English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For January 01/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

#elias_bejjani_news
 

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Bible Quotations For today

And when, after eight days, the time came for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name which the angel had given to him before his birth
The word “Jesus” means in Hebrew “Yeshua” meaning “God saves,” a name that used to refer to a specific message regarding the prophets
Luke 02/21-40: And when, after eight days, the time came for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name which the angel had given to him before his birth. And when the necessary days for making them clean by the law of Moses had come to an end, they took him to Jerusalem to give him to the Lord (As it says in the law of the Lord, Every mother's first male child is to be holy to the Lord), And to make an offering, as it is ordered in the law of the Lord, of two doves or other young birds. And there was then in Jerusalem a man whose name was Simeon; and he was an upright man, fearing God and waiting for the comfort of Israel: and the Holy Spirit was on him. And he had knowledge, through the Holy Spirit, that he would not see death till he had seen the Lord's Christ. And full of the Spirit he came into the Temple; and when the father and mother came in with the child Jesus, to do with him what was ordered by the law, Then he took him in his arms and gave praise to God and said, Now you are letting your servant go in peace, O Lord, as you have said; For my eyes have seen your salvation, Which you have made ready before the face of all nations; A light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. And his father and mother were full of wonder at the things which were said about him. And Simeon gave them his blessing and said to Mary, his mother, See, this child will be the cause of the downfall and the lifting up of great numbers of people in Israel, and he will be a sign against which hard words will be said; (And a sword will go through your heart;) so that the secret thoughts of men may come to light. And there was one, Anna, a woman prophet, the daughter of Phanuel, of the family of Asher (she was very old, and after seven years of married life She had been a widow for eighty-four years); she was in the Temple at all times, worshipping with prayers and going without food, night and day. And coming up at that time, she gave praise to God, talking of him to all those who were waiting for the freeing of Jerusalem. And when they had done all the things which were ordered by the law of the Lord, they went back to Galilee, to Nazareth, the town where they were living. And the child became tall and strong and full of wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

 

Question: "What sort of New Year’s resolution should a Christian make?"
GotQuestions.org/December 31/2020
Answer: The practice of making New Year’s resolutions goes back over 3,000 years to the ancient Babylonians. There is just something about the start of a new year that gives us the feeling of a fresh start and a new beginning. In reality, there is no difference between December 31 and January 1. Nothing mystical occurs at midnight on December 31. The Bible does not speak for or against the concept of New Year’s resolutions. However, if a Christian determines to make a New Year’s resolution, what kind of resolution should he or she make?
Common New Year’s resolutions are commitments to quit smoking, to stop drinking, to manage money more wisely, and to spend more time with family. By far, the most common New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, in conjunction with exercising more and eating more healthily. These are all good goals to set. However, 1 Timothy 4:8 instructs us to keep exercise in perspective: “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” The vast majority of New Year’s resolutions, even among Christians, are in relation to physical things. This should not be. Many Christians make New Year’s resolutions to pray more, to read the Bible every day, and to attend church more regularly. These are fantastic goals. However, these New Year’s resolutions fail just as often as the non-spiritual resolutions, because there is no power in a New Year’s resolution. Resolving to start or stop doing a certain activity has no value unless you have the proper motivation for stopping or starting that activity. For example, why do you want to read the Bible every day? Is it to honor God and grow spiritually, or is it because you have just heard that it is a good thing to do? Why do you want to lose weight? Is it to honor God with your body, or is it for vanity, to honor yourself? Philippians 4:13 tells us, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” John 15:5 declares, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” If God is the center of your New Year’s resolution, it has chance for success, depending on your commitment to it. If it is God’s will for something to be fulfilled, He will enable you to fulfill it. If a resolution is not God-honoring and/or is not in agreement with God’s Word, we will not receive God’s help in fulfilling the resolution. So, what sort of New Year’s resolution should a Christian make? Here are some suggestions: (1) pray to the Lord for wisdom (James 1:5) regarding what resolutions, if any, He would have you make; (2) pray for wisdom as to how to fulfill the goals God gives you; (3) rely on God’s strength to help you; (4) find an accountability partner who will help you and encourage you; (5) don’t become discouraged with occasional failures; instead, allow them to motivate you further; (6) don’t become proud or vain, but give God the glory. Psalm 37:5-6 says, “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 31/2020/January 01/2020

Lebanon Reports Record High of 2,878 Daily Covid-19 Cases
Ministry of Health: 3507 new coronavirus cases, 12 deaths
Aoun signs decree on general mobilization extension
Aoun meets with Abdel Samad, Lebanon's maritime negotiating delegation, MP Rahma: For facing challenges with will and determination
Bassil via Twitter: 2021 will be the first year of the age of a country that will rise again with the strength of its people
Foreign Ministry deplores Yemen's Aden blasts
Geagea Says Futile Waiting for Govt in Light of Current Ruling Authority
Lebanon, UK Sign Post-Brexit Trade MoUs
Foreign Ministry Deplores Yemen’s Airport Blasts
Geagea Says Futile Waiting for Govt in Light of Current Ruling Authority
Lebanon, UK Sign Post-Brexit Trade MoUs
Foreign Ministry Deplores Yemen’s Airport Blasts
Lebanese start-up funding threatened...2020, where things stand/Lara Shabb/Executive Magazine/December 31/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 31/2020/January 01/2020

Israel admits to striking 50 Syria targets in 2020
Poster of Iran’s Soleimani sparks controversy in Gaza Strip
Iranian experts plotted attack on Aden airport: Yemeni PM
Yemen Govt Vows to Restore Stability after Deadly Attack
Brexit to Take Full Effect as UK Leaves EU Single Market
Egypt Clears Police Officers in Italian Student Murder
U.N. Chief Seeks Monitors for Libya's Fragile Ceasefire
Jihadist Attack Kills 30 Soldiers in East Syria
Houthis seen behind attack on Aden airport, in bid to obstruct Riyadh agreement
The Trump legacy that can never be erased
Trump ends term as 'most admired man in America'
Greenblatt: Trump will continue to be a force for good
 

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 31/2020/January 01/2020

More than an angle to look at Aden airport blasts/Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
Came the Islamic Revolution/The theocrats who seized power in Iran are still widely misunderstood/Clifford D. May/he Washington Times/December 31/2020
Turkey: Turks Celebrate Nazi Sympathizer/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/December 31/ 2020 We Need a Global Alliance to Defend Democracies/Richard Kemp/Gatestone Institute/December 31/2020
Khamenei’s early intervention in Iran’s upcoming election betrays his fears for the future/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
 

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 30-31/2020

Lebanon Reports Record High of 2,878 Daily Covid-19 Cases
Naharnet/December 31/2020
Lebanon reported a record high of 2,878 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday.
In its daily statement, the Health Ministry said 13 fatalities were also recorded over the past 24 hours, which raises the overall number of cases to 177,996 and the death toll to 1,443.
The country has meanwhile recorded 126,460 recoveries. Lebanon has seen a major surge in coronavirus cases in recent months, putting its health sector under strain amid an unpredented economic crunch and following August's massive blast at Beirut port that temporarily knocked a number of hospitals out of service.

Ministry of Health: 3507 new coronavirus cases, 12 deaths
NNA/December 31/2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced 3507 new cases of coronavirus infection, which raises the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 181,503.
12 deaths have been recorded over the past 24 hours.

Aoun signs decree on general mobilization extension
NNA/December 31/2020
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, and Caretaker Prime Minister, Dr. Hassan Diab, as well as concerned ministers, signed the decree #7315 to extend general mobilization from 1/1/2021 until 3/31/2021 inclusive.

Aoun meets with Abdel Samad, Lebanon's maritime negotiating delegation, MP Rahma: For facing challenges with will and determination
NNA/December 31/2020
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, called on the Lebanese people to face the challenges that Lebanon welcomes in the New Year, with will and determination , because by doing this, appropriate atmosphere can be created to overcome these challenges, especially the Corona pandemic, which requires all of us to be aware of dealing with it realistically and adhering to all the measures that it takes to limit its spread. President Aoun affirmed that the new year would bring about a solution to the difficult economic situation that Lebanon is going through, especially after the explosion of Beirut port, considering that this requires the existence of an effective government, and it is hoped that its formation will not be delayed any longer.
Minister of Information
President Aoun received Caretaker Minister of Information, Dr. Manal Abdel Samad Najd, at Baabda Palace, and discussed with her the media situation in the country.
After the meeting, Minister Abdel Samad told Journalists:
"I visited His Excellency the President to congratulate him on the holidays, and presented the bitter reality that the media is experiencing today, and the proposals to improve the situation, especially since the media is just a mirror of our reality and reflects what is happening, and if we want to change this reality, we should not break the mirror, but rather improve conditions. I proposed to the President of the Republic the establishment of the Beirut Humanitarian Prize, to be launched periodically on August 4 of each year, in memory of the martyrs of the explosion in the port of Beirut. The aim of it is to support initiatives and actions that promote humanity and to reject hatred, violence."
She added: "We also touched on the issues of the Ministry of Information and its current role in light of the crises and the media plans set, and there were a number of wishes and recommendations hoping to rise and start the new year under an effective government capable of managing matters, especially emergency ones, in order to find solutions as soon as possible. Hope everyone has a glorious holiday away from the Corona epidemic, free of diseases, full of hope, optimism, achievements, and a new government."Question: The number of Corona cases is increasing. Is there a tendency to lock down the country again?
Answer: The closing is linked to the decision of the Preventive Measures Committee, which in turn awaits the results of the New Year's Eve, and if these results are similar to what happened on the Christmas Eve, which was disastrous, then any decision can be taken in a way that serves control of matters and observance of public safety.
Meeting of the negotiating delegation
President Aoun chaired a meeting that included Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Charbel Wehbi, the head of the indirect negotiations delegation to demarcate the southern maritime borders, Brigadier General Pilot Bassam Yassin, and the members of the delegation: Brigadier General Mazen Basbous, a member of the Petroleum Sector Administration Board, Engineer Wissam Shabab, and expert Dr. Najeb Masih. During the meeting, discussions focused on steps that Lebanon would take in preparation for the resumption of negotiations in the coming dates.
Former MP Emile Rahma
President Aoun, met with head of the Solidarity party, former MP Emile Rahma, and discussed with him the current situation. Former MP Rahma said that the current circumstances require solidarity and cooperation as there is no point in the disputes, especially with regard to the formation of the new government that is supposed to be able to face the challenges that Lebanon is going through, and this means that it should be a government with fair and balanced representation among all the Lebanese components, and includes personalities known for their experience, efficiency and familiarity with national affairs, in order to be able to achieve a qualitative leap in the work of the executive authority. Rahma raised with President Aoun the turbulent security situation in the Baalbek-Hermel region and the need to address them quickly so that the security chaos does not continue, calling for the acceleration of uncovering the the assassination of the young man Joe Bejani in Kahla and other crimes, considering that the authorities have time, and today is the time of the judicial authority.-- Presidency Press Office

Bassil via Twitter: 2021 will be the first year of the age of a country that will rise again with the strength of its people
NNA/December 31/2020
Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Head, MP Gibran Bassil, said via his twitter account on Thursday, "2021 will not be the last year of the age of a collapsing country, but rather the first year of the age of a country that will rise again with the strength of its people... May the New Year bring blessings to Lebanon and peace for the whole world."

Foreign Ministry deplores Yemen's Aden blasts
NNA/December 31/2020
Lebanon's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in the Caretaker government on Thursday condemned, in a statement, the terrorist explosions that struck Yemen's Aden International Airport shortly after a plane carrying members of the new Yemeni government landed. The Foreign Ministry offered sincere condolences to the Yemeni government, people and families of the fallen victims, wishing speedy recovery for the innocent wounded. The Ministry affirmed its support for the efforts that end the chapter of tragedy and restore stability and safety to Yemen and the Yemeni brethrens.

Geagea Says Futile Waiting for Govt in Light of Current Ruling Authority
Naharnet/December 31/2020
Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea on Thursday lashed out again at the ruling authority’s paralysis and incapability to form a salvation government amid an unprecedented economic crisis in the country. Geagea said: “The only remaining solution to end our current crisis is to opt for early parliamentary elections.
“Awaiting the formation of a new salvation government in light of the current ruling majority is similar to waiting for green pastures to sprout amid an arid desert that has never known rain, thousands of miles away from the nearest water oasis,” Geagea exclaimed. With regard to the prevailing security situation in Zahle, Geagea stepped up calls on the internal security forces, Zahle's municipality, and the rest of the region’s security apparatuses, to swiftly draft an emergency security plan to protect the city and its people and halt the rampant thefts in it. Geagea’s words came during a meeting that was held at the party’s general headquarters in Maarab during a handover ceremony between the newly appointed Zahle district coordinator, Michel Fattoush, and former Zahle district coordinator, lawyer Antoine Kassouf.

Lebanon, UK Sign Post-Brexit Trade MoUs
Naharnet/December 31/2020
Lebanon and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on Thursday exchanged MoUs in completion of a number of necessary legal procedures to put the partnership agreement between the two countries into effect as of 01/01/2021.
Representing Lebanon, caretaker Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, represented UK Chargé d'Affairs, Alison King, witnessed the exchange of MoUs. According to a statement, the new post-Brexit MoUs aim to regulate the legal framework of trade ties that had been previously established by a partnership agreement between Lebanon and the European Union. The MoUs aim to safeguard consumer confidence, as well as that of British and Lebanese companies, in a bid to continue their trade deals and to preserve trade-related preferential terms between both parties. Moreover, the MoUs aim to open future prospects for expanding trade exchange in goods and services between the two countries, thus providing additional opportunities for Lebanese exporters in light of Lebanon's efforts to strengthen its productive sectors. In this framework, UK Chargé d'affaires Alyson King said, “I am delighted that the UK-Lebanon Association Agreement is now in force. This agreement provides certainty and confidence to both UK and Lebanese businesses. Both countries highly value the bilateral trade relationship and today’s agreement provides a firm platform for doing more business together in the future.”

Foreign Ministry Deplores Yemen’s Airport Blasts
Naharnet/December 31/2020
Lebanon's Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned in a statement the terrorist explosions that hit Yemen's Aden International Airport, shortly after a plane carrying members of the new Yemeni government landed. The Foreign Ministry offered sincere condolences to the Yemeni government, people and families of the victims, wishing speedy recovery for the wounded. The Ministry affirmed its support for the efforts that end the chapter of tragedy and restore stability and safety to Yemen and the Yemeni brethrens.
 

Lebanese start-up funding threatened...2020, where things stand
Lara Shabb/Executive Magazine/December 31/2020
https://www.executive-magazine.com/uncategorized/lebanese-start-up-funding-threatened

Eager to capitalize on the tech-savvy population,high education rate and entrepreneurial spirit, Banque du Liban’s (BDL) Circular 331, released in 2013, paved the way for the creation of dozens of startups in Lebanon, in addition to accelerators and incubators. Despite this support, events of the past few years have put a stop to the generous investments in startups.
Circular 331 was meant to incentivize local banks to invest in the local tech scene to turn Lebanon into a start-up nation. The circular encouraged banks to allocate up to 3 percent of their capital in startups, incubators, accelerators and venture capital funds by a mechanism that would guarantee reimbursement in case of failure of the said venture up to 75 percent of direct startup equity investment or indirect support entities. Local banks would be authorized to obtain a seven-year loan from BDL with zero interest, in exchange for investing it in Lebanese Treasury Bills with an interest rate of 7 percent, in return for the banks committing to invest in the knowledge economy with BDL guaranteeing the investment up to 75 percent and sharing the profits with the banks at 50 percent.
The structure of the initiative allowed for more guarantees. In 2014, this allowed for an injection of $400 million in the Lebanese knowledge economy. According to Bassel Aoun, program manager at Kafalat for the Innovation in Small and Medium Enterprises (ISME) program, a project supported by the World Bank, the major source of startup funding has come through Circular 331 subsidies. Banks are the main suppliers of funds through Circular 331, so the current banking crisis has resulted in this money drying up overnight.
“Most of the funds came from the banks’’, says Fadi Bizri, a partner at B&Y Venture partners. Indeed, in the absence of well-developed capital markets in Lebanon, the attempts to reach international investors have been lukewarm, and the ecosystem has been resting mostly on BDL’s shoulders.
Nevertheless, in light of Lebanon’s financial woes, and due to regulatory hurdles and other shortcomings of the Lebanese economy, the support mechanism established through Circular 331 have stalled.
Due to the current financial crisis, and to capital controls, it has been difficult to get investments from abroad to local startups, and trying to attract such investors is, according to Aoun, “counter intuitive”. “Capital controls are affecting the performance of our companies,” Aoun continues.
Indeed, startups in Lebanon are being barred from wiring money abroad to pay for marketing, software, ads, and foreign talent, which is having an adverse effect on their financial standing. “It’s a nightmare” says Fadi Bizri, taking into account that the value of a startup is heavily related to the value of its software (hosted on servers such as Amazon Web Services), data and cloud management, all of which require international payments to be maintained.
To add, startups are no longer able to hire talent from abroad, and are even losing talent to emigration. “Between the thawra, capital controls and Covid-19, there is a lack of trust from abroad in the local economy and therefore very little to no investment,” says Nicolas Rouhana, general man-
In collaboration with 43 ager at IM Capital, an initiative funded by USAID
which provides capital and support to companies through early-stage investors like angel investors, venture capital funds, accelerators and incubators .
Efforts to mobilize international investors have had little to no tangible result, most finance experts say. Consequently, many startups are considering moving abroad to re-incorporate in a different jurisdiction. Start-ups are also being pushed to relocate by investors, who are nervous about the current situation and Lebanese judicial regulations, as Lebanese commercial laws are deemed too rigid for the corporate structures needed in venture capital. Also, the relocation of these start-ups abroad would allow them to raise capital from different pools of investors, in jurisdictions where money would be more easily accessible.
Nevertheless, initiatives to channel foreign money into Lebanese startups have not fully dried up. IM Capital, for example, to help provide relief for affected SMEs in light of the August 4 Beirut port explosion, recently launched the “heartfelt support to Beirut” – initiative supported by USAID
to help channel 2 billion LBP through its companies across four sectors: education, housing, food and water, securities and business platforms. The
money will be used to provide relief packages to clients and beneficiaries who have been affected by the port explosion.
HAVE START-UPS TRIED TO CHANNEL SOME OF THE LOCAL EPOSITOR MONEY?
Startups would, in principle, be seen as attractive investments to local depositors worried about capital controls and talks of haircuts on deposits. “We have witnessed this trend”, says Aoun, mentioning investments in local dollars – “lollars” – in startups, “though it has been minor for early stage startups”.
Nevertheless, for startups less dependent on foreign money, Rouhana believes that this could result in a mix of “fresh” dollars and local dollars
as an investment tool in the near future. Such a mix of local and international dollars, according to Fadi Bizri, would not depend so much on the startup’s industry, but more on how mature the company is. Mature companies wishing to pay higher salaries, for example, or needing to transfer money abroad, would be less interested in the use of local dollars.
Other ways to circumvent the difficulty of accessing capital and sending money abroad is the use of crypto-currency and crowdfunding. The use of crypto in Lebanon is not obvious as such tokens would have to be converted to hard cash – and buying them would prove difficult due to capital controls. Regarding crowdfunding, there have been minor initiatives but they have been made on a small level. According to Bizri, “You have small initiatives from people abroad who want to help”, but those happen mainly for companies with exportable (or potentially exportable) products who are in need to import things like raw materials or machinery, and that can repay investments with ‘fresh’ dollars, which is not the case for most startups in Lebanon who are engaged in the local production and distribution of services.
“The last 14 months have been challenging in abnormal ways for any entity across Lebanon” says Mouhamed Rabah, Chief Executive Officer of the Beirut Digital District (BDD), a privately-funded community space that
hosts startups, incubators, accelerators and funds. According to him, startups are looking for international funding, but this comes with a requirement to reincorporate abroad. He argues that two elements are driving these companies to reincorporate: the drying up of funds for startup investments in Lebanon, and a loss of trust in the government and institutions due to the August 4 explosion. Indeed, the latter seems to have been the breaking point for many talents, who do not see the need to risk their lives or their childrens’.
“We are seeing an increase in demand from companies wanting to set-up their back office in Lebanon due to a more competitive financial cost and this could help Lebanon transform into an added value outsourcing hub, building on the yearly graduating talents” says Rabah. For example, a Saudi company is opening up their engineering office in Lebanon at BDD to profit from these now more affordable talents. More of these examples can be found at BDD, according to Rabah.
As local funds dry up, startups can turn to their networks in the diaspora, as incorporating outside of Lebanon doesn’t necessarily mean to pack bags and leave. Indeed, reincorporating abroad can mean setting up another legal structure and bank account for cash management outside of Lebanon, but does not imply leaving the Lebanese market as a whole or moving out completely.
 

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 31/2020/January 01/2020

Israel admits to striking 50 Syria targets in 2020
The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
JERUSALEM – Israel’s military, which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria blamed on its forces, said Thursday it had hit about 50 targets in the neighbouring country in 2020. The annual report released by the Israel Defence Forces did not provide details about the targets hit, but Israel is believed to have launched hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. They have targeted government troops, allied Iranian forces and fighters from the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The Jewish state has consistently vowed to prevent its arch-enemy Iran gaining a foothold in Syria, where Tehran has backed President Bashar al-Assad throughout the nearly decade-long war. A military spokeswoman told AFP that figures in the report were correct as of December 20. The latest strike in Syria blamed on Israel came Wednesday, when missile fire from the Jewish state hit a military position near Damascus, Syrian news agency SANA reported, citing a military source. SANA said one Syrian soldier was killed and three others wounded. Israel’s military declined to comment on the incident. Overall, Israeli warplanes flew 1,400 “operational” sorties in 2020, the report said, without elaborating.
The first came in December 2008, when Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” to stop rocket fire into Israel. It ended with a ceasefire in January 2009, after 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. On Tuesday, Hamas and other armed groups staged military exercises in Gaza, including firing rockets into the sea, to mark the anniversary of the start of the 2008 conflict. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday quoting reliable sources that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has started a military and ideological course in Al-Mayadeen city in Deir Ezzor countryside, as applicants can register their names in this course for 40 days.Regarding the Palestinian conflict, the Israeli report said 176 rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into Israel, of which 90 fell on open ground.It said that Israeli missile defences had intercepted 80 rockets. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamists took power in Gaza in 2007.

Poster of Iran’s Soleimani sparks controversy in Gaza Strip
Hazem Balousha/The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
GAZA CITY: A picture of the late Iranian Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani that was posted on a billboard in Gaza City has been vandalized and torn down, days before the first anniversary of his death. Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad Airport on Jan. 3, 2020.
The Gaza picture bore the phrase “the martyr of Jerusalem,” which was uttered by the head of Hamas’ political bureau Ismail Haniyeh at Soleimani’s funeral.  Hamas has publicly praised Iran during the past few years as it is the most prominent supporter of developing the movement’s military capabilities.
But Palestinians and Arabs view Soleimani as a war criminal, involved in massacres against Syrian and Iraqi civilians through his direct intervention in military operations in both countries. The poster was put up by an unknown group believed to be affiliated with Hamas and Iran-backed factions.
Hamas security forces arrested Sheikh Majdi Al-Maghribi, who was at the front of the group that tore down the image, according to his family and those close to him. Al-Maghribi wrote on Facebook: “Every hero can remove this shame from the land of Gaza. Let him blur, rip, and distort these images ... A shame for this filth remaining above our heads.” The appearance of the poster also coincided with a military exercise in the Gaza Strip that involved the participation of Hamas and 12 military wings, most of which acknowledge Iranian support. A few days ago, a prominent Hamas leader, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, said that Soleimani had handed him $22 million during their first meeting in 2006 when he was Gaza’s foreign minister. A member of the Political Bureau of the People’s Party, Walid Al-Awad, said that displaying Soleimani’s image at this time was unnecessary and would negatively affect Gaza because it would either pay the price at the hands of Israel or lose ties with Arab countries. “Raising Soleimani’s picture is a step that will be exaggerated in a way that places Gaza in the circle of Iranian terrorism,” he added.
A member of the political bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Talal Abu Zarifa, said the general’s picture would lead Gaza into a “maze and great and dangerous political entanglements” and lose the support of Arab countries instead of having them on side at a time when the Palestinian cause was going through a great impasse. Activist Ahmed Silmi also rejected the justifications for showing Soleimani’s image with Iranian support for Palestinian factions. “The resistance is not only a military action, but it is a moral clarity in order to be worthy of the people’s bias toward you and their feeling motivated in adopting your causes. The interest in building an arsenal of weapons alone at the expense of concern for moral clarity has a heavy price.” Hezbollah possessed an arsenal of weapons greater than Gaza but had become a pariah in the consciousness of Muslim peoples, so its weapons had not satisfied it, he added. Political science professor Hussam Al-Dajani at Umma University said controversy accompanied everything in Gaza, whether it was a picture of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi Sisi, Soleimani, or an Emirati aid convoy.
“Our whole lives are controversies, and although this debate is healthy and useful, we should know that politics is governed by interests, not principles, even if we disagree on that,” he said.It is the second time that Soleimani’s picture has been raised in Gaza. The first was in a mourning marquee set up for him by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees. Hamas official Ismail Radwan said at the time: “We will remain in the Gaza Strip loyal to those who supported Palestine and developed the capabilities of the factions.”

Iranian experts plotted attack on Aden airport: Yemeni PM
Saeed Al-Batati/Arab News/December 31, 2020
AL-MUKALLA: Yemen has accused Iranian military experts of masterminding Wednesday’s deadly attack on Aden’s airport, vowing to defeat the Tehran-backed Houthis, restore peace and stability to Aden and other liberated areas, and address people’s grievances.During the first meeting of his government in Aden, Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdul Malik Saeed said initial information showed that military experts from Iran had launched the guided missiles that hit Aden airport killing or wounding dozens of people.
“When we talk about the Houthis, we talk about Iran’s destructive scheme in the region,” the premier said, while visiting some of the wounded in hospital, adding that the attack had made his government “even more determined” to defeat the Houthis, press ahead with the Riyadh Agreement and address the country’s main issues.  This terrorist attack will not achieve the goals of those who carried it out and who sought to obstruct the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement,” the official news agency quoted the prime minister as saying. Dr. Qasem Buhaibeh, Yemen’s health minister, said on Twitter that 25 people were killed that that number may rise, since several of the 110 wounded are in critical condition. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said three of its workers died in the attack — two Yemenis and a Rwandan. “A day like this adds even more grief both for the Red Cross family and for the Yemeni families who had loved ones killed or injured in this explosion,” said Dominik Stillhart, ICRC’s director of operations. The Yemeni Journalist Syndicate said one Yemeni journalist had been killed in the attack and 10 more wounded. Yemen’s Foreign Ministry blamed the Houthis for the attack, pointing out that the same technology and techniques had been employed in previous attacks by the militia across Yemen. Maj. Gen. İbrahim Ali Haydan, the new interior minister, said the Houthis were responsible for the attack and that the investigation he is heading up would reveal more details. Official media reported that Yemenia, the country’s flagship carrier, had diverted flights from Aden to Seiyun airport in the southeastern province of Hadramout. On Wednesday night, the Arab coalition launched retaliatory strikes on Houthi military sites in the capital, Sanaa, and surrounding areas, including Al-Dailami airbase. Cale Brown, the US State Department’s deputy spokesperson, condemned the attack on Aden’s airport and expressed his country’s sympathy and support for the Yemeni people and their government. “The attacks were timed with the arrival of new leaders of the legitimate Yemen government, but they will not thwart efforts to bring lasting peace to Yemen. We stand with the Yemeni people,” Brown said on Twitter. “The main beneficiaries of this attack are the Houthis and the enemies of the Riyadh Agreement,” Yasser Al-Yafae, a political analyst based in Aden, told Arab News. “Iran wants to send a message to Saudi Arabia through its tools (in Yemen) that it is strong and can foil the Kingdom’s gains in the country.”Najeeb Ghallab, undersecretary at Yemen’s Information Ministry and a political analyst, told Arab News that the Houthis quickly denied their involvement in the attack to create uncertainty and infighting among the Yemeni forces. “The Houthis know that if the government succeeds in addressing problems and unifying forces, they will be isolated,” he said.

Yemen Govt Vows to Restore Stability after Deadly Attack
Agence France Presse/December 31/2020
The new power-sharing Yemeni government vowed on Thursday to bring stability to the war-torn country, a day after a fatal attack ripped through Aden's airport targeting cabinet members. At least 26 people, including three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, were killed and scores were wounded when explosions rocked the airport as ministers disembarked from an aircraft in the southern city.  All cabinet members were reported to be unharmed, in what some ministers charged was an attack by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels. Video footage shot by AFP shows what appears to be a missile striking the airport apron, which moments before had been packed with crowds, and exploding into a ball of intense flames. But it is still not fully clear what caused the explosions. Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak told AFP on Thursday the new unity government is up to the challenges facing a country that has long been the Arab Peninsula's most impoverished nation. "The government is determined to fulfil its duty and work to restore stability in Yemen," he said. "This terrorist attack will not deter it from that." Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed and millions displaced in Yemen's grinding five-year war, which has triggered what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster. The cabinet ministers arrived in Aden days after being sworn in by Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Saudi Arabia, which leads a military coalition against the Huthi insurgents. Hadi fled to Riyadh after Yemen's capital Sanaa fell to the Huthis in 2014. The new government includes ministers loyal to Hadi and supporters of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council, as well as other parties. While all oppose the Huthi rebels, deep divisions have grown among them, including through sporadic military clashes in and around Aden between the secessionists and forces loyal to the central government. Saudi Arabia has been encouraging the unity government to quell the "war within a civil war" and to bolster the coalition against the Huthi insurgents, which control Sanaa and much of the north. Some ministers, including Mubarak, blamed the Huthi insurgents for the attack but other government officials remained more circumspect. "Information and preliminary investigations show that the Huthi militia was behind this ugly terrorist attack," Mubarak told AFP, adding that missiles were launched from rebel-held areas.

Brexit to Take Full Effect as UK Leaves EU Single Market
Agence France Presse/December 31/2020
Brexit becomes a reality on Thursday as Britain leaves Europe's customs union and single market, ending nearly half a century of often turbulent ties with its closest neighbours. The UK's tortuous departure from the European Union takes full effect when Big Ben strikes 11:00 pm (2300 GMT) in central London, just as most of the European mainland ushers in 2021 at midnight. Brexit has dominated British politics since the country's narrow vote to leave the bloc in June 2016, opening deep political and social wounds that still remain raw. Legally, Britain left on January 31 but has been in a standstill transition period during fractious talks to a secure a free-trade agreement with Brussels, which was finally clinched on Christmas Eve. Once the transition ends, EU rules will no longer apply, with the immediate consequence being an end to the free movement of more than 500 million people between Britain and 27 EU states. Customs border checks will be back for the first time in decades, and despite the free-trade deal, queues and disruption from additional paperwork are expected.
Symbolic departure -
Britain -- a financial and diplomatic big-hitter, and major NATO power -- is the first member state to leave the EU, which was set up to forge unity after the horrors of World War II. The EU has lost 66 million people and an economy worth $2.85 trillion, but Brexit, with its appeal to nationalist populism, also triggered fears other disgruntled members could follow suit. Leaders in both London and Brussels signalled their wish to draw a line. "It's been a long road. It's time now to put Brexit behind us. Our future is made in Europe," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday, as she signed the trade pact. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Brexit was designed to resolve "the old, tired, vexed question of Britain's political relations with Europe, which has bedevilled our post-war history". Thursday "marks a new beginning in our country's history and a new relationship with the EU as their biggest ally," he said after British parliament voted to back the trade deal. "This moment is finally upon us and now is the time to seize it."
'New beginning'
Unlike in January, when flag-waving Brexiteers led by populist anti-EU former lawmaker Nigel Farage cheered, and pro-EU "remainers" mourned, no formal events are planned for the end of the transition. Public gatherings are banned due to the coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed more than 72,000 lives and infected more than 2.4 million in Britain, including Johnson himself. But Johnson is looking not only to a future free of Covid but also of rules set in Brussels, as Britain forges its own path for the first time since it joined the old European Economic Community in 1973. On Wednesday, he hailed regulatory approval of Oxford University and AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine, and a "new beginning" for a prosperous, more globally focused Britain. As well as ensuring tariff- and quota-free access to the EU's 450 million consumers, Britain has recently signed trade deals with countries including Japan, Canada, Singapore and Turkey. It is also eyeing another with India, where Johnson plans to make his first major trip as prime minister next month, and with incoming US president Joe Biden's administration. Practical application  In the short term, all eyes will be closer to home and focused on how life outside the EU plays out in practical terms. That includes disruption at the ports, which have stoked fears of food and medicine shortages, as well as delays to holidaymakers and business travellers used to seamless travel in the EU. British fishermen are disgruntled at a compromise to allow continued access to EU boats in British waters. The key financial services sector also faces an anxious wait to learn on what basis it can keep dealing with Europe, after being largely omitted from the trade deal. Northern Ireland's border with EU member state Ireland will be closely watched to ensure movement is unrestricted -- a key plank of a 1998 peace deal that ended 30 years of violence over British rule. And in Scotland, where most opposed Brexit, Johnson faces a potential constitutional headache from a resurgent independence movement.

Egypt Clears Police Officers in Italian Student Murder
Agence France Presse/December 31/2020
Egypt's public prosecutor Wednesday cleared five policemen of responsibility in the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni and said he will not pursue the case because the perpetrator is unknown. The decision announced by state prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy comes nearly three weeks after Italian prosecutors said they planned to charge four Egyptian security officers over the torture and death of Regeni. The Cambridge University graduate was in Egypt researching trade unions, when he was kidnapped in January 2016 and his mutilated body later found on the outskirts of Cairo. His death sparked outrage in Italy and strained diplomatic relations between the two countries, with Italy's government accusing Egyptian authorities of non-cooperation. Sawy in a statement published Wednesday said Egypt's public prosecution has no intention of "pursuing a criminal case in the murder, abduction and torture of Giulio Regeni because the perpetrator is unknown." Investigators would continue to seek the identity of the murderer but the prosecution has "ruled out" any charges "against the four officers and a fifth policeman" in connection with the case, he said. On December 10, Italian public prosecutor Michele Prestipino told a parliamentary commission in Rome there were "elements of significant proof" implicating Egyptian policemen. "We are going to ask to begin a criminal action concerning certain members of the Egyptian security services," he said.
"We owe it to the memory of Giulio Regeni," he added. Regeni had been researching the sensitive topic of labor organizations in Egypt when he disappeared. He had also written articles critical of the government under a pen name. Since his death, Italian investigators have rejected multiple theories put forward by Egyptian authorities, including that Regeni had been working as a spy, or that he was the victim of a criminal gang. Late last month, Egypt said it would "temporarily close" its parallel investigation into Regeni's murder, saying Rome's accusations were based on insufficient evidence.

U.N. Chief Seeks Monitors for Libya's Fragile Ceasefire
Agence France Presse/December 31/2020
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has proposed international monitors to support Libya's fragile ceasefire amid hopes that foreign fighters will soon leave and the country can turn the page on a decade of war. In a letter to Security Council members seen by AFP, the secretary-general asked to set up a monitoring group that would include civilians and retired soldiers from regional groups such as the African Union, European Union and Arab League. The warring sides, which reached a ceasefire on October 23 in Geneva, both want to avoid armed and uniformed foreign troops, Guterres said.
"I call on all national, regional and international stakeholders to respect the provisions of the ceasefire agreement and ensure its implementation without delay," Guterres said in the letter dated Tuesday. "I encourage member states and regional organizations to support the operationalization of the ceasefire mechanism, including by providing individual monitors under the auspices of the United Nations."He called in particular for all nations to respect the UN arms embargo on Libya, which has been flagrantly violated. Under the ceasefire, all foreign forces are to leave within three months. Khalifa Haftar, a warlord in eastern Libya, has enjoyed backing from Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Haftar reached the truce after being driven back in an offensive by the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord, which enjoys strong support from Turkey.
Under Guterres' proposal, which is likely to be debated in the new year, monitors would initially operate in a triangular section of Libya around Sirte -- the birthplace of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi, whose Western-supported overthrow in 2011 set off a decade of turmoil. The monitors would join Libyan forces in reporting in the area on the ceasefire, withdrawal of foreign forces and removal of mines and other explosives. The observers would expand to other parts of the country as conditions allow until they can be replaced by a unified Libyan national force.
While October's ceasefire has largely held, Haftar recently vowed to "drive out the occupier by faith, will and weapons," leading Turkey to warn of retaliation to any attack by the "war criminal." In early December, U.N. envoy Stephanie Williams estimated that 20,000 foreign troops and mercenaries remained in the country in a "shocking violation of Libyan sovereignty."

Jihadist Attack Kills 30 Soldiers in East Syria
Agence France Presse/December 31/2020
At least 30 Syrian soldiers were killed Wednesday in an attack by the jihadist Islamic State group on their bus in the east of the war-torn country, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in Deir Ezzor province targeted a bus carrying regime soldiers going home on leave. "It was one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the IS (self-proclaimed) caliphate" last year, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The official news agency SANA reported that a "terrorist attack" on a bus killed "25 citizens" and wounded 13. Abdel Rahman said the bus was ambushed near the village of Shula by jihadists who detonated bombs before opening fire. Two other buses which were part of the convoy managed to escape, the war monitor said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. IS overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border "caliphate" in 2014, before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat. The group was defeated in Syria in March last year but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks namely in Syria's vast desert that stretches from the central province of Homs to Deir Ezzor and the border with Iraq. In April, 27 fighters loyal to the Damascus government and allied Iran-backed militiamen were killed in an IS attack near the desert city of Al-Sukhna. The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, the Observatory says. The dead include more than 130,500 pro-government fighters, among them foreigners.

Houthis seen behind attack on Aden airport, in bid to obstruct Riyadh agreement
The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
ADEN–Concurring Yemeni sources and eyewitnesses in the Taiz governorate confirmed to The Arab Weekly that the Houthis have targeted Aden airport with a number of ballistic missiles launched from Taiz airport, which is under their control, prior to the arrival of the plane carrying the new Yemeni cabinet. The Houthi was according to analysts aimed at preventing the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement and the subsequent formation of a unity government to manage the military and security issues. Sources pointed out that a number of missiles fell in the terminal and runway of Aden International Airport moments before the members of the Yemeni government headed by Moein Abdul Malik disembarked from the plane. More than twenty people were killed in the attack and scores wounded from among the crowd that was at the airport waiting to welcome the new government formation. Among the victims were Yasmine al-Awadi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Public Works. and a local employee of the International Red Cross. According to the sources, the missiles greatly damaged the airport lounge and runway, but they did not hit the plane carrying the government coming from the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The same sources indicated that the Arab coalition forces evacuated the plane and transported members of the government to their residence in the presidential palace in the Maasheeq area.
Aden witnessed a tightening of security measures after the incident, while Aden Airport was closed and Yemeni Airlines flights were diverted to Sayun airport in Hadramout Governorate. Informed Yemeni sources denied to The Arab Weekly the authenticity of the news according to which the presidential palace in Maasheeq had also been attacked by missiles, noting that the forces protecting the palace had tested their air defence weapons in anticipation of any new attacks, in light of information about the detection of drones in the airspace of Lahj (north of Aden) believed to be Houthi.
The official Yemeni News Agency said that President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi ordered the formation of a committee “to investigate the repercussions of the terrorist act […] The said committee will be headed by the Minister of Interior and include the leaders of the security and intelligence services and the local authority in Aden, and work in coordination with the Coalition to Support Legitimacy.”
In his first appearance after the incident, the Yemeni prime minister said the government would remain in Aden “to exercise all its duties and actions supported by the will of the people.”Speaking with The Arab Weekly by phone from Aden, Yemeni journalist Mohamed Fahd al-Junaidi said, “The attack failed to achieve its goal of targeting the members of the government.”About the details of the incident, Junaidi told The Arab Weekly, “It was one in the afternoon when I heard explosions next to me and then gunfire, before I heard ambulances rushing to the place and did not stop until three in the afternoon, and it is not possible to accurately determine the number of dead and wounded in these bombings., but it was clear that there were many soldiers and civilians killed and injured, who were inside the airport.”
Junaidi pointed out that the attack on Aden airport was similar to the bombing that killed Brigadier General Munir Al-Yafei, aka Abu al-Yamamah, former leader of the logistical support brigades in August of last year, “with the difference that more than one blast hit the airport.”
Observers considered that the incident targeting Aden airport at the moment of the arrival of the new government formed based on the Riyadh Agreement doubles the challenges ahead, especially in the military and security front, through which some parties rejecting the Riyadh Agreement are hoping to infiltrate the government’s work in order to thwart the new cabinet, confuse the Arab coalition and reshuffle the cards in Aden. In a statement to The Arab Weekly, Yemeni political researcher Mustafa Ghleis described the government of Moein Abdul Malik as a government of last resort, pointing out that targeting it with a terrorist attack is nothing but an attempt to strike at the program it is entrusted with implementing.
He added, “We all know that we are at war with the Houthi militia and that it wants to obstruct this government and muddle the situation to thwart the political path agreed upon by the parties of the legitimacy camp, based on the Riyadh Agreement, which has accomplished many of its goals aimed at uniting the ranks.”Regarding the party behind the incident, Ghleis indicated that the recordings documenting the explosion confirm that it was a missile attack carried out by drones and that the Houthi militia were behind it. This version was also confirmed by the Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism in the Yemeni government, Muammar al-Eryani. Eryani wrote on Twitter about an hour after the blasts, “The cowardly terrorist attack carried out by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia on Aden airport will not deter us from carrying out our patriotic duty.”
Stances condemning the incident continued, as the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, described the attack on the Aden Airport as “a targeting of the Riyadh Agreement and the prospects for stability and peace it holds in brotherly Yemen.”“Incitement, sabotage, violence and terrorism will fail in the face of the peace project led by brotherly kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the good of Yemen and the region,” he added on Twitter.
UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, condemned the attack on Aden airport upon the arrival of the members of the government. “I wish the Council of Ministers resilience in the face of the difficult tasks ahead. This violent act is unacceptable, and it is a tragic reminder of the importance of urgently returning Yemen to the path of peace,” he said. The Saudi ambassador to Yemen and one of the architects of the Riyadh Agreement between the Yemeni government and the Southern Transitional Council, Mohamed al-Jaber considered the targeting of the Yemeni government upon its arrival at Aden airport as “a cowardly terrorist act targeting all of the Yemeni people, their security, stability and their daily life, and it confirms the extent of disappointment and confusion that the death and destruction mongers have reached as a result of the successful implementation of the Riyadh Agreement, the formation of the Yemeni government, and its commencement of its duties to serve the Yemeni people.”The attempt to target the new internationally-recognised Yemeni government poses enormous challenges in terms of reviewing the work of security and military institutions, and revitalising intelligence work in the face of the Houthi infiltration, in addition to dealing seriously with anti-coalition activity and the goals of “legitimacy” camp from within government institutions.

The Trump legacy that can never be erased
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/January 01/2021
Donald Trump will be remembered as the most controversial leader in modern US history, a man who refused to be politically correct and was not afraid to face the international community, and confront it when needed.
Regardless of your feelings for Trump the man, Trump the president has accomplishments that his successors will find it difficult to erase.
In 2014, Daesh invaded and occupied swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria, and established its “caliphate.”This terrorist organization was formed, flourished and expanded during Barack Obama’s presidency; as commander in chief, he failed to stand by the people of Syria and Iraq, who greatly suffered at the hands of Daesh. Five years after Daesh emerged, efforts by the Trump administration led to its defeat and the liberation of Mosul, the second-largest Iraqi city, freeing thousands of Iraqis of many ethnicities and religions.
On Oct. 27, 2019, Trump announced to the world that Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi had been killed the night before in what he described as a “dangerous and daring” US raid. Trump emphasized his country’s determination to pursue not only the remaining Daesh terrorists but all other radical groups that shared its ideology and methods. “Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate, and they will not escape the final judgment of God,” he said.
Iran has been Trump’s focus since he took office in 2016; he clearly understood the threat of the ayatollahs in Tehran, and how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had enabled the Iranian regime to spread its influence in the Middle East. The left considered this 2015 deal as one of Obama’s biggest diplomatic achievements, ignoring the fact that the JCPOA has given Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief that played a part in funding, training and arming its proxy militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.
When Trump authorized the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a ruthless Iranian terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Israelis, Iraqis and many more, the left argued that the killing was reckless and would escalate the situation with Iran.
Regardless of your feelings for Trump the man, Trump the president has accomplishments that his successors will find it difficult to erase. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces deputy chief who was killed alongside him, were war criminals, a fact overlooked by the same people who thought that overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was an American duty. In October 2011, Obama said Qaddafi’s death marked the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya. “For four decades, the Qaddafi regime ruled the Libyan people with an iron fist. Basic human rights were denied. Innocent civilians were detained, beaten and killed. And Libya’s wealth was squandered. The enormous potential of the Libyan people was held back, and terror was used as a political weapon.”Was Qaddafi more dangerous than Soleimani and Al-Muhandis combined? The Democrats seem to think so. Trump’s most significant accomplishment of the past four years, however, was the diplomatic success in the Middle East, which came in the last few months of his presidency. On Sept. 15, 2019, Trump presided over the signing of the Abraham Accords, two historic normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, praising the courage of the leaders of these three countries who made it possible for a new era to begin.  Trump said these historic agreements would pave the way for people of all faiths and backgrounds to live together in peace and prosperity. “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history. After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East," he said at the White House signing ceremony.Similar agreements with Morocco and Sudan followed, and more are in the pipeline.
Regardless of our ethnicity, how we individually identify, or where we may place our views on the political spectrum, we Americans are unified by the constitutional democratic process of our country, and by the pursuit of the protection of that process.
Love him or hate him, when Trump leaves office on Jan. 20 these and similar decisions will define his legacy.
• Dalia Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, and a former Republican congressional candidate. Twitter: @DaliaAlAqidi

Trump ends term as 'most admired man in America'
Arutz Sheva Staff /Dec 31 /2020
Donald Trump ends Barack Obama's 12-year run as the most admired man in America according to new Gallup poll. US President Donald Trump is the most admired man in the United States according to a Gallup poll, ending former President Barack Obama's 12-year run as the most admired man in the country.Former First Lady Michelle Obama was the most admired woman in America for the third straight year. The poll asked respondents: "What man that you have heard or read about, living today in any part of the world, do you admire most?"
18% of respondents named Trump as the man they most admired. Barack Obama placed second with 15%. President-elect Joe Biden placed third with six percent, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci was fourth with three percent. 43% of Republican respondents named Trump as the man they most admired, while 32% of Democrats named Obama and 13% named Biden. Both top candidates received the support of 11% of independents. Trump tweeted in response to the poll: ""Barack Obama was toppled from the top spot and President Trump claimed the title of the year’s Most Admired Man. Trump number one, Obama number two, and Joe Biden a very distant number three. That’s also rather odd given the fact that on November 3rd, Biden allegedly racked up millions more votes than Trump, but can’t get anywhere close to him in this poll. No incoming president has ever done as badly in this annual survey.”@MarkSteynOnline,@TuckerCarlson," That’s because he got millions of Fake Votes in the 2020 Election, which was RIGGED!"

Greenblatt: Trump will continue to be a force for good
Arutz Sheva Staff , Dec 31/ 2020
Former White House envoy Jason Greenblatt says Trump is fighting an “uphill battle” in his efforts to prove the election was conducted unfairly, but hopes he will “continue to be a force for good” in any event. Speaking to Ilana Dayan on Galei Tzahal, Greenblatt noted he had spoken with Trump following the election. “He firmly believes the election was stolen from him, he thinks there are multiple reasons why this election is not fair. He’s given very specific examples of why it was [not],” Greenblatt said, but added: “It's going to be a challenge to prove that.”“It’s going to be a very uphill battle. The news media is against him, and it’s hard to prove the different things that bring that case together. So let’s see how that unfolds for him.”“He’s clearly working very hard on it and we’ll see if he manages to show everybody the things that he says happened and if he is successful in changing that around. It is a big battle to do that, but I wish him success in it.”Greenblatt said that Trump doesn’t need anyone to tell him when the fight is over. “I think he’ll recognize that himself. If he sees that for whatever reason he’s not able to prove it [and] the courts disagree with him, he will go home.”“He’s certainly not going to celebrate it. The 75 million people who voted for him won’t celebrate it. But in the end we live in a democracy and we have the rule of law and life moves on, and I hope he will continue to be a force in this country for good.”

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 31/2020/January 01/2020

More than an angle to look at Aden airport blasts
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
The Houthi attack on Aden airport at the arrival of members of the new Yemeni government, can be viewed from two angles. One angle is the continuous Iranian onslaught on more than one front in the region before US President-elect Joe Biden enters the White House. The second angle is the lack of competence, in any shape or form, of Yemen’s internationally-recognised government, or the “legitimacy” government. The attack on the airport in southern Yemen’s capital, at this particular time, cannot be isolated from Iran’s endeavour to show the incoming US administration that it is present in the region and that its presence is quite significant. Moreover, Iran wants to prove that the US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have not affected its regional posture nor its behaviour outside its borders.
On the contrary, Iran wants to show that it is still present in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and that its presence in these four countries is both offensive and deeply-rooted. Its talk about controlling four Arab capitals, it aims to say, is based on reality and on real facts. Most of all, it intends it as a non-negotiable presence that could be part of a new deal wherewith the Biden administration accepts to breathe life into the Iranian nuclear deal signed during the summer of 2015 by Tehran with the Group of Five plus one. The thrust of the message is that Iran will not enter any negotiations with the new US administration regarding its nuclear file from a weak position and under new conditions that would include the removal of its ballistic missiles.
This appears to be the view from Tehran after the Trump administration revealed that Iran is no more than a paper tiger, which is unable to respond directly to the US killing of Qassem Soleimani.
The “Islamic Republic” seeks to say that the first anniversary of the assassination of the commander of the “Quds Force” of the Iranian “Revolutionary Guard” will not pass without a response. It is true that the response will not take the form of a direct confrontation with the United States, but it is also true that there are Iranian proxies that are able to perform this task in the best way, as evidenced by the Houthi missile attack on Aden airport and then the bombing of the Al Maashiq area where members of the new Yemeni government have moved.
It is noteworthy that Iran is in an offensive posture in Iraq as well. We see it exerting all kinds of pressure on the government of Mustafa al-Kadhimi, while pretending that it is keen not to target diplomatic missions in Baghdad, including the US embassy.
These Iranian pressures on Iraq not only include the moves by the “Popular Mobilisation Forces”, which wants to prove that it is the most powerful faction in the country, but there are also threats to stop supplying Iraq with gas as well if it does not settle unpaid bills in the hard currency from which Iran has been deprived. There is no need to mention also the issue of Lebanon, a country that has become an Iranian hostage, nor the Iranian deployment in Syria through sectarian militias of several stripes, including “Hezbollah”.
As to the second angle through which one can look at what happened at Aden airport, it is possible to say that all that was mentioned about Iran and its role in Yemen does not exempt the Yemeni “legitimacy” government from responsibility for what happened.
This legitimate government, headed by the transitional president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, showed an inability to deal with the complexities of the Yemeni situation, on the one hand, and to understand the Houthi phenomenon with its Iranian dimension, on the other. It is difficult to fathom how the new Yemeni government could move to Aden from Riyadh without proper precautions, including keeping the date of its arrival flight secret. This government has shown it is made up of amateurs in politics and security matters, and it is a caricature of the character of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was supposed to have made Aden his place of residence a long time ago.
But the question is, how can the transitional president reside in Aden and manage the confrontation with the Houthis from there, while he cannot even go to his hometown in the nearby Abyan governorate?
The most dangerous aspect revealed by the attack on Aden airport is the inability to understand the Houthi phenomenon and the lack of any intelligence about the reality of what “Ansar Allah” militias are concocting while continuing to fire their rockets at Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi kingdom has found itself in a self-defensive posture since the fall of Sana’a to Iran on September 21, 2014. Among the reasons for that fall was the person of the transitional president who believed at a certain stage that he could use the Houthis in a game aimed at settling scores with Ali Abdallah Saleh, on the one hand, and asserting his ability to manoeuvre vis-a-vis the Muslim Brotherhood, including his deputy Ali Mohsen Saleh al-Ahmar, on the other hand. .
In the end, it became clear that the Houthis had infiltrated the “legitimacy”, while there was no infiltration by the “legitimacy” camp of those who call themselves “Ansar Allah”. It is clear that no political or military victories over the Houthis will be possible with this kind of “legitimacy” government, which needs, before anything else, to be reconfigured.
The attack on Aden airport demonstrated a reality that could no longer be ignored. It is not possible to enter into a confrontation with the Houthis, who are nothing but an Iranian tool, with this type of “legitimacy” in place.
There is need for a different approach to the Yemeni issue, one that takes into account that there a major change is required in the balance of power in the event negotiations with the Houthis are to take place one day to force them to dismantle the state they have established and which has turned into an Iranian base, and nothing else. Successive events confirmed that the existing “legitimacy” could not, on any given day, win any battle with “Ansar Allah”. One knows who drove them out of Aden and the strategically located port of Mocha. What is not known is how the void, made starkly clear after what happened in Aden, came to be filled.

Came the Islamic Revolution/The theocrats who seized power in Iran are still widely misunderstood
Clifford D. May/| The Washington Times/December 31/2020
In early 1979, I was sent to Iran to report on the rebellion then underway. I was woefully ignorant of Iranian history, politics, and theology. But older, more experienced colleagues in the journalistic, diplomatic, and intelligence communities also misunderstood would become known as the Islamic Revolution.
So, it was with both curiosity and pleasure that I’ve been reading “The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty” an enlightening new history by Ray Takeyh, the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Among the revelations: By the late 1970s, the U.S. intelligence community, and William Sullivan, America’s last ambassador in Tehran, knew full well that Iran was not, as President Carter curiously proclaimed on Dec. 31, 1977, “an island of stability.”
On the contrary, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government was riddled with corruption and dissent. His health was in decline, along with his popularity. He was “devious and cynical,” writes Mr. Takeyh but, to his credit, he would not contemplate a bloody crackdown against his opponents because “he sincerely believed that a monarch should not kill his subjects.”
The opponents that most concerned Ambassador Sullivan were Iran’s Communists even though, Mr. Takeyh writes, the Tudeh had become a “dormant political party.” Foreign reporters like myself were inclined to focus on Western-educated reformers. What few analysts perceived: It was the religious extremists who were at history’s helm.
For years, they had been mixing Islamic theology with Marxism, refashioning Shiism into what Mr. Takeyh calls “a religion of dissent led by rebels seeking social justice.”
They regarded modernization, the Shah’s main pursuit, as “borrowing ideas from Europe and America,” and they rejected it.
Among those advancing such ideas was a dour cleric living in exile, first in Turkey and Iraq, then in France, who “stood above everyone else in terms of courage and charisma.”
A book published by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1970, “Islamic Government,” had attracted little attention. It’s most audacious proposal, Mr. Takeyh writes, was that “the clergy should assume political power. This contravened Shia thought” which had long emphasized that “the guardians of faith should keep their distance from centers of power” until the return of the “Hidden Imam,” a messianic figure.
Mr. Takeyh notes too: “Khomeini’s contempt for democratic rule and his hatred of religious minorities are evident throughout the text.”
In November 1978, Ambassador Sullivan sent a diplomatic cable to Washington suggesting that Ayatollah Khomeini might be persuaded to compromise with moderate dissidents, and “return to Iran in triumph and hold a Gandhi-like position in the political constellation.”
“As an emissary of a secular republic known for its pragmatism,” Mr. Takeyh explains, “Sullivan simply could not comprehend revolutionaries who meant what they said.”
The Shah fled Iran on Jan. 16, 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran on Feb. 1, proclaiming that he was not leading “a nationalist rebellion” but rather a “Quranic rebellion,” an “Islamic rebellion.”
A referendum was held in March. Iranians were asked to vote yes or no to the founding of an Islamic Republic. The “yes” ballot was colored green, the “no” was red. Voters had to request one or the other.
Almost no one asked for a red ballot. If a similar plebiscite were held today, would the results be the same? My guess is yes, if – now as then – mullahs were supervising the not-secret balloting.
Over the months that followed, “Liberals were cast aside and traditional clergy were forced to comply with the new strictures. Women’s rights were curtailed and religious minorities endured persecution.”
Islamic courts were established and those who had served the shah were summarily tried, convicted and executed for such crimes as “spreading corruption on earth.” When one defendant asked what that meant, the judge replied: “What you are guilty of.”
Mr. Takeyh adds: “Scores of Arab and Kurdish separatist leaders, and then the leftists who had cheered when the shah’s officials were put to death, also faced the mullahs’ wrath.”
Thousands are estimated to have been killed. Nevertheless, Supreme Leader Khomeini – the new title awarded him by the Islamic Republic’s constitution – would later regret that he had not gone further, that he had not, in his words, “set up gallows in the main squares and cut down all the corrupt people. In the presence of God Almighty and the dear nation of Iran, I apologize for our mistakes.”
Along with most reporters, I left Iran before summer. After that, news from the Islamic Republic seldom made the front pages. Then, on Nov. 4, 1979, as crowds outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran chanted “Death to America!” several hundred young followers of the Supreme Leader breached the walls. The diplomats inside were held hostage for 444 days.
Mr. Khomeini died in 1989. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei, now 81, who has remained an ardent Khomeinist, burning with hatred of America. He and Iran’s other theocrats, Mr. Takeyh writes, are in pursuit of “the most ambitious imperial venture in Iran’s modern history.”
Too many in the journalistic, diplomatic, and intelligence communities still don’t understand that. Nor, clearly, do the 150 House Democrats who last week signed a letter urging Joe Biden to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a deal that doesn’t curb the regime’s support for terrorism, its threats to Iran’s neighbors, or its suppression of the Iranian people.
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, it also doesn’t stop Iran’s rulers from acquiring nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them to targets anywhere – America included. On the contrary, it leads to that outcome with a promise of American and European acquiescence. Ayatollah Khomeini would be pleased.
*Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet on France and Islamism
Marilyn Stern/Middle East Forum Webinar/December 31, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/61900/anne-elisabeth-moutet-on-france-and-islamism
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, columnist for London's Telegraph and a contributor to the BBC and the New York Post, spoke to participants in a November 20 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about international reaction to French President Emanuel Macron's recent speech outlining his commitment to fight against "separatist Islamism."
Moutet recounted the criticisms lobbed against Macron by multiple organs of the Anglosphere media, which "accused him of being Islamaphobic, racist, in need of an education, et cetera."
Moutet said that her native France is "a country that has known terrorism for a very long time" and understands the threat, "knowledge ... we paid for in blood." In the sixties, "Algerian independentists" launched bomb attacks in Paris. In the seventies, it was Palestinian terrorists who threatened France. Then came Iranian-backed terrorists and various other Mideast proxies pressing their causes in France. In the nineties, France was "one of the main hinterlands of the civil war in Algeria," which unleashed Islamist terrorism on French soil. Following 9-11 came more bombings and beheadings, "the phenomenon that now ... everyone unfortunately has become familiar with."
Since 9-11, there has been a "creeping influence" of the "worst elements of Islamism" within the French Muslim community, which numbers 6-7 million people, almost half of which are of north African descent. Moutet said while the majority of Muslims in France generally distrust the Islamists and want to integrate into French society, "ecosystems" of Islamic extremism have developed among the Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated segments of the Muslim minority. In those Muslim enclaves, the French law of the land is defied and logistical support for terror attacks can be found.
French President Emanuel Macron delivers a speech condemning "Islamic separatism" on October 2.
Rather than seeking to advance defined political objectives, Islamists today increasingly kill "just because they don't like something ... drawn or written on paper." The 2015 massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris can best be understood by recalling the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie three decades prior for "insulting Islam" with the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa accusing Rushdie of blasphemy and "condemning him to death" was looked upon in the West as "madness" issued by "one mullah in Tehran." Today, large numbers of Islamists claim that Charlie Hebdo cartoons are no different than the blasphemy of The Satanic Verses.
Macron made his declaration against "separatist Islamism" against the backdrop of the court case which was reopened against the surviving Charlie Hebdo killers. The magazine made the decision this past September to reprint the cartoons that provoked the killings, but French allies reacted with harsh criticism this time around, in contrast to the full-throated support they had voiced for France following the 2015 murders.
The French population supports Macron's government and his muscular response to Islamist terrorism. Moreover, President Macron took care in his speech about separatism to distinguish between the majority of French Muslims and the radical Islamists. But he has learned the hard way that the word "Islamophobia" has become an effective weapon for silencing any criticism of extremism in Islam.
Two foreign Muslim leaders seized the opportunity to revile both France and Macron. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdoğan, who was angry at Paris for its defense of Greece, retaliated by insulting Macron and encouraging attacks against anyone aligned with Macron and the law of the French republic. A close second in piling on Macron is Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who declared that any Muslim is entitled to fight back against France – in essence a call to commit murder. Both Erdogan and Khan have funded the establishment of mosques in France, which affords them access to the Muslim enclaves that separate themselves from the greater French community.
It was in this atmosphere of incitement that the French teacher Samuel Paty was recently targeted and beheaded. Ironically, Paty was giving a civics lesson on freedom of expression and why caricatures are part of the French tradition and "not something that entitles you to kill people." Murdering Paty for displaying a cartoon critical of a religion is an assault on French political traditions, which can only be understood in the context of French history and the post-French-revolution establishment of "laïcité" (secularism) enshrined into law in 1905. Under this precept, the state "protects the practice of religion" while guaranteeing "the neutrality of the public space."
Macron's commitment has been exhibited through the French parliament's passage of laws strengthening France's counterterrorism agencies and dissolution of some associations that advocated murder and criminality. The way to "defang" some of the methods Islamists employ to spread their hate is to "follow the money" and disrupt it.
Moutet is "cautiously hopeful" that Macron, who has been sensitized to the scourge of Islamism, is committed to defending freedom of speech. "He is absolutely horrified that there is no way of getting your point across to some people, because they may understand what you say, but they absolutely disapprove of your being able to say it, and they [express their disapproval] with bombs."
*Marilyn Stern is communications coordinator at the Middle East Forum.

Turkey: Turks Celebrate Nazi Sympathizer
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/December 31/ 2020
Sadly, Hüseyin Nihal Atsız still has many fans in Turkey.
"As the mud will not be iron even if it is put into an oven, the Jew cannot be Turkish no matter how hard he tries. Turkishness is a privilege, it is not granted to everyone, especially to those like Jews... If we get angry, we will not only exterminate Jews like the Germans did, we will go further...." — Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, in his National Revolution (Milli Inkılap) journal, 1934.
Today, behind many of Turkey's continued aggressive policies such as its anti-Armenian, anti-Greek, anti-Cypriot, anti-Jewish, anti-Kurdish, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli activities lie the racist views of Atsız and the like. Millions of Turks have for decades been poisoned with Atsız's Nazi-like views.
In November, the Istanbul metropolitan municipality, led by Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), named a park in Istanbul's Maltepe district after Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, a racist anti-Semite and one of Turkey's most prominent Nazi sympathizers. Pictured: CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu (left), waves to supporters at a rally in the Maltepe district of Istanbul on July 9, 2017. (Photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)
In November, the Istanbul metropolitan municipality, led by Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), named a park in Istanbul after Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, a racist anti-Semite and one of Turkey's most prominent Nazi sympathizers. The request was made by members of another Turkish opposition party, "The Good Party" (Iyi). Atsız (1905-1975) was known for "measuring skulls" to determine people's "amount of Turkishness."
In March, a member of the Good Party presented a motion to the Istanbul municipal assembly, calling for a park in Istanbul's Maltepe district to be named after Atsız. The motion stated that Atsız spent most of his life in the Köyiçi region of Maltepe, and the subject was put on the assembly's agenda in November. After the motion was passed by the assembly, the park in the Yalı Neighborhood officially received Atsız's name.
According to the official website of the Istanbul metropolitan municipality, the motion passed unanimously. In a video published on social media, the Maltepe branch of the Good Party thanked Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, a member of the CHP, for his support.
Sadly, Atsız still has many fans in Turkey. On December 11, for instance, Meral Aksener, the head of the Good Party, posted on Twitter:
"I commemorate with respect and grace Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, one of the valuable representatives of the idea of Turkish nationalism and a translator of our feelings, on the anniversary of his death."
So what are Atsız's worldview and legacy?
Atsız promoted Pan-Turanism, also known as Turanism, Turkism or Pan-Turkism, a nationalist, expansionist ideology that emerged in Ottoman Turkey during the Young Turks era (1908–18). Turanism believes in the supremacy of Turks and aims to unite all "Turkic peoples" from Hungary to the Pacific under one roof. The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which organized the first phase of the 1914-23 Christian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, was also pan-Turkist-Turanist. Turkey's continued aggression towards Armenia, Israel, Cyprus, Greece, and other nations in the region today is also motivated by Turkism, among other extremist ideologies.
In her book Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust, scholar Corry Guttstadt describes Atsız as a "Turkish apologist for German Nazism":
"Nihal Atsiz was an avid Nazi sympathizer. He called himself a 'racist, pan-Turkist and Turanist', and was an open anti-Semite. From 1934 onward, Atsiz published the Turanist journal Orhun, in which he advocated a Greater Turkish Empire extending from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. His Turkism was based on ties of blood and race; he advocated a return to pre-Islamic Turkish beliefs."
Professor Jacob M. Landau notes:
"Atsiz was a great admirer of the race theories of Nazi Germany, expressing some of them repeatedly in his own works during the 1930s and 1940s (with the Turks labelled as the 'master race'). His articles insisted, again and again, that Pan-Turkism could – and should – be achieved by war. For years, his haircut resembled Hitler's and his own personal posture had a military way to it."
Atsız's writings led to violence when the Jewish communities of eastern Thrace were attacked during the 1934 anti-Jewish pogrom. Atsız was a literature teacher in the region back then. Guttstadt writes:
"Immediately prior to the events of 1934, threatening articles directed against Jews had also appeared in the journal Orhun, published by Atsiz."
After a trip to the city of Canakkale, for instance, Atsız wrote:
"The Jew here is like the Jew we see everywhere. Insidious, insolent, malevolent, cowardly, but opportunistic Jew; the Jewish neighborhood is the center of clamor, noise and filth here as [the Jewish neighborhoods] everywhere else.... We do not want to see this treacherous and bastard nation of history as citizens among us anymore."
In another article during the same period, Atsız wrote:
"The creature called the Jew in the world is not loved by anyone but the Jew and the ignoble ones... Phrases in our language such as 'like a Jew', 'do not act like a Jew', 'Jewish bazaar', 'to look like a synagogue'... shows the value given by our race to this vile nation. As the mud will not be iron even if it is put into an oven, the Jew cannot be Turkish no matter how hard he tries. Turkishness is a privilege, it is not granted to everyone, especially to those like Jews... If we get angry, we will not only exterminate Jews like the Germans did, we will go further...."
Motivated by the writings by Atsız and other anti-Semitic authors, Turks targeted the Jews of eastern Thrace in pogroms from June 21- July 4, 1934. These began with a boycott of Jewish businesses, and were followed by physical attacks on Jewish-owned buildings, which were first looted, then set on fire. Jewish men were beaten, and some Jewish women reportedly raped. Terrorized by this turn of events, many Jews fled the region. According to historian Rifat Bali, many of Atsız's followers participated directly in the riots.
Atsız contributed a lot to intoxicating Turkish minds with Jew-hatred. According to Dr. Fatih Yaşlı's book, Our Hate is Our Religion: A Study on Turkist Fascism, Atsız wrote:
"Can a child of the Turkish nation who swung swords and spent their lifetime on battlefields for centuries and a child of the Jewish nation who lived their lives in dishonesty and fraud for centuries be equal? Even if they take a Turkish child and a Jewish child born on the same day to the same education institution and teach them only the Esperanto language and give them the same education under the same conditions, the Turkish child will definitely be brave again, and the Jew will be cowardly again."
Atsız often made dehumanizing statements about other non-Turks, as well. Referring to Greeks, for instance, and conveniently disregarding the Turkish genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, he wrote:
"Can Greeks be regarded as human beings?... Greek means a scorpion. Just as the scorpion stung the turtle who helped it cross the river to do it a favor and then said 'what can I do? This [betrayal] is my habit', the Greeks are also shaped by a habit of enmity against Turks."
Atsız hated almost all non-Turkish peoples. In his will, addressing his then one-and-a-half-year-old son, Yagmur, Atsız wrote, in part:
"The Jews are the worst enemy of all nations. The Russians, the Chinese, the Persians, the Greeks are our historical enemies.
"The Bulgarians, the Germans, the Italians, the British, the French, the Arabs, the Serbs, the Croats, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romanians are our new enemies.
"The Japanese, Afghans and Americans are our future enemies.
"The Armenians, the Kurds, the Circassians, the Abkhaz, the Bosnians, the Albanians, the Pomaks, the Laz, the Lezgins, the Georgians, the Chechens are our enemies within [Turkey].
"One must become well prepared to combat so many enemies."
His son Yagmur, however, grew up to be an individual critical of his father's views. In a book he penned in 2005, he described how his father measured skulls in an attempt to determine people's "rate of Turkishness."
"Nihal Atsız was dreadfully [into] skullcaps. He measured the skulls of people he did not know at all – beside the skulls of his immediate surroundings and neighbors. He then calculated the skulls meticulously, and informed them whether they were Turkish or not. For example, he told them if they were Turkish 37 percent, nine out of ten or 69.4 percent. For those with a low rate of Turkishness, he always had words of 'consolation' on his lips. For instance, he said, 'But you can partially eliminate your innate deficiency through an extraordinary voluntary effort and vigilant national consciousness.'
"Of course, those with a low rate of Turkishness, according to the skull measurement, would leave [our] home extremely distressed."
Yagmur Atsız added that the "tool" that his father used to measure skulls was a kind of a caliper, about 45 centimeters long, and it was always on his writing desk. Atsız added that his father continued the skull measurement activity for decades.
Atsız also continued to affect Turkish political life in the next decades. Guttstadt notes:
"Anti-Semites and fascists, inspired by the German example, became a constant in Turkey's political system in the period after World War II. In 1962, Nihal Atsız, along with like-minded people, founded the Türkçülük Derneği [Turkism Association], a forerunner of the fascist National Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), which was responsible for countless murders of leftist students, unionists, and intellectuals during the seventies. The leader of this movement was Atsız's comrade in arms Alparslan Türkeş."
The MHP also includes the far-right, racist Grey Wolf movement (Bozkurtlar), which was recently banned in France after a memorial to victims of the 1914-23 Armenian Genocide was defaced. Officially known as Idealist Hearths (Ülkü Ocakları), the movement has been involved in many acts of violence against civilians as well as political and religious figures. This includes the Alevi massacre in the city of Maras in southeast Turkey in 1978 and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Atsız's racist worldview has led to deaths and destruction for so many. Nevertheless, at least three other parks in Ankara and Antalya and a street in the city of Amasya have been named after him.
So, what is it in Atsız's thoughts and activities that many in the Turkish opposition -- including Istanbul's mayor -- find worth promoting? Is it his "skull measurement," Nazism, racism, Turkish supremacism and hate on which the Turkish opposition also agrees?
Today, behind many of Turkey's continued aggressive policies such as its anti-Armenian, anti-Greek, anti-Cypriot, anti-Jewish, anti-Kurdish, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli activities lie the racist views of Atsız and the like. Millions of Turks have for decades been poisoned with Atsız's Nazi-like views.
Apparently, the opinions of many members of the Turkish opposition do not seem so different from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's violent, supremacist mindset. Until the Turkish opposition leaders and politicians honestly face and criticize Turkey's history of crimes, slaughter and systematic racism, true democracy there will remain just a dream.
*Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
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We Need a Global Alliance to Defend Democracies
Richard Kemp/Gatestone Institute/December 31/2020
Under a Biden administration, many will be mindful of the Obama-era sell-out of America's Middle East allies while accommodating the hostile Iranian ayatollahs.
Despite the optimistic indulgences by foreign policy experts and politicians over decades, China will not reform to allow normal coexistence within the world order but must instead be contained.
A modern alliance to resist today's "attempted subjugation and outside pressures" should focus not only on China and the immediate challenges of 5G technology and supply chains, but also on the other major strategic threats to democratic states.... The object should not be... to lecture governments such as Hungary, Poland and Romania... While [Biden] may find their internal policies unpalatable, they pose no threat to any other country.
An interests-based, rather than ideological, alliance of strategically like-minded democracies should be built, each with the economic power and will to counter the authoritarian entities that oppose the Free World.... The alliance should work to push back the authoritarians and radicals across the economic, cultural, political, cyber and technological realms and deny them access to critical infrastructure and technology as well as opportunities for cultural subversion. It should also act to deter their further advances.
An important function of the proposed alliance would be to encourage member states, and their allies against authoritarian and extremist entities, to both provide adequate defence resources and where necessary adapt and modernise forces to ensure credible deterrence.
If a country lacks the confidence to stick up for its own values at home, how is it to robustly defend its virtues against those who wish to undermine them? This weakness in Western democracies has already allowed great strides across the world by China, Russia and jihadism and has helped create the situation that a D10 alliance is now urgently needed to repair.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to use the G7 summit that Britain is hosting in 2021 to launch the "D10", intended as an alliance of democracies to counter China.
His proposal is for the G7 group of leading industrialised nations to be joined by Australia, South Korea and India. The focus would be on developing 5G telecommunications technology to reduce dependence on Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party as well as reliance on essential medical supplies from China.
President-elect Joe Biden put forward a somewhat similar initiative in 2019 and it is widely believed that he plans to convene a "Summit for Democracies" in 2021. It appears his intention is broader than Mr Johnson's both in scope and participation, and that it includes promoting liberal democratic values across the world.
This raises the spectre of abortive efforts at democracy-building in the Middle East and South Asia in the years after 9/11. It would be ill-judged and it fails to recognise a changed world in which allegiance to the US has been devalued as economic incentives from China to many countries, including democracies, have significantly grown. Confidence in US leadership has also been substantially undermined by interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, which today are widely regarded as failures. Under a Biden administration, many will be mindful of the Obama-era sell-out of America's Middle East allies while accommodating the hostile Iranian ayatollahs.
In other words, while the spread and development of Western-style democracy should of course be encouraged, something of more concrete utility to national self-interest than a liberal-left world view needs to be on offer. Instead of attempting an ideological programme to duplicate American democracy around the world, the US should work with the UK on a version of Mr Johnson's action-oriented D10 proposal, but significantly expanded in scope.
This would recognise that, despite the optimistic indulgences by foreign policy experts and politicians over decades, China will not reform to allow normal coexistence within the world order but must instead be contained. As British Chief of Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter said in a speech this month:
"What's needed is a catalyst somewhat like George Kennan's 'long telegram' in which he observed that peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union in 1946 was unlikely to work. This led to the Truman Doctrine of containment which provided the basis of US and Western strategy throughout the Cold War."
The Truman Doctrine transformed US foreign policy towards the Soviet Union from an alliance against fascism to the prevention of Soviet expansion across the globe. As President Truman said in a speech to Congress in 1947: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures".
A modern alliance to resist today's "attempted subjugation and outside pressures" should focus not only on China and the immediate challenges of 5G technology and supply chains, but also on the other major strategic threats to democratic states. There is no doubt that China constitutes by far the greatest challenge and is likely to do so for generations to come. The alliance, however, should also be aimed at Russia, which dedicates significant efforts to undermine US and allied foreign policy and society and to subvert Western democracies on top of its regional aggression in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, the Middle East and elsewhere. Relations between China and Russia have been steadily improving, with their interests converging in many areas, especially where they oppose the West. Some believe a formal strategic coalition between the two could emerge.
The alliance should also oppose the threat from North Korea with its growing nuclear capability, and Iran, which, although predominantly regionally-focused, sponsors terrorist attacks globally and has nuclear ambitions that pose a grave strategic danger.
Finally, the alliance should direct itself against the threat from global Sunni Islamic jihad, in terms of international terrorism from the likes of Al Qaida and Islamic State and also societal subversion by the Muslim Brotherhood and associated radical entities.
The object should not be another talking shop to extol the virtues of democracy or to press for domestic social and political reform. Nor, as Mr Biden will be inclined, to lecture governments such as Hungary, Poland and Romania, each of which he chastised in a 2018 speech in Copenhagen. While he may find their internal policies unpalatable, they pose no threat to any other country.
Instead, an interests-based, rather than ideological, alliance of strategically like-minded democracies should be built, each with the economic power and will to counter the authoritarian entities that oppose the Free World. Such an alliance would aim to support others in defending themselves against the authoritarian and extremist entities, and encompass friendly countries that are not democracies and include nations likely to be out of favour with the administration, such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil.
Despite some common characteristics, this will be no re-run of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The complexities today are far greater. Globalisation, economic inter-dependence, cyber vulnerability, environmental concerns, the priority assigned to climate change and connectivity on so many other levels mean there is a continuing imperative to remain widely engaged with those who must at the same time be contained by this endeavour. In addition, the potency of asymmetric, unconventional and unattributable conflict is significantly greater today, particularly in the cyber realm.
The threats posed by each of the authoritarian and radical entities and levels of dependency upon them affect countries to substantially different degrees. Given this and the realities of varying domestic political perspectives, strategic cultures, economic dependencies and national foreign policy priorities, there should be no realistic expectation of universal congruence across a broad alliance. Indeed, the D10, whatever form it takes, should not be a formalised NATO-like structure with a charter, endless staffs, bureaucracies and the need for consensus to secure action.
Rather, it should be a flexible forum of nation-states playing their own roles in containing a common series of threats against them. The objective, and indeed the litmus test, of American leadership would be to persuade all or most members of the alliance to act in concert against all major challenges.
For such an alliance to be formed and sustained over the long term, however, it would be necessary to accept that in some situations there might be unanimity of action whereas in others a group of members might decide to act together. Such a pragmatic formula should prevent the paralysis that is often characteristic of more orthodox international bodies such as the UN Security Council, the EU and NATO, while generating the kind of international synergy against global threats that is needed today to enable rapid and concerted action as well as long-term strategic policy.
The alliance should work to push back the authoritarians and radicals across the economic, cultural, political, cyber and technological spectrums and deny them access to critical infrastructure and technology as well as opportunities for cultural subversion. The alliance should also act to deter their further advances. For example, China or Russia would be aware that any crisis they precipitated against one state could quickly expand, drawing in other alliance members, potentially developing into a major challenge to them and giving pause as to whether creating the threat would be worth the cost. A similar range of deterrence could also be effective against states such as Iran that are tempted to use terror proxies or sponsor radicals opposed to the West.
Instruments available to the alliance include diplomatic, trade and economic incentives and coercion as well as technological edge. Military conflict would not be the intention. On the contrary, as US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said only a few days ago of conflict with China and Russia: "they are wars that must not be fought, where the measure of success is not military victory but deterrence". As General Milley knows better than most, however, deterrence through economic, diplomatic and technological means needs to be backed by the added muscle of strong and effective military force and the unmistakable political will to use it if necessary.
Logically, division of deterrent military effort would be made on a regional basis with an agreement on more flexible deployments when necessary. This would give European nations primary responsibility for countering Russia, as well as Chinese, Iranian and jihadist security threats in the region, freeing US forces to focus on the Indo-Pacific. However, Europe's track record on its own security is far from encouraging, underlined by the refusal of most European countries even to meet their NATO defence spending commitments. An important function of the proposed alliance would be to encourage member states, and their allies against authoritarian and extremist entities, to both provide adequate defence resources and where necessary adapt and modernise forces to ensure credible deterrence.
Such an alliance would be faced with a Catch-22 problem, which did not exist to anything like the same degree in the Cold War. Wide-based moral conviction within member states is needed to underpin political will. Creeping cultural relativism has severely infected many Western democracies, especially in Europe, and today threatens to engulf even the US polity. This has been accompanied by a determination to enrich and empower adversaries by engaging in business with them with little patriotic or moral restraint.
The latest example is the EU's trade pact with China, signed on 30 December. This is despite concerns raised by some politicians about forced labour, especially among the Uighur minority, human rights in Hong Kong and China's role in the Coronavirus pandemic. An unusual intervention, urging policy coordination with the US by President-elect Biden, was ignored.
If a country lacks the confidence to stick up for its own values at home, how is it to robustly defend its virtues against those who wish to undermine them? This weakness in Western democracies has already allowed great strides across the world by China, Russia and jihadism and has helped create the situation that a D10 alliance is now urgently needed to repair.
*Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander. He was also head of the international terrorism team in the U.K. Cabinet Office and is now a writer and speaker on international and military affairs.
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Khamenei’s early intervention in Iran’s upcoming election betrays his fears for the future
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/The Arab Weekly/December 31/2020
Although Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claims his job is not to interfere in government affairs unless the survival of the Islamic Republic is at risk, he is already intervening in the country’s presidential election, which is still almost six months away. In his latest remarks to the representatives of Iran’s “Student Unions,” he pointed out that a “young and hezbollahi government” must rule the country. He added: “I have repeatedly said that I believe in such a government … However, this word does not mean just a 30-some-year-old young person becomes the government’s chief … The young and hezbollahi government means a practical, ready and sprightly government that cures dilemmas and can pass the country from hard paths,” according to the Iranian state-controlled Mehr news agency.
What he is suggesting is that the next government must be a hard-line one that adheres to and promotes the revolutionary ideals of the Islamic Republic. From his perspective, people such as the late Gen. Qassem Soleimani are perfect candidates to run for the presidency. As he stated: “Some are young, hardworking and cheerful despite old ages, like great martyr Haj Qassem Soleimani. He was above 60 years old. However, I would preserve him at his position even for another 10 years if he was not martyred.”
Khamenei is attempting to fill every branch of the government with hard-line ideologues. He already tightened his grip on the parliament by consolidating his autonomous rule, as hard-liners won the majority of seats in 2020 parliamentary elections. The victory of these hard-liners was most likely premeditated and predetermined by the supreme leader. The Guardian Council, the members of which are directly or indirectly appointed by Khamenei, disqualified more than 7,000 candidates ahead of the vote. The majority of those who were banned were from reformist, independent, pragmatic and moderate political parties.
He is also continually marginalizing the high-level clerics who oppose him, and has created his own inner circle and foreign-policy office
Similarly, Khamenei made several speeches in the months prior to the parliamentary elections that warned the government against allowing some candidates to stand. In one of those speeches, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, he called for a “strong Majlis (Iran’s Parliament)” that must be made up of “courageous, effective, obedient, motivated (candidates) loyal to Islam.”
He added: “Anyone who fears speaking out against a certain foreign power (the US) is not fit to represent the honorable, mighty and brave Iranian public.”
While some politicians in Iran may prioritize a pragmatic approach to running the country to ensure the survival of the theocratic establishment, Khamenei believes that pragmatism ought to come second to the revolutionary ideals of the Islamic Republic, which include anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, exporting the principles of the revolution to other nations, and pursuing hegemonic ambitions in the region.
As a result, his regime is making sure that those who are deemed to be qualified to run for office are ideologues, staunchly loyal to the supreme leader and the revolutionary goals of the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei’s modus operandi has always been anchored in weakening the presidential office and influential figures while granting significant power to the military, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite branch, the Quds Force.
He is also continually marginalizing the high-level clerics who oppose him, and has created his own inner circle and foreign-policy office. In particular after the latest widespread protests across Iran, Khamenei has significantly empowered the IRGC and paramilitary group the Basij.
He has made the IRGC the backbone of the clerical establishment, as it controls significant sections of the country’s economic and ideological centers. Khamenei and the senior cadres of the IRGC enjoy the final say in some of Tehran’s foreign-policy decisions and its support for proxies.
The Supreme Leader’s current favored candidate for the presidency appears to be hard-line politician Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who was elected speaker of the parliament this year. A former IRGC general, he is considered a principalist (ultraconservative) within the Iranian political spectrum and one of the most corrupt politicians in the country.
He is a staunchly loyal confidante to the supreme leader, and has played a crucial role as the regime’s insider in ensuring the survival of the Islamic Republic and the advancement of Tehran’s revolutionary principles.
This is why President Hassan Rouhani’s political party recently attacked Qalibaf. According to an article published by the Asr-e Iran website on Dec. 19: “Wow, Majlis reformed the presidential law for Qalibaf … Believe that, if they could, they would write that the presidential candidate must be a general, doctor, pilot, Tehran mayor and Majlis Speaker (referring to Qalibaf’s previous positions) otherwise, he cannot register.”
Khamenei’s move to interfere in the presidential election reveals his fear that the survival of the Islamic Republic is in danger as a result of growing domestic opposition to the regime and the potential for further protests.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. He serves on the boards of the Harvard International Review, the Harvard International Relations Council and the US-Middle East Chamber for Commerce and Business. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh