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Official sources in Jerusalem said "Israel categorically denies the announcement by the prosecutor on the opening of a preliminary examination based on the scandalous request by the Palestinian Authority."   "The PA is not a country and thus there is no cause for the court, even accords to its rules, to undertake such an inquiry. The decision is absurd, even more so given that the PA cooperates with terror organization Hamas, which commits war crimes against Israel – who is fighting terror," added the sources.   Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki welcomed the move and said the Palestinian Authority would cooperate.

In a section summing up Britons’ attitudes to nations outside Europe, the authors noted that “North Korea is viewed most unfavorably (47%), followed by Israel (35%). The number of those viewing Israel unfavorably has increased by 18 points since 2012, presumably in response to the controversial military campaign in Gaza and the civilian casualties it caused, which were prominent in the news at the time the survey was conducted. Iran (33%) is the third most unfavorably viewed country, though its rating is down by 12 points compared with 2012. Pakistan (28%) and Nigeria (21%) complete the top five. The Chatham House study — entitled “Internationalism or Isolationism? British Attitudes Towards the UK’s International Priorities” – was based on a YouGov poll in August which questioned a representative sample of 2,059 adults.

The Obama administration has strained to reconcile the vast counter-terrorism bureaucracy with its policy declarations that the US is not at war with Islam and has attempted, with mixed results, to cultivate a less militarized and security-focused relationship with US Muslims, often preferring the term "countering violent extremism" over "counter-terrorism".In some anti-Islam circles, the removal of the instructional material is infamous and considered evidence of an administration capitulation to Islam – the exact opposite of the concern raised by the Intercept on Wednesday. The Intercept report, by former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain and Josh Meyer, suggested a persistent counter-terrorism atmosphere in which the mixture of Muslim heritage or faith and political activism attracted the scrutiny of US security agencies, despite first amendment protections. It presented the cases of five American activists and attorneys of Muslim heritage who appear to have been targeted for surveillance, at least between 2002 and 2008. None have been charged with a crime.

US Muslim leaders and civil rights groups reacted with fury to the Intercept report.A coalition of 44 civil rights organizations wrote Obama on Wednesday to request a meeting with him, attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director James Comey. "In short, the government’s domestic counterterrorism policies treat entire minority communities as suspect, and American Muslims have borne the brunt of government suspicion, stigma and abuse," reads an open letter issued by a coalition that includes the ACLU, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Arab-American Institute, and dozens of others.In a statement, the law firm Muslim Advocates said the spying, apparently conducted between 2002 and 2008, "confirms the worst fears of American Muslims"."The federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage," the group said. "The report clearly documents how biased training by the FBI leads to biased surveillance."

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, issued a statement comparing the surveillance of Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, named by the Intercept as one of the five surveillance targets, to the infamous surveillance of the Civil Rights Movement."The NSA’s surveillance of Nihad Awad and CAIR fits the same pattern as the FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, and other leaders of the civil rights movement. Then it was based on manufactured suspicions of associations with the Communist party. Now it is seemingly based on unproven claims of tangential associations with Hamas," Warren said.

“The United States has been trying to broker peace in the Middle East for the past 20 years,” wrote the liberal commentator Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, last Tuesday. The following day, CNN reported that the Obama administration ”agreed to Israel’s request to resupply it with several types of ammunition … Among the items being bought are 120mm mortar rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers.” The new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that enabling.

The Cairo Post notes, however, that the allegations against Beshr would be the first incident since the overthrow of the Morsi administration, in which the Egyptian government alleges that a former official has been conspiring with a European country or the United States.

The current President of Egypt, Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi has, however, given an interview before in which he accused the United States of having stabbed Egypt in its back with Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 2013 interview with Larry Weissman, Al-Sisi said: “The people of Egypt are aware of the fact that the USA has stabbed Egypt in the back with the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi. It is nothing that Egypt will easily forget, or forgive”. After receiving a Master’s degree in engineering at Cairo University in 1978, Morsi received a scholarship from the Egyptian government and received his PhD in engineering from University of Southern California, USA, in 1982.

Morsi was reportedly introduced into the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt 1977. It was however, while he was at the campus of University of Southern California that Morsi began to be introduced to the inner core of the “Ikhwan” and to U.S. based, Muslim Brotherhood linked organizations with ties to major U.S. think tanks and Washington, such as WAMY, International Institute of Islamic Thought and others. WAMY and several associated organizations have since “morphed” into the  Council on American – Islamic Relations, CAIR. The transformation came after several leading WAMY members with contacts to the White House were arrested on terrorism-related charges.

It is noteworthy that CAIR entertains close relations with U.S. security adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski and circles around Brzezinski. Several leading members of the so-called Syrian “Transitional National Council” were linked with CAIR when the foreign-backed, attempted subversion of Syria and Libya began in 2011. nsnbc is currently unable to document whether Mohamed Morsi has had direct ties to CAIR, but it is widely assumed that Morsi received strong support from the United States, circles around the Rockefeller Family, and associated think tanks when “The Arab Spring” was unleashed against Northern Africa and the Middle East in 2011.

It is noteworthy that many of the leading members of Syrian Transitional National Council, who first met in Turkey and which was backed by the USA and other core NATO members had direct links to CAIR. The organization’s leadership is known for having close ties to, among others, U.S. security adviser and “Grand Architect” or NATO’s current military-politico strategies, Zbigniev Brzezinski. Or, in other words, to Rockefeller money. U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke commented on the UAE’s anti-terror list, saying: “We have examined the list of organizations that were classified as terrorist groups that was published by the United Arab Emirates a few days ago, and we are aware that two of the organizations on that list are based in the United States. We are trying to get information on the reasons behind this decision”.

The inclusion of CANVAS in the list is widely perceived as a direct slap into the face of NATO covert operations planners, the U.S. State Department and the CIA. CANVAS, a.k.a. DEMOZ has been implicated in U.S.-backed subversion from the former Republic of Yugoslavia to Egypt and Ukraine. In December 2013 the National Security Agency of Kuwait released a social media video that explained the role CANVAS played in promoting dissent in Kuwait. It is noteworthy that virtually identical CANVAS/DEMOZ flyers, instructing people in how to prepare for violent clashes with state authorities were distributed during the Rabaa al-Adweya and Nadah Square sit ins in Egypt and during the armed ouster of the Ukrainian government in February 2014.

Organizations in the following countries outside the United Arab Emirates are affected: * Afghanistan * Algeria * Belgium * Denmark * Egypt * France * Germany * India * Iraq * Italy * Lebanon * Libya * Mali * Norway * Palestine * Pakistan * Philippines * Russian Federation * Saudi Arabia * Sweden * Somalia * Syria * Tunisia * United Kingdom * United States of America * Uzbekistan * Yemen. Affected regions / regional operations: GCC, EU, AL, AU. The list of organizations which the Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates designated as terrorist organizations includes:

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that the Islamic State actually benefits Israel by causing problems for those very states that do actively oppose Israel and support the Palestinians, such as Syria. What the Islamic State is causing in the Middle East is perfectly attuned with the view of the Israeli Right — as best articulated by Oded Yinon in 1982 — which sought to have Israel’s Middle East enemies fragmented and fighting among themselves in order to weaken the external threat to Israel.

Israel’s pro-rebel activities in the Syrian conflict have not been counterproductive in that they have not caused any of Assad’s many Arab enemies to abandon their effort to remove his regime. But it is not apparent that Israel is taking any steps like this regarding the Islamic State, and the United States does not seem to be pressuring it to do so. What this means is that Israel is not really any type of ally of the United States. It does not bend its foreign policy to aid the United States but only acts in its own interest. It takes actions against the Assad regime because the latter is an ally of Iran and provides a conduit for weapons being sent to Israeli’s enemy Hezbollah. Israel’s inaction toward the Islamic State, despite its close proximity, should actually provide a model for the United States to emulate. It shows that the Islamic State should not be regarded as a threat to the faraway United States. And this lesson is further confirmed by the fact that the nearby Islamic countries,  which should be far more endangered than the United States, do not seem to be fighting hard against it. It would seem that the fundamental way for the United States to face significant attacks from the Islamic State is to attack it first, which is exactly what it is now  doing.

Considering the Islamic State is targeting Muslims, the Israeli government does not see it as a significant enemy at this time. And it is reasonable for Israeli leaders to believe that the Islamic State would never move on to attack their country because it will never be able to conquer its major Islamic foes

Conceivably, Israel could covertly support the enemies of Islamic State. Israel has been doing just that in regard to Syria. During the past two years it has launched airstrikes against Assad’s forces which has helped the rebels. Israel takes the position that any attacks on its territory from Syria are the responsibility of the Assad government even if they are made by the rebels. Moreover, just like the United States, Israel has provided training for Syrian rebels. For example, Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir al-Noeimi, currently the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free Syrian Army, secretly trained in Israel in 2013 after being admitted into the country for medical treatment. [See “Report: Commander of Syrian Rebels Trained in Israel, Jewish Press News Briefs,”  Feb. 24, 2014. In regard to Israeli participation in training Syrian rebels, see: Jason Ditz, “Report Claims US, Israeli Trained Rebels Moving Toward Damascus,”  Antiwar.com, Aug. 25, 2013,; Jinan Mantash, “Israeli analyst confirms link between Israel, ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels,” Alakbar English, Oct. 17, 2014.]

It can be argued that if Israel openly entered the fray as a member of the anti-Islamic State coalition, it would be counterproductive. Since many Arabs see Israel as their major enemy, Israel’s involvement in the war would turn them against fighting the Islamic State and maybe even cause some of them to support that militant jihadist group as an enemy of Israel. So it might be understandable that the United States would not demand that Israel participate in the war against the Islamic State, just as it did not expect Israel to fight against Saddam Hussein. Although this might be understandable, if true it would mean that Israel could not really be an ally of the United States in the Middle East because it could not participate in America’s wars in the region, which is the very raison d’état of an ally.

Considering Israel’s inactivity, it is ironic that in the United States it is the supporters of Israel, such as the neoconservatives, who have taken the lead in pushing for a hard-line American military position against the Islamic State. [See Jim Lobe, “Project for a New American Imbroglio,” LobeLog Foreign Policy,  Aug. 28, 2014.]

Needless to say, neither the neocons, nor any other mainstream commentators for that matter, have uttered a word about Israel’s inaction. As Scott McConnell wrote in August in The American Conservative, “over the past two generations thousands of articles have been written proclaiming that Israel is a ‘vital strategic ally’ of the United States, our best and only friend in the ‘volatile’ Middle East. The claim is a commonplace among serving and aspiring Congressmen. I may have missed it, but has anyone seen a hint that our vital regional ally could be of any assistance at all in the supposedly civilizational battle against ISIS?” However, it would be far wiser for the United States to follow the example of Israel here — and, in fact, always follow the example of Israel by adhering to national interest (that of the United States, of course, not Israel) — than to follow the advice of those American supporters of Israel who have, because of their influence on American Middle East policy, involved the United States in endless wars creating a regional environment beneficial to Israel from the perspective of the Israeli Right.

Abu Talal said pro-government forces are trying to take the village of Handarat, which is located just north of Aleppo and next to one of the last roads connecting the city’s rebels with reinforcements and food brought in from the Turkish border. The fall of that road would constitute a major blow to Assad’s opposition in a three-year-old civil war that has killed nearly 200,000 people.

The regime has stepped up aerial bombardment of the rebel-held suburbs of eastern Damascus, as well as in areas near the city of Idlib. Government helicopters have dropped some 45 barrel bombs in recent days in the countryside near Idlib to halt rebel movements near two military bases on a strategic road connecting Aleppo with Hama, to the south, said Abdullah Jabaan, a resident of Idlib and journalist for the Syria Live News Network, which supports the opposition.

Meanwhile, Assad’s military has largely avoided territory held by Islamic State militants, instead striking moderate rebel factions that could be slated to receive weapons and military training from the coalition, said Riad Kahwaji, chief executive of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “If the regime manages to fully besiege Aleppo at this time, they would block and undermine the plans of the alliance to use the opposition, or at least present the opposition, as the ultimate ground force to deal with ISIS,” he said. A successful routing of those rebels could position the Assad regime as the only force in Syria capable of fighting the Islamic State, he said.

Meanwhile John Kerry is doing fancy footwork, explaining the legislation away, in a letter to Javad Zarif. we remain fully committed to the sanctions lifting provided for under the JCPOA. We will adhere to the full measure of our commitments, per the agreement. At the State Department briefing Monday, reporters questioned why the legislation didn’t amount to a violation of the Iran Deal:

Here is some more blindness in the media on these issues. NPR has continually deceived listeners about Sheldon Adelson’s agenda, and it did so again yesterday. Adelson is a leading opponent of the Iran Deal, as a supporter of Israel. He has called on President Obama to nuke Iran. But in a report on Adelson’s purchase of a Nevada newspaper, NPR once again leaves out the Israel angle of Adelson’s interests. It says blandly: Adelson is also prominently involved in national politics. That link is to a story about his on-line gambling concerns. But as Cory Bennett of the Hill said on CSPAN the other day– something I did not know till now– Iran is said to have undertaken a cyber-attack on Sheldon Adelson’s casino last year because of his call to nuke Iran.  The alleged cyber-attack:  Investigators determined that hacker activists were the ones who broke into servers belonging to the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in February 2014, costing the company more than $40 million in damages and data recovery costs, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thusday citing a report by cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks. The hackers were acting in retaliation to the company’s CEO, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s statement that Obama should detonate a nuclear bomb in Tehran, which stirred controversy around the world. This is the battle behind the headlines. And in a transparent effort to get Adelson’s backing, as well as that of the Andrew Herenstein’s of the world, the neoconservative favorite in the Republican race, Senator Marco Rubio, has vowed to tear up the Iran deal on his first day in the White House if he’s elected. Thus the ideological war over how much the U.S. should support Israel is playing out in global terms; and our media are shying away from the story.

Turkey and the ex-governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, would like to be present when the city is taken from Daesh, hoping to be able to prevent it from being occupied by the Popular Mobilisation Forces (al-Hashd al-Shaabi), the great majority of whom are Shia. It’s clear that everyone is dreaming – illegitimate President Massoud Barzani believes that no-one will question his annexation of the oil fields of Kirkuk and the Sinjar mountains – the leader of the Syrian Kurds, Saleh Muslim, imagines that he will soon be President of an internationally-recognised pseudo-Kurdistan – and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presumes that the Arabs of Mosul long to be liberated and governed by the Turks, as they were under the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, in Ukraine, Turkey has deployed the International Islamist Brigade that it officially created last August. These jihadists, who were extracted from the Syrian theatre, were divided into two groups as soon as they arrived in Kherson. Most of them went to fight in Donbass with the Cheikh Manour and Djokhar Doudaïev Brigades, while the best elements were infiltrated into Russia in order to sabotage the Crimean economy, where they managed to cut all electricity to the Republic for 48 hours.

The terrorist forces We could deal here with the terrorist organisations, but that would involve pretending, like NATO, that these groups are independent formations which have suddenly materialised from the void, with all their salaries, armement and spare parts. More seriously, the jihadists are in fact mercenaries in the service of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – it seems that the United Arab Emirates have almost completely withdrawn from this group – to which we must add certain multinationals like Academi, KKR and Exxon-Mobil. Turkey continues its military deployement in Bachiqa (Irak), in support of the Kurdish forces of illegitimate President Massoud Barzani who, although his mandate is terminated, refuses to leave power and organise new elections. When the Iraqi government demanded that Turkey remove its troops and tanks, Ankara responded that it had sent its soldiers to protect the training forces deployed in Iraq according to an earlier international agreement, and that it had no intention of withdrawing them. It then added even more, bringing the number of troops involved to at least 1,000 soldiers and 25 tanks. Iraq referred its case to the United Nations Security Council and the Arab League, without provoking the slightest reaction anywhere.

The Coalition has announced that it has carried out new bombing missions and destroyed a number of Daesh installations, but these allegations are unverifiable and even more doubtful insofar as the terrorist organisation has not made the slightest protest. From this disposition, we may conclude that France may elaborate its own strategy, but that the United States can re-assert control at any time.

Saudi Arabia united its mercenaries in Riyadh in order to constitute a delegation in readiness for the next round of negotiations organised by the NATO Director of Political Affairs, US neo-Conservative Jeffrey Feltman. The Saudis did not invite the representatives of Al-Qaïda, nor those of Daesh, but only the Wahhabist groups who are working with them, like Jaysh al-Islam or Ahrar al-Sham. Therefore, in theory, there were no « terrorist groups », as listed by the UNO Security Council, present at the conference. However, in practice, all the participants were fighting with, in the name of, or alongside Al-Qaïda or Daesh without using their label, since most of these groups are directed by personalities who once belonged to Al-Qaïda or Daesh. Thus, Ahrar al-Sham was created just before the beginning of the events in Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood and the principal leaders of Al-Qaïda, drawn from personalities close to Osama bin Laden. Continuing to act as they had before the Russisan intervention, the participants agreed to a « political solution » which would start with the abdication of the democratically-elected President Bachar el-Assad, and continue with a sharing of power between themselves and the Republican institutions. Thus, although they have lost all hope of a military victory, they persist in counting on the surrender of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Since the representative of the Syrian Kurds was not invited to the conference, we may conclude that Saudi Arabia considers the project for a pseudo-Kurdistan as distinct from the future of the rest of Syria. Let us note in passing that the YPG has just created a Syrian Democratic Council in order to reinforce the illusion of an alliance between Selah Muslim’s Kurds and the Sunni and Christian Arabs, when in reality, they are fighting each other on the ground. In any case, there is no doubt that Riyadh is supporting Turkey’s efforts to create this pseudo-Kurdistan as a place of banishment for « its » Kurds. Indeed, it is now confirmed that Saudi Arabia supplied the logistical aid necessary for Turkey to guide the air-air missile which shot down the Russian Soukhoï 24. Finally, Qatar is still pretending that it has not been involved in the war since the abdication of Emir Hamad, two years ago. Nonetheless, proof is accumulating of its secret operations, all of which are directed not against Damascus, but against Moscow – thus, the Qatari Minister of Defence, in Ukraine at the end of September, bought a number of sophisticated Pechora-2D anti-air weapons which the jihadists could use to threaten Russian forces. More recently, he organised a false-flag operation against Russia. Still in Ukraine, at the end of October, he bought 2,000 OFAB 250-270 Russian fragmentation bombs and dispersed them on the 6th December over a camp of the Syrian Arab Army, in order to accuse the Russian Army of blundering. In this case too, despite the proof, there was no reaction from the UNO.

The patriotic forces The Russian forces have been bombing the jihadists since the 30th September. They plan to continue at least until the 6th January. Their action is aimed principally at destroying the bunkers built by these armed groups and the totality of their logistical networks. During this phase, there will be little evolution on the ground other than a withdrawal of jihadists towards Iraq and Turkey. The Syrian Arab Army and its allies are preparing a vast operation for the beginning of 2016. The objective is to provoke an uprising of the populations dominated by the jihadists, and to take almost all the cities in the country simultaneously – with the possible exception of Palmyra – so that the foreign mercenaries will fall back to the desert. Unlike Iraq, where 120,00 Sunnis and Ba’athists joined Daesh only to exact revenge for having been excluded from power by the United States in favour of the Chiites, rare are the Syrians who ever acclaimed the « Caliphate ». On the 21st and 22nd November, in the Mediterranean, the Russian army took part in excercises with its Syrian ally. As a result, the airports of Beirut (Lebanon) and Larnaca (Cyprus) were partially closed. On the 23rd and 24th November, the firing of Russian missiles on Daesh positions within Syria provoked the closing of the airports at Erbil and Sulaymaniyah (Iraq). It seems that in reality, the Russian army may have been testing the possible extension of its weapon that inhibits NATO communications and commands. In any case, on the 8th December, the submarine Rostov-on-Don fired on Daesh installations from the Mediterranean.

Russia, which disposes of the air base at Hmeymim (near Lattakia), also uses the air base of the Syrian Arab Army in Damascus, and is said to be building a new base at al-Shayrat (near Homs). Besides this, some high-ranking Russian officers have been carrying out scouting missions with a view to creating a fourth base in the North-East of Syria, in other words, close to both Turkey and Iraq. Finally, an Iranian submarine has arrived off the coast of Tartus. Hezbollah, who demonstrated their capacity to carry out commando operations during their liberation of the Sukhoï pilot held prisoner by militias organised by the Turkish army, are preparing the uprising of Shia populations, while the Syrian Arab Army – which is more than 70% Sunni – is concentrating on the Sunni populations. The Syrian government has concluded an agreement with the jihadists of Homs, who have finally accepted to either join up or leave. The area has been evacuated under the control of the United Nations, so that today, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Lattakia and Der ez-Zor are completely secure. Aleppo, Idlib and Al-Raqqah still need to be liberated. Contrary to peremptory affirmations by the western Press, Russia has no intention of leaving the north of the country to France, Israël and the United Kingdom so that they can create their pseudo-Kurdistan. The patriot plan forsees the liberation of all the inhabited areas of the country, including Rakka, which is the current « capital of the Caliphate ». This is the calm before the storm.

“They fight and they even fight ahead of the peshmerga. They won’t allow anyone to take photos of them, but they take photos of everyone, ” Karwan Hama Tata, a Peshmerga volunteer, told The Guardian reporter after showing him another video of two U.S. soldiers in the middle of an operation with other Kurdish fighters. In an Oct. 28 report by Bloomberg, U.S. and Kurdish officials, not authorized to speak about the matter, said that he U.S. was running an operations center in Irbil city staffed by a special operations task force whose work is so classified its name is a state secret.

The Guardian said that when asked about the videos and the testimonies of the Kurdish fighters, the U.S. Central Command in Baghdad said: “No U.S. or coalition SOF [special operations forces] were engaged in any of these events you listed.” It added “we have no reports of any coalition advise and assist teams becoming engaged during the actions you referenced.”

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, as well as Egypt have consistently criticized Qatar for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and a cohort of Muslim Brotherhood and Taliban affiliated organizations. It is also worth noting that an adviser to then U.S. President-elect Donald, in November, promised to “outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some analysts in Gulf States are asking whether fellow GCC members and the USA could be aiming at “regime change” in Doha while others see the severing of ties motivated by less drastic goals and as aimed at forcing Qatar to change its relatively tolerant position towards Iran, and to end its support of the Taliban and Muslim Brotherhood and their offshoots including Hamas in Palestine.

In November 2016 Walid Phares, a top-foreign policy adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, said the Trump administration will sign a bill that designates the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Walid Phares spoke with the Egyptian Youm7 saying that: “Trump considers the Muslim Brotherhood a dangerous group that fuels the Jihadist ideology, thus he seeks for a military strike against the group and will not politically contain the group as Obama and H. Clinton did”. In February 2016 the US House Judiciary Committee approved legislation calling on the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a foreign terrorist organization. However, the U.S. State Department has not taken any further steps since February 2016. The bill cites multiple countries who have declared the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) a terrorist organization. These countries include Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is noteworthy that the Obama administration and especially the State Department under then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton colluded with Muslim Brotherhood – linked organizations during the notorious Arab Spring in Libya, Egypt and Syria in 2011. In fact, one of Clinton’s closest advisers, Huma Abedin and her family are known for close ties to Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda linked organizations. But U.S. collusion with Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda linked “rebels” is not limited to Democrats. In April 2013 Conservative Senator John McCain was caught on photo in a safe-house in Syria after crossing the border illegally. (see photo left) Among the “celebrities” present at the meeting was Islamic State leader al-Baghdadi (al-Badri). In November 2014 the United Arab Emirates (UAE) outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood following intense rounds of negotiations between GCC member states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The UAE designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda associated Jabhat al-Nusrah, the so-called Islamic State a.k.a. ISIS/ISIL and Yemen’s Houthi. Saudi Arabia’s position regarding the Muslim Brotherhood is dual. On one hand, some top-members of the Saudi oligarchy including government support Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations abroad while the country opposes its “official” presence within the State. Saudi Arabia considers large parts of the international Muslim Brotherhood as instrument for is ally and rival Qatar, one of the primary international sponsors of Botherhood-linked organizations. Saudi Arabia is, however, “unofficially but blatantly” using Al-Qaeda an the Islamic State as an instrument abroad while it opposes its “official” presence in the country.

Opponents of Trump attempt to denounce the U.S. President-elect as anti-Muslim, and Trump made some “politically incorrect” statements, about Muslim and other communities. That is, provocative campaign statements that could easily be abused and used against him. Meanwhile, a closer look reveals that Trump is not anti-Muslim at all. Much rather, he opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, and he at least appears to be opposed to using Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda-linked organizations as an instrument of US foreign and military policy.