Tuesday 30 April 2013

AN ex-girlfriend of dead Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev has told how he tried to brainwash her into becoming a Muslim fanatic who hated America.

My boyfriend the bomber

Fanatic's ex: He said I was 'pure' and he took my virginity. I loved him but he slapped me and tried to brainwash me to hate US like he did

Nadine Ascencao
Reprisal fear ... Nadine Ascencao's features have been obscured
Doug Seeburg


Nadine Ascencao, 24, said Tamerlan made her wear an Islamic hijab and pray to Allah and slapped her when she wore Western clothes.


But she was so blindly in love with the handsome boxer who had taken her virginity, she did her utmost to make him happy.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Fanatic ... bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev


Nadine said: “I went to his mosque a couple of times and even looked into converting to make him happy. I thought, ‘This is crazy’ — but I still did it for him.

“Tamerlan had taken my virginity and said he loved me because I was pure and hadn’t been with any other guys. I was in love and scared he’d leave me if I didn’t do what he said. Looking back I had a lucky escape.”

Tamerlan, 26, who with 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar killed three people and injured 260 when they exploded two bombs at the Boston marathon, started dating Nadine in 2006 when she was 17.

During their three-year relationship she watched him change from a cannabis-smoking, party-loving teenager into a violent extremist.

She said: “One minute he’s this funny, normal guy who liked boxing and having fun, the next he is praying four times a day, watching Islamic videos and talking insane nonsense.
“He became extremely religious and tried to brainwash me to follow Islam. Tamerlan said I couldn’t be with him unless I became a Muslim. He wanted me to hate America
like he did.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife Katherine
Convert ... Tsarnaev's wife Katherine, seen wearing Islamic hijab

He wouldn’t let me watch TV or listen to the radio. He’d say, ‘TV is the project of Satan’ and claimed Satan sent us messages through commercial music.”

The couple even stopped having sex after he said it was wrong because they were not married.
Tamerlan, a Chechen who emigrated to the US with his family in 2002, became obsessed with Nadine’s clothes. She said: “He hated my tight trousers and made me wear long skirts. Towards the end I was wearing a hijab.

“He once ripped a pair of my jeans and hit me in the face with them. Tamerlan told me I should only talk to Muslim girls, not other ‘slutty’ girls.” Besotted Nadine moved into a flat in the house where the Tsarnaev family lived to be near Tamerlan.

And she was heartbroken when she learned he was secretly seeing another girl. Her rival was Katherine Russell, a student who was to become Tamerlan’s wife after converting to Islam. Crafty Tamerlan was soon playing the two women off against one another.

Nadine said: “He once made me learn a verse of an Islamic prayer and if I got it wrong he’d say, ‘Well Katherine can do it’.”

marathon bombing
Horrific ... marathon bombing
Dobson Agency


Tamerlan even attacked Nadine when he found her heading off to a friend’s pool party wearing cut-off jeans and a crop top.

She said: “He was shouting and screaming at me. He slapped me across the face really hard.”
Nadine called the police and Tamerlan was arrested and spent a night in the cells. Once out on bail he begged Nadine’s forgiveness.

But as soon as she dropped the charges Tamerlan dumped her and moved in with Katherine. Nadine’s relationship was over and within six months Katherine was pregnant with Tamerlan’s daughter.

Nadine put Tamerlan behind her and barely gave him a second thought until the early hours of April 19 when the FBI turned up at her home asking questions about her ex.

A few hours earlier officers had killed Tamerlan in a shoot-out in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Brother Dzhokhar, who is now in custody, was still on the run.

Nadine, who asked The Sun to obscure her face in photos for fear of reprisals, said: “When they said Tamerlan was dead, I didn’t cry.

“I was more shocked Dzhokhar was involved. He was a nice kid.



Fatah: Murderer of father of five is "The hero, the released prisoner"

This morning, an Israeli father of five Evyatar Borovsky was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist at the Tapuach Junction, north east of the Israeli city Ariel and south of the Palestinian city Nablus in the West Bank.

Fatah's Facebook page is celebrating the murder and glorifying the murderer. Pictures of the terrorist and the victim were posted by Fatah's Facebook administrator and the text calls the murderer: "The hero, the released prisoner, Salam Al-Zaghal."

The following are the texts and pictures from Fatah's Facebook page celebrating the murder:

Fatah's Facebook page administrator:

"A picture of the settler who was killed today at the Al-Za'atara military checkpoint, in south Nablus, by the hero, the released prisoner, Salam As'ad Al-Zaghal from Tulkarem."






Fatah's Facebook page administrator:

"The youth Salam Al-Zaghal who stabbed the settler at the Al-Za'atara military checkpoint comes from the village of Shweika located in the Tulkarem District. He is a released prisoner who sat in the occupation's prisons for 4 years."

Caption on picture:

"Salam Al-Zaghal who stabbed the settler at the Al-Za'atara checkpoint is a released prisoner who sat in the occupation's prisons for 4 years."

Caption on picture:

"Peace upon you, on the day of your birth, on the day of your arrest, and on the day you will go free"

All the above pictures appear on the "main page" of the Facebook of "The Recruitment and Organization Commission" of Fatah.

Glorifying terrorist murderers is official Palestinian Authority policy.


 

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8881

Guardian/AP story on Tunisia’s Jews omits history of antisemitic persecution

An AP story written by Bouzza Ben Bouzza, and published by the Guardian on April 27, entitled ‘Jews ease back into Tunisia for famed pilgrimage‘, reports on a three-day Jewish pilgrimage (which took place over the weekend) to the Ghriba synagogue. Ghriba is the oldest synagogue in N. Africa, and traces its origins to Jewish exiles who fled the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BCE.

Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue Djerba, Tunisia, 1940's
Rabbis at the entrance of El Ghriba synagogue

Djerba, Tunisia, 1940′s

The pilgrimage to the Tunisian island of Djerba – where the ancient synagogue is located – is linked to the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba’Omer, and, in past years, has attracted thousands of Jews from Europe, Israel and the US.

The AP/Guardian story aptly describes some of the more interesting details of the synagogue, such as the following:

The site is rich with legend. The first Jews who arrived were said to have brought a stone from the ancient temple of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians. The stone is kept in a grotto at the synagogue. Women and children descend into the grotto to place eggs scrawled with wishful messages on them.

The report also provides some proper historical context – such as the deadly Islamist attack on the synagogue in 2002 which significantly deterred Jewish participation in the pilgrimage for several years.

At its peak in 2000, about 8,000 Jews came — many from Israel, Italy and France, where they or their forebears had moved over the years. Such crowds haven’t returned since an al-Qaida-linked militant detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue in 2002, killing 21 people, mostly German tourists — and badly jolting the now-tiny Jewish community.

And, the report also includes the following passage accurately citing events during the “Arab Spring” which affected the pilgrimage:

The pilgrimage was called off in 2011 in the wake of Tunisia’s revolution, when major street protests ousted longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia, and some ultra conservative Muslims called Salafis chanted anti-Semitic slogansat their rallies. Last year, the pilgrimage resumed on a tiny scale: Only 100 or so foreigners came. This year, community leaders hope 300 to 500 will have come.

However, the report then provides the following highly selective history of Tunisia’s Jews.

Jews have been living in Djerba since 500 B.C. The Jewish population has shrunk to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove away many Jewish business owners.

First, this truncated history entirely leaves out the oppression of Tunisia’s Jews during the Nazi period.

Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) explains:

In 1940, as Tunisia was subjected Vichy policy discriminatory, anti-Jewish legislation was implemented. By 1942, the Nazi’s were occupying Tunisia arresting Jewish leaders and sending many Jews to North African Nazi camps. According to Robert Satloff, “From November 1942 to May 1943, the Germans and their local collaborators implemented a forced-labor regime, confiscations of property, hostage-takings, mass extortion, deportations, and executions.” At least 160 Tunisian Jews were deported to European death camps.

Moreover, there is much about the roughly 99% decrease in Tunisia’s Jewish population during the latter half of the 20th century that the writer left out.

For instance, per JVL, even before the Six Day War antisemitic policies enacted by the Arab government caused many Jews to flee.

When Tunisia gained independence in 1956, the new government passed a series of discriminatory anti-Jewish decrees. In 1957, the rabbinical tribunal was abolished and a year later the Jewish community councils were dissolved. The government also destroyed ancient synagogues, cemeteries, and even Tunis’ Jewish quarter for “urban renewal” projects.

Additionally, as JVL further explains, it wasn’t Tunisia’s economic policy which drove away Jews but, rather, antisemitic persecution and violence by local Arabs.

During the Six-Day War, Jews were attacked by rioting Arab mobs, while businesses were burned and the Great Synagogue of Tunis was destroyed. The government actually denounced the violence and appealed to the Jewish population to stay, but did not bar them from leaving.

The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel and at least 7,000 more to France. By 1968, the country’s Jewish population had shrunk to around 10,000.

Whilst the Tunisian government may have historically treated their Jewish citizens a bit better than other Arab governments, the antisemitic persecution which largely served as a catalyst for the Jewish exodus certainly mirrors what occurred in the rest of the Middle East – a regional ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands which continues to represent one of the most underreported crimes in recent history.


http://cifwatch.com/

Monday 29 April 2013

Op-Ed: Islam's World War Came to Boston

This article should make you sit up and think long and hard about what is happening to the USA. The willingness of the Tsarnaev brothers to kill the people of the country they had grown up in isn’t a paradox; it’s the point.

After the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Obama asked, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?”

Despite the scholarships and the positive press, the money and the good times that came their way, the Tsarnaevs were never truly part of our communities or our country. As the words of a Jihadist song in Dzhokhar’s playlist go, “Be in this temporary world a stranger/Infidels rule the earth/for the faithful life is torture.”

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were strangers. Tamerlan had an American wife and Dzhokhar had plenty of American friends but they chose to treat a city and a nation that had taken them in as targets in a terrorist war. As infidels who deserved nothing more than to be lied to and killed.

The Tsarnaevs weren’t insane. Nor were they nihilists looking to go out with a bang just for the kicks. Their social media accounts reveal the world of two men who had strong beliefs and commitments. These beliefs and commitments however were not to this country. They were to the Islamic Ummah.

Two months before his killing spree, Tamerlan reproved another Muslim for not believing. Unlike him, Tamerlan believed. What he believed in was not the mere nationalism of a land that he had never lived in. If Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had only wanted Chechen independence, they could have joined the fight there. But if the thought ever crossed their minds, they were reoriented in another direction.

To Americans, the Chechen Jihadists, the Syrian rebels, the Palestinian terrorists, the Afghan Taliban and the Mali Turaeg fighters all represent national struggles. To Muslims, they are all local manifestations of a global struggle between Islam and the world. For the Tsarnaevs, Chechnya wasn’t any different than Afghanistan, Nigeria, Thailand, America or any other theater of battle in a world war. Instead of trying to fight a war in a country he had never seen, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was dispatched or dispatched himself to fight a battle in the country that he knew best.

In Obama’s speech, the willingness of the Tsarnaev brothers to kill the people of the country they had grown up in is a paradox. But it isn’t a paradox; it’s the point.

Communists in America undermined the country not just because they saw it as the greatest villain, but because Communists in every nation were committed to undermining it in order to remake it. Each Communist movement was fighting a local front in a transnational struggle. For Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev their local front was not Chechnya; it was Boston.

Chechnya to the Tsarnaevs represented the Islamic transnationalism of the Jihadist that transcended nations. Their Chechen nationalism, like Hamas’ Palestinian nationalism and the Syrian nationalism of the rebel brigades linked to the Muslim Brotherhood derived from a common Islamic identity. It could have no meaning without Islam.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the marathon massacre not because they were on the outside, but because they were on the inside. Islamic terrorism was their way of expressing their American identity. When they detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, they weren’t doing it as Chechen Muslims, but as American Muslims.
Like Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hasan, they wanted an American identity that would be based on Islam in the same way that Chechen identity was based on Islam. They wanted it because they believed it to be the only possible way of making America over into a country that would reflect their own values.
There is a reason why second and third generation Muslims are more likely to turn terrorist than their immigrant parents. It is because they have become American, British, Canadian and Australian part of the way. They have gone deep enough to begin making a claim on the country. The Western Islamist seeks to align his internal Islamic identity and his external national identity by unifying them through Islamization.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were not fighting for Chechnya at the Boston Marathon. They were fighting against the American infidels who were barring the way to an Islamic America. They were fighting to make America like Chechnya. Islam is not just a religion. It is a political system. You cannot expect a devout Muslim to live as an American, the same way that you could not expect a Communist, Nazi or any other consuming political identity to just keep it private or local. To think that way is to truly misunderstand Islam.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not become radicalized. They became religious. They embraced a transnational ideology which applied not only to them, their mosque or their community, but to the entire world. Eventually the discontinuity between their beliefs and the life of the city around them became too great to be tolerated. And so the Tsarnaevs, inspired in no small part by the Islamist culture that they found on the internet and perhaps at their own radical mosque, set out to resolve the conflict through terrible violence.
The two brothers were showered with educational and financial advantages. The United States took them in as refugees. The City of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar a $2,500 scholarship. Tamerlan aspired to be a boxer and found a woman who loved him enough to take his religion. They lived the good life, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
The liberals who refuse to see what the Tsarnaev brothers stood for passionately believe in the things that they think it will take to make the world a better place. The Tsarnaevs believed that only one thing was necessary; Islam.
Islam was born out of war and terror. It spread through the sword and the slave. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were not the disciples of some imaginary religion of peace, but a religion of war. What they did was horrifying, but not surprising. They were taking part in a world war that had begun over a thousand years ago.
They did not expect to strike the finishing blow; just another blow to bring America closer to the form of submission known as Islam. Like other Muslim terrorists operating in the countless theaters of the world war, from Asia to Africa to the Middle East to Australia and America, they sought to shock and horrify, to break our will to resist and force us to submit.
“He it is who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist.” Koran 61:9
In Boston the infidels resisted the messengers of Mohammed and Allah. They patched up the wounded and saved as many as they could. They hunted down the messengers and shot them. But more will come. They will speak the language of our popular culture and their classmates will remember them as nice young men. No one will understand what caused such nice young men to do it except other nice young men like them who feel the tension between Islam and America inside them waiting to break.

Daniel Greenfield
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/

Sunday 28 April 2013

US Lawmakers Urge Action After Syria Chemical Weapons Report

U.S. lawmakers say America cannot ignore Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons.


Last week, the White House told lawmakers it believes the government of President Bashar al-Assad has used a small quantity of sarin gas, a chemical weapon, in Syria’s bloody civil war. The news prompted strong reaction from legislators that continued Sunday. Speaking on the U.S. television program Meet the Press, Republican Senator John McCain demanded prompt action.


“Arming the [Syrian] rebels, making sure that we help with the refugees, and be prepared with an international force to go in and secure these stocks of chemical and, perhaps, biological weapons. There are a number of caches of these chemical weapons. They cannot fall into the hands of the jihadists."
McCain has also urged establishing a no-fly zone over Syria.

The White House says it wants the United Nations to confirm the U.S. belief that chemical weapons have been used, something President Barack Obama has described as a “red line” that would trigger a U.S. response. Senator McCain says the administration’s posture has failed to stem bloodshed in Syria.

“The president drew red lines about chemical weapons, thereby giving a green light to Bashar Assad to do anything short of that, including [firing] Scud missiles and helicopter gunships, air strikes, mass-executions and atrocities on a scale that we have not seen in a long, long time.”
The United States has provided non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. The Obama administration has resisted calls for direct U.S. military involvement in Syria, saying that President Assad’s rule will end one day regardless of any actions taken by the United States.
But even some of Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress say there is more the United States could do. Congressman Keith Ellison also appeared onMeet the Press.

“I believe the United States could play a greater role in dealing with the humanitarian crisis. I mean, we have spillage and refugees in Jordan in Lebanon, internally-displaced people in Syria. The suffering is intense, and I do not think the world’s greatest superpower, the United States, can stand by and not do anything.”
Republican Congressman Peter King said, having set down a red line in Syria, “something is going to have to be done” once that line is crossed. Neither he nor the Obama administration have specified any actions to be taken.

http://www.voanews.com/

Syrian Army Ordered Use of Chemical Weapons: Defected General

Hizbollah Terrorists Lending Many Hands to Assad's Army

Syria's civil war is slowly but surely “leaking” out to Lebanon, as Hizbullah terrorists aid Syrian army troops

Syria's civil war is slowly but surely “leaking” out to Lebanon, a result of the direct participation by Hizbullah terrorists in the war, assisting Bashar al-Assad'sgovernment forces against Syrian rebels. Hizbullah terrorists have joined Assad's forces in several key battles, including a large battle at Al-Kuseir. According to reports, many Hizbullah terrorists were killed in that battle.

Hundreds of Hizbullah terrorists are now said to be in Syria, stationed in the many Shi'ite villages in bordering Syria. The terrorists act as “security guards” for the government, tamping down incidents of anti-Assad activity, and joining fighting in battles that take place in the area. Many terrorists have been killed in these battles, reports said.

In response to the increased activity by Shi'ite-oriented Hizbullah, the sheikh of the central Bilal bin-Rabah Mosque in Sidon, Ahnad al-Asir, last week announced the establishment of a new Sunni fighting force to defend Sunni communities in Syria.

There were several other instances of organized activity against Hizbullah; a group calling itself “The Free Al-Baqa Brigades” declared that it would work against Hizbullah's activities in Syria, threatening to move the center of their activities from Lebanon's Al-Baka region to Syria. The group called on Sunni Lebanese soldiers to leave their posts, given the control Hizbullah has over the army and the increased activity of Lebanese soldiers sympathetic to Hizbullah in Lebanon, under the direct orders of Iran and with the assistance of the terror group.

In recent months tensions between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in Lebanon have reached new heights, with numerous violent clashes taking place.

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Syrian regime ordered use chemical weapons against the Free Syrian Army during select battles, a defected general told Al Arabiya.


The Syrian government ordered the use chemical weapons against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) during select battles with Syrian regime forces, a defected general told Al Arabiya late Saturday.

Zahir al-Sakit, a former army general from the chemical weapons branch, told Al Arabiyathat he was instructed to use chemical weapons during a regime battle with the FSA in the southwesternarea of Hauran.

Instead, Sakit disobeyed the orders and substituted the chemicals with disinfectant water he called “Javel water.”

“I was given orders to execute the use of poisonous chemicals in caves and tunnels that are used by the Free Syrian Army, but I mixed all chemicals with water and used Javel water instead,” Sakit said.

He said that prior to his defection, no chemical weapons were used on his watch in battles against the FSA.

“I assure you that I ordered all chemical weapons to be buried and I can point out the exact locations of those chemicals,” Sakit told Al Arabiya.

The United States and Britain have previously accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in Damascus after results of the smuggled soil samples showed presence of chemicals that were used in the capital’s suburbs.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday warned Syria that using chemical weapons would be a “game changer,” after the U.S., Israel and Britain all cited signs that the regime attacked with the deadly agent sarin.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of Knesset on Sunday to refrain from voicing concern over the mounting evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria, in an effort to avoid the impression Israel is pushing the international community into armed intervention.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/



 

Bethlehem Marathon: the bit the BBC did not report


Here is another interesting follow-up story to Jon Donnison’s recent article on the subject of the Bethlehem Marathon. It turns out that whilst Donnison (along with the race organisers and the political NGO ‘Gisha’) was criticising the fact that a number of would-be participants in the event from the Gaza Strip were not permitted to cross into Israel, the organisers of this ‘non-political’ marathon had banned Israelis of all ethnic backgrounds and creeds from taking part.
“If The Palestine Marathon had nothing to do with politics, it had everything to do with political warfare. It is likely the first marathon in the history of modern sports that categorically prohibited runners from Israel from taking part, banning Israeli Jews, Muslims and Druse athletes.
Palestinian Olympic committee member Itidal Abdul- Ghani told The Times of Israel on April 22, a day after the race, that “Israelis weren’t welcome to join the marathon while their military occupies Palestinian lands.” Haaretz reported that a number of Israeli runners were turned back and their registration fees returned.”
No doubt Jon Donnison is penning his follow-up article at this verymoment

Jon Donnison’s recent

BBC's Donnison promptes Bethlehem Marathon as non-political event



On April 18th 2013 the Middle East section of the BBC News website featured a report by the BBC Jerusalem Bureau’s Jon Donnison entitled “Israel bars Gaza runners from first West Bank marathon“.
Bethlehem marathon
The report features an unchallenged quote from the Palestinian Olympic Committee spokeswoman.
“The athletes, the race organisers and the Palestinian Olympic Committee have asked the Israeli authorities to reconsider their position but have not received a reply.
“The Israelis should look at this purely as a sporting event. It has nothing to do with politics,” says Samia al-Wazir, the spokeswoman for the Palestinian Olympic Committee.
“This is an event in the West Bank and every Palestinian, not just athletes, should have the right to attend.” ” [emphasis added]
Donnison makes no attempt to verify the accuracy of the claim that the event (due to take place on April 21st) has “nothing to do with politics” for his readers. A quick perusal of the marathon’s website would have been enough to inform him of the fact that the reality is quite different.

http://bbcwatch.org/2013/04/21/


Saturday 27 April 2013

Happy Lag B’Omer

 

Wishing a happy Lag B’Omer to all those celebrating. The pictures below show once-secret hiding caves used during the Bar Kochva Revolt at Hurvat Burgin (Kfar Bish) in the Judean foothills.

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