RUTHFULLY YOURS

The aftermath of vandalism at the ancient Jewish cemetery of Námestovo, Slovakia in December 2019. (Courtesy of ZCN)

(JTA) — More than 20 headstones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in northern Slovakia in the second such incident in the country in a week.

The 22 gravestones vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in the country’s northern town of Rajec appear to have been damaged in mid-December, according to the World Jewish Congress. The vandalism is currently under investigation by police.

The 60 gravestones knocked down and set on fire in the Jewish cemetery of Námestovo, a town in northern Slovakia near the Polish border, were discovered on December 16.

It is not known yet whether the two incidents are connected.

Anti-Semitic incidents of this nature are extremely rare in Slovakia, according to the World Jewish Congress.

In Central and Eastern Europe, inactive Jewish cemeteries often attract vagrants because they are often located outside urban centers and out of sight of law enforcement. Some incidents of vandalism have been attributed to drunks and drug users and are not always deemed hate crimes.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15346/german-parliament-hezbollah-update

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

It is utterly implausible that Germany, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in Europe, is unable to ascertain the organizational structure of Hezbollah within its own borders.

“Six months ago, the AfD presented a resolution in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah, a resolution which you vehemently rejected and which since then you have blocked in caucus…. What is needed is the complete ban of Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s propaganda and terror financing in Germany must be stopped… This, by the way, is also demanded by the Bundestag’s Anti-Semitism Resolution, which expressly calls for the deportation of supporters of anti-Semitism. If this does not apply to supporters of Hezbollah, which wants to send Jews to the gas chambers, and wants to destroy Israel, then to whom could this apply?” — Beatrix von Storch MP, Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] party, to the Bundestag, December 19, 2019.

Von Storch noted that the Bundestag’s resolution, if implemented by the German government, would allow Hezbollah’s 30-plus German-based mosques and cultural centers — where the group raises funds and spreads anti-Israel propaganda — to continue to operate. Moreover, not one of the 1,050 known Hezbollah operatives now in Germany would be deported.

Gatestone Institute recently reported that a December 19 German parliamentary resolution, which claims to call for a complete ban in Germany of Hezbollah (Arabic for “The Party of Allah”), actually falls short of demanding a comprehensive ban of the terrorist organization. A senior US government official called the article “flat wrong”. It would have been nice if had been.

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

The Bundestag itself has issued a statement which states that it is calling for an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot) of Hezbollah, but not an organizational ban (Organisationsverbot) — an important distinction because the activity ban is legally weaker than the organizational ban.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15319/joachim-son-forget

What shocks the elites of Paris or Brussels about President Trump is that he actually embodies real governance, which is totally inadequate in their mode of operation.

Clandestinely, North Korea is at the forefront of computing, which allows it to siphon significant funds through the blockchain [bitcoin].

Kim Jong-un has no interest in denuclearization. His program is total and irreversible, not to mention verifiable…. He has promised that its effect… will change the “strategic status” of North Korea… Why would his regime comply with adopting a position of weakness?

Joachim Marie Son-Forget, a French politician born in South Korea, since 2017 has been a member of the French National Assembly (lower house of the French Parliament) representing French residents overseas. Formerly active in the Socialist Party and later La République En Marche!, he resigned in late 2018 to start his own political party, Valeur Absolue.

Grégoire Canlorbe: How do you react to the EU’s attitude: hostile to Trump but friendly towards the mullahs of Iran?

Joachim Son-Forget: I do not think that the EU is particularly hostile to Trump, except that it denounces the trade war that has been declared. I fully understand the US President’s decision to increase tariffs on goods such as European wines or Airbus aircraft. Trump is defending America’s economic interests, and from his point of view, he is right to do so. As I am concerned with French and European interests, I am obliged to approve the tariff sanctions with which the EU has promised to respond. But Trump is a great President; I regret that he cannot find in [French President Emmanuel] Macron an interlocutor who answers him from a position him of strength — as a leader who skillfully and ferociously defends his own economic and geopolitical interests, like Kim Jong-un, who has been so skillful despite his age and his education in Switzerland.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/communist-cuba-enslaves-physicians-11577299061?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

What do you call a system that combines slavery with espionage? In Communist Cuba, you call it humanitarian aid. For decades Havana has sent tens of thousands of doctors abroad as a supposed sign of goodwill, only to steal their income and use some as unwilling spies. Fortunately, more nations are rejecting Cuba’s “help.”

After toppling socialist dictator Evo Morales in November, Bolivia expelled more than 700 Cuban doctors, accusing them of fomenting protests demanding Mr. Morales’s return to power. Ecuador moved to evict the 400 or so Cuban doctors within its borders a few days earlier. One doctor said she and her colleagues received only a third of their promised salaries, with Havana keeping the rest. She also said Cuban authorities forced them to “send messages of support to the revolution.”

In late 2018, incoming Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro demanded that Cuba allow the more than 8,500 doctors in his country to bring their families and collect their full salary, which was paid for by Brazilian taxpayers. Havana soon recalled the doctors. A year before, at least 150 Cuban doctors in Brazil filed lawsuits detailing their mistreatment. One said, “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15311/persecuted-christians-enemies

“You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been ‘genocided,’ they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in… and even threaten you…” — Paul Diamond, British Human Rights Lawyer, CBN News, December 4, 2019.

Lord George Carey is suing the UK Home Office for allegedly being “institutionally biased” against Christian refugees and therefore complicit in what he calls “the steady crucifixion of Middle East Christians.”

When it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christians. Statistics seemed to confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian….” — Barnabas Fund, November 2, 2017.

A number of other Christian orderlies were also denied visas, including another nun with a PhD in biblical theology from Oxford; another nun denied for not having a personal bank account; and a Catholic priest denied for not being married.

Christian “infidels” need not apply, but radical Muslims are welcomed with open arms.

The United Nations Refugee Agency appears to be committed to blocking persecuted Christians from receiving any assistance. According to a recent CBN News report:

Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.

One of the refugees, Hasan, a Syrian convert to Christianity, told us in a phone call that Muslim UN camp officials “knew that we were Muslims and became Christians and they dealt with us with persecution and mockery. They didn’t let us into the office. They ignored our request.”

Yes, tiny Israel with 9 million people, the size of New Jersey is number 8!  The U.S. is 473 times the size of Israel. 
Happy Holidays from Janet Levy.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the most powerful countries in 2019 are:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/power-rankings
1.   United States
2.   Russia
3.   China
4.  Germany
5.  United Kingdom
6.  France
7.  Japan
8.  Israel
9.  Saudi Arabia
10. South Korea
11.  United Arab Emirates
12.  Canada
13.  Iran
14.  Switzerland
15.  Australia
16.  Turkey
17.    India
18.   Italy
19.   Iraq
20.  Singapore
21.   Sweden
22.  Pakistan
23.  Spain
24.  Qatar
25.  Belgium
26.  Netherlands
27.  Norway
28.  Denmark
29.  Egypt
30.  Brazil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15320/palestinians-iraq

Instead of helping the Palestinians who are being arrested and killed and tortured in Iraq, the UN, EU and “pro-Palestinian” groups are busy spouting hate against Israel.

The number of Palestinians in Iraq has dropped from more than 40,000 before 2003 to fewer than 6,000 today. Many Palestinians have been killed, injured and arrested by Iraqi authorities and various militias. Thousands of Palestinians fled to neighboring countries, including Syria and Jordan.

The United Nations, European Union and various human rights organizations pay attention to the Palestinians only when they find a way to hold Israel responsible for their “suffering.”

More than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011. Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from working in about 70 professions, such as medicine, law and engineering, or joining any professional association…. Palestinians are victims not only of their Arab brothers, but also of the double standards of the international community, which continues to be obsessed only with Israel.

Palestinians living in Iraq were recently stripped of the equal-rights status they had enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. Now, the Palestinians are complaining that they are being targeted by the Iraqi authorities and various militias.

Their complaints, however, seem to have been ignored by the international community, including Western activists and human rights organizations that describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian.”

No one in the international community cares about Palestinians when they are targeted by their Arab brothers.

The United Nations, European Union and various human rights organizations pay attention to the Palestinians only when they find a way to hold Israel responsible for their “suffering.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-champions-the-faithful-11577144946?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Christmas is anything but a season of peace and joy for millions of Christians around the world today. Not since the death of Stalin have Christians in so many places faced the levels of discrimination, violence, imprisonment and even death on account of their religion that they do today.

After more than a century of intermittent genocide, persecution and forced removals, ancient Christian populations in much of the Middle East are on the edge of extinction. Iraq’s Christian population, estimated at 1.4 million as recently as 2003, fell by almost 90% in the chaos that followed the American invasion. Roughly three quarters of Syria’s Christian population, estimated at two million before the current civil war, are refugees. Once a substantial percentage of the Arab Palestinian population, Christians are rapidly disappearing from the Palestinian territories. Egypt still retains a large Christian population, but Copts face pervasive discrimination and, especially in rural areas, violence.

Persecution hangs over beleaguered Christian communities in much of the world. Christians in sub-Saharan Africa face violence from Boko Haram fighters. In Pakistan no Christian is safe from false charges of blasphemy. Hindu mobs in India have attacked churches. In Indonesia, radical Islamists attempt to disrupt the traditionally peaceful relationships among the country’s religious groups.

The most alarming developments are taking place in China. As authorities in Beijing work to enforce ideological conformity and restrict debate among China’s 1.4 billion people, the Christian population is experiencing heightened scrutiny and pressure. Crosses have been pulled down from church roofs, and churches have been bulldozed. More ominously, the biometric monitoring and close surveillance that has been used to crush Tibetan Buddhists and the Muslims of Xinjiang has been systematically introduced into Christian churches across the country.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15324/german-parliament-hezbollah

Germany, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah’s “political wing,” which continues to raise funds in the country. A German foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, has said that such a ban would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…. Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, is in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.” — Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem.

Germany’s Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah in its entirety. He recently repeated the German government’s distinction between Hezbollah’s legitimate and illegitimate activities in Germany.

“It remains to be seen to what extent the German federal government will…actually ‘exhaust all the resources of the rule of law’ to stop Hezbollah’s money laundering and terrorist financing in Germany.” — Bild, December 19, 2019.

The German parliament has passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the German government to ban the activities of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — in Germany.

The measure — supported by center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the two major parties that make up Germany’s ruling coalition, and also by the classical liberal Free Democrats — has been hailed as “important,” “significant,” and a “crucial step.”

The resolution, however, falls short of a complete ban on Hezbollah and appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Germany to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.