RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/mounting-evidence-points-hezbollah-culpability-ari-lieberman/

Within an hour of the massive explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4, Hezbollah denied any culpability. Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun, considered a close Hezbollah ally, immediately attributed the blast to the presence of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that ignited after a nearby warehouse housing fireworks caught fire. Lebanese authorities claim that the ammonium nitrate was confiscated from a Russian cargo vessel in 2013 after the ship took a detour from its original destination and docked at the port.

The ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make explosives, was stored at the port for seven years before it blew up with catastrophic consequences. There is ample reason to believe that Hezbollah was responsible for the blast and resulting carnage. The collective evidence is in fact, damning.

First, one must understand that in Lebanon, Hezbollah controls all ports of entry, either directly through force of arms or indirectly, through graft. The obvious purpose is to control the flow of weapons, money and narcotics that pass through these ports of entry. Therefore, it is logical to assume that Hezbollah was aware of the presence of the ammonium nitrate.

In 2008 the Lebanese cabinet headed by the Western-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, attempted to remove security cameras installed by Hezbollah at Beirut International Airport. The cabinet also attempted to remove Brigadier General Wafiq Shkeir, widely regarded as a Hezbollah stooge, from his post as airport security chief. Finally, the government attempted to close separate telecommunication infrastructure that Hezbollah was installing throughout the country.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/austria-must-grapple-its-past-joseph-puder/

Austria today is one of the friendlier members of the European Union (EU) towards the Jewish state. In fact, the current Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz has been particularly friendly toward Israel, and he regularly speaks out against antisemitism. He has also been the one EU leader to convey Benjamin Netanyahu’s fair charges regarding EU policies toward Israel. Kurz’s Austria is the only West European nation whose government is actively shielding the Jewish state from EU sanctions. This year Austria’s parliament passed a resolution calling the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel a form of antisemitism. It also labeled Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Now, Chancellor Kurz has eased conditions for Israeli citizens to receive Austrian citizenship. Unfortunately, like his predecessors, he has thus far failed to confront Austria’s dark past, specifically Austrians behavior during the Holocaust.  Austria has done very little about educating its young people on the Holocaust or prosecuting its many living Nazi criminals.

Austria conducted two trials of Nazi criminals, both in the 1960’s. The first was the trial of Franz Murer, the SS-Oberscharfuhrer, also known as the “butcher of Vilnius.” Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor Nazi hunter, managed to get him prosecuted in 1963. The trial took place in Graz, Austria, lasting a week, and ended with the Austrians acquitting Murer. The second trial was that of Franz Novak, a senior aide to Adolf Eichmann. He stood trial on October 12, 1964, in Vienna, charged with participating in the deportation of 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the death camps in Poland. Convicted and imprisoned, he was pardoned by Austria’s President Rudolf Kirchschlager. Austrians have not bothered to grapple with their role in the Holocaust crimes. The one-time Austria was forced to face reality was in 1986, when Austrian Kurt Waldheim, the former UN Secretary-General, was running for the Austrian presidency. Press inquiries into his past revealed his role in the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, Austrians elected him as their president. Embarrassed by these revelations concerning Waldheim’s past, in 1991, Austria’s Chancellor Franz Vranitzky declared his nation’s responsibility for Nazi crimes. Austrians, however, were still unable to face up to their sordid history. They went from denial of their role in the Holocaust to historical revisionism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16351/china-persecution-uyghur-muslims

The globe’s most influential Muslim international forum, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in a resolution drafted in March last year, in fact commended China’s efforts in its care of the country’s Muslims.

The silence of the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia is, in part, explained by the at least $75 billion of investment deals reached in the last few years. Moreover, China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner. However, Saudi Arabia’s failure publicly to support Uyghur Muslims shreds the Kingdom’s claim to be the “Defender of the Faith.”

Perhaps a more realistic but cynical explanation for the seemingly incongruous alliance between China and the globe’s Islamic governments is the collegial compatibility of authoritarian regimes. None of these tyrannical entities wants international observers to arrive inside their sovereign realms to investigate human rights abuses of minorities….

More strategically threatening to the existing liberal international order may be a decision by the world’s Islamic states and other Third World countries not to condemn Beijing in the event that China might emerge as victor in the new Cold War.

When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the entire Islamic world united behind their fellow Muslim Afghans and cooperated with the West to force the USSR to withdraw. By contrast, China’s Communist security forces have transformed their ethnic Uyghur majority province of Xinjiang into a huge concentration camp, but the world’s Islamic states have refused to criticize Beijing.

The world’s most influential Muslim international forum, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in a resolution drafted in March last year, in fact commended China’s efforts in its care of the country’s Muslims. Shortly after, in July 2019, twenty-three Muslim countries supported a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution praising the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) efforts “for protecting and promoting human rights through development.” This statement rebuffed an earlier Human Rights Council resolution drafted by 22 Western countries urging China to refrain from violating the human rights of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16353/belarus-protests

“You speak about unfair elections and want fair ones? I have an answer for you. We had the elections. Unless you kill me, there will be no other elections.” — Alexander Lukashenko, Tass News Agency, August 17, 2020.

Lukashenko’s crackdown on the protests has been particularly severe: Some 6,700 have been detained since protests erupted in the evening of August 9, at least two people have died and many more have been wounded. Riot police have used rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades to disperse thousands of peaceful demonstrators.

“Crowds outside a detention centre in Minsk say the screams of torture victims are audible from outside, and video footage corroborates this. The evidence points to a campaign of widespread torture and other ill-treatment by the Belarusian authorities who are intent on crushing peaceful protests by any means…. These are people whose only ‘crime’ was to take to the streets in peaceful protest. What we are seeing in Belarus is a human rights catastrophe that demands urgent action.” — Marie Struthers, Amnesty International Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, August 13, 2020.

Unlike the murder of George Flynn in the US, the horrifying police brutality against thousands of peaceful demonstrators in Belarus has not caught the attention of Western activists, none of whom has taken to the streets in solidarity with innocent Belarussians.

The people of Belarus probably need a strong Western response, not just to counter Lukashenko and the rigged elections, but also to show Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has been pushing for ever-closer “integration” with Belarus for many years, that Belarus will not be abandoned by the West.

Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which border Belarus, will be following developments closely. The West really needs to do the same: supporting Belarussian civil society, while deterring Russia’s designs on the country.

President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron grip since 1994, “won” his sixth presidential election on August 9 with a remarkable 80% of the vote. Both the US and the EU have described the election — much like the previous elections there — as neither free nor fair.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/are-unilateral-withdrawals-in-israels-interests-opinion-638593

The explosion in Beirut was only a warning. It was meant to take place in Israel, and yet few people have focused on this (understandably because of the tragedy). Hezbollah still has 150,000 precision-guided missiles intended to be used against Israel. That will be as devastating as the ammonia-nitrate explosion at the port. And Hezbollah remains the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon. Although Israel is not the cause of Hezbollah’s rise to power in Lebanon, it bears some responsibility.

One of the consequences of then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s irresponsible decision to leave Lebanon unilaterally in May 2000 was to give Hezbollah the opportunity to fill the vacuum left by the absence of the IDF and the collapse of the South Lebanese Army. Although controversial within the government and the IDF, the withdrawal was not hasty. It was planned and executed by the IDF. The withdrawal was seen by Arabs as a retreat under fire.

Barak’s attempts in July of that year to appease PLO chairman Arafat at a conference convened by US president Bill Clinton at Camp David failed, but the PLO saw this in the context of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Like Hezbollah, it too could be victorious. That led to a massive reign of terror led by the PLO, the Second Intifada, which claimed 1,100 Israeli lives and many thousands wounded.