RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-antiterror-opportunity-in-sudan-11601333982?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The fact that Sudan’s leaders are openly discussing the normalization of relations with Israel shows how much the northeast African nation has changed since the downfall of dictator Omar al-Bashir. The Trump Administration’s diplomacy is pulling Khartoum closer to the West, but it needs help from Congress.

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok took office last year after widespread protests brought about the old regime’s end. He shares power with unsavory figures but has managed to repeal draconian Islamic laws and give civil society some breathing room. The government has promised elections in 2022, and Mr. Hamdok wants to improve ties with the U.S. before his term ends.

The prime minister’s position is fragile. Many Islamists want him gone—he survived an assassination attempt this year—and the generals who toppled Mr. Bashir aren’t excited about democracy in Khartoum. But Congress can improve Mr. Hamdok’s standing, and give the country’s struggling economy a boost, by removing Sudan from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

The U.S. made the designation in 1993. Mr. Bashir hosted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden at the time and gave them a free hand to plot mayhem around the region. After decades of isolation, the country has turned around and already qualifies for removal. Washington has tied the change to a $335 million compensation package for victims of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/09/27/uae-irans-aggressive-policies-made-arabs-look-at-israel/

“The more strategic the Israelis look at these relationships, the more doors will open to them,” says UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash. Normalizing ties with Israel “was strategically good for the UAE, will make it have more of a global presence.”

The United Arab Emirates didn’t need peace with Israel to counter Iran, a top UAE official said Friday, but he said Iran’s aggressive policies over three decades alarmed many Arab countries and made them look at their relationship with Israel “with fresh eyes.”

UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash acknowledged at a virtual briefing on the sidelines of the equally virtual UN General Assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders that this may not have been Iran’s intention. But its actions had an impact in the region, he said, though he wouldn’t speculate on whether other Arab countries would follow the UAE and Bahrain in establishing relations with Israel.

“The only thing I want to say is the more strategic the Israelis look at these relationships, the more doors will open to them,” Gargash said. “If they look at it very `transactionally’, I think that it is not going to send a very good omen for normalizing relations with many of the Arab countries.”

Gargash said the UAE’s message to Israel is to “look at these opportunities and build strategically, and think long term rather than short term” – and prove wrong the countries who say that because of the Israeli political system its decision-makers think only tactically.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16550/france-terrorism-silence

This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!

“[T]his lack of courage to follow in Charlie’s footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground.” — Flemming Rose, Le Point, September 2, 2020.

“To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West. These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom.” — Flemming Rose, Le Point, August 15, 2020.

On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine’s editors and cartoonists were murdered by extremist Muslims in 2015. The suspect, in police custody, is being investigated for terrorism.

The accused murderers in the 2015 attacks are currently on trial in Paris.

Shortly before the knifing attack, on September 22, Charlie Hebdo’s director of human resources, Marika Bret, did not come home. In fact, she no longer has a home. She was evicted after serious and concrete death threats from extremist Muslims. She decided to make her “exfiltration” public for French intelligence to alert the public to the threat of extremism in France.

“I have lived under police protection for almost five years”, she told the weekly Le Point.

“My security agents received specific and detailed threats. I had ten minutes to pack and leave the house. Ten minutes to give up a part of one’s life is a bit short and it was very violent. I will not go home. I am losing my home to outbursts of hatred, the hatred that always begins with the threat of instilling fear. We know how it can end”.

Bret also claimed that the French Left abandoned the “battle for secularism”.