RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273331/kiwi-madness-bruce-bawer

Last month, according to at least one count, there were 154 terrorist attacks around the world. Here’s a rundown of some of the major ones. The Taliban took 23 lives in Helmond Province, Afghanistan; at least 15 in Qaysar District, Afghanistan; ten in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan; 20 in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan; 22 in a second attack in Qaysar; and 65 in Sangin District, Afghanistan. ISIS murdered eight people in Idlib, Syria; five in the Anbar desert in Iraq; 16 in Jalalabad; seven in Makhmur, Iraq; 17 in two separate attacks in Kabul; and five in the Syrian desert. In Mali, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed 32 people in two separate attacks. In Syria, Ansar al-Tawhid killed 27. In Mozambique, Ansar al-Sunna killed 13 people in a terrorist attack. In three terrorist attacks in Mali, Al-Shabaab took a total of 38 lives. A Turkish jihadist, Gökmen Tanis, shot four people to death on a Utrecht tram. And a man named Brenton Tarrant killed 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Which of these things is not like the others?

Only one of these attacks was not motivated by a devotion to Islam. Only one was committed by a single individual acting on his own and not as a member of a terrorist group. And only one made worldwide headlines and caused an entire country to lose its mind and take a scimitar to its own freedoms.

Surely one reason why New Zealanders went insane over the mosque attacks, which took place on March 15, is that their country is so geographically isolated that it can seem immune to the troubles that beset the rest of the world. Another reason is that New Zealanders tend to think of themselves as supremely virtuous, liberal, and multicultural.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-chilling-imprisonment-of-a-taiwanese-critic-11554057567

Taipei

Li Ching-yu fixes me with a look of steely determination. “Even in prison,” she says, “my husband is a human-rights activist, and he wants the world to speak out, not only for his freedom but for all prisoners of conscience in China. The last time I saw him, he told me: ‘Go everywhere and tell everyone.’ ”

Her husband, Li Ming-che, is a Taiwanese democracy activist. He has languished in Chinese custody for two years because of his writings. Communist authorities arrested him in March 2017 as he tried to enter the mainland from Macau. Ten days later, China revealed he was detained on suspicion of “endangering national security.” For 177 days Mrs. Li received no news, until his trial on Sept. 11, 2017. In a televised confession—almost certainly obtained under duress—he said he had “disseminated articles and essays that maliciously attacked and defamed the Chinese government.” In November 2017, Mr. Li was sentenced to five years for “subverting state power.”

In Mr. Li’s case, Beijing has applied its “One China policy” in a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose fashion. Because China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, it accuses Mr. Li of writing illegally within its jurisdiction. Yet Mr. Li, who supported civil society in China, is believed to be the first activist imprisoned under Beijing’s new law restricting foreign nongovernmental organizations. So even though his activities from Taiwan are regarded as within China’s jurisdiction, China classified him as a foreigner and stripped him of rights to which Chinese nationals are entitled under the law.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13983/palestinians-fleeing-lebanon

International journalists based in the Middle East seem to care precious little about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, who, for several decades now, have been protesting the apartheid and discrimination practiced by an Arab country.

As a result of these laws, the conditions of Palestinians in Lebanon have worsened to a point where 65% of them live below the poverty line, according to a report by Al-Jazeera.

The Arab and Western silence towards the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon achieves one thing alone: aggravating Palestinian agony. Yet the only evil the Arab leaders and the international community see is the supposed evil that they link to Israel.

Palestinians appear finally fed up with the apartheid and discriminatory laws they have been subjected to in Lebanon in the past few decades. They appear fed up with the ongoing apathy towards their plight in the international community and media. They also appear fed up with the international media’s obsession with Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The only Palestinians the international media reports about are those whose “problems” are directly linked to Israel.

For the past year, dozens of international journalists based in the Middle East have been covering the weekly protests along the Gaza-Israel border. These journalists, however, seem to care precious little about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, who, for several decades now, have been protesting the apartheid and discrimination practiced by an Arab country.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13955/turkey-christchurch-new-zealand

The more critical problem is the discrepancy between the way the government and the people of Turkey have been treating the Christchurch attacks, as opposed to the way they have been responding to the murder of non-Muslims in their own country.

While Muslim worshippers were being murdered in New Zealand — and Turkey was among the nations condemning the anti-Muslim slaughter and voicing outrage over “Islamophobia” — they were paying little or no attention to the Christians in Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda, Pakistan and elsewhere who were being violated, abducted or massacred by extremist Muslim perpetrators. Where is the reciprocity?

Until Turks and others are as vocal in their condemnation of religious-based violence and hate crimes against non-Muslims as they are about those against Muslims, it is hard to take what Ataklı referred to as their “talk of tolerance” seriously.

Since the March 15 massacre of dozens of Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Turkey has joined the rest of the world in condemning the murders, praying for the victims and commemorating the event by laying wreaths at the sites of the slaughter.