Saturday, April 24, 2021

Following rocket attack: IDF Chief of Staff postpones trip to USA - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

by Arutz Sheva Staff

Following rockets fired at Israeli territory overnight: The Chief of the General Staff held an operational situation assessment

 

Situational assessment

The Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, held a situational assessment that ended shortly ago at the IDF HQ (HaKirya).

The situational assessment was held with the participation of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, the Head of the Operations Directorate, the Commanding Officer of the Southern Command, the Commanding Officer of the Home Front Command, the Head of the Intelligence Directorate, the Commanding Officer of the Israeli Air Force, the Commanding Officer of the Central Command, the Commanding Officer of the Israeli Navy, The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, representatives of the Israeli Police, the ISA and the NSC, along with several other commanders.

During the situational assessment, the Chief of the General Staff instructed a series of steps for possible responses and preparation in the event of an escalation of the current situation.

Due to said events and possible developments, the Chief of the General Staff decided to postpone his trip to the United States.

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304931

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Defense Minister Gantz: 'If quiet isn't preserved, Gaza will be severely hurt' - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

by Arutz Sheva Staff

PM Netanyahu calls emergency meeting to discuss rocket attacks, instructs Israel be 'ready for any developments.' DM Gantz: 'IDF prepared for escalation.'

 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday afternoon held a meeting to discuss the current security situation.

On Friday evening, Gaza terrorists fired 36 rockets at Israeli civilians. Six of them were aimed at populated areas and were intercepted.

Attending the meeting were Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White), Public Security Minister Amir Ohana (Likud), IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, Shabak chief Nadav Argaman, National Security Council chief Meir Ben Shabbat, Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, and other officials.

"I have instructed that we be ready for any developments," Netanyahu said at the end of the meeting.

A diplomatic source warned that "Israel will respond harshly to rocket fire from Gaza."

In addition to attending the meeting, Gatnz held a round of situational assessments with defense officials, as well as a conference call with heads of regional councils in the Gaza border area. He briefed them on efforts to preserve the current quiet and promised to continue with close communication and regular updates to residents, while addressing any issues that may arise.

"I've just concluded a round of situation assessments and conversations with heads of regional councils in the Gaza envelope in light of the current security circumstances," Gantz said in a statement. "Let me emphasize that the State of Israel promotes an inclusive civil culture, and protects freedom of worship for all faiths and religions, including for residents of East Jerusalem and Palestinians at large."

"At the moment there is quiet in the south, but if this quiet is not preserved, Gaza will be severely hurt: from a civil, economic, and security perspective.

He added that "the ones responsible are Hamas leaders."

"The equation is known to them and it is very clear. The IDF is prepared for the possibility of escalation, and we will do what is necessary in order to preserve the quiet."

The US State Department's Near Eastern Affairs section released a statement saying: "We condemn the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. There is no justification for such attacks."

 

Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304932

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For Progressives, Netanyahu isn’t the problem - Caroline Glick

 

by Caroline Glick

At the J Street conference, Warren became the first American political leader to openly call for the overthrow of the leader of a sister democracy.

 


Just a few years ago, Senator Elizabeth Warren was a bit of joke. With her views placing her at the leftist edge of the political spectrum, Warren was viewed as a marginal figure in national politics. She was known most widely for a cynical fraud she committed in her academic days.

A white Protestant from Boston, Warren claimed to be the descendant of Native Americans to land a job as a professor at Harvard Law School. Donald Trump turned her fraud into a parody when he nicknamed her Pocahontas.

Today, with the Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House, and with the progressive wing of the party very much the dominant force in the party, along with Bernie the Red, Warren has become one of the most powerful senators in America. On most fronts, what she says goes.

This week Warren turned her attention to Israel in a speech she gave at J Street’s annual conference.

Warren’s speech was clearly important to her because she posted it on YouTube as soon as she delivered it. She was right to want to get it out. She made history in that speech.

At the J Street conference, Warren became the first American political leader to openly call for the overthrow of the leader of a sister democracy. In her speech, Warren called on – or rather demanded that – opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “join together to begin the difficult task of rooting out corruption and reinstating the rule of law,” by ousting Netanyahu from power.

Warren claimed Trump was defeated only because all the forces from across America’s political spectrum that opposed him banded together. “Israel’s elected leaders,” she barked, “should do the same and give the Israeli people a new prime minister.”

Undoubtedly, many Israelis would be hard pressed to feel shock at Warren’s exhortation. After all, the “NeverBibi” crowd of Netanyahu haters in Israel have been saying similar things for years.

But there are two big differences between Netanyahu’s Israeli antagonists and Warren. The first is that she isn’t Israeli. Her call for Netanyahu’s opponents to oust him, and to do so through parliamentary tricks rather than elections, constitutes gross interference in the internal affairs of an ally. The second difference between Warren’s call for Netanyahu’s ouster and calls by the likes of opposition leader Yair Lapid for his removal from politics is that her call came in the middle of one of the most anti-Israel speeches ever given by an American leader.

Of course, Warren didn’t present herself as an Israel hater. To the contrary, at the outset of her remarks Warren claimed, “I am committed to US-Israel relations and I’m committed to Israel’s security and safety.”

Unfortunately, Warren’s interpretation of the term “committed” is not the first definition you’re likely to find in the dictionary. Right after pronouncing her “commitment” to the Jewish state Warren said, “But one of the most sacred aspects of friendship is speaking honestly, and, sometimes providing tough love.”

Warren’s exposition on “tough love” began with an excoriation of Trump. Trump, she seethed, “undermined fifty years of US leadership as an effective mediator by abandoning any pretense of neutrality” and favoring Israel.

That has to end. But going back to neutrality is insufficient in Warren’s world of committed tough love.

“In the past,” she explained, “US administrations and members of Congress relied on the comfortable talking point that the parties must get together and work out their differences through negotiations. That approach is no longer enough. When the imbalance of power between the two sides is as vast as it is between Israel and the Palestinians, passive calls for a negotiated solution do little more than perpetuate the status quo.”

Having made clear that tough love and commitment to Israel involves siding with the Palestinians against Israel, Warren proceeded to explain how it should be done. First, she said, Israel has to work on behalf of the Palestinians who “suffer under Israeli occupation.”

Warren claimed Israel is obligated under international law to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to the Palestinians. In reality, no such obligation exists under international law. But whatever.

Next, Warren laid out steps the US must take to empower the Palestinians. She called for the Biden administration to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians and to reopen the PLO representative office in Washington. Both moves would face significant legal challenges due to the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorism.

She called for the US to provide aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza. And she called for the US to support Palestinian elections even though, she admitted, “Hamas is a terrorist organization and it’s likely going to win many seats” in the Palestinian legislative council.

True, Warren acknowledged, supporting the election of a terrorist organization “is hard.” But she insisted, you just can’t “stand in the way of democracy or reject democratic outcomes we don’t like.”

Finally, Warren set out the final component of her tough love policy towards the Jewish state: Weakening Israel.

Having legitimized a future Hamas terror regime in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Warren turned to what she called, “the elephant in the room – America’s military assistance to Israel.” Warren, who to be sure, is “committed to Israel’s security,” said that Israel must be prohibited from using US military aid “in the occupied territories.”

In other words, for the queen of Democrat progressives, it’s fine for Hamas to rule, but Israel must be prohibited from defending itself. Leaving aside how her plan squares with her commitment to Israel’s security, it certainly will achieve her goal of decreasing the “imbalance of power” between Israel and the Palestinians.

Bernie Sanders, who also spoke at the J Street conference, echoed Warren’s call to prohibit Israel from using US military assistance to defend against Palestinian aggression in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

This then brings us back to her call to oust Netanyahu. Her policy proposals make clear that Warren’s hatred for Israel has nothing to do with him. These policies whose goal is to strengthen Israel’s enemies and enfeeble Israel are policies she and her comrades seek to implement with a “new Prime Minister” in Israel.

J Street is certainly on board with their agenda. Ahead of its conference J Street joined with Peace Now to support Cong. Betty McCollum’s bill calling for such conditioning. McCollum is one of the most anti-Israel lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Hating Israel no longer being a bar for promotion in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi promoted her to serve as chair of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. From that position, McCollum submitted a bill last week that would prohibit Israel from using US military aid in Judea and Samaria. McCollum’s bill, which falsely accuses the IDF of deliberately and systematically harming Palestinian children, is based on a report by a Palestinian NGO with intimate ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.

While J Street is growing, it is far from representative of the mainstream view of American Jews. So too, Warren, McCollum and Sanders are heads of the most powerful and fastest-growing faction in the Democrat party. But to date, the desire to harm Israel is not shared by the majority of their fellow Democrat lawmakers at least as far as military aid to Israel is concerned.

Following the J Street conference, AIPAC got a majority of Democrats to sign a letter to the heads of the Appropriations Committee opposing any conditions on US military aid to Israel. AIPAC, whose relevance wanes as the progressives’ power rises, is still capable of rallying the votes to approve military assistance to Israel.

Although the picture of progressive power to harm Israel is mixed, there are two clear takeaways from Warren’s speech and those of her Democrat colleagues at the J Street conference. The first takeaway lesson relates to J Street itself. In its heyday, AIPAC was about more than protecting US military aid to Israel. AIPAC used to spearhead pro-Israel initiatives in Congress. AIPAC lobbyists would lock onto an issue, like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and lobby lawmakers to advance it until their idea became law.

As an anti-Israel Jewish-led lobby, J Street operates much differently than AIPAC did. J Street’s job isn’t to initiate anti-Israel policies as a counterpart to AIPAC. J Street’s job is to serve as a Jewish fig leaf for anti-Israel Democrats.

Warren doesn’t seek to block Israel from defending itself against Palestinian aggression because J Street asked her to. J Street supports placing conditions on US military aid to Israel because Warren and her comrades wish to condition the aid. The anti-Israel Democrats come to the J Street conference every year to receive J Street’s Jewish stamp of approval for their anti-Israel policies. It can be assumed that the more powerful Warren and her comrades become, the less need they will have for their Jewish fig leaf. Over time, the rise of the progressives is likely to render J Street even more irrelevant than AIPAC.

The second lesson from Warren’s speech and the J Street conference more generally is that the era of bipartisan support for Israel is essentially over. Israel has become a partisan issue.

The Republican Party is a pro-Israel party. Republicans, almost to the last want to maintain and strengthen the US-Israel alliance. While a majority of Democrats will still support US military aid to Israel, most Democrats prefer to keep their positions quiet because the Democrat base opposes Israel. The Democrat leadership in both houses not only refuses to take any steps against the Israel hating progressives. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Pelosi are promoting them even as they push policies openly geared towards empowering Israel’s enemies and weakening Israel.

For many years, leftists in Israel and the US accused the Israeli Right – and Netanyahu in particular – of making US support for Israel into a partisan issue. But Warren’s address and those of her colleagues this week proved that neither the right in Israel nor Netanyahu is responsible for what has happened.

In her 15-minute speech, Warren referred to her demand that Israel withdraw from Judea and Samaria as a “moral” imperative five times. As she and her camp see it, anyone thinks Israel should maintain its presence in the areas is immoral. And if withdrawal opponents are immoral, it follows naturally that they do not share the values of Warren’s America. And since they do not share progressive values, they cannot be allies with the America of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.

As for President Joe Biden, so far, the difference between him and them is hard to find. While he may not be going down the anti-Israel path as quickly as Warren, Sanders and their comrades would wish, Biden has done nothing they disagree with. His trajectory, like theirs, is clear.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick

Source: https://carolineglick.com/for-progressives-netanyahu-isnt-the-problem/

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US, EU Help to Suppress Journalists, Political Activists - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

US taxpayer money, in other words, is going to support a Palestinian security service whose main task is to spy on journalists, political activists and critics of Abbas and the Palestinian leadership.

  • The malware, disguised as chat applications, would give the Palestinian Security Services access to targets' phones, including contacts, text messages, locations and even keystrokes, Facebook said. The hacking operation targeted Palestinian journalists, political activists and dissidents.

  • The Facebook revelation came two weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration decided to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, including "vital security assistance programs," a reference to support for the PA security forces.

  • US taxpayer money, in other words, is going to support a Palestinian security service whose main task is to spy on journalists, political activists and critics of Abbas and the Palestinian leadership. The same, of course, applies to European taxpayer money.

  • This is certainly not a way to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for Palestinians. On the contrary; by funding the Palestinian security forces, the Biden administration is actually assisting Abbas in his continuous efforts to silence his critics and intimidate journalists and human rights and political activists.

  • By spying on journalists and political opponents, the Palestinian security forces have violated Article 4 of their own law.....

  • In the past decade, the PA security forces have arrested or interrogated dozens of Palestinians over critical remarks they posted on Facebook. This crackdown has been largely ignored by the international community, specifically US and European Union donors to the PA.... This indifference has allowed the Palestinian leadership to enforce an atmosphere of menacing intimidation on the Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank.

  • Now that Facebook has confirmed the PA's responsibility for hacking the accounts of journalists and political activists, the Biden administration and Western donors are morally obligated to emend their policy of providing financial aid to Abbas's security services.

  • The donors must make it clear to the Palestinian leadership that the PA security forces are tasked with enforcing law and order and combating terrorism, not misappropriating American and European money to crush their own people.

  • The time has come to answer the basic question: Why are Americans and Europeans propping up an authoritarian regime, to the tune of millions upon millions per year, that muzzles free speech and spies on reporters and political opponents?

Why are Americans and Europeans propping up an authoritarian regime, to the tune of millions upon millions per year, that muzzles free speech and spies on reporters and political opponents? Pictured: Palestinian journalists protest a Palestinian Authority court ruling to block access to 59 websites and social media pages, on the grounds that they "threaten national security and civic peace," in Ramallah on October 23, 2019. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

Palestinians have long been accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) of spying on them by monitoring their activities on various social media platforms, including Facebook. The espionage has resulted in the arrest and persecution of dozens of Palestinians, especially those who dared to criticize PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian officials.

The Palestinians' accusations have now been confirmed by Facebook. This week, it revealed that it had uncovered the hacking activities of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS), who report to Abbas.

According to Facebook, the PSS "used fake and compromised accounts to create fictitious personas." Posing as young women, journalists and political activists, Abbas's security agency then sought "to build trust with people they targeted and trick them into installing malicious software."

The malware, disguised as chat applications, would give the PSS access to targets' phones, including contacts, text messages, locations and even keystrokes, Facebook said. The hacking operation targeted Palestinian journalists, political activists and dissidents.

Mike Dvilyanski, Facebook's head of cyber espionage investigations, told Reuters that the campaign's methods were crude, "but we do see them as persistent."

The Facebook revelation came two weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration decided to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, including "vital security assistance programs," a reference to support for the PA security forces.

"US foreign assistance for the Palestinian people serves important US interests and values," Blinken said. "It provides critical relief to those in great need, fosters economic development, and supports Israeli-Palestinian understanding, security coordination and stability. The US is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians."

US taxpayer money, in other words, is going to support a Palestinian security service whose main task is to spy on journalists, political activists and critics of Abbas and the Palestinian leadership. The same, of course, applies to European taxpayer money.

This is certainly not a way to advance prosperity, security, and freedom for Palestinians. On the contrary; by funding the Palestinian security forces, the Biden administration is actually assisting Abbas in his continuous efforts to silence his critics and intimidate journalists and human rights and political activists.

Alarmed by the Facebook allegations, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) called on the Palestinian Authority government and attorney general to launch an investigation into the internet hacking.

"The ICHR looks with great concern at the Facebook statement, given what it poses as a serious threat to the citizens' natural right to privacy and inviolability of their private lives, which are guaranteed by the Palestinian Basic Law," the organization said in a statement. "Violating these rights constitutes a crime."

As part of his effort to repress his dissidents and critics, Abbas has blocked access to dozens of websites affiliated with his opponents, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled leader of the ruling Fatah faction. Dahlan, an archrival of Abbas, was forced to flee the West Bank in 2011 after a fallout with Abbas.

Abbas's decision to block more than 50 websites has been upheld a PA court, which ruled in 2019 that the published articles and photos "threaten national security and civic peace." The court accepted the PA attorney general's argument that the websites have attacked and insulted "symbols of the Palestinian Authority," a reference to Abbas and senior Palestinian officials.

"By censoring websites, the Palestinian authorities are not only muzzling critical voices, but also denying Palestinians their right to receive information from a variety of sources," said Ignacio Miguel Delgado, Middle East and North Africa Representative at Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that promotes press freedoms worldwide.

The decision to block the websites was take in accordance with the controversial Palestinian Cybercrime Law, approved by Abbas in 2017. The law allows the Palestinian security forces to crack down on anyone who publishes news that would "endanger the integrity of the Palestinian state, the public order or the internal or external security of the State."

Ironically, in the wake of the revelation by Facebook, if anyone has violated this law it is the Palestinian leadership and Abbas.

By spying on journalists and political opponents, the Palestinian security forces have violated Article 4 of their own law, which states:

"Any person who has intentionally and unlawfully accessed any electronic system or network, has abused any information technology or part thereof, or has exceeded the authorized entry shall be liable to either imprisonment, a fine, or a combination of the two."

In the past decade, the PA security forces have arrested or interrogated dozens of Palestinians over critical remarks they posted on Facebook. This crackdown has been largely ignored by the international community, specifically US and European Union donors to the PA. The donors have further turned a blind eye to Palestinian charges that the PA security forces are spying on them through social media. This indifference has allowed the Palestinian leadership to enforce an atmosphere of menacing intimidation on the Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank.

Now that Facebook has confirmed the PA's responsibility for hacking the accounts of journalists and political activists, the Biden administration and Western donors are morally obligated to emend their policy of providing financial aid to Abbas's security services.

The donors must make it clear to the Palestinian leadership that the PA security forces are tasked with enforcing law and order and combating terrorism, not misappropriating American and European money to crush their own people.

There is good reason for Abbas to feel free to spy on journalists and political activists: the international community has long stuffed his pockets with no questions asked, failing to hold him to account for incessantly violating public freedoms, especially a free media. Now, Abbas has been caught, red-handed. The time has come to answer the basic question: Why are Americans and Europeans propping up an authoritarian regime, to the tune of millions upon millions per year, that muzzles free speech and spies on reporters and political opponents?

  • Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17303/palestinians-spying-journalists-activists

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The UN 'Experts' are Wrong on Race - Michael Curtis

 

by Michael Curtis

An honest report on racism by the British Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has riled up the usual suspects.

Cancel culture is at again and can’t take yes for an answer. This is evident in the reaction to an official report, issued as a  response to the BLM movement, by the British Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (BCRED), a body of ten experts drawn from a variety of fields including science, education broadcasting, medicine, and policing, and all of whom except one came from ethnic minority backgrounds. Published on March 31, 2021 the 258-page independent report points out that the dominant narrative on race tends to emphasize abuse rather than progress concerning ethnic minorities in Britain, and that social media, with their large user base, enormously amplifies racist views. The report painted a complex picture of the issue of race in the UK, and among other matters tries to explain why some minority groups do better than others, indicating that in the educational system black African, Indian, and Bangladeshi students do better than white British ones.

The commission was given the task of reviewing inequality in the UK, and focused on the issues of education, employment, crime and policing, and health. Contrary to cancel culture critics who argue that the official report ignored the role of “structural racism.” BCRED demonstrated that disparities persist, that racism and discrimination affect people’s life, and that racist attitudes exist in society and in institutions, and that action is necessary to tackle these attitudes.  But the BCRED report also argues that although disparities exist between ethnic groups many factors other than racism may be the root cause. The report did not deny that institutional racism exists in the UK but did not find conclusive evidence of it in the specific areas, that it examined. It concluded for example that the increased risk of infection and death from COVID-19 was explained by socioeconomic factors, living in deprived areas, crowded housing, and exposure to the virus at work, and that the outcomes were driven more by risk of infection than by ethnicity. 

The crucial argument of the report is that, while disparities between minority groups exist in many areas, factors other than racism are often the root cause.  Among the factors are geography, family structure, and socioeconomic background. The report challenges the fatalistic and pessimistic accounts that nothing concerning racial matters has changed and that seek to explain all minority disadvantage through the prism of discrimination by whites. Racism, it holds, is too often used as a catchall explanation for disparities and inequalities that affect people from minority groups.

Critics of this conclusion will argue that the factors mentioned are themselves the result of “structural racism” and longstanding inequalities, but this is a circuitous argument. The problem is indeed complex. People will disagree on how to address ethnic minority inequalities but it is irresponsible to characterize those who challenge orthodoxy and want an informed debate as “racism deniers,” rather than analysts seeking accurate evaluation of the evidence. Why are the social outcomes of health unequally distributed between different racial and ethnic groups? Why do some ethnic minority groups have higher life expectancies and lower risks of many diseases than the white majority population, despite higher levels of deprivation? One last question, why do ethnic minority students, except those from black Caribbean backgrounds, have higher aspirations at age 14 than white students?

The issue of race as the explanatory factor for socioeconomic inequalities deserves vigorous debate, but analysis should be one based on nuanced understanding of the existing acts and reality of conditions. Not surprisingly, there has been deliberate misrepresentation of the BCRED report, especially claims that the report denies that racism exists. This is a false charge. The report in fact makes clear that the UK is not a post-racial society, and that racism is a real force that can deny opportunity. The commission recommends government action to end practices that cause unjustified racial disadvantage or arise from racial discrimination.

A fulsome attack of the BCRED report came on April 19, 2021 from a group of so-called United Nations “human rights experts.” This UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent categorically rejects and condemns the analysis and findings of the report. The problem is that it flagrantly misstates the arguments, conclusions, and recommendations of the report. It falsely states that the report distorts history, upholds white supremacy, and shifts the blame for the impacts of racism to the people most impacted by it. The Working Group holds that the BCRED report repackages racist tropes and stereotypes, misapplies statistics, which lead to attacks on peoples of African descent. It says the BCRED ignores the pervasive role that “the social construction of race” plays in the inequalities in society and blames identity politics. It is critical of the BCRED’s call for a more responsible use of statistics.

It is helpful to examine both the Working Group of experts and the organization from which it originated.  It is a body of five, chaired by U.S. attorney Dominique Day.  The UN World Conference against racism,  racial  discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa,  in September 2001 adopted  the Durban declaration. Among other matters, it requested the UN Commission on Human Rights to consider establishing a working group or other mechanism of the UN to study the problems of racial discrimination faced by “people of African descent living in the African diaspora.” A year later the WG of experts was established by the Commission on Human Rights. It is composed of five independent experts appointed on the basis of equitable geographic representation. Member are chosen for a three-year term and can be renewed for an additional three year mandate. The commission changed its name in June 2006 and became the UN Human Rights Council.

However, far from being an organization concerned with human rights in the countries of the world, the UNHRC has been fixated on the issue of the State of Israel. The obsession has meant that Israel has been criticized on more occasions than the rest of the world combined. The animosity against Israel began at the beginning with the creation of the council which voted to make a review  of alleged human right abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session is compounded by the rule that Israel is the only country which by item 7 is listed on the permanent agenda, the only country that is always investigated annually.

The UNHRC is composed of 47 states, of whom 15 were elected in 2021. Among the guardians of human rights are China, Cuba, Russia, Gabon, Senegal, and Bolivia.

It is an organization that has been focused on anti-Israeli resolutions, obsessively biased against any action on the part of Israel.

The WG is a group of independent lawyers but its statements and conclusions ought to be seen in the context of the UNHRC.  It was set up to investigate and report on the situation of “people of African descent globally.”  Its five members come from Jamaica, Poland, South Africa, Philippines, and the U.S. Chairman Dominque Day is also executive director of a body called Daylight and for a year a former teacher and researcher at Al Quds in the West Bank.

The Working Group of Experts “categorically” rejected and condemned the analysis and findings of the BCRED. Yet it remains a matter of objective analysis to assess whether the UK suffers from what the experts call legacy mindsets of racial hierarchy and from “institutional racism and structural invisibility.”  The bias and lack of objectivity of the experts is fully on display with its assertion that the BCRED report fails to acknowledge how the legacies of enslavement continue to shape wealth disparities, social stratification, and the experiences of people of African descent in Britain.

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye. 

Image: UN.org

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Michael Curtis

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/the_un_experts_are_wrong_on_race.html

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China Funds Africa’s Fossil Fuel Renaissance—To Africa’s and the World’s Peril - Vijay Jayaraj

 

by Vijay Jayaraj

China is taking advantage of the West's Green obsessions to make serious geopolitical inroads into Africa.

China is pushing major advances in Africa’s energy sector. It will inevitably use the African fossil fuel sector as security for its own future energy needs. The geopolitical consequences could be serious.

Countries in Africa are in dire need of economic uplift for which a fossil-fuel supported energy sector is indispensable. In a world of growing opposition to fossil fuels, China has become Africa’s key fossil fuel enabler.

Africa Must Move Forward, and Fossil Fuels Are an Absolute Necessity

The African continent is at a critical phase of development. Decades of slow economic development are proving to be a major hurdle in tackling poverty, expanding access to basic utilities, and overall improvement of living standards.

To break free from this persistent lack of growth, Africa countries must adopt the tried and tested method of economic growth and industrialization used in Europe, North America, and Asia: a strong energy sector that aids a budding industrial economy.

Developed economies across the globe achieved phenomenal success during the 20th century by using fossil fuels to provide the energy required for the industries, households, and transportation.

But the anti-fossil fuel lobby threatens Africa’s ambitions. Even Africa’s primary funders, like the African Development Bank, have stopped funding fossil-fuel projects. This is a big blow to Africa’s ambitions to break free from centuries of poverty and the existing $50 billion per annum investment gap in Africa’s energy sector.

Denying African countries’ energy sovereignty will perpetuate widespread poverty and delay economic progress. China is stepping in to aid African countries with fossil fuel development.

The Fossil Fuel Genie: China

Despite signing the Paris climate agreement, and even aiming to achieve “Net Zero target by 2060,” China has been an active enabler of fossil fuel production and technology deployment in Africa.

Since 2000, China has funded $51.8 billion for coal projects globally, and its total contribution to foreign energy is valued at $245.8 billion. Through its $1 billion “Belt and Road” initiative, China is involved in fossil-fuel projects with over 70 countries and international organizations, including in Africa. China’s trade with Africa is already worth $200 billion per year, and its fossil fuel investments are expected to take this number higher.

China’s interest in Africa’s fossil fuel sector helps secure its imports for the future. Beijing’s own oil reserves are depleting rapidly, and the power demand from fossil fuels is projected to surge in coming decades. China has provided funds for at least 13 coal projects in Africa and plans to fund nine more.

In Nigeria alone, China’s investment in oil and gas is estimated to be more than $16 billion. It is expected to help Nigerian authorities achieve their target of producing three million barrels a day by 2023.

Three-fourths of the revenue for Nigeria’s federal budget comes from its oil industry. Continued Chinese interest (since 2005) is helping the country’s race against poverty. Around 40 percent of the population in Nigeria lives in poverty. Nigeria has also been benefiting from domestic interest in fossil-fuel expansion. Nigeria’s richest man is building a multi-billion dollar oil refinery that will process 650,000 barrels per day and create 230,000 indirect jobs once it starts operating in the first quarter of 2022.

Oil reserves off the coast of South Sudan hold a promising future and are considered the third largest in Africa. Again, China is the leading oil and gas operator in the region despite its sociopolitical instability. To make itself immune from that instability, China has hired private security to help expedite its oil and gas installations in Africa.

Chinese energy interests in South Sudan date back to the mid-1990s It has maintained a near monopoly in the region since then. Dr. David H. Shinn, adjunct professor of international affairs at George Washington University, noted, “China wants to retain its substantial petroleum investment in South Sudan to take advantage of current oil production and on the assumption that better days will come ….When that happens, Chinese companies will be well placed to develop new oil fields in the country. This is part of China’s long-term strategy even if it means tolerating short-term losses.”

In poverty-stricken Zimbabwe, Chinese investment in a coal project has raised hopes for a brighter future. Zimbabweans have experienced power blackouts as lengthy as 18 hours a day, because the government has not been able to produce more electricity and lacks funds to import it. The $4.2 billion Chinese investment in a coal project near Lake Kariba will improve the energy and economic situation.

Zimbabwe’s neighbor South Africa has been battling its own problems with the aging and underperforming Eskom, the state power utility company. China has stepped with a $4.5 billion investment in a power plant.

The list of China’s energy investments in Africa is quite long. Beijing has invested in most other countries in Africa, including some of the poorest like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Niger, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.

The anti-fossil lobby in Europe and North America has been observing China’s fossil fuel enablement in Africa. The powers in Brussels and Washington may see China’s carbon footprint in Africa as an impediment to their global renewable energy mandate.

But for those who are concerned about the development of Africa -- the conquest of poverty there -- like Dr. Mehari Taddele Maru, “China is already winning the hearts and the minds of Africans.” He argues that China has enabled the “African governments to meet their people’s rapidly growing demands for services and infrastructure more quickly… China has lifted about 800 million people out of poverty through its untraditional path of development.”

China’s growing presence in Africa and the increasing indebtedness of African nations to it could prove a geopolitical threat to Western powers and to democracy in Africa. The last thing the world needs is a Chinese-controlled African continent. International funders should resume funding fossil-fuel projects, providing economic and democratic stability in the region.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in Bengaluru, India.

Image: Raminagrobis

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Vijay Jayaraj

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/china_funds_africas_fossil_fuel_renaissanceto_africas_and_the_worlds_peril.html

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CAIR and US Islamists Have a #MeToo Problem - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

Rape, sexual harassment, and child abuse in the Sharia states-within-a-state.

 


First, Ahmad Saleem, a community organizer for CAIR in Florida, was busted after showing up to molest what he thought was a 12-year-old girl he had met over the internet. When Ahmad showed up in a car with a plate, "Invest in Children", the cops were waiting for him instead.

The son of Pakistani immigrants had headed up the local Muslim Students Association at the University of Central Florida before moving up the ranks at CAIR. Then it was off to prison.

Now it’s Hassan Shibly’s turn. The Syrian immigrant who headed up CAIR Florida was accused of assaulting his wife, threatening to kill her, and sexually harassing CAIR employees. Shibly was also accused of threatening some of his accusers, and trying to pay them off.

An NPR article noted that CAIR leaders had been aware of the accusations as far back as 2016 and that no action was taken. "CAIR National has a history of turning a blind eye to many incidents over the years, and the information is coming out. No NDA will save them from what's to come," a former CAIR employee tweeted.

A forum for CAIR victims on Instagram quickly filled up with stories of a CAIR chapter head who "was found to be sexually harassing a member of staff and other women also complained about his behavior" only to be protected by the local CAIR governing board, a CAIR leader grooming an employee into a sexual relationship, a CAIR leader using "his religious belief that men can have 4 wives to manipulate women into having affairs with him behind his legal wife's back", and a "lawsuit with an imam and a little girl."

This kind of thing happens a lot.

When the various Islamist groups set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar networks operate in this country, they use the laws of Sharia that they intend to impose on Americans.

Two years ago, Zia ul-Haque Sheikh, a former ISNA board member, and the Imam at the Islamic Center of Irving, was accused of sexually exploiting a 13-year-old girl. He allegedly tried to marry the girl, when she came of age, even though he already had two wives at the time.

Also at the Islamic Center of Irving, a security guard was accused of molesting a third-grader, and there was an incident of a foreign man kissing minors at the mosque.

Sheikh's accuser claimed that she had reported this to the president of the Islamic Center of Irving board, Nouman Ali Khan, who “discouraged her from sharing what she experienced because it would harm Sheikh’s reputation.”

Khan, an Islamic preacher and a Pakistani immigrant, had headed up the Bayyinah Academy before being accused of latching on to troubled women at Islamic events and then exploiting them. The Islamist cleric had frequently appeared at ISNA and other Islamist events, and had previously defended the Sharia practice of lashing those accused of immoral behavior.

Sheikh Usama Canon, the Islamic cleric who founded the Ta'leef Collective, had been a frequent speaker at CAIR and ISNA events, an instructor at the Islamist Zaytuna Institute, and  an advisor to the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN).

Canon, a black convert to Islam turned preacher, was ousted after allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior that included grooming women. He still remains involved in various Islamic institutions and organizations including the Downtown Islamic Center of Chicago.

Muslim feminist activists insist that the answer is more female leadership, but Linda Sarsour, probably the most prominent female Muslim activist in America, was herself accused of enabling sexual harassment back when she was working at the Arab American Association.

“She oversaw an environment unsafe and abusive to women,” a former employee, who claimed to have been repeatedly groped, alleged.

The Islamist apples rarely fall far from the tree.

Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and probably the leading Islamist figure in the West, has been accused of raping a series of women.

Ramadan's alleged assaults took place in Washington D.C., in Paris, London, and major cities around the world. The victims who have come forward included a disabled convert to Islam and former teenage students: including one as young as 14 years old.

The disabled woman described meeting Ramadan after a conference on Islamophobia and Palestine before he beat her, raped her, and then urinated on her.

Abuses happen in all religions and among secular intellectuals, but Islam is unique in that its theology provides a license for sexual abuse. A number of the Muslim leaders caught in the #MeToo moment employed the toolbox of Sharia law to perpetrate their abuses. They used the legal fiction of “temporary marriages” to force women into illicit affairs and the codes of a religion whose founder married a 7-year-old girl and where children are married off well before they hit puberty to justify abusing underage girls. And the Islamist infrastructure around them, tapping into the Sharia demand for multiple witnesses to a rape charge, ignored their accusers.

Rape and sexual abuses can happen in a variety of settings, but Islam is uniquely built to justify and protect behaviors that are crimes in the United States, but normative in the Muslim world.

The #MeToo scandals of Islamism are just symptoms of the fundamental divide between two civilizations and their accompanying value systems. The Islamists had always intended to build a state within a state. And within their organizations and communities, the state within a state operates under Sharia law, with legal, but no moral accountability, to the United States.

After 9/11, America’s Islamists increasingly came to align with the Left. The unspoken conflict between Sharia and feminism has yet to explode out into the open because there is too much at stake for both sides. But the #MeToo scandals at CAIR and other Islamist groups are a fracture point between two ideologies that are hostile to America, but also to each other’s values.

The miniature clash of civilizations within the political infrastructure of multiculturalism is coming.

Islamists have injected their policy priorities, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, hostility to Israel, hijabization, and opposition to fighting terrorism, into the Left. But the Left has also injected its own values, including feminism, into the Islamist political infrastructure.

Leftists and Islamists allied in Egypt, Algeria and Iran, among many other places, to overthrow establishment governments, only to have those alliances come apart in blood and tyranny.

The American alliance between Islam and the Left may meet the same end.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/cair-and-us-islamists-have-metoo-problem-daniel-greenfield/

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Kezia Obama Joins Family Plot - Lloyd Billingsley

 

by Lloyd Billingsley

The back story of the composite character president is once again ignored.

 


Kezia Obama, widow of the Kenyan Barack H. Obama, has passed away at the age of 81. A native of Kenya, Obama moved to the village of Bracknell in the United Kingdom and was receiving treatment there when she died. Cause of death was not disclosed.

In 1956, Kezia married Barack H. Obama and as Darrogh Roche of Newsweek reports, the Kenyan “later” married the American Stanley Ann Dunham, mother to former U.S President Barack Obama, born in Hawaii in 1961.The Kenyan Barack H. Obama, born in 1934, didn’t have much to say about Ann Dunham.

In all his documents from 1958 to 1964, housed at the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, the Kenyan Barack Obama makes not a single mention of an American wife and Hawaiian-born son. This material was first made available in 2013 but the president declined several invitations to review the archive.

Malik Obama, Keiza Obama’s eldest son, managed a foundation named after his father Barack Obama, who died in 1982. Last year, Malik told the New York Post that before the 2009 inauguration, the American president-elect “insisted I shut down the website and not continue with the foundation.” In 2015, Malik Obama made an appeal on behalf of Aunt Hawa, living in poverty and working as a charcoal seller. The president told Malik he was “broke.”

As Malik explained,  “I don’t understand how somebody who claimed to be a relative or a brother can behave the way that he’s behaving, be so cold and ruthless, and just turn his back on the people he said were his family.” According to Malik, “What I saw was he was the kind of person that wants people to worship him. He needs to be worshiped and I don’t do that.”

Malik Obama also charged that Dreams from My Father was inaccurate and freighted with “embellishments.” For example, Malik’s grandfather was not detained and beaten by British troops in 1949. As David Garrow noted in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, that was hardly the only problem.

“Dreams from My Father was not a memoir or an autobiography,” Garrow wrote. “It was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction (Garrows’ italics). It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.”  This was all apparent from the beginning.

The Dreams author describes the Kenyan Barack Obama as a “useful fiction” and “a prop in someone else’s narrative.” Everybody calls the author Barry, but the Kenyan Barack Obama supposedly “bequeathed” his name to him. By the end of the book, the Kenyan is a nameless “Old Man.”

In the Dreams novel, a poet known only as “Frank” gets more than 7,000 words. Garrow correctly identified this character as Frank Marshall Davis and explains that Frank’s “Communist background plus his kinky exploits made him politically radioactive.” Davis disappeared from the audio version of Dreams and makes no appearance in anything else under the Obama brand.

In 2015, filmmaker Joel Gilbert (Dreams from My Real Father), asked Malik Obama if he saw any resemblance between the president and Frank Marshall Davis. “There’s a great resemblance,” said Malik, who was willing to take a DNA test. Malik also said he didn’t know what he would do if the president turned out to be “a fraud and a con.”

In 2016, the outgoing president backed former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Malik Obama voted for Donald Trump and continued to support Trump in 2020. “He’s not fake,” Obama told the Post. “He tells us the way he sees it. He’s bold and fearless and he’s tough.”

Malik Obama is now seeking donations for his mother’s funeral. One relative pitched in 20,000 shillings and another only 100, the equivalent of 93 cents in American currency. At this writing, the former president has yet to respond, and his statements about Kezia’s departure are hard to find.

The composite character’s own mother, Ann Dunham, married Indonesian foreign student Lolo Soetoro in 1965. Dunham passed away in 1995, the same year Dreams from My Father appeared. In 2004 the composite character, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, told the nation, “my father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father—my grandfather—was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.”

The composite character rode that narrative into the Senate in 2004 and White House in 2008. In 2017, David Garrow revealed that Dreams from My Father was a novel and the author a composite character. That should have been the year’s biggest story, but the establishment media looked the other way and spent three years demonizing President Trump.

This is what happens when journalists serve as publicity agents for a composite character aiming to transform America into a one-party state.

 

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/kezia-obama-joins-family-plot-lloyd-billingsley/

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The Armenian Genocide Forges On - Raymond Ibrahim

 

by Raymond Ibrahim

"Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]? To continue the Armenian Genocide." — Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Facebook, October 1, 2020.

  • "At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000.... denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present." — The Genocide Education Project.

  • Not only has Turkey repeatedly denied culpability for the Armenian Genocide; it appears intent on reigniting it, most recently by helping Azerbaijan wage war on Armenia in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which again erupted into armed conflict in late 2020.

  • "Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]? To continue the Armenian Genocide." — Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Facebook, October 1, 2020.

  • These mercenaries and their Azerbaijani partners, among other ISIS-like behavior, "tortured beyond recognition" an intellectually disabled 58-year-old Armenian woman by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet -- before murdering her. Her family was only able to identify her by her clothes.

  • Answering the question, "If you could get away with one thing, what would you do?" -- asked to random passersby on the streets of Turkey -- a woman recently replied on video: "What would I do? Behead 20 Armenians." She then looked directly at the camera and smiled while nodding her head.

  • Much of this genocidal hatred should be unsurprising: Turkish public school textbooks, as a recent study found, continue demonizing Armenians -- as well as Jews and Christians.

Armenian churches have been desecrated after coming under Azerbaijani control during and since the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute erupted into armed conflict in late 2020 -- despite promises from the Azerbaijani authorities to protect them. Pictured: The Ghazanchetsots (Holy Saviour) Cathedral in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, on October 13, 2020, shortly after it was bombed. (Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Today, April 24th, is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marking 106 years since the start of the Armenian Genocide, when the Ottoman Turks massacred approximately 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.

Most objective historians who have examined the topic unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide. According to the Genocide Education Project:

"More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as "Turkey"] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century. At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000.

"Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present."

Not only has Turkey repeatedly denied culpability for the Armenian Genocide; it appears intent on reigniting it, most recently by helping Azerbaijan wage war on Armenia in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which again erupted into armed conflict in late 2020.

As Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia's prime minister, observed in October 2020: "Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]? To continue the Armenian Genocide."

During this recent conflict, which did not concern it, Turkey sent sharia-enforcing "jihadist groups." According to French President Emmanuel Macron, they -- including the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Hamza Division were sent from Syria and Libya to terrorize and slaughter Armenians. The Hamza Division reportedly kept naked women in prison while operating in Syria.

These mercenaries and their Azerbaijani partners, among other ISIS-like behavior, "tortured beyond recognition" an intellectually disabled 58-year-old Armenian woman by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet -- before murdering her. Her family was only able to identify her by her clothes.

"Armenians," according to a December 2020 report, "are being brutalized" and have "lost territory to their jihadist neighbors before agreeing to a cease-fire enforced by Russia.... Prior to violating the so-called peace agreement, the Turkish Muslims of Azerbaijan did as Muhammad commanded in beheading Christians."

The report linked to a video of soldiers in camouflage overpowering a struggling, elderly Armenian man to the ground, before casually carving at his throat with a knife.

"Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of violating the peace deal first," the report continues, "but observers note the only provocation Muslims need to attack Armenians is their continued existence."

Anti-infidel rhetoric underscores this view. A captured terrorist confessed that he was "promised a monthly 2000 dollar payment for fighting against 'kafirs' in Artsakh, and an extra 100 dollar for each beheaded 'kafir.'" (Kafir, often translated as "infidel," is Arabic for non-Muslims who fail to submit to Islamic authority, which by default makes them enemies worthy of slavery or death.)

Armenian churches that came under Azerbaijani control have been desecrated -- despite promises from the Azerbaijani authorities to protect them. In one instance, a soldier -- it is unclear whether he was an Azeri or a jihadi mercenary from Syria or Iraq -- was videotaped standing on top of a church chapel, where the cross had been broken off, and triumphantly shouting "Allahu Akbar!" Azerbaijani forces also shelled and destroyed Holy Savior, an iconic Armenian cathedral which was "consecrated in 1888 but was damaged during the March 1920 massacre of Armenians of the city by Azerbaijanis and experienced a decades-long decline."

More recently, according to a March 29, 2021 report, during just two weeks, at least three Armenian churches in the Nagorno-Karabakh region were recently vandalized or destroyed by Azerbaijani forces -- even though a ceasefire had been declared in November. Video footage of the desecration of one of these churches shows Azerbaijani troops entering the Christian place of worship, and then laughing, mocking, kicking, and defacing Christian items inside it, including a fresco of the Last Supper. Turkey's flag appears on the Azerbaijani servicemen's uniforms, further implicating the Erdogan government of involvement. As they approach, one of the Muslim soldiers says, "Let's now enter their church, where I will perform namaz" -- a reference to Muslim prayers; when Muslims pray inside a non-Muslim temple, it immediately becomes a mosque.

In response to this video, Arman Tatoyan, an Armenian human rights activist, issued a statement:

"The President of Azerbaijan, and the country's authorities have been implementing a policy of hatred, enmity, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Armenia, citizens of Armenia and the Armenian people for years. The Turkish authorities have done the same or have openly encouraged the same policy."

As an example, he said that Azerbaijan's President Aliyev had proudly stated in early March that "the younger generation has grown up with hatred toward the enemy " -- meaning Armenians.

Such hate, a precursor to genocide, seems evident everywhere. One need only listen to a Turkish man rant in a video about how all Armenians are "dogs," and that any Armenians found in Turkey should be slaughtered:

"What is an Armenian doing in my country? Either the state expels them or we kill them. Why do we let them live?... We will slaughter them when the time comes.... This is Turkish soil. How are we Ottoman grandchildren?.... The people of Turkey... have honor, dignity, and Allah must cut the heads of the Armenians in Turkey. It is dishonorable for anyone to meet and not kill an Armenian... If we are human, let us do this—let us do it for Allah.... Everyone listening, if you love Allah, please spread this video of me to everyone..."

Answering the question, "If you could get away with one thing, what would you do?" -- asked to random passersby on the streets of Turkey -- a woman recently replied on video: "What would I do? Behead 20 Armenians." She then looked directly at the camera and smiled while nodding her head.

Much of this genocidal hatred should be unsurprising: Turkish public school textbooks, as a recent study found, continue demonizing Armenians -- as well as Jews and Christians.

If Turks, who are not affected by the Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict, feel this way, why it should be a shock that any number of Azerbaijanis do, too? "We [Azerbaijanis]," noted Nurlan Ibrahimov, head of the press service of Qarabag football club of Azerbaijan, "must kill all Armenians—children, women, the elderly. [We] need to kill [them] without [making a] distinction. No regrets, no compassion."

Today, therefore, marking the anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide, we would do well to remember not only what happened then, but what is clearly being primed to happen again.

 

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, The Al Qaeda Reader, and Crucified Again, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17304/armenian-genocide

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