Dr. Richard Benkin

Israel Does the Impossible: Brings Peace between Greeks and Turks

In singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer’s 1965 satire, “National Brotherhood Week,” we hear, “Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.” He goes on about other groups hating one another, but left out one of the longest running national hate-fests in history: Greeks and Turks.

Israeli Diplomatic Offensive a No-Brainer

In late March, according to the AP, “Britain took the extraordinary step Tuesday of expelling an Israeli diplomat for the first time in more than 20 years, after concluding there was compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for the use of forged British passports in the plot to slay a senior Hamas operative in Dubai.”

Ignore Indian events at our own Peril

For the past year, I have been saying that the political center in India is collapsing. The re-election of the left-center Congress Party last year only masked this inevitable decline and had more to do with political dynamics in India and the fact that India has remained relatively unscathed from the recent world economic collapse. The finale might not come this year, or maybe even next; but it is coming, and when it does it will be with an explosion heard around the world. I was in India for just over two weeks in February, and during alone that time noted:

• Relations with fellow nuclear power Pakistan deteriorated in a hail of harsh rhetoric and threats such that the Obama administration sent Senator John Kerry to try and “calm” tensions.

Kerry Pushing Same Nonsense

This is an amazing time to be in India. Last week, tensions here heated white hot when Pakistan refused to hold long overdue talks with India about the former’s role in the Mumbai terror attacks. At the same time, the government continued its offensive against communist rebels who have been terrorizing this country for decades; and the Maoists for the first time cried “Uncle.” Shortly after the Indo-Pak talks were on again (albeit with the two countries disagreeing on their content), terror struck.

American Islamist Headley cased sites for Pune attack

Islamist terrorists struck India today, bringing death and destruction in the western city of Pune, a financial hub 58 miles from Mumbai. According to the Indian Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), which has taken charge of the case, terrorists left an explosive-filled backpack under a counter at the “German Bakery,” an establishment that is very popular with tourists and locals in this city of over five million people.

Follow up:  Pakistan agrees to talk, sort of

Pakistan has agreed to hold talks with India—sort of. The office of Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani released the following statement. “It was decided that foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries would be held on February 25 in New Delhi.”

Another Victory for Strength over Appeasement

When Islamists attacked Mumbai, India’s New York, many people called it that country’s 9/11. Although it certainly was the most high profile attack, it was far from the first in this country of over a billion people. India faces terrorist attacks of one sort or another multiple times each week. The South Asia Terrorism Portal collects figures on terrorism here and calculated that 47,371 Indians have died in terrorist attacks since 1994. Since 2006, about two-thirds of the fatalities occurred as a result of Islamist attacks; the rest came at the hands of radical communists.

Tensions grow as Pakistan cancels talks with India

(Delhi, February 8) “Pakistan Shows its True Colours,” screamed angry headlines here this morning after Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi abruptly and defiantly refused to schedule talks with India about the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai and the countries’ longstanding dispute over Kashmir. Those attacks left 173 people dead. The terrorist group, Lashkar e Taiba, has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which shook this nation of over a billion people.

Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam:  Update

I previously reported on the abduction of a young Hindu woman from her family’s home in northern Bangladesh (Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam, Canada Free Press, August 11, 2009). At 12:45am on June 13, five Muslims broke into a home in the village of Ghosai Chandura, vandalized it, and grabbed the 21-year old the college student Koli Goswami from her bed.

For Obama, It’s only human rights if it’s anti-US

Although you would never know it from the mainstream media, many Americans never bought the ridiculous argument that Barack Obama was some sort of human rights activist. In fact, for some of us, he was just the opposite. As reported in an earlier Canada Free Press article (“Obama Sides with Islamists in Choudhury Case”), Obama was the only Washingtonian asked who did not take any action to support Muslim Zionist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Keeping Afghanistan the “Good War”

I have a good friend who fought in the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive. He talks about how, in the battle's aftermath, he and his buddies patrolled the streets of Hue City, site of some of the most intensive fighting. He describes walking on the bodies of dead North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers piled several layers high in the strategic provincial capital, and is also quick to remind me that Tet was a stunning military victory for the United States; that in fact, the US did not lose a single military encounter for the rest of the war.

Bangladeshi Hindu Abducted, Forced to Convert to Islam

For most of us in the West, the notion of forced conversion seems to belong to a bygone age and a long discredited mentality. The sad fact, however, is that like the slave trade and other atrocities we have left in our past, forced conversion is alive and well even today.

Is Shoaib Choudhury’s Ordeal Drawing to a Close?

The trial of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury continued this week in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was his second court appearance in two weeks after being called no more than once a month for the last four years. (Prior to that, he spent 17 months of imprisonment and torture for his anti-Islamist and pro-Israel articles.) The next day, he received a call from an attorney who told him that the prosecutor in his case said the government would convict Shoaib even though it did not have the evidence for it.

Why this silence on organised anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh?

Reports began trickling out of Bangladesh this spring about an anti-Hindu violence in the heart of its capital carried out in three stages: March 30, April 17, and April 29. A community of approximately 400 Hindus was reportedly going about its business when “hundreds of Muslims” suddenly descended on them and demanded they quit the homes where they and their families had lived for the past 150 years. Witnesses also report that police watched passively while attackers beat residents and destroyed a Hindu temple.

Why Jimmy Carter Really is an Anti-Semite

For years, many people have accused former US President of being an anti-Semite, but Carter and his minions have insisted that such accusations amount to calumny and that he is simply a moral man who speaks for the oppressed Palestinians. This week, however, he finally slipped up and let his anti-Semitic slip show.

Muslim Zionist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, harassed by Bangladeshi Intelligence

Dhaka, Bangladesh—The Bangladeshi government resumed its harassment of pro-peace journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, despite repeated promises not to. Intelligence agents have been staking out his house the“past few days,” according to neighbors; and the family cornered a man insisting that he was from Bangladesh’s DGFI intelligence service.

Fawning Media will Ignore Obama’s Pakistan Disaster

The Obama Administration continues to say all the “correct” things about Pakistan and its fight against the Taliban. Yet, knowledgeable observers in South Asia give the country no more than twelve months to stave off the terror group’s inevitable takeover of that nuclear Islamic Republic.

Obama domestic and foreign policy two sides of the same coin

The Taliban are cutting through Pakistan like a knife through butter; the Pakistani government has responded by ceding parts of the country to the terrorists and ignoring the extensive Talibanization of its intelligence service, military, and bureaucracy. David Kilcullen, former adviser General David Petraeus, recently said that Pakistan could collapse within six months; and a February report from a task force chaired by no less than former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said: “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure.”

Those Wacky Moderate Taliban

Delhi, India. United States President Barack Hussein Obama unveiled his much awaited South Asian strategy in a globally televised speech last night (Indian time). Today many Indians told me, as one put it, that Obama “lived up to his middle name by showing the face of a pro-Pakistan US policy.” A critical component of that policy is to find “moderate Taliban” with whom the United States and its allies can negotiate a peace.

Maybe I’m just dumb, but “Smart Power” makes no sense to me.

Perhaps the Obama-Clinton concept of Smart Power is just too sophisticated for my limited conservative brain. For there is nothing smart about it, and it seems like code for avoiding the use of any kind of power. The first tip off came from the fact that it is winning high praise among those who have long detested any manifestation of US power: the Europeans and the UN. The second tip off is that the earliest manifestations of Smart Power could not have been dumber.