...Meanwhile in the Middle East

Last week when yet another ter­ror­ist attack was made against Jew­ish tourists in Bul­garia this blog was silent con­cern­ing it.

This was by design, my read­ers have been made well aware of the tar­get­ing of Jews and the rise of rad­i­cal Islam so I thought we’d see how the rest of the media would deal with a very promi­nent ter­ror­ist attack.

In case you missed it this is what hap­pened:

A deadly explo­sion on a bus car­ry­ing Israeli tourists out­side an air­port in Bul­garia was “clearly a ter­ror­ist attack,” Israeli Defense Min­is­ter Ehud Barak said Wednesday.

This was appar­ently a case of “If at first you don’t suc­ceed try try again”

The ter­ror attack at the Bul­garia air­port is an almost exact repeat of the attack thwarted by Bul­gar­ian secu­rity forces in Jan­u­ary of this year. Back then, a bus full of Israeli tourists was sup­posed to be blown up using explo­sives snuck into it. Yet this time around there was no warn­ing, and the mur­der­ous ter­ror attack was not curbed. The flight in ques­tion was a Bul­gar­ian char­ter, and such flights — as well as the buses that carry their pas­sen­gers — are not secured.

Both Pres­i­dent Obama:

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is strongly con­demn­ing a “bar­baric ter­ror­ist attack” against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria.

Obama says his thoughts and prayers are with the fam­i­lies of those killed and injured, and he calls the attacks against inno­cent civil­ians “com­pletely out­ra­geous.” He says the U.S. will stand with its allies and work to “iden­tify and bring to jus­tice the per­pe­tra­tors of this attack.”

and Mitt Rom­ney

“The ter­ror­ist attack today in Bul­garia is a sober­ing reminder that the scourge of ter­ror­ism con­tin­ues to threaten all free peo­ple. My heart goes out to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and to all Israelis who have been the tar­gets of such bru­tal and cow­ardly vio­lence for so long. We must stand together in the fight against ter­ror­ism, and we must prevail.”

along with the UN secu­rity coun­sel con­demned it.

While the usual sus­pects indy­media and Pravda blamed Israel (as if the cold war never ended) sane media such as the Wash­ing­ton Post:

THE BOMB­ING of a bus in Bul­garia filled with Israeli tourists on Wednes­day under­lines the grim fact that Iran is wag­ing a war of ter­ror­ism. Using the ter­ri­tory of coun­tries across the world, work­ing some­times through prox­ies like Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and some­times with its own forces, Tehran has been inten­tion­ally tar­get­ing not just diplo­mats of ene­mies such as Israel and Saudi Ara­bia but also civilians.

The Bul­garia bomb­ing, in which five Israelis were killed, was the ninth plot pinned on Iran this year and the third this month: Sim­i­lar attacks in Kenya and Cyprus were foiled. In Feb­ru­ary, an Israeli diplomat’s wife was injured in a car bomb­ing in New Delhi, and other attacks failed in Geor­gia and Thai­land. Last Octo­ber, the Jus­tice Depart­ment charged two Ira­ni­ans in a plot to kill the Saudi ambas­sador in Wash­ing­ton by bomb­ing a George­town restaurant.

And CNN

The bus bomb attack on Israeli tourists at Bulgaria’s Bur­gas Air­port rep­re­sents the first sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess for what some have alleged are Iranian-​backed ter­ror­ists who have mounted a sus­tained cam­paign against Israeli diplo­mats and tourists around the world.

Just a few days before the Bur­gas attack, a sus­pected Hezbol­lah oper­a­tive was report­edly arrested in Cyprus. He was found with infor­ma­tion on resorts, flight sched­ules and tour bus com­pa­nies fre­quented by Israeli tourists. How­ever, the Israeli Counter Ter­ror­ism Bureau didn’t issue a spe­cific travel warn­ing to tourists fol­low­ing this arrest.

were less shy about nam­ing the attack­ers and con­demn­ing them.

Unfor­tu­nately while con­dem­na­tions are nice some of the actions of the UN and our own diplo­mats have been less that inspir­ing, to wit:

Ear­lier this month, U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State Maria Otero deliv­ered a speech at the Global Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Forum in Madrid, in which she failed even to men­tion Israel as a coun­try that has expe­ri­enced terrorism.

“Last Sep­tem­ber at the offi­cial launch of the Global Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Forum, I had the priv­i­lege to intro­duce the pre­mier of a film ‘Hear their Voices,’ which tells the sto­ries of eleven sur­vivors of ter­ror­ist attacks from Pak­istan, Jor­dan, North­ern Ire­land, Uganda, Turkey, Indone­sia, India, Spain, Colom­bia, and the United States,” she said.

When Asso­ci­ated Press reporter Matthew Lee asked Otero why she hadn’t men­tioned the Israelis as peo­ple who have suf­fered from ter­ror­ism, State Depart­ment spokesman Patrick Ven­trell momen­tar­ily tripped over his words, before respond­ing that “I don’t have the details of the undersecretary’s speech.”

Strangely enough this type of thing doesn’t seem to be an odd move in the Hillary Clin­ton State Department

in Istan­bul, Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton hosted the first U.S.-sponsored Global Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Forum. The event brought rep­re­sen­ta­tives from many coun­tries, includ­ing Saudi Ara­bia — long known for spread­ing the rad­i­cal Wah­habist ide­ol­ogy to which many ter­ror­ists adhere — but with one con­spic­u­ous absence.

The United States appears not to have invited Israel, a coun­try with a long track record of com­bat­ing terrorism.

One Israeli diplo­mat told The Times of Israel that “the Turks are cur­rently not behav­ing in a very help­ful man­ner,” and they go to great lengths to block the pres­ence of Israel at inter­na­tional events. It is unclear if Turkey’s prime min­is­ter, Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, him­self strong-​armed the U.S. State Department.

Turkey strong arm­ing the US state depart­ment to exclude Israel, and suc­ceed­ing? Amaz­ing, well maybe not

Wash­ing­ton, long wary of Islamists and an ally of ousted Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, shifted pol­icy last year to open for­mal con­tacts with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the group behind Mursi’s win. Mursi for­mally resigned from the group when he won the presidency.

maybe not at all:

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has invited Egypt’s newly elected Islamist pres­i­dent, Mohamed Mursi, to visit the United States in Sep­tem­ber, an Egypt­ian offi­cial said on Sun­day, reflect­ing the new ties Wash­ing­ton is cul­ti­vat­ing with the region’s Islamists.

And what hap­pens when you see the US green light­ing Islamists? Stuff like this:

Air­port offi­cials say Egypt is allow­ing Pales­tini­ans free entry into the coun­try, end­ing part of a five-​year block­ade on the Gaza Strip.

The deci­sion means Pales­tini­ans can freely leave Gaza. It also applies to Pales­tini­ans in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

and this:

Gun­shots fired across the bor­der from Egypt on Sun­day hit an Israeli army bus but caused no casu­al­ties, a mil­i­tary spokes­woman said.

The attack, in the cen­tral sec­tor of the porous desert fron­tier, may heighten Israeli fears of an ero­sion of secu­rity in the Egypt­ian Sinai given the polit­i­cal upheaval in Cairo.

When you look at the ter­ror attacks, and the US government’s unprece­dented exclu­sion of Israel com­bined with the unprece­dented coop­er­a­tion and sup­port Islamists have received by the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion and the Hillary Clin­ton state depart­ment (even to the point of the per­sonal inter­ven­tion of Sec Clin­ton on behalf of a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood big­wig) the ques­tion isn’t why mem­bers of con­gress like Michelle Bach­mann are ask­ing ques­tions about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and their allies the ques­tion is why aren’t more peo­ple ask­ing these ques­tions and why are oth­ers so deter­mined to mar­gin­al­ize those who do?

BTW I am just as out­raged over death threats against Huma Abe­din as I am against the death threats Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, Wafa Sul­tan Ayaan Hirsi Ali reg­u­larly receive. I’m just as upset that Huma Abe­din needs addi­tional secu­rity as I am that Pam, Robert, Ayaan, Wafa and Brigitte Gabriel need secu­rity on a reg­u­lar basis when­ever they appear and speak. I trust those in an uproar this morn­ing can say the same.

If not why not?

Update: Jihad watch ads an inter­est­ing twist to the story:

As you can see from the screen­shot above, Yahoo head­lined this story “Bachmann’s accu­sa­tions lead to threat against Huma Abe­din,” thereby giv­ing the impres­sion that some greasy Islam­o­phobe, dri­ven mad by Bachmann’s “hate speech,” had threat­ened the pure, the inno­cent, the unjustly accused Abe­din. Only when you go to the orig­i­nal story do you find out that it was a Mus­lim who threat­ened Abe­din. Was he expect­ing not to get caught, and hop­ing to give the impres­sion that some counter-​jihadist had threat­ened her, thereby advanc­ing her claim to vic­tim sta­tus and dis­cred­it­ing her accusers, as in the cases of so many Mus­lims who have faked hate crimes against them­selves? Or is he an anti-​Muslim Broth­er­hood but nonethe­less violent-​minded Muslim?

Appar­ently some death threats by Mus­lims are more equal than oth­ers.
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