RUTHFULLY YOURS

“I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?” — Asia Bibi.

It is the West’s indolence and cupidity that has condemned Asia Bibi to death. No one in Europe has filled the streets to ask for the liberation of this courageous woman, or even to protest Pakistan’s anti-Christian laws.

Even Pope Francis stood silent. The emblem of his reticence is the 12 seconds of face-to-face time the Pope had with Bibi’s husband and her daughter in St. Peter’s Square. Francis barely touched the two. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, publicly called many times for her release.

The mainline Protestant churches of America, too busy demonizing Israel, also stood silent. Meanwhile, Christianity is being erased from its own cradle.

The death sentence for Asia Bibi is like Chernobyl’s nuclear cloud: it contaminates everything around it. After Asia’s arrest, her husband, Masih, and her children went into hiding. They have moved house 15 times in five years. They could not even attend Asia’s judicial hearings. It is too dangerous for them. Her husband was forced to quit his job.

Asia’s “crime” was to use the same water glass as her Muslim co-workers. She was sentenced to death because she is Christian and she was thirsty. “You defiled our water,” the Muslim women told her. “Convert to Islam to redeem yourself from your filthy religion.”

Israel on Wednesday said it plans to expand a key missile-defense system to warships, in a bid to protect the country’s lucrative offshore gas fields amid growing aerial threats from regional adversaries.

Israel’s military said it had successfully tested a naval version of its land-based Iron Dome system in recent weeks and would begin deploying it on its newest frigates to protect the country’s strategic assets, including its gas rigs.

The naval system is a combination of the land-based Iron Dome missile interceptor and radar systems on ships, the military said. “We call it the Iron Dome of the sea,” Col. Ariel Shir, head of operational systems in the Israeli navy, told reporters on a phone call.

Israel’s land-based Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts short-range rockets and has become a bedrock of the country’s defense since its introduction in 2011.

The ship-based Iron Dome system would augment a combination of land-based systems that Israel has jointly developed with the U.S., and that it hopes will provide a layered defense against a variety of short range missile threats to those capable of flying more than 600 miles.

The Iron Dome system intercepted 700 rockets fired by Islamist movement Hamas during the war in Gaza in 2014, a 90% success rate that effectively blunted the Palestinian group’s aerial threat.

During that conflict, Israeli defense officials say Hamas tried to fire rockets at the country’s two gas rigs that sit about 20 miles from Israel’s shore. Since then the military, in coordination with Israeli defense companies, has been developing a naval-based system to negate such a threat. CONTINUE AT SITE

EgyptAir said one of its aircraft disappeared early Thursday while flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard, the third major incident to befall the nation’s aviation sector since October.

The Egyptian flag carrier said Flight MS804, which departed Paris at 11:09 p.m. local time, “disappeared from radar” at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time Thursday while at 37,000 feet. It lost communication over the Mediterranean Sea, the airline said, shortly before it was due to land at 3:15 a.m.

An EgyptAir official said military search and rescue teams picked up a possible emergency locator signal at 4:26 a.m. Cairo time, less than two hours after the jet disappeared.

But Egypt’s military, which is leading the search and rescue operation, said shortly after that no such signal had been detected.

A civil aviation ministry official told state television that the initial report had been his ministry’s error.

The Airbus A320, with 56 passengers, including three children, three security personnel and seven crew on board, was last spotted over the Mediterranean Sea on the way to Cairo, according to flight-tracking websites.

Mr. Arria was Venezuela’s permanent representative to the United Nations from 1991-93.

“What does Israel plan to do with the Palestinians?” asked the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Rafael Ramirez. It was, of course, a rhetorical question.

Speaking at an informal session of the Security Council this month, the representative of a despotic, corrupt and militarized regime — one that has bankrupted Venezuela, hijacked the judicial system to throw political dissidents in jail, and counts Iran and Syria among its closest allies — rained down anti-Semitic rhetoric upon the State of Israel.

Ramirez went on to flatly ask whether Israel was “trying to impose a ‘final solution’ on the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

In making the obscene comparison between Israel and the Nazis, the Venezuelan delegate engaged in the ultimate blood libel — accusing the survivors of the Holocaust of having turned into the same monsters who exterminated 6 million Jews and millions of others. Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon publicly rejected such a disgusting comparison, as did other UN member representatives including France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

(Ramirez has since apologized privately to Israel’s UN ambassador, but has yet to do so in public.)

The Venezuelan remarks, of course, were meant only to fuel hatred. Ramirez never had any intention of addressing the subject of the meeting: the protection of civilians affected by the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.

Even worse, arguably, is the fact that these comments were made under the auspices of a process that is designed to increase dialogue and understanding, rather than boosting hatred and polarization.

One way to evaluate the direction of 21st century Western civilization is to ask whether free nations are acting more like totalitarian ones, or vice versa. A recent story highlighting modern-day North Korea indicates a depressing parallel between America and a nation where opponents of the ruling regime are rumored to be fed to the dogs – or at least executed by firing squad.

In “I went to North Korea and was told I ask too many questions,” the Washington Post’s Anna Fifield describes a visit to a Pyongyang maternity hospital during a state-organized media tour. During the visit to what we gather is a Potemkin hospital, a medical facility set up for pure publicity that misrepresents the true state of the country’s healthcare industry, Fifield asks a series of questions met with propaganda, obfuscation and not-so-curious inconsistency.

The reporter’s handlers rush her through a tour of the hospital, showing “state-of-the-art” Siemens equipment marked to show the technology is a gift from “Respected Leader Kim Jung Un.” Supposedly domestically produced machines are nowhere to be found. Staffers turn on a CT scanner to reveal password protection that cannot be cracked.

How can an administration’s words be at all trusted when frauds with profound consequences like the Iran deal and Obamacare are foisted so audaciously on the American people?

The trip ends with a visit to a room in one ward with “a nicely made-up woman sitting on the bed in pink pajamas…there were no personal effects on the bedside table or in the connecting bathroom, there was no medical chart on the end of the bed or even a glass of water on her bedside table.”

On Sunday, the Islamic Republic announced the arrest of eight women whose photographs were featured on Instagram. The models reportedly failed to adhere to stifling Islamic style dress codes rigorously enforced by Iran’s oppressive mullahs. More specifically, they posed without wearing religiously sanctioned head scarves designed to cover exposed hair.

Following her arrest, one of the models was forced to appear on Iranian TV in the presence of two prosecutors. Wearing a black head scarf and matching black gloves, she was recorded – almost certainly under duress – sanctioning the government’s Orwellian-like actions, warning other Iranian women that they “can be certain that no man would want to marry a model whose fame has come by losing her honor.” As an aside, when Iranian navy pirates operating off Farsi Island kidnapped 10 U.S. Navy sailors in the Arabian Gulf in January, they forced a female sailor into Sharia compliance, requiring her to don a hijab.

The arrests come in the midst of a yet another government crackdown on social media and dissent. The anti-social media operation, ominously codenamed “Spider II” has thus far netted dozens of models, photographers, makeup artists and other dangerous enemies of the state. Also arrested was Iranian blogger Mahdi Boutorabi who reportedly covered Iran’s rigged 2009 elections. It appears that periodically, the mullahs get bored or insecure and conjure up ways to make the lives of their citizens more miserable.

But the Islamic Republic’s absurdity doesn’t end there. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard bizarrely accused reality star (and not much else) Kim Kardashian-West of being behind the nefarious plot to undermine or otherwise taint the morals of Iran’s young women.

In third world democracies such as Turkey, there is a vast gap between what laws say and how they are enforced.

“As many as 2,000 individuals — reporters, celebrities, academics and students — are reportedly being officially investigated on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or spreading ‘terrorist propaganda.'” — “Reporters Without Borders” Report.

The EU must understand that it has too little, if any, leverage on a country that is going full speed toward darker days of Islamist authoritarianism.

With or without legal amendments to its anti-terror laws or a deal with the EU, Erdogan’s Turkey will de facto follow the path of Islamist autocracies, where any kind of dissent amounts to terrorism and treason.

Turkey and the European Union (EU) have been negotiating a deal that ostensibly would stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants into Europe; Turkey, on its part, would bring dozens of laws and regulations, including its draconian anti-terror laws, in line with Europe’s; and nearly 80 million Turks would then be given visa-free travel to the EU’s borderless Schengen zone. But now, as Turkey refuses to amend its anti-terror laws, the deal seems to be facing a stalemate.

That is hardly the heart of the matter. In reality, both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the EU are pursuing a deal that will not work.

“It can be expected that, as soon as Turkish citizens will obtain visa-free entry to the EU, foreign nationals will start trying to obtain Turkish passports … or use the identities of Turkish citizens, or to obtain by fraud the Turkish citizenship. This possibility may attract not only irregular migrants, but also criminals or terrorists.” — Leaked European Commission report, quoted in the Telegraph, May 17, 2016.

According to the Telegraph, the EU report adds that as a result of the deal, the Turkish mafia, which traffics vast volumes of drugs, sex slaves, illegal firearms and refugees into Europe, may undergo “direct territorial expansion towards the EU.”

“If they make the wrong decision, we will send the refugees.” — Burhan Kuzu, senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan is now demanding that the EU immediately hand over three billion euros ($3.4 billion) so that Turkish authorities can spend it as they see fit. The EU insists that the funds be transferred through international aid agencies in accordance with strict rules on how the aid can be spent. This prompted Erdogan to accuse the EU of “mocking the dignity” of the Turkish nation.

The EU-Turkey migrant deal, designed to halt the flow of migrants from Turkey to Greece, is falling apart just two months after it was reached. European officials are now looking for a back-up plan.

The March 18 deal was negotiated in great haste by European leaders desperate to gain control over a migration crisis in which more than one million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East poured into Europe in 2015.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms” – not quite what one would expect to hear from a supposed advocate of equality.

The irony of course is that to show you are not a racist, you are using racist terminology. Is that what an anti-racist should sound like?

Name-calling is usually just a form political blackmail designed to close down a discussion before it has even begun. What it does not wish to take into consideration is that someone might simply have a different opinion.

Every candidate’s record on terrorism should be questioned. It is the public’s right. Just because Khan happens to be Muslim, does that entitle him to special treatment? Why should one not be able to ask Khan the same questions one might ask any other politician?

Many are hailing the election of London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, admirably the “son of a Pakistani bus driver,” as the sign of a new, tolerant London and that Britain’s Black and minority ethnic communities are making progress.

But there are concerns. Khan has called moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms” – not quite what one would expect to hear from a supposed advocate of equality.

The irony of course is that to show you are not a racist, you are using racist terminology. Is that what an anti-racist should sound like?

Branding someone an “Uncle Tom” also implies that the poor primate cannot think independently or formulate an opinion apart from his ethnicity. Basically, the accusation would seem an attempt to intimidate those within a community to conform to whatever the group-think is; anyone who disagrees must therefore be a traitor. But name-calling is usually just a form political blackmail designed to close down discussion before it even begins. It seemingly does not wish to take into account that someone might just have a different opinion.

My father, Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old retired elementary-school principal from Connecticut, was on a bus in Jerusalem last October when two young Palestinian men boarded and began shooting and stabbing passengers indiscriminately. Two passengers were killed that awful day and 16 injured, including my father. Despite the efforts of first responders and the nurses and doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, my father died two weeks later. He had been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times in the head, face, chest and stomach.

Over the past seven months I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand what would cause two educated Palestinian men in their early 20s to board a public bus and butcher a group of innocent civilians, many of them senior citizens. I’m sorry to report that the Palestinian reaction to the attack has led me to believe that the “peace process” is more one-sided than ever.
Richard Lakin died in October 2015, two weeks after he was critically wounded in a Palestinian terrorist attack on a public bus in Jerusalem. ENLARGE
Richard Lakin died in October 2015, two weeks after he was critically wounded in a Palestinian terrorist attack on a public bus in Jerusalem. Photo: Associated Press

My father grew up a fighter for civil rights in America. He took those values with him in 1984 when he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he taught English to Arabs and Jews. He was a kind, gentle-hearted man who dedicated his life to education and promoting peaceful coexistence.

Yet Palestinian newspapers praised Baha Alyan, one of the terrorists who murdered my father, as a “martyr and intellectual.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has met with the families of the attackers and praised them as “martyrs.” A Palestinian scout leader said Baha Alyan, who was shot and killed by a security guard before he could kill more innocent passengers, was “an example for every scout.”

Muhammad Alyan, the father of Baha Alyan, has been invited to speak at Palestinian schools and universities about his son the “martyr.” He recently spoke to children at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School in East Jerusalem, about a half a mile from where my father lived. Tragically, many Palestinian children, perhaps most, are still taught to honor terrorists and fight for the destruction of Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE