The UN's Shameful Purge of Historical Jewish Ties to Jerusalem - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

How the United Nations is helping the Palestinians’ campaign of dejudaization of Jews’ holiest sites.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) executive board passed a resolution, entitled “Occupied Palestine,” which refers to Jerusalem's holy sites only by their Islamic names. The resolution effectively denies the historical ties of the Jewish people to the Temple Mount, proving that this dysfunctional UN body is not grounded in any educational, scientific or cultural reality at all.  UNESCO is being used by Islamists, who rammed through the admission of Palestine to UNESCO with full membership privileges in 2011, to wipe away Jewish history in Jerusalem with a stroke of the pen. The purpose is to delegitimize the Jewish state. This is no surprise, considering that Islamic states such as the holocaust-denying Islamic Republic of Iran, the ISIS-funding state of Qatar and the genocide committing state of Sudan sit on UNESCO’s Executive Board. 

Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has had his own issues with Israel, could not abide by UNESCO’s re-writing of history. "The Secretary-General reaffirms the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions and stresses the importance of the religious and historical link of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian peoples to the holy site," said a statement read by the UN Spokesperson on behalf of the Secretary General. “The Al Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif, the sacred shrine of Muslims, is also the Har HaBayit—or Temple Mount—whose Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism, a few steps away from the Saint Sepulcher church and the Mount of Olives, which is revered by Christians.”

A senior Obama administration official told the Jerusalem Post that the UNESCO resolution was "one-sided," "unhelpful" and "highly politicized." The U.S. did vote against the resolution, but President Obama still wants to restore American taxpayers’ funding of UNESCO, which had been cut off after UNESCO granted full membership to the so-called Palestinian “state.”

Palestinian leaders have been cynically attempting to re-write history to suit their false narrative for years. And UNESCO has aided and abetted the lies, even referring to the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall, as Al-Buraq Plaza “Western Wall Plaza.”  UNESCO used the Arabic name rather than the Hebrew name, Hakotel Hama'arvi, "Kotel."

Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, recently praised the UNESCO action on official Palestinian Authority TV:

“UNESCO's resolution confirms what we think and believe in, that Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular, and the Al-Buraq Wall (i.e., Western Wall) and the Al-Buraq [Wall] plaza are all purely Islamic and Palestinian assets and no one has the right to be our partner in that. No one has the right. We are the owners and we have the right to it. Only the Muslims have the right to the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] and the Al-Buraq [Wall] and the Al-Buraq [Wall] plaza which is purely Islamic waqf property... This is a message to Israel from us (i.e., the Palestinians) that we have the right and from all of the international community.”

The UNESCO resolution goes further than just propagating the Palestinian lies. Contrary to its supposed mission to encourage educational, scientific and cultural exploration for the truth, UNESCO’s resolution demands that Israel stop excavation efforts to unearth further archeological evidence of Jewish life in and around Jerusalem dating as far back as 1000 BCE. The Palestinians and their allies know that the best way to deny the existence of ancient Jewish roots in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land is to prevent their discovery in the first place. They also seek to debunk the validity of traces of Jewish history already unearthed with malicious falsehoods and acts of wanton destruction.  

Indeed, Islamists know only how to destroy sites of significance to other faiths or defile them. When Jordan occupied the Old City illegally starting in 1948, the Jewish synagogues in the Old City were destroyed or used as hen houses and stables filled with manure. Jewish residents were forced to leave their homes. Jordan barred Jews from access to their holy sites or to the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Grave sites were ransacked. 

After Israel liberated Jerusalem's Old City in 1967, the Jewish state did not seek revenge. It did not destroy or desecrate sites considered holy to Muslims. In fact, the Knesset passed the Safeguarding of the Holy Places Law, which states: "The holy places shall be safeguarded against desecration and any other harm, and from anything liable to impede freedom of access of members of religious denominations to the places sacred to them or to their feelings regarding those places." The keys to the Temple Mount were handed over to the Muslim Waqf authorities of Jordan, whom Israel has continued to recognize as having special custodial responsibilities in administering the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. However, Jordan irresponsibly ceded at least some of its authority to Palestinian officials, who proceeded to oversee the conversion of ancient Second Temple period underground structures into a mosque in 1996. They repeated with another Second Temple period underground structure converted to a mosque in 1997.

In short, while Israel has not turned any structures associated with Islamic history in Jerusalem into synagogues, the Palestinians have abused the custodial authority that Jordan delegated to them in the Old City by converting ancient structures associated with Jewish history into new mosques. Yet UNESCO sought fit to condemn only Israel’s carefully supervised scientific archeological exploration, maintenance work and new infrastructure projects such as a new cable car over Jerusalem's Old City that would allow people of all faiths to more easily travel to holy sites that Islamists had chosen to desecrate during their occupation.    

The UNESCO resolution speaks of “the cultural heritage of Palestine and the distinctive character of East Jerusalem,” as if they were inextricably linked. There is no distinctive cultural heritage of Palestine in Jerusalem.  Palestinian Muslims share the same affinity to the Islamic holy site of Al Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif that the estimated 1.6 billion Muslims around the world do. Contrary to the resolution’s falsehood that Israel is preventing Muslims from worshipping at Al Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif, Israel has shown remarkable self-restraint in keeping access open despite periodic provocations from Palestinians throwing stones at Jews worshipping below at the Western Wall.

The whole idea of an Israeli occupied “East Jerusalem” that supposedly belongs to the Palestinians is a revisionist construct. Historically, Jews have been living in Jerusalem continuously for more than three millennia. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any sovereign nation except of the Jewish people.  In more recent times, Jews have constituted the largest single group of inhabitants in Jerusalem since at least the mid-1800s. Prior to the Jordanians’ illegal occupation, Jerusalem was an undivided city. Jerusalem is so again today, open to worshippers of all faiths. It is the Palestinians who seek to replicate Jordan’s temporary illegal occupation and division of Jerusalem and make it permanent, imposing an ethnic and religious cleansing of any Jewish residents in the Old City.

As Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council on October 19^th, “UNESCO’s resolution which denies a connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem, is an embarrassing stain on the pages of UN history.  These attempts to cut us off from our homeland and our heritage will not succeed.  We will remain in our land and in our capital of Jerusalem forever.”


Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264574/uns-shameful-purge-historical-jewish-ties-joseph-klein

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B’tselem at the UN - Where are Israel's brains? - Dr. Martin Sherman

by Dr. Martin Sherman

Has Israel become so “open-minded" that its collective brains have fallen out? ​​​​​​​B’tselem is not a human rights organization but a politically partisan group for which “human rights” are a pretext for advancing its agenda - Israeli withdrawal.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad  (Ancient proverb, misattributed to Euripides.)

Q: What is the difference between the State of Israel and a lunatic asylum? 

A: In a lunatic asylum, at least the management is supposed to be sane. (A popular joke) 

I admit that until this week I was living in a state of blissful ignorance. But this week the bubble burst—and I was left struggling to wrap my mind around the staggering, outrageous, infuriating truth.

B’tselem as…national service!!!????

Never in my most feverish dreams (or rather, nightmares) did I imagine that volunteering to work for an organization of the ilk of B’tselem would – indeed, could—ever be considered an appropriate alternative to military service in the IDF.  But this week, my naiveté was abruptly shattered.

In the hullabaloo following the scandalous (the less charitable might say “seditious”) appearance last Friday of  B’tselem’s director, Hagai El-Ad, before the UN Security Council, in which he harangued IDF efforts to ensure security in Judea-Samaria and urged the international community to take punitive action against his own county, I learned the distressing truth: Volunteering to serve in the ranks of B’teselm is considered “National Service”, a government sanctioned alternative for military service.

I was stunned at this. After all, B’tselem is a radical political organization— funded predominantly by foreign governments (habitually inimical to Israeli policy),devoted largely to denigrating Israel at home and abroad in general, and to excoriating the activities of Israel’s military in particular.   How on earth is it then possible to confer the status of “national service”, in lieu of military service, on the activities of such a partisan political entity?!!

The mind boggles at the self-obstructive insanity of the decision to accept the incomprehensible travesty.
B’tselem: Political activism in guise of “human rights” 

Don’t let B’tselem’s self-righteous rhetoric fool you. It claims to be a “human rights” organization. But in reality it is nothing of the kind!

It is, indisputably and undeniably, a blatantly biased political group, for which “human rights” are but a mere pretext for advancing its political agenda.  This is an agenda that has nothing to do with protecting the “human rights” of Palestinian-Arabs in Judea-Samaria, and everything to do with trying to compel Israel to withdraw from those territories.

Indeed, this was explicitly conceded in a TV interview with B’tselem’s spokesperson, Sarit Michaeli, by Alan Mendoza, director of the Henry Jackson Society, a British think-tank. (Sept.6, 2016) 
In probing to uncover the essential aim of B’tselem’s activities, Mendoza asked: “…what's your end point in this?” To this Michaeli answered, starkly: “For us…the key issue is that the Israeli occupation needs to end.” 

But of course, in the real world, there is no connection between the two—ending the Israeli occupation, on the one hand, and Palestinian “human rights, on the other”.  Indeed, as we shall soon see, a compelling argument can be made for precisely the opposite – i.e. the state of Palestinian human rights has been dramatically undermined by Israeli withdrawals and will be further eroded by further withdrawals.

Loath to admit that terror is terror 

Seen in this light it is not surprising that the leaders of B’tselem are loath to define Hamas as a “terrorist group”. Indeed, the most B’tselem director El-Ad was prepared to reluctantly concede in a radio interview (August 13, 2014) was that Hamas was an “armed Palestinian organization”, insisting that that is the “commonly used professional term”. Likewise, in the previously mentioned Mendoza interview, spokesperson Michaeli could not bring herself to say that Hamas was a terrorist organization—despite the laudable persistence of her host. The most she would grudgingly admit was that “the military wing” of the organization at times engages in terrorist activities.

Again, seen in the context of the clear political bias of its organizational goals, this is entirely unsurprising.
After all, one of the stratagems that B’tselem employs to undermine the IDF’s capacity to function effectively in Judea-Samaria is to severely hamstring its operational capabilities by holding Israel to unattainable, immaculate standards of morality—while holding the Palestinian-Arabs to none.  This not only creates accumulating pressure on the IDF to restrict the measures that it employs in combatting its unscrupulous enemies, but also exposes its combatants to considerably greater risk - lest they run afoul of B’tselem’s appalling double standards.

Thus, if B’tselem were to actually concede that Hamas is a terror organization, this might actually give a legitimate operational rationale to some of the harsher coercive measures the IDF needs to employ  and which B’tselem  wishes to stymie—so as to further its political goal of inducing Israeli withdrawal.

Casting context & integrity aside

El-Ad launched into his anti-Israel diatribe at the UN Security Council with evident gusto, liberally peppered with pathos. He urged the Council to consider “What does it mean, in practical terms, to spend 49 years, a lifetime, under military rule?” totally ignoring two things:

(a) The presence of Israel in Judea-Samaria, which until June 1967was under Jordanian control, was not the consequence of avaricious Jewish territorial greed, but the consequence of desperate Jewish self-defense against a concerted Arab attempt to annihilate the Jewish state.

(b) As reflected in another UN address, that of Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian-Arabs  do not consider the “occupation”  to be 49 years old (i.e. a consequence of the 1967 Arab defeat) but 68 years old ( i.e. a consequence of the 1948 Arab defeat and the establishment of the Jewish state).

The latter was starkly illustrated at Abbas’s 2011 UN General Assembly address when he exclaimed theatrically: “After 63 years of suffering and ongoing Nakba (catastrophe): enough, enough, enough…” Note 63 years –in 2011. Interestingly, the next year, in his 2012 UN address Abbas referred to “64 years [having] passed since Al-Nakba”. No one can accuse him of inconsistency –or B’tselem of accurately representing the facts.

Casting context and intellectual integrity aside, El-Ad then recited a litany of hardships Palestinian-Arabs suffer under Israeli 'occupation'—somehow omitting to mention that virtually all these hardships are the consequence of unending Arab endeavors to murder and maim Jews.

B’tselem advocates annulling human rights?

But as I hinted earlier, there is a compelling case to be made for the claim that advocacy for Israeli withdrawal gravely undermines basic Palestinian Arab rights and welfare.

This was made vividly clear in a seminal article, What Occupation?, in “Commentary” (July 1, 2002), by Efraim Karsh, then professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at Kings College London, and incoming director of BESA ( Begin-Sadat) Center for Strategic Studies.  

He makes the dramatic assertion: “Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare”, which he backs up with a battery of factual evidence.

He writes: “Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970-1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa)”.

He continues: “Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000”. This was far below the then-prevailing rates in unoccupied Iraq (64), Egypt (40), Jordan (23), Syria 22. He adds: “… under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.”

“Occupation” enhanced welfare and basic rights

But that was not all!  

Karsh underscored the Palestinian-Arabs’ soaring standards of living: “No less remarkable were advances in…Palestinians’ standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967…”

He concludes: “Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980’s, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was…progress in higher education. At the time …Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank [began], not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990’s, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15”. Again this is far lower than rates prevailing even today in most of the unoccupied Arab world.
Clearly then, if the right to life, health, basic amenities and education are anything B’tselem cares about, these were all greatly enhanced by the Israeli administration  (a.k.a. “occupation”) and, as we shall see, have been greatly undermined by Israeli withdrawal—B’tselem’s undisguised primary demand.

Lies, damn lies and B’tselem lies  

Numerous doubts have been raised as to the reliability/veracity of B’tselem’s allegations (perhaps the less charitable would say “blood libels”) against Israel.  In virtually all cases, they are manifestly biased, detached from context and highly selective in the facts they present--and/or those they do not. .

But nowhere is the blatant mendacity of B’tselem’s anti-Israel recriminations—and Israel’s appalling incompetence/impotence in rebutting them—more apparent than in the sphere of water usage.

The B’tselem site is replete with heart-rending accounts of Palestinian-Arab families being deprived of minimal water –with blame being inevitably laid at the doors of the “usual suspects”, the much maligned “settlers/settlements”

These emotive portrayals typically neglect to mention several well-known, but inconvenient, facts:

(a) By the terms of the Oslo Accords, it is the PA, not Israel, who is responsible for supplying the domestic Palestinian-Arab consumer with water.

(b) Almost all cases of disruption of supply to the consumer are due to faulty infrastructure, theft or unpaid bills, not the cessation/reduction of supply by Israel.

(c) Not only does Israel provide Palestinian distributors with amounts far in excess of its Oslo commitments, but actually conveys across the 1967 Green Line quantities that exceed the entire consumption of the Jewish population living in Judea-Samaria!  In other words, not only do the “settlements” not encroach on Palestinian-Arabs water supplies but Israel actually provides them with additional water from inside the pre-1967 lines.

But hey, why let pesky facts ruin the dramatic effect of a perfectly good politically-correct myth.

B’tselem touts tyranny

Of course, B’tselem must know that, were its demands for Israeli withdrawal implemented, the most plausible outcome would not be an enhancement of Palestinian human rights, but a dramatic erosion of them.

Indeed, if their aims, as set out by spokesperson Michaeli (i.e. “the Israeli occupation needs to end”), were realized, there is little reason to believe that the result would be anything other than the establishment of (yet another) homophobic, misogynistic Muslim-majority tyranny, whose hallmarks would be the utter negation of all the humanistic values invoked for its creation: Gender discrimination, persecution of homosexuals, religious intolerance, and oppression of political dissidents.

How would that advance the basic rights of Palestinian-Arab women/girls, Palestinian-Arab Gays? Socio-cultural diversity? Religious tolerance?

Indeed, to gauge how counter-productive the consequences of Israeli withdrawal would be in terms of human rights, one need look no further than Gaza, from which Israel withdrew completely, eliminating every vestige of Jewish presence –including its dead—with the exception of several synagogues which the Palestinians, in a spontaneous display of religious tolerance, promptly pillaged and burnt.

Indeed, since Israel withdrew from Gaza, living conditions have become so harsh, that, according to reports in Al Jazeera, many Gazans, now unencumbered by Israeli occupation, are paying  considerable sums to smugglers to extricate themselves from post-occupation realities- see Palestinians paying thousands in bribes to leave Gaza   

So my advice to B’tselem: Beware what you wish for – you just might get it

Reinstating the “T” word?

While writing these lines reports are coming in of a complaint filed against B’tselem by an attorney and activist for the Left-leaning Zionist Union opposition party, accusing it of treason—something which has been largely eschewed as taboo since the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Significantly, the complaint is based on the country’s existing Penal Code- see Chapter Seven: National Security, Foreign Relations And Official Secrets -Article Two: Treason

It may be a little early for optimism but perhaps this is a sign that not everyone in the country has become so open-minded that their brains fell out.


Dr. Martin Sherman served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli Defense establishment, was ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir's government and lectured for 20 years at Tel Aviv University in Political Science, International Relations and Strategic Studies. He has a B.Sc. (Physics and Geology), MBA (Finance), and PhD in political science and international relations, was the first academic director of the Herzliya Conference and is the author of two books and numerous articles and policy papers on a wide range of political, diplomatic and security issues. He is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategicisrael.org). Born in South Africa,he has lived in Israel since 1971.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19650

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"First They Came for Asia Bibi" - Douglas Murray

by Douglas Murray

Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism

• The same week that Mr Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.
• They attack the Conservative government of the UK for Nazism while not merely praising, but lauding as a safe haven, a state which actually persecutes and murders people because of their religion.
• Which means that he is doing what many other people today are doing, which is knowingly to cover for a racist despotism, so long as it is despotism with an Islamic face.

Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism.

Last week the convener of the Scottish Parliament's Equalities and Human Rights Committee, one Christina McKelvie, pronounced that the Conservative party is displaying "some of the most right-wing reactionary politics that I've heard in my lifetime" and claimed that the Conservative party's recent conference showed what will happen in Britain "if we become bystanders and do not speak out against discrimination." She said that some recent Conservative proposals were "reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s."

Higher up the Scottish Nationalist Party food-chain, one of their MPs, Mhairi Black last week also compared the recent Conservative party conference to the Nazi party. She wrote without irony that she was vexed by its alleged "nationalism', all the more "when that "nationalism" is used as a motivation or an excuse for racist, bigoted and small minded policy." The policies of the Conservative party, she claimed, were increasingly "reminiscent of early 1930s Nazi Germany." As though to demonstrate how sparse her knowledge of that period is, she concluded her piece by citing -- as though no one could possibly have come across the quotation before -- Pastor Martin Niemoller. "First they came for the Jews."

Having sparked some criticism, other nationalists soon came to the aid of Ms Black. Notable among them was Humza Yousaf, one of the ministers of the SNP and himself a member of the Scottish Parliament. While many people on social media criticised Ms Black's absurd rhetoric, he chose to back her up. "Those criticising, I have friends/family who have applied for dual nationality with Pakistan. Feel UK will be unbearable for Muslims in future." This gained headlines of its own. But nobody pointed out the twin outrages of this grotesque nonsense.

While Humza Yousaf (left), a member of the Scottish Parliament, extolls the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, Asia Bibi (shown at right with two of her five children) sits on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian.

First, although it should be obvious, a country the citizens of which elected a Muslim (Sadiq Khan) as the mayor of their capital city, is highly unlikely to become a place where pogroms against Muslims are imminent. Second, in making this comparison, Mr Yousaf unwittingly pointed to one of the greatest outrages of our time.

While the Conservative party in Westminster is portrayed by these supposed defenders of human rights as some kind of Nazi offshoot, life is, in fact, unequalled in Britain for being good for people of any faith or background. It would be hard to find a society anywhere that has been more tolerant of mass immigration or tried to make life good for the immigrants who arrive, whatever background they are from. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a country which could hardly have a worse record on all of these matters. It is a country where racism and ethnic and religious hatred are rife. People of the "wrong" background, caste, or ethnicity experience infinitely more racism in Pakistan than in any country in Europe. Even people who are the "wrong" type of Muslim, such as Ahmadiyya Muslims, are the subject of constant and routine persecution and bigotry. The persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims is so rife in Pakistan that this July, it even spilled out onto the streets of Glasgow in the murder of an Ahmadiyyan shopkeeper, Asad Shah.

There is also almost no country in the world today (Saudi Arabia and Iran perhaps aside) that is more intolerant of people of other faiths. The same week that Mr Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.

As it happens, the case of Asia Bibi has now been delayed yet again because the judge has removed himself from the case. He has done so because he knows that if he were to release Asia Bibi, he will himself be assassinated in the manner of the late Punjab governor Salman Taseer. While last week's hearing was going on, hundreds of riot police had to be deployed outside the courthouse in Islamabad. This was because everything about Asia Bibi and her case brings out mobs in Pakistan; thousands of Pakistani nationals have said that if Asia Bibi were ever released, they would kill her.

So this is the situation the ridiculous nationalists of the SNP and others who are like-minded find themselves in. They attack the Conservative government of the UK for Nazism while not merely praising, but lauding as a safe haven, a state which actually persecutes and murders people because of their religion.

If Black, Yousaf and company were merely ignorant that would be one thing. But they cannot possibly be so ignorant -- or at least Yousaf cannot be. He must know enough about Pakistan to know the prejudice and ignorance that goes right through Pakistani society. Which means that he is doing what many other people today are doing, which is knowingly to cover for a racist despotism, so long as it is despotism with an Islamic face. As for the colleague whose rescue he ran to, perhaps the next time Ms Black ponders the lessons of Pastor Niemoller she could tell her readers, "First they came for Asia Bibi. But I did not speak up, for I had never heard of her." That, at least, would be honest.

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Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9138/uk-pakistan-asia-bibi

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Turkey's Wars - Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen

by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen

It is against the Syrian Kurds, therefore, not ISIS that Turkey has been operating for months.

Turkish air and ground forces are attacking northern Syria. The target is not ISIS – the presumed threat to Turkish interests – but rather Kurdish forces that have borne the brunt of anti-ISIS ground fighting and are key to the battle for Mosul in Iraq. 

Since the July aborted coup in Ankara, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been making internal war against what it calls the "Gülenist threat," followers of Turkish cleric Fetullah Gülen, who Erdoğan believes engineered the coup. Tens of thousands of Turks have been arrested, dismissed from their jobs, and otherwise harassed. Turkey has also been conducting an external war – either overtly or by proxy – to control sensitive areas of Iraq and Syria and short-circuit any possibility of Kurdish independence or large-scale autonomy emerging from the wreckage of wars in both those countries.

After shelling Kurdish positions just north of Aleppo, the Turkish Air Force bombed headquarters, ammunition dumps, and shelters. Turkish sources claimed 200 dead; Kurdish sources said 10 people were killed. They were PKK, said the Turks – members of the Peoples Workers Party, which has carried out operations inside Turkey for decades. The People's Protection Units (YPG), however, said in a statement that the airstrikes targeted fighters from the YPG-affiliated Jaish al-Thuwar (Revolutionary Front), which was advancing against ISIS in the city of Ifrin.

Turkey makes little distinction among Kurdish groups. The U.S. takes a different tack, agreeing that the PKK is a terrorist organization but arming and training the YPG and finding it the most effective force on the ground fighting ISIS. A U.S. official says the particular Kurds targeted this time were not among those we have trained, so there were no Americans in the area of Turkish fire. This time. But the possibility of direct U.S.-Turkish confrontation is rising daily.

There has been little mention of Turkey's wars in the American press, aided by the fact that militias, rebel armies, terrorist groups, and sub-state actors sound like alphabet soup: FSA, PKK, PYD, YPG, JAN, ISIS, AQI, and more fight in Syria and Iraq. Even when they have names, Americans are likely to find themselves confused. How does Jaish al-Thuwar relate to the Khalid ibn al-Walid Brigade, or the Free Syrian Army or the Authenticity and Development Group, the Sun Battalion, the Al-Qousi Brigade, or the Truthful Promise Brigade?

Confusion is serving Turkey well.

There are an estimated 60 million Kurds in the Middle East and adjacent regions, divided among Turkey (25.8 million), Iran (11 million), Iraq (10.2 million), Syria (4 million), and Afghanistan (9 million). Another 2 million are estimated to be in Europe, primarily in Germany. 

Turkey adamantly opposes independence for the Kurds, and the U.S. had trouble gaining even reluctant Turkish acceptance of Northern Iraq's regional autonomy after the 2003 ouster of Saddam from Baghdad. The dissolution of Assad's control of Northern Syria and the possibility that Iraqi and Syrian Kurds might construct a contiguous Kurdish area appears to pose a greater problem for Turkey than the rise and spread of ISIS. It is against the Syrian Kurds, therefore, not ISIS that Turkey has been operating for months.

In late August, Turkey directly intervened with tanks and planes to assist the Syrian Nour el-din el-Zinki rebel group in attacking Kurdish forces. The Kurds, members of the YPG militia, had captured the ISIS-held town of Manbij, but the Turks wanted them to hand the town over to its proxy. The U.S. caved to Turkish demands and ordered the YPG – its ally – out of town.

Following U.S. pressure on the Kurds, the Turks have increased the pace and lethality of their attacks. Unsurprisingly, Kurdish groups have begun to challenge reliability of the West – and the U.S. in particular. This round of fighting began just before a scheduled visit to Turkey by U.S. secretary of defense Ashton Carter. Carter, no doubt planning to ensure continued use of Turkey's Incirlik air base to launch strikes against ISIS and to support Iraq, struck a conciliatory tone toward Ankara when asked about the airstrikes – something sure to rankle the Kurdish militias. "With respect to Turkey, our partnership is very strong in the counter-ISIL campaign," he said. "We're working with the Turks now very successfully to help them secure their border area."

To many in the Middle East, the United States not only appears unreliable, which is bad enough, but seems to have frequently abandoned its friends and allies, which is worse. In the Obama administration, not only the president, but also the vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense bear responsibility for these impressions. While Turkey is, by treaty, an American ally and a NATO member, the U.S. has to either rein in the Turks or face the consequence of a powerful and reckless Turkish government shooting up Turkey and its neighborhood – and our allies.

If the Kurds are really the West's best hope for a ground force against ISIS, there are several steps the U.S. can and should take to impress upon the Turkish government the seriousness with which we take their aggression in Syria and Iraq.

As matters of policy, the U.S. should:

• Insist that Turkey stop attacks on Kurds outside Turkish territory.
• Demand that Turkey remove its forces from Iraq and Syria.
• Demand that Erdoğan restore rule of law to Turkey and end the persecution of Gülenists and Kurds.

Moving from demands to action, the U.S. should:

• Stop delivery of military hardware to Turkey, including spare parts, and demand that all NATO allies do the same.
• Stop cooperation and any coordination with Turkey's military and intelligence organs until Turkey complies.
• Increase the arms flow as well as intelligence and other cooperation with the Kurds to ensure they are defended as well as possible.

Without these steps, Turkey, a powerful country, will become a genuine threat to the region as it tries to reestablish a modern form of Ottoman suzerainty.

Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/turkeys_wars.html

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Brooklyn College Takes Down 'Illegal' Freedom Center Anti-Terrorism Posters - TruthRevolt.org

by TruthRevolt.org

"We support free speech, and we seek to maintain a safe and tolerant campus."

As part of its Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus program, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has been putting up anti-BDS, anti-terrorism posters at schools notorious for fostering groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) that support terrorism. One of those schools is Brooklyn College, where actions such as storming a faculty meeting with demands for “Zionists off campus” or support for anti-Israel terrorism are facts of everyday life. Check out the Freedom Center's profile of the school's terrorist-supporting activities here.

One of the posters (see above) depicts Raja Abdul Haq, a Brooklyn College student and BDS supporter. The poster contains a quote from Haq stating “It’s very important to always remember that Western colonial powers are as guilty as Israel…especially the USA.” Israel has always been the canary in the mine for the holy war that radical Islamists have declared on America and the West.

A second poster depicts a gun-toting Hamas terrorist holding the strings of a puppet labeled “American Muslims for Palestine” which in turn controls a marionette labeled “Students for Justice in Palestine.” Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is described as “The chief sponsor of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities on campus.” Hamas is identified as “A terror organization pledged to wipe out Israel” (a goal explicitly stated in the Hamas charter) while AMP is the “Hamas-created chief organizer and funder of SJP.” The poster also depicts shadowed bodies lying in pools of blood, illustrating the bloody deeds of Hamas’s campaign of terror against the Jews. The poster contains the hashtag #JewHatred and the Freedom Center’s website, www.HorowitzFreedomCenter.org.

A third poster created by the Freedom Center asks sardonically, “Do you want to show your support for Hamas terrorists whose stated goal is the elimination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state?” and answers the question with “Join us! Students for Justice in Palestine.” The poster then lists the names of student and faculty leaders on campus who promote the genocidal Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Earlier this week the Freedom Center posters were put up overnight at Brooklyn College and subsequently taken down, as Brooklyn News 12 reported, after which Brooklyn College released a statement saying, in part,

We support free speech, and we seek to maintain a safe and tolerant campus for our students, faculty and staff. We also do not permit public defacement or illegal postings on our property.

But they permit anti-Israel hatred to thrive.

Check out the short Brooklyn News 12 video about the incident here.

TruthRevolt.org

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264578/brooklyn-college-takes-down-illegal-freedom-center-truthrevoltorg

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Clinton Foundation Employed a Now-Imprisoned Senior Muslim Brotherhood Official - Patrick Poole

by Patrick Poole

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

During his ascendancy in 2011 and 2012, at which time he served on the Muslim Brotherhood's "Nahda" (Renaissance) Project to revive the caliphate and reinstitute Islamic law and also served as Morsi's campaign spokesman, he was being paid by the Clinton Foundation.

Gehad El-Haddad, the now-imprisoned former spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's so-called "Freedom and Justice Party," was effectively the "Baghdad Bob" of the Arab Spring.

Educated in the UK and the son of a top Muslim Brotherhood leader, Gehad served as the special advisor on foreign policy to deposed Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi.
Gehad incited violence, justified the torture of protesters, recycled fake news stories, and staged fake scenes of confrontation during the 2013 Rabaa protests.

He was arrested in September 2013 after the fall of Morsi and the bloody confrontations during the breakup of the Muslim Brotherhood's protest camps in Rabaa Square and around Cairo.

During his ascendancy in 2011 and 2012, at which time he served on the Muslim Brotherhood's "Nahda" (Renaissance) Project to revive the caliphate and reinstitute Islamic law and also served as Morsi's campaign spokesman, he was being paid by the Clinton Foundation.

Gehad had been employed for five years as the Cairo director of the Clinton Foundation until August 2012, according to his own LinkedIn page:



This shows that the Clinton Foundation subsidized one of the senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood officials in his rapid rise to power.

His LinkedIn shows he was employed by the Clinton Foundation from August 2007 through August 2012, during which time he served in several positions within the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party:

 
From the early days of the Arab Spring beginning in May 2011, when he was serving as the Muslim Brotherhood's party foreign affairs advisor, he was being paid by the Clinton Foundation.

He was still on the Clinton's payroll when he became spokesman for Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate for president of Egypt, and throughout the entirety of his campaign.

He held multiple senior roles with the Muslim Brotherhood while continuing to be in the employ of the Clinton Foundation.



It didn't take long for Gehad to become a brazen apologist for the worst abuses of the Morsi regime.

When Morsi declared himself above the law and the courts in a November 22, 2012 declaration, Gehad was quick to justify the power grab to reporters and analysts:

And when police immediately began to protest Morsi's power grab, Gehad threatened a purge of the police for not falling into line:

Patrick Poole

Source: https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/10/20/rewind-clinton-foundation-subsidized-now-imprisoned-senior-muslim-brotherhood-official/

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Not a peep from the pope - David M. Weinberg

by David M. Weinberg

what's truly infuriating and disappointing about the UNESCO vote is the deafening silence of significant Christian figures

Last Friday, Israeli Channel 10 News anchorwoman Ayala Hasson asked the Executive Board chairman of UNESCO whether that international organization would adopt a resolution that said Christians had no ties to the Vatican or that Muslims had no ties to Mecca.

"Such a resolution would never happen," replied Michael Worbs of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Of course not. Such things only happen to the Jews. Such preposterous resolutions can be expectorated by the global community only with regard to Israel. 

Only when it comes to denying the Jewish people's claim to its ancestral homeland; especially its historic ties in Jerusalem; and most especially its foundational links to the site of the Holy Temples -- can crackpot clubs like UNESCO assert that the earth is flat and Jews have no place on it.

The usual suspects voted in April and again last week for the dingbat resolution that ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, supposedly semi-friendly countries like Russia joined them; and ostensible friends of the Jewish state such as France, Italy, Kenya and Japan abstained.

This is wicked and witless. As Professor Martin Kramer has pointed out, "Jews were worshipping in their Temple in Jerusalem when Moscow was a pine forest, and Jews had prayed for the Temple's restoration for a thousand years before a Slav laid the first brick of the Kremlin."

But what's truly infuriating and disappointing about the UNESCO vote is the deafening silence of significant Christian figures. 

Consider: Palestinians have been pushing the linguistic reframing of the Temple Mount in order to deny the Judaic heritage of the site and to completely Islamicize Jerusalem. Willy-nilly, this nullifies Christian history, too. So you would think that both the Catholic pope and mainline Protestant leaders would rise up in protest against Arab-Islamic negation of Judeo-Christian history and legitimacy.

You would think that Christian leaders would demur when UNESCO calls Matthew a liar. It was he who testified that the Christian messiah threw money changers out of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

And yet, I haven't heard a peep from the pope. Not a word of criticism for UNESCO's disavowal of biblical history. Not even a mild grunt of disapproval.

It's not like Israel didn't seek the Vatican's help in defeating the defamatory Arab-Islamic initiative. A few days before the vote, Jerusalem's new ambassador to the Holy See, Oren David, contacted the Vatican's undersecretary for relations with states, Antoine Camilleri, and asked him to use his influence to get member states to reject the draft. Such a text would harm Christian interests as well as Jewish ones, the Israeli diplomat reportedly told his interlocutor. 

Apparently, the Vatican is still praying on the matter.

Vatican-friendly observers explain that Rome's stillness on this issue stems from its concern for Christians across the Middle East -- who are under daily attack from Muslim radicals. How the pope's strange silence helps Christians anywhere escapes me.

Less church-friendly observers wonder whether age-old Christian supersessionism is at work here; meaning that the church doesn't too much mind the Muslim campaign to de-Judaize Jerusalem. Rome hasn't recognized Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem, and theologically never will.

Either way, the calm of the church in the face of UNESCO's chutzpah is galling. I would expect the Holy See to be seething, and coming to the defense of its "elder brother" when that brother's very identity is under ungodly assault.

In truth, I really shouldn't be so surprised. After all, what's new here? The hypocrisy of the nations is a constant in Israel's foreign relations, as are melodramatic warnings of Israel's "deepening isolation." And yet, Israel chugs along just fine, thank you. 

Remember that Jews have not been liked for several thousand years, and the Jewish people's collective effort to rebuild a national state in its ancestral homeland liked even less. The world has been opposed to core Israeli diplomatic and security policies from day one of this country's existence.

The U.S. State Department reproached Israel for capturing the Galilee and the Negev in 1948. The U.N. condemned Israel for invading Sinai in 1956; and for Israel's 1967 "aggression"; and for Jerusalem's reunification; and for the annexation of the Golan Heights; and for Prime Minister Menachem Begin's bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and of Beirut, etc., etc. The U.S., by the way, was party to all these condemnations.

The U.N. annually condemns Israel for (reportedly) building a nuclear weapons capacity, and lambastes Israel for a load of other fabricated evils from stealing Palestinian water to destroying Palestinian archaeology. The U.N. has slap-happily censured Israel for defending itself against Hamas and Hezbollah -- in the First and Second Lebanon wars, and for operations against Hamas in Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014. 

Overall, the U.N. Security Council has adopted more than 150 anti-Israel resolutions since 1967. (The U.S. vetoed about 50 others.)

Remember "Black Wednesday"? On December 17, 2014 newspaper headlines howled that the world was closing in on Israel. On one single day, the European Parliament proclaimed its support for recognizing Palestinian statehood; the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention gathered in Switzerland to condemn Israel; and the EU Court removed Hamas from the European list of terrorist organizations. 

About the same time, the parliaments of Luxembourg, Portugal, France and Sweden recognized Palestinian statehood, too. The International Criminal Court declared the security fence illegal. U.S. President Barack Obama applied the term illegal to settlements. (Now, Obama seems poised to apply this appellation to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria altogether. He already has called it "unjust").

And still, the sky hasn't collapsed on Israel.

The cumulative weight of all these unfriendly actions is surely somewhat corrosive to Israel's global standing. But as Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once said: What counts is not what the "goyim" say, but what the Jews do!

And thus what counts is aliyah, the high Israeli birthrate, more building starts in Jerusalem, the strength of Israel's military, the tone and tenor of the country's educational, cultural and legal institutions, the Jewish and democratic fabric of society, and the depth of loyalty to Jewish and Zionist principles. That's what really counts. 

Everything else, including Israel's standing in the international community, will fall into place if Israelis are united and confident in their creed.

Thus Israel will get past the recent wave of condemnations. It has been there before. 

So the world recognizes make-believe Palestinian statehood and slams settlements? So it negates Jewish history in Jerusalem? So what! No series of condemnations will get Israel's detractors very far, despite the unpleasantness. 

It's ironic that UNESCO took its scalpel to Jerusalem just when Jews celebrate Sukkot; when evangelical pilgrims from 80 countries of the world ascend to the holy city to participate in the festivities, as prophesied in the Bible. The ruffians of UNESCO don't know who and what they're up against. Israel and its loyal friends don't scare easily.

"Om ani choma," proclaims yesterday's Hoshanah prayer -- the people of Israel are a fortress wall, standing guard over Jerusalem.

David M. Weinberg (www.davidmweinberg.com) is director of public affairs at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17465

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MPs from 17 countries denounce UNESCO resolution - Yori Yalon, Zeev Klein and Israel Hayom Staff

by Yori Yalon, Zeev Klein and Israel Hayom Staff

Nineteen lawmakers sign declaration opposing U.N. body's resolution denying Jewish link to the Temple Mount, Western Wall in Jerusalem • The MPs are in Israel to attend the 5th Israel Allies Foundation Jerusalem Chairman's Conference.

MPs from around the world present Deputy Minister Michael Oren, center, with a declaration against UNESCO's Jerusalem resolution | Photo credit: Avi Hayon

Lawmakers from 17 different countries signed a declaration Thursday against the controversial UNESCO resolution last week and called for international recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital of Israel. 

The UNESCO resolution rejects any Jewish link to the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem. 

In the declaration, the 19 MPs said that "the U.N. resolution is disconnected from reality and is incorrect. We will work toward the international recognition of Jerusalem, as the undivided, eternal capital of the State of Israel." 

The parliamentarians presented the declaration to Deputy Minister Michael Oren, who delivered it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Oren called the UNESCO resolution "unacceptable." He said it "must be fought against every way possible. The signing of the declaration by MPs from all over the world against UNESCO is one of the steps we will take against this atrocious decision. We will continue to emphasize the eternal connection between the Jewish people and our eternal capital for ever and ever, which no body in the world, and certainly not UNESCO, can break." 

The visiting lawmakers are from countries, such as the Netherlands, Finland, Latvia, Spain, Switzerland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Malawi, South Africa, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile. They are in Israel for the 5th Israel Allies Foundation Jerusalem Chairman's Conference. The conference is sponsored by the World Jewish Congress and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and held at Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem. 

According to the Israel Allies Foundation website, "The foundation is dedicated to the purpose of promoting communication and information sharing between parliamentarians and legislators the world over who share a belief that the State of Israel has the right to exist in peace within secure borders" and to bringing "a unified voice on issues and legislation regarding Israel worldwide." 

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon also spoke out against the UNESCO resolution.

"Jerusalem is mentioned 670 times in the Bible, and we do not need anyone's approval. The tradition of our mothers and fathers keeps us here; we have a connection to Israel," he said.

Yori Yalon, Zeev Klein and Israel Hayom Staff

Source:  http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=37299

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Red Alert! Protestant Couple "Security Threat" to Turkey! - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

The Islamophobia that Erdogan never ceases to claim exists in the Western world may or may not be a real social malady, but non-Muslimphobia in Turkey is increasingly a contagious malady.

• "Traitors! We'll bomb your church!" — The words of Mehmet Ali Eren, suspected al-Qaeda member, as he attacked Protestant Pastor Andrew Craig Brunson in Izmir, Turkey.
• Erdogan should explain why he persistently demands more and more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, including the building of mosques in every capital, while his government can deport Pastor Brunson and his wife on the spurious grounds that they pose a security threat to his country. The police explained that they were being expelled on grounds of posing a security threat because they had carried out "missionary activity and received money from sources abroad."

Over the past several years Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pressured Greece to construct a mosque in Athens. He has criticized the country which boasts the only European capital without a mosque. He does not hide his passion for mosques worldwide.

In 2015 Erdogan proposed the construction of a mosque in secular, Communist-ruled Cuba. Also in 2015, he went to Moscow for the inauguration of the biggest mosque in the Russian capital.

Earlier this year Erdogan pleasantly announced his presence at the opening of the biggest mosque in Amsterdam. The mosque is called "Hagia Sophia," named after a Greek Orthodox Christian basilica built in 537 AD in Constantinople, reflecting the typical Muslim extremist obsession with "conquest." Recently Erdogan has also been eyeing Iraq.

As recently as April, Erdogan attended the opening ceremony of a culture center and mosque in Maryland, United States. The complex, the only one in the United States to feature two minarets, was constructed in the style of 16th century Ottoman architecture, with a central dome, half domes and cupolas, echoing Istanbul's Suleymaniye Mosque. At the ceremony, Erdogan said: "Unfortunately, we are going through a rough time all around the world. Intolerance towards Muslims is on the rise not only here in the United States but also around the globe." Intolerance toward Muslims?

Back in Turkey, an article published in the monthly magazine of the country's powerful (and wealthy) Islamic Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet in Turkish) warned of the spreading new "religion" of Jediism -- the religion of the Jedi knights from the Star Wars film series. But not all "religious tolerance" stories in Turkey are equally off the wall.

Synagogues in Turkey have quietly tightened security. Scholar Rifat Bali, who has written several books on Turkey's Jews, says that Christians and Jews are being targeted.

Indeed, threats against Christians and churches on social media by Islamists in Turkey have intensified. "Some people have sent death threats to the mobile phones of 15 pastors," says Umut Sahin, the secretary-general of the Union of Protestant Churches, an umbrella organization for Protestant denominations in Turkey.

Andrew Craig Brunson, pastor at a protestant church in Izmir, on Turkey's Aegean coast, survived an armed attack on April 11, 2011. The attacker, Mehmet Ali Eren, shouted: "Traitors! We'll bomb your church!" Eren had just been acquitted in a trial on charges of being a member of al-Qaeda.

Brunson and his wife, Norine Lyn, have been living in Turkey for 20 years. On October 7, the couple was summoned to a police station. The police told them that they would be deported from Turkey because they "posed a national security threat" to the country. A two-member terror organization? Bombings and killings? Not exactly that, the police explained. The pastor and his wife were being expelled on grounds of posing a security threat because they had carried out "missionary activity and received money from sources abroad."

Turkey's President Erdogan (left) should explain why he demands more and more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, including the building of mosques in every capital, while his government can deport Pastor Andrew Craig Brunson and his wife (right) on the spurious grounds that they pose a security threat to his country. The police explained their "crime" as their having carried out "missionary activity and received money from sources abroad."

There must be merely a few thousand Protestants in Turkey, a country of nearly 80 million people, where politicians often boast that 99% of the population is Muslim. Why do nearly 80 million people view a few thousand people as threats to their national security just because the few thousand belong to a different faith? This question probably falls not into the scope of theological discipline, nor political science, but social psychiatry.

But there is a more serious aspect of this limitless Islamic hypocrisy. Erdogan should explain why he persistently demands more and more tolerance for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands, including the building of mosques in every capital, while his government can deport two Protestants on the spurious grounds that they pose a security threat to his country. The Islamophobia that Erdogan never ceases to claim exists in the Western world may or may not be a real social malady, but non-Muslimphobia in Turkey is increasingly a contagious malady. Erdogan's determined denials do not make him right; instead he further proves his religious-ideological incompatibility with Western democracies.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9136/turkey-protestants

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