RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13355/palestinian-victims

The 3,903 Palestinians killed in Syria in the past seven years are of no interest to the Western correspondents and their editors.

The Western media’s obsession with Israel has created the impression that the only Palestinians living on this planet are those who are residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This impression does injustice to the Palestinians who are facing horrendous conditions, torture, and death in the Arab countries, especially Syria.

Who cares about the suffering of these Palestinians? No one. Every week, scores of foreign journalists travel to the Israel-Gaza border to report on clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian rioters. Have any of these journalists thought of travelling to Syria or Lebanon to report about the atrocities that are being committed against the Palestinians there? Of course not. Why should they do so when the story lacks an anti-Israel angle?

The number of Palestinians killed in Syria will soon reach 4,000. Perhaps then, with that gruesome milestone reached, will Western correspondents in the Middle East wake up to the enormity of the crimes that are really being perpetrated against Palestinians?

Here’s some “good” news: In October, only five Palestinians living in Syria were pronounced dead. The London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria reports that in October 2017, 12 Palestinians were killed due to war-related incidents in that country. “The list of victims who died in October 2018 includes four Palestinians who were pronounced dead in Teloul Al-Safa, in Al-Sweida desert, south of Syria, and one Palestinian in Damascus,” the group said.

According to the human rights watchdog that monitors the situation of Palestinians in Syria, the number of Palestinians killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011 now stands at 3,903. Another 1,712 Palestinians in that country have been arrested by the Syrian authorities, and 316 are listed as missing.

The latest victim was identified as Ahmed Abdullah Balbisi who, according to the human rights group, died of torture in a Syrian prison eight years after his incarceration. The group said that Balbisi was arrested then for participating in peaceful demonstrations organized by the Syrian opposition. Balbisi is the latest victim added to the 3,903 Palestinians killed in Syria during the past seven years. His death was reported by the group on November 22.

A day earlier, the human rights group reported that two other Palestinians, Mohammed Khalil al-Kurdi and Wael Abu Hamdeh, died due to lack of proper medical treatment. On November 19, reports surfaced that a third, Mohammed Ahmed Farhat, was killed during an exchange of gunfire between the Syrian army and the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.

A photograph recently emerged of Jeremy Corbyn making the four-fingered rabbi’ah or Muslim Brotherhood salute at the Finsbury Park Mosque. A Muslim counter-extremist commentator compared Corbyn’s activist-Salafist salutation to a right-wing politician offering his solidarity for the British National Front. Rod Liddle, writing in the Spectator, wondered whether the current leader of the British Labour Party was “either deeply sinister—or a total idiot”. The correct answer is both, and then some more. The tragedy of Jeremy Corbyn, like the tragedy of so many social-justice warriors, is that he believes his modern-day leftist ideology places him on the unassailable moral high ground. It does nothing of the sort—and that is a calamity for him and his supporters and apologists, and something worse for the local Jewish population.

Jeremy Corbyn, let us recognise, is one of the most successful left-wing or progressive characters in Europe right now. In the 2017 British general election, for instance, the Labour Party under his stewardship increased its voting share from 30.4 per cent to 40 per cent. Is there any other mainstream European social democratic (or democratic socialist) party that can, in the past few years, match that kind of accomplishment? Membership of Labour has doubled to significantly more than half a million, and the party faithful are overwhelmingly in support of their unapologetic champion. The ethical disaster for Jeremy Corbyn is that he has been co-opted, along with the British Labour Party and the latter-day Left in general, by Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism. Detractors will say the Opposition Leader is a polarising force in British politics, but Jeremy Corbyn happens to be an effective politician in today’s intemperate electoral climate—not despite his boundless radical provocation but because of it.

A growing majority of British Jews are alarmed by the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn government. On July 25, 2018, the three main Jewish newspapers in Britain, the Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph, each produced front pages warning of “the existentialist threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government”. Two of the pillars of Jewish public life, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, voiced a corresponding concern. Why this particular reproach? Labour’s National Executive Committee, controlled by Corbyn’s faction, had just announced it was going to deviate from the definition/explanation of anti-Semitism submitted by the intergovernmental agency International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and accepted by the British government. The refusal to simply accept the IHRA’s definition/explanation of anti-Semitism and move on was considered especially galling, since the frequency of Labour officials, members, councillors and even parliamentarians making crude anti-Semitic jibes has skyrocketed during Corbyn’s tenure as leader.

https://www.jns.org/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-stakes-staunchly-pro-israel-position-at-vienna-conference/

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are getting blurred, but they are two sides of the same coin,” said the Australian leader, noting his country’s laden past regarding European Jewry. “We can’t undo history, but we can do justice to our history.”

Amid debate about the European right and a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment and actions, conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz of Austria has positioned himself and his government as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism by convening the Nov. 21 conference “Beyond Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: Securing Jewish Life in Europe” in the context of the Austrian Presidency of the European Council.

The event evolved into a celebration of friendship between Austria and Israel, with Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, presenting Kurz with the “Navigator to Jerusalem Award” at the conference gala.

“This is possibly the first time a nation which holds the European Union Presidency has attempted to address anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in a constructive and holistic manner,” Kantor told JNS. “We are grateful to the Austrian government for partnering with us, and accepting the role of pushing for lasting and durable solutions to increasing anti-Semitism.”

The European Jewish Congress presented senior leaders with a “Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism,” which includes, first and foremost, the worldwide adoption and implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/asia-bibi-blaphemy-charges-religious-freedom-asylum/Why hasn’t she been granted asylum?

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human-rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

The other day in Frankfurt, Malook called on the German government to provide Asia Bibi and her family with documents that would allow them to exit Pakistan. Why no Western government has yet granted her asylum is something of a mystery. It is possible that Bibi and her family may be using the negotiations to secure the release of additional people whose safety they feel is also in jeopardy. European governments, including the United Kingdom’s, may also worry that Asia Bibi’s arrival would provoke a backlash from their own militant Islamists. Nor is Europe exactly the global standard in free speech. Around the same time the Pakistani Supreme Court reversed the verdict against Asia Bibi, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a verdict against an Austrian woman for “publicly disparaging religious doctrines,” namely Islam. She and Bibi should compare notes.

How lucky one is to be born in the United States. The American tradition of religious freedom is strong, and it is neither to be under-appreciated nor to be tossed off lightly. Religious dissenters founded several of the original colonies. The first clauses of the Bill of Rights prohibit an established church as well as abridgments of the free exercise of religion. George Washington’s letter to the Touro synagogue in Newport reflects the American (and Biblical) ideal: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Asia Bibi’s story pricks the conscience because it is so outside the American understanding of public speech, of religious practice.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13349/canada-government-media

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it seems, adheres to the principle of globalism, according to which the world is borderless, and the idea of sovereign nation-states is both reactionary and obsolete. In this borderless world, the governing body is the unelected, untransparent, unaccountable and deeply corrupt United Nations and its agencies, which possess the authority to legislate international law that is then enforced by member states.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is a document detailing the requirements for UN member-states to adopt as policy that amounts to unfettered global migration. Trudeau has bought into this UN agenda and has decided to impose it on the Canadian people without their prior knowledge or consent.

The Global Compact requires the media outlets of member-states to adhere to the objectives and refrain from any critical discussions of these objectives that would be deemed as not “ethical” and against UN norms or standards consistent with the ideology of globalism.

This helps to explain the Trudeau government’s generous handout to the Canadian media. In this light, the $600 million can be viewed as a form of secretive soft control and censorship, ensuring that the Canadian press abides by the requirements of the Global Compact.

The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country’s financially strapped media outlets — as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election — is not as innocent as it may seem.

In response to the announcement, the heads of Canada’s media organizations promptly popped open the proverbial champagne and raised their glasses to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unifor, a national union that represents Canadian journalists, was even more jubilant. It felt vindicated that its slogan of “Resistance” — which it touts as Conservative Party opposition leader Andrew Scheer’s “worst nightmare” — had so swiftly resulted in opening the government’s wallet, and handing out taxpayers’ money, to an industry that should actually be fighting to remain steadfastly independent of any form of government backing.

This is what a “free press” is presumably all about, after all; not as in countries with totalitarian regimes, such as the once-Czarist Russia-turned communist Soviet Union-turned Putinist Russia, or Maoist China, or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Castroist Cuba and many third-world states in which the press is simply a propaganda tool of the government, subjected to the dictates and whim of its leader.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13345/qatar-time-to-shape-up

We need a united anti-Iran front, and Qatar needs to come closer to its friends on the peninsula, us, the U.S., and Israel on that point. And in the meantime, let’s help Qatar along here. Why doesn’t the United States get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization? And then that gives Qatar the excuse to go ahead and do it too, so we can cut off everyone’s funding for them, whether it’s in Egypt, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, July 12, 2017.

The time is not only ripe for Washington to take this step; it is essential.

Since 2017, when five countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar for siding with the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups, Doha has been forging new alliances, particularly with Russia and China.

During a military parade in December 2017, Qatar’s armed forces showcased new Chinese guided ballistic-missile systems that have a range — up to 400 km — that encompasses Qatar’s neighboring Gulf States. In September 2018, PetroChina struck a long-term deal with Qatargas to purchase 3.4 million tons per year of liquid natural gas.

Defense and economic ties with Qatar are crucial to China’s plans to extend its influence in the Middle East through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China is aware that for the BRI to be successful, the GCC must be reunited. Given its own cordial relations with the GCC, Beijing sees engagement with Doha as an opportunity to become a key mediator in the Qatar-GCC crisis.

Qatar is also in talks to purchase Russia’s S-400 air-defense system. Despite Saudi Arabia’s reported opposition to the deal, Russia says it is moving forward anyway.

With Russia under U.S. sanctions, and Qatar under a GCC blockade, defense and trade ties between Moscow and Doha are mutually beneficial. In 2016, for example, Qatar purchased a huge stake in Russia’s state-controlled oil company, Rosneft.

This strengthening of ties is taking place in spite of the fact that Moscow and Doha are on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, with Russia backing the Assad regime and Qatar supporting the rebel forces. Qatar is likely seeking Russian mediation to resolve its crisis with the GCC.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13341/turkey-cyprus-christian-culture

“Turkey has been committing two major international crimes against Cyprus. It has invaded and divided a small, weak but modern and independent European state… Turkey has also changed the demographic character of the island and has devoted itself to the systematic destruction and obliteration of the cultural heritage of the areas under its military control.” — from “The Loss of a Civilization: Destruction of cultural heritage in occupied Cyprus.”

“More than 550 Greek Orthodox churches, chapels and monasteries located in towns and villages of the occupied areas, have been pillaged, deliberately vandalized and, in some cases, demolished. Many Christian places of worship have been converted into mosques, depots of the Turkish army, stockyards and hay barns.” — Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“UNESCO considers the intentional destruction of cultural heritage a war crime.” — Artnet News, 2017.

A sixth-century mosaic of Saint Mark, stolen from a church after Turkey’s military invaded Cyprus in 1974, was recently recovered in a Monaco apartment and returned to Cypriot officials. The ancient masterpiece was described by Arthur Brand, the Dutch investigator who located it, as “one of the last and most beautiful examples of art from the early Byzantine era.”

Many other cultural Cypriot relics, from churches and other sites, were stolen from Cyprus by Turkish invaders and smuggled abroad. Some were recovered and returned in the past. In 1989, mosaics stolen from the Church of Panagia Kanakaria, discovered in the United States, were returned to Cyprus.

In the summer of 1974, Turkey mounted two major military campaigns against Cyprus and occupied the northern part of the island (which Turkey now calls the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” recognized only by Turkey). Since the Turkish invasion, much information has emerged not only about the atrocities committed against the Cypriots, but also of the destruction of historic, cultural and religious monuments.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13348/we-will-displace-you

There were 128 incidents of church vandalism or other anti-Christian attacks in France during the first five months of 2018, according to a Paris-based Roman Catholic non-profit organization that tracks attacks against Christians.

Zanzibar “has concealed Christian persecution for decades…. issues that the international community knows too little or nothing about….[T]he Christian body has been persecuted for so long.” — Simon, pastor of a church, quoted by International Christian Concern.

Extremist Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: Police stood by and encouraged a Muslim mob attacking a church. After local Muslims in Ezbet Sultan Pasha village learned that Christians, who form about 20% of the population, were on their way to legalizing a church building, they surrounded it on July 6, after Friday prayers. “The protesters were chanting slogans against us [Christians], such as ‘We don’t want a church in our village,'” said one resident. “We locked ourselves in our homes during the demonstration because we were afraid that they would attack us. Police didn’t do anything to disperse the demonstrators and didn’t arrest anyone of them.” Demonstrations continued into the next day with no police intervention.

On the following Friday, again after Muslim prayers, local Muslims and others from neighboring villages, surrounded the church again and hurled stones and bricks at it and a at nearby Christian home. “They were shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ [‘Allah is greater’] and chanting hostile slogans against Copts, such as: ‘We will not allow any church to exist in our Muslim village,’ ‘We will not allow any other prayers to be held in our Muslim village except our prayers,'” said another Christian resident. According to the report:

“While police did not intervene, one of the officers apparently promised the protesters that no church would be allowed in the village. … [T]his declaration encouraged the protesters who clapped shouting ‘Allahu akbar’…. There are at least approximately 3000 pending applications from churches that still need to be examined by the government commission set up to verify whether they meet legal requirements.”

Archbishop Makarios released a statement saying, “We are saddened by official appeasement of and acquiescence to demands by some who possess no right to such demands [the demands to have no church in the village], to the detriment of Coptic rights.” A local said, “Terror dominates the village because the Muslims can demonstrate and gather at any time. We are in great fear and in anticipation of the situation.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13335/fracturing-france

In a new program, Macron’s government is offering Arabic lessons in France’s public schools to children as young as six years old, purportedly to facilitate integration.

French authorities seem to ignore that the vast majority of terrorists from France have been French citizens, who spoke a perfect French and, unlike their parents, were born in France. They were perfectly “integrated”. They rejected it.

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron engaged in a public diplomatic clash just days before Trump visited France this month. The spat began when, in a radio interview, Macron suggested that Europe needed an army to protect itself from the US. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” said Macron.

Protecting France from the United States? In a November 11 speech commemorating World War I, Macron in a diplomatic welcome to his guest, attacked “nationalism”. President Trump had proudly called himself a “nationalist” less than three weeks before.

Macron, it seems, was using the armistice signed in 1918 to forget what is going on in France in 2018.

Gérard Collomb, France’s Interior Minister until last month and currently Mayor of Lyon, is apparently pessimistic about the situation in his country, according to comments reported by Valeurs Actuelles. “People do not want to live together,” Collomb lamented, continuing that the responsibility for security during the recent immigration has been “huge.” Collomb also warned that there is only a “little time” to improve the situation. “It’s difficult to estimate but I would say that in five years the situation could become irreversible. Yes, we have five, six years to avoid the worst,” he added.

And the worst will be a “secession”, or as Gilles Kepel, the French specialist on Islam, called it: “La fracture.”

Macron, however, does not seem particularly receptive to Collomb’s warning. A man reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed a police officer in Brussels this week, during a state visit by Macron to the Belgian capital — the first for a French president since Mitterrand visited there in the 80s. Macron also went to Brussels’ Molenbeek district, which he defined “a territory marked by the image of the terrorist drama and also a place of initiatives, sharing and integration”. Sharing and integration?