RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21137/churches-in-egypt-destroyed

“In sub-Saharan Africa, there are 16.2 million Christians who are displaced by violence and conflict….” — opendoorsuk.org, Nov. 1, 2024

A Muslim security guard at a private school raped a 6-year-old Christian girl. “The girl… identified the school’s security guard, Husnain, as the attacker. She said that he had covered her mouth to silence her during the assault.” When her parents… reported the matter to the principal, he… threatened them with “problems if they took any action.” — persecution.org, Nov. 15, 2024, Pakistan.

On Oct. 4, a Muslim man was arrested for plotting to bomb a church in Bergamo, ansa.it, Oct. 4, 2024, Italy.

Egypt’s Mansoura University had some years earlier quietly republished a book — with Al Azhar’s complete approval — dedicated to proving that, according to Islamic law and the fatwas of learned sheikhs, all churches in Egypt should be destroyed. — copticsoidarity.org, Oct. 5, 2024, Egypt.

Somalia’s constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion…. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence.” — copticsolidarity.org, Oct. 24, 2024, Somalia.

The driving out of the Armenian population and destruction of ancient and medieval Christian sites has caused human rights advocates to label Azerbaijan’s actions as ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Despite this and its reputation as a significant environmental polluter, Azerbaijan was given the honor of hosting COP29 [a climate change conference].” — persecution.org, Nov.11, 2024, Azerbaijan.

Another report notes how Azerbaijani textbooks indoctrinate children to hate Armenians…. — armenianweekly.com, Oct. 30, 2024, Azerbaijan.

Muslim groups are forcing more and more Christians to pay jizya, compulsory tribute — essentially “protection” money — that Christian and Jewish subjects of an Islamic state are required to render to their Islamic overlords per Koran 9:29. — acninternational.org, Oct 29, 2024, Mali.

If the authorities do not act, the population will pay taxes directly into the coffers of the terrorists…. — acninternational.org, Oct 29, 2024, Mali.

Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko [of Senegal] is asking all schools to allow young girls to wear the Muslim veil, or hijab. This includes the nation’s Catholic schools, which actually have a ban on the hijab (due to security and other considerations). Because of this ban, the prime minister also referred to the nation’s Catholic schools as “foreign.” — fsspx.news, Oct. 3, 2024, Senegal.

On Oct. 17, police arrested a Christian man after he said on social media that the Koran was of not of divine but human origin—and that it promoted “racism” (or discrimination.) When police arrived at Rudi Simamora’s home, hundreds of angry Muslims had already surrounded it. — morningstarnews.org, Oct 22, 2024, Indonesia.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of October 2024.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nero-had-more-class/

Pro-Hamas demonstrators ran amok in Montreal Friday night, attacking police, burning cars, breaking windows, and in general displaying their profound understanding of Allah’s command to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60). The demonstrators, secure in the certainty of their own righteousness even as they sowed chaos and destruction in the once-charming Canadian city, burned Benjamin Netanyahu in effigy and threw what Fox News described as “small explosive devices and metal items” at police. And where was Justin Trudeau amid all this? He was boogieing the night away at a Taylor Swift concert. Yes, really.

Nero had more class. Contrary to legend, he didn’t exactly fiddle when Rome burned. When the notorious fire broke out in his capital city in 64 AD, the Roman emperor who has become famous for his indifference to his people’s suffering was in Antium, a coastal city 32 miles away. Reality is usually more prosaic and less interesting than myth, and so it is in this case: far from shrugging off the fire and practicing his instrument, Nero hurried back to Rome and immediately threw himself into efforts to bring relief to the people of Rome. The city was full of people whose homes had been destroyed, and Nero offered them refuge in his private gardens and the city’s public buildings. He compelled the towns around Rome to donate grain to feed the refugees.

None of that is remembered. All people today know, if they’ve heard of Nero at all, is that he was a callous autocrat who was cavalier in the face of a catastrophe befalling his people. This claim, which may have some truth to it, goes almost all the way back to the time of Nero himself. The first-century historian Tacitus, who was around eight years old at the time of the fire, wrote much later that Nero’s “measures, popular as their character might be, failed of their effect; for the report had spread that, at the very moment when Rome was aflame, he had mounted his private stage, and, typifying the ills of the present by the calamities of the past, had sung​ the Destruction of Troy.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21123/people-of-iran-seek-change

European governments, rather than risking confrontation with Iran’s regime, have preferred to maintain business relations and avoid taking any position that might upset the mullahs. Those countries are complicit in the suffering of the Iranian people. The unalleviated silence emboldens the regime, rather than holds it accountable.

After nearly four decades of maintaining diplomatic relationships with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the time is long overdue for Western nations to take a real stand. If these countries genuinely believe in the principles of “democracy” and “freedom” that they so often preach, they would look a lot more credible if they demonstrated this professed commitment by genuinely supporting Iranians yearning for freedom.

This would mean cutting diplomatic ties with Iran, imposing and enforcing serious primary and secondary sanctions on the regime, putting military options on the table, and fully supporting Israel and, one hopes, the incoming US administration, in putting a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear program as well as to its brutal, expansionist regime.

Only then will the actions of these nations align with their suspect rhetoric about “human rights,” and show that they are willing to deliver real backing to those risking their lives for change in one of the world’s most repressive states.

For decades, the brave people of Iran have arisen time and again, demanding a future free from oppression and authoritarian rule.

In recent years, Iranians have launched countless uprisings, each filled with hope and courage, only to be met with violent repression from the regime, and mainly indifference from abroad. Each wave of protests saw the regime’s security forces killing thousands of demonstrators, and imprisoning and torturing many more. These movements have shown the strength of the Iranian people’s resolve, but despite their cries for freedom, support from the West— usually merely vocal, about the ideals of democracy — has remained disappointingly muted.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/22/making-it-a-crime-for-the-jews-to-defend-themselves/

Let’s speak plainly about what happened yesterday. Four hundred and eleven days after the Jews were subjected to the worst act of anti-Semitic barbarism since the Holocaust, arrest warrants were issued for the Jews who fought back. Thirteen months after Israel was invaded by the racist killers of Hamas, indictments were made against the men who pursued those racist killers. A little over a year since a species of fascism was visited on the world’s only Jewish nation, the Jewish nation’s own leaders found themselves turned into fugitives for the ‘crime’ of fighting that fascism.

When all is said and done, this is what the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant add up to: the creeping criminalisation of the Jewish State’s right to defend itself against the armies of anti-Semites that wish to destroy it. The ICC and its voluble cheerleaders in the Israelophobic set have just engaged in one of the most chilling acts of moral inversion of recent times: they have made criminal suspects of those who stood up to one of the gravest crimes of the 21st century so far.

It matters not one iota what we might think of Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, or Gallant, who was Israel’s defence minister until he was fired earlier this month. Everyone, from the ICC’s own activists-cum-judges down to the millions of tweeters gloating over the arrest warrants, knows full well it isn’t only those two men who’ve been indicted – all of Israel has. As a writer for the Jerusalem Post says, the warrants inflame the fashionable prejudice that says Israel is a ‘pariah state’, meaning the entire nation is likely to pay a ‘dramatic cost’ for what the ICC has done. This is right. A nation subjected to one of the most barbarous assaults of our era is indicted for being barbarous – truth and reason turned utterly on their heads.

There is much to discuss about the ICC’s cynical, dangerous stunt. There’s the ridiculousness of its issuing of a warrant for Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas’s military wing, alongside Netanyahu and Gallant. Deif is widely thought to be dead, courtesy of an Israeli strike in July. Many suspect his name was only included to add a gloss of impartiality to the ICC’s imperious meddling with Israel’s right to wage war on the anti-Semites who attack it. What’s more, what an outrage to imply moral equivalence between the fascist who butchered Jews and the democratic Jewish nation that pushed back against him. It terrifies me that a chief institution of the ‘rules-based order’ is so bereft of moral reason that it seemingly cannot distinguish between fascism and fascism’s target, between the man who started a war and the men who responded in kind.

Then there’s the staggering cant of Western leaders puffing themselves up to say they will obey the ICC and arrest these wicked Israelis should they set foot on their soil. Behold the grim audacity of Justin Trudeau saying he will ‘abide’ by the ICC’s decision. Canada took part in the post-9/11 Afghan War whose consequences were far more devastating than what is happening in Gaza. Tens of thousands perished in that calamity. Millions were plunged into ‘acute food insecurity’ – what we used to call starvation. Address your own nation’s ‘crimes’, Justin.

Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain, too, will abide by the ICC. Oh, will we? The nation that was a key player in Afghanistan and Iraq – wars that killed more people than every war Israel has been involved in since 1948 combined – will arrest these suspected ‘war criminals’? Who’s buying this? Who’s falling for this posturing of politicians who lead states whose warmongering makes Israel’s look like small fry in comparison? I know who: the myopic Israel-haters of the woke left and hard right who have convinced themselves, in the absence of anything resembling evidence, that Israel is a ‘uniquely murderous’ state. So deep are these people in the poison well of Israelophobia that they will gladly cheer anyone – even nations with higher kill counts than Israel’s – who agrees to treat Israel as the great untouchable of world affairs.

Then there’s the infantile treatment of war as a crime. The ICC charges Netanyahu and Gallant with such ‘crimes against humanity’ as withholding food, water and medicine from Gaza and thus causing ‘severe suffering’ to its people. I hate to say this, but this is what happens in war. Normalcy ends, things run out, people go hungry, people suffer, people die. It is dreadful. It is why, ideally, wars should not be started. It is why Hamas should not have started this one, this infernal clash that has doomed so many Palestinian innocents alongside Israelis.

All wars contain such horrors. Acute malnutrition doubled in Iraq in the year after the allies’ invasion in March 2003. A savage famine has ravaged Yemen as a result of the Western-backed Saudi war there. And yet Mohammed bin Salman still swishes around his palaces, mingles with Western leaders, and rarely troubles the consciences of the West’s woke loathers of Israel.

For 24 hours straight we’ve been treated to the nauseating spectacle of states and even terror groups that are genuinely murderous welcoming the ICC’s indictment of Israel’s ‘murderers’. Turkey, violent suppressor of the Kurds, described the arrest warrants as an ‘extremely important step’ towards ‘justice’. Jordan, the state that fought a vicious year-long war against the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the 1970s, said it will implement the ICC’s ruling. Even Hamas is now in love with the ICC, despite its indictment of Deif, cheering it for sending an important message to ‘every war criminal’. Guilt by association is bad politics, I know, but, seriously, if your actions make the fascist terrorists of Hamas grin from ear to ear, it is time for a moral rethink.