RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/rising-islamic-terrorist-threat-austria-strikes-daniel-greenfield/

On a summer Sabbath day, Elie Rosen, President of the Jewish Community of Graz, spotted a suspicious man hanging around the synagogue. The synagogue had recently been vandalized and the man had a backpack full of rocks that he was about to start throwing at the synagogue.

After the synagogue had been vandalized a few days earlier, Rosen had warned that in the Austrian city, “we are dealing with a stronger left wing and anti-Israel antisemitism,”

Rosen’s concern was understandable since some of the graffiti smeared on the wall around the synagogue read, “Free Palestine” and “Our language and our country is Palestine”. A second attack by the same perpetrator on the Sabbath Eve had smashed the synagogue’s windows.

The wall that the Islamic attacker had vandalized was made out of bricks from the ruins of the original Graz synagogue that had been destroyed by the National Socialists. The synagogue, which had been rebuilt only two decades ago, serves Graz’s tiny surviving Jewish community.

Austrian Jews know better than to take such slogans lightly. One of the worst episodes of  antisemitic violence after the National Socialist period had been an assault by two PLO Islamic terrorists on a synagogue where a Bar Mitzvah was taking place. The terrorists had opened fire with machine guns and thrown hand grenades into the synagogue. A woman who had rolled on a hand grenade to protect the children died. A number of other congregants were wounded.

When Rosen asked the bearded man what he was doing, the vandal attacked him with a chair leg, and fled on a mountain bike. When the police caught him, he expressed no remorse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-iran-from-terrorizing-dissidents-abroad-11598822066?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Jamshid Sharmahd, a California-based Iranian opposition activist, disappeared in late July while traveling to a technology conference in India by way of Dubai. Mr. Sharmahd’s family tracked his movements using mobile phone data to a remote region of neighboring Oman before he dropped off the map. Days later, he appeared blindfolded on Iranian state television as a result of what the Islamic Republic termed a “complex operation” by “anonymous soldiers.”

More frightening than the apparent kidnapping of the U.S.-based dissident is the fate that likely awaits him. This summer Tehran sentenced to death another kidnapped opponent, who had been living as a refugee in France. And in recent weeks a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist based in the U.S. revealed that her family had been pressured to invite her to a get-together in neighboring Turkey so she could be abducted.

Iranian democracy activists living in Western countries are understandably alarmed by this apparent uptick in kidnappings and hope that their adopted democratic homes will protect them. But safeguarding these dissidents will require world leaders to stop thinking of such incidents as isolated crimes, and instead confront them as state-sanctioned intimidation policy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/european-allies-fail-to-support-us-effort-to-reinstate-sanctions-on-iran_3477629.html

The U.S. effort to renew the arms embargo against Iran set to expire on Oct. 18 met with opposition from its European allies, France, Germany, and the UK. However none of them supports giving Iran the opportunity to buy and sell weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News.

For almost two years, the United States “has made every diplomatic effort” to renew the arms embargo against Iran. On Aug. 21, the United States officially requested that the United Nations restore UN sanctions on Iran that had been lifted by a UN Security Council Resolution adopted in 2015, which also endorsed the Iran nuclear deal.

This request was met with criticism by European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal. The E3 countries—France, Germany, and the UK—refused to support the U.S. initiative because it withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018.

The EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a statement that the United States can’t request the snapback of sanctions for the same reason.

“I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the preservation and full implementation of the JCPOA by all. The JCPOA remains a key pillar of the global non-proliferation architecture, contributing to regional security,” Borrell said.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/30/chinas_brand_of_communism.html

Communism is back in the news. That’s in part because the Trump administration has made a national priority of informing the public about the China challenge. Earlier this summer four senior officials — National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General William Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — gave a series of speeches highlighting the communist roots of China’s autocratic conduct and of its ambitions to reconfigure world order.

Those speeches, however, did not include any scoops. They addressed a widely neglected — and sometimes aggressively downplayed — development stretching across the better part of a decade. Since his accession in 2012 to the position of general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping has ruled China with dictatorial powers while consistently reaffirming the centrality of communism to the CCP’s quest to transform China into the world’s most powerful and influential nation.

According to the “South China Morning Post,” Xi wrote in an article published this month that “The foundation of China’s political economy can only be a Marxist political economy, and not be based on other economic theories.” Therefore, “The dominant position of public ownership cannot be shaken, and the leading role of the state-owned economy cannot be shaken.” 

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

When Britain’s foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Jerusalem last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly chewed his ear off.

Small wonder. It’s hard to exaggerate the perfidy, cynicism and head-in-the-sand cowardice currently being displayed by Britain, along with France and Germany, over Iran.

Instead of joining forces with those trying to neutralise the growing threat from the Iranian regime, Britain and these two other key European powers are actually acting in concert with the world’s twin empires of evil, Russia and China, in shoring up this terrorist rogue state.

Earlier this month, the United States proposed at the UN Security Council to extend the Iran arms embargo, which is due to expire on October 18.

This was strongly supported by the Gulf states, which said that Iran has continued to supply conventional weapons to terrorists and separatists in the region and to intervene militarily in neighbouring countries.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16428/lebanon-france-wish-list

The first defect of the Macron plan, as we understand it, is that it treats what Lebanon faces as a humanitarian disaster, something like a major earthquake or tsunami, rather than a man-made tragedy plotted outside and executed by elements in the Lebanese political system. In other words, Lebanon’s crisis is caused by geopolitical factors with internal manifestations.

Tehran has tried to rewrite the Lebanese rules of the game in two ways. First, it has recruited, often purchased, allies not to say clients, in all communities. To be sure, Hezbollah remains Tehran’s main Trojan horse. But Iran also has baby Trojan horses in all other communities.

The second way in which Tehran has changed the rules of the game is to transform Hezbollah into a state-within-the-state, turning the official institutions of the Lebanese state into empty shells. Worse still, Hezbollah itself is held on an increasingly tight leash from Tehran. Those who follow the official narrative in Tehran know that the hard core of the Islamic Republic leadership treat Hezbollah as servants rather than allies.

Even before the mullahs seized power in Tehran, Iran exercised some influence in Lebanon and is likely to maintain a high profile there even after the mullahs are seen off the stage. But, while Iran will always be here, it would be wrong to assume that the Islamic Republic, too, will always be there.

Does Emmanuel Macron have a plan for helping Lebanon out of its current crisis? Sources close to the French president claim he does.

The plan consists of mobilizing international support for a fund to rebuild the shattered port of Beirut and upgrade the country’s ramshackle infrastructure.

In exchange, it would require a new national consensus that transcends sectarian divides without ignoring them altogether.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16396/china-debt-trap-diplomacy

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s grand thoroughfares are now global in scope, extending as far as Djibouti, a strategic maritime chokepoint in Africa, just west of the Arabian Peninsula, or Ecuador, home to South America’s third-largest oil reserves.

The economic benefits, however, of some of these deals between China and poor “Third World” countries in Africa and Latin America are questionable. A few of these bilateral packages appear contrived to imprison already impoverished states into realms of permanent economic vassalage to China.

The objectives of China’s global BRI programs are clearly as much strategic and political as they are economic. BRI projects seem not designed so much to win new friends as to win new dependents, especially in areas either neglected by the West or in the Western sphere of influence.

The ultimate objective of the global dimension of China’s BRI enterprise appears to be geared toward replacing the existing political, military and economic dimension of the West’s liberal democratic order — again not surprisingly — with one dominated solely by the Communist Party of China.

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy proposal has been the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) commercial and strategic program. At first, the network was pitched as a restoration of the ancient overland trade route, the “Silk Road,” that linked China to Europe. This “New Silk Road,” like its predecessor, would traverse the vast steppes of Central Asia — but the contemporary BRI is allegedly meant to serve also as an economic boon for all the countries along the route.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16404/turkey-hostility-israel-uae

It should not be a surprise that a government that supports Hamas is against the normalization treaty between Israel and the UAE. The treaty will hopefully pave the way for more peaceful coexistence and cooperation between Israel, the UAE and other Muslim countries. The Erdogan regime, through its hostility to the deal, its hosting Hamas terrorists on its own soil, and its recent acts of aggression in Syria, Libya, Greece and Iraq, has once again demonstrated that it supports the destruction of Israel, regional instability, neo-Ottoman expansionism, and war.

When the Israel-United Arab Emirates (UAE) peace agreement, also known as the Abraham Accord, was announced on August 13, the UAE became the third Arab country, after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, formally to normalize relations with Israel.

Turkey, however, condemned the Israel-UAE agreement despite its 71 years of diplomatic relations with the Jewish State. The Turkish foreign ministry said in a press release:

“While pursuing its narrowly defined interests, the UAE has attempted to present its betrayal to the Palestinian cause as an act of altruism. The history and the conscience of the people in the region will never forget or forgive this hypocritical act.”

Turkey’s Communication Director for the Presidency, Fahrettin Altun, said that they consider the agreement between the UAE and Israel “null and void.” The head of Turkey’s parliament, Mustafa Şentop, condemned the deal, calling it “disgraceful” and a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/285939

A traveller to Eastern Europe can visit the sites of once-famous yeshivas like Slobodka, Kelm, Volozhin Telze and Ponevech and mourn at seeing buildings that once echoed with Talmudic study and which are now either empty ruins or have been transformed into community centers or shops.

Those yeshivas, however, abandoned because of the Holocaust and prior periods of persecution, and the shuls burned to the ground by Nazis and their cohorts, have been reborn in Israel (and the USA)..Today, the sound of Torah echoes from thousands of voices, more than there ever were in the renowned European yeshivas.

One cannot say the same about what is happening to Christianity in Europe, with France at the head. The worshipers are no more, and now it is the turn of the buildings.

“Should we abandon the churches of our villages, victims of de-Christianization?”, asks Stéphane Bern, commissioned by Emmanuel Macron to protect French cultural heritage, in a new essay for La Reveue des deux mondes.

On its website, the Patrice Besse real estate agency, which specializes in historic buildings, lists thirty churches currently for sale. Per square meter, desecrated churches are the cheapest lots in the country.