RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump’s bizarre proposal to bar all Muslim immigrants from the U.S. has overshadowed a more legitimate concern regarding religion and immigration: Middle East Christians who are desperate to escape the genocidal campaign against them by Islamic State.

Islamist terror attacks like the ones in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have underlined the need for more and better vetting of refugees from the Middle East who seek safety in the U.S. But with tens of thousands pushing at the gate, who should to get first preference?

In our view, as rabbis, any immediate admissions should focus on providing a haven for the remnants of historic Christian communities of the Middle East. Christians in Iraq and Syria have been suffering longer than other groups, and are fleeing not just for safety but because they have been targeted for extinction. In a region strewn with desperate people, their situation is even more dire. Christians (and Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who follow a pre-Islamic religion) have long been targeted by Muslim groups—not only Islamic State, or ISIS—for ethnic cleansing. Churches have been burned, priests arrested.

Hungary and Greece have broken ranks with the European Union in signalling they want nothing to do with the recently introduced EU labelling laws requiring Jewish products originating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to have special labels and not be marked “made in Israel”.

These decisions follow hard on the heels of European Parliament delegation for relations with Israel chairman – Fulvio Martusciello – warning:

“The decision to label products was a mistake. Europe is loud about Israel, but quiet about 200 other conflicts around the world.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced Hungary’s decision:

“We do not support the decision to make a special mark on products coming from the West Bank or the Golan Heights. This step is inefficient and illogical. It would only hurt attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Greece’s decision was communicated by letter from its Foreign Minister to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a visit by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Israel – when extensive bilateral cooperation in economic matters, technology, science, education, trade, energy, and agriculture were concluded.

Islamist extremist Harry S. wasn’t in Syria for long. But during his stay there, he claims, Islamic State leaders repeatedly tried to recruit him to commit terror attacks in Germany. Security officials believe he could be telling the truth.

It was an early summer morning in the Syrian desert, with not a cloud in the sky, when Mohamed Mahmoud asked those gathered around him: “Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?”

Not long before, Islamic State (IS) had taken the city of Palmyra, and now jihadists from Germany and Austria were to participate in the executions of some of the prisoners taken in the operation. They drove to the site of the executions in Toyota pick-ups, bringing along an IS camera team in order to document the atrocity in the city of antique ruins. Even then, Mohamed Mahmoud was known to German security officials for his repeated propaganda-video calls to join the jihad. On that early summer day in Palmyra, though, he didn’t just incite others. He grabbed a Kalashnikov himself and began firing. That day, Mahmoud and his group of executioners are thought to have killed six or seven prisoners.

The story comes from someone who was in Palmyra on that day: Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen. “I saw it all,” he says.

Harry S. returned to Germany from Syria and is now in investigative custody. He has told security officials everything about the brief time he spent with Islamic State and has also demonstrated his readiness to deliver extensive testimony to German public prosecutors. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist group. His lawyer Udo Würtz declined to offer a detailed response when contacted, but said of his client: “He wants to come clean.”

Obama is betting the last of his foreign policy cred on beating ISIS by fixing Syria through a peace process that brings together Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and just about everybody who is anybody in the international terrorism and regime change racket to fight the ISIS war that he doesn’t want to fight.

There’s just one little problem. Nobody on the guest list wants to fix Syria. They want to control it.

The reason that ISIS exists is the same reason that Syria can’t be fixed. ISIS didn’t get so big because Muslims are angry about our foreign policy. It got huge because Sunni Muslims hate Shiite Muslims.

Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t become popular because it killed American soldiers, but because it suicide bombed Iraqi Shiites. It really took off once there was a civil war underway between Syrian Shiites and Sunni Islamists.

Osama bin Laden wanted Al Qaeda in Iraq to focus on Americans, not Shiites. Zarqawi knew better. Al Qaeda’s base in Iraq was a Sunni population that hated their Shiite and Kurdish neighbors even more than they hated the American soldiers trying to keep the peace between them. By massacring Shiites, Al Qaeda in Iraq stopped being another franchise of a goofy Saudi rich kid making snuff videos for Qatar’s fake Al Jazeera news network and instead became the protectors of the Sunni minority.

Tensions are running high in the northern English town of Ashton-under-Lyne after a video circulating online showed a gang of what is reported as British-Pakistani youths attacking young “white girls” at a bus stop.

The incident, which occured in the town just outside of Manchester, has led to a number of groups calling for a ‘march’ or ‘rally’ in the town this coming Saturday, with the English Defence League quickly setting up an ‘Ashton-Under-Lyne’ branch of the group.

The video, which has been removed from YouTube but can still be found on LiveLeak, describes the incident last night as, “This is a video that has been taken in Ashton Under Lyne, England that shows a gang of Muslim youths attacking a group of white kids. Just before the filming had started one of the muslim youths had punched one of the white girls in the face. This is becoming a regular occurence on the streets of the UK.”

China and Russia rattle nuclear sabers at sea, while the US Navy’s newest ship breaks down.

For what appears to be the first time, Beijing has sent one of its nuclear missile subs on an actual deterrence patrol:

China has advanced its nuclear deterrent capabilities by sending a Type 094 (‘Jin’-class) nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) out on its first deterrent patrol and by conducting a fifth reported test of its mobile, solid-fuel, multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV)-capable DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), according to US officials.

Although China’s first second-generation Type 094 was launched in 2004, according to IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships , US officials have not acknowledged that its premier deterrent patrol had occurred until this month.

“Given China’s known capabilities and their efforts to develop a sea-based deterrent, in absence of indicators to the contrary it is prudent to assume that patrols are occurring,” said US Strategic Command spokesperson US Navy captain Pamela Kunzein in a statement to The Washington Times published on 10 December.

Finland, a country sandwiched between Sweden and Russia, and which basically wants nothing more than to be left alone, is not happy to find itself suddenly on the front lines of Merkel’s Folly:

There is a sense of tension in the pretty, snow-covered Finnish town — an underlying fear which makes parents hold their children a little closer, and angry resentment towards the group of young men who arrived just a month ago. Kempele, almost 400 miles north of Helsinki, is usually a place where 17,000 unassuming townfolk while away the hours playing ice hockey. But that peaceful existence has been ripped apart by the rape of a 14-year-old girl as she walked home on a Monday night a fortnight ago.

The alleged culprit is one of the young men living at a migrant centre, which locals did not want in the first place.

But far from being an anomaly, Kempele – which saw hundreds take to the streets in an anti-immigration march last weekend — has become a snapshot of a country where people patrol the streets in vigilante mobs, block people crossing the border and even dress as the Ku Klux Klan at angry protests against the influx of refugees.

We still have not encountered one case — ever — where a terrorist complained about the absence of a two-state solution. Also, contrary to Abbas’s claim, none of the terrorists has ever complained about checkpoints or settlements. This latest wave of terrorism is not about “despair,” unemployment, poor living conditions or freedom of movement. Instead, it is another attempt by Palestinian “youths” to eliminate Israel, by again using the false excuse that Jew are “desecrating” and “destroying” Islamic holy sites.

A review of the Facebook accounts of most of the terrorists shows that their main intention was to murder as many Jews as possible in order to become “martyrs” — to impose a reign of terror Jews, to force them to leave Israel.

Abbas is well aware that the “youths” are not complaining about the “occupation.” The “occupation” these ” youths” have a problem with is the one that began with the creation of Israel in 1948.

A new generation of Palestinians has once again been deceived into believing that the Jews are plotting to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In the “Al-Aqsa Intifada” (2000-2005), the Palestinians knew — they saw — that the Jews had not destroyed the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas now wants us to believe that the Palestinian “youths,” who are sent out to murder Jewish soldiers and civilians, are acting out of “despair.” He wants us to believe that these “youths” decided to murder Jews because their dream of a two-state solution has not been realized. Abbas is also trying to convince us that these “youths” are upset about the Israeli checkpoints, continued construction in the settlements, and visits by Jews to the Noble Sanctuary (Temple Mount).

ISTANBUL—Thousands of Turkish security forces are converging on the country’s Kurdish heartland for what the government is calling a “decisive” military campaign against militants fighting for autonomy.

Nearly 200,000 people have fled their homes and hundreds have been killed in parts of southeastern Turkey, the epicenter of clashes since a two-year cease-fire between the government and Kurdish militants collapsed five months ago, according to humanitarian groups.

Turkish security forces in tanks and armored personnel carriers are now seeking to tighten their hold on strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party—the militant group better known as the PKK—in residential neighborhoods of seven Kurdish-majority cities, officials said.