RUTHFULLY YOURS

After many years of being gagged, Fatah’s young guard is finding its voice. But while members of this faction wish to see a “changing of the guards at the Palestinian palace,” this does not mean that they have changed their attitude towards Israel.

Fatah’s young guard is neither interested in, nor authorized to, give up the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees — or even take the basic step of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. In short, the actors might change, but the same show will go on.

The international community, meanwhile, is busy burying its head in the sand of Abbas’s very messy backyard. The participants at the Middle East peace conference held in Paris last week may have missed the latest revolt against the PA president. Had they been paying attention, instead of calling for a two-state solution, they might have demanded that Abbas and his Fatah faction get their acts together, and include Israel in the show. Perhaps they also would have mentioned that this ought happen before Hamas takes over the West Bank and creates another Islamist regime there, too.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is once again facing insurrection — this time from the young guard in his ruling Fatah faction.

Even autocracy has its limits, and after many years of being gagged, Fatah’s young guard is finding its voice.

This renewed power struggle between the young and the old guard is probably a positive sign. It seems to signal the Palestinians wish to see new faces in power. However, just because members of this faction wish to see a “changing of the guards at the Palestinian palace” does not mean that they have changed their attitude towards Israel.

This young guard, in fact, is neither interested in, nor authorized to, give up the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees — or even take the basic step of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Professor Bardakcioglu is under a disciplinary investigation launched by the university’s rector for his tweet, in which he criticized the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

After losing his job and being condemned and ostracized by his community, Bardakcioglu defined his deleted tweet as “an ugly and wrong expression that was not my own view.” The professor, sadly, apologized for telling the truth.

Publicly debating historical events recognized by most scholars in free societies is, in Turkey, a criminal offense. You can lose your job, your freedom or even your life.

Turkish state officials constantly claim there is nothing in Turkey’s history that they should be ashamed of, so they continue persecuting and jailing journalists or professors who express differing ideas, and slaughtering non-Muslims and non-Turks.

Erbay Bardakcioglu, a professor at Adnan Menderes University (AMU) in Aydin Province in western Turkey, was suspended after posting a tweet, in which he criticized the conquest of Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, in 1453.

Professor Bardakcioglu’s tweet, on May 29, read, “Today is the anniversary of the invasion of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, a magnificent civilization, by a barbaric and fanatic tribe.”

After the tweet caused an outrage on social media, Bardakcioglu deleted it.

The professor is also under a disciplinary investigation launched by the university’s rector for his tweet.

The university’s rector, Cavit Bircan, on his Twitter account, also condemned the professor and declared that he was laid off from his job.

Describing Bardakcioglu’s tweet as “unacceptable,” Bircan wrote on his Twitter account:

American traitors like these should be sent straight to Gitmo for hard labor….rsk
Disenchanted followers of the extremist group are trying to get out of Syria.

Disenchanted Islamic State members recruited from the West have increasingly been contacting their governments and asking for help in getting home, according to diplomats and a Syrian network that aids defectors.

Some have turned up at diplomatic missions in Turkey, and others have sent furtive messages to their governments seeking assistance in escaping from territory the extremist group controls in neighboring Syria, according to the diplomats, who represent six Western missions in Turkey.

The calls for help from Westerners come as Islamic State loses ground and faces fresh assaults on its Raqqa stronghold and on Fallujah, Iraq, where it has ruled for more than two years.

Some Westerners seeking to escape from Islamic State are fighters, and others are people who were enticed to move to the group’s so-called caliphate and declared their loyalty, and now find themselves in dire straits, the diplomats said.

“Their troops are now starting to leave. There are a lot of French people who are coming back,” France’s national intelligence coordinator, Didier le Bret, said at a recent security conference. “They’ve got a feeling it’s not going that well.” He said citizens of other European countries are also returning.

The Western diplomats said about 150 citizens from just their six countries have sought help to flee or did so on their own since the departures began to ramp up in the fall. The overall number of Westerners who joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and then returned home isn’t known, but Western officials have said several hundred fighters have come back to Europe. CONTINUE AT SITE