RUTHFULLY YOURS

The news that the Dutch have followed the Swedes in declaring BDS messaging as free speech leaves me perplexed. Let me see if I’ve got this right.

The Dutch are against BDS, oppose boycott campaigning, oppose their call for the elimination of Israel, but allows their right to do all this. This is more than double Dutch. It’s more like a Dutch pretzel.

“As long as what you say is not illegal you are free to say it,” claims the Dutch Ambassador to Israel, Gilles Beschoor Plug. So let’s see a few of the things that BDS says.

BDS activists claim that they are a non-violent protest movement supporting the Palestinian cause.

Non-violent? Here is what Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS, has said;

“Palestinians have the right of resistance, including armed resistance.”

We Israelis, from our long history of Palestinian “armed resistance” tend to call it “terrorism.” It includes everything from stabbings, shootings, suicide bombings, rocket attacks on our civilians, the killing of our Olympic athletes and, in the past, plane and ship hijackings.

So much for “non- violence.”

Would, I wonder, the Dutch government tolerate the free speech of an organization that called for non-violent protest against some of their policies and then condoned lethal force as part of their campaign? For how long would the Dutch government protect anti-Dutch BDS rights to free speech if they recruited people to their call for the elimination of The Netherlands as part of their protected free speech rights?

During the Second World War, French Jews were persecuted like never before. They lived in Paris and its suburbs for centuries, and were always left alone. They truly felt French… or, to be more precise (anyone who knows anything about Paris knows that the inhabitants consider themselves different from the rest of the country), Parisian.

Hitler and his Nazi scum couldn’t have cared less about any of that, however. They considered Jews to be subhuman and sent them to concentration camps where they were systematically slaughtered.

After the Americans, British and Canadians liberated France, Frenchmen discovered what had happened to their Jewish neighbors. They immediately made clear that they would never allow something like that to happen again. “Never again” became an international rallying cry.

Well, with “never” they apparently meant “until 2016”:

Jews who have lived peacefully in the suburbs of Paris are now having to move to other parts of the country or head for Israel to escape anti-Semitism.

When Alain Benhamou walked into his apartment near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words “dirty Jew” scrawled on the wall, he knew it was time to leave.

It was his second such break-in in less than three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.

Nineteen people involved in the production and shipping of thousands of fake European Union passports and other documents were arrested in Greece and the Czech Republic in the past few weeks, the bloc’s law-enforcement agency, Europol, said Tuesday.

Sixteen people suspected of document forgery “on a large scale” and the smuggling of migrants were arrested in Greece last week, and three other suspects were taken into custody in the Czech Republic on May 10, Europol said.

The arrests come as migrants who arrived in the EU last year seek to legalize their stay, while others who are still outside the bloc have fewer options to enter after the route via Turkey, Greece and the Balkan countries was cut off.

The forged documents—passports from EU countries, identity cards, driving licenses, asylum-seeker registration cards, residence permits and visas to the border-free Schengen area—were shipped through courier companies to other EU countries as well as to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Europol said. They cost between €100 ($111) and €3,000, depending on the quality, type and country of issue.

In Athens, the suspected criminal network was composed of two groups—one comprising mainly Bangladeshi nationals, the other mainly Sudanese nationals. The Bangladeshi group sent at least 126 parcels containing travel documents via courier last year, while the Sudanese group sent 431 parcels over the same period, Europol said.

A 27-year-old female journalist recounted that a Palestinian official working for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza invited her for a job interview. The official “tried to approach and touch her, but she walked away and left the office… The following day… he offered her the job in return for having sexual intercourse with him.”

The victim noted that under Palestinian law, UNRWA officials enjoy immunity from being prosecuted.

Palestinian journalist Amjad Yaghi found that the Palestinian Basic Law does not tackle the issue of sexual harassment in Palestinian society. Meanwhile, the Hamas connections of these criminals will keep them out of jail and in positions of power.

Where are the women’s rights organizations now? Where are the European and American overseers of the international human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip? Do they only awaken from their slumber when they smell fresh Israeli meat? How many women will be sexually assaulted while these watchdogs sleep?

Sex is a taboo topic in the conservative Palestinian society. So it came as a nasty surprise to many when the rampant sexual harassment in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was recently brought to public attention.

A damning report, entitled “Gaza: Sexual Harassment and Bribery Chase Job-Seekers,” was published in the Beirut-based, Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar. Amjad Yaghi, the young Palestinian journalist who wrote the exposé, showed extraordinary courage in doing so.

Hamas, needless to say, was not amused.

Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media. On May 15, police detectives arrested Chowdhury for alleged “involvement in a plot to oust the Bangladesh government with the support of Israeli intelligence Mossad.”

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist, was sentenced in 2014 to seven years in prison, allegedly for trying to travel to Israel, to speak on the rise of Islamic militancy in his country, and how madrassahs (Islamic religious schools) are being used to spawn militants.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques.

Israel, the Mossad and Jews, seen as one, are now a political issue in Bangladesh politics. Accusations and denials about “Israel and Mossad connections” are going on among the rival political parties and leaders. Both the government and largest opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have been trying to cash in on the existing antagonistic sentiment against Israel among the country’s 90%-Muslim population.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques. Imams across the country shout before the Friday prayer’s sermon audience that Jewish people are infidels.

The latest dirty game of Israel-hating began in early May. A Bangladeshi politician, Aslam Chowdhury, who is a Joint General Secretary of the BNP, visited the Indian capital of Delhi and the historic city of Agra, where he met Mendi N. Safadi, reportedly a member of Israel’s Likud party.[1] Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media.

“I can assure you,” Wendy Sherman, President Barack Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran nuclear deal, said the other day, “that if Iran takes truly horrific terrorist action, or truly horrific human rights action, that people will respond.” Uh huh.

Sherman’s comments, which she made during a May 25 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, came a day after Stephen Mull, Obama’s lead coordinator on implementing the deal, acknowledged at a congressional hearing that Washington hasn’t leveled any sanctions on Iran over its human rights violations since inking the deal last summer – even as Tehran cracks down harder on its own people.

Apparently, Iran’s decision to hang 13 prisoners on a single day in May, including one in the city square of Mashhad in the presence of children, doesn’t constitute “truly horrific human rights action.” Nor, apparently, does the 10-year sentence that Iran imposed a few days later on a human rights activist, about which the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human rights said it was “appalled.”

Nor, apparently, does the barbaric punishment that more than 30 students near Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, received recently after throwing a graduation party where boys and girls danced and girls removed their headscarves: 99 lashes each, which the authorities reportedly imposed less than a day later.

The administration’s refusal to sanction Iran over human rights has ignited bipartisan anger on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers reminded top Obama officials that they backed the nuclear deal based on administration assurances that it would impose sanctions over human rights and other issues as circumstances warranted. The clash over sanctions, which erupted at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week, comes amid growing congressional interest in imposing new sanctions on Iran to replace those that will expire later this year, and administration concerns over such efforts.

Nearly a year after U.S.-led global negotiators finalized their nuclear deal with Iran, two realities have grown clearer: that hopes the pact would moderate Tehran’s hard-line regime remain a pipe dream, and that the administration will do nothing to anger Tehran and raise the chances that it will disavow the deal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Turkish women abandon contraception in a televised address May 30, Reuters reported. “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach,” Erdogan said. The Turkish leader has denounced Turkish women for refusing to have more babies on many earlier occasions.

Erdogan has played every side of every issue, alternately courting and rejecting the European Union, claiming the United States as an ally against ISIS while aiding the terrorist army on the sly, succoring Hamas while proposing to rebuild relations with Israel, helping Iran run sanctions while claiming the Gulf States as Sunni allies. Christina Lin catalogued his double-dealings in a May 31 news analysis for this publication.

When he talks about Turkey’s failing demographics, though, Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Turkey’s Kurdish citizens continue to have three or four children while ethnic Turks have fewer than two. By the early 2040s, most of Turkey’s young people will come from Kurdish-speaking homes. The Kurdish-majority Southeast inevitably will break away. Erdogan’s hapless battle against the inevitable motivates the sometimes bewildering twists and turns of Turkish policy.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Raymond Ibrahim Moment with Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

He discussed The Pope Who Gained the World, But Lost His Own Soul, unveiling Pope Francis’ Jihad on Christianity.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/31/raymond-ibrahim-moment-the-pope-who-gained-the-world-but-lost-his-own-soul-2/

DHIMMIWITS
An annual Jewish pilgrimage to Africa’s oldest synagogue got under way in Tunisia where security forces were deployed heavily to ward off potential jihadist attacks.
“….About 850,000 Jews lived throughout the Arab world before the state of Israel was created in 1948. That number has dwindled to fewer than 4,500.
Jewish communities have virtually disappeared across North Africa and the Middle East, including Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Yemen….”
No cause given for the “dwindling” or “virtual disappearance”….a rather glaring omission of the actual history, though not an unusual one?

DJERBA, Tunisia — Despite warnings from Israel to avoid traveling to one of the Arab world’s last Jewish communities, thousands came to the ancient El Ghriba synagogue this week to celebrate the Jewish festival of Lag b’Omer.

Jews from Tunisia, Europe and elsewhere made the annual two-day pilgrimage that began Wednesday under tight security to mark the holiday with prayers, candles and wishes written on eggs.

Organizers estimated 2,000 people made the trip here despite a severe warning by Israel’s National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau that recommended all travel to Tunisia be avoided.

“Terrorism is everywhere, it’s in Paris, it’s in Bardo. The problem is worldwide,” Lior Elia said in his family jewelry shop in Houmt Souk, the main city on the island of Djerbaoff the Tunisian coast. “We are protected here, the police work for us and for everyone, and we are also protected, thanks to God.”

“We protect each other always,” said Madji Barouni, a Muslim college student who stopped by the shop to visit his friend Elia.

There have been plenty of security concerns. In an assault in March, militants affiliated with the Islamic State stormed the Tunisian border town of Ben Gardane, leaving more than 50 dead. Access to Djerba was immediately cut off.

Two high-profile attacks last year in Tunisia — at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis and in the beach resort of Sousse — stoked fears that the Jewish community could become a target of extremists.

DJERBA, Tunisia — Despite warnings from Israel to avoid traveling to one of the Arab world’s last Jewish communities, thousands came to the ancient El Ghriba synagogue this week to celebrate the Jewish festival of Lag b’Omer.

Jews from Tunisia, Europe and elsewhere made the annual two-day pilgrimage that began Wednesday under tight security to mark the holiday with prayers, candles and wishes written on eggs.

Organizers estimated 2,000 people made the trip here despite a severe warning by Israel’s National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau that recommended all travel to Tunisia be avoided.

Iran’s international cartoon exhibition and contest mocking Jews and the Holocaust has just concluded. It provided a prominent hate-filled platform to those who deny or make fun of the genocide inflicted on Jews by the Nazis and who seek to compare Israel today to Nazi Germany. One hundred fifty “cartoonists” from 50 countries submitted entries. The exhibition provided a perfect bookend to the message emblazoned by the Iranian regime on missiles it test fired last March, “Israel must be wiped out.”

Western-educated Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif played the free speech card to defend the right of the organizers to put on their show, while denying that his government had anything to do with it.

During an April 2016 interview with the New Yorker, Zarif said the exhibition was organized by a non-governmental organization “that is not controlled by the Iranian government.” Zarif claimed, “Don’t consider Iran a monolith. The Iranian government does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you’re talking about.”

A well-known exiled Iranian cartoonist, Nikahang Kowsar, laid bare Zarif’s Big Lie in a blog post published by the Times of Israel:

“The claim that the Iranian government doesn’t control this platform for spewing hate and denying the Holocaust is a pure lie, coming from a pathological liar whose previous absurd claim, exactly a year before this one, was ‘we do not jail people for their opinions.’

The director of the Iranian Cartoon House, a former member of the Revolutionary Guards, runs the contest by the rules set by the Culture and Arts Center of Tehran’s Municipality. Cartoon House is not allowed to hold International competitions and contests without permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.”