The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
'We urge the world not to look away,' Israeli FM spokesman
JERUSALEM — Over the past few weeks, I have watched
from Israel as a 43-minute film containing raw footage of Hamas
terrorists' Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel makes its way around the
world.
The extreme and horrified reactions in Congress, the United Nations
and even in Hollywood to the film — a compilation of body cameras worn
by Hamas terrorists, dashcams, traffic cameras, closed-circuit TV and
the mobile phones and social media accounts of victims, soldiers and
emergency medical workers — have not surprised me.
I will be haunted forever.
This
is the nightmare Israelis have been living for the past seven weeks
since thousands of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza
Strip infiltrated Israel on that fateful Saturday morning — now referred
to as "Black Saturday" — attacking some 20 civilian communities, army
bases and a music festival.
A
picture taken Oct. 11, 2023, shows covered bodies at kibbutz Beeri near
the border with Gaza, the site of an infiltration by Hamas terrorists
Oct 7.(Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
More
than 1,200 people were brutally murdered in the attack, and another
200-plus were taken hostage, including nearly 40 children and a dozen
mothers.
Even the headiest of individuals struggle to stomach such a compilation of horror.
"We
want the world to see the atrocities that Hamas did during the Oct. 7
massacre, and we urge the world not to look away," Lior Hiatt,
spokesperson of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Fox News
Digital Thursday.
"When we say that Hamas is worse than ISIS,
this is exactly what we mean," he said. "It is a very difficult film to
watch. It is the raw footage taken by the terrorists themselves and
shows very graphic images."
Hiatt said that the film has been
shown to diplomats, international organizations, influencers and
decision-makers at the highest levels, shared by Israel in more than 60
of its embassies and consulates around the world.
Israeli
army soldiers search the remains of a torched vehicle for forensic
evidence at the site of the Oct. 7 attack on the Supernova desert music
festival by Palestinian terrorists near kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert
in southern Israel Oct. 13, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
"Not
everyone can actually stay and watch the entire movie," the spokesman
said. "I’ve seen people crying, I’ve seen people leaving the room and
I’ve seen a lot of people shocked to see that those kinds of atrocities
were committed against human beings by the monsters from Hamas."
Those
who are invited to see the film are forbidden from entering with
personal cameras or cellphones. According to the Israeli army, which put
the footage together, this is not a film that will be released to the
general public. The reason, officials say, is many of the individuals
seen clearly in the film did not survive the attack, and their relatives
have requested it only be shown to people who can make a real
difference.
Split image of Hamas terrorists with civilian body bags.(Yousef Masoud/Majority World/Universal Images Group and Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In Congress, the footage was seen last week by an audience of about 300, reportedly including "Squad" member
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez., D-N.Y. While she's been vocal with
criticism of Israel on X, formerly Twitter, and on her congressional
website, she doesn't seem to have made any comment, but the reactions
from other members of Congress were similar to when I saw it in Israel.
"I’ve
seen decapitation and I've seen just beating and beating on both dead
and alive bodies," said California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa,
who spoke with Fox News Digital after watching footage. "And, quite
frankly, I'm just sick to my stomach."
New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres,
who saw the film this week at a different screening, wrote on X, "I
find myself haunted by the cries of two children witnessing their father
die from an explosion after a Hamas terrorist throws a grenade inside
their shelter. Suffering the savagery of Hamas feels like a fate worse
than death. The fatherless child is seen crying in agony ‘Why am I still
alive?’"
Indeed, that scene, captured on a family’s private
webcam, is particularly upsetting, but it’s not the only section that is
the stuff of nightmares. A selection of still photographs taken as
forensic evidence shows unidentifiable human bodies, including babies
still in their pajamas, beaten, burned and unimaginably mutilated,
including evidence of gender-based crimes, which Fox News Digital has
detailed in previous stories.
Hamas terrorists killed at least 1,400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, when they attacked Israel Oct. 7. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)
Equally
horrific is the footage taken from the cellphones of victims who most
likely did not survive or were taken hostage, including a group of young
female soldiers sheltering in a bomb shelter seconds before a
gun-wielding terrorist walks calmly inside and begins shooting. In
another clip, blood-dripping partygoers from the festival are seen blown
to bits by the terrorist’s grenades.
This
image from undated bodycam video footage taken by a downed Hamas
terrorist and released by Israel Defense Forces shows a Hamas militant
walking around a residential neighborhood at an undisclosed location in
southern Israel. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)
Another
aspect that is perhaps most jarring, however, is the footage taken by
the terrorists themselves. Many of those who carried out the barbaric
attack wore bodycams with the explicit goal of documenting their
atrocities, most likely as a way to further terrorize and torment the
Israeli public, ISIS-style, long after the attack.
They
filmed themselves hunting down civilians both in their homes and on the
streets of southern Israel, in rural communal farms and in the towns of
Sderot and Ofakim, which sit just a few miles from the border with
Gaza.
In one particularly awful moment, a group of elderly people
is gunned down and mutilated on the pavement next to their minibus. In
another scene, we see a Hamas terrorist screaming "Allahu Akhbar," as he
relentlessly hacks the head off a Thai laborer with a hatchet.
Also interspersed throughout the footage, we see snippets of exhilarated terrorists celebrating
their heinous acts, including the joyous celebration as they dragged
the decapitated bodies of Israeli soldiers and civilians through the
streets of Gaza.
A
soldier of the Military Rabbinate unit opens a container filled with
bodies killed during the Hamas attack on the Israeli southern border as
the process of identifying the dead continues in the Shura army base
Oct. 24, 2023, in Ramle, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In
my screening, which was for journalists, no one walked out in the
middle, but no one spoke much afterward. The question of how humans
could do this to other human beings hung heavy in the air inside the
auditorium.
Maayan
Hoffman, The Jerusalem Post’s deputy CEO, who was at that screening,
told Fox News Digital she believed more people should see the footage.
A
man holds a banner displaying photos of kidnapped Israelis at a rally
in Times Square demanding Hamas free Israeli hostages Oct. 19, 2023, in
New York City.(Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"It
is extremely important for more people to see the film because it’s
difficult to really understand the barbaric behavior and the joy these
terrorists had while they were hurting other people," she said.
"I’ve
been to southern Israel since Oct. 7, and I have also been at the
forensic labs, but this film really brings it all together," said
Hoffman, also a senior correspondent for the newspaper.
"It also gives us a better understanding of what the victims and families of the hostages went through on that day."
Ruth Marks Eglash is a veteran journalist based in Jerusalem, Israel. She reports and covers the Middle East and Europe. Originally from the U.K, she has also freelanced for numerous news outlets. Ruth can be followed on Twitter @reglash
The hostages were being brought to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula through the Rafah crossing before flying to Hatzerim Airbase near Beersheva.
Israel Air Force helicopters prepare to take
hostages released from the Gaza Strip, Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: IDF
Spokesperson's Unit.
Thirteen Israeli hostages were released on
Friday as part of a ceasefire deal, 49 days after Hamas terrorists
kidnapped them and some 230 others during the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200
people in the northwestern Negev.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office
identified the released hostages as: Doron Katz-Asher (34) and Raz (4)
and Aviv (2) Asher; Danielle (45) and Emilia (5) Aloni; Ruth (78), Keren
(54) and Ohad (9) Monder; Adina Moshe (72), Channa Katzir (76),
Margalit Mozes (77), Chana Perry (79) and Yaffa Adar (85).
The 13 are being brought by
representatives of the Red Cross from Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula
through the Rafah border crossing before flying to Hatzerim Airbase near
Beersheva in southern Israel.
The group was set to return home by Israel
Air Force helicopter, which the military outfitted with special blue
and pink noise-canceling headphones.
“We just completed the return of the first
of our hostages: children, their mothers and additional women. Each of
them is an entire world. But I emphasize to you, the families, and to
you, citizens of Israel: We are committed to returning all the
hostages,” stated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“This is one of the aims of the war and we are committed to achieving all the aims of the war,” Netanyahu added.
“We have a great privilege to be here at
this significant moment,” Lt. Col. ‘Yud,’ commander of 118 Squadron,
said ahead of the rescue flight. “Today marks the beginning of the light
at the end of the tunnel.”
After arriving at the base, the hostages
were set to speak by phone with their families before being transferred
to hospitals for medical exams and monitoring. There, they will be
reunited with loved ones.
The Health Ministry instructed physicians to carry out exams “sensitively” and document signs of torture, rape or other crimes.
The IDF spokesperson called on the Israeli
public to show “patience and sensitivity” and to respect the privacy of
the freed captives and their families.
Hamas released the hostages at around 4
p.m., just minutes before Shabbat began at sundown. Jerusalem
subsequently freed 39 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.
In a separate deal, Egypt announced that
it had successfully negotiated the release of 10 Thai nationals and one
Filipino who were abducted during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught. Bangkok
believes 26 of its citizens were taken to Gaza.
A four-day ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization went into effect at 7 a.m. on Friday.
As part of the deal approved by the
Israeli Cabinet on Wednesday, Hamas will release 12 to 13 hostages each
day of the four-day truce. The release of every additional 10 hostages
will result in one additional day in the pause in combat.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at
the IDF Operations Branch Control Center at the Kirya in Tel Aviv on
Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: Haim Zach/GPO.
The IDF will refrain from using
surveillance drones in Gaza for six hours each day of the ceasefire.
Israel will also allow fuel to enter the Strip during that time and
dramatically increase the volume of goods permitted into the enclave.
Israel also agreed to commute the
sentences of at least 150 female and teenage Palestinian security
prisoners, or three terrorists for every hostage that is released. The
Palestinian terrorists—many of whom are affiliated with Hamas,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine—will be allowed to return to their previous places of
residence in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
Hamas had previously released four
hostages for what it said were “humanitarian reasons.” Judith Raanan,
59, and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie were freed on Oct. 20. Nurit
Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, were let go three days later.
IDF special forces late last month also rescued Pvt. Ori Megidish from the Gaza Strip.
Last week, IDF soldiers operating in the vicinity of Shifa Hospital in
Gaza City recovered the bodies of Cpl. Noa Marciano, 19, and Yehudit
Weiss, 65. Both women were murdered during their captivity.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told
troops on Thursday that the Jewish state would “complete the victory
and create the impetus for the next groups of hostages, who will only
come back as a result of pressure.
“I estimate that in the next month or two,
at least in December and January, and perhaps longer, there will be
intense fighting of the kind we’re currently seeing, and in some places
even more,” he said during a visit with the navy’s Shayetet 13 commando
unit.
Gallant’s remarks echoed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed the nation on Wednesday night and vowed to “continue until we achieve all our objectives.”
Security sources said that the IDF's ground offensive would recommence if the Israeli captives were not freed by midnight.
Hamas terrorists march along the border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, July 19, 2023. Photo by Majdi Fathi/TPS.
Hamas delayed on Saturday the release of
13 additional hostages from the Gaza Strip after accusing Israel of
violating the terms of a four-day ceasefire deal.
A Hamas official had told AFP that the handover of a second batch of Israeli hostages to Red Cross had begun.
However, the terror group’s “military
wing” subsequently said the exchange was being delayed “until the
occupation adheres to the terms of the agreement related to the entry of
aid trucks into the northern Gaza Strip and due to failure to adhere to
the agreed-upon standards for releasing prisoners.”
A senior official in Jerusalem had
attributed the hold up to a “technical matter,” but security sources
later told Israeli media that the IDF’s ground offensive in Gaza would
recommence if the captives were not freed by midnight.
A four-day ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization went into effect at 7 a.m. on Friday.
As part of the deal approved by the
Israeli Cabinet on Wednesday, Hamas will release 12 to 13 hostages each
day of the truce. The release of every additional 10 hostages will
result in one additional day in the pause in combat.
The IDF will refrain from using
surveillance drones in Gaza for six hours each day of the ceasefire.
Israel will also allow fuel to enter the Strip during that time and
dramatically increase the volume of goods permitted into the enclave.
Over the past two days, some 200 trucks
carrying humanitarian aid have entered Gaza from Sinai, with more than
50 of them designated for the northern part of the Strip.
On Saturday, the Israel Defense Ministry’s
Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit
announced that four tankers of fuel and four tankers of cooking gas had
entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
Israel also agreed to commute the
sentences of at least 150 female and teenage Palestinian security
prisoners, or three terrorists for every hostage that is released.
On Friday, Jerusalem freed 39 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.
The Israel Prison Service said on Saturday
it had received a list of 42 additional Palestinian security prisoners
to be released in accordance with the deal. Hamas had been expected to
release 14 hostages instead of 13, and so, following the agreed-upon 3:1
ratio, 42 terrorists were named on the list instead of 39.
The first group of 13 Israeli women
and children was released on Friday as part of the ceasefire deal, 49
days after Hamas terrorists kidnapped them and some 230 others during
the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem
identified the hostages released on Friday as Doron Katz-Asher, 34, Aviv
Asher, 2, and Raz Asher, 4; Danielle Aloni, 45, and Emilia Aloni, 5;
Ruth Monder, 78, Keren Monder, 54, and Ohad Monder, 9; Adina Moshe, 72;
Channa Katzir, 76; Margalit Mozes, 77; Chana Perry, 79; and Yaffa Adar,
85.
In a separate deal, Egypt announced Friday
that it had successfully negotiated the release of 10 Thai nationals
and one Filipino who were abducted during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
The U.N. recently adopted eight resolutions condemning Israel for various alleged human rights violations, yet made no condemnation of other nations or groups, including Hamas.
This, after Hamas slaughtered nearly 1,500 innocent Israelis during a surprise attack on October 7.
And
at a time of inexplicably rising anti-Semitism. This tells you all you
need to know about the “world body.” It is nothing more than a wretched
hive of scum and villainy.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN
Watch, said via press release: "The U.N.’s assault on Israel with a
torrent of one-sided resolutions, just one month after the largest
massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and on the 85th anniversary of
Kristallnacht, is surreal.”
And morally repugnant.
Neuer added, “The only
purpose of these eight lopsided condemnations is to demonize the Jewish
state. The world should not be deceived that these annual resolutions
advance the cause of peace or human rights in any way.”
The U.N.’s
Second Committee, which focuses on Economic and Financial issues,
announced the passage of three such resolutions, including one demanding
that Israel cease the “exploitation, damage, cause of loss or depletion
and endangerment” in the Golan Heights region of Syria. Huh?
Unsurprisingly, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria drafted
and co-sponsored the resolution, which passed with a vote of 151 in
favor to six against. Only Israel, Canada, the Federated States of
Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States opposed the measure.
Eleven members abstained from voting.
Neuer called the
Syrian-backed resolution "obscene," and stated that it is "astonishing"
that the U.N. would support a call for "more people to be handed over"
to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has killed "half a
million of its own people."
Neuer noted that Assad’s forces have
killed "more than 3,000 Palestinians" in their conflicts, prompting him
to add of the resolution, "The text is morally galling and logically
absurd.”
“The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”—attributed to Zvi Rex, Israeli psychologist.
Neither, it appears, will much of the world. So, we begin to
hear—including placards held in front of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum—about the “Holocaust in Palestine.” The compulsion to turn
Israelis into Nazis and self-defense by the Jewish state into “genocide”
is methamphetamine for today’s antisemites. It seems to justify the
slaughter of Israelis and violence against diaspora Jews.
Germany’s Holocaust against European Jewry epitomized the crime of
genocide. Collaboration in it by Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and
others and passive enabling by Great Britain, the United States and
additional wartime Allies exposed a fundamental Western moral failure.
Assistance to the Third Reich from pro-Hitler Palestinian leader Haj
Amin al-Husseini and pro-Berlin, anti-British, anti-French movements in
Iraq, Syria and Egypt—and subsequent wars against Israel—did the same
for much of the Arab-Islamic Middle East. Now the post-World War II
compulsion to gain absolution from Jew-hatred and genocide accelerates.
As novelist Howard Jacobson noted nearly a decade ago, what better way
than to invert reality by falsely convicting the Jews and their state of
the great crime committed against them?
Hamas, (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement), rules the Gaza
Strip. Its terrorists ecstatically slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel on
October 7—the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel went to war against Hamas. So, 1,200 Yale University students
and faculty signed a petition accusing Israel of genocide. Yale is still
considered an “elite” institution by some status-seekers, but it
behaves like non-elite San Francisco State University.
In 2002, a mob at SFSU shouting “Hitler didn’t finish the job!” and
“Get out or we’ll kill you!” surrounded pro-Israel students. Campus
police, reportedly told not to arrest anyone, eventually marched the
pro-Israel students to the Hillel House and posted a guard at the door.
In 2017, students at the school filed a federal civil rights suit
against it for enabling creation of a hostile—that is,
antisemitic—environment. Fifteen years came and went but things didn’t improve. Only in 2019 did the school settle, agreeing to some of the students’ demands.
In a 2016 Washington Post column, David E. Bernstein,
professor of law at George Mason University, related that recent Oberlin
College alumna Isabel Storch Sherrell had recounted multiple incidents
in which other students dismissed the Holocaust as merely
“white-on-white” crime. Bernstein found the post not just a “troubling
sign of emerging hostility to Jews and Jewish concerns among
self-proclaimed social justice advocates on left-wing campuses but as an
equally troubling sign of the degradation of intellectual discourse at such campuses generally…”
That degradation requires not denying the Holocaust but
misappropriating it. Pretend that Israel commits something similar
against Palestinian Arabs. Erase the Jewish Holocaust in favor of
Israel’s fabricated “Holocaust of Palestinians,” and one advances
erasure of both the Jewish state and those who support it.
An ostensibly “pro-Palestinian” march in Washington, D.C. on November
4 drew tens of thousands. It was, asserted talk radio host Chris
Plante, the biggest racist demonstration in the capital since the 1925
Ku Klux Klan march attracted 30,000.
Participants condemned “racist” Israel for “genocide” in the Gaza
Strip. News media did not cover the event as a gathering of Jew-hating
bigots seeking Israel’s destruction. Instead, they portrayed the rally
rather as calling for “freedom” for Gaza.
Where were rallies in support of freedom of Gazans from the
theocratic, repressive Hamas or of West Bank Arabs from the corrupt,
thuggish Palestinian Authority before October 7? Nowhere, because the
hundreds of thousands in the streets of Washington, New York, London,
Paris, Berlin and elsewhere aren’t about Gazans or West Bankers. They’re about getting the Jews.
Due to the intellectual degradation—not to mention moral
collapse—Bernstein saw, today’s haters of the Jewish state and Jews
often are termed progressive. However, by embracing antisemitism they
reveal themselves as reactionary.
They haven’t blasphemed about “Israel’s Holocaust of the
Palestinians” just yet. One of their number, Rutgers University Prof.
Jasbir Puar, promoter of the grotesquery that Israelis shoot-to-maim Palestinians to
subjugate but not kill them, used to agree that Israel commits genocide
but the term was too “tethered to the Holocaust” to be useful. Not
anymore, the new blood libel is invoked incessantly.
What to do? Stop “fighting antisemitism.” Fight the antisemites,
their collaborators and apologists instead. Hit them politically,
judicially, economically and culturally. Relentlessly.
Eric Rozenman is communications consultant for the Jewish Policy Center. He is author of Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question.
The impact of the terror attacks in Israel on October 7 has been so severe that there are now “before October 7” and “after October 7”
eras. The world is not the same. The issue of jihad war, and the
evidence of 1,400 years of expansionary jihad violence, is in focus.
What Hamas did on October 7 may be new to the West, but it has many
historic antecedents. It is part of what jihad is. In the recent past,
we saw it with the Islamic State; even now, Christians in Africa are
experiencing a genocide at the hands of brutal jihadists. But now jihad has, once again, struck Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
And please, we need to stop the nonsensical view, advanced by many,
about the West caring about Israel only because it’s made up of “white
people.” If you go to Israel, you will see Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews,
B’nei Menashe (Indian) Jews, Kaifeng Jews (Chinese), and among them
all, multitudes of Arabs living their daily lives in Israel in peace. I
have personally had Arab cab drivers tell me that they hate the
Palestinian Authority and love living in Israel, where they can work and
are treated better by the Israeli government. Israel is one of the most
diverse countries in the world, and its varied citizens live together
in peace, except, of course, for the Palestinian “resistance.”
The lies about Israel being an “apartheid state” are grossly off-base,
and anyone peddling them doesn’t deserve to be trusted as a source of
information.
Before October 7, Jihad Watch, the David Horowitz Freedom Center team, along with many other organizations in the counter-jihad movement, understood what jihad is about. Hamas’ modus operandi on October 7 was not a surprise to anyone who has been following jihadist activities.
Jihad can be unspeakably brutal. It also encompasses the patient insidiousness and deceit of stealth jihad,
which endeavors to fool gullible Western countries into becoming useful
idiots. For instance, the West accepted the “Islamophobia” subterfuge
based on claims of victimhood and charges of racism and bigotry. The
term was heavily promulgated by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
in order to shut down criticism of Islam and to bring Sharia blasphemy
laws forbidding criticism of Islam to the West. Charges of
“Islamophobia” became a tool of subjugation. With October 7, the
discussion of the full ugliness of what jihad is is back on the table.
Westerners first flung open their doors to unvetted immigration of
mostly Muslim migrants on a massive scale during the Syrian war. This
mass migration continued for years, and has largely been comprised of
illegal, unvetted economic migrants. That stream broadened to include
African Muslim illegals. Now, open doors is a globalist norm.
In the globalist view, anyone can enter Western countries and people are
welcome to come in any quantity, unvetted. This created conditions that
were ripe for jihad by immigration, aka the hijrah.
It is already a success. Given low Western birthrates and high Muslim
birthrates, Western countries will be dominated by vast Sharia-believing
populations in the decades to come. History teaches that when Muslim
migration and influence increase, so does violence against non-Muslims.
Yet in the West, very little attention was devoted to monitoring the hate coming out of mosques.
What happened on October 7 shifted the jihadist scheme to the next
level, and this is still largely unrecognized. It is also causing
upheaval within both the Right and Left camps. Take, for instance, the
recent FrontPage Magazine article, “Goodbye Candace: A statement by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.” It has gotten plenty of attention. See HERE, HERE, HERE,
and there’s more, including vibrant discussions on social media. The
key point of the article was that commentator Candace Owens, an icon
among many on the Right, was reckless in her seeming condemnation of
Israel’s war on Hamas, and in what appeared to be her sympathies for
certain pro-Hamas talking points. She also gave airtime to the infamous Norman Finkelstein, who falsely claims that Israel is an apartheid state, and to Andrew Tate, a convert to Islam who proudly promotes the idea that “ISIS are the real Muslims.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the West are not merely exercising
their freedom of expression, and they certainly are not peaceful. They
are the next step in the jihad war against the West, with the jihad
against Israel serving only as a springboard. But this fact is not
recognized by many supporters of the Palestinians, including Amnesty International:
People in European countries who would like to express
solidarity with Palestine face restrictions, including banning of flags,
banners, slogans and more, in blatant violation of freedom of
expression and freedom of assembly…..Amnesty has said that peaceful
protests against Israel cannot be seen as a security issue.
The group further said that some countries, including Austria, the
Czech Republic and Germany, have been blocking the EU from collectively
calling for a cease-fire or calling out violations of international
humanitarian law by Israeli security forces….
Amnesty Intl. is wrong, because pro-Palestinian protests in the West areindeed a “security issue.” They are an expansion of the jihad “resistance”
and an encouragement to target Jews with violence. Such protests
manipulate Western freedoms. Islamic supremacists are working to shut
down the freedom of speech at any hint of criticism of Islam, but they
cry foul in fighting for their free speech rights when advocating for
violence against Israel and fomenting hatred of Jews and widespread
anarchy in their cause of jihad.
The pro-Palestinian protests are the next stage. They are promoting revolution. The chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is an open call to obliterate Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It
is a call to violence and murder — as was demonstrated on October 7.
Every Sharia-believing Muslim knows and understands that. Mosab Hassan
Yousef, a.k.a. Son of Hamas, revealed the bare truth about Hamas at the United Nations, exposing the destructiveness of Westerners who are calling for a ceasefire
from Israel. He is candid about his love for his people, but he is also
clear about the threat of Hamas and why it is imperative that Israel
wins in the Gaza war. No Westerner can identify with what Yousef has
experienced. He was raised by Hamas. He begins:
Hamas’ first crime against children in the
Palestinian societies is not arming them or encouraging them to carry
out suicide bombing attacks, it’s the religious ideological
indoctrination that I had to go through with one intention in mind: to
annihilate the state of Israel. This is Hamas’ primary goal. In this
truth there is no confusion. I speak as a firsthand witness on Hamas of
their intention. My father is one of the founders of Hamas.
And he finishes with this warning:
If Hamas is not defeated in Gaza it will inspire many
groups around the globe. They will see that few thousands of savages
can blackmail the International Community, the superpowers and bring
democracies to their knees. Many of them are watching now. Many of them
are very happy about how the world is responding and many of them are
satisfied to see the state of confusion and fear and anxiety. This is
the time to get united because if Israel fails in Gaza all of us, we
will be next .
Watch Yousef discuss the inside story of Hamas, the reasons for October 7, and why Israel MUST win:
This is why Candace Owens is gravely flawed in her disposition on this issue. She and others like her claim to represent America First, but they do not understand that fighting Hamas, as Israel is doing, is putting
America first. The ideology behind Hamas is that of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which seeks global conquest. The Brotherhood’s motto is “jihad is the way.”
What’s more, the Muslim Brotherhood is Sunni. While Hamas is the Muslim
Brotherhood in Gaza, Hamas also serves as a uniting force between the
Sunni and Shia jihadist ambitions of establishing a global caliphate, as
Shiite Iran finances and supports Hamas. Iran calls Israel the “little
Satan” and America the “Great Satan.” This war concerns America and the
West as much as it concerns Israel. [See Robert Spencer’s video on this
issue HERE.]
The jihadist aspiration is so widely held among Muslims worldwide
that the hopes that many people had that Saudi Arabia would normalize
relations with Israel came to nothing in the face of jihad. Those hopes dissipated as the Saudis published a map on which Israel didn’t exist, but had been replaced with “Palestine,” and the Saudis didn’t waste any time in condemning the “occupation” soon after the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Five months before that, Saudi Arabia had released Hamas prisoners after meeting with top level Hamas operatives. No one asked why, and few even noticed.
Some governments are beginning to wake up. Germany has criminalized the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” because the chant is indeed criminal. The Czech Republic is poised to follow suit.
“Jihad is the way” is unwelcome on Western soil for those
who see the threat clearly. They gauge that pro-Palestinian activists
are planting the seeds of division and ultimate jihad conquest.
The willfully blind on both sides of the political spectrum are a
threat to the continuing freedom of Western societies. Those on the
Right who have opposed reckless immigration policies and yet have
suddenly demonstrated a blind spot over Israel are disappointing, and
their position raises the question: how much of their pro-Palestinian
stance reflects a hitherto hidden anti-Semitism?
Christine Douglass-Williams is Associate Editor of Frontpage, regular
writer for Jihad Watch, a nine-time award-winning journalist, past
Canadian government appointee to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation
and the Office of Religious Freedom; author of "The Challenge of
Modernizing Islam" and "Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing
Islam".
The Europeans' continuing business with Iran repeats the same mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will ultimately turn on them.
Germany is the top European trade partner buying oil and non-oil commodities from Iran.
"UANI [United Against Nuclear Iran] said that research had led to
the identification of 2,500 businesses around the world, suspected of
having involvement with Iran, with hundreds in Europe. They will publish
their names if they do not receive satisfactory answers." — The
National, September 22, 2023.
The EU's trade with Iran, increasing the Iranian regime's
revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the theocratic establishment
to provide weapons to Russia, repress its own people even further,
strengthen its military presence in Venezuela and Cuba, help its proxies
escalate their goals of trying to annihilate Israel and the Jews, and
above all, top off its nuclear weapons program with which to blackmail
everyone.
If this is the damage the Iranian is doing without nuclear weapons, just think what it will do with them.
The Europeans' continuing business with Iran repeats the same
mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will
ultimately turn on them. Appeasing anyone will only encourage him to
become an even greater threat. Although Europe and the US most probably
will not do it, the time has come to stop.
The Europeans' continuing business with Iran repeats the
same mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that
will ultimately turn on them. (Image source: iStock)
In spite of the Iran's increasing involvement in the war against
Ukraine and against Israel and Jews, the European Union, as well as the
US, appear more than happy to continue appeasing the Iran's ruling mullahs. Shouldn't this make them considered accomplices?
Iran and Russia are fast making headway constructing
a plant based in Russia that will mass-produce Iranian-designed
kamikaze drones, presumably to help Moscow attack Ukrainian targets.
Yet, no sanctions or pressure have been imposed either by the United
States or the European Union just on this project, let alone Iran's
lethal nuclear program or the 60+ attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq
just since October 17.
According to a recent report by the Institute for Science and International Security:
"Now, not later, is the time for the U.S. government to
take the lead, work with partner governments and industry, and use
leverage against those less inclined to cooperate, to hinder Alabuga
from succeeding in providing the Russian military with thousands of
Shahed-136 drones. With winter fast approaching, and Alabuga's Shahed
output increasing, Russia can be expected to accelerate its Shahed-136
attacks against Ukraine's vital energy infrastructure, causing brutal
living conditions for the civilian population. A key, overdue first step
is for the United States and its allies to sanction JSC Alabuga and its
associated companies".
The EU continues to trade with Iran -- a move also in violation of the US sanctions. Germany is the top European buyer oil and non-oil commodities from Iran. Tehran Times recently wrote:
"Germany was Iran's fourth source of import during the
five-month period....Iran's import of goods in the five months of this
year reached 14.4 million tons worth $24.2 billion, indicating a 7.49
percent growth in value and a 2.17 percent increase in weight, year on
year...The average customs value of each ton of imported goods was 1,677
dollars in the mentioned five months."
Hundreds of European companies are, in fact, doing business with the Iranian regime. According to The National:
"A pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI),
has embarked on a campaign to persuade hundreds of businesses to sever
links with Iran and will hold events in European capitals to publicly
name companies that do business in the country.
"UANI said that research had led to the identification of 2,500
businesses around the world, suspected of having involvement with Iran,
with hundreds in Europe. They will publish their names if they do not
receive satisfactory answers.
"The companies have been contacted to seek 'clarification' about their dealings in the country.
"The pressure group has chosen Sweden, which has at least two citizens being held by Iran, to launch its campaign."
The beneficiaries of EU's increased trade with Iran are most likely
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The EU's trade with Iran, increasing
the Iranian regime's revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the
theocratic establishment to provide weapons to Russia, repress its own
people even further, strengthen its military presence in Venezuela and Cuba,
help its proxies escalate their goals of trying to annihilate Israel
and the Jews, and above all, top off its nuclear weapons program with
which to blackmail everyone.
If this is the damage the Iranian is doing without nuclear weapons, just think what it will do with them.
The Iranian regime, probably knowing that the European Union will not
take any action against it – a sad example of greed trumping not only
moral clarity but national security -- is ratcheting up its construction
of a drone factory in Russia, and exporting weapons to Russia. As Sky
News reported in March 2023:
"Iran has secretly supplied large quantities of bullets,
rockets and mortar shells to Russia for the war in Ukraine and plans to
send more, a security source has told Sky News. The source claimed that
two Russian-flagged cargo ships, departed an Iranian port in January
bound for Russia via the Caspian Sea, carrying approximately 100 million
bullets and around 300,000 shells. Ammunition for rocket launchers,
mortars and machine guns was allegedly included in the shipments. The
source said Moscow paid for the ammunition in cash."
The Europeans' continuing business with Iran repeats the same mistake
they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will ultimately
turn on them. Appeasing anyone will only encourage him to become an
even greater threat. Although Europe and the US most probably will not
do it, the time has come to stop.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and
advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of
Harvard International Review, and president of the International
American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
The attack on the CMA CGM Symi caused no injuries.
Part of Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drone is
seen after it was shot down near Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, Sept.
13, 2022. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
An Israeli-owned commercial vessel was attacked by an Iranian drone in the Indian Ocean on Friday, the Associated Press reported, citing a U.S. defense official.
The attack on the CMA CGM Symi container ship, which caused no injuries, came a week after Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels hijacked an Israeli-linked ship in the Red Sea.
The defense official told AP on condition of anonymity that the Malta-flagged Symi was targeted by a triangle-shaped, bomb-carrying Shahed-136 drone while traveling in international waters.
The “suicide” drone caused damage to the ship but no casualties among the crew, said the report.
It added that the ship’s Automatic
Identification System tracker had been switched off since departing
Dubai’s Jebel Ali port on Tuesday, indicating the crew believed the
vessel could be targeted.
The crew had also shut off the system previously when traveling through the Red Sea past Yemen.
The Symi is registered to Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping, which is controlled by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer.
CMA CGM, a French shipping and logistics
firm, is the third-largest container shipping line company in the world,
operating hundreds of shipping lines.
In November 2022, an Iranian-made drone was used to attack the Liberian-flagged commercial oil tanker Pacific Zircon off the coast of Oman. The vessel was also owned by Eastern Pacific Shipping.
“This unmanned aerial vehicle attack
against a civilian vessel in this critical maritime strait demonstrates,
once again, the destabilizing nature of Iranian malign activity in the
region,” said CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla at the time.
Iran has targeted numerous ships in recent years, including, in July 2021, the Mercer Street,
an oil tanker with connections to Idan Ofer’s brother Eyal. The ship’s
captain and a security officer were killed in the attack.
On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that the Houthis hijacked the Galaxy Leader vehicle carrier in the Red Sea, calling it a “very grave incident of global consequence.”
“The ship departed Turkey on its way to
India, staffed by civilians of various nationalities, not including
Israelis. It is not an Israeli ship,” the military added.
The Bahaman-flagged Galaxy Leader is registered by a British company partially owned by Israeli tycoon Abraham Ungar.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem
released a statement confirming the ship was being operated by a
Japanese firm and had 25 crew members on board from Ukraine, Bulgaria,
the Philippines and Mexico.
“This is another act of Iranian terrorism
and constitutes a leap forward in Iran’s aggression against the citizens
of the free world, with international consequences regarding the
security of the global shipping lanes,” the Prime Minister’s Office
said.
On Monday, the Houthis published a
four-minute propaganda video showing a helicopter adorned with the flags
of Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization landing on the Galaxy Leader.
At least eight armed terrorists, some
wearing bandanas featuring a photo of Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida,
emerge from the chopper and take control of the vessel, pointing their
weapons at the civilian crew as they shout “Allahu Akbar.”
Israel has bolstered its naval presence in the Red Sea area following repeated missile and drone attacks from Yemen.
The IDF said that missile boats were
deployed “in accordance with the assessment of the situation, and as
part of the increased defense efforts in the region.”
On Nov. 9, Houthi rebels
fired a ballistic missile at Eilat, which was intercepted by Israel’s
Arrow 3 in the aerial-defense system’s first operational use.
On Oct. 31, Israel’s Arrow 2 air defense system for the first time intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired from the Red Sea area.
Moreover, dozens of U.S. troops have been
wounded in more than 60 attacks on American assets in Iraq and Syria
since Oct. 17, the Pentagon confirmed this week.
In response, the United States
has on at least three occasions struck Iran-linked sites in Syria,
confirming on Tuesday it conducted retaliatory military activity in Iraq
for the first time.
On Friday morning, a four-day ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization went into effect in the Gaza Strip.
A new documentary exposes the lies behind The Narrative.
Frederick Douglass is a towering figure in American history. The
most-photographed man of the 19th century, Douglass, who passed away in
1895, made his mark as a passionate orator, writer, abolitionist, social
reformer, statesman, and civil rights trailblazer.
Fast forward 125 years to 2020, when another black American made his
mark in history and is arguably more well-known to young generations
around the world than Frederick Douglass is. Career criminal and
substance abuser George Perry Floyd, who died in an infamous
confrontation with Minneapolis police that year, became the emblem of
the Left’s literally incendiary claims that America is nowhere more
systemically racist than in our nation’s police departments, which
purportedly are waging a genocidal war against black people.
The Left predictably exploited what was later judged to be Floyd’s
murder while restrained by white police officer Derek Chauvin, to make
the suspect a martyred saint for their social justice agenda. “Thank
you, George Floyd,” a shameless Nancy Pelosi mumbled through her
pointless COVID mask after Chauvin’s murder conviction, “for sacrificing your life for justice.”
The Minneapolis intersection where Floyd died has been officially
designated “George Perry Floyd Square.” A 6-foot bust of Floyd sits on a
marble base in New York City’s Union Square. A 700-lb. statue of a
tank-topped Floyd sprawls on a park bench outside City Hall in Newark,
New Jersey. Floyd’s image, often crowned with a halo, abounds on everything from t-shirts and bumper stickers to artwork and murals from Minneapolis to Berlin to Kenya to Syria. Apart from Barack Obama and Michael Jackson, Floyd may be the most recognizable black man worldwide of the 21st century.
In a sad irony, during the 2020 “summer of Floyd” when rioting over
his death consumed the nation, a statue of Frederick Douglass was torn
down in Rochester, New York where the most recognizable black man of his
century had helped shuttle slaves to freedom in the Underground
Railroad. What a tragic commentary on how far the Left has dragged down
role models for blacks from the proud, self-made icon Douglass to a
drug-addicted criminal whom the Left holds up as an idol solely because
he was “victimized” by “white supremacy.”
Recently I wrote at FrontPage Mag about six must-see documentaries
to help conservatives understand various threats to our civilization
from the radical Left and their allies among the globalist elites. Since
then a brand new film has been released which I highly recommend. The
crowdfunded movie The Fall of Minneapolis,
written and directed by Dr. JC Chaix and produced by
multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter Liz Collin, is based on her gripping
book They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and the Death of George Floyd.
Like that book, the film exposes the gaping holes in the prevailing
narrative constructed around George Floyd’s death and the trial of
officer Chauvin, and the devastating consequences for the city of
Minneapolis in particular and America in general. The Fall of Minneapolis is now streaming for free on Rumble.
Featuring extensive police bodycam footage of Floyd’s arrest, clips
from the trials of the officers, and more than a dozen interviews with
the people directly involved, the film includes exclusive interviews
with former officers Derek Chauvin and Alexander Kueng, who spoke to Ms.
Collin from prison. The families of Chauvin and Kueng also speak out
publicly for the first time.
The documentary features current and former Minneapolis police
officers who tell their harrowing stories from the subsequent riots that
turned the city into what more than one officer called a “war zone.”
They describe the surrender of the city’s Third Precinct to a raging,
looting mob which swarmed the evacuating officers who had not been
allowed even to wear riot gear. In a heartbreaking concluding segment
titled “The Aftermath and the Right Side of History,” these men and
women of courage and integrity, who had once been passionate about
serving in law enforcement, explain very emotionally why they felt
compelled to leave the careers they loved in the wake of the riots.
They weren’t the only ones. The film notes that in the three years
since the riots, the Minneapolis Police Department – demoralized by lack
of support from government officials, targeted for violence by a
community taught to hate the police, and fearful of risking prison like
Chauvin for engaging with black suspects – has lost 380 officers.
Those of us who from the beginning were skeptical of the official
George Floyd narrative, and of the accompanying rush-to-judgment about
the four police officers who went to prison, have since had our doubts
confirmed as new details and facts leaked out. As the film shows, we now
know that despite telling officers he wasn’t on any drugs, Floyd was
later determined by an autopsy to have over three times the lethal level
of fentanyl in his system at the time of his arrest, in addition to
pre-existing medical conditions like coronary disease and untreated
hypertension that put him at high risk of death under certain
circumstances. The doctor who conducted the initial autopsy stated that
if Floyd had simply been found dead at home instead of in police
custody, his death could legitimately be described as an overdose. If
Floyd had admitted to police officers that he was on fentanyl, they
could have acted accordingly and the career criminal would still be
alive – or in any case, would not have died that day.
But the leftist media and a whole race-hustling industry led by such
despicable hate-mongers as Al Sharpton zeroed in on this opportunity to
fashion a false narrative that racist white cops (one of the four was
actually black, and another one Asian) cruelly and intentionally
murdered a healthy, innocent black man as he repeatedly shouted “I can’t
breathe!” The Left needed an incident like this to confirm their ugly
accusation that America is a systemically racist nation, and that police
departments are riddled with racism and should be defunded and
dismantled.
“They were going to use this incident for a political narrative – and they did,” one officer told Ms. Collin.
The film recaps how, as the news media coordinated to inflame racial
tensions in the city and across America, Minnesota’s pro-crime,
Antifa-supporting Attorney General Keith Ellison, who has a long history
of defending gang members (whom he has described as “misunderstood
victims”), charged Chauvin with 2nd-degree murder and had the other officers arrested too.
Floyd family attorney Ben Crump, a notorious racial ambulance chaser,
described the substance abuser as “a healthy young man.” Crump and the
family hired a doctor who conducted an “independent review” of the
autopsy; he falsely declared that Floyd had “no underlying medical
condition that caused or contributed to” his death.
The officers’ bodycam videos were withheld from the public for months
after the incident while politicians, the media, and perennial race
hustlers like Sharpton painted a racial narrative that swiftly began
tearing the city apart. Liz Collin’s film allows those previously
suppressed perspectives to blow that narrative wide open.
Like much of America, the officers in this film no longer have any
trust in our so-called justice system. One told Collin, “I think
unfortunately, we’ve come to the point now where the justice system has
been controlled by mob mentality. Social media, news outlets, peer
pressure now control the outcome of trials, investigations.”
The officers to a man (and woman) blame the city’s rioting on a total
absence of leadership and support from state and city officials,
especially: cowardly Governor Tim Walz, who threw the police department
under the bus, describing Floyd’s death to the media as “tragic and
senseless” while calling the rioting (which actually was tragic
and senseless) “righteous anger” exhibited by “people of conscience”;
woke Mayor Jacob Frey, who gave the order for police to evacuate the
Precinct (at one point in the film he is shown kneeling beside Floyd’s
coffin, sobbing into his virtue-signaling COVID mask); and then-Police
Chief Medaria Arradondo, who told the media bald-faced lies about not
having trained his officers in the restraint technique Chauvin employed
to subdue a resisting Floyd.
The Fall of Minneapolis, produced by and featuring
investigative reporter Liz Collin, is a must-watch film for blasting
through the shaky structure of the Left’s George Floyd myth and getting
to the truth about one of the most devastating blows to American unity
in our modern history. In the process, it is also a long-overdue tribute
to, and defense of, actual victims in this ugly episode: the
men and women of Minneapolis law enforcement, demonized by the pro-crime
Left, targeted for violent assault, and forced out of their mission to
serve and protect.
Epilogue: This week the Supreme Court struck down Derek Chauvin’s appeal to review his murder conviction.
Mark Tapson is the Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, focusing
on popular culture. He is also the host of an original podcast on
Frontpage, “The Right Take With Mark Tapson”. Follow him on Substack.
"Some cases do land in courts. But it is not easy for the victims to win them. Sometimes, the victims are treated as if they were the perpetrators...." -- bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.
"These rapes are
unfortunately customary and serve a specific purpose. It is believed
that once no longer a virgin, a girl would become unsuitable for
marriage, even if she belongs to a religious minority, and her only
choice would be to marry one of her captors. Mishal was then forcibly
converted to Islam and married to one of the kidnappers." –
bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.
"Some cases do land in courts. But it is not easy for the victims
to win them. Sometimes, the victims are treated as if they were the
perpetrators...." -- bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.
"As we returned back to our grass-thatched roof house, we found
some of the debris around the house. On entering the house, we found
there was a threatening message, 'Today if we find you around, we shall
destroy you with the house. You have become an embarrassment to our
Muslim family by joining a wrong religion.'" – morningstarnews.org,
October 4, 2023, Uganda.
Regrettably, this scenario—a fire claims Christian lives, only
for Muslim authorities to say it was "accidental"—has played out many
times in the Middle East.
On October 17, "suspected Islamic terrorists" murdered three
Christians — a Ugandan tour guide and a European couple — in Queen
Elizabeth National Park in Uganda, on the accusation that they were
"supporting Christians in Uganda and coming in the name of tourists."
Pictured: Crater Lake in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. (image
source: Robert Weinkove/Wikimedia Commons)
The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of October 2023.
The Sexual Abuse and Forced Conversion of Christians
Pakistan: Three Muslim men abducted and violently gang-raped
a 16-year-old Christian girl, Persis Masih, on her way to Sunday church
service. The girl's father, a pastor, and most of the family had left
early for church, while Persis continued to get ready. She never
appeared at church and was not home when they returned. After
immediately filing a report with police, "the family spent a sleepless
night contacting relatives in the hope of finding Persis," according to
the Oct. 1 report. Eventually,
"[T]he family heard Persis moaning for help outside their
gate. The culprits, realizing the severity of her condition, had
callously dropped her off. Supported by her elder brother Yessi Masih,
Persis was brought inside the house, her physical and emotional state in
shambles... [After rushing her to a hospital, the] medical examination
revealed the horrifying truth—Persis had been gang-raped. Despite the
trauma, she bravely identified one of the perpetrators, Muhammad Atif,
thanks to the assistance of the local police and CCTV footage."
Police acted quickly and arrested Atif before he fled the region.
After commending police for this uncharacteristic move—police in
Pakistan are notorious for turning a blind eye to the persecution of
Christians—a local reporter, Aliyas Wattu, remarked that, "Persis was also beaten, and she bears visible marks of violence on her body." The report concludes
that "Persis' suffering did not end with the assault; she bore visible
marks of violence. The family, already grappling with the emotional
toll, faces an arduous journey towards justice."
In a separate incident, "a gang of armed robbers subjected two Christian women to sexual assault at gunpoint while keeping the men tied up and confined to a room." According to the report,
"This nightmarish event occurred in the early hours of September 14th."
Shortly after midnight, when the entire family was asleep, six men
quietly broke into the Christian household. The father, Intezar Masih,
his wife Rani (41), his sister Farzana (36), and children were, "to
their sheer horror," rudely awakened to find themselves "encircled by
six masked men brandishing firearms." According
to Intezar, "We were warned not to make any noise, as the armed robbers
were armed with pistols and heavy guns." Two of the men held the family
hostage, as the other four ransacked the house, "looting everything
they could lay their hands on." Then they took Intezar and his children
to a separate room: "Two of the robbers," he said,
"forcibly dragged me by my shoulder, took the children inside the room,
beat me severely, and eventually tied me up with a rope before
departing."
"The children and their patriarch were left bound and
confined to the room, while Rani Bibi (41 years old) was taken to
another room, where she cried out for mercy while enduring horrific
sexual assaults by two of the men. Simultaneously, two other assailants
took Farzana Bibi into a separate room, where she became the victim of
sexual assault at gunpoint.
"After this horrendous ordeal, Rani Bibi was brought back to the
veranda, only to be taken to Mr. Masih's welding workshop, where the
remaining robbers subjected her to further sexual violence. The
criminals left the family in a state of utter pain, trauma, and fear,
warning them of dire consequences if they attempted to pursue them or
contact the police...."
Discussing this incident, Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Asian Christian Association, said:
"As the sole Christian family in the area, it appears
that this crime targeted them due to their vulnerability and the sense
of impunity that perpetrators often feel when targeting marginalized
communities."
Finally, a separate Oct. 24 report
documents other previous cases of abduction, rape, and forced
conversion of Christian girls. In one, Mishal, a 15-year-old Christian
girl was "abducted at gunpoint," then "gang-raped by four men":
"These rapes are unfortunately customary and serve a
specific purpose. It is believed that once no longer a virgin, a girl
would become unsuitable for marriage, even if she belongs to a religious
minority, and her only choice would be to marry one of her captors.
Mishal was then forcibly converted to Islam and married to one of the
kidnappers."
Six months later, when her abductors were distracted with a funeral,
Mishal managed to escape and return to her father's home. But when she
and her father went to report the kidnappers and rapists to police, "Not
only did the officers refuse to investigate, but they also informed
Mishal's captors of what was going on. The girl and her father had to go
into hiding for fear of being killed."
After pointing out that "Christian and Hindu girls continue to be
abducted, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to Muslim men
in Pakistan," the report adds:
"This obnoxious practice would not prosper without some
complicity by police and courts of law. Some cases do land in courts.
But it is not easy for the victims to win them. Sometimes, the victims
are treated as if they were the perpetrators.... Meanwhile, the business
of kidnapping minority religion girls continues. The whereabouts of
another Christian girl, Tabita, daughter of Razzak Mashi, kidnapped by
four men on September 29, are still unknown. Her case was reported to
the police on October 5, together with a birth certificate proving she
is twelve years old, as her captors will probably claim, as usual,
[that] she is really 18. Whether the police will do anything about
Tabita is a different question."
Nigeria: Muslims, including college personnel, abducted and forcibly converted Dorcas, a 20-year-old Christian college student to Islam. According to Campus Mission Watch, a Christian watchdog group, during a brief communication with her parents,
"Miss Dorcas told her parents that she was taken to an
imam's house, the imam of Sultan Bello Mosque, in the city of Kaduna,
where she was kept against her will and threatened not to disclose that
she was coerced into embracing Islam, before being brought back to
campus. She also told her parents that one Muslim woman, Mallama Amina,
an academic staff in the Department of Biochemistry, was appointed as
her godmother, who facilitated her forceful conversion to Islam through
the renouncing of Christianity and the recitation of Kalma Sha'ada, the
Islamic creed.... Dorcas remains with the Muslim leaders and has not
been allowed to have any contact with her parents or other Christians on
campus. This development has created fear in Christians on KASU campus,
forcing some to want to leave."
Campus Mission Watch added
that a well-financed campus group called the Council of Muslim Sisters,
which is supported by Muslim leaders in Kaduna state and the
Muslim-controlled state government, has implemented a plan to forcibly
convert Christians to Islam:
"This group is made up of highly placed and influential
female staff in the university. Some of them are professors, directors,
senior lecturers from academic and non-academic cadres. They are well
coordinated and professionally structured. They have agents at the top
management level, directorate levels, faculty levels, department levels,
and even at the Student Union levels."
Attacks on Muslim Converts to Christianity
Kyrgyzstan: Converts to Christianity are openly being targeted
for persecution in the Central Asian Muslim nation. According to an
October report:
"[V]ideos inciting hatred towards Kyrgyz Christians who have converted from Islam are being widely distributed on the internet.
"In these videos, Christian believers are called sectarians (strong
supporters of a minority group or 'sect') and traitors of the nation and
native faith. The creators of these videos are calling for people to
break into Christian communities and churches to capture the faces of
believers on video and then distribute their images online to encourage
persecution."
As an example, the article tells the story of Mahri (not her real name), aged 24:
"[She] used to go to church with her mother, a former
Uyghur Muslim. Mahri's mother's relatives were completely against her
Christian faith, and didn't offer any help when Mahri's dad passed away.
"Unfortunately, Mahri's mother also died, and Mahri went to live with
her aunt – who has completely forbidden her to believe in Jesus, attend
house church meetings and have any communication with other believers.
Every time Mahri leaves the house, her aunt bombards her with questions:
'Where are you going? Who are you seeing?' Mahri's phone is constantly
checked, and she's not even allowed to attend school.
"Recently, Mahri was able to attend church where she shared her situation. She's understandably anxious and exhausted."
Egypt and Yemen: According to an Amnesty International:
"Yemeni asylum seeker, Abdul-Baqi Saeed Abdo, who has
been arbitrary detained in Egypt for over 20 months, is at risk of
deportation to Yemen, where his life would be at risk. Abdul-Baqi Saeed
Abdo and his family were forced to flee Yemen for Egypt in 2014 after
being subjected to violent attacks with impunity following his
announcement of his conversion to Christianity on social media. Egyptian
security forces arrested him on 15 December 2021 and forcibly
disappeared [sic] him for two weeks, before bringing him for
interrogations before a prosecutor, who ordered his pretrial detention
pending investigations on bogus charges of 'joining a terrorist group'
and 'defamation of the Islamic religion'. He is held solely for
exercising his rights to freedom of expression, conscience and belief
and must be immediately released; any plans to deport him must be
halted."
Uganda: Soon after converting and attending churches in late
September, 2023, Sula Mugudi, 70, and his wife, Aisha, 62, returned to
their modest home only to find it destroyed by their outraged relatives:
"As we returned back to our grass-thatched roof house, we
found some of the debris around the house. On entering the house, we
found there was a threatening message, 'Today if we find you around, we
shall destroy you with the house. You have become an embarrassment to
our Muslim family by joining a wrong religion.'"
They immediately fled: "It was a very difficult moment for us – no place to stay, no clothing and beddings. According to a pastor who helped them:
"When the couple arrived at our church, they looked
shaken and fearful. The church has hidden them for the sake of the
church as well for the lives of these two new Christians. We need
prayers for God's protection and providence."
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Democratic Republic of Congo: On Oct. 24, Muslims of the Allied Democratic Forces, which is connected to the Islamic State, slaughtered
at least 39 Christians, including 12 children, in a spate of attacks.
"Many of these people are Christians, they were servants of God, and
teachers in our schools," related Reverend Gabriel, a church leader in Oicha. "It is the church that is under attack."
This is only the latest attack. The same terrorist group massacred 17 Christians and torched two churches in July. Before that, in June, they hacked 12 people to death — four children, four women, and four men — in the nation, which is predominately Christian. According to officials, the Muslims "were opening doors and decapitating people with hatchets and machetes."
"We don't need humanitarian aid, but we do want security," one frustrated local said discussing these latest massacres of October. According to another local, Christians are "in despair and disillusionment. They are losing hope."
"This is a bad situation," said Pastor Paluku Bagheni Joseph, adding:
"Really pray for us so that everything [meaning the
funerals of 39 recently slain] can happen in peace, and pray for the
situation we are going through, because the fear increased when the
enemies entered the city. Your prayers are very important to us at this
time when we are going through pain."
Uganda: On Oct. 17, "suspected Islamic terrorists" murdered
three Christians—a Ugandan tour guide and a European couple—in Queen
Elizabeth National Park, on the accusation that they were "supporting
Christians in Uganda and coming in the name of tourists."
Oct. 2:
Muslim Fulani herdsmen raided a Christian village during the night "and
sprayed bullets on the bodies of innocent people while sleeping,"
killing eight, an eyewitness said.
Oct. 29:
"Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists" slaughtered six Christians in
Benue state, "following the slaughter of 10 others earlier this month."
Oct. 17: Muslim terrorists slaughtered a Christian doctor and his driver with machetes.
Sept. 30:
Terrorists killed one Christian and abducted 19 others, "a day after
gunmen in the country's southwest intercepted a church bus and kidnapped
25 members."
Oct. 7: Terrorists kidnapped at least 30 Christians
General Muslim Persecution of Christians
Uganda: On Oct. 10, six Muslims shouting, "Kafir [Infidel]!" and the jihadist slogan "Allah akbar" [Allah is greatest] attacked 27-year-old Robert Settimba, a well-known Christian street preacher, as he was returning home. According to his friend, an eyewitness:
"The Muslims got hold of him and started kicking and
boxing him as others came beating him with sticks, as I watched from a
distance, helpless. Some bystanders were shouting at me to disappear or
else the attackers will also beat me up. I then left my friend lying
down."
He ran to a nearby church to recruit some aid. When they returned,
they found Robert unconscious and took him to a local hospital.
Iraq: On Oct. 3, more than 100 Christians were burned alive
after a fire broke out during a Christian wedding ceremony; another 150
attendees were seriously injured. Nearly 60 of those killed were
directly related to the bride and groom. In a press conference held on
the same day, the Iraqi government announced
that its investigation had "conclusively concluded" that the fire was
"accidental," caused by fireworks, and "not intentional at all." Minutes
later, the Syriac Church slammed the announcement: "We reject it [the
conclusion], we don't accept it," said
the Archbishop of Mosul Benedictus Younan Hanno, adding that "political
conspiracies" might be afoot. Regarding the claim that the fire was
caused by fireworks, "there are tens of videos," the archbishop added, "showing that they were not the reason." After also categorically rejecting the fireworks claim, the bridegroom, Rivan, 27, insisted that the fore has been cause by arson:
"We demand the rights of those whose blood was spilt. Why
did their blood have to be spilled? We demand their rights and we
demand the perpetrator of this action, him and all who are behind him.
We demand an international investigation, not a local or federal
investigation."
Regrettably, this scenario—a fire claims Christian lives, only for Muslim authorities to say it was "accidental"—has played out many times in the Middle East.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches and Symbols
Italy: On Oct. 6, Arabic graffiti
was found on the bell tower of a church in Sacille. In translation, the
Arabic stated the primary half of the Islamic credo: "There is no god
but Allah" (the continuation is "and Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah"). This was not the first time the church was targeted. According
to the report, in December of 2022, the church
"reported the theft of the Baby Jesus displayed in the
parish nativity scene in the church square. Shortly after that, the
sacristy doors were unhinged and everything within the sacristy was
found desecrated, causing thousands of euros of damage. More recent to
this incident, the parish recorded acts of vandalism in the cemetery,
where crosses were kicked down. Also, a few weeks ago a few teenagers
occupied the oratory without consent, abandoning bottles of spirits,
cigarette butts and remnants of joints.
Separately, on Oct. 11, four teenage boys vandalized, desecrated, and
tried to torch the Church of Carmine in Noci. Among other things, "the
children also blasphemed heavily, danced, and undressed." One reportsaid:
"The children were in the church for 30 minutes when they
broke off the doors of the tabernacle, tampered with the organ, threw
hand sanitizer on the floor, threw waste inside the church, and set fire
in the skylight. Luckily the fire did not spread to other parts of the
church. The teenagers also damaged the security cameras, but by then the
footage of their actions had already been archived."
They were accordingly found by police. Because the incident "raised
anger and indignation among the citizens of Noci," a meeting was held
with the boys and their parents. Having been caught, they "sincerely
apologized."
Spain: Two churches were vandalized in Andalusia, which contains the nation's second largest Muslim community. According to the report,
"Two churches were vandalized in Andalusia: the Virgen de
las Flores Convent Church in Malaga and the Puerto Real Hospital Chapel
in Cadiz. The attacks happened in September of 2023 and were reported
on October 3, 2023. In the Puerto Real Hospital the perpetrators took a
consecrated host, while in the Virgen de las Flores Convent they
scattered the consecrated hosts on the floor, took the mantle of Mary
and the image of Baby Jesus."
Germany: Two churches in a region with a large Muslim presence were vandalized by a group of "youth" loitering in the darkness. According to the report,
"During October, two churches in the city of Bonn in
Germany were vandalized: paving stones were thrown into the windows of
the Saint Lambert Catholic church in mid-October, then, closer to the
end of the month, the billboards of the Saint Elisabeth church were
tagged. Members of the parish council tell the local press that the
exterior of the church is regularly vandalized, as young people meet
under the church porch until late at night. This has already been
reported to the police numerous times – without any solution being
found."
France: On Oct. 7—the same day as Hamas massacred 1,200
Israelis—three Muslim men (described in reports only as "North
Africans") entered into the Saint Christophe church in Tourcoing during a
wedding was being and began to disrupt
the service. When a woman asked them to "respect the religious service"
or else she would call police, they threatened her with "death by decapitation," before fleeing, the report stated. Discussing this incident, a police source said that "The parish priest regularly receives threats without reporting them to the police."
Separately, a beloved Christian statue of Beatrice of Savoy in Echelles, which depicts her holding a cross, was found decapitated
on Oct. 31. The head was nowhere to be found. Beatrice, a thirteenth
century countess, is renowned for her charitable disposition and
generous donations to the poor. "The case," according to the report, "remains mysterious."
Greece: On Oct. 19, a Syrian man barged
into the Saint Panteleimonas Church in Athens, where he began shouting
the jihadist war-cry, "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is Greatest") and engaging
in Islamic prostrations. Police arrived on the scene and restrained him
despite his resistance. A large knife was found in his backpack.
According to the report,
"The man is known to the authorities as he has created similar problems
in the past, while he was once taken for a psychiatric examination."
Germany and Sweden: Two Syrian brothers who were arrested for
planning to bomb a church in Sweden in retaliation to a Koran
desecration there were nevertheless prosecuted in Germany. To quote from
the Oct. 4 report,
"A pair of Syrian brothers from Hamburg and Kempten
(Bavaria) wanted to kill many people in an attack with explosives. The
scene of the crime was to be a church in Sweden."
One of the Muslim brothers, 29, has been charged
with "attempted membership in a terrorist organization abroad,
preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state and
financing of terrorism." The other brother, 24, was charged with
"probable cause for supporting a terrorist organization abroad and
aiding and abetting the financing of terrorism."
Uganda: On Sunday, Oct. 15, police managed to thwart an Islamic terror plot to bomb two churches. The bombs were concealed as gifts and mailed to local pastors. Police managed to locate and defuse them on time.
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of
Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such
persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place
irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents
that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.
