Jonathan Tobin Writes: Ten years ago this week, the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. Nine days later he was murdered–beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Before being killed, he was forced to make a statement on a video that the terrorists subsequently distributed to the press. Though he was forced to make criticisms of the United States, he died expressing pride in his identity. “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,” he said.

Pearl’s abduction and murder was a heinous crime that came to symbolize the barbarity at the heart of the Islamist movement. But Pearl’s final words, though spoken under duress and with the shadow of death hanging over him, are also a symbol of the spirit of a people that hate cannot extinguish.

Ten years after Pearl’s death, there are many in this country who believe the “war on terror” is something for the history books, put on a shelf and forgotten. Al-Qaeda has received severe blows. Mohammad was subsequently arrested and after much legal wrangling, will eventually face trial before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay for his role in Pearl’s death as well as the 9/11 attacks. But the terrorists are still out there and, with their allies the Taliban still holding their own in Afghanistan, hold out hope for a revival of their cause.

Even more to the point, Islamists who sympathize with Pearl’s killers and share much of their ideology–such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Palestinian group Hamas–are on the upswing. The Brotherhood controls Egypt’s new parliament with other Islamists while Hamas appears poised to expand its sway over Palestinian society from Gaza to the West Bank via a unity pact with Fatah.

The anniversary of Pearl’s abduction should remind us that those who spread hatred of the West and of the Jews are generally not satisfied with merely talking about killing Jews. These groups pose a direct threat to world peace, and the United States must not be gulled into seeing them as people with whom we can do business. For them, Daniel Pearl’s admission of his Jewish identity and his ties with the people and the land of Israel justified his death. For us, they are an expression of pride.

Reuters Reports: After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.

As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.

It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.

NYT Reports: The federal government on Thursday escalated its campaign to stanch the flow of what it says is dirty money to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Prosecutors filed a civil suit aimed at financially punishing American and Lebanese businesses that the government charges were behind a Hezbollah-controlled global network that laundered huge sums in South American cocaine proceeds.

The court action, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks nearly half a billion dollars in penalties from three Lebanese financial organizations — the now-defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank and two Beirut-based money exchange houses — and 30 auto dealers in the United States. The $480 million in penalties is the sum of the drug proceeds that are alleged to have been laundered; the government is also seeking to freeze and seize assets traceable to those companies.

The suit represents the latest effort by the Obama administration to disrupt the financial network that sustains Hezbollah, an organization that the American government has long considered a terrorist group but that has become the pre-eminent military and political power in Lebanon.

In February, after a six-year investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Treasury Department forced the closing of the Lebanese Canadian Bank and the sale of its untainted assets to a new owner.

It charged the bank with assisting a handful of account holders in a scheme to wash drug money for Colombian cartels by mixing it with the proceeds of used cars bought in the United States and sold in Africa. The government said that the cash was then flown to Lebanon and deposited first into exchange houses named in Thursday’s civil suit and then into the Lebanese Canadian Bank, with Hezbollah taking a cut of the profits.

The man accused of being the drug kingpin at the center of that case, Ayman Joumaa, was indicted on Tuesday in Virginia on federal charges that he trafficked drugs and laundered proceeds not only for the Colombian cartels, but also for the murderous Mexican gang Los Zetas. His whereabouts are unknown.

Hezbollah has dismissed the American charges as propaganda. A lawyer for Lebanese Canadian Bank’s former owners has denied wrongdoing, as have the exchange houses.

A New York Times examination published Wednesday found evidence that the now-defunct bank was a money-laundering hub for Hezbollah that went far beyond just the Joumaa-linked drug scheme. The degree to which Hezbollah’s business had come to suffuse the bank’s operations emerged as the bank’s untainted assets were being sold, with American blessings, to Société Générale de Banque au Liban, known as SGBL.

AP via Breitbart Reports: A crisis in relations looked set to deepen after a House-Senate negotiating panel agreed to freeze $700 million in U.S. aid to Pakistan until it gives assurances it is helping fight the spread of improvised explosive devices in the region.

Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, and the cutback announced is only a small proportion of the billions in civil and military assistance it gets each year.

But it could presage greater cuts as calls grow in the United States to penalize Islamabad for failing to act against militant groups and, at worst, helping them, following the secret U.S. raid on a Pakistan military town in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed.

Home-made bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are among militants’ most effective weapons against U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan as they struggle to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

Many are made using ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer smuggled across the border from Pakistan. The freeze on U.S. aid was agreed as part of a defense bill that is expected to be passed this week.

The NYT Reports: The Central Intelligence Agency has vacated an air base in western Pakistan that it had been using for drone strikes against militants in the country’s tribal areas, the Pakistani military said on Sunday.

Pakistan had ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi air base in protest over NATO airstrikes that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan on Nov. 26. Pakistan has also blocked all NATO logistical supplies from crossing the border into Afghanistan since the clash.

Pentagon and Obama administration officials declined to comment publicly on the departure from the Shamsi air base.

But a senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the drone operations at Shamsi were classified, said that vacating the base would not end American counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. “The United States retains robust capabilities to fight Al Qaeda and its militant allies,” the official said. “Our operations will continue.”

Pakistani officials have repeatedly accused NATO forces of deliberately attacking the Pakistani soldiers at two military check posts; American officials have said the airstrikes were an unfortunate accident.

In response to the attacks, Pakistan gave the C.I.A. 15 days to vacate the Shamsi base, which is about 200 miles southwest of the city of Quetta in Baluchistan Province. Inter Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistani military, said the last flight carrying American personnel and equipment left the base on Sunday. “The base has been taken over by the army,” the agency’s statement said.

While United States officials do not comment publicly on drone operations against militants who plan attacks on Afghanistan from havens in the Pakistani tribal areas, operations had been reduced at the Shamsi air base since May, when a Navy Seal commando raid killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad. The United States also carries out drone strikes from bases in Afghanistan.

After the Bin Laden raid, Pakistan insisted that the C.I.A. shut down its operations at the Shamsi base, but it later relented, permitting scaled-down operations.

Fox News Reports: Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation’s Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded  at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of alleged plots targeting the military has  grown significantly since then. Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against  the U.S. military since Sept. 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have  been since mid-2009.  Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who is  being held for the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric  Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late  September. The two men exchanged as many as 20 emails, according to U.S.  officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security  Committee, Connecticut independent Sen.  Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a “direct target of violent  Islamist extremism” within the United States.

(Read more at Fox News)

NPR Reports: Nearly 3.5 million holiday travelers are expected to board planes this Thanksgiving weekend. Many dread the long lines and invasive procedures of security checkpoints. The Transportation Security Administration hopes to improve their experience — it’s considering devices that would let passengers keep their shoes on through security checks.

Air travelers have only recently mastered the art of sliding out of coats, pulling out laptops and posing for an x-ray photoshoot in a full-body scanner. But a change to U.S. security procedures could come soon. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said recently that passengers will get to keep their shoes on in the near future.

“That would definitely be convenient,” says traveler Brian Wolfe, as he unlaces his ankle-length suede boots at Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport.

The TSA is considering devices that would save Wolfe the trouble, but still detect threats. Shoes became a concern in 2001, when would-be terrorist Richard Reid made it onto a Miami-bound flight with explosives in his sneakers.

The TSA has received numerous bids for devices that scan passengers’ shoes as they wear them. One of the competing products is IDO Security’s Magshoe, which can be found in hundreds of airports and cruise ships around the world.

“As long as you’re still when you step onto the machine, it immediately reads the area from the soles of your shoes, midway up your calf. And then you step off the machine,” says Michael Goldberg, the president of the Israel-based company. “You’ll get a green or a red, which is a go/no-go signal.”

Morpho Detection, part of the France-based Safran group, is another company vying for the bid. Unlike the Magshoe, prototypes of its ShoeScanner can detect chemical compounds in addition to metal objects.

“It detects a wide variety of explosive and in fact, non-explosive, threats,” says spokesperson Steve Hill.

Morpho’s device scans shoes in three different ways, but Hill says the U-shaped ShoeScanner is easy to use.

“As the passenger’s standing in this taco shell, if you will, there are plastic doors that are closed in front of him or her,” he says.”And when the screening process of 8 to 12 seconds is complete, the doors either open or remain closed, if there’s an alarm condition that’s detected.”

But shoe scanners could make airport security even more frustrating for passengers, says Steve Lott, of the Air Transport Association, a trade group for the airline industry.

“If we continue to add these reactive patches to an old system, it just bogs down the whole process,” he says, “and it becomes very inefficient.”

But for those who think current security procedures are too invasive, shoe scanners may be a step in the right direction.

The Op-ed was written by Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director of the “U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.” Ruebner himself has 139 followers on Twitter, and the group for whom he works has 1,981 followers, plus another 1,492 likes on Face book. So I am not exactly sure how well funded they are or perhaps that but for their agenda, few in the USLeft would at all look at them. Regardless, the well respected The Hill ran the following op-ed which between others reads:

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is admirably legislating against U.S. arms sales to Bahrain, the autocratic Gulf kingdom which has killed at least 30 protesters during the Arab Spring. To suppress protests, Bahrain has arrested more than 1,600 protesters, has fired 2,500 from their jobs, and is handing down harsh jail terms to medical personnel who treated injured protesters. This brutal repression of Bahraini human rights led Wyden to introduce a resolution to prohibit U.S. weapons sales to Bahrain until it meets stringent human rights criteria, helping to generate enough political pressure so that the Obama Administration has delayed implementation of its shameful decision last month to sell $53 million of weapons to Bahrain.

“Selling weapons to a regime that is violently suppressing peaceful civil dissent and violating human rights is antithetical to our foreign policy goals and the principle of basic rights for all that the U.S. has worked hard to promote,” Wyden argued.

While this principle should apply to all U.S. weapons sales, it should be even more strictly adhered to when U.S. taxpayers are funding weapons sales through military aid. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, scheduled to receive $30 billion in taxpayer-financed weapons between 2009 and 2018, and also violently suppresses nonviolent Palestinian protest and commits grave human rights violations against Palestinians living under its illegal 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.”

Comments is up you to friends.

The following was my Op-Ed at Yeshiva World News Sunday afternoon

Before it was even clear if Democrat Congressperson Gabrielle Giffords survived the shooting, members of the media and press were already pointing to Palin and to Anti-Obamacare rhetoric that caused the shooting.

Let us put aside the fact that Giffords was only one of nineteen Dems to vote last week against Pelosi being Speaker, in addition to Giffords owning a gun and asking Obama to send troops to the border. Instead, let us – like “professional” media people ate doing – play politics when the blood is still being collected from the scene, and ask the following:

• When debating with Liberals as to why we don’t focus on the most likely suspects of international terrorists, such as radical, young, male Muslims, the Left points to the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 as “proof” that Whites also commit terror acts, and as such everyone needs to be treated as equal suspects. Indeed, Saturday’s story plays into this theme. But it begs the question: If three mass terror acts by Whites in a span of fifteen years (including the 1999 Columbine massacre) is enough to keep Whites as ongoing suspects at airports, etc, how many more terror acts and plots would it take for Radical Muslims to commit before they are treated as potential threats, and perhaps 9-1 threats versus Whites?

• After Arizona passed its tough Immigration Laws, rioting and vandalism broke out, including the smearing of swastikas on Arizona’s Capital. The smearing “was sparked by the newly signed anti-illegal-immigration law,” reported a news site. The questions is: When are the actions of politicians – such as being tough on illegal immigration – at fault for “sparking” violence, and when are opponents of a law – say opponents of Obamacare, a law supported by Giffords – at fault for violence?

• Similarly, members of the Left, after 9/11, instead of blaming radicals for the acts, were asking “why do they hate us?,” as if it is America who needs to correct its ways not to be hated. Will Democrats – in the wake of the shooting – ask “why do they (some in the American population) hate us?” or will Palin, Limbaugh, opponents of Obamacare, supports of the Arizona Immigration law, continued to be faulted for the shooting? If it will be the latter, when will the Left stop blaming the USA for the 9/11 and other attacks, and instead blame those who drive others to commit the acts and/or blame those who actually to it?

In closing: as of this point, I don’t think that the Saturday shooting was driven by a sane, young person who opposed from the Right the Congressperson’s political acts. However, the above questions are asked only in the context as how the Left is spinning the story as of now.

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Politico’s Mike Allen notes that while Repub blame the new (Obama) administration for the X-Mas day Terror plot, “Republican lawmakers, candidates, pundits and commentators — and the Bush administration — blamed the CLINTON administration for 9/11.” In other words, Republicans can’t have it both ways.

Well, not exactly.

1) The 9/11 attacks took place in early September of the new administration, vs. The X-Mas day thing took place in late December of a new administration, which gave the Obama people 2 and a half more months to take ownership of America’s intelligence systems and community.

2) Team Bush took over an America which had a destroyed intelligence community and a country that was zero-to-none focused on fighting terror, therefore it is open for debate how much more Bush’s people should or could have done to increase America’s terror vigilance, in time to stop 9/11. Team Obama however, scaled back dramatically the terror war, therefore anything and everything that takes place on this front is clearly the blame or credit of the new administration.

3) I agree that 9/11 is clearly the fault of Team Clinton, and I have a hard time getting my Dem friends to agree with me on this. So… If Dems blame the X-mas incident on Bush in exchange for finally admitting that Clinton is responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 2,700 people, then I am all ready to agree that Bush is responsible for the NWA incident.

In conclusion: ignoring and/or downplaying the terror threat only increases the possibility of more terror attacks, regardless which administration is at the helm of the USA.

By now you sure have heard of the new airline regulation which prohibits people from standing in the aisle; using the bathroom; and to be covered with a blanket during the last 60 minutes of a flight’s route.

This comes in result of the attempted attack on the NWA flight, where a 23 year-old went to the bathroom in the last hour of the flight to prepare his explosive device, then when he was back at his seat, covered himself with a blanket to conceal that he is igniting a device.

This new regulation is crazy to the least, psychotic to its worst. Because God-forbid if a terrorist does try doing the same thing in the future, he will do his shtick 90 minutes before landing, instead of 40 minutes before. So what exactly was gained by this new rule?

Furthermore, if someone will try it three hours before landing, will we altogether prohibit blankets from being on planes? Or… will airlines lock and remove all the restrooms and replace them with a few more passenger seats?

Implementing these rules, gives the impression that the ability of terrorists carrying out attacks in mid-flight has to do with blankets and bathrooms, and not that authorities ignore the real problem. Namely, that more than most terrorists’ acts are carried out by young men from middle eastern countries, and/or with Muslim names.

Instead of taking away my blanket or prohibiting me from using the John, authorities should focus 80% of their work on the usual suspects rather than driving crazy all of America.

The Obama Administration, NYC Boss Bloomberg, and Liberal bloggers say that terror suspects need to stand trial in NY because where else if not in the city they committed their crimes should the terrorists be brought to justice?

This – that the perpetrators should stand trial just blocks of where they committed their acts – is the main talking point that we hear from those who support bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to NY to stand trial in a civilian court. But if this is really the underlying reason for bringing KSM to NY, the Defense Department should set up a military commission in the pit at Ground Zero in a temporary building, and place KSM and his buddies to trial there. Why try KSM in a civilian court with all the rights that the court gives?

The answer is simple: bringing KSM to “the place of HIS crime” is NOT the real reason why he will get a day (perhaps years) in the civilain system; it’s just a tactic to get more people on-board this crazy plan by making them feel-good that the proces is taking place “just blocks away” of ground zero. The real reason why KSM is being brought to NY is a dangers approach from President Obama and his team to go back to a pre-9/11 setting, and to “show the world” that we America try terrorists – who want to destroy the American way of life – the same way we treat regular American citizens.

One more thing: why do I keep hearing “the place of their crimes?” Using the word “the place of their terrorist acts” comes across more accurate.

It is a week already since the Hasan attack took place in Ft. Hood, yet President Obama – together with most news reporters and Democrats – still don’t know how to categories the attack. In fact, Obama says maybe Hasan cracked, or as Revira on FoxNews suggested, Hasan might have had a toothache…

Do these people in places of power and news-making think that the American public is stupid? Does the President think that the name Hasan rings Irish to most Americans? Do reporters who spin this story away from Islam think that we, the public, believe that screaming Allah Achbar is some sort yell of joy by a Jew wining a lottery ticket? Do the spinners think that Americans can’t read facts, such as Hasan’s glorifying suicide bombers?

Wake up, Mr. President. You fooled us one time already with your change baloney. Give it up. Every American who has even just low brain voltage knows that the Ft. Hood attack was a gruesome act of Muslim terror, and the American people want you to call it as is.