RUTHFULLY YOURS

Original Post: Breaking news out of Melbourne, Australia, that at least three people have died after a man plowed a vehicle into a group of pedestrians near a shopping mall.

According to one witness, the driver was screaming, “Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar!”

This event is reminiscent of the terror attacks last July in Nice, France, and more recently at a Christmas mall in Berlin.Remarkably, police have asked Melbourne Herald Sun reporter Andrea Hanblin to remove her video interview of the eyewitness who claimed the driver was shouting, “Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar!”

The immediate two aims of the Kairos Document are: 1) to boycott Israel and the Jewish historical connection to the Land of Israel; 2) to neutralize the support of Christian Zionists and any other Christians for Israel.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Secretariat targets Israel’s tourist industry and aspires to re-direct pilgrims from Israel to the Palestinian area, and to guide pilgrims from having a positive outlook on Israel to having a negative reactions to the Jewish State.

Many faithful Christians, including a good portion of the fine Lutheran Church of Hannover, are hardly aware of the degree of deception employed by the WCC Secretariat. They would be scandalized to know that they were being used for the Secretariat’s scheme of nationalism and anti-Semitism.

The Christian faith is known for holding aspects of the divine commitment to the Jewish people by seven biblical covenants: six unconditional ones with Abraham (Gen 12, 1-3), the Land (Gen 12, 1), the Levites (Num 25, 10-13), David (2 Sam 7, 10-16), Israel and Judah (Jer 31, 31-34), Jerusalem (Ez 16), and one conditional one at Sinai (Ex 19, 5). Those commitments are preceded by the universal covenant with the whole creation (Gen 9, 12-17). Many attempts which try to re-draw that celestial union of universality-cum-Israel-particularity fall, unswervingly, into the trap of nationalism and anti-Semitism.

Two recent divine-restructuring efforts of that kind count the Christians in Nazi -Germany and some Palestinian Christians. The former attempt ended in the Holocaust; the latter is now sponsored by the World Council of Churches (WCC) through two major engines, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme to Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), and the Kairos Palestine Document with its spin-off, “Alternative Tourism.” These two programs are of interest here.

Denmark’s parliament yesterday passed a draft forbidding people to marry a person under the age of consent. In addition to this, Copenhagen decided it will no longer accept marriages that have previously been registered abroad if one of the persons involved in such a union is under the age of 18 years old. https://gatestone.eu/denmark-marriage/

Denmark initiated a similar law in February 2016, but unfortunately for the child brides, the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) decided to reunify them with their ‘husbands’ in September 2016, after the government had made a sudden U-turn on the issue. Copenhagen ‘justified‘ the reversal of its position by stating that preventing this type of child abuse might amount to an infringement of the fundamental refugees’ rights.

“In some of these cases it has been assessed that it would not be compatible with Denmark’s international obligations to maintain the separate living quarters, thus these couples have been offered to be housed together.”

But the Danish legal crusade against child marriage has been renewed, and is still based on reports from 2016 showing Danish asylum centres accommodate some 27 ‘married’ juveniles, writes The Danish Local. Previous accounts made mention of 14-year-old girls who entered Denmark as refugees and then became the brides of men that were more than ten years their senior.

Naser Khader, from the Conservatives, last year told Metro Xpress that he was “outraged” by the situation:

“That’s what you call ‘pedophilia’ when you have made a 14-year-old pregnant and are allowed to stay with the girl. The men should not be able to apply for asylum in Denmark. We can give asylum to the 14-year-old but should kick their grown men out. In Holland, you can, according to what I’ve been told, not be granted asylum if you have a child bride. So it must be in Denmark.”

The tightening of the laws on Thursday nevertheless still offer room for legal loopholes. A marriage will not be rejected when there’s “a compelling argument” for the union.

The above mentioned supposedly successful Dutch government is still struggling with the issue as well. Holland banned child marriages in 2015, but in the four months that followed the implementation of the law, some 60 Syrian-born child brides entered the Netherlands, according to RTL.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Most observers, when debating the pros and cons of a two-state solution, focus exclusively on its potential impact on Israel and its Jewish citizens. Much less attention is paid to the solution’s potential impact on the Palestinians. Leftists, right-wingers, conservatives and liberals all tend to assume that two states would naturally be in the Palestinians’ interest. Think again.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/396-frisch-two-state-solution/

As was apparent at the recent Paris conference, the world refuses to acknowledge that the two-state solution has already failed the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority (PA), established in 1994, came to rule over all of Gaza in the summer of 2005 after the complete Israeli withdrawal and destruction of Israeli settlements. The PA also had exclusive control over the major cities in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank and their environs, comprising some 95 percent of these territories’ population.

However, that unified Palestinian entity, which was supposed to be the Palestinian side of the two-state equation, proved extremely short-lived. Within two years of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas took over Gaza completely. In the summer of 2007, after several rounds of fighting that began soon after Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006, the Islamist group established its own exclusive government in Gaza.

Thus, the Palestinians partitioned themselves into two bodies: an autocratic entity headed by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and a Hamas theocracy in Gaza. Almost unnoticed, the two-state solution had given way to a three-state solution.

European states – like France, for example, which convened the Paris conference – will no doubt clam that that was all in the past, and the past can always be corrected.

It is certainly true that the Palestinians are always allowed by the international community to have yet another chance. But a two-state solution is simply no longer feasible.

A relatively bloodless civil war has been raging between the two entities day in and day out since their bloody 2007 confrontation, offering a constant illustration of why there cannot be a single Palestinian state. If the two sides were to attempt to reunite, that war would become very bloody indeed. The Palestinians themselves realize this, which explains the succession of failed attempts to bring the sides together.

As separate entities, the two sides make do by utterly subduing the opposing group. The cost of this suppression has been relatively low so far: several deaths of tortured political prisoners in Hamas and PA prisons, a few extrajudicial killings, and the occasional closing down of professional or charitable organizations linked to the opponent. The PA, the economic clout of which is financed by the international community, has blocked projects like the creation of a new Israeli electric grid line into Gaza and the creation of a modern port that would considerably improve Gazans’ standard of living.

There are 1.2 billion Catholics across the globe or almost 20% of the earth’s population, more than 1 out of 5 Americans and 40% of Latin America. This is a disgraceful abuse of power by the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world. Janet Levy
Madrid (AFP) – Pope Francis warned against populism, saying it could lead to the election of “saviours” like Hitler.

In an hour-long interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais conducted as Donald Trump was being sworn in as US president, the pontiff also condemned the idea of using walls and barbed wire to keep out foreigners.

“Of course crises provoke fears and worries,” he said but added that for him “the example of populism in the European sense of the word is Germany in 1933.

“Germany… was looking for a leader, someone who would give her back her identity and there was a little man named Adolf Hitler who said ‘I can do it’.”

“Hitler did not steal power,” the pope said. “He was elected by his people and then he destroyed his people.”

The Germans at that time also wanted to protect themselves with “walls and barbed wire so that others cannot take away their identity,” he said.

“The case of Germany is classic,” he said, adding that Hitler gave them a “deformed identity and we know what it produced.”

Pope Francis however underscored that it was too early to pass judgement on Trump.

“Let’s see. Let’s see what he does and then we will evaluate,” he said.

This appalling disregard for shrines and historical monuments was routine when the Arabs(Jordan) controlled Jerusalem and occurs continually in those ancient cities of Judea and Samaria now controlled by the Palarabs….but nary a word from mainstream press….rsk

BEIRUT—Islamic State group militants destroyed a landmark ancient Roman monument and parts of the theater in Syria’s historic town of Palmyra, the government and opposition monitoring groups said Friday.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of Syria’s antiquities department, said the militants destroyed the facade of the second-century theater along with the Tetrapylon, a cubic-shaped ancient Roman monument that sits in the middle of the colonnade road that leads to the theater.

Mr. Abdulkarim told the Associated Press that reports of the destruction first trickled out of Islamic State-held town late in December. But satellite images of the damage were only available late Thursday, confirming the destruction.

The imagery, provided by the US-based American Schools of Oriental Research, show significant damage to the Tetrapylon and the theater. The ASOR said the damage is likely caused by intentional destruction but they were unable to verify the exact cause.

Abdulkarim said only two of the 16 columns of the Tetrapylon remain standing. The stage backdrop has sustained damage, according to ASOR.

State-run news agency SAN’A reported the damage Friday and Syrian opposition monitors also confirmed but gave no immediate details.

The extremists recaptured the ancient town in December from government troops, nine months after IS was expelled in a Russia-backed offensive. During their first stay, from May 2015 until May 2016, Islamic State destroyed ancient temples including the Temple of Bel, which dated back to A.D. 32, and the Temple of Baalshamin, a structure of stone blocks several stories high fronted by six towering columns.

The militants also blew up the Arch of Triumph, which had been built under Roman emperor Septimius Severus between A.D. 193 and A.D. 211.

A Unesco World Heritage site, Palmyra boasts 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades and priceless artifacts. Syrians affectionately refer to it as the “Bride of the Desert.”