RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14754/tlaib-help-palestinians

While Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib is using the controversy surrounding her visit as an excuse to launch scathing attacks on Israel, Palestinians seem to be more worried about failed leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This concern is not something that Tlaib seems to share with Palestinians because for her the only wrong-doing is coming from Israel.

“Praising suicide bombers and pushing blood libel is not ‘criticizing Israeli policy.'” — Charles Sykes, The Bulwark, August 19, 2019.

As a Congresswoman, Tlaib should have been worried that a US Embassy was forced to cancel an event to help Palestinians because of threats and calls for a boycott.

It would have been helpful had the Palestinian-American Congresswoman made an effort to persuade Palestinian Authority officials to resume their relations with the US administration and explore ways of boosting the Palestinian economy and improving living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a Congresswoman, she should be working to build, and not destroy, bridges between her people and the US. Her fierce attacks on Israel and the US administration, however, embolden Palestinian hardliners and fuel hate against Israelis and Americans.

If Tlaib really cared about the Palestinians, she should be campaigning against the PA and Hamas leaders engaged in a power struggle over money and power. Moreover, she should be calling for reforms and democracy under the PA and Hamas. The least she could do is demand an end to human rights violations by the PA and Hamas or demand that they hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections. She could also demand an end to crackdown on freedom of speech under the PA and Hamas.

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib is apparently upset because she was not able to agitate against Israel during a proposed visit to her grandmother there.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14739/al-qaeda-isis

In the short term, al-Qaeda evidently wants to pressure the United States to withdraw from direct involvement in the Middle East. ISIS, on the other hand, wants to cleanse the region’s Arab regimes of secular dictatorships, corrupt ruling elites and insufficiently devout Muslim intelligentsia.

There is, however, a serious complication. The Taliban-al-Qaeda coalition is now being challenged by increasingly strong ISIS forces in several Afghan provinces. The United Nations recently estimated that ISIS still have roughly $300 million at their disposal. Moreover, some “disaffected” or hardline Taliban fighters opposed to ongoing negotiations with the U.S. are defecting to ISIS.

The West should take no pleasure in the global competition between al-Qaeda and ISIS. It is a competition that incentivizes each terrorist network to upgrade its recruitment appeal for the next generation of jihadists.

In its effort to sustain a pro-Western regime in Afghanistan, the United States might instead take advantage of an opportunity already in place. In an area of such unrest, and where it is still unclear what the word of those making promises is worth, it might be wise to keep a modest footprint rather than withdraw all troops. To abandon the area totally, as President Obama abandoned Syria and Iraq, and then find it overrun with terrorist groups, would be, as one saw, a catastrophic mistake…. Although admittedly less than ideal, it still be might be far less costly in life and treasure, as with the Middle East, to safeguard the area and gather intelligence, rather than to leave and then have to go back. It is an opportunity that would be foolhardy to give up.

While the world’s two most prominent and competing jihadist networks, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), share the ultimate objective of establishing a global Islamic caliphate and ushering in the apocalyptic age of the Mahdi. Their intermediate goal seems to be replacing the liberal nation-state system with a worldwide Muslim Ummah. Their immediate aims are different.

In the short term, Al-Qaeda evidently wants to pressure the United States to withdraw from direct involvement in the Middle East. ISIS, on the other hand, wants to cleanse the region’s Arab regimes of secular dictatorships, corrupt ruling elites and insufficiently devout Muslim intelligentsia.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274647/mullahs-provocations-joseph-puder

The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in his Twitter account last week that the UN embargo on Iran will expire soon, and he asked the Iranian regime to end its “destabilizing behavior.” He added that the “clock is ticking,” and urged the international community to recognize that it means the Islamic Republic will be able to resume its nuclear weaponization and that its Quds Force (part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC) commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani will be able to travel freely again and foment trouble and instability worldwide. Pompeo called upon the western powers to continue their support for sanctions on the Iranian regime.

Pompeo charged Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with inciting violence against Israel on the eve of the ninth of Av, a tragic day for Jews, which commemorates the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. The Ayatollah Khamenei exhorted Muslim pilgrims to Mecca to take an active part in defeating America’s “deceit,” a reference to the U.S. Middle East Peace Plan, also known as the ‘Deal of the Century.’ 

Pompeo tweeted in response that: “It’s sick that on the eve of Tisha (ninth) B-av, a solemn day for the Jewish people, Khamenei calls for violence against the Jewish state.” Pompeo took issue with Khamenei’s hypocritical positioning of Iran as the champion of the Palestinians. He wrote that Khamenei’s “faux concern” for the Palestinian people runs so deep, that under his reign of terror he provided less than $20,000 in aid since 2008, while the U.S. provided $6.3 billion in support to the Palestinians since 1994.” In another tweet, Pompeo wrote that, “Khamenei doesn’t see “progress” as prosperity for the Palestinian people, but for Palestinian terrorists switching from rocks to rockets to kill more Jews.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14563/denmark-immigration-integration

How does a society deal with religious institutions that profess values which are the very opposite of the value system of the Western society in which they live?

“When I was in high school, there were around 50,000 people with a non-Western background in Denmark. Today, there are almost half a million. In one generation, our country has changed”. — Lars Løkke Rasmussen, then prime minister of Denmark, January 1, 2019.

The Integration Barometer — which measures the degree of assimilation in the municipality among young people with a non-Western background — showed that almost one third of 18-29 year-olds (31%) believe that “religious and cultural laws must be adhered to, even though they may be contrary to [Danish] law”. The issue, then, is whether these young people believe that Islamic sharia law should take precedence over Danish law…. In addition, the number of youths who view democracy in a positive light has fallen from 86% in 2016 to 79% in 2018.

It recently came to light… that a committee under the government’s Ministry of Church Affairs, which is responsible for formally approving mosques in Denmark, has been handing out approvals for them without knowing “whether they [the mosques] were ruled from abroad, whether women’s rights were suppressed, or there were other problematic conditions”. Formal approval of a mosque means that the mosque becomes eligible for tax benefits and is permitted to bring foreign preachers to Denmark on a special visa.

When the association behind the mosque [asked]… to be approved as a religious community, it had in its statutes a provision saying it operated under the supervision of Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader’, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At first, this news was a matter of concern for the Ministry of Church Affairs, but then Ahlul Bait simply rewrote its statutes and the ministry gave its approval.

Earlier this year, in his New Year’s speech, Denmark’s prime minister at the time, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, mentioned that religious parallel societies constitute a problem and that immigrants need to learn to “put secular laws over religious ones”.

What, however, if, in the community involved, there seems no desire to do that?

“When I was in high school”, Rasmussen continued “there were around 50,000 people with a non-Western background in Denmark. Today, there are almost half a million. In one generation, our country has changed”.

Just how great are the problems was revealed in a recent survey, Integrations Barometer 2018, published by the municipality of Copenhagen. The Integration Barometer — which measures the degree of integration in the municipality among young people with a non-Western background — showed that almost one third of 18-29 year-olds (31%) believe that “religious and cultural laws must be adhered to, even though they may be contrary to [Danish] law”.[1] The issue, then, is whether these young people believe that Islamic sharia law should take precedence over Danish law. The statistic represents an increase from 2016, when a similar survey showed that 24% wanted sharia law. In addition, the number of youths who view democracy in a positive light has fallen from 86% in 2016 to 79% in 2018[2].

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gulf-states-shrug-as-india-seizes-kashmir-11566255385

The Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed a unique status in predominantly Hindu India for more than 70 years. No more. Both houses of the Indian Parliament have approved legislation to divide Kashmir into two “union territories” and allow non-Kashmiri Indians to move freely into the region, open businesses and buy land. Many Kashmiris fear the result will be a wave of migration that ends any hope of Kashmiri independence or autonomy.

Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India over Kashmir, reacted with rage, but it isn’t getting much support from its purported Muslim allies in the Persian Gulf region. As hundreds of Kashmiri intellectuals, journalists and activists were arrested, and as telephone and internet service to much of the state was cut, Saudi Aramco announced a $15 billion investment in an Indian oil company. On Sunday evening, after stone-throwing crowds confronted security forces in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to the United Arab Emirates next week to receive the country’s highest civilian honor. From the U.A.E., he will travel to Bahrain on the first-ever visit to that country by a sitting Indian prime minister.

Civil libertarians and human-rights activists in India and around the world have condemned the crackdown in Kashmir, but a recent opinion poll found 57% of Indians wanted Kashmir to lose its special status. Sixty-five percent said they thought Mr. Modi could solve the Kashmir problem in five years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/britain-pays-the-price-for-corbyn-11566248428

Blame for most political failures surrounding Brexit rests with Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, but the past week has cast a new light on the ways the Labour opposition also is guilty of dereliction of duty. With the country in the grip of a once-in-a-generation governance crisis, Labour has opted out of serious participation.

That’s the meaning of a remarkable series of events in recent days in which even the politicians most staunchly opposed to Brexit have concluded that Brexit would be better than letting Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister. Mr. Corbyn last week urged pro-Remain members of other parties to oust Boris Johnson ’s Tory government, which has a single-seat majority. The parliamentary putsch would install Mr. Corbyn as caretaker Prime Minister for long enough to delay Brexit and organize a general election. Yet no one took Mr. Corbyn up on his offer.

It’s hard to blame them. Mr. Corbyn can’t lead a “national unity government” when his economic platform is the most radical Britons have seen in two generations and his tolerance for anti-Semitism within Labour continues to shock voters. His personal views on Brexit, and Labour’s Brexit platform under him, are so confused that Remainers distrust him to lead. It’s not even clear that Mr. Corbyn, steeped as he is in the tactics and ethos of the radical left, could be trusted to relinquish power quickly under an anti-Brexit parliamentary maneuver if he became Prime Minister.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tiananmen-then-hong-kong-now/

Orville Schell, who covered the Tiananmen Square protests for the New York Review of Books 30 years ago, has an essay in Foreign Affairs that is worth your time. Schell compares what happened in Beijing then with what is going on in Hong Kong now. The similarities are not reassuring.

“The Tiananmen Square demonstrations taught that powerful movements of dissent against the Chinese Communist Party are almost always destined to end in confrontation,” Schell writes. “Why? Because such challenges are intolerable to a Leninist one-party system that allows no notion of dissent and whose leaders are perennially worried about displaying weakness.”

A generation ago, Deng Xiaoping waited until the conclusion of a high-profile summit with Mikhail Gorbachev before acting against the democracy activists in Tiananmen. Gorbachev departed on May 18. Within a few weeks, the government massacred the protestors.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/advocates-internationalize-the-fight-to-free-raif-badawi-from-saudi-prison

MONTREAL — More than seven years after Raif Badawi was thrown in prison, lawyers and allies of the Saudi blogger are increasingly lobbying foreign governments in an effort to secure his release as Saudi Arabia prepares to host next year’s G-20 meeting.

Irwin Cotler, a human rights lawyer and former federal justice minister who represents the family internationally, says advocates for Badawi have recently been meeting with foreign governments, UN representatives and others to encourage them to call for the release of Badawi, his sister Samar, their former lawyer Waleed Abulkhair and other imprisoned human rights defenders.

People hold pictures of Samar Badawi (C) and her brother jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi (R) as they demonstrate in support of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam, on May 7, 2015 in Paris. Stephane de Sakutin / AFP/Getty Images

Cotler sat down with The Canadian Press to discuss the intensifying effort to free the 35-year-old Badawi, who was arrested on June 17, 2012, and was later sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for his online criticism of Saudi clerics.

Cotler said it is urgent “to both internationalize and intensify our advocacy” as Saudi Arabia chairs the G-20 ahead of the meeting in Riyadh in November 2020.

Jack Letts, dubbed ‘Jihadi Jack’ by British media, has been detained for about two years after a 2014 trip to Syria where he helped the Islamic State

OTTAWA — The United Kingdom is shirking its share of the international community’s duty to help keep the world safe from terrorism, the federal government suggested Sunday after the British Home Office revoked the citizenship of a dual citizen imprisoned in Syria.

Jack Letts, a British-Canadian man who has been behind bars in a Kurdish prison since 2017, has been stripped of his British citizenship, the office of Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed in a sternly worded statement.

“Canada is disappointed that the United Kingdom has taken this unilateral action to off-load their responsibilities,” the statement said. “Terrorism knows no borders, so countries need to work together to keep each other safe.”

Letts, who was dubbed “Jihadi Jack” by the British media, has been detained for about two years after he travelled to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group.

A statement from the Home Office said revoking British citizenships is one way it counters terrorist threats. It said it does not comment on individual cases.

“Decisions on depriving a dual national of citizenship are based on substantial advice from officials, lawyers and the intelligence agencies and all available information,” the statement said.

Letts’ parents, John Letts and Sally Lane, were found guilty in June for funding terrorism when they tried to send him money. The couple, from Oxford, England, received suspended sentences of 12 months in prison.

John Letts wrote a letter to Canadian MPs last year that said his son is not a terrorist and deserves Canada’s protection. In his letter, Letts wrote that the money was to pay “people smugglers,”which he described as his son’s “only way out” of Syria.