RUTHFULLY YOURS

As if we needed another reason to despise the Saudi Arabian terrorist, Osama bin Laden:

Osama bin Laden wrote a letter calling on the American people to help President Barack Obama fight “catastrophic” climate change and “save humanity,” in the latest evidence of his worries about environmental issues, newly released documents show.

The letter was among materials that were seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan that killed the al Qaeda chief and which were released on Tuesday by the Obama administration. The undated, unsigned letter “to the American people,” which US intelligence officials attributed to bin Laden, appeared to have been written shortly after Obama began his first term in 2009, based on the letter’s references to events.

Bin Laden’s preoccupation with climate change also emerged as a theme in the first tranche of documents from the raid that was declassified in May 2015, as well as in an audio recording released via the al Jazeera network in January 2010.

You can’t make this stuff up. But wait — there’s more!

In the rambling letter made public Tuesday, bin Laden blamed the 2007-8 US financial crisis on corporate control of capital and corporate lobbyists, and the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He called on Americans to launch “a great revolution for freedom” to liberate the US president from those influences. That would enable Obama to make “a rational decision to save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny,” bin Laden continued.

The UN Security Council today unanimously passed a resolution penned by the United States and China to expand sanctions on North Korea.

In addition to broadening the list of people and entities subject to sanctions, the resolution stipulates that countries accepting cargo from North Korea or heading to the reclusive country will have to inspect all shipments. New banned items include luxury swag that Kim Jong-un enjoys.

Under the resolution, North Korea is not supposed to use any revenue from energy sales to fund its nuclear program. This would be nearly impossible to enforce, and Pyongyang is notorious for thumbing its nose at UNSC resolutions.

The Security Council began negotiations a few weeks ago on “measures in response to these dangerous and serious violations” of North Korea’s latest missile launch.

President Obama said in a statement that the resolution “imposes significant costs on the DPRK in response to its January 6 nuclear test and February 7 missile launch.”

“This resolution levies strong new sanctions aimed at halting Pyongyang’s efforts to advance its weapons of mass destruction programs,” Obama said. “I have consistently said that the DPRK would face consequences for its actions, and I welcome this resolution as a firm, united, and appropriate response by the international community to the DPRK’s recent provocations that flagrantly violated multiple Security Council resolutions.”

IDOMENI, Greece—A clampdown along Balkan borders has left 30,000 migrants trapped in Greece, marking a new stage in the humanitarian crisis swamping Europe.

Countries farther up the migration trail, from Macedonia to Austria, are now letting in only a few hundred a day, and sometimes no one.

Allowing migrants to be stranded in Greece is considered the EU’s last option to halt the relentless inflow of people from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. More and more EU governments have lost faith in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of stopping irregular migrants at Turkey, spreading bona fide refugees around the EU, and keeping Europe’s internal borders open.

Ms. Merkel warned this week of “chaos” in Greece, but other European Union leaders say there is no alternative to shutting down the Balkan migration route.

“The first priority is to rapidly stem the flows,” European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday while visiting Croatia, a country on the now-constricted Balkan trail. Europe’s monthslong furor over migration “is testing our Union to the limit,” Mr. Tusk said.

Senior EU officials argue that a humanitarian crisis in Greece, ameliorated with EU money, would help deter further migrants from traveling to Europe. On Wednesday, the EU executive in Brussels said it could send Greece €300 million ($326 million) quickly, from a new €700 million emergency fund for the bloc.
Greece is rapidly becoming a pressure cooker. Refugees and other migrants are growing frustrated and angry. Hundreds tried to storm the border with Macedonia on Monday, only to be driven back with tear gas. The presence of riot police and military vehicles is growing daily. Authorities are hastily building a network of camps around the country, hoping to spread the trapped migrants and avoid major unrest. CONTINUE TO SITE

Robert Nicholson is the executive director of The Philos Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote positive Christian engagement in the Middle East. He holds a BA in Hebrew Studies from Binghamton University, and a JD and MA (Middle Eastern History) from Syracuse University. A formerly enlisted Marine and a 2012- 2013 Tikvah Fellow, Robert lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

The Jesuit magazine America recently reported that Arab Christians are fleeing in droves from Bethlehem, the hallowed city of Jesus Christ’s birth. In 1990, Christians made up a majority of the city’s residents; today they make up only about 15%. “With thousands more fleeing the city every year,” reports America’s correspondent Jeremy Zipple, “you can’t help but wonder, will there be any Christians left here…in the not too distant future?”

Zipple’s question is rhetorical. He clearly believes that Christianity in Bethlehem may be nearing its end.

But why? Why are Christians fleeing?

At first Zipple says “it’s complicated.” But he goes on to list one reason, and one reason only: “Since 2003 Bethlehem has been circumscribed by a 26-foot military grade wall.”

Zipple is, of course, referring to the separation barrier that was constructed by Israel during the Second Intifada to keep out suicide bombers who tried to cross from the West Bank into Israel. Although the vast majority of the barrier is a chain link fence, in Bethlehem and a few other metropolitan areas it becomes a tremendous gray wall. Since its construction, the barrier has become the international symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

“[T]he separation wall…cuts family from each other. People get humiliated at checkpoints. People do not have many opportunities to improve their living standards. So, therefore, Christians who can afford to, are trying to leave this country,” says interviewee Hanan Nasrallah, a Palestinian employee of Catholic Relief Services.

Nasrallah’s calculation is simple: Israel built a wall; the wall makes life difficult; therefore, Palestinian Christians are leaving.

When Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for U.S. military efforts against ISIS, was asked about the status of Christians in Iraq soon after the monastery’s destruction, he replied “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”

Kuwait lawmaker Ahmad Al-Azemi said that he and other MPs will reject an initially approved request to build churches because it “contradicts Islamic sharia laws.” He added that Islamic scholars are unanimous in banning the building of non-Muslim places of worship in the Arabian Peninsula.

“We have little hope left that there can be a future for us, Aramean Christians, to stay in the land of our forefathers.” — Fr. Yusuf, head the last Christian family to flee Diyarbakir, Turkey.

Yet another Christian girl in Pakistan was abducted by a group of Muslim men, forced to convert to Islam, and, at the age of 15, marry one of her kidnappers.

Iraq: The Islamic State blew up the country’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah’s. The 27,000-square-foot building had stood near Mosul for 14 centuries. For several years, prior to 2009, U.S. soldiers protected and sometimes used the monastery as a chapel. “Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled,” reported a Roman Catholic priest in Irbil. “We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, [and] eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.” Yet, when Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for America’s military efforts against ISIS, was asked about the status of Christians in Iraq soon after the monastery’s destruction, he replied, “We’ve seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians.”

According to gay activist Judith Butler, Hamas is a progressive organization and anyone who points out that Israel doesn’t have the death penalty for gays is just “pinkwashing”. But Hamas is not actually all that progressive on gay rights as we see with the case of Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander who was tortured into confessing to being gay and then killed.

A Hamas commander who was executed in February was tortured and then killed after at least one terrorist under his command admitted to having sex with him.

Relatives and other sources say he was tortured extensively during that period, including beatings, whippings, being suspended by his hands from the ceiling for hours on end, sleep deprivation and more.

So bad were his conditions that family members protested outside the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in a rare show of dissent in authoritarian-ruled Gaza. Demonstrators were beaten by Hamas police and dispersed.

Here’s how Hamas progressively dealt with the whole gay thing.

In his next meeting with relatives, on March 1, Mr. Ishtiwi told his brother Hussam that he had been tortured since his fourth day in detention. Six weeks later, when his wives visited, they sneaked out a note, of which Human Rights Watch shared a photograph. “They nearly killed me,” it says. “I confessed to things I have never done in my life.”

By June 7, when Samia visited her brother at a Qassam base near Gaza City’s used car market, Mr. Ishtiwi “looked destroyed,” she recalled.

“I asked, ‘Why are you crying, brother?’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘I have been wronged, wronged.’ ”

Members of Kaifeng community, believed to be founded by 8th- or 9th-century Jewish traders, to undertake formal process to become Jews

For the first time in 7 years, 5 young women in their 20’s from China’s historic Jewish community have made Aliyah and are presently living in Israel. They were brought to Israel via the Shavei Israel organization. The women, Gao Yichen, Yue Ting, Li Jing, Li Yuan, and Li Chenglin, have been studying Hebrew and Judaism intensively in Kaifeng for the past several years prior to their Aliyah.

“Kaifeng’s Jewish descendants are a living link between China and the Jewish people,” Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund stated. “After centuries of assimilation, a growing number of the Kaifeng Jews in recent years have begun seeking to return to their roots and embrace their Jewish identity. These five young women are determined to rejoin the Jewish people and become proud citizens of the Jewish state and we are delighted to help them realize their dreams.”

“Being part of the Jewish people is an honor because of the heritage and wisdom,” said Li Jing, who on a brief previous visit to Israel put a note of prayer in the Kotel asking to return and live in Israel. “Now, my prayer has been answered,” she said. After the 5 women arrived in Israel, they were brought by Shavei Israel to the Kotel to pray and from there will be studying in a seminary in Jerusalem. After they formerly convert to Judaism, they will receive Israeli citizenship.

For the past three years, the West has been tricking itself into seeing the Islamic Republic of Iran as a country undergoing a gradual process of reform. The outcome of Friday’s two elections — one for the Majlis (parliament) and the other for the Assembly of Experts — is serving as the latest mirage in the delusion.

In 2013, when Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, the United States and Europe took it as a sign of a new dawn. Even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the chief mullah controlling Iran’s “elected” leader, came to understand that Rouhani was preferable to the volatile and fanatic Ahmadinejad, whose repeated pronouncements about wiping Israel off the map before attending to America were not serving Tehran in good stead.

Rouhani’s appearance on the international stage provided particular fantasy-fodder for supporters of a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s race to obtain nuclear weapons and to guarantee its regional, and eventually global, hegemony.

Those people today feel vindicated for two reasons. The first is that world powers finally did reach a nuclear deal with Iran. The second is that Rouhani’s “pro-deal” camp emerged victorious in the latest parliamentary election, and two of the most hard-line ayatollahs were voted out of the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with appointing the supreme leader. And considering Khamenei’s advancing age and questionable health, this clerical assembly, which sits for eight years, is likely to end up selecting his successor.

To understand why the above is no cause for celebration, two crucial things need to be kept in mind: the only thing the nuclear deal accomplished was to enable Iran to step up its nuclear program, but with lots more money at its disposal; and Rouhani is no moderate.

Indeed, Iran continues to assert its right to nuclear power, while flexing its military muscles nearly daily by testing missiles and threatening the West not to intervene. In addition, celebrations less than three weeks ago marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that turned Iran into an Islamic state included chants of “death to America,” “death to Israel” and a reenactment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s humiliation of U.S. sailors who had strayed into Tehran’s territorial waters.

A review of Rouhani’s record also leaves little room for optimism. Though the Shiite cleric was not Khamenei’s preferred choice, he would never have been approved as a candidate in the first place if his revolutionary credentials had not been impeccable. And they certainly were.

Where is the professional journalism the mainstream media keeps talking about? While they have been focusing on Iran’s artificial democratic elections, the mainstream liberal outlets seem to have intentionally ignored one of the most heinous and egregious acts that the ruling mullahs of Iran committed during the elections.

The Islamist henchmen of the Islamic Republic executed every man in a village in the province Sistan-Baluchestan, according to the latest report coming from Iran. Shahindokht Molaverdi, the vice president for women and family affairs, called for increased protection for the families of the executed as she claimed to a Persian news outlet that “We have a village in Sistan-Baluchestan (province) where every single man has been executed.”

In addition, while liberal journalists often report on the mass executions that are being carried out by the non-state militia — the Islamic State — they have chosen to ignore larger scale of human rights violations by a powerful Islamist state, Iran.

Iran has surpassed China in the number of executions being carried out per capita, now ranking at the top. The number of executions of juveniles, women, and political prisoners has significantly increased under the government of the so-called moderate president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani.