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WORLD NEWS

Palestinian stands trial in Germany for murder of ‘rich Jew’

https://worldisraelnews.com/palestinian-stands-trial-in-germany-for-murder-of-rich-jew/?utm_

A witness in the trial of the Palestinian accused of killing Michael Riecher testified that the suspect accused the victim of “annihilat[ing] [his] country.”

In Baden-Württemberg, Germany, a Palestinian identified only as “Iyad B.” in the media stands trial for the brutal murder of Michael Riecher, a German real estate investor whom the suspect reportedly referred to as a “rich Jew” who “annihilated [his] country,” reported the Jerusalem Post.

According to a report in the German newspaper Schwarzwälder Bote, the witness who testified to these comments on Wednesday claimed that the Palestinian suspect’s hatred of Jews was his motive for the murder, which occurred in November. Investigators identified Riecher’s cause of death as strangulation.

Though it is unclear if Riecher was even Jewish, he played a major role in renovating the sanctuary of a synagogue in Germany.

In 2014, Free Democratic Party MP Michael Theurer was quoted as saying, “If Michael Riecher had not taken over the financial risk of the property developer, we would not be sitting in a rock-solid, renovated sanctuary today.”

The murder plot was allegedly hatched by Mohammed Omran Albakr, a 28-year-old from Syria. Schwarzwälder Bote apparently hailed Albakr in 2016 as a model refugee after his 2015 arrival in Germany.

Riecher’s murder comes amid growing anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe at large.

Katie Hopkins explores Europe’s loss of its Homelands by Ruth King (Video embedded)

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/katie_hopkins_explores_europes_loss_of_its_homelands.html

A new 42-minute documentary titled Homelands by British pundit Katie Hopkins (embedded below) is a cautionary tale for Americans. In England, Belgium, Italy, France, sovereignty and national culture are threatened by immigrants who openly reject the language, mores, laws of their host nations. European nationals, including former immigrants who have assimilated, are pushed out by a growing number of radical Moslems who are taking over towns, boroughs and sections rendering them “no-go zones” by menacing existing neighbors. Women and girls not clad in Islamic garb, as well as men going about diurnal chores are all threatened and harassed in their own countries.

Hopkins travels and interviews citizens of all ages who no longer feel at home in their respective cities. The globalist leaders like Merkel, Macron and May are indifferent and impotent in dealing with the problem.

The second half of the film concentrates on the plight of Jews in France. In spite of the street theater marches and perfunctory denunciations by politicians, all French Jews are in peril from marauding and violent Moslem gangs.  An unprecedented number of French Jews have left with an equal number preparing to do so.

The documentary ends in Israel, where she visits recent immigrants from Europe, and in a most touching moment she reflects that Jews have a nation that will welcome them and wonders where all non-Jewish Europeans who are increasingly doubtful of their survival can go.

In a surprise move for an organization that condemned Evangelical Christians and conservatives for purported anti-Semitism, between 2014 and 2017 the ADL conducted global and national surveys which disclosed the alarming fact that among Moslems there is a significant and outsize index of anti-Semitism. Andrew Bostom summarizes:

—The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism in the West:—Belgium, 68% of Muslims vs. 21% of the general population; Spain, 62% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; Germany, 56% of Muslims vs. 16% of the general population; Italy, 56% of Muslims vs. 29% of the general population; United Kingdom, 54% of Muslims vs. 12% of the general population; France, 49% of Muslims vs. 17% of the general population

—The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism in the U.S., 34% of Muslims vs. 14% of the general population

—The prevalence of extreme Antisemitism, globally, by religious affiliation—Muslim, 49%; Christian, 24%; No religion, 21%; Hindu, 19%; Buddhist, 17%  .

This is nothing new as Dr. Bostom demonstrated in his essential books, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History and The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non -Muslims.  Islamic hatred for Jews and Christians dates from the advent of Mohammed and is expressed in many passages of the Koran repeated daily in mosques in every corner of the world.

While decent people may bristle when Jews are called “descendants of pigs and apes” few are familiar with the quotes of the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi Grand Imam of Al Azhar University who described the Jews as: “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.”

Since 2009, Raymond Ibrahim has published over 200 columns at the Gatestone Institute  and over 100 here at American Thinker, on the systematic and unrelenting persecution of Christians by Moslems. In his recently published book Sword and Scimitar-Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West he provides a historical context to the jihads against Christendom. In June, the US Army War College shamefully bowed to pressure from CAIR and “postponed” a scheduled lecture he was to offer.

In our own nation petulant and partisan legislators refuse to confront any peril or selective immigration.

Clergy and commentators and media of both faiths airbrush the faith-driven hatred and violence against western culture and values.  Katie Hopkins, to her enormous credit, looks it square in the eye.

The ‘Cat-And-Mouse’ World of the Ayatollah by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14468/iran-cat-and-mouse

.sanctions are working not by wrecking the lives of ordinary Iranians, who do suffer nevertheless, but by denying the mullahs the means to indulge in their deadly Tom-and-Jerry shenanigans.

Each time the US imposed sanctions, the mullahs took a bite of humble pie and briefly modified aspects of their behavior as if playing a Tom-and-Jerry script. However, once sanctions were eased, their Jerry lost no time to revert to its old tricks.

The key question here is whether Trump… will want or be able… to sit back and let time do its chastising work on the… Khomeinist regime.

A few weeks ago, the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described his regime’s decades-long conflict with the United States as a real-life re-enactment of the Tom and Jerry cartoons from Hollywood, in which a crafty little mouse provokes the clumsy big cat into all manner of threatening gestures but always ends up emerging safe and sound.

In Khamenei’s bizarre depiction, the Islamic Republic is the little mouse (Jerry) and the United States the big cat (Tom). Why should Khamenei make a conflict that has done so much damage to Iran as a nation the subject of so frivolous a depiction is something beyond the scope of this article.

Christians in Africa: “You have three days to go or you will be killed!” by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14430/christians-africa-persecution

“Christianity originated in the Middle East. Thus, the displacement or evacuation of Christians from the Middle East is very dangerous for the safety of the region… also in the Mediterranean Sea region. Europe is affected by this.” — Egyptian Coptic Pope Tawadros II, in Germany, where he was inaugurating a new Coptic church for his exiled community. Deutsche Welle, May 14, 2019.

Regrettably, the tragedy of these Christian massacres is directly proportional to the neglect with which they are reported in the West.

“‘Islamophobia’ looms large; talk of ‘Christophobia’ is almost nonexistent”. — Ross Douthat, “Are Christians Privileged or Persecuted?”, The New York Times, April 23, 2019.

Algeria — the country of origin of some of the Christian fathers such as Augustine of Hippo — has become a country… where officially there are “no native Christians”. How many other countries will meet the same fate? And will the West ever come to the help of their Christian brethren?

Persecution of Christians in the Middle East is now close to “genocide”, a UK-commissioned report just revealed. The same threat has also become critical for Christian communities in Africa.

Some say it began in Algeria in the 1990s, when 19 monks, bishops, nuns and other Catholics were killed during the civil war. Since then, in Nigeria, Christian faithful have been massacred in their churches; in Kenya, Christians have been killed in universities; in Libya, Christians have been beheaded on beaches; in Yemen, nuns have been assassinated and in Egypt, massive anti-Christian violence is prompting an exodus. It is the new African archipelago of persecution.

Europe’s Missing Islamic State Fighters by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14459/europe-returning-jihadists

Swedish Television surveyed officials in the five Swedish municipalities — Gothenburg, Stockholm, Örebro, Malmö and Borås — that are home to most of the 150 IS returnees and found that those municipalities combined only have knowledge of the whereabouts of a maximum of 16 adults and 10 children.

“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial… The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them…” — U.S. President Donald Trump, Twitter, February 16, 2019.

The Wall Street Journal, in a recent editorial, “The West’s Foreign Fighter Problem,” noted that European governments face a “Catch-22” situation: either repatriate and prosecute their jihadis, or risk that they disappear off the radar and carry out new attacks in Europe.

The German government has lost track of scores of Germans who travelled to Iraq and Syria in recent years to join the Islamic State (IS). The revelation comes amid growing fears that some of these fighters are returning to Germany undetected by authorities.

The German Interior Ministry, in response to a question from the Secretary General of the classical liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), Linda Teuteberg, revealed that German authorities lack information on the whereabouts of at least 160 Germans who left to fight with the IS, according to Welt am Sonntag. The ministry said that while some had probably been killed in combat, others have gone into hiding and may be trying to resettle in Germany.

UN Global Compact: What Happens Next? by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14391/un-global-compact-next

This initiative [to “present a global plan of action against hate speech and hate crimes on a fast-track basis”] should be deeply concerning and is likely to serve only to silence critics of the UN, including its agenda on migration and the GCM.

The EU, for its part, according to statements by Hungary and Austria, does not appear to agree that implementing the Global Compact should be up to every EU member state. Instead, the EU is working on making it legally binding, even for those EU countries who have not adopted the Compact.

“A ‘secret document’ has been published on work by the European Commission’s legal service to formulate ‘lengthy and devious’ legal grounds for suggesting that the compact is, after all, mandatory for EU member states.” — Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

In December, world leaders of 165 countries adopted an ostensibly non-binding agreement that propagates a radical idea: that migration — for any reason — is something that needs to be promoted, enabled and protected[1].

The agreement is named the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and now comes its implementation. The UN has not wasted any time in setting this “non-binding” Compact in motion. Already at the Marrakesh Conference in December, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the Migration Network (Network)[2], a new addition to the UN bureaucracy, and seemingly intended to “ensure effective and coherent system‑wide support to the implementation of the Global Compact”. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) will serve as the coordinator and secretariat of all constituent parts of the Network in implementing the Global Compact.

The UN, in other words, has set its enormous bureaucratic infrastructure into full motion to see to it that the Compact will have maximum impact across the globe.

IOM director-general Antonio Vitorino has already sent a warning to critics of the UN migration agenda. “If we want to succeed in having a more humane and better world, we should resist the temptation of negative narratives that some want to spread about migration,” Vitorino said recently.

Trinidad: The Western Hemisphere’s Jihadist Hotspot The Caribbean island has produced more ISIS recruits than any other western country. Stephen Brown

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274139/trinidad-western-hemispheres-jihadist-hotspot-stephen-brown

It is difficult to believe that a lush, tropical vacation destination like the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a relatively prosperous country with full religious and legal freedoms, has produced more fighters per capita for the murderous Islamic State (ISIS) than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.

But, unfortunately for Trinidad and the civilized world, that is the tragic fact of the matter. While Muslims constitute only five per cent of the country’s population, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, a portion is “causing outsized global security concern,” states Todd Benson in the publication Center for Immigration Studies.

Unknown to most and largely unreported by the media, Trinidad, with only a population estimated between 1.2 and 1.5 million people, has sent at least 130 of its citizens to join the Islamic State. The United States, by contrast, with a population about 240 times larger than Trinidad’s, has sent about 250 to 300, about one per cent of the 30,000 foreigners who joined ISIS.

T. and T. citizens in ISIS “are high up in the ranks, they are very respected, and they are English-speaking. ISIL have used them for propaganda to spread their message through the Caribbean,” said John Estrada, former U.S. ambassador, to Trinidad and Tobago, adding Trinidadians did “very well” in ISIS.  

Religious Suppression North of the Border American politicians shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for the faithful in Canada. By Avi Schick

https://www.wsj.com/articles/religious-suppression-north-of-the-border-11561676755

One of New York state’s great civic leaders once began a meeting by observing that I wore a yarmulke at work. I’d just been nominated as president of New York’s economic development agency. I told him that headgear hadn’t seemed to hinder Cardinal Edward Egan’s effectiveness. We got down to business and got along fine. This incident came to mind last week when the National Assembly of Quebec passed a law barring public employees from wearing religious clothing or symbols at work.

Advocates say the bill promotes the separation of church and state. In reality, the law suggests that religious practice is incompatible with public service, that people of faith cannot be trusted to balance their religious beliefs and civic responsibilities, and that employees must choose between their consciences and careers. Public employees won’t be the only ones affected: If the government won’t hire someone who wears a turban or crucifix, why would a private business?

During my decade as a yarmulke-wearing government official in New York, I occasionally encountered those who viewed religious professionals through a lens that magnified their faith while obscuring their abilities.

On two separate occasions when I was in Albany for the State of the State address, senior officials approached me in the holding room for politicians and staffers off the Capitol floor, shook my hand, addressed me as “Rabbi,” and thanked me for coming to deliver the invocation. Mortified colleagues quickly corrected them.

If religiously observant employees are given the chance, eventually people will focus on the job they are doing and not the clothing they are wearing while doing it. The best way to ensure respect for different faiths and cultures is to make them well-represented in all workplaces. That means not excluding them from the workforce or forcing them to hide their identities.

Britain has ‘by far the highest rate of returning jihadi fighters in Europe’ Bill Gardner

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/27/britain-has-far-highest-rate-returning-jihadi-fighters-europe/

Britain has by far the highest rate of “exceptionally dangerous” returning jihadis in Europe, police chiefs have warned.

A report from Europol revealed that of hundreds of Britons who travelled to Syria and Iraq amid the rise of Isil, nearly half have been able to return safely.

It comes amid widespread concern at the low number of returning fighters and so-called jihadi brides successfully prosecuted in British courts.

According to the annual Europol report, roughly 45% of Britons who travelled to Syria and Iraq have already come back to their home country.

The country with the next highest proportion was Germany, where 33% have returned, while in the Netherlands and Spain the return rate is thought to be just 18%.

The report warned that returning jihadis and their supporters pose a serious ongoing threat to national security.

“Those that have returned garner kudos with like-minded individuals,” it said.

“Their training and experience – such as handling weapons and explosives – makes them exceptionally dangerous. 

UK: A Clash of Educations, Part II by Denis MacEoin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14432/uk-clash-educations-ii

“It seems it was far less politically complicated to keep quiet.” — Baroness Cox, address on grooming gangs to the House of Lords, May 14, 2019.

“In the context of schooling, it manifests itself as the imposition of an aggressively separatist and intolerant agenda, incompatible with full participation in a plural, secular democracy…. It appears to be a deliberate attempt to convert secular state schools into exclusive faith schools in all but name. (5:2)” — Peter Clarke, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism branch, in a report for the House of Commons, July 22, 2014.

Is Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, still hampered by an unwillingness to ask hard questions and a desire to “avoid giving offence”?

Recent protests about supposed LGBT lessons in a school in Birmingham, England, have drawn attention from the media, politicians, the High Court, and the National Secular Society. While the protests may well spread to other cities, for the moment they are contained. When these lessons, which are based on the “No Outsiders” curriculum within the international system of “Diversity Education,” become legally compulsory for almost all schools in 2020, either the protests will die out or become more clamorous in a struggle to rescind the law — an act to which the government might well not agree.

The question of demands placed on Western governments to alter national laws in order to accommodate religious rulings remains an issue that is divisive, notably between secular states and citizens who might not want a secular state but a religious one instead.