RUTHFULLY YOURS

During these weeks across the UK, universities are holding ‘Israeli apartheid week’. I have sat and viewed with revulsion as images have emerged of students on campus being fed raw radical Islamic propaganda. It has turned into a show, with each of the universities trying to outdo each other. This year Cambridge received praise for placing a military checkpoint in the centre of the Sidgwick lecture site at the University. Did I just call it raw Islamic propaganda? Yes, I did, but more on that later.

Just last night (24th Feb) I was at SOAS to hear yet another incessant and libellous attack against Israel. The usual tales were told, replete with examples of how Israel is randomly shooting at people in the street. The evening started with the host boasting about being able to recognise Zionists in the crowd and deliberately not letting them have the microphone when questions are tabled. They actually took photos at one event on Monday of a person they identified as ‘Zionist’ who had his hand up constantly. What they did is take pictures of him and Photoshopped different things into his hand and shared it amongst themselves. What type of university believes this is acceptable? SOAS does, we know Kings does too. In Oxford we have seen claims of rabid antisemitism. In Cambridge they simply want to intimidate the Jewish presence into submission first. In Westminster and others across the land, I’ve spoken to Jews, Zionists and Israelis who hide their identity whilst in University. This is the ‘safe space’ that has been created on UK campuses in 2016; safe to intimidate, safe to scare, safe to shout down, safe to silence, safe to lie and safe to hate.

Israeli Apartheid week is a recruiting tool for BDS on campus. It aims to flatten the complex situation in the Middle East into the binary black/white issue of Apartheid. If Israel can successfully be labelled an apartheid state, then the reservoir of the anti-Apartheid sentiment across the globe can be reawakened and directed towards Israel. Ironically, it is in universities, the very places that simple issues are meant to be opened up and investigated, one of the most complex and multi-faceted conflicts on the planet is reduced to propaganda rhetoric and blatantly false, one sided accusations of absolute guilt.
Apartheid

Let me firstly deal with this ridiculous and slanderous notion.

Take two brothers, both Arabs living in the British mandate in 1946. How they got there, how long their families were there is not relevant. According to the UN definition of the Palestinian refugee, even if the family had come looking for work in 1945 from Syria, they count as Palestinian. So do their children and grandchildren, even if they themselves were all born and lived all their days back on Syria or Lebanese soil. So be it. These are just elements that contribute to the absurdity of the conflict, and have to be accepted as factual without adhering to any ethical, moral or logical position.

During 1948, the two brother’s lives took different paths. One, having moved to a village near Haifa that worked in friendship with the local Jewish towns, remained a passive bystander as civil war erupted in the region. The civil war erupted because the Arab population, egged on by regional Arab dictatorships, had refused to accept the UN decision on Jewish independence over any part of the land. Some people do argue that the Jewish acceptance of the deal was a ploy, and the Jewish national aspirations dictated that the area should turn violent regardless. This too is irrelevant. Factually we know the Arabs rejected the deal and turned violent, the Jews accepted the deal and responded to the violence by defending against those that openly sought to destroy them.

No, it’s not one of those kinky sex videos.

It’s an imam, and a prominent one at that (apparently), in one of those former Viking lands that seem set on committing cultural suicide and taking the rest of Europe down with them.

He’s explaining to the female of the species the mandatory punishments the Religion of Peace metes out to married women on the one hand and virgins on the other if they should have the temerity to leave said creed.

Remember, this is not a lecture in some Middle Eastern hellhole.

It is a lecture in one of the nation states of northern Europe.

This is Danelaw, but not as King Knut knew it.

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.