RUTHFULLY YOURS

Sports stadiums and big music events are especially vulnerable: “This is where you put a small town into a small area for a couple of hours.” — Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London.

“We know that the Islamic State has the European Championship in its sights.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

According to Patrick Calvar, head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, at least 645 French nationals or residents, including 245 women, are currently with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Another 200 individuals are “in transit,” either on their way to Syria or returning to France. Around 244 jihadists have already returned to France.

British police chiefs are struggling to recruit enough officers who are willing to carry a firearm, because many fear they will be treated as criminal suspects if they use their weapon in the line of duty.

European security officials are bracing for potential jihadist attacks at public venues across Europe this summer.

In France, officials are preparing for possible attacks against the European Football Championships. The games, which start on June 10, comprise 51 matches involving 24 teams playing in 10 host cities across the country.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that more than 90,000 security personnel will be on hand to protect the 2.5 million spectators expected to attend the games, as well as the hundreds of thousands more who will watch the matches on big screens in so-called “fan zones” in major cities.

Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization.

Bouattia’s role is meant to entail representing the best interests of students in the UK. How does endorsing and legitimizing terrorist attacks in Israel the best way to improve conditions for students in the UK? Is Bouattia trying to radicalise students in the UK?

When students need representation, the voice often heard is that of the NUS. Is it any wonder that when this voice has a history of endorsing terrorism, including sharing platforms with convicted terrorists, that students may want a different voice?

The United Kingdom’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization, and more are set to follow. NUS is struggling even to retain its previous strongholds, such as Exeter’s Student Association.

The Exeter University campaign to leave the NUS managed to increase the number of votes to defect from roughly 200 to 2546. This stampede occurred despite the massive protests by the “stay” campaign, including text messages to thousands of students and visits to the school by more than 10 senior NUS officials, including two Vice Presidents-elect and the President-elect.

Why are students from so many British universities fighting to leave the NUS? Well, take for example statements by its new president-elect, Malia Bouattia.

Tents of African migrants that are popping up under bridges in Paris look nothing like Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s tent (pic on the right) that was pitched in the garden of Hôtel de Marigny, the government’s official guest house, opposite the Elysée Palace in December 2007. But Gaddafi’s tent was the foretaste to today’s African illegal immigrants’ makeshift camps littering the French Capital. Their spread forced the Mayor Anne Hidalgo, to announce the creation of the city’s first refugee camp.

In 2010, Qaddafi warned the Europeans of the growing threat of African illegal immigration. On August 30, 2010, as he ended his visit to Italy, the Libyan leader packed his tent and demanded that the European Union pays Libya €5 billion a year “to ensure its co-operation in preventing illegal immigration from Africa.”

Gaddafi warned: “Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration; it could turn into Africa. There is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe, and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion.”

Qaddafi urged the Europeans to “imagine that this could happen, but before it does we need to work together.” But the Europeans, despite the already increase number of African refugees, accused Qaddafi of blackmail. And when Libyan Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated rebels joined the “Arab Spring”, European and American forces intervened militarily in March 2011 to remove Qaddafi.

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.