Home Front

“For the past year, I have led a double existence, dividing my time between military reporting assignments in Iraq and tracking the campaign debate in the United States,” writes Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, of the difference in how the Iraq war is regarded by the troops and the candidates. Gordon speaks of “parallel universes, in which the discussion of the taxing road ahead and potential fall-back options were often so divergent that the generals and the politicians seemed not to be talking about the same war.” Read More

British Front

“The idea of rampant immigration, combined with zero accountability for Muslim communities, all in the name of multiculturalism, is simply national suicide,” comments Jihad Watch on an article in a British newspaper about the extremism of a mosque in Blackburn. The picture above was taken in Blackburn.

Another example of the cultural crisis in what could become Britainstan is presented in a Jerusalem Post article about British taxes funding Palestinian hate education with a reference to a TV show about which we wrote a post last summer. You may recall that the Mickey Mouse clone Farfur was graphically murdered by “Zionists” on terrorist-related TV as impressionable Palestinian children watched in horror—and induced hatred.

Election Front

New York Sun contributing editor Hillel Halkin questions on many levels Obama’s readiness for the presidency. On the issue of Pastor Wright, Halkin comments, “…the problem, as has been observed, is not that Mr. Obama needs to be suspected of agreeing with Pastor Wright. It’s that he didn’t think it sufficiently important to disagree with him by getting up and leaving his church.” Read More

Electric Front

“Israel, tiny and bereft of oil, has decided to embrace the electric car…the Israeli government will announce its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between an American-Israeli entrepreneur and Renault and its partner, Nissan Motor Company.” Read More

Bringing to our readers’ attention this latest instance in Israeli innovation juxtaposed to references to Hillel Halkin brings to mind a pivotal opinion piece that Mr. Halkin wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2002 about the connection between being anti-Israel and being anti-Semitic, of which we will quote a powerfully succinct thought: “…one cannot be against Israel or Zionism, as opposed to this or that Israeli policy or Zionist position, without being anti-Semitic. Israel is the state of the Jews. Zionism is the belief that the Jews should have a state. To defame Israel is to defame the Jews. To wish it never existed, or would cease to exist, is to wish to destroy the Jews.”

John & Joe Show in Florida

Will Florida’s Jews Follow Joe Lieberman and Vote GOP? asks Rosner’s Blog in Haaretz. “Over the next week and a half, Lieberman will address a number of heavily Jewish crowds in Florida in support of the McCain campaign. Will the support of the senior Jewish senator from Connecticut encourage Florida Jews to buck the trend and vote for McCain?”

“Before the heavily-Jewish crowds, Lieberman emphasized McCain’s pro-Israel voting record and his knowledge of the Iranian threat. Lieberman didn’t level harsh criticism on the democratic candidates, after all, he is for the most part still a democrat. Nonetheless, Lieberman doesn’t seem convinced that the democratic candidates fully understand the Iranian threat.” Read More

From Melting Pot to Salad Bowl

Today’s FrontPage contains a significant symposium on immigration in which Victor Hanson succinctly poses the following question: “…what should one expect when millions arrive with the three strikes of no English, no legality, and not much education-at a time when America itself has lost confidence in its own traditions, and so asks very little of any immigrants, and has replaced the successful melting pot with the bankrupt and illiberal notion of a salad bowl?” Read More

The New Blasphemy

In a Washington Times column titled Western Blindness, Diana West argues that . “Jihad doctrine; Shariah (Islamic law); designs for a global caliphate through jihad (terrorism) and the spread of Shariah (Islamization): We pretend they are not factors in the free world’s experience with Islam,” and concludes that “we seem to have arrived at a strange junction where neither jihadist apologists nor surge enthusiasts want to hear the facts about Islamic law. You might say it’s become the new blasphemy.”

We urge you to read the entirety of this discerning and disturbing analysis of the pervasive reluctance to confront Islamism. West’s perspective is painfully pertinent in the midst of presidential campaigns that persist in ignoring the true implications of Islamism—which will be waiting for the next president.

It started with a column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post urging Barack Obama to distance himself from his church’s praise of Farrakhan. Obama took that distance in a statement on his campaign’s Web site as noted by a report in the New York Times on nine Jewish letters defending Obama against anonymous e-mail claiming that the candidate is a secret Muslim:

“The Jewish leaders seemed to be responding to reports that the e-mail was now being spread deliberately among Jews. In the letter, they said that the “hateful e-mails use falsehood and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Barack Obama’s religious beliefs and who he is as a person,” and that they were an “attempt to drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate based on despicable and false attacks and innuendo based on religion.” Read More

The conservative New York Sun has also been emphatic in its defense of Senator Obama against accusations related to concerns of the Jewish community. An editorial in today’s issue accuses the Clinton campaign of trying to stir up the Jewish community against Obama by circulating “scurrilous and false e-mails.” In an editorial two weeks earlier, the Sun criticized Republicans for reportedly planning to attack Obama for his “supposed lack of support for Israel.”

“We’re no shills for Mr. Obama,” the Sun continued, “but these Republicans haven’t checked their facts. At least by our lights, Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israel, as he has articulated it so far in his campaign, is quite moving and a tribute to the broad, bipartisan support that the Jewish state has in America.” Read More

A Political Mavens blogger freely expresses her outrage over the Muslim subversion of European culture in a controversial post that you will want to read.

The New York Sun takes an observation made by President Bush on his recent visit to Yad Vashem as an occasion for asking what interventions could have been undertaken during the Holocaust, viewing these old questions through a new prism: “This is something to think about when we are in the midst of a great political contest in respect of a war in which vast enemies are once again maneuvering against both America and the Jews.” Read more

You will want to read a FrontPage interview with Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, about her new book Jews and Power

Here is how Wisse describes the core of her book: “I try to isolate the political dangers of accommodation, a creative strategy as far as it goes, but fatal when one is trying to accommodate would-be destroyers.”

Academics to Visit Ahmadinejad
“…a group of Columbia University professors, including faculty deans, are preparing a trip to Iran, but not to promote free speech. Instead, they’re going to present an official apology to Iran’s President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, for the way he was treated by Columbia President Lee Bollinger when he visited the university last September.” Read More

Bulletin from the Food Front

ALERT friend Cynthia Lebowitz alerted us to the following report about a legislative initiative that could effect school cafeterias throughout the Empire State in order to “ensure ‘halal (Islamically permissible) food’ for Muslim students in schools of the city (NY), and the state as well.” Read More

Sean & Steve Segment

Below is the transcript of a Hannity & Colmes segment last week on which Steve Emerson appeared to discuss the firing of Stephen Coughlin, “an Islamist expert at the Pentagon known for his hard stance against radical Islam…”

We were pleased to see that the segment featured Sean Hannity discussing the disturbing implications of this firing with Emerson instead of leaving it to Colmes, whose role in the discussion below is secondary. On other recent appearances of Emerson on the high-profile Fox News show, Colmes’ challenges to just about every sentence uttered by the terrorism expert (and member of ALERT’s Advisory Board) made it difficult for Steve to comprehensively develop his arguments.

HANNITY: An Islamist expert at the Pentagon known for his hard stance against radical Islam was recently fired, and now his colleagues want to know why.

Stephen Coughlin was fired after a confrontation with one of the deputy defense secretary’s aides, which ended with Coughlin being called, quote, “a Christian zealot with a pen.”

The word from the Pentagon is that Coughlin was fired for fiscal reasons, but supporters of his think that there are ulterior motives behind his dismissal.

Joining us now from InvestigativeProject.com is terrorism expert Steve Emerson, back with us.Hi, Steve. Walk us through what happened here, who he is, where his expertise was, and why you think — what really went on here.

STEVE EMERSON: Stephen Coughlin has a background in law, international business, and a specialty in academic study of Islamic militant doctrine of jihad.

And what he did is to analyze documents, hundreds of thousands of documents that were released during the Hamas trial, the Holy Land case trial in Texas. He did an analysis of some of those documents that were not disputed which showed that there was a Muslim Brotherhood plan, a secret plan, designed to acquire influence in the U.S., undermine U.S. democracy, and to establish a caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood plan was spelled out in a document that was introduced at trial.

Mr. Coughlin wrote a memo spelling out the implications of these documents and the profound nature of what would happen if the United States government decided to start doing dialogue and embracing the very organizations that were intent on undermining U.S. national security.

HANNITY: Steve, was there a point, and this is a point of contention, I know Bill Gertz brought it up in a piece that he put together on this, that he was asked to soften his views on Islamic extremism. In other words, they’re saying it’s about fiscal — a fiscal reason for the firing.

EMERSON: That’s a cover. The J-2, which is intelligence, said I can tell you this openly right now. The J-2, which is the intelligence wing of the joint chiefs, said he was a political embarrassment.

And the reason was because he had offended a top aide to the deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England, whose aide, Hisham Islam, I believe is an Islamist with a pro-Muslim Brotherhood bent who has brought in groups to the Pentagon who have been unindicted co-conspirators.

HANNITY: Let me get the broader picture here. So you believe that this guy is a foremost expert on the issue of Islamic extremism in the United States, and because he wouldn’t soften his views, change his opinions or his rhetoric, he’s being fired because there are people that are sympathetic — you’re making the case — to radical Islam within our own government? Am I understanding that right?

EMERSON: Radical Islam, the jihadists, Global Civilization of Jihad - - that’s a quote from the document released during the trial, has emerged under the guise of different organizations that have penetrated the U.S. government.
People don’t want to believe it, but it’s true…

COLMES: Hey…

EMERSON: … and even these groups claim they’re antiterrorism. They’re not. They have an agenda. They’re subversive, and — let me just finish. The fact is that he didn’t have a hard line. All he did was spell out what the agenda was of these groups, and his particular quote, and I’d just like to…

COLMES: We only have a moment left. We have a FOX News producer at the Pentagon who is reporting that we have spoken with people in the Pentagon who are claiming that the defense intelligence agency, they employ Coughlin through a contract. And it was Rear Admiral David Dorset, director of intelligence for the joint staffs, who decided not the renew his contract for fiscal purposes. It had nothing to do whatsoever with Islam, the person you’re fingering as being responsible for his dismissal.

EMERSON: You want to — you know, they want to have a cover story. That’s the cover story. The reality is a lot different. He was called a Christian extremist, a zealot. He had offended Hesham Islam, Gordon England, who has appeared before radical Islamic groups such as the Islamic Society of North America. We have videotape of this.

COLMES: That may be true, but that’s not why he was fired. So you’re saying that we’re being lied to by the Penatagon?

EMERSON: His contract was not renewed. This is a cover story. The reality is his contract was not renewed because of the Islamic penetration of the Pentagon. And that the sad reality has affected DHS, the FBI, the department…

COLMES: When you say Islamic penetration, are you talking about just one person, or are you saying there’s widespread penetration, people who want jihad against the United States working — literally working in the Pentagon?

EMERSON: Yes. We know that from the trials of former military members who were brought up on charges for carrying out jihad.

COLMES: How could this happen.

EMERSON: We know they trained in the military, No. 1. No. 2, the chaplains who serve as the Islamic chaplains who serve were trained by a known terrorist.

COLMES: And they want to destroy the United States, these people working internally. It was like a fifth column in there.

EMERSON: You got it. It’s definitely an operations in the late 1980s Trojan Horse from the late 1980’s –

COLMES: The government is lying to FOX News about it?

EMERSON: The government lying — I’m shocked, Alan. I mean, suddenly you’re a believer in the government.

COLMES: I asked you a question. I don’t always believe the government. Absolutely not. The same government told us the true about the…

HANNITY: Thank you very much.

COLMES: Coming up, I’ll look back at some of the suspense moments.

Thank, you, Steve. Stay with us on “Hannity & Colmes”