Don’t allow Israel detractors use false Gaza casualty figures to demonize Israel.

The battle is still going on about Gaza casualty figures during the recent fifty day conflict between Palestinian terrorism led by Hamas, and Israel.

Israel detractors are still using slogans, purportedly based on Gaza casualty figures, to bash Israel. We heard it spouted by Mahmoud Abbas at the UN podium. We confront it on campus, in meetings, and on the social media. It simply won’t go away.  The fraud keeps churning off the conveyor belt of lies.

During the conflict and after, I extensively researched and reviewed casualty figures with a view to checking media and propaganda claims that the majority of casualty figures were civilian, mainly women and children.

I refused to use Israeli-based statistics. Instead, I logged in to figures put out by the Ministry of Health in Gaza. This is hardly a Zionist organization. On the contrary, it is a Hamas-controlled bureaucracy.

At the outset of the conflict they published daily listings of casualties giving names, ages, and where they were killed. Later, they revised their reports by not giving names and locations but simply groupings such as children, females, and elderly.  It is interesting to note that their children’s group included people up to the age of 18. 

It is worth noting that some of the Palestinian terrorists killed or captured by Israel’s IDF were younger than eighteen. One terrorist, caught as he came out of a terror attack tunnel inside Israel, was aged 16.  Obeida Fadhel Mohammad Abu Hweishel, was listed by the Palestinian Health Ministry as aged 24 to hide the fact that this nine-year-old was exploited by his uncle, Adel Mohammad Abu Hweishel, as part of his jihad activities as commander of the Hamas rocket firing network in the Nuseirat refugee camp. 

Hamas buried nine-year-old Obeida wearing the headband and shroud of the Izz-a-din-al-Qassam Brigade.

In its attempt at concealment Hamas listed a number of terrorist men as children. One, listed as a 13 year old boy, was 26 year old Fatah terrorist, Ibrahim Jamal Kamal Nasr, killed at Khan Yunis on July 18. So the Gazan Ministry of Health children’s casualty group should be taken with skepticism.

My findings throughout the research clearly showed the majority of casualties to be men of fighting age. Clearly, not all men of fighting age were terrorists but they constituted a majority of over 56% of known casualties, and not the women or children.

Out of a total of 2130, less than a thousand were children, women, or elderly.

My findings are being confirmed by the slow, methodical, work being undertaken by the Meir Amit Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center.  As of September 22, they had plodded through 750 names in an effort to identify and link them with a terrorist faction in Gaza. 

According to their identified people almost 50% were tied to a terrorist group. As they research later figures I am certain that their percentages of terrorists dead will increase to match my figures, or surpass them, as later fighting was concentrated in areas where the civilian population had fled.

Their final figures will echo my own in that more terrorists were killed in Gaza than civilians, but even if the figure will be one terrorist to one civilian this is infinitely a superior, moral, ratio than terrorist/civilian casualty rations in other recent conflicts.

As Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told me, the ratio in his theater of conflict in Afghanistan was three civilian deaths for every terrorist, despite the precautions taken by British, American, and other coalition forces. In Iraq, he said, the ratio was worse – four civilians for every terrorist. In Russia’s fight in Chechnya the ratio was six civilians for every terrorist.

So factually, statistically, Israel’s IDF have proven to be the most moral fighting force in military history.

Let not those, who bandy around worthless slogans, be allowed to denigrate Israel when it comes to the fight against extremist terror in urban warfare zones. 

Barry Shaw is the consultant on delegitimization issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.    He is also the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’  www.israelnarrative.com  Also available in ebook format on Amazon.

The Palestinian leadership is the real obstacle to a Palestinian state.

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, and Israel's so-called “moderate peace partner”, made these remarks about Israel at the podium of the UN General Assembly;

Israel committed "genocide" in the recent Gaza conflict.

Israel committed a "series of absolute war crimes."

That anyone who expressed support for Israel's right to self-defense was wrong to do so.

Israel is "Judaizising" Jerusalem.

Israel is a racist occupying State.

That a war was waged by a racist occupying State (he meant Israel, not Hamas).

Israel is a colonial occupying power.

Israel is preparing a new Nakba (disaster) against the Palestinian people.

"It is impossible, I repeat, it is impossible, to return to the cycle of negotiations."

Not one word of the Hamas kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. Not a word about the thousands of Palestinian rockets hurled at Israeli civilian centers. Not a word about Palestinian terror attacks tunnels designed to slaughter Israelis and grab others, drug and drag them back into Gaza. Not a word even about the members of Abbas’s own people who were gunned down in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, and executed by the walls of Gaza mosques. Not a word on the death and destruction that Hamas inflicted on the people of Gaza.

Not even a word about the infamous Hamas Charter which calls for the destruction of Israel and death to all Jews. Yet, staggeringly, this is the evil partner that Abbas insists must play a full role in Palestinian destiny.

The US State Department deplored his words as being "offensive characterizations that were deeply disappointing and which we reject. His remarks were counterproductive and undermined efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust."

If trust is lost it is entirely due to the actions of Hamas, and the words and intent of Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli politicians, from the left and right, blasted Abbas.

Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said Abbas’s remarks “prove for the umpteenth time that he is not a leader who wants peace and strives to advance the lives of his people, but a person who is propagating lies, is engaged in incitement and spreads hate speech against Israel.”

He added, “We have no partner for an agreement to end the conflict, and so will not compromise the security of Israeli citizens.” 

Likud Deputy Minister Ofir Akunis said the PA leader’s words revealed “the true face of the PA president. It is obvious that this is not a peace partner but a man who does not miss any opportunity to disseminate Palestinian lies and Israel-hatred.”

Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liberman, said shortly after Abbas’s speech that the PA president demonstrated that “he doesn’t want to be, and cannot be, a partner for a logical diplomatic resolution. It’s no coincidence that he joined a national consensus government with Hamas.”

Labor Party MK, Eitan Cabel, called Abbas’s statements “false and outrageous. They are worthy of condemnation by any true peace supporter,” Cabel added, “Even if he has internal political needs which force him to ‘wink’ at Hamas, there is no justification for such remarks. This is a disappointing speech that strengthens those who oppose peace, and does not carry with it any hope.”

The leader of the Israeli Labour Party, Yizchak Hertzog, a staunch supporter of a two-state solution, was scathing about Abbas saying that his speech was full of lies.  He was backed by Labour MK, Nachman Shai, who said that his speech was a sad day for anyone wanting two states for two nations. “The accusations that the PA president made are baseless lies, starting with the genocide to the claims of a new ‘Nakba.’ These things never happened.

The only Israeli Jewish Knesset faction that backed Abbas was the discredited Meretz (read ‘Communist’) party.

As such, the UN speech of the Palestinian leader succeeded in uniting the Israeli political spectrum for the first time since the cessation of the recent Gaza conflict.

There is an across-the-board feeling in Israel that if this is what the Palestinian movement thinks of Israel let’s bring it on! Let’s bring their false accusations to an independent and approved board of inquiry together with Israeli claims of Palestinian crimes and abuses, and let this selected panel examine both claims and pronounce who is guilty of international crimes, including terrorism, war crimes, deliberate human rights crimes, incitement to genocide, incitement to racial and anti-Semitic hatred, and murder.

Let’s bring a two decades old industry of lies and violence to an end by exposing, once and for all, the true nature of Palestinian leadership and society. Let’s show to the world the real, ugly, face of Palestinian intent as evidenced in their documents, statements, and actions. Let the world see that they nothing to do with a genuine and pragmatic peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel. Let’s put an end to this Palestinian deceit and rub the truth in the faces of those who have been hitting on Israel for all these years, and in the faces of those who have been perpetuating a no-chance two-state solution that has achieved little except throw billions of dollars into corrupt and hateful Palestinian coffers and into underground terror tunnels and factories of war, not peace.

Let’s not forget that Abbas is living on borrowed time. His elected four-year term ended in 2009. In Palestinian 2005 elections, Hamas won a 64% majority of the vote. If elections took place today their percentages would increase, according to all recent polls. Abbas lost control of the major Arab towns in the last municipal elections in the West Bank. Politically, he is a dead man walking.

This is not a time when Israel can gamble on its security and its future.

Talks are supposed to restart in Cairo. How can Israel be expected to make any gestures to a Palestinian regime that is united in its lies, violence, hatred, fraud, corruption, and murderous intent against a Jewish state which, to them, has no right to exist? What is there to discuss? That Abbas will recognize some of us? That he will accept part of the land until a time when he is replaced by a more forceful leader, or Hamas, who will then attack a rump state of Israel with no definable defensive borders?

This logic is dangerously absurd. There has to be an alternative that makes sense. One such alternative was the generous proposal made by el-Sisi, the new Egyptian president. It offered a large part of the Sinai to become the new Palestinian state. This would be linked to the Gaza Strip into one contiguous landmass hugely larger than a West Bank territory squeezed between Jordan and Israel with its impossible national density.

The Egyptian initiative would offer growth space to absorb Arabs interested in a “right of return” into a new Sinai-Gaza based state. It would have access to the sea and potential for a port. It would have territory for tourism, agricultural, industrial, and residential development.

From a regional perspective, it would avoid the friction of a rejectionist Palestinian entity rubbing up against the Jewish State of Israel. It would also ease the pressure of Jordan by having such an entity across the Red Sea and not across an embarrassing Israeli-held security buffer zone along the Jordan Valley. It would be a secure solution for both Egypt and Israel that would enable both of them, for separate and individual reasons, to keep a defensive eye of a Palestinian state in such a location.

Let’s be clear about this. It is a win-win-win-win solution for Palestinians truly desirous of having their independent state, for Israel, for Egypt, and for Jordan.

Those that have supported a two-state solution based solely in Judea & Samaria and Gaza should think again, support the Egyptian initiative, and exert heavy diplomatic and economic persuasion on the Palestinian to go this new route.

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It won’t happen easily because the Palestinians have a long history of always letting an opportunity go to waste. They have rejected this proposal as they have to all others that have gone before. It is up to the international community to grasp the gift offered to the world by the Egyptians and force it down a begrudging, malevolent, Palestinian leadership who still think they speak for the whole of the Arab and Muslim world.  It’s about time they are told they don’t.

It’s about time this alternative solution is forced on them, for their own benefit, because the corpse of 1967 lines solution was buried by Hamas and now by Abbas, if it was ever alive at all.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com

He is the consultant on delegitimization issues to the Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College in Israel.

Where is the fair and balanced reporting?

Where is the fair and balanced reporting?

Has anyone noticed a significant difference in the way that the Western media is covering the US-led air strikes against Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq to the way they covered Israeli strikes against Hamas terrorists in Gaza?  The difference is the startling absence of casualty figures. The difference is the lack of reference to civilian, mainly women and children, dead or injured.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for the long overdue degrading and destruction of this branch of extreme Islamic terror. In fact, I think the numbers of attacks are far too few. They are merely a slap on the wrist for a mob of Muslim murderers bent on jihad and martyrdom.

However, like most Israelis, tired of media lack of context and laser concentration on casualty figures when it came to Israelis defending ourselves from bombardments of Palestinian terror rockets and horrendous attack tunnels, with terrorists emerging from their underground burrows into our southern settlements we find the attitude change when others are fighting the same type of conflict, hypocritical.    

True, the West don’t have journalists embedded with Islamic State as they were with Hamas. Hamas used these journalists for  propaganda purposes by restricting their movements and reporting. Islamic State used them for propaganda purposes by beheading them on the social media.  However, it is deserving for an Israeli to point out the stark difference in attitude of the media. 

Both Israel and America target Islamic terror regimes holding territory after suffering intolerable acts of violence and reacting to the dangers posed by both. But, on the one hand, the media broadly supports the Obama prompted military strikes while, on the other they were highly critical when Israel was forced for confront Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists fighting in urban Gaza locations.

In our fight against a murderous terrorism, the media dwelt on emotional sensationalism devoid of context. In the American-led actions against a similar-sized terror group (both Hamas and IS have/had circa 25,000 combatants) the media is replete with experts giving viewers and readers context with zero reference to emotional scenes. 

Clearly the cameras and reporters are not there to cover the story, but what if IS starts to provide gruesome shots of dead or injured children. Would the media cover or censor them? Would they use such scenes to condemn or prevent further strikes? Would they call them international crimes? Would they portray the people in IS-held locations as being disproportionately attacked by American attacks on innocent civilians? Or would the media explain that such casualties are to be expected in a war against terrorists embedded among a civilian population?

This concern was raised by Fox News’ Shepherd Smith who zoomed in on a large screen studio map to explain to viewers the density of urban Mosul in Iraq to point out the inevitability of civilian casualties in air assaults on ISIS targets.  When it comes to American targeting, it’s inevitable. When it comes to Israeli targeting, its unacceptable and a crime.

There enemy is evil and must be destroyed. No need to publicly count the civilian casualty figures Our enemy is explained through the prism of Gazan civilians, where each additional death increases the demand for us to stop our defensive war against radical Islam. This, despite the fact that our ratio of civilian to terrorist dead is far far lower than American, NATO, British, Coalition conflict figures.. This is wrong. It is unjust to a democracy that take greater pains to reduce collateral damage than any other fighting force in military history.

Such is the dilemma for Israel. We in Israel do not get a fair or balanced reporting. 

BRITISH LABOUR PARTY BIAS IS APPALLING.

Statements made by Ed Miliband and his Shadow Foreign Minister, Douglas Alexander at the Labour Party Conference on Monday, September 22, were appalling for their one-sided bias against Israel.

Although they paid lip service to a condemnation of “Hamas rockets and the terrorization of civilian populations” the only use of the word “illegal” was in reference to Israeli building, and the only use of the word “immoral” was for settlements, which they described as being done “on other peoples land.”

No room for doubt or uncertainty there. No consideration for a view that the land belongs, both historically and legally, to Israel under international law dating back to 1922 and beyond. No mention of the fact that this is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, including the reference to “close Jewish settlement” of the land.  All that, and more, was wiped away by a Labour leadership that ignores facts and history, overlooks Palestinian crimes and rejectionism, in favour of condemning Israel of criminality.

Further, they denounced Israel’s need to enter Gaza for what they called “an Israeli invasion…to perpetuate the cycle of violence, tragedy, and loss of innocent life.”

No mention of the necessity to eradicate the Palestinian terror attack tunnels, to denude Hamas of their rocket stockpile, or to eradicate one thousand two hundred Gaza-based terrorists who threatened and murdered Israeli civilians for decades.

Their moral equivalency has tilted so radically that their language reflects a world in which Palestinians are naughty for firing rockets and for murdering Israeli civilians, including babies and teenagers, while Israel is criminal for building houses on land that is legitimately under its control, despite them claiming otherwise.

Let Miliband and Alexander go back to the statute books and do some revision. Let them start by reading the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, then proceed to the UN Charter Article 80. They should finish off by reading the wording of the Oslo Accords to which Britain was a witness and guarantor. All these preserve and define Israel’s legitimacy to act in the territories.

Instead, their blind, dogmatic, left-wing, failed Two-State notion has fossilized the Israel-Palestinian conflict for far too long. 

Demanding that Israel surrender more territory is not a potion for peace. It is a remedy for further violence. Israel sees what Miliband fails to see, that an Israeli withdrawal from Judea & Samaria will follow the pattern of our evacuation from Gaza. We removed ourselves from every settlement, we forcefully evicted thousands of Jews, handed over an agricultural oasis to the Palestinians and, in return, got suicide bombers, rockets, and terror tunnels. 

Will Miliband guarantee that this will not happen should Israel listen to his ill-advise and withdraw from the Samarian and Judean hills, leaving Hamas to take over the West Bank, by ballot or by bullet, as they did in the Gaza Strip?

Britain may lurch to the left in the next general election but, following recent experiences both by the Palestinian Authority and from Hamas, Israel has moved right of centre with the vast majority of Israelis totally distrusting Palestinian intentions, and deeply cynical of politicians such as Miliband.

If Miliband wants peace let him task his Labour Friends of Palestine to produce a reformed and pragmatic Hamas and to persuade the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to recognize the right of the Jewish people to live in peace in the Land of Israel. 

For, if there is a monster in the room, it is not an Israeli building his home in Maale Adumim or Ariel, it is the monster of Hamas terrorism, the rejectionism of Mahmoud Abbas, and the rapid anti-Semitism of them both that is the major obstacle to peace.

Based on recent statements by Miliband and Alexander, a future Labour-led Britain can contribute nothing to peace, neither for Israel, nor for the Palestinians.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com

He is also the Consultant on Delegitimisation Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College in Israel.

Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden.

Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden.  Special report taken from the movie of the same name.

An insight into the hard work, failures, and successes of counter-terrorism agents.

After the raid in Pakistan Only one outside observer was allowed into Osama Bin Laden’s compound at Abbottabad in Pakistan after the nave seal’s raid before they demolished it. That person was Peter Bergen who had met and interviewed Bin Laden, had written the book on which the movie was based.  He reported to the participants at the ICT World Summit on Counter-Terrorism in Herzlia, Israel, that in certain rooms the walls and ceiling were splattered with blood.

The raid on Bin Laden’s compound took forty minutes to execute. The intelligence hunt for Bin Laden took two decades.

Michael Sheuer was the CIA intelligence agent tasked to head the Bin Laden team. He preferred to have women in his analysis team because, according to him, they were better analysts than men.  Unofficially, they were called “The Sisterhood.”

Susan Hasler, Cindy Storer, Nada Bakos, Barbara Sude, and Jennifer Matthews made up the main team.

In an early recording Osama Bin Laden was heard predicting “the tails of the infidels will be cut off through Jihad!”  Today, with the Islamic State usurpers of Al-Qaida, we see them cutting not tails but heads of people they consider infidels in the name of Jihad.

The CIA team started with a blank slate. Visual recognition, photos of Al-Qaida members, their roles, and how they ranked, were slowly and painstakingly obtained. It became clear that Osama Bin Laden was the head of this group. The difficulty was figuring out the information and how it was connected.

The picture changed all the time. In 1995, CIA created the Osama Bin Laden desk. It was called the “Alec Station.” A fusion between intelligence gathering, analysts, and operations doing covert work based on the analysis work developed.  Marty Martin was the case officer.  They had a bit of luck. They intercepted a Bin Laden phone call saying “the phone number is 671-0837. Buy a plane tickets and take 70% of the cost from the charity.”

In 1997, Peter Bergen got the first interview with Bin Laden in a small mountain village 6000 feet above sea level. In this interview Bin Laden said “Getting killed for Allah is a great honor bestowed only on the best Muslims. Hearts of Muslims are filled with great hatred for America. It is an unjust nation. No American is exonerated. They voted for their government.”  When asked about his future plans, Bin Laden smiled and said, “You will see and hear of them in the media, God willing.”

On August 7, 1998, two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed. 258 died and over 5000 injured. This date was the eighth anniversary of the arrival of American troops in Saudi Arabia. The intelligence threads led to Al-Qaida and Bin Laden.

They then discovered that a person called Abu Zubeydah was in charge of jihadi training camps. What was going on there? By 1999, CIA began to track him. By March 2000, they logged Zubeydah as a senior Al-Qaida figure and a trusted aide of Bin Laden.

On October 12, 2000 Al-Qaida attacked USS Cole. 17 sailors were killed and 39 were injured.

Bin Laden put out another recording. In it he said, “Jihad against America is the core of our faith. We are starting a psychological war against America.”

By April 20, 2001 Alec Station were picking up intel that Al-Qaida was planning a multiple strike against America. By July they posted the threat as “real.” By August 3 they upgraded the threat as “imminent” although they had no specific details. By August 6 they had determined that OBL was about to strike inside the United States. Al-Qaida made a video about “the Manhattan Raid” which they only released after 9/11. This video showed terrorists with knives at the throat of pilots.

Then 9/11, and shock. To those who had been working for years to identify Al-Qaida it was a “This is it!” moment.

0/11 was executed nineteen terrorists. 19 out of the thousands coming out of the Al-Qaida training camps.

Then the blame game began.   One of the women in Alec Station said, “After a while the guilt sets in”. Then heads of agencies and Administration started blaming them for not connecting the dots.  “Our feeling was, ‘you didn’t help us at all, and now you blame us for not trying hard enough.’” CIA internal investigation put the blame on Alec Station.

The FBI was also investigating Al-Qaida. Ali Soufan was in charge of the AQ investigation. They interrogated Bin Laden’s former bodyguard.

A CIA World Wide Attack Matrix was established to kill or capture AQ operatives, and to dismantle and destroy it. There was an explosion of intelligence at CIA after 9/11. Joe Rodriquez with 25 years’ experience was appointed as CIA counter-terror head. Marty Martin led the CIA war on AQ.

In March 2002, Abu Zubeydah was tracked to a house in Pakistan and was captured in a covert operation. He was hit with 3 bullets but survived. He was taken to a “black site” secret prison and interrogated. Enhanced interrogations took place to extract intel. Tough Joe Rodriquez said “it was pretty wimpy stuff.”

On March 1, 2003, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was captured at a house in Pakistan. This man was behind the killing of Daniel Pearl in 2001. He later admitted beheading him. He was implicated in the embassy bombings and the USS Cole.

The cry was out “Where is Osama Bin Laden?” Jose Rodriquez was asked by two presidents. He said, “The next time anyone asks me where is Bin Laden I’m going to say ‘Fuck You!’ and I don’t care who it is. Then I went home and my wife asked me ‘Where is Bin Laden?’”

The order to kill and capture Bin Laden starts with accurate info on his location. Alec Station was tasked to identify and locate AQ leaders. They were digitally tracked. Alec Station agents went into target areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Nada Bakos went to Baghdad in search of the AQ leader in Iraq. His name was Abu Musad al-Zarqawi.  “He was a monster,” she said. He was behind the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad and, just days later, the bombing of the UN headquarters there that killed 22 people. Then, on August 29, he engineered the deadliest bombing in Baghdad with a car bombing of the Shiite holy shrine in Najaf that killed over a hundred people. The suicide bomber of this mission was Zarqawi’s father-in-law.   Bin Laden ordered Zarqawi to stop killing Muslims in Iraq. He ignored the order. Later, in 2004, Zarqawi anointed himself as “Emir of al-Qaeda’s Operations in the Land of Mesopotamia.” 

Zarqawi’s first victim was an American, Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded, some suspect, by Zarqawi himself.

Bin Laden sent an aide, Hassan Ghul to exert control in Iraq for AQ. Ghul was an interesting case study. He was captured by Kurdish security forces acting on a tipoff by American intelligence. Among the items on his hard disc was a long 17 page letter to Osama Bin Laden. Originally thought to have been written by Ghul, it was originally from Zarqawi thereby implicating Ghul as a central courier-type figure linked directly to OBL. Jose Rodriquez wrote in his book “Hard Measures,” “Initially he played the role of tough mujahedeen and refused to cooperate. We then received permission to use some (but not all) of the EIT [enhanced interrogation techniques] procedures on him. Before long he became compliant and started to provide some excellent information.”

The Americans tried to turn Ghul and, in 2006, they sent him to Pakistan after he agreed to cooperate and turn informer with the hope that he would lead them to Bin Laden.   Ghul had given the Americans the name of a special courier. His codename was Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, but his real name was Ibrahim Saeed. More on Ghul later.

There were several attempts to kill or capture Zarqawi. All ended in failure. The brashness of Zarqawi put him into frequent conflict with AQ HQ.  On June 7, 2006, acting on intelligence based on a tip from Jordanian intelligence that he was due to hold a meeting nearby, Zarqawi was killed by an air strike on a safe house north of Baghdad.

By 2001, Michael Hayden had become CIA director. In late 2007, a different approach was begun. CIA targeters of AQ leaders, particularly Bin Laden, were sent into the field to coordinate intelligence, analysis, with special ops. Khost in Afghanistan was an enemy center, and the CIA had set up a special compound for their operations in this area. Jennifer Matthews of the Alec Station Sisterhood was sent there to help target and kill AQ operatives.

In early 2009, they got a new lead that originated in Jordan with a message from a doctor talking about Zarqawi. It was sent by a 32 year old doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, writing on the internet.

Following this intercept he was arrested by Jordanian security forces and taken to their intelligence HQ. He was interrogated by American intelligence and offered millions of dollars and a plane ticket to work for the CIA. He agreed and was sent to Wasiristan. After providing the CIA with information on Al-Qaida he requested a meeting and was told to come to the CIA secured compound in Khost. Unknown to the CIA, al-Balawi remained so loyal to AQ to the extent that he agreed to go to this meeting on a suicide mission. Before leaving he made a video in which he said, “They think I am a sky, but I am a bomb.”

Arriving at the Khost compound in his vehicle he was allowed through three checkpoints without any personal security check. He filmed himself on his drive to the compound as is heard to say in English, “Death will come to you in an unexpected way. This is not a watch. It is a detonator.”

CIA agents and others were waiting for him as he arrived into their part of the compound. The smoke from the explosion could be seen for miles. Seven personnel were killed, including Jennifer Matthews. Jose Rodriquez said, “We lost good people that day.” Osama Bin Laden declared it as a great victory that targeted the CIA.

The fate of Hassan Ghul is murky. One US sources said he had vanished. On October 1, 2012, a drone fired four missiles at a vehicle in an area of Wasiristan. Three people were killed. The press called the target as unnamed rebels. It is suspected that Ghul was one of those killed.

The Washington Post revealed that the CIA and NSA tracked down Ghul’s wife’s computer from an email she sent, that homed in on Ghul. An NSA document said, “This information enabled a capture/kill operation against an individual believed to be Hassan Ghul on October 1.”  

Was Ghul killed? Or was this a subterfuge to allow Ghul his freedom and anonymity for services rendered? We may never know.

Mustafa Ansari, a Saudi journalist with access to Bin Laden, said, “An Al-Qaida warrior cannot be killed unless he makes a mistake. What was Bin Laden’s mistake? His love of power. He sent a courier because he wanted to be kept in the picture. He should have stayed quiet. He made videos of himself.”

It was the communication between his courier, Ibrahim Saeed and Bin Laden that gave the location of the Al-Qaida leader to the CIA team as being a large house in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.

Even so, when President Obama gave the order to strike, the CIA analysts could only give him an 80% chance that he was in that house.

See the movie or read Peter Berger’s exceptional book “Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abottabad.”

The Dithering Commander in Chief.

President Obama, forced to take action by dramatically falling poll numbers, is trying to hobble together a coalition of the willing to take on a gruesome terror regime. He considered Erdogan as one of his closest allies in the region, yet the Turkish Islamist is giving him and his Secretary of State the cold shoulder. He has sold billions of dollars worth of military equipment to Qatar, but he knows not to come calling. Saudi Arabia is loaded with the most sophisticated weaponry, US-trained servicemen, state of the art airfields, yet the heart of Islam is not ready to commit its soldiers or airmen to the fight against an enemy that has its sights on them.

Obama calls the Islamic State terrorist organization ISIL. He tries to tell the naive that ISIL do not represent Islam and they are not a state, despite the fact that they control an area four times the size of Israel. For somebody raised in the Islamic world, this is so mind-blowingly a state of denial.

Then he sends John Kerry out to tell the world that the new campaign to destroy the heaviest, largest,  and richest, armed terror regime is not a war. What is it then when you are bombing them from the air and sending in multi-national forces to seek, degrade, and destroy them, predictably over a ten to twenty year period?

Barrack Hussein Obama is the example of what happens when the mightiest nation on earth elects a politician whose worldview is to naively make the world a level playing field, and fails.

America goes into reverse and “leads from behind.” He goes on An apology tour to the Muslim folk and tell them America is out of there, and they are free to conduct their own business, free of American interference. No more good side or bad side. Let’s push the “reset” button with Russia.  Assad is “a reformer” and the world is “a global village” according to his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.  “Bin Laden is dead, General Motors is alive, and Al-Qaida is on the run.”  There is no such thing as Islamic terror. Let’s throw Mubarak under the bus to give Egyptians democracy and, just to show our good intentions, let’s invite the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House. Let’s set red lines in Syria and if they use their chemical weapons again our response will be, according to John Kerry, “incredibly small.”

Always the charmer, Obama has been out-charmed by a smiling Rouhani face that disguises an Iranian on-going pursuit of nuclear missiles. Replacing Ahmadinajad abusive rhetoric with a Tehran grin has lulled the Obama Administration as the Iranians run down the clock to breakout time.

America has a president that has been shackled by an early presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize which was given more as a warning than an award for peacemaking. Received gladly, it now weighs heavy on the thin chest of a lightweight president.

So when Russia invades Ukraine, Obama manages a verbal bluster and nothing of substance. Releasing some of the worst Islamic terrorists from Guantanamo to plan and wreak havoc on the West was a kind-hearted gesture that the world will live to regret.

We are already regretting the Obama insistence of pulling US troops out of Iraq. Leading from behind in Libya and Syria, and putting a misplaced faith in a Shiite Maliki government in Iraq, has left a vacuum that has been gruesomely filled by an Islamic horror the world has never known since the brutal days of Mohammad, who slaughtered his way across the Arabian and Jewish worlds.

Let’s be honest, the brand of terrorism we are witnessing was unleashed by the wealthy fat cats of today’s Islamic world from Iran to Qatar, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia who set Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, and ISIS on their path of mayhem and murder in the name of Allah and Mohammed.

Some of these exporters and sponsors of Islamic terror are now fearful of the monster they have created. The Saudi king warned that Islamic extremists would attack Europe and America within months if there was not a robust international response to the advance of ISIS.  Yousef al-Otaba, the UAE Ambassador to America said, “Islamic extremism is the most destabilizing and dangerous global force since Fascism. Now is the time to act!”  That’s rich coming from the part of the world that incited, exported, and financed this radicalism. It is time to act, and it’s up to the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and others armed by America with highly sophisticated military hardware and US-trained forces to get into the fight, and not leave non-Muslim Westerners to die on a battlefield of their making.

It is wrongly claimed they say that it was Western interference in Muslim areas of conflict that inflamed impressionable people to join radical Islamic terror armies and carry out atrocities across the globe. So let the concerned Muslim nations take the lead. The battle against the Islamic State of al-Bagdhadi is one where the West should lead from behind. Let the world see that, at last, the Muslims are fighting against the evil they have created.

This, however, does not release Obama from the feckless leadership he has displayed, a fecklessness that truly endangers Western, non-Muslim, countries. His flip-flop attitude to the rising power of ISIS is of grave concern. He is trapped in his own deluded worldview.

Obama, like so many progressive wishful thinkers, is a man whose vision of the world has turned out to be a mirage. According to Brit Hume of Fox News, a Senator Obama once told someone close to him “Wouldn’t it be great for the world if I were president.”  Senator Obama, in a televised address on November 21, 2007 said, “If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country. I may be Christian but I also understand their point of view.”  He continued, “I think this world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that I will make us safer.”

Obama has totally misread the ingrained religious hatred and ambition that goes back to the days of Mohammed, an ambition that will not be quenched with anything less than the total victory that a global Caliphate will bring.

Obama’s delusional world came crashing down with the Islamic knife that beheaded Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff, a knife that is braggingly pointed at the White House.  These gruesome murders followed the bloody killing of Ambassador Stephens and three other Americans in Bengazi by other radical Islamic terrorists. Obama’s and Clinton’s delusional world put the blame for this attack on America was an amateur video. They were in denial then. He is in denial now.

Obama is confronted with a world as it really is and not a world he thought it should be. Sadly, Obama is unable to adjust.

He is a metaphor for too many liberal free thinkers who impose their faulty worldview with a certainty that is frightening, insulting, and leave us exposed to greater risks and dangers caused by their hallucinatory visions. Israel finds itself victim to the Two-State vision doggedly pursued for over forty years by these parched and thirsty travelers who think they can see a wonderful oasis, unable to face the truth that there is nothing there; that their goal is an unobtainable mirage, tempting them to ignore other alternative sources of hope, and forcing Israel to jeopardize their lives and security to these free-thinking whims.

So it is with an Obama who has built his political career on a vision that is falling apart both at home and abroad. He is finding out that good things don’t happen when America steps back.

The rise of ISIS was part of the President’s daily briefings for a year before they grabbed substantial territory. Yet, on January 19, Obama called them a JV team, downgrading the perception of ISIS as a major terror threat. This was after they flew their flag over Fallujah and just before they captured Mosul. In a knee-jerk response to the criticism of his remark, Obama blamed his intelligence team even though they had been giving him regular updates. The basic problem with Obama was that they were telling him something he didn't want to hear.

It is impossible for him to take vital policy decisions because they clash with his political views. He has allowed himself to become prisoner to his stubborn refusal to face reality.

Into September, Obama told the world “we don’t have a strategy, yet.” He not only doesn't have a strategy, he doesn't even have an objective when it comes to ISIS, or Islamic terror anywhere.

Under pressure, we see Obama flip-flop over ISIS. On the day of the beheading of the second American, Steven Sotloff, by ISIS, Obama started by saying that beheadings “would not intimidate America,” followed by a statement threatening to “degrade and destroy ISIS” but, by the end of the same day, the president had reduced that to “shrinking its sphere of influence…to the point that it’s a manageable problem.”

His Democrat allies are speaking up in exasperation. Lanny Davis, a close friend and staunch Obama supporter said on Fox News, “he needs to inform us of the grave danger that we face.”

The vacuum left by the president’s inability to confront a serious threat was filled by the bluster of Vice President Joe Biden’s words, “We will pursue them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice!”

Pursue them to the gates of hell, Mr.V.P.? How do you do that when your boss won’t let your troops out of their barracks?

Barry Shaw is the Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. He is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com