A Proposed Agenda for Congress in 2015 to Defend America and its Ally Israel

by Jerry Gordon (January 2015)

It is appropriate at the start of 2015 to take stock and make resolutions to protect against the wide ranging threats to freedom, liberty and free expression now imperiling America and those allies in the West, especially Israel, which share our values. Let us review the situation we face and develop an agenda for Congress and concerned activists to rally around with determination to defeat the enemies ranged against our national interests and those of our ally Israel.

What we are seeing at the UN, here in the US and especially in what Bat Ye’or calls Eurabia is pushback against governments that have abetted mass Muslim immigration and Islamization undermining fundamental Judeo Christian values in the West. Some say Eurabia became a reality in Bosnia in 1992. Bat Ye’or maintains it started during the October War of 1973 when the Euro Arab Dialogue was begun by European Council bureaucrats. This allowed the Saudi sponsored Organization for Islamic Cooperation and Turkish émigré groups to press the EC and OSCE to acquiescence to Shariah blasphemy codes (under existing hate speech laws). We in the US have been blessed with free speech guarantees under our First Amendment with its Establishment Clause protecting freedom of worship and the right to criticize a religion. 

The New English Review Press published a collection of interviews in 2012, The West Speaks, originally published in editions of the New English Review. It was a compilation of interviews with many of the heroes of the free speech movement in Europe. They have been threatened with death by Jihadis and prosecuted for warning fellow citizens of what has occurred on the Continent. People like Geert Wilders in Holland, Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff in Austria, Lars Hedegaard and Kurt Westergaard in Denmark, Lars Vilks in Sweden and Bat Ye’or are among some of those featured in the book. They predicted what is occurring now in Europe – the massed rallies in Germany organized by the Pegida movement, the Swedish Democrats upending temporarily the Social Democrats and outbreak of Mosque fire bombings in Swedish cities, the Danish People’s Party surging to the top and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party now vaulted to the top rank in polls in The Netherlands. Independently we  interviewed both Nidra Poller and Philippe Karsenty in France about the “lethal narratives” of the Mohammed al Dura Affair (with legal actions involving France 2 TV Michel Gurfinkiel) which questioned the future for French Jews given the looming threats of Muslim jihadists who have killed Jews, fire bombed synagogues and attacked Jews for wearing kippots and Stars of David. We also interviewed Paul Weston in the UK, founder of the British Freedom Party, now renamed GB Liberty, who experienced under British law what Wilders had been prosecuted for in The Netherlands – hate speech offenses. These included criticism of mass Muslim immigration and its consequences, the threat of Islamization and accommodation of Shariah courts and creation of infidel free no-go zones in Muslim dominated urban areas. 

These developments in Europe have led to actions by the Palestinians seeking unwarranted statehood at the UN. This is directed at Israel verging on what Dr. Phyllis Chesler identified in 2003 as The New Antisemitism, anti-Israelism.

A draft Palestinian statehood resolution at the UN Security Council was defeated by one vote despite France’s vote for it and the UK’s abstention. That underlined the message to the two largest Jewish communities in Europe from Israeli NGO leader and author Manfred Gerstenfeld that 40% of the EU’s estimated population of 400 million evidences anti-Israel attitudes tantamount to antisemitism. He suggested that it was time for Jews to leave Europe. It is not lost on many that French Jewish Aliyah to Israel doubled to 7,000 in 2014 over that in 2013 and may likely double again in 2015. We read a statement recently from Danny Cohen, Jewish head of the BBC-TV, certainly not one of Israel’s media friends, saying that he questioned the future for UK and Continental Jews with the rise of these antisemitic attacks.

Some Jews in the UK, Europe and J Streeters in America myopically connect the rising anti-Islam rallies and firebombing of mosques in Sweden reflect the mistaken belief these problems with Muslim immigrants are caused by the fact that Israel, meaning PM Netanyahu, didn’t accept a two state solution that the Obama Administration and Secretary of State Kerry were pushing hard to resolve. Wrong. Those German, Swedish, Dutch and other European push back actions you read about daily are the result of the jihad by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq pushing hundreds of thousands of refugees desperately seeking asylum in the EU. The latest horrors, the hapless flotsam of Syrian refugees adrift in ships abandoned by smugglers  in the Mediterranean Sea only to be saved by the Italian and Icelandic Coast Guards. Germany is going to accept 200,000 and Sweden upwards of 90,000 Syrian refugees from the nearly four year bloody civil war. A war spawned by Sunni Salafist extremists, the Al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra and the self-declared Islamic State. The US State Department is prepared to accept an allotment of 20,000 Syrian refugees in compliance with UN humanitarian refugee standards under the 1980 US Refugee Act.  

The leftist governments in Europe and the US Administration are blind to the doctrinal imperative in Sunni and Shiite Islam to follow the way of Allah, jihad. Sunni extremists are compelled under this doctrine to retake the lands once conquered in the great waves of jihad begun over 14 centuries ago. That wave of jihad captured a broad swath from the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to the heartland of the Sunni and Shiite Near East, Central and South Asia, parts of what is now China and the archipelago of Indonesia and even the Philippines. Those conquered realms cost the lives of hundreds of millions of unbelievers over a millennium removing their religions and cultures, leaving those remnants reduced in status, without civil or human rights, subject to depredations at any moment. These extremists believe that their G-d Allah gave them those conquered lands as a waqf or trust for eternity. Then think of the horrors perpetrated by Islamic State Salafists emulating the barbarity of Mohammed and his companions, the future Caliphs. The Islamic State, equipped with abandoned US and Russian equipment from Syria and Iraq has cut a swath across both Arab states. The Islamic State’s barbaric rampages have involved graphic beheading of American and British citizens along with mass beheadings of Syrian soldiers, crucifying, enslaving and extorting all along their path. Especially vulnerable have been religious minority Christians, Yazidis, Sabeans, Mandeans, Kurds, Shia and non-believing Sunni Muslims, whom they consider infidels. That is why there will never be a peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israelis let alone between Islam and what we deem “the West.”

And who facilitated this in the West, you ask? How about the CIA and the Eisenhower Administration. They invited the son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, Dr. Said Ramadan, into the Oval Office in the summer of 1953, in the delusion that they could combat Soviet Communism threats in the so-called third world through the Saudi sponsored Muslim League. The CIA even helped ex-Nazis and ex-Waffen SS Muslim veterans form a mosque in Munich that the Muslim Brotherhood took over and whose leaders, like Dr. Ramadan and others, sent agents to the US in the 1960s to form the Muslim Student Association and the Islamic Society of North America headquartered in Plainfield, Indiana. These groups and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts were cited as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 Federal Dallas trial that convicted leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Muslim charity that funneled upwards of $36 million to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, a foreign terrorist organization designated by our State Department.

Nothing has changed since the 1950’s. In the 21^st Century both the Bush and Obama Administrations have deepened support for the Muslim Brotherhood concept of “democracy” in the countries of the Arab Spring and infiltrated of our government at the highest levels. Both US Administrations wanted to engage Muslim Brotherhood Islamists in dialogue, mistakenly believing that this might result in cooperation and peace at home and in the bloody borders of the Middle East surrounding the Jewish nation of Israel – a nation that, for its own security, has the most powerful military in the Middle East. The late General and Secretary of State Alexander Haig once said: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.” Israel shares common American values of liberty, freedom, free speech and tolerance of minority citizens. The current US Administration’s agenda is to transform conflict through multilateralism and avoiding having a steel fist in a velvet glove approach to protecting national interests. The Administration delayed shipping the IDF critical authorized weaponry during the 2014 summer war with Hamas in Gaza.

Israel may now be threatened with Palestinian charges of war crimes at the International Criminal Court at The Hague and a reprise of last week’s failed draft Palestinian resolution at the UN Security Council. A resolution which, if adopted, would consign Israel and its citizens to commit national suicide. Remember what happened to pre-World War II Czechoslovakia at Munich in September 1938 when allied appeasement of Hitler and Italian fascist dictator Mussolini dismembered a democracy with a well equipped modern army. By March of 1939, Czechoslovakia was dismembered. The largely German Sudetenland was ceded because of allied appeasement and an enforced agreement imposed on Czech President Eduard Benes. The Nazis marched into Prague signaling the death of democracy in central Europe. The nightmare of Czechoslovakia’s fall to appease Nazi tyranny wasn’t relieved until May 1945 when General Patton’s Third Army freed them, liberating Nazi death camps along the way. Is that what the Administration wants to have occur in the 21^st Century at the UN Security Council to ally Israel whose sovereignty is supported by the majority of the American public and the Congress?

The machination against Israel by the Palestinians, the Arab League, members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and EU members at the UN and now the ICC are poised to harm Israel, despite support from Americans, Australians and Canadians. In Vienna there is the appeasement by the  P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, seeking to rein in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s quest for nuclear hegemony providing a shield for its state sponsored terrorism.

The Administration has a dilemma facing them in the UN and Congress over vetoes against the Palestinian  state resolution seeking to dismember and destroy Israel and Iran’s perfection of nuclear capabilities to “wipe Israel off the map of the world,” all while Iran’s Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khamenei, President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif have pulled the wool over the eyes of the Administration. President Obama and his National security advisers are seeking to re-establish an embassy in Tehran just like the one they intend to re-open in Havana. Think of it, renewing relations with two oppressive regimes, Communist Cuba and Mahdist Shiite Iran. Iran may already have achieved nuclear breakout and this year may be on the cusp of testing an ICBM for delivery of nuclear warheads to the US. They already have Intermediate range ballistic missiles covering all of Europe with conventional warheads. Shades of the Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets that rained death and destruction on Britain during WWII.

The US military, as a result of the sequester and other budget initiatives, is unable to put boots on the ground in conflicts where projection of American military power could be effective. Think of the war to “degrade” and destroy the Islamic State, Russian President Putin’s actions in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and threats to NATO members in the Baltic states. The 114^th Session of Congress in January 2015 will have to concern itself with redressing the imbalance in our military security budget. Witness an Army with a field force 440,000, less than we had in 1940 prior to WWII, a Marine force cut to 174,000 or a Navy fleet with less than 306 vessels and aging Air Force fleet with overage B-52’s. Is it any wonder that a recent Military Times survey found that less than 15 percent of active military were pleased with this Administration? The new GOP- controlled Congress may hopefully change that imbalance and enhance our national security.

In a late December 2014 NPR interview with President Obama, he said he might be prepared to use his veto authority on specific legislation passed by the new Congress. Senator Mark Kirk in the Sunday Fox interview indicated that 17 Democrats, including New Jersey’s Bob Menendez and New York’s Charles Schumer may have the requisite votes to pass new stronger sanctions legislation against Iran’s nuclear program in view of the Islamic regime fobbing off failed P5+1 negotiations. Those 17 Democratic Senate votes would make such a measure veto proof. This puts President Obama in a difficult situation regarding his engagement of the Islamic regime in Tehran, a regime that has successfully outmaneuvered the P5+1 and Administration and likely has already achieved nuclear breakout. Omri Ceren chronicled this in a Commentary article, “Enabling Iran’s Nukes” saying, “The lies began at the very beginning with American assurances [it] had secured a ‘halt’ in the Iranian nuclear program.” This is a matter of great concern to Israel’s PM Netanyahu who would support such Congressional action on tougher Iran sanctions.

The one bright spot has been the US energy revolution driven by fracking and horizontal drilling technologies that has had a global impact. Iran is feeling the ravaging of its economy due to the loss of revenue from oil and gas production. Given the precipitous fall in world energy prices, due in part to the drop in demand and the vaulting of US energy production to first rank in 2015. That has forced Iran to suggest that fellow OPEC member Saudi Arabia cooperates to cut production. This is an unlikely prospect since the Saudis are unwilling to relent given their $750 billion dollar hard currency reserve cushion. What the 114h Session should also do is take up passage of the Keystone XL pipeline so that the US can export cheap energy to the world possibly contributing to the breakup of OPEC.

So, what can American activists do in 2015? Here are some suggested social media campaigns to alert the media and the newly-organized Congress under the Republicans to the issues involved and possible actions they should consider as an agenda:

1. Push for enhanced budget initiatives for a strong military enabling the US to support valued allies by projecting power in concert with diplomacy.

     hashtag  # Congress increase our military strength and preparedness.

2. Oppose the Palestinian suicide campaign against Israel.

     hashtag # Defund The Palestinian State

3. Push for stronger sanctions against Iran’s nuke and ICBMs.

   hashtag #Pass strong sanctions against Iran’s nukes and ICBMs.

4. Promote the American energy revolution in 2015.

    hashtag, # Pass the Keystone XL Pipeline to Export US Energy to the World.

5. Support the 2014 US Israel Strategic Partnership Act.

    hashtag # Implement the US Strategic Partnership with Israel Act.

6. Prevent the possible flood of “humanitarian refugees.”

   hashtag # Stop UN Abuses of our Refugee Laws.

7. Complete the House Special Committee investigation into Benghazi.

   hashtag # Benghazi Truth is on the March.

8. Build a local dossier on Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the more than 2000 mosques across America.

   hashtag# Know your local Imams.

Doubtless this agenda of social media agenda may attract activists to join in this battle for our liberty, freedom, and preservation of foundational Judeo Christian values. That would bring hope to embattled Europeans and support for Israel in the war torn Sunni and Shiite extremist Middle East.  

This excerpts from speaking notes on February 9, 1941 by Sir Winston Churchill  when Britain was virtually alone should be a call for action:

We shall not fail or falter. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

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Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

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