RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nineteen people involved in the production and shipping of thousands of fake European Union passports and other documents were arrested in Greece and the Czech Republic in the past few weeks, the bloc’s law-enforcement agency, Europol, said Tuesday.

Sixteen people suspected of document forgery “on a large scale” and the smuggling of migrants were arrested in Greece last week, and three other suspects were taken into custody in the Czech Republic on May 10, Europol said.

The arrests come as migrants who arrived in the EU last year seek to legalize their stay, while others who are still outside the bloc have fewer options to enter after the route via Turkey, Greece and the Balkan countries was cut off.

The forged documents—passports from EU countries, identity cards, driving licenses, asylum-seeker registration cards, residence permits and visas to the border-free Schengen area—were shipped through courier companies to other EU countries as well as to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Europol said. They cost between €100 ($111) and €3,000, depending on the quality, type and country of issue.

In Athens, the suspected criminal network was composed of two groups—one comprising mainly Bangladeshi nationals, the other mainly Sudanese nationals. The Bangladeshi group sent at least 126 parcels containing travel documents via courier last year, while the Sudanese group sent 431 parcels over the same period, Europol said.

A 27-year-old female journalist recounted that a Palestinian official working for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza invited her for a job interview. The official “tried to approach and touch her, but she walked away and left the office… The following day… he offered her the job in return for having sexual intercourse with him.”

The victim noted that under Palestinian law, UNRWA officials enjoy immunity from being prosecuted.

Palestinian journalist Amjad Yaghi found that the Palestinian Basic Law does not tackle the issue of sexual harassment in Palestinian society. Meanwhile, the Hamas connections of these criminals will keep them out of jail and in positions of power.

Where are the women’s rights organizations now? Where are the European and American overseers of the international human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip? Do they only awaken from their slumber when they smell fresh Israeli meat? How many women will be sexually assaulted while these watchdogs sleep?

Sex is a taboo topic in the conservative Palestinian society. So it came as a nasty surprise to many when the rampant sexual harassment in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was recently brought to public attention.

A damning report, entitled “Gaza: Sexual Harassment and Bribery Chase Job-Seekers,” was published in the Beirut-based, Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar. Amjad Yaghi, the young Palestinian journalist who wrote the exposé, showed extraordinary courage in doing so.

Hamas, needless to say, was not amused.

Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media. On May 15, police detectives arrested Chowdhury for alleged “involvement in a plot to oust the Bangladesh government with the support of Israeli intelligence Mossad.”

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist, was sentenced in 2014 to seven years in prison, allegedly for trying to travel to Israel, to speak on the rise of Islamic militancy in his country, and how madrassahs (Islamic religious schools) are being used to spawn militants.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques.

Israel, the Mossad and Jews, seen as one, are now a political issue in Bangladesh politics. Accusations and denials about “Israel and Mossad connections” are going on among the rival political parties and leaders. Both the government and largest opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have been trying to cash in on the existing antagonistic sentiment against Israel among the country’s 90%-Muslim population.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques. Imams across the country shout before the Friday prayer’s sermon audience that Jewish people are infidels.

The latest dirty game of Israel-hating began in early May. A Bangladeshi politician, Aslam Chowdhury, who is a Joint General Secretary of the BNP, visited the Indian capital of Delhi and the historic city of Agra, where he met Mendi N. Safadi, reportedly a member of Israel’s Likud party.[1] Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media.

“I can assure you,” Wendy Sherman, President Barack Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran nuclear deal, said the other day, “that if Iran takes truly horrific terrorist action, or truly horrific human rights action, that people will respond.” Uh huh.

Sherman’s comments, which she made during a May 25 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, came a day after Stephen Mull, Obama’s lead coordinator on implementing the deal, acknowledged at a congressional hearing that Washington hasn’t leveled any sanctions on Iran over its human rights violations since inking the deal last summer – even as Tehran cracks down harder on its own people.

Apparently, Iran’s decision to hang 13 prisoners on a single day in May, including one in the city square of Mashhad in the presence of children, doesn’t constitute “truly horrific human rights action.” Nor, apparently, does the 10-year sentence that Iran imposed a few days later on a human rights activist, about which the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human rights said it was “appalled.”

Nor, apparently, does the barbaric punishment that more than 30 students near Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, received recently after throwing a graduation party where boys and girls danced and girls removed their headscarves: 99 lashes each, which the authorities reportedly imposed less than a day later.

The administration’s refusal to sanction Iran over human rights has ignited bipartisan anger on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers reminded top Obama officials that they backed the nuclear deal based on administration assurances that it would impose sanctions over human rights and other issues as circumstances warranted. The clash over sanctions, which erupted at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week, comes amid growing congressional interest in imposing new sanctions on Iran to replace those that will expire later this year, and administration concerns over such efforts.

Nearly a year after U.S.-led global negotiators finalized their nuclear deal with Iran, two realities have grown clearer: that hopes the pact would moderate Tehran’s hard-line regime remain a pipe dream, and that the administration will do nothing to anger Tehran and raise the chances that it will disavow the deal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Turkish women abandon contraception in a televised address May 30, Reuters reported. “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach,” Erdogan said. The Turkish leader has denounced Turkish women for refusing to have more babies on many earlier occasions.

Erdogan has played every side of every issue, alternately courting and rejecting the European Union, claiming the United States as an ally against ISIS while aiding the terrorist army on the sly, succoring Hamas while proposing to rebuild relations with Israel, helping Iran run sanctions while claiming the Gulf States as Sunni allies. Christina Lin catalogued his double-dealings in a May 31 news analysis for this publication.

When he talks about Turkey’s failing demographics, though, Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Turkey’s Kurdish citizens continue to have three or four children while ethnic Turks have fewer than two. By the early 2040s, most of Turkey’s young people will come from Kurdish-speaking homes. The Kurdish-majority Southeast inevitably will break away. Erdogan’s hapless battle against the inevitable motivates the sometimes bewildering twists and turns of Turkish policy.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Raymond Ibrahim Moment with Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

He discussed The Pope Who Gained the World, But Lost His Own Soul, unveiling Pope Francis’ Jihad on Christianity.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/31/raymond-ibrahim-moment-the-pope-who-gained-the-world-but-lost-his-own-soul-2/