RUTHFULLY YOURS

“These murders are giving us yet another signal that there is no place for Assyrian Christians in Iraq.” — Ashur Sargon Eskrya, President of the Assyrian Aid Society-Iraq.

“The only way for us to have a bright future is to establish a local administration in the Nineveh Plain lands, which will be a safe haven for all persecuted communities, including Yazidis… [It] should be protected internationally. This would also include forming a no-fly zone, and having the province monitored by international powers for a temporary period until we strengthen our military force and reconstruct our areas.” — Athra Kado, the head of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, Alqosh, Iraq.

On March 8, three members of an Assyrian Christian family — Dr. Hisham Maskoni, his wife, Dr. Shadha Malik Dano, and her elderly mother — were stabbed to death in their home in Baghdad. The two doctors, who had left Iraq, the country of their birth, in 2003, returned five years ago to work at St. Raphael Hospital in the capital.

The victims, who lived in a neighborhood controlled by a Shiite militia, had been tortured, according to Ashur Sargon Eskrya, president of the Assyrian Aid Society-Iraq, in an interview with Gatestone.

Eskrya also said that the motive behind the killings — as in the case of an innocent Christian killed in Baghdad in February — had not been established, and that so far, no suspects have been arrested. “These murders,” he added, “are giving us yet another signal that there is no place for Assyrian Christians in Iraq.”

An indigenous people of the Middle East, Assyrians have been targeted and murdered over the centuries for their religion and ethnicity. Yet they were once the rulers of the ancient Assyrian Empire. The traditional Assyrian homeland contains parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

Two Israeli F-35 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace over the past month, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Thursday. The act is a signal of heightened regional tensions, especially in light of recent Israeli military attacks in Syria, including against Iranian bases in the country.

Sources quoted in Al-Jarida stated that two stealth fighters flew over Syrian and Iraqi airspace to reach Iran, and even targeted locations in the Iranian cities Bandar Abbas, Esfahan and Shiraz.
The report states that the two fighter jets, among the most advanced in the world, circled at high altitude above Persian Gulf sites suspected of being associated with the Iranian nuclear program.

It also states that the two jets went undetected by radar, including by the Russian radar system located in Syria. The source refused to confirm if the operation was undertaken in coordination with the US army, which has recently conducted joint exercises with the IDF.

The source added that the seven F-35 fighters in active service in the IAF have conducted a number of missions in Syria and on the Lebanese-Syrian border. He underlined that the fighter jets can travel from Israel to Iran twice without refueling.

Israel has admitted to launching about 100 air strikes on Syria over the past five years, targeting Hezbollah terrorists, weapons convoys and infrastructure, and it is believed to be behind dozens more.On March 21, the IDF cleared for publication that Israel was behind the 2007 destruction of a nuclear reactor that was under construction in northern Syria.

In February, Israeli F-16 fighter jets entered Syrian airspace, striking 12 Iranian targets in Syria in response to an Iranian drone that was shot down over Israel. Two Israeli crew members were wounded when they ejected from their jet before it crashed, which was later determined to be caused by pilot error.

In response to the Iranian drone, a senior Israeli official warned that Israel will react with force to Iran’s efforts to entrench itself further in Syria.

“…the Iranians are determined to continue to establish themselves in Syria, and the next incident is only a matter of time,” he said, warning that Israel does not rule out that that the Islamic Republic will continue to try to attack Israel.

Russia will expel 60 U.S. diplomats and close the American consulate in St. Petersburg in response to the Trump administration’s expulsion of the same number of Russian diplomats earlier this week, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced Thursday.

An additional 90 diplomats representing western countries that joined the U.S. in expelling Russian diplomats will also be sent home. Lavrov said the number of diplomats expelled from each country will be equal to the number of Russians each of those countries expelled.

The expulsion of Russian diplomats, which was accompanied by the closure of the Russian embassy in Seattle, was prompted by a Kremlin-linked nerve-gas attack against a former Russian spy living in London.

Numerous other acts of Russian aggression have escalated tensions between western allies and Russia to levels unseen since the Cold War. The Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions against Russian entities and individuals this month in response to cyber attacks against American utility companies and interference in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. officials are also reportedly in the process of drafting a proposal that would increase NATO military readiness in response to Russia’s provocations.

The Trump administration is trying to walk a fine line between Turkey, which it still refers to as a NATO ally, and our Kurdish allies on the ground in northern Syria, and it has become increasingly painful and disheartening to watch.

For the past two months, as Turkish troops have pounded civilians in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, Turkish President Recip Tayip Erdogan has verbally assaulted and taunted America.

After initially threatening to kill U.S. liaison officers working with the Kurds, Erdogan then warned the U.S. commander in Syria, LG Paul Funk, to beware an “Ottoman slap.”

The fact that U.S. commanders – undoubtedly under the direction of Defense Secretary Mattis – continued to avoid any direct contact with Turkish troops only emboldened Erdogan. Just before the final assault on Afrin last week, he taunted: “NATO members are not powerful enough to stand up to Turkey… [T]hey do not have the cheek.”

Once YPG fighters withdrew from Afrin on March 15, and civilians evacuated in the following days, Islamist militias backed by the Turkish army swooped into the city, destroying Kurdish cultural sites and plundering homes and businesses.

These were exactly the people the U.S. has been trying to defeat on the battlefield. And here Turkey has made them their allies and is training and equipping them.

As I argued in these pages two months ago, Turkey has long since stopped behaving like a NATO ally. It’s time that the Trump administration faced these facts and got tough on Turkey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8yES9IOp1Y
Julius Sello Malema is a Member of Parliament and the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a radical leftist and racial nationalist South African political party, which he founded in July 2013.

South African firebrand Julius Malema explains to a TV interviewer how white farmers might be stripped of their land via legal means, with those considered “essential” perhaps allowed to remain on long-term leases — or not, as the case may be. As an endorsement of caprice as the rule of law’s guiding principle it is nasty stuff, although not quite so toxic as this clip in which Mr Malena enjoys a gloating moment of tribal triumphalism while assuring the crowd that it is white South Africans’ turn to suffer.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley lashed out at the UN Security Council during a Tuesday briefing on the humanitarian crisis in Syria for not being “responsible” and acting against the Assad regime and his allies Russia and Iran as they ignored a UN ceasefire.

“Siege. Starve. And surrender. This is the awful, unceasing rhythm of the Syrian war. As we meet here today, the third step – surrender – is taking place in eastern Ghouta. After years of enduring siege and starvation, residents are surrendering eastern Ghouta. The terrible irony of this moment must be stated and acknowledged: in the 30 days since the Security Council demanded a ceasefire, the bombardment of the people of eastern Ghouta has only increased. And now, at the end of the so-called ceasefire, eastern Ghouta has nearly fallen,” Haley said.

“History will not be kind when it judges the effectiveness of this Council in relieving the suffering of the Syrian people. Seventeen hundred Syrian civilians were killed in just the last month alone. Hospitals and ambulances are deliberately targeted with bombs and artillery. Schools are hit, like the school in eastern Ghouta that was bombed just last week, killing 15 children. Siege. Starve. And surrender,” she added.

About 1,700 civilians have been killed in the city over the past month; about 500 of the dead were women and children.

“I would ask my Security Council colleagues to consider whether we are wrong when we point to Russian and Iranian forces working alongside Assad as being responsible for this slaughter,” Haley said. “Russia voted for the so-called ‘ceasefire’ in Syria last month. More than that, Russia took its time painstakingly negotiating the resolution demanding the ceasefire.”

Haley noted that during those negotiations “we could see our Russian friends constantly leaving the room to confer with their Syrian counterparts.”

“The possibilities for what was going on are only two – either Russia was informing their Syrian colleagues about the content of the negotiations, or Russia was taking directions from the Syrian colleagues about the content of the negotiations. Either way, Russia cynically negotiated a ceasefire it instantly defied,” she said.

Saying they’re bombing “terrorists” as they target civilian neighborhoods is a “transparent excuse for the Russians and Assad to maintain their assault,” the ambassador added.

“…Their blatantly false narratives will not keep us from telling the world about Russia’s central role in bombing the Syrian people into submission.”

Haley told the council “we should all be ashamed” for the fact that, with the ceasefire ignored, Assad and his allies now control 80 percent of Ghouta. CONTINUE AT SITE

The 85-year-old child Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment who I wrote about yesterday morning, has now been named as Mireille Knoll. Besides being repeatedly stabbed and burned, police sources say she had her throat slit, and that anti-Semitism was the prime motive for her murder. Two suspects have been arrested.

As a nine-year-old girl, she was one of the survivors of the notorious Vel d’hiv round-up of Paris’s Jews by French police acting for the Nazis in 1942 — events depicted in the 2010 film Sarah’s Key, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, which I recommended in this dispatch.

Knoll is the 11th person murdered in an act of anti-Semitism in France in the past 12 years, and many others, including children, have been badly injured.

A “silent march” outside her home in Paris, initiated by a French friend of mine and subscriber to this email list, is planned for tomorrow in her memory. It is expected to draw thousands of people. Unlike the march yesterday in London, in which only a handful of non-Jews joined British Jews in protesting anti-Semitism, significant numbers of French non-Jews are expected to join tomorrow’s vigil.

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Below are a selection of today’s British newspaper covers. Only the Guardian, in denial about the ugly nature of the British far left as ever, talks of ‘perceived’ anti-Semitism.

“MORE REMARKABLE IS THAT IT IS HAPPENING IN BRITAIN”

As the left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz writes:

The rally by Jews outside parliament in London was “unprecedented. The Jewish community in a modern Western democracy is accusing one of the country’s largest mainstream political parties and its leader, who may well be the country’s next prime minister, of tolerating and enabling anti-Semitism. More remarkable is that it is happening in Britain, where the leaders of the Jewish establishment are notoriously timid and routinely shy away from any hint of controversy. And to the Labour Party, which historically fought against any racism or discrimination against minorities…”

“There will be no happy end to this sorry saga. At 68, and after nearly half a century of political activism, Corbyn is too old and dogmatic to change. His attitudes can’t shift. In the some way he is incapable of acknowledging that Russia was almost certainly behind last month’s poisoning of a former double agent in Salisbury, even though his beloved Soviet Union was long ago replaced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy, he is incapable of grasping that many of his fellow-travelers on the radical left are judeophobic. And many of those who now cling to Corbyn as their savior are equally incapable of hearing any ill spoken of him.”

Unsurprisingly, Michelle Obama’s “hashtag” campaign from four years back failed abysmally to prevail upon the violent jihadist group Boko Haram to return the hundreds of Nigerian school girls who it abducted.

And while the American media gave audiences the impression that this attack by militant Muslims against young Christian girls was a one-off, the truth is that Boko Haram has been conducting a reign of terror upon Nigeria’s Christian inhabitants for years. When men are included, the total number of victims of Boko Haram is estimated to be at 20,000.

Some, like 17 year-old Esther, have managed to return home.

On a day that started like any other in October of 2015, Esther’s life would forever change. Esther’s mother had already passed away. She lived with her sick father, for whom she cared when she wasn’t in school. But the day that Boko Haram besieged her town would be the last day that she would ever see him alive.

Esther and her father heard the first gunshots. They tried to escape, but the terrorists already had their home surrounded. Open Doors shares what happened next:

“The rebel militants struck down her [Esther’s] father and left him in a heap on the ground. Esther became a Boko Haram captive. As rebel fighters carried off her and several other young women in their town to their hideout in the Sambisa Forest (where Boko Haram drove thousands of those they kidnapped), she continued to look back, her eyes fixed on her father.”