Ron DeSantis: "We must support Israel’s right to defend itself, and that includes strong military and intelligence cooperation... It also includes supporting Israel maintaining its qualitative military superiority with systems such as Iron Dome.”
Comments made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
during his visit to Israel are relevant in light of his expected
candidacy to become a Republican candidate for the US Presidency.
Addressing the fraying relationship
between the United States and Saudi Arabia by the Biden Administration,
and the strain that it has put on Israel, DeSantis said,
"The Biden Administration worked overtime to alienate Saudi Arabia
making it more difficult for Israel to forge a normalization deal with
Saud Arabia."
“I think, with a proper policy and proper relations, you could see Saudi Arabia recognize the existence of Israel."
About Israel's role in the Middle East, DeSantis said,
“What’s
right with the Middle East is Israel. What’s right with the Middle East
is Israel working with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. What’s
wrong is Iranian terror and ambitions in the region.”
Regarding Iran, DeSantis said,
“There is perhaps no adversary more hostile to
both Israel and the US than the Islamic regime in Iran. We must support
Israel’s right to defend itself, and that includes strong military and
intelligence cooperation.
“It also includes supporting Israel maintaining its qualitative military superiority with systems such as Iron Dome.”
About the United States relationship with Israel,
“Our alliance with Israel rests on unique cultural and religious affinities,”
DeSantis said as he put forward an Israel policy that
was in line with that of the former Trump administration, particularly
with respect to Jerusalem.
DeSantis was very clear that he supported a
united Jerusalem as the country’s capital, noting that he had spoken
about this prior to Donald Trump’s decision when he was in Congress,
including holding a hearing on the matter in 2017.
“Jerusalem is, going back thousands of years, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. US policy should recognize the truth.
"Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is critical to ensure freedom of
worship for Jews, Muslims and Christians in the city’s holy sites."
DeSantis recalled that during his last trip to Israel in
2019, he had visited both Ariel University and an industrial park in
the Gush Etzion region which he referred to as Judea and Samaria,
explaining that he viewed the area as “disputed” and not “occupied” territory.
“Those are the most historic Jewish lands there are, going back thousands of years. There has never been a Palestinian entity.”
About US funding if he were president, DeSantis said, “I
would not fund things like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency”
referring to the UN organization that perpetuates Palestinian refugees.
Nor, DeSantis explained, would he fund the Palestinian Authority if it
continues to support terror.
About US-Israel relations, DeSantis added,
“Israel is also one of America’s most valued and trusted allies.
Maintaining a strong Israel relationship has been a priority for me
during my time in elected office, and I know it’s been a priority for
the overwhelming majority of the American people.”
DeSantis spoke of the shift in the American political
scene “with the Left going one way and the Right and the Center siding
with Israel... I think there should be bipartisan support for Israel,”
DeSantis said.
Referring to the protests in Israel for and against judicial reforms, DeSantis said, “We
should not butt into their internal affairs; that is a debate that is
happening here, it is obviously raging... but it is healthy to flush
this stuff out. Israel is a rambunctious democracy,”
Recalling
a previous visit to Israel, Desantis told of how he had prayed at the
Western Wall in 2019, to save his state from Hurricane Dorian which,
miraculously, veered off in direction at the last moment.
He also
told of how he and his wife had put water from the Sea of Galilee into a
bottle, during an earlier visit, which they used to baptize their
children.
A Pakistani columnist writes that a nuclear-armed Pakistan is an antidote to the 'cancer named Israel.'
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set fire to an
Israeli flag during a rally to mark the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem
Day), during the holy month of Ramadan in Istanbul, Turkey April 14,
2023.
(photo credit: REUTERS/DILARA SENKAYA)
The Islamic Republic of Iran organized an exhibition in Afghanistan’s
third-largest city of Herat that advocated the “nuclear extinction” of
Israel in April as part of the month-long Al-Quds Day celebrations.
“This
exhibition is an example of the Iranian regime's exporting of its
antisemitic ideology. There is a permissive environment in Afghanistan
for the Iranian system to do so now, especially with the Taliban in
charge, and there are natural linkages to the Hazara community, which
have a significant presence in Herat," Jason Brodsky, policy director
for the US-based United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told the Jerusalem Post.
"These
Cultural Centers are not spreading the views of the Iranian people, but
of the Islamic Republic, and it is part of a drive for recruitment,
incitement, and influence.“
The Hazara are a largely a Shi'ite Muslim ethnic group. Nearly almost all of Iran’s over 87 million Muslims are Shi'ite.
“This
exhibition is an example of the Iranian regime's exporting of its
antisemitic ideology. There is a permissive environment in Afghanistan
for the Iranian system to do so now, especially with the Taliban in
charge."
Jason Brodsky
The
Cultural Center of the Consulate General of Iran organized the
anti-Israel exhibition in Herat, Afghanistani news outlet Watan24.com
reported three weeks ago. The Middle East Media Research Institute
(MEMRI) translated the report into English.
Exhibit falling on Al-Quds Day
The
Herat exhibit that urged the nuclear obliteration of the Jewish state
coincided with the antisemitic Al-Quds Day event. The founder of the
Islamic Republic leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini created Al-Quds Day after
Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Israel and the Western powers have accused Iran's regime of building
nuclear weapons. Tehran denies that it seeks to construct an atomic
bomb.
People chant slogans as they set fire to a representation of Israel's
flag, marking al-Quds Day, (Jerusalem Day), during the fasting month of
Ramadan in Peshawar, Pakistan April 14, 2023. (credit: Fayaz
Aziz/Reuters)
MEMRI wrote that Al-Quds Day
"is celebrated generally on the last Friday of Ramadan, which this year
was on April 21, to emphasize the call for the liberation of Jerusalem.
However, Al-Quds Day was marked this year on both April 14 and April
21, the former perhaps in expectation that it might have been the last
Friday of Ramadan. In South Asian countries, Eid Al-Fitr was celebrated
on April 21 and April 22, 2023.”
Tufail
Ahmad, a Senior Fellow for the MEMRI Islamism and
Counter-Radicalization Initiative, published a report on the “upsurge of
anti-Israel events, antisemitism, and statements in South Asia,
especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pakistan-controlled Azad Jammu
& Kashmir and in Indian Kashmir and other cities of India, during
the holy month of Ramadan, starting March 23, 2023.”
Watan24.com
reported that in the province of Herat, Shi'ite leaders celebrated
Al-Quds Day on April 14. Allama Hojatoleslam Ahmadi, the head of Herat's
Shia Ulema Council, delivered a diatribe in to people in Herat city:
"Israel will not continue as a state, this being a divine promise,”
according to a Dari-language news website.
MEMRI also noted that the Pakistani columnist wrote in their local newspaper Roznama Dunya
that nuclear-armed Pakistan is an antidote to "the cancer named
Israel." The MEMRI website also posted photographs of the antisemitic
Al-Quds Day demonstrations including a ”replica of Al-Quds presented at
Al-Quds Day rally in Karachi city on April 14, 2023, showing a grave of
Israel with the words inscribed ‘RIP Israel’" and of “protesters
trampling upon images of the Israeli and American flags.”
Maulana
Syed Kalbe Jawwad Naqvi, the general secretary of the Majlis
Ulama-e-Hind, addressed protesters in India’s Lucknow's Asafi Mosque,
who held banners with slogans declaring "Death to Israel, America," and
"Free Palestine."
The
radical Islamist Jawwad Naqvi added that "very soon, Israel will be
obliterated, the prophecy about which has proven to be correct, because
the blood of the oppressed, will never go in vain."
Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
Smoke rises over a fuel tank following an alleged drone attack in Sevastopol, Crimea, April 29, 2023.
(photo credit: REUTERS/STRINGER)
A Ukrainian military intelligence official said on Saturday more than
10 tanks of oil products with a capacity of around 40,000 tonnes were
destroyed in an explosion on the Russian-occupied port of Sevastopol on
April 29, RBC Ukraine reported.
The
official, Andriy Yusov, did not claim Ukraine was responsible for the
explosion in comments reported by RBC, instead describing the blast as
"God's punishment" for a Russian strike on a Ukrainian city on Friday.
"According
to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit,"
Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Annexed territory by Russia
Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed
from Ukraine in 2014, has come under repeated air attacks since
Russia's full-fledged invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. Russian
officials have blamed the attacks on Ukraine.
The
Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment
on Saturday. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for
attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
A
view shows Russian warships on sunset ahead of the Navy Day parade in
the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, Crimea July 27, 2019 (credit:
REUTERS/ALEXEY PAVLISHAK)
Razvozhaev said no one was hurt in Saturday's fire.
"The
situation is under the control of our firefighters and all operative
services," he wrote. "Since the volume of fuel is large, it will take
time to localize the fire."
China is reportedly recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better how Western military aircraft and pilots operate.
China is reportedly
recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better
how Western military aircraft and pilots operate. Up to 30 former UK
military pilots are believed to have traveled to China since 2019 to
work as instructors in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
"It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop
Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities. Money is a strong
motivator." — Unnamed Western official, BBC, October 28, 2022.
"It was very specific that it had to be frontline military
aviators in current flying practice.... why send military pilots rather
than teachers?" — Sky News, October 28, 2022.
Perhaps most incredibly, the US Army, as late as November 2020,
conducted the Disaster Management Exchange (online, due to coronavirus)
with China's PLA.... Unbelievably, the November 2020 remote exercise
took place just one month after President Donald Trump's National
Security Adviser, Robert O'Brien, had pronounced China to be the threat
of the century....
China is reportedly recruiting former air force pilots from
the West to understand better how Western military aircraft and pilots
operate. Pictured: Sailors and fighter jets on the deck of the Chinese
People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning in the sea
near Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province on April 23, 2019.
(Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)
China is reportedly
recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better
how Western military aircraft and pilots operate. Up to 30 former UK
military pilots are believed to have traveled to China since 2019 to
work as instructors in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
"They are a very attractive body of people to then pass on that
knowledge. It's taking Western pilots of great experience to help
develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities," an unnamed
Western official said. "Money," he added, "is a strong motivator."
Britain's Ministry of Defence stated that while the pilots have not
actually breached any current law in the UK by working for the PLA, they
are warning other former pilots against taking up work for the Chinese
military.
"It certainly doesn't match my understanding of service of our nation
-- even in retirement -- to then go and work with a foreign power,
especially one that challenges the UK interest so keenly," Minister of
State for the Armed Forces James Heappey said, stressing that the UK "must change the law."
"We are taking decisive steps to stop Chinese recruitment schemes
attempting to headhunt serving and former UK armed forces pilots to
train People's Liberation Army personnel in the People's Republic of
China," a spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence announced.
Other Western pilots have also been targeted by China. In France, one pilot toldLe Figaro:
"I almost tried it. This is not a common opportunity to have a fighter
in your hands, and here I am offered the handle of a J-11 [J-11BH
carrier-based variant, or the newer J-15]." He was offered a three-year,
20,000 euro per month contract. "I almost let myself be tempted," he
said. "I eventually turned down the offer as I did not want to get into
trouble. And also for ethical reasons, as China is not on our side."
Despite the outburst of concern in the UK and elsewhere over China's
attempts to recruit Western pilots, a number of Western countries,
including the UK, Canada, and the United States, until recently used to
engage actively with the Chinese People's Liberation Army, thereby
contributing to the development of Chinese military capabilities.
According
to Sky News, at least three Chinese military personnel undertook basic
officer training at the Royal Air Force College in the UK, the latest as
recently as 2019.
In addition, a number of more senior military officers from China
studied at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in the UK, which
caters to more senior military personnel from both the army, navy and
air force.
Earlier, in 2016 the Ministry of Defense in the UK sent up to four
RAF pilots to take part in the "Aviation English Course" in Beijing
which, according
to unnamed sources cited by Sky News, "consisted of helping the
People's Liberation Army Air Force learn how to run overseas military
deployments."
"It was very specific that it had to be frontline military aviators
in current flying practice, so I am sure more than English language got
talked about," the source said, adding that the title of the course, "Aviation English," was "a misnomer -- why send military pilots rather than teachers?"
Furthermore, the British Ministry of Defence only raised the alarm on
the issue this fall, raising questions as to why it had taken them so
long.
"The first duty of any government is to protect our nation's security," Labour's shadow defence secretary John Healey said in a statement.
"The Tories have been too slow to emerge from their
'golden era' with China and repeatedly blasé about security threats.
This official deployment could have compromised details of UK military
operations, technology and training to a foreign power, posing a
significant threat to our national security. Ministers must answer
serious questions about why they backed this activity and what risks it
poses. The public also want reassurance on the actions taken to halt
it."
In Canada, the military invited representatives from the People's
Liberation Army to observe its winter military exercises as recently as
in 2018.
"We do not train with the PLA," a spokesperson for Canada's Department of National Defence said in 2020.
"However, based on an agreement signed in 2013, there has
been the occasional, reciprocal granting of observer-status for
non-sensitive activities, including winter survival exercises."
As late as 2019, however, Canada's Department of Global Affairs was
fearful that the Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan
Vance, after being urged by the United States, had cancelled winter
military exercises with the PLA and later all military interactions.
"Should Canada make any significant reductions in its military
engagement with China, China will likely read this as a retaliatory
move," said a February 2019 Department of Global Affairs memo to Ian Shugart, then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.
"We understand that [this cancellation] was driven
principally by concerns voiced by the U.S. that the training could
result in unintended and undesired knowledge transfer to the PLA.
Unilateral decisions to postpone and/or cancel previously agreed DND/CAF
co-operation with the PLA risk being interpreted by China or others in
an unintended (and unhelpful) way. [This] could also damage Canada's
long-term defence and security relationship with China."
The winter exercises were supposed to have been observed by six to
eight military officers from the People's Liberation Army. In addition, according to the Globe and Mail:
"[A] calendar of coming engagements for 2019 between the
Canadian military and China's PLA listed up to 12 events, including PLA
soldiers attending the Canadian Security Studies Program at Canadian
Forces College in Toronto and a United Nations peacekeeping course at
the Canadian-army affiliated Peace Support Training Centre in Kingston.
It also included the delegation of athletes for the Military World Games
in Wuhan and delegates to attend a PLA National Defence University
International Symposium in China. Canada sent 114 athletes, 57 coaches
and support staff to the Military World Games."
Perhaps most incredibly, the US Army, as late as November 2020, conducted
the Disaster Management Exchange (online, due to coronavirus) with
China's PLA. The event has been an ongoing bilateral annual training
exercise between China and the US since 2005. In November 2019, the US
Army Pacific hosted
members of the PLA for the two weeks that the exercise lasted at
Kilauea Military Camp and Kilauea Military Reservation in Hawaii.
Unbelievably, the November 2020 remote exercise took place just one
month after President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser, Robert
O'Brien, had pronounced China to be the threat of the century.
"The CCP is seeking dominance in all domains and sectors...(and)
plans to monopolize every industry that matters to the 21st century,"
O'Brien said in October 2020.
"Most recently the PRC used cyber-enabled espionage to
target companies developing Covid vaccines and treatments in Europe, the
UK and the United States all the while touting the need for
international cooperation."
Perhaps the US Army's approach to the PLA might partly be explained
through the fact that as late as 2013, Lt. Gen. Francis Wiercinski, then
U.S. Army Pacific commander, suggested that the US could conduct
bilateral exercises such as the Disaster Management Exchange with China,
as China's army no longer posed any danger to the US.
"I believe that the Army is extremely well suited to conduct
continuous engagement with the Chinese because our army-to-army forces
are literally, at this point, not a threat to each other," Wiercinski said.
"Our engagements with disaster management exercises,
military medicine, engineering projects -- these are all peacekeeping
operations. These are excellent opportunities for us to get into
mil-to-mil discussions. I can only hope those will continue in the
future."
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
One month ago a heavily-armed, 28-yr-old female named Audrey
Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender male, literally shot her
way into a Nashville private Christian grade school called Covenant and
murdered three nine-year-old students and three adults before police
terminated her and her rampage.
Hale left a manifesto reportedly detailing her motivation, the
contents of which the FBI is still protecting. Joseph Giacalone, former
police officer and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice, believes
authorities are not releasing the manifesto because there may be
“something in there that is truly damaging for the transgender
community.” Does the manifesto explode the narrative that the Left wants
so desperately to maintain: that trans people are the victims of
genocidal bigotry and not a threat to anyone? The narrative that the real domestic terror threat in America is Trump supporters and Tucker Carlson viewers?
The shooting came just ahead of something alarmingly called a “Trans Day of Vengeance” set for April 1st
(but ultimately cancelled) and took place in a climate of media-driven,
hysterical fear-mongering about what is outrageously being labeled a
right-wing “genocide” of the so-called trans community. (Fact check: trans people are not experiencing anything that could even remotely be considered genocide.) It is a lie that our doddering President Joe Biden himself has promoted.
This has led many to believe that violence committed by or threatened
by trans individuals is justifiable “vengeance” and self-defense.
Indeed, the most disgusting and disturbing aspect of the Nashville
massacre, apart from the cold-hearted evil at the heart of it, has been
the response from many in the news media and on social media
rationalizing Hale’s actions. Meanwhile Christians and the Right are
blamed for what these apologists falsely label “trans hate” and for
political policies that purportedly push troubled trans people to the
point of violent retaliation.
Something called the Trans Resistance Network in Massachusetts, for example, released a statement
on the Covenant school shooting stating that life for “transgender
people is very difficult” due to “anti-trans legislation” and “right
wing personalities.” The group also painted a sympathetic picture of
shooter Hale as a “complex tragedy” who felt she “had no other effective
way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others.”
No other way to be seen than to kill nine-year-olds? There is no one more
visible in America today than a trans activist. They are celebrated in
the culture, lauded as trailblazing heroes, and given every platform
from the daytime gabfest The View to the White House itself. It
is a grotesque lie and sick rationalization to claim that Audrey Hale
had no other way to be “seen” than to shoot innocents dead – and
furthermore, to claim that the trans community is marginalized and
endangered.
In a recent episode of All Things Considered
on the leftwing propaganda outlet National Public Radio, NPR
correspondents Adrian Florido and Melissa Block fretted that the
transgender community “fears a further escalation of hate” after it was
revealed that the Nashville school shooter was trans, and their fear
“has been amplified” due to “a surge of anti-trans rhetoric.” (Has NPR
ever done a story on the anti-white, anti-Christian rhetoric pumped into
our culture daily? Just curious.)
NBC ran a story with the headline,
“Fear pervades Tennessee’s trans community amid focus on Nashville
shooter’s gender identity: ‘We were already fearing for our lives. Now,
it’s even worse.’” As Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway put it on
Twitter, “Gee, you’d think heavily armed Christian children were hunting
down trans activists instead of the other way around.”
Courageous opponents of trans ideology from both sides of the political spectrum – e.g., the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and Harry Potter
author J.K. Rowling – have been smeared as bigots and threatened with
death for stating the simple biological truth about the two sexes that
has been known and accepted for many thousands of years of human
existence – facts that the radical Left want to erase as part of their
deconstruction of the norms and values and universal truths of Western
civilization. Because that’s what gender ideology and the other facets
of Cultural Marxism like Critical Race Theory are: a concerted assault
on our civilization. And the Left is becoming increasingly bold about
waging violence to achieve this vision.
The day after the shooting, the press secretary for the Governor of Arizona tweeted an image
from a movie in which a character is wielding a pair of handguns, along
with the message, “us when we see transphobes.” There’s no other way to
read that tweet than as support for the actions of child-killer Hale, and as a threat that others who perceive themselves to be trans are prepared to shoot anyone they deem bigots.
A trans male who goes by the name Tara Jay recently issued a call to his 2400 TikTok followers to buy guns and told them he was prepared to die for the cause of trans “safety” and “freedom”:
If you back an animal into a corner, they become a dangerous animal. So if you want to die
on this hill of yours, of righteousness and moral majority, then you go
right ahead. I dare you to try and stop me from going into a women’s
bathroom. It will be the last mistake you ever make. I dare you to try
and stop a transgender woman in my presence from using the bathroom. It
will be the last mistake you ever make. This is a call to action and
call to arms to everybody within the United States that are scared,
worried, have children that are transgender, lesbian, bi, or gay…. This
is a call to action. You need to arm up. Plain and simple, go out and
buy a gun. Learn how to use it, efficiently. Through and through.
Because the time to act is now. You need to protect yourself and you
need to protect your fellow transgender…. There are lots of people like
me who are not afraid to die. I love my girlfriends to death, but I
would rather die for them to secure their safety, freedom, and future
than to live and not have anything done.
Yet another example: in a now-deleted post on Twitter, transgender
activist Kayla Denker posed with an AR-15 and a handgun along with the
words “Kill christcucks. Behead christcucks” and “crucify filthy
christcucks” as well as “slam dunk a christcuck baby into a trashcan.”
The post was hashtagged “trans day of vengeance.”
Has the FBI investigated this lunatic, or are they too busy
investigating parents who complained at school board meetings about
their children being exposed to sexually explicit books? Do I really
need to point out that if a MAGA hat-wearing person posted pictures on
social media in which he wielded a “weapon of war” and called for
beheading the LGBT community, the FBI would have raided his house faster
than you can say “Jan 6th insurrection”?
“Armed queers bash back,” reads a “Pride” flag with a picture of an AK-47.
“Respect my pronouns or yours will be was/were,” reads a sweatshirt.
One t-shirt pictures three daggers along with the words “Protect Trans Kids.”
“Respect gender pronouns or I will identify as a problem,” reads one
sticker. Another one reads, “Respect my pronouns or die by my sword.”
“We’re here. We’re queer. I have a brick,” reads another shirt.
These are not vows of self-defense against a legitimate violent
threat, but violent threats themselves against someone who might merely
“misgender” a trans person. These are public warnings that if you fail
to participate in or celebrate this gender delusion, or simply get
someone’s “personal pronouns” wrong, some trans people are willing to kill you.
These are not the expressions of a community “living in fear,” but of
thugs looking for an excuse to commit murder and mayhem – and confident
that the media will circle the wagons around them, and the police will
suppress information about their motivation, if they do.
But the trans violence goes beyond just rhetoric. As Tucker Carlson
noted in a recent Fox News commentary, a trans girl tried to assassinate
Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home last year. A
self-described nonbinary shooter later murdered five people and wounded
18 at a Colorado nightclub. In 2019, a trans teenager shot nine people
in a Denver high school, killing one. In 2018, a mentally ill
transgender person shot up a Rite-Aid distribution center in Aberdeen,
Maryland, killing four. Then came the Nashville school shooting, and
police recently arrested a trans man in Colorado named William
Whitworth, who goes by the name Lily. He had a kill list and a manifesto
and was planning to attack three schools and churches.
Tucker ended his commentary declaring the trans community to be the
most dangerous extremist group in America. I would include in that
community its huge support groups in the media, in the Biden
administration, in the medical field, and of course among the masked
shock troops of Antifa, who can always be counted on to dole out some Clockwork Orange-style “ultra-violence” on anyone who dares speak out against the increasingly dangerous trans movement.
I would also argue that this extremism qualifies as domestic
terrorism. Targeting innocent citizens for intimidation, violence, and
death for political ends is the very definition of terrorism. By that
basic standard, all of the movements in recent years which have
been championed by the Democrat Party and protected by the complicit
news media – from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to Antifa,
and now to a growing number of unhinged transgender activists – wage
terrorism. Their overlapping political ends involve the complete
destruction of the economic, societal, and moral status quo in the West.
They are literally a civilizational threat.
As the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh tweeted recently, “Always remember
what happened at the Covenant School. Remember what happened to those
innocent victims, to those children. We are facing a truly demonic evil.
Never forget that.”
It is a truly demonic evil, and it’s time to call it like it is: terrorism.
For many in the West, Jew-hatred is invisible and grossly misunderstood.
A furor over a British Labour Party politician tells us a great deal
about the tsunami of Jew-hatred rolling across Britain, America and the
West.
Diane Abbott, who in 1987 became Britain’s first
black female member of parliament, caused widespread outrage last
weekend when she wrote in TheObserver
that Jews, Irish people and travelers don’t face racism but merely
suffer the same level of prejudice as people with red hair. The only
possible victims of racial prejudice, she suggested, are black people.
Labour
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer promptly suspended Abbott from the
parliamentary Labour Party. Her comments threatened to derail his
strenuous efforts to rid the party of the stain of antisemitism, which
under Labour’s previous hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn reached epidemic
proportions.
Diane AbbottJNS Photo
The
views held by Abbott, who remains a Corbyn acolyte, inhabit the
intersection between Jew-hatred and the “identity politics” that is
driving Western society off the rails.
Abbott ignored the fact
that many Jews are brown or black-skinned. The reason for that omission
gets to the heart of the antisemitism of the left.
The left’s
dogma of “intersectionality” holds that groups are defined by power and
powerlessness. People of color are said to be powerless because they are
oppressed by the West, which is powerful. The West is said to be
powerful because it is capitalist, and is therefore deemed innately
exploitative and rapacious.
Because the West is a historically
white culture, white people are themselves deemed innately exploitative
and rapacious and can never be victims of black people. Moreover, like
Marx himself, such leftists believe that the Jews control capitalism and
manipulate all the levers of global power in their own interests to the
disadvantage of everyone else.
So, to them, it follows that Jews
are innately exploitative and rapacious. They are therefore deemed
guilty of “white privilege” even when they are dark-skinned and they can
never be victims, only victimizers.
This is why the
“intersectional” left treats Israel with such obsessional hysteria,
unremittingly presenting Israeli self-defense as aggression. Israel,
which defends itself through military strength, is the antisemites’
nightmare of Jewish power on steroids.
Of course, this is
old-style antisemitism sitting bang smack at the heart of the identity
politics that currently drives the left.
It is therefore beyond
troubling that the Democratic Party in the United States and so many
liberal American Jews have signed up for identity politics. Worse still,
these Jews tell themselves that such ideas are Jewish values. In fact,
they negate Jewish values and provide the ideological rocket fuel behind
the current onslaught against Judaism, Jewish people and the Jewish
state.
At the core of this support lies a Jewish terror of being
different from the rest of the world. That fear is inseparable from the
contempt for and even fear of unabashed religious belief, a hostility
that motivates the Western left in general.
The result has been
that, for many Jews and non-Jews in the West, Jew-hatred has become
largely invisible and hugely misunderstood and devalued.
Among her
offensive remarks, Abbott said that in pre-civil rights America only
black people were required to “sit at the back of the bus.”
This provoked a stinging response from Herschel Gluck, a haredi (often
termed ultra-Orthodox, which is actually a pejorative - the haredim
are stringently Orthodox) rabbi in Abbott’s constituency, which contains
the largest haredi community in Europe, whom she has, in fact, often supported on local issues.
As Gluck told The Jewish Chronicle,
there are now constant reports of Jews being abused on buses, kicked
off buses and asking the bus driver for support only to find that none
is forthcoming. When Gluck recently tried to get on a train in Abbott’s
own constituency, he was pushed off by football fans, one of whom said:
“We don’t allow Jews on the train.”
In both the United
Kingdom and the United States, antisemitic attacks are at record levels
and a disproportionate number of them, particularly physical attacks,
are against the haredi population. Yet these are mostly ignored.
There
are two reasons for this invisibility. First, such violent attackers
are disproportionately black or Muslim and so directly contradict the
unchallengeable “intersectionality” narrative of licensed victim groups.
Secondly, the secular world finds the haredim mystifying and alienating, and many Jews do not want to be associated with them either.
This is partly because such Jews regard the haredim as a threat to liberal Jewish life. It’s also because they fear that, by protesting on behalf of the haredim, they will be lumped together with them as “the other” by the gentile world.
In Israel, resentment and hostility towards the haredim
by the left is a factor behind the four-month-long anti-government
protests. Disturbingly, in both America and Britain civic authorities
have also come to regard the haredim as a threat.
New York State has been tightening requirements for haredi Jewish schools to teach curricula that are “substantially equivalent” to those in non-religious schools.
This has been accompanied by aggressive reporting about hassidic schools in The New York Times
and other outlets, with similar media attacks in Britain. They have
claimed that such schools don’t teach basics such as English or math,
routinely beat their pupils and sentence them to adult lives of poverty.
These accounts have been accused of distortion, selective reporting and exaggeration. In City Journal, Ray Domanico reported
last month that at the hassidic school he visited in New York, all the
boys seemed to be fluent in English, which was freely spoken at home,
while graduates had gone on to be successful business owners and
leaders. (See Arutz Sheva's response here.)
Critics
of such schools also don’t appreciate that Talmud study fosters
analytical thinking to a level far higher than anything taught in
regular schools.
Rabbi Asher Gratt is a governor in one of the largest haredi
schools in Britain. As he has written, Talmud study creates practical
images of abstract concepts, connects these through lateral thinking and
teaches concentration, memory skills and problem-solving to a high
level.
It might therefore be thought that the haredi
approach has something of value to impart to mainstream schools—where
illiteracy and innumeracy levels are often very high through fundamental
deficiencies in the way children there are taught.
In Britain, pressure applied to haredi
schools goes far beyond any apparent concern about basic standards. For
a number of years, the education regulator Ofsted has been trying to
force haredi schools to teach LGBTQ+ issues.
The schools’ protest that they never teach sexuality at all
because they believe it to be inappropriate and against their religious
values has fallen on deaf ears. A liberal society, they are told,
demands that all schoolchildren be taught about all kinds of sexuality
in order to promote tolerance and inclusiveness.
Yet
preventing a religious minority from teaching its children according to
its own religious precepts is fundamentally intolerant and exclusive. To
Britain’s “liberal” bureaucratic mind, however, the fact that the haredim
pose no threat to anyone else and that their children are largely free
from the antisocial behavior commonplace elsewhere cuts no ice at all.
Difference,
particularism and separateness are now viewed in themselves as a threat
that must not be tolerated. The only values permitted are universalist
ones. The equality of outcomes promoted by identity politics is a
universalist value.
Universalism, however, is a fundamentally
anti-Jewish creed. Jews are the most particularist community on earth.
Universalism denies them the difference that defines their unique
behavior as well as their unique experience of suffering.
Jews who
flinch from their historic burden of difference have latched on to
universalism as the ultimate means of erasing difference. That’s why
they support Black Lives Matter, campaign against Israel and relativize
the Holocaust by equating it with “many genocides.”
They have thus
signed up to the very creed that lies behind the mindset of Diane
Abbott and the terrifying onslaught against Jews throughout the West.
Melanie Phillips,
a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column
for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal
and political memoir “Guardian Angel” has been published by Bombardier,
which also published her first novel, “The Legacy.” Go to melaniephillips.substack.comto access her work.
“She is the first woman in history to win the 100 and 200 meters in back-to-back Olympics.”
That is how USA Today summarized the performance of Elaine
Thompson-Herah, the Jamaican sprinter who dominated women’s track events
in the COVID-delayed 2021 Olympics.
Thompson-Herah won a third gold medal in Tokyo that year as the first runner on Jamaica’s 4×100 meter relay team.
In the 100-meter race, she not only won gold for the second Olympics
in a row but set an Olympic record by running the race in 10.61 seconds.
That was the second-fastest 100 meters any woman has ever run in any
competition, according to the Mirror. The only woman who ever ran faster
was Florence Griffith-Joyner, an American, who in 1988 set the women’s
world record of 10.49 seconds in the 100-meter dash.
But what if Elaine Thompson-Herah had been forced to run in the men’s 100-meter final at the Tokyo Olympics?
She would have finished last.
The slowest contestant in the men’s 100-meter final in Tokyo was
Bingtian Su of the People’s Republic of China. His last-place finish was
timed at 9.98 seconds — 0.63 seconds faster than Thompson-Herah’s
Olympic record of 10.61 seconds in the women’s final.
The swimming competition saw similar results at the Tokyo Olympics.
Emma McKeon of Australia won the 100-meter freestyle swimming race
with a time of 51.96. Caeleb Dressel of the United States won the men’s
100-meter freestyle with a time of 47.02. The slowest swimmer in the
men’s 100-meter final in Tokyo was Nandor Nemeth of Hungary, who had a
time of 48.10.
Nemeth’s last-place time in the men’s race was 3.86 seconds faster than McKeon’s winning time in the women’s race.
What is the lesson here? President Joe Biden is once again exposing
his radical idiocy by opposing legislation that would prevent biological
men from competing in women’s sports at federally funded institutions.
The House Rules Committee last week sent to the full House a bill
(H.R. 734) that is called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports
Act. As the House Committee on Education and the Workforce explained in
its report on the bill, it has a simple — and important — purpose. It
would prohibit “a recipient of federal financial assistance who
operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to
permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program
or activity that is designated for women or girls.”
The committee’s report further explained that, in the context of this
legislation, “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s
reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
So, for example, a 6-foot-10-inch 290-pound biological male could not play center on the women’s basketball team.
Nor could a male high school student who hit 50 home runs as a junior
on the varsity baseball team switch to the women’s softball team in his
senior year.
Biden claims the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act is
“discrimination,” and his White House last week put out a statement
condemning it.
“The Administration strongly opposes the House passage of H.R. 734,” said the statement.
“H.R. 734 would deny access to sports for many families by
establishing an absolute ban on transgender students — even those as
young as elementary schoolers — playing on a team consistent with their
gender identity,” the White House said.
“Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools or on our
playing fields,” it said. “Congressional Republicans have instead chosen
to prioritize policies that discriminate against children.”
“If the president were presented with H.R. 734, he would veto it,” said the White House.
Were Biden to do so, he would be mocked by history — for mindlessly
engaging in a battle with a biological fact: There are two human sexes,
male and female.
This nation was founded on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously noted in his Letter from the
Birmingham Jail: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the
moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of
harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas
Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law
and natural law.”
Laws and regulations that require or permit schools to pretend that
biological males are actually females — or that let biological males
compete on female athletic teams — violate the natural law. They are
unjust.
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act would be a just law in keeping with the natural law.
If Congress passes the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act
and President Biden vetoes it, Biden would be guilty of an unjust act
that violates the natural law.
His victims would be women and girls in schools all across America.
Why Clinton and Bush rescued Americans, and Obama and Biden won’t.
In 2006, 25,000 Americans were trapped behind enemy lines in Lebanon.
Hezbollah had attacked Israel and the Shiite Muslim terror group which
had overwhelmed the formerly Christian nation had once again dragged it
into a destructive war.
The Bush administration responded by hiring a cruise ship, the Orient
Queen, which brought over 1,000 Americans to Cyprus. The massive cruise
ship was part of a rescue flotilla that included the USS Nashville (as
captured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations who
was evacuated aboard the cruiser), the USS Trenton, on one of its final
voyages, along with hired civilian vessels from other nations that got
Americans out.
Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, announced
that the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group was being moved into
position so “that we have the capability to extract people, no matter
where their location is.”
The Biden administration has taken a very different approach with the estimated 16,000 Americans trapped in Sudan.
Two Americans are dead in Sudan after Biden, once again, washed his hands of them.
“It is not our standard procedure to evacuate American citizens
living abroad,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, fresh
off celebrating Lesbian Visibility Week with the cast of The L-Word, announced.
In the Biden administration, lesbians are visible, Americans looking to get home aren’t.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the family,” National Security
Council spokesman John Kirby whined. And then announced that, “We
continue to make clear at the highest levels of our government the
leadership of both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support
Forces that they are responsible for ensuring the protection of
civilians and noncombatants.”
The Rapid Support Forces, better known as the Janjaweed, are a Islamic Jihadist operation infamous for its mass rapes and massacres of Christians.
“Men were mutilated and murdered, women raped, and children
kidnapped.” One survivor described how, “they raped us in a group. Some
women were raped by 8 or 10 men. Seventeen women were raped together.
All of us were raped. Even the underage girls were raped.”
Instead of taking responsibility for protecting American lives, the
Biden administration is once again telling Islamic terrorists, first the
Taliban in Afghanistan, now the Janjaweed/RSF in Sudan, that it’s their
job to protect Americans. Not his job.
Karine Jean-Pierre, as usual, was lying. Both Republican and Democrat
administrations had a long proud history of evacuating Americans from
war zones.
During the racist Muslim riots in Indonesia in 1998, the Clinton
administration prepped more than “10,000 American troops and a flotilla
of United States Navy ships” if needed to evacuate an estimated 6,000
Americans. The Clinton administration had helped evacuate Americans from
Albania and dispatched troops to Zaire to get Americans out of the
country.
This was so commonplace and routine that we took it for granted. Until Obama.
Obama set the precedent of abandoning Americans in Benghazi. But what
Obama did on a small scale, Biden has once again implemented on a much
larger scale. The abandonment of thousands of Americans behind enemy
lines in Afghanistan was not an aberration. Sudan has made it clear that
abandoning Americans is the formal new policy.
“Americans should have no expectation of a U.S.
government-coordinated evacuation at this time, and we expect that’s
going to remain the case,” National Security Council spokesman John
Kirby warned.
And claimed that it’s “not as simple as jumping in a taxicab”.
True, it’s not. That’s why we spend hundreds of billions on a
military and diplomatic infrastructure that is capable of doing more
than jumping into a D.C. taxicab to get some drinks.
Not all that long ago, during the Lebanon War, the State Department
figured out how to hire a cruise ship, bring together vessels from
different countries and planes to transport Americans to Cyprus and
Turkey. They were on the phone with a ship urging its captain to miss
his deadline to sail so that Americans could board. Maybe there was more
time to do that without Lesbian Visibility Week and all the other
narcissistic exercises in virtue signaling that define the Left.
Rescuing Americans isn’t easy, but it’s a nice break from those
demanding cocktail parties, Zoom meetings and press briefings that the
State Department and the NSC are busy at.
What was an outrage under Obama has now solidified into a new normal.
Biden administration officials dismiss even the notion that they have
any responsibility to evacuate Americans.
“Shouldn’t Americans abroad expect some help from their government?” a reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre.
“It is not our standard procedure to evacumate — evacuate American
citizens living abroad… the State Department does its best to provide
information to citizens who are abroad and — and giving them the warning
when necessary.” Jean-Pierre, resenting having to take time out from
partying with the L-Word cast, responded with blithe contempt.
It may no longer be standard procedure for America, but the British,
the French, the Germans and even the Italians are getting their citizens
out. Much as some of them did in Afghanistan.
During that evacuation, the Biden administration refused to go out
and get Americans, and woke generals yelled at their European partners
that they were making them look bad. But the British weren’t making
American generals look bad. Biden was disgracing America. And by going
along with his treasonous policy of leaving Americans behind, they were
disgracing themselves.
“The government has begun a large-scale evacuation of British
passport holders from Sudan on RAF flights,” UK Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak tweeted. “I pay tribute to the British Armed Forces, diplomats and
Border Force staff.”
Is there a reason that the Brits, the French and the Italians, who
not only evacuated their own people, but the Vatican staff and Swiss
citizens, can do this, but that America can’t?
Obviously we can. The Clinton and the Bush administrations did it.
Evacuating Americans used to be the norm before Lesbian Visibility Week
became the norm.
Obama and Biden have made a point of refusing to evacuate Americans
from Afghanistan and Sudan because they wanted to make the point that
the military and diplomats were not there to serve national interests,
but global ones. Americans should not expect the State Department or the
military to protect them just because of their birthright or
citizenship. American institutions no longer serve Americans, only
leftist causes. Their mission is equity and inclusion, it’s Lesbian
Visibility Week: not rescuing people who happen to have an American
passport week.
And that’s the way it will stay until Americans take back their country from the un-American Left.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is
an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
If America is to be fundamentally destroyed, it would come from the people within, as opposed to enemies abroad.
While still early, this primary season is already turning out to be
unlike any other. It is not uncommon to see both parties experience a
competitive primary with numerous candidates, however, that usually only
occurs when the sitting president is concluding his second term in
office, making him ineligible for another election. Yet Biden already
has two declared challengers
seeking the Democrat nomination. On the Republican side, President
Trump is seeking to become only the second president in U.S. history to
win a non-consecutive term. Because of that, there are essentially two
candidates in the race that, to some extent, hold an incumbency
advantage.
As
always, candidates will attempt to separate themselves from the pack by
informing the electorate about the greatest threats facing America,
while also trying to convince voters that they have better solutions
than their opponents. However, the greatest present threat facing
America is unlike any other in history: itself.
While this is an inconvenient truth, America was warned about this long before any of us were born when our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, stated:
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I
answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot
come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all
time, or die by suicide."
If
America is to be fundamentally destroyed, it will come from the people
within, as opposed to enemies abroad. Furthermore, Lincoln suggests
that we must actively work together and remain united and strong as a
nation to prevent our demise, or else it will surely happen. This
unfortunately sounds like a strikingly realistic possibility at this
current time.
So
yes, the greatest threat to the United States of America right now
truly is those within government implementing the destruction we have
witnessed for two-plus years, both at home and abroad.
To understand this, one must compare previous eras in our history to the current one.
From the time
Donald Trump announced his candidacy all the way through his first term
in the oval office, career politicians and media worked in
lockstep, parroting the same talking points. They repeatedlywarned that Trump was a threat to American democracy, a maniac who was going to get us into nuclear war, provoke Kim Jong Un, embolden Putin, wreck our economy and become a tyrant.
Everybody would agree that if those things were to occur, whoever
presided over such destruction would undeniably be the greatest threat
to a nation, and that includes foreign threats. Those things did not
occur under Trump, but interestingly enough, many of the people warning
about the dangers of Trump are now in power, and as a result, their warnings are coming to fruition under their own tenure.
In 2019, Kim Jong Un welcomed a sitting U.S. president onto North Korean soil for the first time in history. Kim agreed to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Fast forward to the present day and Kim has begun to increase North Korean nuclear capabilities, just a few short years removed from a promising period of peace. The key change between then and now? American leadership.
Putin
has been emboldened, but by whom? Prior to this administration,
Americans constantly heard about the Russian president. However, much
of that coverage concerned the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative, as opposed to issues of substance. In fact, as the collusion story dominated the news, the U.S. was hitting Putin hard by upholding previously imposed sanctions and placing additional ones
that prevented U.S. banks from making loans or issuing credits to the
Russian government after their role in a near-fatal poisoning was
revealed. But recently, likely after seeing American weakness
on full display abroad, Putin resumed expansion efforts by invading
Ukraine after a rare hiatus from 2017-2021. The key change between then
and now? American leadership.
Tyranny
is a universal threat to any country. Tyrants are cruel and oppressive
rulers who use their power to strip individual liberties from citizens
and make their lives worse in all areas, including financially. By that
definition, America is currently under tyrannical rule. While the
previous administration protected religious liberty, free speech on college campuses, granted farmers financial freedom during a trade war, created a middle-class-benefitting economy, and further lightened the burden on the middle class by repealing the unconstitutional individual mandate portion of Obamacare, the current administration is a stark contrast.
America has recently witnessed an assault on freedom of speech, watched the White House send condolences
to the trans community after one of its members murdered innocent
children at a Christian school, and learned of a proposed tax plan that
would hurt the finances of millions of Americans by adding four trillion dollars in new taxes.
But
perhaps most indicative of a threat from within, this administration has
ushered in a period of unprecedented domestic chaos by attempting to
forcefully vaccinate citizens, prioritize DEI over equality and common sense, and crater military enlistment by promoting wokeness.
Every administration presides over some level of disagreement on issues
amongst the general public, but nothing compares to the confusion they
are causing young American children to endure, especially during such a crucial time in life for a child’s development.
All these problems will have a devastating impact on America’s long-term future if not stopped dead in their tracks.
Damage
to the state of the country since the current administration took power
has occurred at such an alarming rate that even the most pessimistic
citizen has a hard time coming to terms with what they are witnessing.
This is not to say threats outside of the U.S. are nonexistent by any
means. However, when America had strong leadership in power, those
threats were only potential, now they are active.
If
after being previously restrained, our present threats only acted
following changes in our government, the greatest threat truly is those
in power that allow these crises to occur. As this election cycle
unfolds, it will be important to note which candidates grasp this. And
looking to better days, when governmental authority returns to righteous
leadership, we will quickly see once again that the active foreign
threats currently facing America will return to dormant ones.
"Thousands of people every year already face arrest and prosecution for their social media posts, typically charged with defamation, insulting the president, or spreading terrorist propaganda." — Turkey: Events of 2021, Human Rights Watch.
"Terrorism charges continue
to be widely misused to restrict the rights to free expression and
association.... As of July 2020, Ministry of Justice and Interior
figures stated that 58,409 were on trial and 132,954 still under
criminal investigation on terrorism in cases linked to the Gülen
movement. Of those 25,912 were held in prison on remand." — Turkey:
Events of 2020, Human Rights Watch.
"There are no published official numbers of prisoners held on
remand or convicted for alleged links with the PKK, although on the
basis of the previous years' figures the number is at least 8,500 and
includes elected politicians and journalists. — Turkey: Events of 2020,
Human Rights Watch.
"At time of writing, 58 journalists and media workers were in
prison or serving sentences for terrorism offenses because of their
journalistic work or association with media." — Turkey: Events of 2021,
Human Rights Watch.
"Thousands of people every year already face arrest and
prosecution for their social media posts, typically charged with
defamation, insulting the president, or spreading terrorist propaganda."
— Turkey: Events of 2021, Human Rights Watch.
"Scores of former HDP politicians including mayors are held as
remand prisoners or are serving sentences after being convicted of
terrorism offenses on the basis of their legitimate non-violent
political activities, speeches, and social media postings." — Turkey:
Events of 2021, Human Rights Watch.
A Kurdish musician received an effective life sentence at the age
of 14 despite evidence of his innocence. Mazlum İçli was arrested in
2018 for allegedly being involved in killing four people during protests
in the city of Diyarbakir in 2014. He was sentenced to the absurd
prison term of 124 years and 8 months. According to news reports and
Historical Traffic Search (HTS) records, images and testimonies showed
that he was not at the scene of the crime. An expert examination later
determined that İçli was at a wedding during the protests. This accords
with the wedding videos and the testimonies of witnesses. Yet, İçli is
still in jail. He is now 23 years old.
A Kurdish political prisoner, Mehmet Savur, who has spent 31
years in prison and was to have been released in 2021, is still behind
bars.
A major problem in Turkey's judicial system is that statements
from "anonymous witnesses" (or "protected witnesses", called in Turkish
"secret witnesses") are enough to be sentenced to years in jail on
alleged charges of terrorism.
Mehmet Emin Özkan, 84, for instance, suffers from severe
illnesses and is still kept in prison despite the lack of any credible
evidence – based on claims against him by two "secret witnesses"....
Hospitals.... have provided reports saying that he should not be
incarcerated and needed to be discharged to obtain medical treatment.
An overpowering problem is that Turkey fails to recognize its own
crimes and atrocities. The Turkish military, for instance, evacuated
and destroyed villages in southeast Turkey in the 1990s. But the
government of Turkey blames others for committing these crimes and calls
them terrorists.
Yusuf Özmen, a political prisoner and stage-4 cancer patient,
remains incarcerated despite a medical report saying he is almost
totally disabled.
While Erdogan's regime itself has well-documented ties with the
Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria, it accuses
its own peaceful citizens of "terrorism," locks them up with no solid
evidence against them, sends them to prison where they contract severe
illnesses, then leaves them there to die.
The West should insist that all future economic cooperation with
Turkey be linked to Turkey's improvement of human rights and respect for
international law.... to induce positive change.
Such economic cooperation would be carried out only on the
condition that the required changes are made and maintained. No human
rights for the people in Turkey, and no respect for international law in
the region? Then no economic cooperation, no commercial agreements.
The Turkish government will not change its behavior in any way
unless it sees that violations bring serious consequences. Otherwise,
this slow-motion mass murder of political prisoners will continue in
Turkey, as well as its many reversals of civilized norms and the
targeting of others, including Greece, Syria, Iraq, Cyprus, Armenians,
Assyrians, Yazidis and Kurds,
In Turkey, criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his
family, requesting equal rights or autonomy for Kurds, or posting on
social media your criticism of almost any government policy can land you
in jail. Pictured: Erdogan in Ankara on October 5, 2020. (Photo by Adem
Altan/AFP via Getty Images)
In Turkey, criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or his family,
requesting equal rights or autonomy for Kurds, or posting on social
media your criticism of almost any government policy can land you in
jail. Even if you may be committed to non-violence and have nothing to
do with any terrorist activity, you might, for these so-called charges,
spend years in prison. It is common in Turkey for citizens to be labelled "terrorists" and jailed on charges of "terrorism".
Currently, the two groups that are most targeted for being or supporting "terrorists" are the Kurds, and those allegedly close to the movement of the Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, now in self-exile in the United States.
While Kurds are accused of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), the real or perceived supporters of Gülen are accused of
participating in the 2016 failed military coup attempt to unseat
Erdogan. Those who remain imprisoned in Turkey for allegedly being
"terrorists" include journalists, human rights activists, elected
politicians, musicians, teachers, medical doctors, lawyers,
intellectuals, and many other civilians.
"Terrorism charges continue to be widely misused to
restrict the rights to free expression and association in the fourth
year after the coup attempt. As of July 2020, Ministry of Justice and
Interior figures stated that 58,409 were on trial and 132,954 still
under criminal investigation on terrorism in cases linked to the Gülen
movement. Of those 25,912 were held in prison on remand.
"There are no published official numbers of prisoners held on remand
or convicted for alleged links with the PKK, although on the basis of
the previous years' figures the number is at least 8,500 and includes
elected politicians and journalists."
"While most news outlets are owned by companies with
close government links, independent media in Turkey... are subject to
regular removal of content or prosecution for news coverage critical of
senior government figures and members of President Erdoğan's family or
deemed to constitute an offense under Turkey's highly restrictive
Anti-Terror Law. At time of writing, 58 journalists and media workers
were in prison or serving sentences for terrorism offenses because of
their journalistic work or association with media.
"Thousands of people every year already face arrest and prosecution
for their social media posts, typically charged with defamation,
insulting the president, or spreading terrorist propaganda.
"Scores of former HDP politicians including mayors are held as remand
prisoners or are serving sentences after being convicted of terrorism
offenses on the basis of their legitimate non-violent political
activities, speeches, and social media postings."
Examples include:
A Kurdish musician received an effective life sentence at the age of 14 despite evidence of his innocence. Mazlum İçliwas arrested
in 2018 for allegedly being involved in killing four people during
protests in the city of Diyarbakir in 2014. He was sentenced to the
absurd prison term of 124 years and 8 months.
According to news reports and Historical Traffic Search (HTS) records, images and testimonies showed
that he was not at the scene of the crime. An expert examination later
determined that İçli was at a wedding during the protests. This accords
with the wedding videos and the testimonies of witnesses. Yet, İçli is
still in jail. He is now 23 years old.
Prior to his imprisonment, İçli played drums. All the members of his
family are musicians. They formed a band called "Koma Sidar."
Another Kurdish musician, Nûdem Durak, has been sentenced to 19 years in jail for "terrorism." She suffers from severe illnesses that threaten her voice.
Durak, 35, is a Kurdish singer and folk musician. In 2015 she was
arrested for charges related to" terrorism." She was sentenced to 19
years for "being a member of a terrorist organization" and for
"terrorist propaganda." These charges are based on "political songs":
she sang in Kurdish. Durak has complained of torture, of isolation, and
of having her guitar broken by prison authorities.
According to a report
by the Mesopotamia Agency, Durak contracted Grave's Disease (also known
as toxic diffuse goiter) and her bones have thinned in prison. She is
especially worried about Grave's Disease, which could irrevocably harm
her vocal cords so that she will no longer be able to sing. Every month,
she is taken from a prison in the city of Bayburt to a hospital in
Erzurum province for medical treatment.
"She did nothing other than sing," said
her mother, Hatice Durak. "She was arrested for singing in Kurdish... I
haven't seen my daughter for two years. People from my family went to
visit her but were not allowed to see her."
A Kurdish political prisoner, Mehmet Savur, who has spent 31 years in prison and was to have been released in 2021, is still behind bars.
Savur lived in a village in southeast Turkey, where he worked as a farmer before his incarceration. He has been imprisoned for 31 years for allegedly being a member of the PKK.
According to a news report
that includes an interview with his lawyer, Savur went to the city to
buy some materials for the field where he was working on July 3, 1991.
He was kidnapped, then sentenced to 30 years based on "witness
statements." His imprisonment has now entered its thirty-second year.
Savur, who was to have been released on July 3, 2021, is still in
prison. His lawyer, Şükran Öztürk, maintains that Savur has spent 31
years in prison with no evidence against him.
A major problem in Turkey's judicial system is that statements from
"anonymous witnesses" (or "protected witnesses", called in Turkish
"secret witnesses") are enough to be sentenced to years in jail on
alleged charges of terrorism.
Mehmet Emin Özkan, 84, for instance, suffers from severe illnesses and is still kept in prison despite the lack of any credible evidence – based on claims against him by two "secret witnesses".
Özkan says that he was arrested, tortured, and received a life sentence 27 years ago for allegedly assassinating a military commander, and burning down
Lice, his own village in Diyarbakir. However, Turkish soldiers are
known to have burned down villages in southeast Turkey, including Lice
in the 1990s, to make the Kurds, Assyrians and other minorities leave.
It was also reportedly Turkey's Gendarmerie Intelligence Organization
(JİTEM) that was responsible for certain political murders in southeast Turkey.
Özkan's lawyer says
that there is no evidence that proves Özkan's involvement in the
burning of his village or the assassination. Özkan is severely ill, yet
has been incarcerated since 1996.
On January 21, the prisons commission of the Istanbul branch of the
Human Rights Association (IHD) organized a protest in which Gülseren
Yoleri, the head of IHD's Istanbul branch, read a statement to the press and demanded that Özkan be released.
Yoleri stated that Özkan has advanced heart disease, hypertension,
thyroid and kidney diseases, Alzheimer's disease, and a cyst has been
detected in his brain. Özkan has survived in prison only with the help
of his son, who is imprisoned in the same ward. During his stay in
prison, Ozkan has had five heart attacks. However, he has not been
released as the Forensic Medicine Institute said he is fit to stay in
prison. Hospitals, however, have provided reports saying that he should not be incarcerated and needs to be discharged to obtain medical treatment.
"It has become almost impossible for Ozkan to regain his health," Yoleri added.
"If he is released and his treatment and care are continued in good
conditions, it might be possible for him to live longer and spend his
last days with his family."
A major reason these people are imprisoned is the extremely broad
definition in Turkish law of "terrorism". The extremely sweeping and
vague terrorism-related articles in the Turkish Anti-Terror Law and the Turkish Penal Code have long been criticized by international human rights organizations.
An overpowering problem is that Turkey fails to recognize its own crimes and atrocities. The Turkish military, for instance, evacuated and destroyed
villages in southeast Turkey in the 1990s. But the government of Turkey
blames others for committing these crimes and calls them terrorists.
Until the Kurdish issue is resolved democratically and peacefully – in a
way that recognizes the Kurdish right to self-determination – innocent
people will continue to be incarcerated on trumped-up charges.
In addition to Kurdish political prisoners who are imprisoned under
terrorism related charges, there are also those who are accused of
facilitating the 2016 failed coup against Erdogan.
The Turkish government has claimed, and still does, that the movement
of Gülen organized the coup attempt. Turkey further labels the Gülenist
movement -- ironically, a former ally of the government -- a "terrorist
organization." Thus, thousands of people in Turkey – both actual and
supposed supporters of Gülen – have been dismissed from their jobs for
being "terrorists" and even imprisoned, and are now suffering from
severe illnesses. Examples include:
Yusuf Özmen, a political prisoner and stage-4 cancer patient, remains incarcerated
despite a medical report saying he is almost totally disabled. Özmen, a
food engineer, suffers from testicular cancer, which quickly
metastasized to his lungs. He was arrested in 2018, when he had stage-3
cancer, and has been in prison ever since. During this time, he
underwent major surgery and was returned to prison six days later.
A teacher, Veysel Tıkaç, who needs another stent for his heart, cannot get medical treatment. A religious culture teacher, Tıkaç was arrested
in 2017 regarding the failed coup attempt. He already had stents
implanted in his heart nine times and cannot undergo an angiography due
to an embolism and kidney failure. In addition to kidney disease, Tıkaç
suffers from diabetes, gout, and other ailments affecting his heart,
stomach, intestines, and heart. His health has deteriorated further in
prison and his treatment has been delayed. "A tenth stent needs to be
placed in his heart, but [doctors of the state hospital] cannot do so
because the vein is worn out, and because of his kidney failure," a
relative said. The family's request to admit him to a private hospital
has been rejected by prison authorities.
The Turkish Twitter account "Hasta Tutuklular" ("Sick Prisoners")
monitors and posts the violations against sick political prisoners in
the country. According to the Twitter page, patients who have been left to die in prison just in the town of Menemen include:
Bekir Bayram, 73 years old, has severe heart disease and is no
longer able to walk. He used to work as a tradesman in the city of
Isparta but has become bedridden. He was arrested in 2017. A year after
his arrest, a stent was inserted in his heart due to heart failure. He
now needs to use diapers and cannot even leave his bed. According to a 2021 news report, since his imprisonment four years earlier, he lost 40 kilograms.
Halil Karakoç, 83 years old, cannot get out of bed and takes 14 medicines a day.
Şerife Sulukan is paralyzed and 89% disabled.
All are accused of being "terrorists" and of participating in the failed 2016 coup attempt.
Kamil Acar, a teacher suffering from kidney bleeding, has been imprisoned for six years. "My father's kidney bleeding continues," his son said. "The prison does not take his illness
seriously; they do not take him to a doctor in Izmir. They have not
granted him his right to probation for the past four-and-a-half months."
The Turkish government claims that it purges these people in the name
of "democracy." A parliamentary motion, however, submitted in 2017 by
the opposition HDP party, calling for an investigation into "the
political wing of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt," was rejected by MPs
belonging to Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). It is
the government itself that has not allowed an independent committee to
investigate the 2016 failed coup attempt.
By labelling these prisoners "terrorists," Erdogan's regime aims to
silence dissent and terrorize those who do not support his government.
While Erdogan's regime itself has well-documented ties with the
Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria, it accuses
its own peaceful citizens of "terrorism," locks them up with no solid
evidence against them, sends them to prison where they contract severe
illnesses, then leaves them there to die.
The West should insist that all future economic cooperation with
Turkey be linked to Turkey's improvement of human rights and respect for
international law. Future economic cooperation between Turkey and the
West needs to be conditional to induce positive change. Such economic
cooperation would be carried out only on the condition that the required
changes are made and maintained.
No human rights for the people in Turkey, and no respect for
international law in the region? Then no economic cooperation, no
commercial agreements.
The Turkish government will not change its behavior in any way unless
it sees that violations bring serious consequences. Otherwise, this
slow-motion mass murder of political prisoners will continue in Turkey,
as well as its many reversals of civilized norms, including the
targeting of others, including Greece, Syria, Iraq, Cyprus, Armenians,Assyrians, Yazidis and Kurds.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished
Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. She is also a research fellow
for the Philos Project.
Putin
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