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Shavou’ot (Pentecost) guide for the perplexed, 2023

Shavou’ot is one of the three liberty-oriented Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem:  Passover, Shavou’ot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles), which constitute game-changing milestones in the formation of Jewish history, documenting the 4,000-year-old Jewish roots in the Land of Israel, and the unique linkage between the Land of Israel, Judaism and the Jewish people.

Shavou’ot is a historical, national, agricultural and spiritual extension of Passover. Passover highlights the physical liberty from slavery in Egypt; Shavou’ot highlights spiritual liberty, embracing the values of the Torah, the Ten Commandments and six chapters of The Ethics of our Fathers (Pirkey Avot). The eve of Shavou’ot is dedicated to an all-night study of Jewish values.

Shavou’ot is also called the Holiday of the Harvest (ביכורים), since it concludes the harvesting season, which starts during Passover.

Shavou’ot (שבועות) means “weeks” in Hebrew and its spelling is identical to the Hebrew word “vows.”
Shavou’ot commemorates the 40 years of the Exodus, which entailed tough challenges on the road to the Land of Israel, forging the state-of-mind of the Jewish people and the Jewish State.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19659/persecution-of-christians-april

“The Taliban are offering money for Afghans to turn in any Christians they know. And Afghans are desperate, further heightening the security risk [to] Christians.” — mnnonline, April 3, 2023, Afghanistan.

[P]olice raided a large group of Christians, mostly college students, as they “gathered to sing and record video clips for social media.” One-hundred-and three of them, “mainly students,” were arrested and sent to prison. “This latest arrest puts the number of Christian prisoners detained indefinitely without trial in Eritrea to more than 500…. Mai Serwa [prison]…is … known for its use of torture and other forms of mistreatment, including beatings, starvation, and denial of medical care. The Eritrean government detains individuals without charge or trial and has held many in detention for years without access to legal representation or the due process of law.” — International Christian Concern, persecution.org, April 24, 2023, Eritrea.

[I]n one night of unfathomable horror … men, women, and children were slaughtered like chicken….” — persecution.org, April 28, 2023 — Democratic Republic of Congo.

The “pure genocide” of Christians, as it has been characterized by several international observers, reached new levels, according to an Apr. 10 report, which found that since 2009, 52,250 Christians in Nigeria “have been butchered or hacked to death.” – Nigeria.

“Political Islam replaces the laws or interprets them differently so that they restrict the practice of other religions. It also works to change the culture of society — which puts it under great pressure — so that it becomes more radical and extreme, not only toward other religions but also toward other Islamic sects.” — catholicnewsagency.com, 2023, Libya.

[P]olice arrested two illiterate cleaners—a Christian widow and a Muslim gardener—on the accusation that they had intentionally burned pages from the Koran, thereby committing “blasphemy.” — morningstarnews.org, April 24, 2023, Pakistan.

“Don’t tell me that if you entered a church your faith would waver. Every other person of a different religion here hears the [Islamic] call to prayer five times a day [and their faith doesn’t waver].” — Syed Saddiq, Malaysian politician, christiantoday.com, April 7, 2023, Malaysia.

“Indonesia’s Joint Ministerial Decree of 2006 (SKB) makes requirements for obtaining permits nearly impossible for most new churches. Even when small, new churches are able to meet the requirement of obtaining 90 signatures of approval from congregation members and 60 from area households of different religions, they are often met with delays or lack of response from officials. Well-organized radical Muslims secretly mobilize outside people to intimidate and pressure members of minority faiths.” — morningstarnews.org, April 6, 2023, Indonesia.

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of April, 2023:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19648/murdered-like-animals-the-genocide-of-christians

[S]ince the Islamic uprising began in 2009, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria. — Report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (“Intersociety”), April 10, 2023.

In just the first 100 days of this year [Jan.1-April 10], “no fewer than 1,041 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists …” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

[R]oughly 15-20% of the slaughters were attributed to “Nigerian security forces, particularly the Nigerian Army.”

By far, however, the worst killers are the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen who specifically target and massacre Christians and wantonly destroy or burn down their sacred places of worship and learning; homes and farmlands.” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

The Intersociety report makes clear that the jihadists are fervently trying to cleanse Nigeria of any Christian presence….

“This Jihad is based on the Doctrine of Hate taught in Mosques and Islamic Madrasas in northern Nigeria as well as the supremacist ideology of the Fulani. Using both conventional (violent) Jihad, and stealth (civilization) Jihad, the Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as the National Ideology. … We want a Nigeria, where citizens are treated equally before the law at all levels….” – Christian Association of Nigeria, May 4, 2018.

Turkey…, once a bastion of ancient Christianity with churches everywhere, has, after the Turkish conquest, become so thoroughly Islamized, that its ancient basilicas, such as Hagia Sophia, now serve as mosques.

Although the report appeared on April 10, the massacres and atrocities have continued relentlessly since.

Sunday, Apr. 16…. One 5-year-old boy was beheaded.

[N]ews outlets—including the Catholic News Agency—fail to identify the religions of either the murdered or their murderers. This video, which otherwise captures the tragic aftermath, refers to the Muslim terrorists as “bandits” and their Christian victims as “villagers.”

Esther Duniya, a 14-year-old Christian girl, was abducted from school and forcibly converted to Islam. Instead of helping her father and aunt recover her, police handed the girl “to Daawa, the Islamic group in charge – of converting and indoctrinating Muslims converts….” — The Guardian, May 10, 2023.

[T]he government of Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has only “protected” the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen” to “the extent that the Jihadists now invade any Christian Community of their target at will and slaughter its natives and takeover their lands and properties at will.” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

According to several Christian leaders in Nigeria (see below), the reason formerly simple Fulani herdsmen have, since Buhari became president in 2015, managed to kill nearly twice as many Christians as the “professional” terrorists (Boko Haram, ISWA, etc.), is “because President Buhari is also of the Fulani ethnic group.” — Breitbart, June 27, 2018.

“Under President Buhari, the murderous Fulani herdsmen enjoyed unprecedented protection and favoritism… Rather than arrest and prosecute the Fulani herdsmen, security forces usually manned by Muslims from the North offer them protection as they unleash terror with impunity on the Nigerian people.” — Rev. Musa Asake, the General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, January 16, 2018.

“What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting [current president Muhammadu] Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.” — Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former Minister of Culture and Tourism, churchmilitant.com, February 21, 2020.

Despite all this, the American “mainstream” remains committed to describing the jihad in Nigeria as a byproduct of “inequality” and “poverty,” to quote former US President Bill Clinton, who once explained what was “fueling all this stuff” (the “stuff” being a reference to the genocide of Christians in Nigeria).

In their quest to blame anything and everything but Islamic, specifically jihadist, ideology, even climate change has been added to the mainstream arsenal of reasons fueling the genocide of Christians.

Worst of all has been the Biden administration’s response. In 2020, Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern—that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Under Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria—this nation where one Christian is butchered every two hours—from the list.

For mainstream media and politicians, black lives—52,250 now and counting—do not matter — at least not when those lives are Christians’ being slaughtered by Muslims.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/05/chinas-great-plan-coming-to-a-country-near-you/

“China is not interested in invading Australia. It is not a threat to anyone,” the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating said in a National Press Club interview on March 15. It was an astonishing statement from a man who usually displays a sound awareness of national and global affairs, because the course of events shows that China is intent on being the dominant world power. Indeed, it has unwaveringly and determinedly followed a plan and a process to that effect for almost fifty years.

In 1976 Mao Zedong died and was replaced in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping. Deng never held the posts of chairman or president, but nevertheless he was the de facto supreme leader for over a decade and his government commenced a process and implemented a broad-brush plan which established the principles and the basis for all its actions ever since. The process has been applied in a resolute, methodical and single-minded fashion. Because of the secretive nature of China’s government it is not clear if a definitive original plan exists in a single document, but its key elements are clear from the trajectory of the nation’s development in recent decades. Countless papers have been written about China, but this article summarises the core features of the process and the plan as evidenced by the way they have been implemented. The plan and the process of implementation have been modified and refined over time, but there are several key elements that have remained steadfast.

The aim of the plan is simple and straightforward: to establish China as the pre-eminent nation in the world. This objective was prompted by the sense of national humiliation that Chinese people felt they had experienced at the hands of Western countries since the early nineteenth century. Also, it stemmed from the self-belief that China had always been a great nation and that it should become great again. The plan requires that everything—everything—must be dedicated to that end, and all the actions of the Chinese government, Chinese corporations, individuals, and all social and cultural agencies are expected to contribute. Moreover, all international activities undertaken by China, including those which appear to be benign and benevolent (such as foreign aid and Confucius institutes), must be seen as contributing in some way to the progress of the mother country.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/iranian-women-fight-to-the-end/

As the nationwide uprising in Iran enters its eighth month, the bewildered mullahs, bereft of ideas on how to control their infuriated population, have reverted to their time-worn acts of vicious oppression.

The inappropriate wearing of the hijab by women has become front and center the key issue of the uprising, which began with the killing in custody by the morality police, last September, of the young Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, for not wearing her hijab properly. For the theocratic regime, the oppression of women and their status as second-class citizens, is fundamental to their survival.

Schoolgirls who joined the demonstrations led to a sharp rebuke from the Supreme Leader, the elderly and deluded Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told a Friday prayer meeting that the girls should be punished for their disrespectful behaviour. Hardliners have interpreted this as an open invitation to act and there have been repeated reports of toxic chemical attacks on primary and secondary schools in towns and cities throughout Iran. Thousands of girls have been hospitalized with nausea and severe breathing problems, while two young girls have died.

In an attempt to appease the demonstrators, it even seemed as if the morality police had been reined in for a few weeks. Their notorious green and white vans, which regularly patrol the streets, had disappeared from view. But the new police chief – Ahmadreza Radan, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in January after his predecessor was sacked, has reversed those commands, and ordered a renewed crackdown on women who violate the hijab rules.

CCTV cameras have been installed in public spaces and shopping malls to identify unveiled women. The mullahs have announced the closure of dozens of businesses that served women not wearing the hijab. Last week, the state-linked Tasnim news website reported that the sprawling Opal Shopping Center in western Tehran was facing closure because it had become a common meeting place for young women not wearing the hijab.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19642/china-embraces-brazil-partner

Chinese President Xi Jinping also apparently persuaded Lula to support the use of China’s yuan to replace the dollar as the global standard currency…. China also might want Brazil to grant permission to purchase additional farmland. China already owns more than 200,000 hectares of Brazilian land.

The Brazilian leader’s fifth visit to China on April 14 was a stark contrast to his cool visit to the US this past February.

Brazil’s warming ties to China also have an economic purpose. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, and Brazil exports a great deal of agricultural produce to China. Brazil appears hopeful for increased Chinese investment to modernize its industrial plants as well as technology transfer for its semiconductor production.

Above all, Lula has praised China’s rhetoric favoring the establishment of a new, non-US led international order based on multipolarity. China has acknowledged Lula’s support by emphasizing Brazil’s prominent role in the multinational “BRICS” alliance consisting of Brazil. Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The Chinese triumph, however, may prove short-lived. Bolsonaro — who condemned China as a “predator” and infuriated the CCP by visiting Taiwan in February 2018 when he was campaigning for the presidency — remains popular and may run against Lula in Brazil’s next presidential election.

The mid-April visit to China of newly inaugurated Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) is an apparent triumph for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its effort to broaden its influence in Latin America. The visit also seems to have served Lula’s legacy dream of being perceived as a moral beacon and advocate for the impoverished “Global South.”

Lula, now 76, is serving his third term as Brazil’s president, after barely defeating the pro-US and conservative nationalist former President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula has long been an advocate of a socialist model of economic development. He once expressed his respect for the CCP, on an earlier visit to China, “for having created this grand miracle.” According to Wang Yi , CCP Director of Foreign Affairs, Lula also expressed admiration for China’s having brought millions out of poverty and hunger.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19640/jihadist-rape-christian-women

The top five “pressure points” Christian women experience are: 1) sexual violence; 2) forced marriage; 3) physical violence; 4) incarceration or house arrest by male family members; and 5) psychological violence.

“Faith-based sexual violence is recorded as a risk for Christian women and girls in 86% [of the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted in general]. Sexual violence is consistently chosen time and time again to target Christian women and girls across the globe….” [Emphasis in original] — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.

Of the top 20 nations where gender most shapes the experience of persecution for female Christians, 18 are either Muslim-majority or have a significant Muslim population.

Pakistan: ” [I]t is becoming the norm to rape Christian children [some as young as three]…. Many families never see their girls again, partly because the authorities rarely take meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice…. There are also reports of Christian boys being subject to sexual abuse. Experts indicate that instances of rape and murder of young boys are on the rise in Pakistan…” — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.

Saudi Arabia: “[R]ape and sexual assault are commonplace across Saudi Arabia for the thousands of non-Saudi (especially Asian and African) housemaids across the country who are Christian (or non-Islamic), a position in which they are commonly abused and virtually treated as slaves.” — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.

“House-maids working in the UAE often face sexual harassment or slave-like treatment.” — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.

Among other sad conclusions, these disturbing trends make one thing clear: the notorious sexual abuses that the Islamic State (“ISIS”) committed against Christians, Yazidis, and other non-Muslim minorities—which the world heard of, but was also reassured had “nothing to do with Islam” — are, in fact, part and parcel of Muslim societies, rich or poor, whether African, Arab, or Asian.

The global targeting of Christian women for rape and sexual violence, according to a new study, appears to be at an all-time high, especially in the Muslim world.

Open Doors, a human rights organization that tracks the global persecution of Christians, recently published reports examining the role of gender. One of these, “A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report,” ranks nations based on the category of “gender-specific religious persecution” and shows how a victim’s gender shapes their respective persecution.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-seizes-more-tankers-in-persian-gulf/

Last Wednesday we learned that the Iranian regime had seized a second oil tanker recently in the Persian Gulf, forcing it to dock at an Iranian port under orders from the regime’s “judiciary.”

It was seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Go-fast boats in the Strait of Hormuz. This remains the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, according to the US Energy Information Administration, where roughly 20% of the world’s oil transits every day.

The Pentagon subsequently informed us that these two incidents were just the latest of fifteen cases since Biden came to the White House where Iran has threatened or attacked international shipping in the Persian Gulf region.

These kind of attacks are unacceptable. The Iranians know that, and I guarantee you our enemies and adversaries know that. And yet the Iranians act with impunity. Why?

For starters, they know the current U.S. President. Biden has been taking money and supporting pro-Tehran regime lobbyists since at least 2002, when a group of Tehran-supporters threw a fund-raiser for him in California that brought in $30,000.

From then on, Biden became a reliable vote (along with Senator Chuck Hagel) when it came to opposing sanctions on Iran. He railed against President George W. Bush and his “axis of evil” because it included the Iranian regime.

Since becoming president, he has tried hard to re-invigorate the bad Iran nuclear deal, a deal that not only gave Iran a date certain to become a nuclear weapons state with impunity, but lifted all sanctions on the regime’s ballistic missile programs as well.

Just think how many people in Israel, Ukraine, Yemen, and Iraq – including US soldiers and contractors – have been victims of those missiles since 2015.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19615/turkey-hizbullah-terrorists

Turkey’s Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God.

Operating primarily in Batman Province, Hizbullah murdered 188 people in and around the mainly Kurdish city of Batman. The victims included 32 shot in the neck: men for drinking alcohol and women for wearing mini-skirts.

A prominent feminist Islamist, Konca Kuriş, was abducted by Hizbullah and tortured for 35 days before she was murdered. Her Islamism was fine; her feminism was not.

The international community would do well to understand that Kurds, US allies in northern Iraq and Syria, are not monolithic. Secular Kurds are allies. But there are also Islamist Kurds who support Erdoğan.

To win, Erdoğan would ally with radical Islamists: certified terrorists.

If Erdoğan does win on May 14, there will be, for the first time, radical Islamist terrorists in the Turkish parliament. Hizbullah terrorists — responsible for the torture and deaths of hundreds of people in ISIS-style executions — in the parliament of a NATO member state?! This potential outcome is the biggest talk among Western diplomats in Ankara. Most are shocked. They should not be. It is vintage Erdoğan.

Turkey’s Hizbullah is not to be confused with the Lebanese Shia terror group Hezbollah, although their name has the same meaning in Arabic: The Party of God. Turkey’s Hizbullah is radically Sunni and pro-Kurdish.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/principal-beats-principle-in-the-world-order-global-south-china-growth-human-rights-ee2cfbe9?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Sunday’s Arab League vote to readmit the blood-stained Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad should be a wake-up call for Washington. Longtime American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have flipped from backing the U.S.-led effort to isolate and ultimately overthrow Mr. Assad to supporting the Sino-Russian goal of reintegrating him into the regional order.

Many factors go into such decisions, but the Arab League move is part of a wider trend that Washington can’t afford to ignore. It isn’t only nondemocratic countries like the Gulf Arab states tilting toward Russia and China these days. Democracies like Brazil and South Africa are rejecting American pleas to rally behind democratic Ukraine against autocratic Russia. Across the so-called Global South, few countries, democratic or not, are rushing to enlist in President Biden’s anti-autocracy crusade.

Winning friends and influencing people in the Global South was a challenge for American strategists during the Cold War. It will be more difficult this time around. If Washington policy makers and the broader foreign-policy community don’t understand the new challenge, American diplomacy will face setbacks and frustrations.

Chinese communists today aren’t only better at economics than Mao and the Soviet chowderheads; they are also smarter politically. The old communists wanted to conquer the world by alliances with the underdogs and the poor. Today they align with the rich.