RUTHFULLY YOURS

It may seem hard to believe that the United Nations can hold any new surprises when it comes to unprincipled attacks on Israel, but never despair: There is always farther to fall.

For more than 20 years, the U.N. Human Rights Council has had a dedicated “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” (Needless to say, there’s no U.N. Special Rapporteur for the condition of Tibetans or Cubans; only Palestinians.) Now, the incumbent Israel-Hater-in-Chief is leaving and his replacement must be chosen.

This being the U.N., what kind of candidate will they choose? Be careful, now: The position’s entire purpose is to condemn Israel, so it’s important to disqualify anyone who might examine the evidence in an unbiased search for truth. Heaven forfend. Much better to choose someone whose anti-Israel bias is absolute.

And this being the U.N., that’s what they’re doing.

There are two top candidates, both worthy successors to Richard Falk, who served in the post from 2008 to 2014. Falk was the nut-case Princeton professor who wanted U.S. officials prosecuted as war criminals for deposing Saddam Hussein, and once said, “Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.” You can see why the U.N. chose him.

Anyway, back to the current candidates. Ranked second for the Special Rapporteur job is a Canadian named Michael Lynk. Who is Lynk? The invaluable U.N. Watch notes: “Lynk . . . promotes an extreme anti-Western political agenda. Three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Lynk instinctively blamed the West, pointing the finger at ‘global inequalities’ and ‘disregard by Western nations for the international rule of law.’” Needless to say, this political stance means he hates Israel. As UN Watch reports:

Lynk plays a leadership role in numerous Arab lobby groups, including CEPAL, which promotes “Annual Israeli Apartheid Week” events; signs anti-Israel petitions; calls to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes; addresses “One State” conferences that seek to eliminate Israel; and argues that “the solution” to “the problem” must go back to Israel’s very creation in 1948, which he calls “the start of ethnic cleansing.”

You might think, “Wow, he’s perfect for the U.N.!” But no, he’s only ranked second, under the top candidate, Penny Green. Who is Green? She’s a British criminologist whose hatred of Israel is even more blatant. She has urged that the U.K. de-list Hamas as a terrorist group. U.N. Watch reports that she “advocates the total boycott of Israel, posting statements on Twitter such as: ‘Support BDS against Israel – best way to resist this criminal government’; ‘Academics should now systematically refuse any invitations to visit Israeli universities or attend conferences there’; ‘the West must impose sanctions against, boycott and divest from Israel.’”

As in any comedy, there is a clown, and Biden was played for a fool by a Palestinian Authority leadership that finds that it pays to point its finger at Israel.

Here is a dirty little secret: the Palestinian attackers were not driven to murder Jews because of “settlements” and “checkpoints.”

Check their Facebook accounts: what fueled their hatred were the lies they had been fed for the past few years by President Abbas and other Palestinian leaders. Palestinian media outlets and spokesmen vomit poison against Israel.

And so the curtain rises on another act of the ceremonial, make-believe theater of the Middle East. In Abbas’s sneaky script, it is about settlements. In reality, it is about the refusal of the Americans to read, speak or even translate Arabic.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Ramallah last week, and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his top officials are laughing their heads off.

Why not laugh? Biden arrived in the region hoping to persuade the Palestinian leaders to issue a “condemnation” of the reign of terror, which they continue to describe as a “popular and peaceful uprising.” This in itself reeks of gallows humor.

Donald Trump’s latest politically incorrect comment concerning Islam is much truer than most know.

After being asked last week on CNN if he believed the West was at war with Islam, the Republican presidential candidate simply said:

I think Islam hates us. There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.

While millions of Americans undoubtedly agree with Trump’s assertions — at least those who have eyes and ears to see and hear with — few realize that this “tremendous hatred” is not a product of grievances, political factors, or even an “extremist” interpretation of Islam; rather, it is a direct byproduct of mainstream Islamic teaching.

According to the ancient Islamic doctrine of wal’a wa bara’, or “loyalty and enmity” — which is well grounded in Islamic scriptures, well sponsored by Islamic authorities, and well manifested all throughout Islamic history and contemporary affairs — Muslims must hate and oppose everyone who is not Muslim, including family members.

Welcome to what is becoming the new global terrorist normal.

Few days go by now without at least one mass-casualty terrorist attack somewhere in the world. Two such attacks on Sunday, in the Ivory Coast and Turkey, killed 39 people combined.

On Sunday afternoon gunmen raided Grand Bassam, a resort town in the Ivory Coast popular with wealthy locals and Westerners. The assault followed the template of other recent Islamist attacks in the region, with gunmen spraying fire at vacationers on the beach.

At least 12 people were murdered in Grand Bassam, at least one a French citizen, before security forces killed six terrorists and stopped the attack, according to the Ivorian government. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attack.

Left unchecked in the Middle East, al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) have expanded into Africa. An Islamist crescent stretches from the Horn of Africa to West Africa, and to compete for recruits Africa’s al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates are racing to out-do each other in savagery. CONTINUE AT SITE

Iran’s firing long-range ballistic missiles that could reach Israel last week was the result of the Obama administration’s unwavering refusal to hold the regime accountable.

Last week Iran flaunted its violation of U.N. Resolution 2231, which bans Tehran from “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

But Iran feels reassured. After all, the regime was not held responsible for three fire previous testing of ballistic missiles, even after the Iran Deal was agreed upon. Instead of punishing the Islamic Republic, the U.S. added a few Iranian individuals and companies to its designation list, as if these were engaging in a private missiles development program.

Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.

“Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.

More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.

Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

The incident occurred at the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26, when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a six-centimeter kitchen knife.

“[T]hey have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned ‘peace, brotherhood, and human rights’ in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood.” — Ilhan Ongor, Co-President of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association.

Starving or murdering civilians does not, apparently, constitute a crime in Turkey, but speaking out about them does.

Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.

What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people — Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others — are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey’s massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

According to the 2015 statistics of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Turkey, 28 lawsuits were opened by applicants against member states regarding their violations of freedom of expression. 10 of those applications (complaints) were made against Turkey’s violations of freedom of expression. So Turkey ranked first in that category.

Turkish law professor Ayse Isil Karakas, both a judge and elected Deputy Head of the ECHR, said that among all member states, Turkey has ranked number one in the field of violations of free speech.

“619 lawsuits of freedom of expression were brought at the ECHR between 1959 and 2015,” she said. ” 258 of them — almost half of them — came from Turkey and most were convicted as violations of freedom of expression.”

Here is the fulcrum around which so much of the problem turns: the belief that Islamic law has every right to be put into practice in non-Muslim countries, and the insistence that a parallel, if unequal, legal system can function alongside civil and criminal law codes adhered to by a majority of a country’s citizens.

Salafism is a form of Islam that insists on the application of whatever was said or done by Muhammad or his companions, brooking no adaptation to changing times, no recognition of democracy or man-made laws.

The greatest expression of this failure to integrate, indeed a determined refusal to do so, may be found in the roughly 750 Muslim-dominated no-go zones in France, which the police, fire brigades, and other representatives of the social order dare not visit for fear of sparking off riots and attacks. Similar zones now exist in other European countries, notably Sweden and Germany. According to the 2011 British census there are over 100 Muslim enclaves in the country.

As millions of Muslims flow into Europe, some from Syria, others from as far away as Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa, several countries are already experiencing high levels of social breakdown. Several articles have chronicled the challenges posed in countries such as Sweden and Germany. Such challenges are socio-economic in nature: how to accommodate such a large influx of migrants; the rising costs of providing then with housing, food, and benefits, and the expenses incurred by increased levels of policing in the face of growing lawlessness in some areas. If migrants continue to enter European Union countries at the current rate, these costs are likely to rise steeply; some countries, such as Hungary, have already seen how greatly counterproductive and self-destructive Europe’s reception of almost anyone who reaches its borders has been.

The immediate impact, however, of these new arrivals is not likely to be a simple challenge, something that may be remedied by increasing restrictions on numbers, deportations of illegal migrants, or building fences. During the past several decades, some European countries ­– notably Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark — have received large numbers of Muslim immigrants, most of them through legal channels. According to a Pew report in 2010, there were over 44 million Muslims in Europe overall, a figure expected to rise to over 58 million by 2030.

Roman Catholics throughout the world are in the midst of the season of Lent.

Lent occurs over the six weeks stretching between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. It is recognized by Catholics as a season of renewal, a time for Christians to repent of their sins and draw nearer to God.

And while prayer is essential to renewing one’s relationship with one’s Creator, Sustainer, and Savior, unless prayer is accompanied by the love of one’s neighbors, it is in vain.

There are two things that every Christian knows: (1) The love of neighbor transcends any and every boundary that human weakness—human sin—disposes us to draw; and (2) This agape (highest form of love) can be expressed in any number of ways.

These facts considered, Christians in America—particularly during this Holy Season—should bear in mind the plight of their brothers and sisters in the faith around the globe who are made daily to endure persecution of a kind that few of us can scarcely conceive.

The victims are men, women, and children to whom we are now and probably always will be strangers. They are almost always people of color, not infrequently (but by no stretch invariably) Africans and Middle Easterners.

And most (but not all) of the time, their persecutors are Muslims.

Unidentified gunmen stormed a Catholic-run retirement home in southern Yemen last Friday, killing 16 people, including four Catholic nuns. A priest was taken captive and is still missing. The retirement home, run by the Missionaries of Charity — an organization established by Mother Teresa of Calcutta — houses 80 elderly people in the jihadist-infested port city of Aden. The four gunmen reportedly entered the the home on the pretext that they wanted to visit their mothers at the facility.

Via the Guardian:

The gunmen moved from room to room, handcuffing the victims before shooting them in the head. A nun who survived and was rescued by local residents said she hid inside a fridge in a storeroom after hearing a Yemeni guard shouting “run, run”.

Khaled Haidar said that he counted 16 bodies, including that of his brother, Radwan. All had been shot in the head and were handcuffed. He said one Yemeni cook and Yemeni guards were among those killed.