United Arab Emirates Seeks Cooperation with Russia on Energy
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan said during a visit to Moscow on Thursday that his government looks forward to working with Russia – an outlaw state in the eyes of the U.S. and Europe – on “improving global energy security.”
“It is important to maintain the stability of energy and food markets,” Sheikh Abdullah said.
“Securing the global food supply is considered necessary as there are a lot of countries in the world either in our region or abroad that largely depend on the import or export of grain and other basic food supplies around the world,” he elaborated.
“We welcome all mediation efforts in the Ukraine crisis,” he stated. “The UAE is ready to engage with the parties to strengthen opportunities for a peaceful resolution.”
“We look forward to developing relations between the UAE and Russia and diversifying the areas of interdependence between our citizens, institutions and our governments,” he said.
Appearing at a press conference with Sheikh Abdullah after the two had a meeting in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov thanked the UAE for its “balanced stance on the Ukraine crisis.”
Reuters noted the UAE had made some tangible efforts to support Russia, which is a member of the “OPEC+” alliance of oil-producing nations. Along with fellow OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia, the UAE refused pleas from the Biden administration to increase production and push oil prices down, citing production limits set by OPEC+.
The UAE also abstained from the U.N. Security Council vote to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which passed overwhelmingly despite 35 abstentions and five votes against it. The resolution was then vetoed by the president of the Security Council, which is currently Russia.
Sheikh Abdullah had a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last Tuesday, with the war in Ukraine as one of the major topics. If Blinken tried to get the UAE to distance itself from Russia or denounce the invasion, he was evidently unsuccessful.
The New York Times last week reported on fears among Western policymakers that the UAE could help Russian oligarchs evade punitive sanctions. Dozens of members of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s inner circle own luxury properties in Dubai, collectively valued at over $314 million – and at least six of those Russian billionaires are already under U.S. or European Union sanctions.
“The Emirati stance is exposing tensions between the United States and several of its closest Arab allies over their reluctance to oppose the Russian invasion,” the Times noted.
“Asked for solidarity in a moment of crisis, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have instead prioritized relations with Moscow – the Emirates and Saudi Arabia by rebuffing American pleas for increased oil supplies to soothe energy markets, Egypt by muffling criticism of the invasion while proceeding with a $25 billion loan from Russia to finance a nuclear power plant,” the report said.
Al Jazeera News speculated on Monday the Biden White House will give the Emiratis considerable leeway to skirt Russia sanctions because it desperately needs Emirati help with keeping oil prices under control. The question will be if the White House’s focus on the Russian invasion comes to outweigh all other concerns.
A possible sign the West might be ready to start playing harder ball with the Emiratis was the decision by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an anti-money-laundering organization founded by the Group of Seven (G7) nations, to add the UAE to its global watch “gray list” in early March. The move essentially threatens the UAE with closer supervision unless its government does more to crack down on money laundering and terrorism financing. If the FATF is not satisfied with the UAE’s progress, it could be bumped to the far more restrictive “black list.”
Gray listing is no small matter, as Al Jazeera noted when the FATF announced its decision: it could put the UAE at a competitive disadvantage against Saudi Arabia, add significant compliance costs to doing business with UAE entities, and inflict what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) characterizes as “a large and statistically significant reduction in capital inflows.”
According to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, Saudi-led forces in Yemen carried out more than 700 airstrikes in February, the most since 2018, killing hundreds of Yemeni civilians. Most of the bombing raids have been focused on the oil-rich Marib area, where a Houthi offensive threatens to take the last significant portion of northern Yemen still under control of the Saudi puppet regime of ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Yet the New York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a partner in combating terrorism.”
Although the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings. This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed more than 2,900 people, were the deadliest terror attacks in the history of the United States. Nineteen supporters of Al Qaeda, 15 from Saudi Arabia, crashed two passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York; a third plane into the Pentagon building outside Washington; and a fourth into the ground.
The horrific massacre of civilians was immediately exploited by the imperialist powers, led by the United States government itself, to justify far-reaching attacks on the democratic rights of their own populations, and the launching of decades-long wars in the Middle East and Africa. The “war on terror,” embraced by the entire political establishment and corporate media, became the justification for wars and interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Twenty years on, the analysis made by the WSWS of these events has stood the test of time. We present below the major statements and analysis made contemporaneously by the WSWS over the past two decades.
The initial response of the WSWS, written only hours after the attack and posted the following day, “The political roots of the terror attack on New York and Washington,” laid out all the central political questions. The WSWS “unequivocally condemns the terrorist attacks,” it began.
“Those responsible for the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft and their conversion into flying bombs are guilty of mass murder... These acts of homicidal terrorism manifest a toxic combination of demoralized pessimism, religious and ultra-nationalist obscurantism, and, it must be added, political opportunism of the vilest character.”
The WSWS, however, placed central culpability for the attack on American imperialism. Since 1983, the US government had been bombing one or another Middle Eastern country, including Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan.
The Reason Islam's So Keen on Hating Us
A female German convert to Islam was recently sentenced to over seven years in prison. The 44-year-old was found guilty of following her Palestinian husband in joining Islamic terror groups abroad, including the Islamic State in Syria. Moreover, according to a March 3, 2022 report (translated and summarized here), she
had handed over her son, who was only 14 years old at the time, to the militias as a child soldier. ... The boy had actively participated in fighting and had been in acute danger of his life on several occasions. On February 23, 2018, the boy, who was 15 years old by then, had been killed in a rocket attack. She had brought the boy into the IS territory, which is why the accused should also be convicted of involuntary manslaughter. ... The accused had tried to present herself as a naïve wife who had only followed her husband.
As abysmal as this woman's behavior was — she had also tried to get her older son to come and be "martyred" in Syria — the most telling aspect of and lynchpin to her persona is found in the following excerpt: "According to a witness, after the IS attacks in Paris in 2015, she had said that the victims deserved to die. She had told her son that it was important to humiliate and hate the infidels" (emphasis added).
Why would this native German woman, on converting to Islam, feel that "infidels" — all non-Muslims — are deserving of being hated and humiliated? Because Islam unequivocally commands it.
The doctrine of al-wala' w'al-bara' (which can be translated as "loyalty and enmity" or, more simply, "love and hate"), commands Muslims always to aid and support fellow Muslims (including jihadists, for example through funds or zakat).
It is the bara' — the "enmity" or "hate" — that concerns us here. It manifests itself so regularly that even those in the West who are not necessarily acquainted with the particulars of Muslim doctrine sense it. For instance, in November 2015, after a series of deadly Islamic terror strikes in the West, then–presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "I think Islam hates us. There's something there that — there's a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There's an unbelievable hatred of us."
What makes this "tremendous" and "unbelievable hatred" unintelligible to the West is that it is not a product of grievances, political factors, or even an "extremist" interpretation of Islam. Rather, it is a direct byproduct of mainstream Islamic teaching. Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse of this doctrine and speaks for itself. As Osama bin Laden, while quoting it, once wrote:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's Word: "We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — till you believe in Allah alone" [Koran 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility — that is, battle — ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! ... Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Similarly, the Islamic State once confessed to the West in the context of Koran 60:4 that "we hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers." As for any and all political "grievances," these are "secondary" reasons for the jihad, ISIS said:
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
Incidentally, from here one also understands why the recently sentenced German mother insisted that non-Muslims must also be humiliated: Koran 9:29 — which calls on Muslims to war against Christians and Jews, until they pay jizya (tribute) and are "fully humbled" — requires it.
As for the murderous hate, Koran 58:22 goes as far as to praise Muslims who kill their own non-Muslim family members: "You shall find none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and his Messenger — even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred."
According to Ibn Kathir's mainstream commentary on the Koran, this verse refers to a number of Muslims who slaughtered their own non-Muslim kin. (One slew his non-Muslim father, another his non-Muslim brother, a third — Abu Bakr, the first revered caliph of Islamic history — tried to slay his non-Muslim son, and Omar, the second righteous caliph, slaughtered his relatives.) Ibn Kathir adds that Allah was immensely pleased by their unwavering zeal for his cause and rewarded them with paradise (The Al Qaeda Reader, 75–76).
Verses that support the divisive doctrine of al-wala' wa'l-bara' permeate the Koran (see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 60:1). There is one caveat, captured by Koran 3:28: when Muslims are in a position of weakness, they may pretend to befriend non-Muslims, as long as the hate carries on in their hearts (such is taqiyya; see here, here, and here for examples; for other Islam-sanctioned forms of deception, read about tawriya and taysir).
Little wonder, then, that America's supposed best Muslim "friends and allies" — such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar — have issued fatwas calling on all Muslims to "oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [non-Muslims], until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him."
Indeed, because enmity for non-Muslims is so ironclad in the Koran, mainstream Islamic teaching holds that Muslim men must even hate — and show that they hate — their non-Muslim wives, for no other reason than that they are "infidels."
If Muslims must hate those closest to them — including fathers, sons, brothers, and wives — simply because they are non-Muslims, is there any surprise that so many Muslims hate foreign "infidels" who live oceans away — such as Americans, who are further portrayed throughout the Muslim world as trying to undermine Islam?
In short, jihad — or terrorism, war on non-Muslims for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims — is simply the physical realization of an ignored doctrine that precedes it: Islam's unequivocal command for Muslims to hate non-Muslims. So ironclad is it that a German woman, on converting to Islam, and thus being duly instructed in al-wala' wa'l-bara', came to hate fellow Germans, to the point of sacrificing her own son in a foreign nation for the cause of Islam.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
Image via Pxhere.
A female German convert to Islam was recently sentenced to over seven years in prison. The 44-year-old was found guilty of following her Palestinian husband in joining Islamic terror groups abroad, including the Islamic State in Syria. Moreover, according to a March 3, 2022 report (translated and summarized here), she
had handed over her son, who was only 14 years old at the time, to the militias as a child soldier. ... The boy had actively participated in fighting and had been in acute danger of his life on several occasions. On February 23, 2018, the boy, who was 15 years old by then, had been killed in a rocket attack. She had brought the boy into the IS territory, which is why the accused should also be convicted of involuntary manslaughter. ... The accused had tried to present herself as a naïve wife who had only followed her husband.
As abysmal as this woman's behavior was — she had also tried to get her older son to come and be "martyred" in Syria — the most telling aspect of and lynchpin to her persona is found in the following excerpt: "According to a witness, after the IS attacks in Paris in 2015, she had said that the victims deserved to die. She had told her son that it was important to humiliate and hate the infidels" (emphasis added).
Why would this native German woman, on converting to Islam, feel that "infidels" — all non-Muslims — are deserving of being hated and humiliated? Because Islam unequivocally commands it.
The doctrine of al-wala' w'al-bara' (which can be translated as "loyalty and enmity" or, more simply, "love and hate"), commands Muslims always to aid and support fellow Muslims (including jihadists, for example through funds or zakat).
It is the bara' — the "enmity" or "hate" — that concerns us here. It manifests itself so regularly that even those in the West who are not necessarily acquainted with the particulars of Muslim doctrine sense it. For instance, in November 2015, after a series of deadly Islamic terror strikes in the West, then–presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "I think Islam hates us. There's something there that — there's a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There's an unbelievable hatred of us."
What makes this "tremendous" and "unbelievable hatred" unintelligible to the West is that it is not a product of grievances, political factors, or even an "extremist" interpretation of Islam. Rather, it is a direct byproduct of mainstream Islamic teaching. Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse of this doctrine and speaks for itself. As Osama bin Laden, while quoting it, once wrote:
As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's Word: "We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — till you believe in Allah alone" [Koran 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility — that is, battle — ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! ... Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 43).
Similarly, the Islamic State once confessed to the West in the context of Koran 60:4 that "we hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers." As for any and all political "grievances," these are "secondary" reasons for the jihad, ISIS said:
The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
Incidentally, from here one also understands why the recently sentenced German mother insisted that non-Muslims must also be humiliated: Koran 9:29 — which calls on Muslims to war against Christians and Jews, until they pay jizya (tribute) and are "fully humbled" — requires it.
As for the murderous hate, Koran 58:22 goes as far as to praise Muslims who kill their own non-Muslim family members: "You shall find none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and his Messenger — even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred."
According to Ibn Kathir's mainstream commentary on the Koran, this verse refers to a number of Muslims who slaughtered their own non-Muslim kin. (One slew his non-Muslim father, another his non-Muslim brother, a third — Abu Bakr, the first revered caliph of Islamic history — tried to slay his non-Muslim son, and Omar, the second righteous caliph, slaughtered his relatives.) Ibn Kathir adds that Allah was immensely pleased by their unwavering zeal for his cause and rewarded them with paradise (The Al Qaeda Reader, 75–76).
Verses that support the divisive doctrine of al-wala' wa'l-bara' permeate the Koran (see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 60:1). There is one caveat, captured by Koran 3:28: when Muslims are in a position of weakness, they may pretend to befriend non-Muslims, as long as the hate carries on in their hearts (such is taqiyya; see here, here, and here for examples; for other Islam-sanctioned forms of deception, read about tawriya and taysir).
Little wonder, then, that America's supposed best Muslim "friends and allies" — such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar — have issued fatwas calling on all Muslims to "oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [non-Muslims], until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him."
Indeed, because enmity for non-Muslims is so ironclad in the Koran, mainstream Islamic teaching holds that Muslim men must even hate — and show that they hate — their non-Muslim wives, for no other reason than that they are "infidels."
If Muslims must hate those closest to them — including fathers, sons, brothers, and wives — simply because they are non-Muslims, is there any surprise that so many Muslims hate foreign "infidels" who live oceans away — such as Americans, who are further portrayed throughout the Muslim world as trying to undermine Islam?
In short, jihad — or terrorism, war on non-Muslims for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims — is simply the physical realization of an ignored doctrine that precedes it: Islam's unequivocal command for Muslims to hate non-Muslims. So ironclad is it that a German woman, on converting to Islam, and thus being duly instructed in al-wala' wa'l-bara', came to hate fellow Germans, to the point of sacrificing her own son in a foreign nation for the cause of Islam.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
Image via Pxhere.
Saudi monarchy executes 81 men in one day: Medieval barbarism from top US ally in Mideast
In a brutal act of mass murder, the US-backed Saudi monarchy executed 81 men Saturday, the largest such massacre in the history of the kingdom. The Saudi government did not say how the executions were carried out, but beheading is the method it usually employs against its victims. Seven of those executed were Yemenis, one was Syrian, and the rest were Saudi citizens.
The barbaric action received only perfunctory attention in the American media, in sharp contrast to the saturation coverage of every alleged atrocity carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine. The White House and State Department did not issue any public statements.
While the Saudi Ministry of Interior claimed that the capital crimes for which the 81 had been executed included terrorism and “multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead,” it gave no details of the alleged offenses or name any of the supposed victims killed by those executed.
The death toll was largest in a single day of executions since the bloodstained kingdom was founded by Ibn Saud in 1932, when he united the Arabian Peninsula in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I by British and French imperialism.
The largest previous mass execution came in 1980, when 63 men were put to death after Islamist militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in an effort to overthrow the regime. In 2016, the monarchy executed 47 people, including the Shi’ite Muslim leader Nimr al-Nimr, to suppress political opposition in the eastern provinces, largely populated by the Shi’ite minority.
Similar political considerations were apparently involved in Saturday’s bloodbath, as Shi’ite young men were the majority of those executed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—the real ruler of Saudi Arabia under the nominal reign of his senile, 85-year-old father King Salman—has focused internal repressive measures on Shi’ite opposition, portraying all dissidents as agents of Iran.
The regime dropped the death penalty for drug offenses in 2019, resulting in a sharp fall in state killings in 2020. This underscores the fact that Saturday’s mass execution, which produced a greater death toll in a single day than during all of 2020 or 2021, was for political offenses.
The Ministry of Interior issued a lurid statement portraying the victims as linked to foreign terrorist groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda (both of them past beneficiaries of Saudi government support), who targeted government officials and “vital economic sites,” killed police and planted land mines, all without any evidence. The ministry did not even bother to present “confessions” extracted from the prisoners.
Some prisoners were said to be linked to the Houthis, the Yemeni group that overthrew a Saudi-backed regime and has been fighting a protracted war against Saudi military intervention in that country since 2015.
Human rights groups, including those formed by Saudi dissidents in exile, condemned the executions and said that the majority of the victims were from the brutally oppressed Shi’ite minority in the eastern region.
Reprieve, an advocacy group that tracks Saudi executions, said in a statement, “The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow,” adding, “We fear for every [prisoner] following this brutal display of impunity.”
The statement noted the upcoming visit of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Riyadh, “to beg for Saudi oil to replace Russian gas,” and pointed to the contrast between US and European denunciation of Russian actions in Ukraine and “rewarding those of the crown prince.”
The Iran-based Shi’ite news aggregator Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA) reported that those killed in the mass executions included “41 from the peace protest movement in Al-Ahsa and Qatif [eastern Saudi Arabia], under the false accusation of committing ‘terrorist’ acts,” and accused the Saudi regime of “committing more crimes against innocent people, exploiting the so-called war on terror and making use of the current international situation, where the world is preoccupied with what is happening in Ukraine, to carry out a horrific massacre against a group of young people who only exercised their legitimate right of expressing their right to freedom.”
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights said that in the cases it had been able to document, the charges involved “not a drop of blood,” even under the rules laid down by the Saudi monarchy to establish criteria justifying executions. The nature of the charges in many of the cases could not be determined because of judicial secrecy and intimidation of family members of those put to death.
The group said it had documented cases in which prisoners had been tortured, held incommunicado and denied access to lawyers, despite the official claims that all the victims had full access to legal defense.
Ali Adubusi, the head of the group, said in a statement: “These executions are the opposite of justice. Some of these men were tortured, most trials were carried out in secret. This horrific massacre took place days after Mohammed bin Salman declared executions would be limited. It is the third such mass killing in the seven-year reign of King Salman and his son.”
Adubusi was referring to the long interview with the crown prince published in The Atlantic last week, one of the most shameful efforts to glorify the Saudi butcher. Bin Salman is portrayed in the article as an autocratic but liberal reformer who seeks to put an end to mass executions.
Such groveling—once the province of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and other admirers of brute force—has been out of favor in the American corporate press since the crown prince was publicly linked to the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a regular op-ed contributor of the Washington Post. Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018, by a hit squad dispatched by bin Salman.
The Saudi regime has been emboldened by the US-led war hysteria over Ukraine, not only to intensify its internal repression, but also to step up its near-genocidal war in Yemen. The assault on Yemen which began in 2015 has driven millions to the brink of starvation, creating what international agencies have characterized as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 377,000 dead. The US government has been the principal enabler of these attacks, providing targeting information and replenishing Saudi weapons stockpiles.
According to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, Saudi-led forces in Yemen carried out more than 700 airstrikes in February, the most since 2018, killing hundreds of Yemeni civilians. Most of the bombing raids have been focused on the oil-rich Marib area, where a Houthi offensive threatens to take the last significant portion of northern Yemen still under control of the Saudi puppet regime of ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Yet the New York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a partner in combating terrorism.”
Although the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings. This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
Inside Qatar’s ‘Multimillion-Dollar Plan’ To Mainstream Anti-Israel Journalists
Report exposes anti-Semitic, anti-Israel postings from Qatar-Northwestern program
Adam Kredo • March 16, 2022 5:00 amThe Qatari government and Northwestern University are "training a new generation of journalists who will legitimize anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American positions," according to a report by a watchdog group.
"Qatar's Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Influence American Media," a report authored by Canary Mission, a watchdog group that documents anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses, focuses on administrators, professors, lecturers, graduates, and students at Northwestern's satellite campus (NU-Q) in Doha, Qatar's capital, who were found to have made at least 750 "anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American" social media postings. This number includes posts endorsing terrorism, touting boycotts of Israel, referring to pro-Israel Jews as "Zionist pigs," and praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Of the 37 individuals highlighted in the report, 73 percent expressed support for terrorism, 81 percent demonized Israel and Jews, 27 percent posted anti-Semitic content, and 54 percent backed the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which wages economic warfare on the Jewish state.
"The NU-Q learning experience consists of a fully immersive environment that includes a heavily biased curriculum and a host of lecturers who hold antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American views," according to the report.
NU-Q is completely funded up to $50 million annually by Qatar through two state-controlled organizations: the Qatar Foundation and the Al Jazeera Media Network, both of which have come under fire for attempting to wage influence operations in the United States and mainstream anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views. The program lecturers include in-house professors as well as Al Jazeera reporters, producers, and management. Qatar has long been accused of funding U.S. academic institutions to build an influence network across the United States. Programs funded by the Qatari government have come under scrutiny for their anti-Israel bent and focus on demonizing the pro-Israel community.
"Whether students begin with anti-Western views or not, too many emerge from their studies at NU-Q with an anti-Israel and anti-American mindset," Canary Mission said in a statement on its findings. "When they subsequently find positions in mainstream media, they come equipped with both the motivation and ability to influence public opinion."
The watchdog group further says in the report that Northwestern's campus in Doha "trains students to legitimize anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American narratives in Western media." Once completing the program, students are pushed into mainstream media jobs where they can promote these views, according to the report.
One professor highlighted in the report, Sami Hermez, appeared to support Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a 2007 posting at the Electronic Intifada website, which is known for its anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views.
"Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah, is the leader of a movement claiming to fight for the right of self-determination, in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were leaders of movements that claimed similar ends," Hermez wrote. He is also affiliated with the BDS movement, according to Canary Mission’s findings.
Another professor, Ibrahim Abusharif, was a founder of the Quranic Literacy Institute, a nonprofit that was alleged to be acting as a "money-laundering clearing house" for the Hamas terror group. More than $1 million of the organization’s assets were seized in 2004 after it was found guilty of funding a Hamas strike that killed an American teenager in the West Bank, according to reports from the time.
Current students and graduates of the program also were found to hold extreme anti-Israel views.
Alaa Lami, whom the report cites as a current student studying journalism at the Doha campus and slated to graduate in 2024, said in a 2021 tweet, "I called ppl who said ‘innocent israelis shouldnt die' zionist pigs on a uni group."
Another current student, Lujain Assaf, described Israel as "a colonizer and oppressor" and said that "Zionism is a violent racist ideology" in a 2020 tweet cited in the report.
Nawal Aqeel, who Canary Mission says graduated from the Northwestern-Qatar campus site, tweeted in 2014, "I wish Hitler was alive so he could exterminate the existence of Jews attacking the beautiful land of Gaza!"
Northwestern did not respond to a request for comment on the report and its findings.
THE MUSLIM PROFIT MOHAMMED WAS A PEDOPHILE WITH NUMEROUS CHILD BRIDES!
THE KORAN
BIBLE OF THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-novel-blasphemes-fornicating-dog.html
Koran 2:191 "s lay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".
Imam Who Defended Honor Killings and Sex Slavery to Speak On Campus About Challenges of Being Muslim
The great thing about being an Islamist in the Ms. Marvel era is that no matter what awful things they catch you saying, there will be no consequences. After some initial awkwardness, everyone will back away for a few months or a year... and then the party is back on.
When Bernie Sanders appeared with Imam Omar Suleiman, the Imam's hateful views became an issue and the Sanders campaign temporarily backed away. These days you'll find virtually no mention of it. Google is helpfully suppressing search results on the subject and so there's a magical clean slate.
And now Suleiman's going to be speaking at Oakland University on the challenge of being a Muslim in America. It's tough when they won't let you kill your daughters.
"Sisters, you know what happens with a really jealous Dad? He kills you and he kills the guy," a smiling Imam Suleiman told Muslim female college students at an Islamist youth event. "Even if they don't have a man who's going to be a real man, Allah has more than any man."
And won't let you take sex slaves.
"Society's welfare always takes precedence over the individual's welfare," Imam Suleiman had said, when discussing concubines and sex slaves. "It supersedes the outrage of a woman - the very real possibility that a woman in that situation had that option not been there - would have most likely been put in a situation of prostitution."
And then, making it clear that he was talking about sex slavery of the ISIS variety, he discussed a situation where “a prisoner of war was to come in, if a woman was to come in that situation”.
In Islam, girls and women are captured as “prisoners of war” and raped by Muslim men. As the many Yazidi girls and women raped by ISIS were. As were American women like Kayla Mueller.
Or chop off hands.
"The punishment for theft," Imam Omar Suleiman said at a Sharia Council Panel, "which would be the cutting off of the hand, that's not just any theft, Allah wants to protect the life of the one who had stolen... but a skilled thief."
Also there's the support for killing Jews.
Earlier in the conflict, Omar had tweeted, “God willing on this blessed night as the 3rd Intifada begins, the beginning of the end of Zionism is here. May Allah help us overcome this monster, protect the innocent of the world, and accept the murdered as martyrs. ameen #48kMarch #3rdIntifada.”
He later tweeted, “The people of #Gaza made us proud. You refused to let terror break you and we refuse to let Zionist media silence you.”
I'm not sure what the challenge is honestly.
Islamists like Omar can spew the worst hateful filth and then be embraced by leftists and invited to college campuses.
Viral Palestinian Wedding Features Calls for Increased Russian Attacks on Ukraine, Taking of Their Women
In a video clip that has garnered well over half a million views within a day, a famed Palestinian wedding performer leads the crowd with a song calling for increased attacks on Ukraine and the banishment of its citizens in order for Palestinian men to wed the remaining Ukrainian women. It also called for China to invade Taiwan to hit back at the U.S.
The viral clip of a wedding performance by popular Palestinian singer Mohammed Arani, whose official Facebook page has over 112,000 followers, shows Palestinian participants celebrating to the tune of calls for broadening the current bloody conflict in Ukraine, which has already cost the lives of thousands.
Arani is joined by fellow singer Suhaib Al-Jamma’ini, whose official Facebook page has nearly 75,000 followers.
The song specifically addresses Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to intensify his war on Ukraine which would lead to the availability of Ukrainian women for Palestinian men to wed.
“Harden your heart, O Putin,” Arani sings. “Increase your attacks.”
“Banish them to Palestine, and we will marry Ukrainian women,” it continues.
The next part urges authoritarian China to seize its democratic neighbor Taiwan in order to defeat the Israel-supporting United States.
“Also, we say to China: invade Taiwan! Also, we say to China: Why don’t you invade Taiwan?” he sings.
“This way we will smash the nose of the Americans — who make the [Israeli] airplanes,” the song continues.
Arani is then seen repeating the chorus which called for President Vladimir Putin to escalate attacks on Ukraine as well as the banishing of Ukrainian women to Palestine for the purposes of being married off to local men.
Many took to Twitter to express outrage over the clip, which was posted on various Palestinian sources online earlier this month.
Dr. Nervana Mahmoud, a regional observer and independent commentator on Middle East issues, called it “absolutely sick fascism and misogyny.”
“This is who the left adore,” wrote political commentator Sophie Corcoran.
“Heartwarming, from the usual suspects,” human rights lawyer and national security analyst Irina Tsukerman wrote mockingly.
“Here to my progressive friends enjoy true palestinian culture,” wrote commentator Eli Dror.
“It almost feels like they want to lose all the sympathies the world still has for them,” one Twitter user wrote.
“This is disturbing on so many levels….,” wrote another.
Last week, model Gigi Hadid was slammed for comparing victims in Ukraine to people who live in Palestinian territories.
Activist and influencer Elizabeth Savetsky stated she is “absolutely appalled” over Hadid’s comparison, elaborating on reasons the matter is incomparable.
Israeli actress and author Noa Tishby also reacted to Hadid’s comments, stating that the model is “hijacking the Russian invasion of Ukraine to promote propaganda about Israel.”
“We’re seeing, yet again, celebrities and social media influencers co-opting a global tragedy in order to spread lies about Israel,” Tishby said. “Ukraine is not Palestine, and Israel is not Russia. So, no, Gigi, it’s not the same.”
In January, a report revealed the Biden administration was being sued for refusing to submit internal documents that could show it violated a law barring the federal government from sending money to the Palestinian government until it stops its so-called “pay-for-slay” scheme paying terrorists and their families.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.