#where are the calls for hamas to follow international law regarding civilians? why is it all israel's fault to you people?

[frogeyedape]

I'm tired of seeing antisemitism on my dash, in all its subtle forms. War is an atrocity, and Israel is not unique in that. Where is the outrage against Russia's ongoing genocide of Ukrainians? What about China's genocide of Uyghurs? What of all the other atrocities being committed around the world? Why is there *so much attention* devoted to hating Israel and seeking, not an end to the conflict, but the end of Israel? Is it just that they're a little country, an easy target to potentially dismantle, compared to the big fish of Russia and China?

Keep calling out the atrocities, by all means, but for the love of humanity maybe broaden your targets and reduce your own genocidal wishes?

Any ideology that says: "They did horrible things so 'they' [the group they belong to] all deserve to die horribly" is an evil one.

[militant-holy-knight]

On a 500-acre campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Middle East scholar Raymond Ibrahim was finally allowed to give his speech before a packed, mostly civilian audience at the U.S. Army War College's Heritage and Education Center. Based on his book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, Ibrahim covered the 7th-century origins of Islam, its conflict with Christianity during the hundreds of years that followed, and revisionist attempts to deny Islam's history of violent warfare and supremacism.

Ibrahim, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow with the Middle East Forum, was on the receiving end of such an attempt in June 2019, when the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamists convinced the U.S. Army War College to disinvite Ibrahim from his original appearance, fallaciously accusing the son of Egyptian immigrants of being a "bigot" and "white nationalist."

However, Ibrahim wasn't alone. In its press release, CAIR ridiculed the War College as "an academic institution run on taxpayer funds" that was "poised to exacerbate longstanding problems such as racism and human rights violations that exist within the US military."

Ibrahim explained that CAIR is "well aware how important it is to dominate the historic narrative." He pointed to his reliance on primary source material and actual quotes from jihadist and Islamists to support his view that there is "a continuity between past and present; Muslim religious leaders and jihadists see Christianity as both antithetical to the Islamic world and inherently ripe for conquest or conversion."

It took a letter signed by ten congressmen to Army War College commandant Major General John S. Kem, as well as a National Association of Scholars letter to President Trump that included 5,000 signatories, to convince Army leaders to reinstate Ibrahim's invitation.

When CAIR learned that Ibrahim was set to return to the Carlisle campus, it responded by once again suggesting that the Army War College suffers from an "internal problem with white supremacists and white nationalists within its ranks," while claiming that Ibrahim's talk would "instigate hatred against Muslims."

Undeterred by his Islamist critics, Ibrahim began his presentation by saying that "since 9/11," it has "become popular" for media and academia to whitewash the Koran's objectionable passages. "They say Mohammad may have done bad things, but so did King David and Abraham," he said. The difference, Ibrahim noted, is that the Torah acknowledges the wayward path of these leaders and advises against following them, unlike the Koran.

For argument's sake, Ibrahim offered to "put aside what the Koran says" and "see what Islamists have done." Beginning with the Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa, Ibrahim argued that Islamists' consistent goal has been Western submission to Islamic supremacy. This region, which is identified today as Muslim-majority, was home to more Christians than Europe in the 7th century. What remained after the Arab Muslim invasion became "the West." Ibrahim quoted historian Franco Cardini, who wrote, "Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries and again in the 14th and 18th centuries was a violent midwife to Europe."

Ibrahim referred to the late historian of Islam Bernard Lewis, who said, "We forget that for a thousand years since the advent of Islam from the 7th century to the siege of Vienna in 1683 Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion violently wrested from Christendom." Ibrahim noted that modern historians often fail to acknowledge this simple truth.

He argued that Mohammad's guidance to spread Islam was the motivation behind the Islamic conquests. The only way peace could be achieved was through acceptance of Islam by conversion, enslavement, or paying the jizya — an enormous annual tribute that the caliphate levied on non-Muslims.

Short of these options, a non-believer's only recourse was to fight to the death. Ibrahim quoted what Islamist conqueror Khalid bin Walid said to a Byzantine general before the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 C.E.: "We Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood and we are told the Romans are the sweetest of its kind. Where you love life, we love death."

Unlike modern historians who identify the various inter-civilizational wars of this age as ethnic and nationalistic, Ibrahim emphasized that the primary sources clearly show that these ongoing battles were manifestations of jihad, inspired by Koranic scripture. He called this tendency "a historic fact that modern day historians censor."

Ibrahim showed that modern jihadists "belonging to groups such as ISIS are well-versed in Islamic historic military jurisprudence" and the Koran and point to historical precedents to justify their violence and brutality.

At the fall of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II motivated his jihadists with the same instructions invoked by modern-day ISIS: "Recall the promise of our Prophet regarding fallen warriors in the Koran; the man who falls in combat will be transported bodily to Paradise [and] will dine with Mohammed in the presence of women."

Next, Ibrahim recounted the American experience with the Islamic Barbary pirates in 1785 and 1786 that attacked U.S. merchant ships and enslaved American sailors. In an effort to ransom the slaves, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams entered negotiations with Abdul Rahman, Tripoli's ambassador to Britain. The American diplomats futilely explained that they "had done them no injury" and "consider all mankind our friends."

Abdul answered that "it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, written in the Koran that all nations not acknowledging their authority were sinners, that it is their religious right and duty to make slaves of non-believers, and all Muslims slain in battle were sure to go to paradise." America's conflict with Islam did not begin on 9/11. Rather, it dates back to the time of America's Founders.

To underscore this message, Ibrahim cited Theodore Roosevelt's 1916 book, Fear God and Take Your Part, where the former president pointed out, "If the peoples of Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries, and on up to and including the 17th century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated."

The great English statesman Winston Churchill also criticized Islam for institutionalizing slavery. "The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman is the absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."

Ibrahim rhetorically asked, if the violent history of Islam is so well documented, "so ironclad," then "why don't we know about it?" Older historians who studied Islam unprejudiced by political correctness reached conclusions that no longer comport with what the public is told. Conversely, modern historians get away with academic malpractice by reducing previous Islamic studies scholarship to outdated myths.

This is all part and parcel of what Ibrahim referred to as "propaganda as a form of jihad," misinformation of which academics and groups such as CAIR are the most vociferous defenders.

Meanwhile, CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the nation's largest terrorism finance trial and an accused Hamas-supporter, engaged in "propaganda jihad "by working to suppress Ibrahim's historical review, a practice consistent with Islamist suppression of different religious beliefs.

In the end, Ibrahim gave Army service members and the community a coherent and fact-driven presentation of Islamic history that everyone in America should hear, one that dispels the many false, politically correct notions about the nature of Islam. It lays bare the inconvenient truth that Islamic ideology is what motivates Muslim jihadists to perpetrate acts of terrorism against non-believers, both domestically and abroad.

[xtruss]

Biden's $735 Million Arms Sale to “an Illegal Regime of Zionist Cunts: Isra-hell” to Include Missile Type That Hit Gaza Tower

— By Tom O'Connor | Newsweek | May 17, 2021

$735 million arms sale to Israel approved last month by President Joe Biden would include the same kind of precision-guided weapons that the Israel Defense Forces use to target hundreds of sites across the Gaza Strip, including a tower housing international media outlets.

Congressional committee chairs were notified on May 5 of the weapons sale, first reported Monday by The Washington Post and confirmed to Newsweek by two congressional staffers. The notice came just days before the rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians erupted into a deadly campaign involving rocket fire by Palestinian groups led by Hamas on one side and IDF airstrikes and artillery fire on the other.

The proposed U.S. package includes Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that convert missiles into so-called "smart bombs" with lethal accuracy and destructive effect. The sale is subject to a 15-day review that is set to end on Thursday, amid a sharp spike in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The deepening violence on both sides of what has already become the worst conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions in years has garnered international concern. It was one reportedly bloodless attack that has particularly captured global attention.

On Saturday, the IDF bombed Gaza's Al-Jalaa Tower, which housed the offices of top media outlets including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, whose employees rushed out of the building after being given a warning of the impending attack by Israeli authorities shortly before the strike.

The dramatic destruction of the site, which the IDF argued was a legitimate target because it "contained military assets belonging to Hamas military intelligence," was captured in photo and film. The footage of the attack also reveals the munitions used, one that comes from the very same family of JDAMs included in Biden's proposed weapons sale to Israel.

Asked by reporters Monday about the planned arms sale, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki deferred to the State Department, which she said did not believe had announced "any future sales or weapons sales." She did, however, note the robust continued ties maintained between the two allies.

"We do have an ongoing and abiding strategic security relationship and partnership with Israel," Psaki said.

A State Department spokesperson told Newsweek that U.S. officials "are restricted under Federal law and regulation from publicly commenting on or confirming details of licensing activity related to direct commercial sales of export-controlled defense articles or services."

But given the ongoing violence in the region, the spokesperson added a call for de-escalation as the Biden administration works with regional countries in an effort to resolve the crisis.

"We remain deeply concerned about the current violence and are working towards achieving a sustainable calm," the spokesperson said.

Smoke billows as a Joint Direct Attack Munition dropped on Al-Jalaa Tower during an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, a city controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 15. The U.S. considers Israel a key security ally and contributes billions of dollars a year in military assistance, but President Joe Biden has expressed concern over the IDF strike that destroyed a building housing international media outlets who were told to evacuate. MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The targeting and destruction of Al-Jalaa Tower have been condemned by a number of local and foreign media groups, including two of its occupants, The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, which launched its own investigation identifying the weapon that wrecked its offices as a GBU-31, one of several JDAM variants known to have been exported by the U.S. to Israel in past years.

As Israel faced pressing questions regarding the decision to take out the building, IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus offered a three-part rationale for the strike. He said the structure was "not a media tower, and it's not a media center," but rather a militant headquarters used by Hamas for three main purposes.

The first entailed "officers of the military intelligence, basically collection and analysis of military intelligence, obviously used for military purposes, against us."

The second was "research and development, where the best subject matter experts were operating from inside that building, using the hardware, computers and other facilities inside the building to develop weapons, military weapons against us as well."

And the third involved "highly advanced technological tools that are in or on the building."

Conricus declined to go into specifics, citing security concerns, on the final point, but said such tools were used by Hamas "in fighting against us in order to hamper or limit the activity of the IDF inside Israel and on civilian activity along with the Gaza envelope." He reiterated the extent to which the IDF has identified how groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad embedded their military infrastructure "within civilian facilities."

He also emphasized the degree to which the IDF went out of its way to ensure non-combatants had left the building beforehand, even if this the forewarning "was also used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to salvage a lot of very important equipment. That, he said, "is a military loss that we are willing to 'suffer' in order to minimize and to make sure that there are no civilian casualties in the strike on the building."

Later that same day, President Joe Biden phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. leader expressed his support for Israel's right to defend itself, condemned Hamas' rocket launches and mourned the loss of life both sides. He also "raised concerns about the safety and security of journalists and reinforced the need to ensure their protection."

Netanyahu defended the operation in an interview aired Sunday by CBS News, in which he described Al-Jalaa as "an intelligence office for the Palestinian terrorist organization housed in that building that plots and organizes the terror attacks against Israeli civilians," making it "a perfectly legitimate target." He said it was thanks to the IDF that the building's inhabitants escaped in time.

"You weren't lucky to get out. It wasn't luck," Netanyahu said. "It's because we took special pains to call people in those buildings to make sure that the premises were vacated, and that's why we brought down that building."

The Israeli leader also suggested that he had shared with the U.S. evidence backing up the Israeli claims of Hamas' involvement at Al-Jalaa Tower, saying "we share with our American friends all that intelligence." Specifically, he said such matters are communicated "through the intelligence services."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for his part, told reporters Monday that he had "not seen any information provided" regarding the airstrike, "to the extent that it is based on intelligence, that would have been shared with other colleagues and I'll leave that to them to assess."

Following Blinken's consultations with regional officials, including Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Qataris, Biden held Friday his third call with Netanyahu since the latest conflict began and for the first time "expressed his support for a ceasefire."

U.S. Air Force senior airman and 33rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron weapons load crew member runs checks on an inert GBU-31 V3 bomb during a weapons load competition April 16 at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The U.S. exports such Joint Direct Attack Munitions to around 30 countries around the world. AIRMAN COLLEEN COULTHARD/33RD FIGHTER WING PUBLIC AFFAIRS/U.S. AIR FORCE

Hamas has denied that it had a presence in the building, one of a growing number of Gaza high-rises reduced to rubble over the past week.

"The targeting of Al-Jalaa Tower is part of a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are being committed against civilians," Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said Monday in a statement obtained by Newsweek, "in addition to the targeting of homes, residential neighborhoods and civilian institutions."

Abu Obeida, spokesperson for Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades, threatened on Monday to unleash a new round of rockets against Tel Aviv if the IDF did not cease bombing what he called "civilian homes and apartments." The IDF on Monday stepped up its bombing of what it said were "houses served as a part of Hamas' terror infrastructure."

Hamas and affiliated organizations such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad have fired what the IDF estimates to be 3,350 rockets toward Israel over the past week, hundreds of which were said to have fallen short of Israeli territory and hundreds more of which were intercepted by the advanced Iron Dome defense system. Israeli operations from land, air and sea, meanwhile, have targeted hundreds, if not thousands of sites across the densely-populated Palestinian enclave.

The conflict's death toll is estimated have reached well over 200, with the Gaza-based Ministry of Health placing the Palestinian toll at 212, most from Israeli bombings but also including nearly two dozen killed by Israeli police in the West Bank, and the IDF counting 10 Israelis dead due to rocket fire.