Rays of Light in the Darkness

How many of you have had the opportunity to meet a real hero? Please come out and support a truly remarkable individual and hero in the War on Terrorism who has risked his life to save those of others and someone who is condemned to remain in hiding because of his tremendous courage, his idealism and his convictions.

 Save the Date- June 23rd, 2010, 7PM*

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the author of the recently published, “Son of Hamas,” which details his journey from the world of violence and terrorism, to working on behalf of Israeli intelligence, and his conversion to Christianity. Yousef’s transformation began when he was imprisoned by Israel, and saw the brutality carried out by Hamas on its own people, carrying out horrendous tortures against those it suspected of being informers.  

Yousef worked with the Israelis to disrupt suicide bombings and terror attacks, saving countless lives. One of the lives saved, his father’s, who was imprisoned, rather than killed, by Israeli authorities with Yousef’s help.

"I'd seen enough killing. I was a witness to lots of death,” he says, “Saving a human life was something really, really beautiful . . . no matter who they are.”  

Yousef recognizes the danger faced by Israel, and understands how implacable the enemy is,

“They do not hesitate to massacre people in a mosque or to throw people from the 15th or 17th floor of a building, as they did during the coup in Gaza. The Israelis would never do such things. I tell you with certainty that the Israelis care about the Palestinians far more than the Hamas or Fatah leadership does."”

 Yousef lives under constant threat because he has dared to speak out about violence in the Islamic world. His criticism of radical Islam has earned him numerous death threats from angry Islamists who want to shut him up.   "That [dying]'s not the worst thing that can happen to you. I'm OK with it, I'm not afraid.”

Also Featuring:

 

Amil Imani-  Amil Imani is an Iranian-American pro-democracy activist, who works to educate the American people about the threat posed by radical Islam, and works on behalf of freeing Iran from its theocratic rules, and behalf of the civil rights of apostates from Islam throughout the world who often suffer violence and threats at the hands of Islamists. Mr. Imani is also a columnist, a poet, a literary translator, a novelist, an essayist, and a political analyst. He is a regular contributor to the New Medial Journal, the American Thinker, Faith Freedom International, and the Iranian Online magazine, Iranian.com.

 

EMET, Iranian Dissidents speak to Congressional Members, Staff

On Tuesday, February 23rd, Endowment for Middle East Truth President and Founder Sarah Stern had the opportunity to speak to a select group, which included 3 members of Congress and numerous congressional staffers regarding the Iranian “Green” movement and the importance of supporting Iranian dissidents. The following are her remarks:

“Today, we are living in a time when the entire free Western world, as we know it, is being threatened by a brutal, tyrannical regime in Iran with nuclear and hegemonic ambitions. They have been THE destabilizing influence in the Middle East, responsible for the equipping, recruitment and training of Hezbollah and Hamas. Southern Lebanon has now become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hezbollah, and Gaza has become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hamas.

Ever since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime had declared war on America. Its first act was the taking hostage of 53 American embassy officials in 1979, In 1983, it bombed our marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen. No one doubts that it was responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing, commanded by the Blind Sheik Omar-Abdul Al Rahman. This regime is like a hydra , a many-headed monster, stretching  its grasp into Iraq and Afghanistan, where they have been responsible for the manufacture and shipment of IEDs, heavy arms, and advanced roadside bombs, and where they have been responsible for supporting elements of the  Iraqi insurgency, both Sunni and Shiite, alike.

This past Friday, February 19th, a report just came out from the International Atomic Energy Agency that said it had discovered an additional 460 pounds of low enriched uranium, one-third more than Iran has previously disclosed. According to a report in this Saturday’s New York Times, the amount of enriched uranium that the mullahs now possess is sufficient-with added purification-to make an atomic bomb.

This crazed, theocratic regime thinks it will bring the coming of the twelfth Imam-the Messiah- by using these weapons against America and its allies. They have made their intentions perfectly clear.

Yet: there are beautiful, freedom loving dissidents in the street who are crying out for our support to overthrow the mullahs and to replace the regime with a Western styled democracy. Since the fraudulent result of the June 12th elections have been announced, they have bravely taken to the streets, risking everything, even their very lives. Many of these young freedom fighters are disappearing at the hands of the Basij, never to be heard from again. They are being tortured, raped and summarily executed.

Natan Sharansky has said that the basic lesson of his lifelong struggle for freedom was for the oppressed to find the inner strength to confront evil, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in freedom, it is our obligation to find the moral clarity to be able to see evil.

We feel that there we have a moral imperative for America, once again, to obtain the moral clarity it once had, when Ronald Reagan had called us “the shining  city on the Hill”, a beacon for freedom loving people everywhere. If we cannot be that, then we have simply forgotten everything that America stands for.”

Sarah also had the honor of introducing two Iranian dissidents who spoke to congressional staff about the many challenges currently faced by protestors, and what the U.S can do to further its supports for human rights and democracy in Iran.

 

Are 20th Century Rules of Warfare Germane to 21st Century Conflicts ?

David Benjamin Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col.	Hudson Institute scholar and international organizations expert John Fonte	Prominent Washington, DC attorney Nathan Lewin	Professor Jeremy Rabkin from George Mason University	Professor Amichai Cohen from American University and has a Ph.D. from law from Yale University

Are Twentieth Century Rules of Warfare Germaine for the Nature of Twenty-First Century Conflicts?  

By Sarah N. Stern

The Geneva Convention of 1949, and most of the corpus of legal protocols of international warfare, generally had come about in the wake of the vast humanitarian atrocities of World War II, committed at the hands of the state, and the shallowness of the Nuremberg defense.  The entire body of laws of warfare that Western liberal democracies are informed by, today, are essentially humanitarian laws that had been brought about to defend the innocent civilian in the wake of atrocities committed by the over-riding power of the state.

Today, however, we are faced primarily with the phenomena of non-uniformed, non-state actors who hide in densely populated urban centers, and use those civilians as human shields in which to launch attacks.  How is the state, any state, in this new age of warfare, supposed to defend their civilian population, which, according to Article 51 of the UN Charter is a vital responsibility of the nation state?

Western liberal democracies are now under assault, not only by these non state actors, but by an alliance and a congruency of forces between the non-state combatant  and  the institutions of international jurisdiction, such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the International Red Cross, who seem to be stuck in this old paradigm.  The twentieth century paradigm regards the state as the primary source of belligerency against the helpless civilian, but what about in  the case of many, if not most 21st century  conflicts today, when the person wearing civilian’s clothes is not necessarily so innocent, but is simply not wearing a uniform, and who claims allegiance to a greater cause, just not the state?

Are these institutions of international jurisdiction capable of rendering an objective and unbiased judgment ? Or are they stymied by an outdated paradigm, or by a certain zeitgeist, that looks at the machinery of the state as all-powerful against a hapless civilian, even when the civilian might be involved in lethal terrorist activity and has an allegiance to a higher calling with hegemonic aspirations? Have these institutions become political forums for assaulting Western liberal democracies, such as the United States and Israel, and the rule of law that exists within those liberal democracies, when they should be focusing, rather, on the  real human atrocities of Darfur, Rwanda or Yugoslavia?    

On January 26th, EMET held a riveting policy seminar discussing these highly critical issues.  Our  illustrious panel included  Lt. Col. David Benjamin , a specialist in international law for the Israeli Defense Forces Military Advocate General’s Corps, (ret), John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, and the Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for American Common Culture, Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, Prominent Washington DC Attorney Nat Lewin, who is currently an Adjunct Professor  at Columbia University Law School, and Dr. Amichai Cohen, Visiting Professor at American University, and Professor of International Law at Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel.

During the seminar, a lively discussion ensued about whether or not the entire corpus of international law is at all relevant for today’s conflicts. Nathan Lewin had actually expressed the view that virtually none of legal precedent of how to conduct warfare is relevant for today’s conflicts.

Both of the Israelis on the panel expressed  reverence for international legal precedent and felt that it is Israel’s obligation to wrestle with these weighty problems  every day with gravity and with care.  Or, as Lieutenant Colonel David Benjamin who for the last seventeen years has been literally in the trenches as part of Israel’s legal advocate corps had put it, “We have a moral obligation to fight in the most humane way possible, and still manage to survive and to win….And we have.”

(For a complete transcript of the proceedings, please click here.)

 

 

“ Ethics in the Field” A Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Policy Seminar in Response to the Goldstone Report

On Wednesday October 29th, The Endowment for Middle East Truth hosted IDF Reserve Colonel Bentzi Gruber, before a packed room of congressmen, staffers and community members. Col. Gruber is currently Vice–Commander of an armored division, a position that followed other significant posts of command in the course of more than 20 years in the IDF Reserves. He spoke about the moral purity of the decisions of the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas’ use of urban population centers to harbor terrorists, their use of children as human shields, Red Crescent Ambulances to transport Hamas weapons and terrorists, and the elaborate system of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza which Hamas use to transport weapons and terrorists.

Col. Gruber began his presentation with an examination of the threat possed from Gaza which led directly to Operation Cast Lead, including the expansion of smuggling tunnels used by terrorists from Egypt to Gaza, and the more than 22,000 guns, 5.5 million rounds of ammunition, and 140,000 pounds of explosives. Col. Gruber also described the vast increase in rocket and mortar attacks suffered by Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza. In 2002, Israelis suffered from 661 rocket or mortar attacks a year. By 2008 that number had increased to 2,735 attacks per year leading directly to the necessity of Operation Cast Lead.

The colonel went into great deal in an effort to describe the ethical and practical constraints under which young IDF soldiers and reservists must operate while attempting to prevent terror attacks.  On average, he explained,  a young soldier loaded down with weight, and often exhausted, had only 8 seconds to make the determination of whether to fire upon a terrorist, and if so, with what weapon? How do IDF soldiers make those decisions?

First and foremost, Col. Gruber said, was the requirement of distinction, to prevent harm from coming to innocent people. Col. Gruber explained the great difficulty of in determining the terrorist enemy from the civilian population when terrorists disguise themselves as, and hide among, the general population. Secondly, was the importance of necessity. The IDF, Col. Gruber said, instructed its soldiers to only use the smallest amount of force necessary to complete its mission. In many cases this meant that soldiers must risk their own lives rather than utilize high-tech weaponry like artillery or helicopter-launched missiles.  Finally, and most controversially, is the requirement of proportion. Here, Col Gruber remarked, a soldier must weigh the potential for civilian casualties, against the danger posed by the terrorist being targeted. Col Gruber showed a number of aerial videos of terrorists running into buildings and among crowds the moment they hear an Israeli missile being launched, knowing that the Israeli pilots will steer the weapon away rather than strike the target surrounded by civilians. Colonel Gruber also explained that for the Israeli Defense Forces, their goal is to preserve life. “We are not a judge,” he told the audience, “we do not punish. We can only protect for the future.” That means, he explained, that when it came to making the decision to fire, they could not take into account previous attacks a terrorist had committed, only the imminent risk of future casualties.
Col. Gruber also discussed some of the War crimes violations conducted by Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Operation Cast Lead campaign. He showed video of terrorists utilizing small children as human shields, snatching them up and dragging them across streets to avoid Israeli fire, before tossing them to the ground when they had reached safety. He also showed video of how Palestinian terrorists utilize UNRWA ambulances as terrorist troop carriers, and ammunition carriers, explaining that when Hamas took power in Gaza, they fired all the ambulance drivers, and replaced them with their own people in order to expand this tactic.

Col Gruber went into some detail, about the process by which the IDF announces and identifies its targets, including the dropping of leaflets days before the actual bombing, followed by phone calls and text messages sent to residents from a specially trained IDF unit minutes before the operation to give a last warning to residents and to insure that no one is home at the time of the strike. The goal, Gruber says, is to reduce the risk to civilians, by allowing them time to flee the area before a military operation.  Despite this, he explained, many times terrorists will put out a call and actually bring civilians to targets, placing them on the roof, knowing that the IDF will not bomb a target with civilians. For this reason, the Israelis have invented a practice known as “knocking on the roof,” where they are able to fire a relatively harmless projectile at the corner of the building, to show the seriousness of their intent and get civilians to flee the target area before an operation.

Col. Gruber also went through the actual statistics of Operation Cast Lead, by which 709 known and identified terrorists were killed as opposed to only 295 identified non-combatants, some of which, he said may have been Palestinians who died of natural causes, and were being included in statistics to vilify the IDF. He pointed to cases where Palestinians had announced the names of non-combatants who had been killed, and the IDF was able to verify that the person in question was in fact still alive. Col. Gruber compared the IDF’s successful efforts to limit civilian casualties to American combat action in Bosnia, where only one combatant target had been killed for every ten civilian casualties.
Speaking directly about the recently issued Goldstone report, Col. Gruber said he’d read the entire document and was left with the feeling that it did not in any way reflect the actual situation on the ground. “This was not the war which I fought,” he stated.

Taking questions, Col. Gruber was asked why the media had failed to report on these videos of terrorists using human shields, or of the great efforts the IDF had gone to prevent civilian casualties. Col. Gruber said that while getting the word out was important, particularly in the media, the real purpose for the ethical rules and requirements the IDF had was not about propaganda. “The value of the ethics code,” he told the audience,” is for us [the IDF], not for the media.”