RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 5-day tour of east Africa this week was judged to have been a resounding success both in Africa and Israel. Netanyahu visited Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia, but the presidents of other African countries including South Sudan and Zambia and the foreign minister of Tanzania especially flew into meet him.

Sources also reveal that several Muslim-majority countries in Africa that don’t have official diplomatic ties with Israel, including Somalia, Chad and Mali, are now forging close links with the Jewish state, and that Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud secretly met with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv earlier this year. As I have discussed before on this list, a number of Sunni Arab countries that officially have no diplomatic relations with Israel are also forging links with the Netanyahu government (several persons connected to Sunni Arab governments also now subscribe to this email list), while central Asian Muslim countries that do have ties, such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are growing closer to Israel. Turkey also restored relations with Israel last week.

Netanyahu was accompanied to Africa by a delegation of 80 Israeli business leaders from 50 companies, as well as other Israelis of note, and diplomatic, economic, cultural and strategic ties were strengthened. (Israel supplies everything from agricultural seeds, state-of-the-art sprinklers and irrigation pipes, to CCTV cameras and counter-terrorism equipment to the many African states that have suffered Islamic fundamentalist terrorism).

While Netanyahu was on his tour, several African governments invited Israel to be given “observer status” at the 54-member African Union, a significant diplomatic breakthrough for Israel, meaning it will be involved in pan-African consultations. (The Palestinian Authority already has this status.)

African countries (including Muslim ones) significantly strengthen ties with Israel .

“Salaam. I am so excited to be here. My delegation is excited to be here. My wife is excited to be here. And I want to recognize three outstanding members of our parliament who are also excited to be here, though they’ve been here before: Member of Knesset Avraham Neguise; former Member of Knesset Pnina Tamano-Shata; and our ambassador here in Addis Ababa, Belaynesh Zevadia.

I am absolutely thrilled to be the first prime minister of Israel to visit Ethiopia ever. Well, what took you so long? And the answer is: I don’t know, but I’m already planning the next visit.

Ethiopia is a resplendent land, rich in history, diverse in culture, pregnant with promise. The Prime Minister said today in our meeting, he said something that is so true. He said Israel has a place in the hearts of Ethiopians and Ethiopia has a place in the hearts of Israelis, in the hearts of the Jewish people. I bring you greetings from Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, the place where I grew up and the place where the Queen of Sheba met King Solomon 3,000 years ago.

One of the most beautiful streets in Jerusalem, in the heart of the city, is a street called Ethiopia Street, and in my youth, I would pass, I would walk past the majestic Ethiopian church on it. And I felt always that it was just one expression of the enduring bonds between our peoples – bonds of history, bonds of values, and increasingly bonds of interests.

Our historical bond continued from the Solomonic era through the rise of Christianity to this day. Our values, I think the bonds of history gave rise to the bonds of values. The birth of the Jewish people is interwoven with the birth of our freedom, the story of the exodus. We were brought from slavery to freedom to our land, the land of Israel.

You in Ethiopia, you fought for your freedom. You maintain your freedom throughout the centuries. For millennia, your nation has proudly fought for and maintained its independence. We respect you for it. We admire you for it. You resisted foreign rule and live as a free people in your ancestral homeland. And we too live as a free and independent people in our ancestral homeland. The struggle for freedom unites our two nations, as does the second value we share, which is nation-building.

Our return to the land of Israel was just the beginning. We then needed to build our state, a dynamic state, a powerful state. We recognized early on that the diversity of our citizens would be a source of great bonding. Today we draw upon the skills and wisdom of all our citizens – Arabs, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Jews from Ethiopia. Thousands of Ethiopian Jews serve in our army, participate in our politics, take part in our economy, in our culture. They help enrich Israeli society every day and in every way. They act as a human bridge between our two peoples.

On the way here, I spoke to two young flight attendants of Ethiopian descent. They are proud to be Israelis and they’re proud of their Ethiopian heritage. And one of them is seeing her family here for the first time in seven years. What excitement! It’s the excitement we all feel in coming here and rekindling our friendship.

The reforms are unlikely to end Germany’s migrant rape epidemic.

When it comes to immigration, political correctness often overrides the rule of law in Germany, where many migrants who commit sexual crimes are never brought to justice, and those who do stand trial receive lenient sentences from sympathetic judges.

“Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] to avoid problems.” — Rainer Wendt, head of the German police union.

“It is unacceptable that asylum seekers are trampling on our society at the same time that they are here seeking our protection.” — Prosecutor Bastian Blaut.

The German parliament has approved changes to the criminal code that expand the definition of rape and make it easier to deport migrants who commit sex crimes.

Under the bill, also known as the “No Means No” (“Nein heißt Nein”) law, any form of non-consensual sex will now be punishable as a crime. Previously, only cases in which victims could show that they physically resisted their attackers were punishable under German law.

The changes, which were prompted by the sex attacks in Cologne, where hundreds of women were assaulted by mobs of mostly Muslim migrants on New Year’s Eve, is being hailed as a “paradigm shift” in German jurisprudence.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/baghdad-bombing-death-toll-nears-300-1467896428
Death Toll From Sunday Baghdad Bombing Nears 300
Attack by Islamic State, targeting Shiite Muslims, wounded more than 200 others

The death toll from the deadliest single car bombing in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has reached at least 292 people, Iraq’s health ministry said Thursday.

The attack by Islamic State, which also wounded more than 200 others, struck the Iraqi capital’s busiest commercial areas early Sunday as shoppers and diners crowded the streets following the daily dawn-to-dusk fasting that marks the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. On Monday, authorities said 151 people had been killed in the blast.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/dozens-killed-in-shia-shrine-suicide-attack-in-iraq-1467966263
Dozens Killed in Shia Shrine Suicide Attack in Iraq
Islamic State claims they carried out the attack on the shrine north of Baghdad

Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen stormed a Shiite Muslim shrine north of Baghdad overnight, killing 36 people, military and hospital officials said on Friday.

The shrine in the Balad district of Salahaddin province, some 80 miles north of Baghdad, is typically visited by Shiite pilgrims and worshipers.

3rd July 2016. It’s ‘Al Quds’ day. An annual event held on the last Friday of Ramadan. Yet another of the ever increasing number of days where an excuse is found to march against Israel. This particular day was introduced by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. With Hezbollah symbolism ever present in these ‘Al Quds’ marches, that flavour is never far from sight.

I arrived with my family at Oxford Circus Station. Holding their Israeli flags, they continued on their way towards the counter demonstration to be held near the US embassy. Unlike previous years, grassroots groups such as Sussex Friends of Israel and the Israel Advocacy Movement, had vowed the Zionists would not leave the streets to the extremists.

I was envious. However, I had other things planned for myself. I reached the corner of BBC Broadcasting House in Portland Place, placed a scarf with Palestinian colours around my neck, pulled the hood of the jacket over my head as a disguise and entered the opposition camp.

Upon arriving I was handed a flag calling for the boycott of Israel, and slowly the crowd swelled. A coach arrived, then another. The antizionist Neturei Karta were placed at the front of the demonstration. They were kept that way. A line of protecting stewards were placed behind them and if anyone else tried to nudge to the front during the march, they were pulled away. Jews had to be on the front line, however unrepresentative they may be.

Hezbollah T-shirts, Nasrallah T-shirts, Khomeini T-shirts. These people marched proudly through the streets of London. Someone had a placard that read ‘ We are all Hezbollah’. And I marched with them. Support for radical Islamic extremists. Maybe 350 people in total, maybe slightly more. The demographic was clearly one sided. Over 80% of them looked Middle Eastern themselves. Arabic was the language most spoken.

I was not in this alone. There were two others, acting out as reporters from an international news agency. One of them was swiftly identified and removed from the crowd. The other tried to mingle, eventually talking to someone wearing a Nasrallah T-Shirt who began to glorify terrorists.
The march of the Hezbollah in London

And we walked amidst this hatred. The drum beat ever present. The mob’s conductor leading the way with the usual chants. Right through Oxford Circus, Regent Street, Bond Street, the heart of London’s main shopping district. Hezbollah flags were waving all the way. I saw a boy, maybe 13 or 14, holding the terrorist flag. At some point I was handed a large Israel hating placard to hold aloft. I soon disposed of it, my co-operation would only carry so far.

Such extremism. Such hatred. There will be no peace, there will be no progress, until this venom is extracted from the conflict. The irony that on this day in North London, left wing Zionists had gathered at a Haaretz conference to discuss the issue of peace was not lost on me. With all the will in the world, theirs is a bubble that at the moment, simply does not exist.

You cannot negotiate with this. Nor will peace move forward whilst this mob is allowed to spread its poison. This is blind hatred. Self- chosen ignorance, bias, and yes, not a little antisemitism. Those few in the crowd that were not Islamic radicals fell into two distinct groups. Those on the very far left, and those on the very far right. An absurd political marriage enabled only by a mutual hatred of Jews.

The Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – has effectively consigned any negotiated two-state solution to political oblivion with its latest Report.

Two statements in the Report stymie any resumption of negotiations – stalled since April 2014.

1. “The Quartet reiterates that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community.”

Unilateral actions by the Palestinian Authority – disbanded in January 2013 – have already seen the international community:

(i) Admit “Palestine” as a member State of UNESCO on 29 October 2011 in contravention of UNESCO’s own constitution

(ii) Accord “Palestine” non-member observer State status in the United Nations on 29 November 2012.

Such acts of recognition by the international community – over Israel’s strident objections – have hardened Palestinian demands and expectations that their goals can be achieved without negotiations requiring any concessions to Israel.

Reversing these decisions is a Quartet pipe dream.

2. “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunified under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority on the basis of the PLO platform and Quartet principles and the rule of law, including control over all armed personnel and weapons in accordance with existing agreements.”

Reunification under the “PLO platform” sounds the death knell for the Quartet’s mediating role and the two-state solution.

Hamas will certainly not become a willing player in its own extinction.

The Quartet obviously has not considered how such reunification could be achieved whilst Hamas’s own Covenant declares:

‘Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for the Palestinian Liberation Organization – and what it can develop into – and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.

Not only Brussels, but Antwerp too, is a significant terrorism hub in Belgium. By January 2016 there were about 440 Belgian jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and most of them were young Muslims from the suburbs of Brussels and Antwerp.

It was in Antwerp in March 2010 that Fouad Belkacem, a Belgian radical Muslim of Moroccan descent, established “Sharia4Belgium.” The group was actively involved in recruiting young Belgian Muslims for the jihad in Syria and Iraq. A Belgian court in Antwerp ruled in February 2015 that “Sharia4Belgium” was a dangerous terrorist organization and that Belkacem and his followers were responsible for sending dozens of young men to Syria. Belkacem, an arrogant and intolerant man, got a 12-years prison sentence.

On June 25, 2016, Belgian Federal Police arrested 38-year-old Saïd M’Nari in the Antwerp suburb of Borgerhout. M’Nari was Belkacem’s right-hand man and left for Syria in May 2013, where he reportedly joined the notorious terror group Al-Nusra, which is linked to Al-Qaeda. The Flemish Arabist Pieter Van Ostaeyen claims, however, that it is quite possible that M’Nari joined the so-called “Islamic State in Syria and Iraq” (ISIS or IS). “We don’t know which group he belonged to,” Van Ostaeyen told a Dutch radio reporter.

What is certain, however, is that M’Nari’s close friend, Hicham Chaib, is now fighting in the ranks of ISIS. Hicham Chaib is from the problematic Antwerp suburb of Borgerhout and became Belkacem’s “bodyguard.” He traveled to Syria in March 2013. The Antwerp court sentenced Chaib in absentia on February 11, 2015 to 15 years in prison.

Shortly after the ISIS-sponsored terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016, Chaib, a war criminal, appeared in an ISIS video showing the execution of an ISIS opponent by him. He also announced in Flemish that there would be more terror attacks. “Just like you are bombing us, we will retaliate by killing you. Your women will be made widows and your children will be orphans. … We are not scared, but you are. You have been humiliated.”

M’Nari was sentenced by the court to twelve years in jail, but he was also in Syria at the time. He managed to slip into Belgium at the end of 2015, possibly via the Netherlands. Although he was on the terrorism watch list, no one in Belgium and Holland noticed that he was no longer in Syria but had somehow returned to Europe. He must have used a forged passport and had probably pretended to be a refugee. He would not have been the first terrorist returnee from Syria to do so.

“Infidels who were enemies of Islam thought they buried Islam in the depths of history when they abolished the caliphate on March 3, 1924 … We are shouting out that we will re-establish the caliphate, here, right next to the parliament.” — Mahmut Kar, media bureau chief of Hizb ut-Tahrir Turkey

“The magazine [Dabiq] creates propaganda for [ISIS]. It has an open address. Why does no one raid its offices?” — Opposition MP Turkey’s Parliament

The government big guns in Ankara just shrugged it off when on June 5, 2015, only two days before general elections in the country, homegrown jihadist militants for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS or IS) detonated bombs, killing four people and injuring over 100, at a pro-Kurdish political rally. Again, when IS, on July 20, 2015, bombed a meeting of pro-Kurdish peace activists in a small town on Turkey’s Syrian border, killing 33 people and injuring over 100, the government behaved as if it had never happened. After all, a bunch of “wild boys” from the ranks of jihad –which the ruling party in Ankara not-so-privately aspires to- were killing the common enemy: Kurds.

Then when IS jihadists, in October, killed over 100 people in the heart of Ankara, while targeting, once again, a public rally of pro-peace activists (including many Kurds), the Turkish government put the blame on “a cocktail of terror groups,” – meaning the attack may have been a product of Islamists, far-leftist and Kurdish militants. “IS, Kurdish or far-leftist militants could have carried out the bombing,” the prime minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoglu, said. It was the worst single terror attack in Turkey’s history, and the Ankara government was too demure even to name the perpetrators. An indictment against 36 suspects, completed nearly nine months after the attack, identified all defendants as IS members. So, there was no “cocktail of terror.” It was just the jihadists.

The police released a report noting that Sweden is at the top of the EU’s statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking. The report stated unequivocally that it is “asylum-seeker boys” and “foreign men” who commit the vast majority of the reported crimes.

As far as the widespread sexual assaults at public pools are concerned, the police said that in four out of five cases, the perpetrators have been “unaccompanied refugee children”.

A survey by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) suggested that as many as 38,000 women in Sweden may have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). Yet health care services rarely help women with the complications associated with FGM.

A Swedish father was told that he and his two children are being thrown out of the house they are renting from the municipality — to make room for an immigrant family.

May 4: The terrorist who turned out not to be a terrorist, but was chased by the police all over Sweden in November 2015, Mutar Muthanna Majid, demanded 1 million kronor (about $110,000) in damages from the Swedish government. However, the Chancellor of Justice decided that the standard sum for those wrongly incarcerated was enough compensation. Majid was held in custody for four days, which means he gets 12,000 kronor ($1,300).

May 4: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to the defense of Sweden’s Muslim Minister of Housing Mehmet Kaplan, who was forced to resign after his connections to Islamists and neo-Fascists were revealed, as was his defamatory comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany. According to Erdogan, however, the forced resignation of Kaplan was symptomatic for how Muslims are treated in the West: “Just look at what Sweden has done to a Muslim who reached a position in Cabinet,” Erdogan indignantly said.

May 4: It is now up to Sweden’s Supreme Court to decide if an Algerian, Karim Ageri, should be deported from Sweden after knifing a 16-year-old girl because she refused to have sex with him. November 10, 2015, two teenage Swedish girls visited an asylum house for “unaccompanied refugee children” in the Stockholm metropolitan area. Karim Ageri, who claimed to be 16 years old, groped one of the girls, who climbed out a window to get away from him. Ageri then followed her, and slashed her face twice with a knife. The prosecutor in the case argued that Ageri is at least 21 years old, and should therefore be tried as an adult and, after serving his sentence, deported. However, the Municipal Court did not agree, and sentenced the Algerian to juvenile detention. The Court of Appeals increased the sentence to 18 months in prison, followed by deportation. Prosecutor My Hedström says she is now looking forward to having the case tried by the Supreme Court, to get a precedent on how “refugee children” who commit serious crimes should be handled legally.