RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17095/germany-covid-antisemitism

German police reported a total of 2,275 anti-Semitic hate crimes — an average of six per day — in 2020, according to preliminary data provided by the federal government. The tally represents a more than 10% increase over the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported in 2019… Police were able to identify 1,367 suspects — but only five individuals were ultimately arrested.

It remains unclear why so few perpetrators have faced legal consequences for their crimes, especially when government officials repeatedly claim that fighting anti-Semitism is a top priority. A reason may be that it is politically incorrect to identify the true suspects.

German police, possibly under orders from political authorities, systematically assign unsolved anti-Semitic hate crimes to the far right.

“Why are the majority of anti-Semitic acts attributed to ‘right-wing’ German perpetrators? One can see a political motive behind this — growing anti-Semitism can be used politically as a weapon ‘against the right.'” — Tichys Einblick.

“There has been criticism from experts for a long time that the allocation of the vast majority of anti-Semitism cases to right-wing extremist perpetrators is incorrect and that other groups of perpetrators, for example from Islamist and other Muslim circles, are given too little attention.” — Die Welt.

“Even today, anti-Semitism is not just a phenomenon of the right-wing extremist fringes. It reaches into the middle of our society.” — German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass.

The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Germany surged to a two-decade high in 2020, according to new statistics released by the German government. Anti-Semitism in Germany has been steadily growing in recent years, fueled in part by far-left anti-Israel activists and by mass migration from the Muslim world. The problem is now being exacerbated by the Coronavirus pandemic, which far-right conspiracy theorists are blaming on both Jews and Israel.

German police reported a total of 2,275 anti-Semitic hate crimes — an average of six per day — in 2020, according to preliminary data provided by the federal government. The tally represents a more than 10% increase over the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported in 2019, itself a record-breaking year for such offenses. The official numbers represent only the crimes reported to the police; the actual number of incidents is presumably much bigger.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-reckless-labs-put-the-world-at-risk-11614102828?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with viruses. Its army of scientists claim to have discovered almost 2,000 new viruses in a little over a decade. It took the past 200 years for the rest of the world to discover that many. More troubling is the party’s negligence on biosafety. The costs and the risk to world health are enormous, as evidenced by a novel coronavirus that escaped Wuhan. This situation can’t continue. The world must hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable and punish Beijing if it fails to uphold global biosafety standards, including basic transparency requirements.

The most recent example of this malfeasance is playing out around us. The evidence that the virus came from Wuhan is enormous, though largely circumstantial, and most signs point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV, as the source of Covid-19. In America, concern about the site is now broad and bipartisan. The Biden administration stated that it has “deep concerns” about the World Health Organization’s investigation into the early days of the pandemic, particularly Beijing’s interference with the investigators’ work.

The world has known for a long time that WIV poses a huge risk to global health. Two 2018 State Department cables warned of its biosafety problems. They even predicted that SARS-CoV-2’s ACE2 receptor, identified by WIV scientists, would enable human-to-human transmission. Yuan Zhiming, then director of WIV’s biosafety level 4 lab, warned, “The biosafety laboratory is a double-edge sword: It can be used for the benefit of humanity, but can also lead to a disaster.” He listed the shortfalls prevalent among China’s biology labs, including a lack of “operational technical support, professional instructions” and “feasible standards for the safety requirements of different protection zones and for the inoculation of microbiological animals and equipment.”

The Chinese public took note, with several bloggers alleging that WIV’s virus-carrying animals are sold as pets. They may even show up at local wet markets. After the Wuhan outbreak, one since-disappeared blogger asked a WIV researcher to debate the lab’s biosafety practices in public. The offer was ignored.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17057/turkey-academic-freedom

On February 2, Turkish police detained more than 150 people peacefully protesting Erdoğan’s appointment of a party loyalist as BOUN’s new rector. It was the first time a non-BOUN graduate was appointed as head of the university since 1971. Students, professors and alumni have been protesting the appointment of rector Melih Bulu, a former member of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, since early January.

On February 3, Erdoğan denounced student protesters as “terrorists” and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations. By then the police had detained more than 250 students. Erdoğan admitted he feared the BOUN protests could grow into anti-government protests and said he would not let them swell.

In [Erdogan’s] Islamist worldview, youth dissent is good only if it protests ideas Islamism opposes, not if it protests Islamists.

Bosporus University (Boğaziçi Üniversitesi in Turkish, or BOUN in its acronym) is one of Turkey’s top three “Ivy League” higher education institutions. Established as Robert College in 1863, BOUN was the first American university founded outside the US. Its founders were wealthy philanthropist Christopher Robert and missionary Cyrus Hamlin. Robert College was handed over to the Turkish government in 1971 and reflagged itself as BOUN.

BOUN’s notable graduates include former prime ministers Tansu Çiller and Ahmet Davutoğlu. Times Higher Education put BOUN in 601-800 in its 2021 world university ranking. Every year about 2.5 million Turkish pupils take a national examination to enter a university. In last year’s examination 708 of the top 1,000 in 2.5 million contenders enrolled at BOUN. In other words, 70% of Turkey’s best students prefer this university.

Turkish Islamists have always been at odds with the liberal, pro-Western traditions of BOUN. In an interview, Binali Yıldırım, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s choice for prime minister in 2016, commented that he did not attend BOUN in his youth because he “saw boys and girls sitting and talking together in the university’s yard” and found the genders intermixing unacceptable. It was precisely this ideological incompatibility that opened a new front in the battle between tyrannical Islamism and an elite university.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/migrants-and-the-threat-to-womens-rights-in-europe-11614017275?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The European debate on immigration, integration and Islam has intensified. In part this is a response to terrorist attacks, the preaching of radical Islam, and the re-emergence of extreme right-wing and populist parties. But the big, underlying change has been the influx of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

More than 3.7 million people have arrived illegally in Europe since 2009, the majority of whom have applied for asylum. Roughly half arrived in 2015 alone. Two-thirds of the newcomers were male. Around 80% of asylum applicants were under 35. The great majority have come from Muslim-majority countries.

The flow of migrants has abated in the past few years, but large numbers of people still attempt to reach Europe, even during the pandemic. Last year Europe saw more than 336,000 first-time asylum applications and 114,300 illegal entries from January through November.

One consequence has been a change in the position of women in Europe. Many Muslim migrants don’t feel or express contempt for women. But some do—enough to drive a trend.

One shocking event that drew attention to this trend was the wave of sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve 2015-16 in Germany. According to German police, more than 1,200 women were assaulted, of whom 24 said they were raped. The perpetrators often acted in gangs, attacking lone women. Of 153 suspects in the city of Cologne, nearly all were foreign, including 103 from Morocco and Algeria. Sixty-eight were asylum seekers.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-nuclear-weapons-program/

 Samples recently collected by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at two Iranian sites showed traces of radioactivity. Tehran had not reported any nuclear activity at these sites and denied IAEA inspectors access to them until just a few months ago. The findings suggest that Iran, in violation of the JCPOA nuclear agreement it signed in July 2015, has continued to conduct activities related to nuclear military development.

Samples collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed traces of radioactivity at two Iranian sites where Tehran has not reported any nuclear activity. Although the IAEA refrained from naming the sites in its quarterly report of June 5, 2020, they were identified last year by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. The identification of the sites was based on information extracted from the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled out of Tehran and into Israel in January 2018.

The first site visited by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 was a pilot plant for uranium conversion with an emphasis on the production of UF6 (uranium hexafluoride, a uranium compound which, in its gas phase, enables the enrichment of uranium by centrifuges). This site, located about 75 km southeast of Tehran, operated under the aegis of the Amad military nuclear program. In documents from the Iranian nuclear archive, this location is referred to as the “Tehran Site.” The facility was dismantled in 2004.

The other site was Marivan, located near the town of Abadeh in central Iran. This facility, also part of the Amad program, was designed to conduct “cold tests” of nuclear weapons (that is, to simulate activation of a nuclear explosive device using natural uranium rather than nuclear weapons grade uranium). This included operating a multipoint explosive system for the activation of a nuclear weapon as well as the development of its neutron initiator.

According to satellite imagery published by the Institute for Science and International Security, the Iranian authorities razed part of the Marivan facility in July 2019, more than a year before they allowed IAEA inspectors access to the facility. It is likely that this was done to prevent exposure of nuclear activities that had taken place there in the past. (This was not the first time the Islamic regime had razed nuclear sites: it did so at the Lavizan-Shian facility in Tehran in 2004 and the Parchin facility in 2012.) It is possible that the traces of radioactive materials found in samples taken by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 indicate renewed efforts to develop a neutron initiator for nuclear weapons previously conducted at the Marivan site.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17009/turkey-ravages-cyprus

Six years after Turkey invaded Cyprus, another military coup d’état, in 1980 in Turkey, would destroy whatever crumbs of freedoms remained. According to US secret diplomatic documents, at least 650,000 people were detained. Many were tortured and hundreds died in custody.

“There is a rule in the [Turkish] Special Warfare: To increase the strength of the people, some of their values must be sabotaged as if [the sabotage were conducted] by the enemy. [For example], a mosque can be burned. We burned a mosque in Cyprus.” — Turkish General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, Habertürk, September 23, 2010.

In addition to Greek Cypriots, Armenian, Maronite, and other non-Muslim Cypriots were also forcibly displaced. The result was that Turkey effectively crushed the Christian population.

Today Turkey still calls the atrocities it committed in Cyprus in 1974 “a peace operation.”

The international community may be unaware of it, but Europe includes a ghost town located in the Republic of Cyprus. Since 1974, it has been under Turkish occupation, which has looted and ethnically cleansed its indigenous population.

Designated a military zone by the Turkish army 46 years ago, when Greek Cypriots were forced to flee invading Turkish forces, a part of the Cypriot district of Famagusta has remained deserted.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared in October 2020:

“[T]he two main streets and the coast in the ‘Maraş region’ [Famagusta in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus], which were closed since the 1974 peace operation, have recently been opened to the use of the Cypriot people….. The closed Maraş region belongs to the Turkish Cypriots; it should be known this way…

“I call out to our fellow Turks in northern Cyprus, to my Turkish brothers. This land is yours. You have to lay claim to these lands. You also need to protect the political will that lays claim to these lands. If we can put this out fully, I believe that the future in Cyprus will be very different.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17088/iran-mediation

First, he must persuade Tehran to treat Iraq as an independent nation-state, not a glacis for the Islamic Republic in its campaign to “export revolution.”

Revival of the 1977 trade accord could help end the current chaos and enable Tehran and Baghdad to secure income from tariffs and taxation. Setting mutually accepted rules on charities could also help both curb money laundering and tax evasion through fake religious charities linked to crime syndicates and security services.

The big enchilada in al-Hakim’s imaginary mediation would be the reopening of Shatt al-Arab, the border waterway closed and clogged during the war. Re-opened, the Shatt could ensure the revival of Basra in Iraq and Khorramshahr in Iran which were the region’s largest ports for centuries. Dredging and remodeling the waterway could cost some $20 billion, worth considering if both sides created a joint navigation management agency.

Ah, we dropped the word “normalization”…. If the Islamic Republic can’t normalize relations even with Iraq, how could it normalize with the American “Great Satan”?

If wise al-Hakim wants to mediate, let him start with his two homelands.

With Donald Trump out of the White House, wannabe do-gooders have thrown their hats, or turbans, into the ring as mediators between Tehran and Washington.

First, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to seize the opportunity of Joe Biden’s victory to build a bridge with Iran. Then it was the turn of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to don the mantle of honest broker. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has also made musings about mediation.