LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

April 24/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.april24.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today

Peter cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 14/22-33:"Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God."

See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all
First Letter to the Thessalonians 05/12-28:"But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labour among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. Beloved, pray for us. Greet all the brothers and sisters with a holy kiss. I solemnly command you by the Lord that this letter be read to all of them. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 24/16

To Putin or to Pout/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
It’s a wrap: Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia/Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
Mideast education funds matter, but so does R&D/Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
If rural China sneezes, won’t the world catch a cold/Ehtesham Shahid/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
The Self-Contradictory Liberals/Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/April 23/16
Palestinians: When in Doubt, Try Intimidation/Khaled Abu Toameh//Gatestone Institute/April 23/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on April 24/16

Al-Rahi: Political Powers Must Tackle Real Reasons for Presidential Elections Failure
Jones Attends U.S. Embassy-Sponsored Spelling Bee Competition
Mashnouq: No Obstacles Hindering Municipal Polls
Berri Vows to Pursue People's Interest Regarding Legislation
Zoaiter Family Members Clash in Beirut's Laylaki
Report: Complicity between Ogero, Private Companies Emerges in Illegal Internet Case.
Report: Ibrahim Urges more Security Support in Ain el-Hilweh to Avoid IS Clutches
Salam wraps up New York visit
Demonstration towards Turkish Embassy on Armenian genocide anniversary
Rifi: Sunnis are fortified by faith in partnership
LAF: Syrian linked to ISIL referred to judicial authorities
Ministry of Economy warns beach resort owners of tampering with prices
Hout: Carrying out Municipal elections not taken seriously
Big Dance celebrates a decade of dancing, leaves a trail of smiles across Lebanon

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 24/16

Separate U.S. Shootings in Two States Leave 14 Dead
IS Claims Capture of Syrian Pilot after Shooting down Plane
Regime Bombardment Kills 27 Civilians across Syria
Obama, U.N. Envoy Voice Alarm at 'Fraying' Syria Truce
No One Loses' from Main Syria Opposition Group Leaving Talks, Says Russia
Yemen Launches Southern Operation against Qaida Militants
Yemen Foes Hold New Talks under Pressure to Firm up Truce
Dozens of Arrests in Egypt ahead of Anti-Government Protest
Egypt Court Postpones Morsi Espionage Verdict
Israeli Fighters Scramble to Intercept Undeclared Airliner
Ex-U.S. Marine general James Mattis says Iran nuclear deal ‘fell short’
Iran regime hangs prisoner in southern port city
NGO: International action needed to stop Iran regime’s military presence in Syria
IRAN: Plot against the life of political prisoner Ali Moezzi
Iran political prisoner Amir Amirgholi in poor health after 13 days of hunger strike

Links From Jihad Watch Site for April 24/16
Two Muslims get life for Islamic State plots against soldiers, police, and civilians.
Islamic State jihadi reveals plan to bring jihadis to U.S. via Mexico.
Videos: Robert Spencer on “Islamophobia” and peaceful Islam — in Hungarian.
Germany: Muslims scream “Adolf Hitler” and “Allahu akbar,” make Nazi salute.
Grand Mufti of Australia blames “racism” and “Islamophobia” for Paris jihad massacre.
At least 5,000 jihadists entered Syria from Turkey, including Chinese Uighurs.
UK: National Union of Students top dog says condemning the Islamic State would be “blatant Islamophobia”.
Bangladesh professor hacked to death, throat slit in suspected Islamic jihad attack.
Muslim who charged “Islamophobia” when removed from plane tweeted about Muslims removed from plane 3 days earlier.
Ex-hostages of the Islamic State identify Brussels jihad mass murderer as their captor.
Christian refugees “let down” by Pope: he promised to take them to Italy but then took only Muslims instead.

Al-Rahi: Political Powers Must Tackle Real Reasons for Presidential Elections Failure
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi condemned the ongoing vacuum in the presidency and the political powers' failure to resolve disputes hindering the elections, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday. He said: “It is time for the concerned political powers to responsibly and bravely tackle the real reasons that are preventing the completion of quorum at parliament.” Numerous electoral sessions have been scheduled and none but one were held due to the lack of needed quorum at parliament.
“We have reached an unacceptable stage in Lebanon whereby we are witnessing the fragmentation of the components of the state,” continued al-Rahi. “It is as if this fragmentation is programmed, starting with the presidency, passing through the parliament and leading to the cabinet and all other public institutions,” he lamented. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps have thwarted the elections. Hizbullah announced earlier this year that it would boycott electoral sessions unless it receives guarantees that its candidate, Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun, is elected head of state.This stance has been heavily criticized by various members of the March 14 coalition and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat, who blame Hizbullah and its main backer Iran of obstructing the polls.

Jones Attends U.S. Embassy-Sponsored Spelling Bee Competition
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/U.S. Chargé d’Affaires ad interim Ambassador Richard Jones presided on Saturday over the final round of the U.S. Embassy-funded “Bee A Good Citizen” spelling bee competition, the mission announced. Twenty-one students from grades 7 and 8 participated in the final competition at the Baakline National Library, which determined the national winners and regional winners for the Bekaa and the Chouf, it said in a statement. Oganized in partnership with USPEaK, the spelling bee brings together young students to compete in spelling words in English that promote good citizenship, democracy, tolerance, co-existence, and environmental stewardship, said the Embassy. This is the second year the U.S. Embassy has sponsored the spelling bee program in order to support English language learning in Lebanon. More than 1,100 students from 20 public and private schools in the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon (Aley-Chouf) participated in preliminary competitions within their schools during the course of the school year, while 200 students participated in the regional competitions at the U.S. Embassy’s American Corners in Baakline and Zahleh in March and April. In his opening remarks, CDA Jones noted that “the U.S. Embassy’s spelling bee competition is about more than just spelling words. As its slogan ‘Bee A Good Citizen’ indicates, it is also about what those words mean. The words selected focus on values critical to building a better future for all of us, including vocabulary related to citizenship, democracy, tolerance, coexistence, and environmental stewardship.”“It gives me and my colleagues in the Embassy much hope to see this young generation and the vast majority of Lebanese embracing these principles that are important across the world, no matter what language is spoken,” said Jones. “They are the principles of those who wish to create just societies and build upon the strong Lebanese belief in the value of education, mutual understanding, and respect. Lebanon and the United States share these values, and this spelling bee is just one example of the partnership between Lebanon and America to promote and strengthen them,” he added.

Mashnouq: No Obstacles Hindering Municipal Polls
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq stressed that his ministry is “completely ready” to stage the municipal elections on time, saying that there are no administrative or security impediments facing them, reported al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday. He told the daily: “There are no obstacles hindering staging the elections.”The only thing that could stand in the way of the polls is a parliamentary decision to postpone them, he remarked. The elections will be held on time “unless someone wants to create a major security incident.”“We will not allow the polls to be obstructed … and we have not heard any political party say that they oppose it,” Mashnouq noted. “It is too late to talk about or search for useless excuses,” he stressed. He said that he has faith that the elections will be held because they are not being controlled by political powers. The municipal elections are scheduled to be held at various phases in May. The municipal elections in Beirut and Bekaa-al-Hermal districts will take place on May 8, while the elections in Mount Lebanon will be held on May 15. Elections in south Lebanon and Nabatieh are set for May 22 and north Lebanon and Akkar for May 29.

Berri Vows to Pursue People's Interest Regarding Legislation
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/Speaker Nabih Berri is still awaiting a response from the political powers regarding his proposal to hold a legislative session, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper. He said, according to his visitors on Friday: “The ball is now in the court of the political forces.”“I hope to receive positive answers to my proposal. If not, then I will do whatever the people's interests demand,” he pledged. Berri has tasked his advisers to contact Christian parties to bridge the gap on the initiative he launched at the national dialogue table on “necessary legislation,” media reports said on Friday. The speaker proposed before the national dialogue that the parliament bureau place the agenda of the parliamentary legislative session. The agenda will include the parliamentary electoral draft-law. Parliament convenes twice a year in two ordinary sessions -- the first starts mid-march until the end of May and the second from the middle of October through the end of December. But the absence of a president since the end of President Michel Suleiman’s term in May 2014 has paralyzed the parliament and led to wrangling among cabinet ministers. The differences between the different parties also worsened in the past month when they started exchanging accusations of corruption following several scandals that rocked the country.

Zoaiter Family Members Clash in Beirut's Laylaki
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/Armed clashes broke out on Saturday between members of the Zoaiter family. The clashes erupted in Beirut's Laylaki region. The army has since intervened to restore calm. The reasons for the fighting were not disclosed. Some houses and a car were damaged in the unrest. The injury toll was not revealed.

Report: Complicity between Ogero, Private Companies Emerges in Illegal Internet Case
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/The investigations in the illegal internet case have revealed a complicity between the OGERO telecommunications company and figures at private companies, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday. “Had disputes on the distribution of profits between these companies and those importing the illegal internet not emerged, then the scandal would not have been uncovered,” sources following the investigations told the daily. Meanwhile, Health Minister Wael Abou Faour revealed that OGERO chief Abdul Moneim Youssef was interrogated on Thursday and he was later released, but prohibited from leaving Lebanon. “He is the tip of the iceberg in the corruption organization at the Telecommunications Ministry,” he said according to As Safir newspaper on Saturday. A source close to Youssef denied however that he was called for investigation.
General Prosecutor Judge Samir Hammoud also refused to confirm or deny the allegations “to respect the privacy of the investigations.”Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb revealed last month that around four illegal internet stations have been proven to exist in the mountainous terrains of al-Dinnieh, Ayoun al-Siman, Faqra and Zaarour. Suspects involved in the case and believed to be associated with the state-owned OGERO were arrested on Monday over possible links to the networks. Early in March, the parliamentary media committee unveiled what it described as a “mafia” that are taking advantage of internet services by installing internet stations that are not subject to the state control. The owners of these stations are buying international internet bandwidth with nominal cost from Turkey and Cyprus which they are selling back to Lebanese subscribers at reduced prices.

Report: Ibrahim Urges more Security Support in Ain el-Hilweh to Avoid IS Clutches
Naharnet/April 23/16/16/A Palestinian delegation carried out on Friday a series of talks with a number of officials, including General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim, on the latest developments in the southern camp of Ain el-Hilweh and the threat of the Islamic State extremist group against it, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday. It said that Ibrahim demanded that the delegation present “renewed support” to the internal security force within the camp “so that it can perform its duties away from political meddling and pressure.”The internal security force should have “absolute” jurisdiction in confronting any tensions within the camp, he explained. The delegation meanwhile pledged to do “its utmost to tackle security loopholes.” The delegation, headed by Fatah member Azzam al-Ahmed, also held talks with Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq, and Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji. In late March, rival factions at Ain el-Hilweh engaged in fierce clashes, leaving dozens wounded and displacing several families. Such incidents have become frequent in recent years in Ain el-Hilweh, the largest of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps. By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the Palestinian camps in the country, leaving the Palestinian factions themselves to handle security. That has created lawless areas in many camps, and Ain el-Hilweh has gained notoriety as a refuge for extremists and fugitives.

Salam wraps up New York visit
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - Prime Minister Tammam Salam and accompanying delegation, has just wrapped up a visit to New York after signing a Paris Climate Change Protocol at the United Nations' building yesterday. Salam has reiterated Lebanon's commitment to the letter and spirit of the Paris Climate Change Protocol during an address at the U.N.

Demonstration towards Turkish Embassy on Armenian genocide anniversary
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - Armenian young people staged on Saturday a demonstration towards the Turkish Embassy in Rabieh, as part of activities and movements by the Armenian parties on the first anniversary after the Armenian Genocide centenary. Demonstrators demanded Turkish acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide, and "pull out its involvement and support for Azerbaijan in its terrorism against Karabakh region."Afterwards, demonstrators marched towards the Armenian Orthodox Catholicosate in Antelias, where a mass service will be taking place in tribute of the souls of genocide martyrs at 8.00 p.m. this evening.

Rifi: Sunnis are fortified by faith in partnership
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - Sunni Muslims are fortified by their unshaken faith in partnership rather than believing in documents of understanding legitimizing Hezbollah's statelet, resigned cabinet minister Ashraf Rifi stated in response to Gebran Bassil's utterances in Tripoli today. Bassil's claims of supporting Hezbollah against Israel is betrayed by Aoun's support for the party during its anti -Sunni, anti - Druze onslaught on May 8th, Rifi added. Accusing Bassil of striving to implant pro- Hezbollah brigades in order to reignite strife in Tripoli, Rifi concluded that Sunnis were in no need of Aounist sympathy for the general proved himself to be apathetic when selling out his own martyrs' blood sacrifices on Hezbollah's altar.

LAF: Syrian linked to ISIL referred to judicial authorities
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Orientation Directorate issued on Saturday the following statement: "The Intelligence Directorate referred the case of Syrian national Abdul Rahman Mohammad Ali Al Aakari, apprehended on 19/04/2016 in Tripoli, to specialized judicial authorities for his link to the terrorist organization ISIL."

Ministry of Economy warns beach resort owners of tampering with prices
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - The Ministry of Economy and Trade issued a statement on Saturday warning owners of beach resorts of tampering with the prices of entry fees and goods sold at the resorts, especially food and beverage items. The Ministry asserted that it planned to closely monitor resorts and urged citizens to contact the hotline 1739 for any complaints.

Hout: Carrying out Municipal elections not taken seriously
Sat 23 Apr 2016 /NNA - "Jamaa Islamiah" parliamentary bloc member, deputy Imad Hout, considered that carrying out the municipal elections is not taken seriously as non of the political forces has prepared their electoral machinery yet, noting that non of those forces would announce that they are against carrying out municipal elections.Hout told "Voice of Lebanon" radio that his bloc perceives the municipal election as a developmental file which depends on agreement among families away from political factors in order to shun big towns any political battles, calling upon "political forces to address people's minds not instincts."Talking about the illegal internet file, Hout indicated that the political division was behind the public disclosure of the corruption issues which reveals the state disintegration, saying that the "parliamentary telecommunication committee has the right to check the details of the said file provided that it presents its report to the general committee; however, the final word would be to the judiciary."

Big Dance celebrates a decade of dancing, leaves a trail of smiles across Lebanon
Sat 23 Apr 2016/NNA - Under the patronage of the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hugo Shorter, the British Council celebrated with around 1,400 students from 27 public and private schools a decade of 'Big Dance' in Horsh Beirut on Saturday 23 April 2016. The dance adds to the sense of creativity, collaboration and communication of the students and help them meet new people, be inspired by dance and to have a cultural exchange. This year, thousands of schoolchildren from over 1,000 schools across the world will be taking part in the Big Dance pledge for 2016 as a legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, created especially for them by the international choreographer Akram Khan, along with specially composed music track by Nitin Sawhney. The Big Dance Schools pledge is presented in partnership with the British Council and its programme Connecting Classrooms.
Using the themes of 'Overcoming Adversity' and 'Achievement' Akram Khan is encouraging groups to tell their own stories of 'personal struggle reflecting all the things a person goes through to be successful', through the choreography and coming together to share their experiences in performance.
Under these themes, the students also paid tribute to William Shakespeare by celebrating the anniversary of his death 400 years ago - on 23 April 2016 - when they held eight Shakespeare quotes reflecting: Love, Identity, Future, Hope and Music. At the end of the dance, a large 'Shakespeare Lives in 2016' expression was formed by the students by flashing giant cardboard signs above their heads to mark this day. For the past month, The British Council team, choreographers from the United Kingdom and teachers from the participating schools trained the students on the dance. Through this initiative, the British Council has managed to strengthen public-private schools partnerships in Lebanon. It has also helped raise more awareness about the amazing benefits of integrating arts in the curriculum, as it was proved to improve students' performance and increase their levels of creativity.
The British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hugo Shorter commented on the event: 'Nothing compares to the energy and dynamism of dancing, especially when people from all over the world dance together. The 1,400 students gathered here in Horch Beirut are expressing a truly Lebanese shared identity which is this year's theme: personal struggles reflecting all the things a person goes through to be successful. Events that bring people together with creativity and inclusiveness, like the British Council has done today, are very much appreciated.'
The British Council Director, Ms. Donna McGowan said during the event: 'Big Dance is something which students, teachers, ourselves at the British Council and the British Embassy, look forward to every year. Students value being part of this event - not only on the day, but during the preparation and rehearsals. It's not just fun, it's stimulating and gets them to think and interact differently. This is all about bringing young people together, from the public and private school sectors, to learn from one another and appreciate the diversity of Lebanese society.'
The schools taking part in Lebanon are: Al-Makassed Omar Bin Al Khattab School, Makassed Abi Bakr El Siddeeq, Makassed Ali Bin, Abi Taleb College, Makassed KSPS, National Evangelical Institute for Girls and Boys - Saida, Mostafa Shoumran School, Antonine Sisters High School - Roumieh, Antonine Sisters High School - Zahle, Antonine Sisters School (Hazmieh-Jamhour), Antonine Sisters School Dekwaneh, American Academy of Beirut, Ahliah School, Lady of Balamand High School, OLAS- Rmeich, Saint Anthony's College Hammana, College Elysee, Averst College, ALHadi Institution, Students' Paradise Secondary School, Houssam Eddine Hariri High School, Ras Beirut First Public School, Mohammad Shamel Public school, Al-Amir Shakib Irslan Public School, Ghobeiry the 2nd public school, Rene Mouawad Official High School and Aley Public School.

Separate U.S. Shootings in Two States Leave 14 Dead
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Eight members of one family, including a teenager, were shot dead in rural Ohio on Friday, just before gunmen killed six people in Georgia. In Ohio, seven bodies were found at three houses close to each other and an eighth was later found at a separate site, Sheriff Charles Reader told reporters. The victims were "all adults except for a male juvenile" who was 16 years old, he said, and all members of a single family. Two babies -- one aged four days, the other six months -- and a three-year-old child survived the shootings, he added. The authorities gave no possible motive. And, with at least one suspected gunman still on the loose, no arrests have been made. "Each one of the victims appears to have been executed, each one of the victims appears to have been shot in the head," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. "The preliminary determination has been made that none of the individuals committed suicide," he added, saying the shooter or shooters "are still at large. We do not know their location."Several victims were in bed when they were shot, Reader said. The first and fourth crime scenes are separated by 30 miles (50 kilometers), the sheriff's office said. Earlier, DeWine and Reader said in a joint statement that the first seven victims had been found "in three Union Hill Road homes in Pike County," a rural community about 80 miles east of Cincinnati.There was no "active shooter," they said. Schools in Pike County and surrounding areas were earlier placed on lockdown as a precautionary measure, local media reported. Agents from the Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation were leading the investigation, the statement said. Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich tweeted that the situation was "beyond comprehension."Meanwhile, five people were found dead in northern Georgia, in two separate incidents believed to be a domestic dispute, Columbia county sheriff's officials said, according to television reports. Local coroner Vernon Collins said five people were dead in two shootings that are possibly connected, the report added. Firearms kill some 30,000 people in the United States each year. However, Republican lawmakers, many of whom are backed by the powerful National Rifle Association, have blocked President Barack Obama's attempt to pass gun control legislation.

IS Claims Capture of Syrian Pilot after Shooting down Plane
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/The Islamic State jihadist group on Friday captured a Syrian pilot alive after shooting down his plane east of Damascus, the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said. Amaq gave the pilot's name as Azzam Eid, from Hama. It said IS fighters had shot down his plane and found him alive after he parachuted down to the crash site. A video posted by Amaq showed the charred remains of a plane, some parts still on fire, lying on a vast desert plain. Several apparent IS fighters in military-style fatigues circle around the wreckage, pointing to the two-starred Syrian government flag clearly visible on one of the wings. Syrian state news agency SANA had no immediate news on the incident. IS fighters have shot down several Syrian government warplanes in recent weeks, including over the Dmeir military airport near Damascus and in the southern province of Sweida. But the pilots were able to land in regime-held zones on both occasions. In December 2014, IS shot down a warplane from the U.S.-led coalition striking the group in Syria and captured the Jordanian pilot alive. The ultra-conservative group later burned pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh alive and posted video footage of his death online. Syria's conflict first began in March 2011 with widespread anti-government protests which have since spiraled into a multi-front, complicated civil war. Across the country, IS is fighting the Syrian government, non-jihadist rebels, and Kurdish groups.

Regime Bombardment Kills 27 Civilians across Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/At least 27 civilians were killed Saturday in regime bombardment on rebel-held areas across Syria, a monitor and local sources said, in the latest deadly violence despite a ceasefire deal. Twelve civilians were killed in Aleppo, according to a local civil defense official, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 13 others died in shelling on the rebel town of Douma, east of Damascus. And two men were killed in regime airstrikes on Talbisseh in Homs province, the monitor said. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the escalating violence meant the ceasefire in Syria had effectively collapsed. The barrage of air strikes on Aleppo began around 10:00am (0700 GMT) on several neighborhoods, including the heavily-populated Bustan al-Qasr district, an AFP correspondent in the city said. But the deadliest raid was on the Tareeq al-Bab neighborhood on the eastern edges of the city. A civil defense member responding to the incident said 12 civilians had been killed there. AFP footage showed a civil defense volunteer carrying a screaming woman down a ladder from a damaged building in the neighborhood, as a pick-up truck drove the remains of one person away. Another volunteer brought down a young man cradling a baby from a high floor in a crane. At least nine other civilians were wounded in air strikes on other parts of the city, including Bustan al-Qasr and Al-Mashad, the civil defense member said. It was the second day of deadly strikes on Aleppo, after 25 civilians were killed and another 40 wounded in air strikes on Friday. Once Syria's commercial hub, the northern metropolis has been divided by government control in the west and opposition groups in the east. In the rebel-held town of Douma, 13 people -- including three women and two children -- were killed in government shelling on the city. The Observatory said all the dead were civilians. Douma lies in the Eastern Ghouta opposition bastion, where the Jaish al-Islam rebel group -- also party to the truce deal -- is dominant. The ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and the United States saw Syria's government and non-jihadist opposition agree to halt attacks while pursuing peace talks. Violence dropped across the country, including in Aleppo city, where residents cautiously began shopping in open-air markets and taking their children to parks. But Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said on Saturday that the truce had effectively collapsed. "Most of the areas that were under the ceasefire are now seeing fighting again," he said. More than 270,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict first broke out in 2011.

Obama, U.N. Envoy Voice Alarm at 'Fraying' Syria Truce
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Syria's fragile ceasefire is in grave peril, U.N. President Barack Obama and the U.N.'s special envoy warned Friday, as violence surged in the war-ravaged country's second city Aleppo. The truce "is still in effect, but it is in great trouble if we don't act quickly", the United Nations' top envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva, where he is mediating faltering peace talks. Obama voiced alarm at the situation, telling a press conference in London: "I am deeply concerned about the cessation of hostilities fraying and whether it's sustainable."A landmark partial ceasefire -- not including the Islamic state group -- which was negotiated by the United States and Russia and took effect on February 27, had dramatically curtailed violence across much of Syria and raised hopes that a lasting deal could be struck in Geneva to end the bloodshed.
But the country has been rocked by fighting in recent weeks, particularly around the city of Aleppo, where at least 25 civilians were killed and 40 wounded in air strikes on rebel-held neighborhoods on Friday alone, emergency workers said. De Mistura said Friday's violence in Aleppo was "very worrisome". Frustrated by the surging violence, the lack of access for desperately needed aid and the failure to secure the release of detainees, Syria's main opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) halted its formal participation this week in the Geneva talks. But de Mistura said Friday that members of his team had continued to hold "very, very productive" meetings at a technical level with remaining HNC members at their Geneva hotel. And he said he intended to push ahead with the ongoing round of talks, which began on April 13, until Wednesday. "We need to try until Wednesday to get as deep as possible... and we can do that both formally, informally, technically, practically," he said.
He hailed all sides finally engaging in discussions on the thorny issue of political transition, but acknowledged that the understanding of what that would entail still differed widely. The fate of President Bashar Assad remains a major sticking point in the indirect talks, with the opposition insisting any peace deal must include his departure, while Damascus insists his future is non-negotiable. The HNC, an umbrella group comprising the main Syrian opposition and rebel factions that came together in Riyadh in December, said in a statement Friday that it was continuing "to work hard for progress on political transition, for relief from sieges and air strikes". "And we have had a meeting here today on the detainee issue," it said, stressing that it considered the ceasefire to be "in trouble". HNC spokesman Salem al-Meslet told AFP that if the group sees "major and serious steps on the ground... in the next couple of days, there will be nothing stopping the members who left Geneva from returning". De Mistura called for a new high-level meeting of the 17-country International Syria Support Group, which is co-chaired by the United States and Russia. "We do need certainly a new ISSG at the ministerial level, because the level of danger... (means that such a meeting) is urgently required," he said. Obama meanwhile lashed out at Moscow for supporting "a murderous regime", but vowed to keep working with the Russian government to strengthen the ceasefire and support the peace talks. He said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday "asking him to put more pressure on (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, indicating to him that we would continue to try to get the moderate opposition to stay at the negotiating table in Geneva". "If in fact the cessation falls apart, we will try to put it back together again even as we continue to go after ISIL," he said, referring to IS, which along with other jihadists is not included in the truce deal. The group said it had captured a Syrian pilot alive on Friday after shooting down his plane east of Damascus. Since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011, more than 270,000 people have died, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is considered to have the most reliable count. The U.N. no longer provides casualty figures for Syria, since it considers them too difficult to verify, but de Mistura said Friday he believed the actual toll had to be far higher, likely around 400,000. The Pentagon meanwhile said 20 civilians had been killed in U.S. airstrikes on IS targets in Syria and Iraq over a five-month period, although observers warned the toll is likely much higher.

No One Loses' from Main Syria Opposition Group Leaving Talks, Says Russia
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Key regime backer Russia on Friday downplayed the significance of the departure of Syria's main opposition group from U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva earlier this week. "Probably no one loses but them if they leave the negotiations," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on a visit to Armenia, referring to the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC). The HNC earlier this week halted its formal participation in the round of talks that began in Geneva on April 13 in frustration over surging violence on the ground. "If they want to secure their participation only at the expense of ultimatums with which everyone needs to agree then this is their problem," Lavrov said. He said that the task of U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura was to deal with the "entire spectrum of the opposition.""If some part of this spectrum wants to throw tantrums, be our guest," Lavrov said. "No need to run after them. You have to work with those who are ready to think about their career, not about how to 'please' their foreign sponsors but those who are ready to think about the fate of their country." "So I believe this is the process of making the Syria talks healthier." Lavrov noted that several opposition figures had split from the HNC group and that Russia would welcome their participation in the talks as independent entities. Russia has frowned upon the fact that several hardline groups including the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) are members of the HNC, saying there is little difference between them and Islamic State jihadists.

Yemen Launches Southern Operation against Qaida Militants
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Yemeni forces backed by air power from the Saudi-led Arab coalition launched an operation Saturday to drive Al-Qaida fighters out of a southern provincial capital, military officials said. Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Abyan province advanced towards Zinjibar and the neighboring town of Jaar, the sources said. Soldiers reached Al-Kud, five kilometers (three miles) south of Zinjibar where they clashed with Qaida militants, while coalition Apache helicopters targeted extremist positions in the vicinity, according to the officials. Twelve Al-Qaida militants and three soldiers died in the fighting, a military official said. Government forces last week expelled militants of the jihadist network's local branch -- Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula -- from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj, as part of a widespread operation to secure southern provinces. Coalition-backed forces have driven militants out of Aden, the southern city declared by Hadi as temporary capital after Shiite Huthi rebels stormed Sanaa in September 2014. The Arab coalition launched a military operation in support of Hadi in March last year after rebels advanced on his refuge in Aden and forced him to flee to Riyadh. But pro-Hadi forces managed over the summer to wrest back control of Aden and four other provinces thanks to the support of coalition firepower. The coalition recently turned its attention to extremists, backing pro-government forces against AQAP and Islamic State group militants, who have taken advantage of the chaos to strengthen their grip on southern Yemen. The operation comes as representatives of the government and the Iran-backed rebels continue with U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait, which began on Thursday.

Yemen Foes Hold New Talks under Pressure to Firm up Truce
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Yemen's warring parties held a new session of peace talks in Kuwait on Saturday under pressure to firm up a fragile ceasefire that went into effect on April 11. "The meeting has started," Charbel Raji, spokesman for U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, told AFP, without providing details. Ould Cheikh Ahmed told a press conference on Friday that the delegations had "constructive" negotiations and were committed to firming up the ceasefire. He acknowledged that the truce was still only between 70 and 80 percent respected and said there were violations by both sides. Sources close to the government delegation said it would submit a complaint listing 260 ceasefire breaches by the rebels on Friday alone. Rebel delegation spokesman Mohamed Abdulsalam said the priority was to end the fighting that has killed more than 6,800 people and driven 2.8 million from their homes since March last year. "Stopping the war and all forms of military action is the priority of the Yemeni people and the priority of their representatives," he said on Facebook. Third city Taez, where forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi have been under rebel siege for months, has been a particular source of friction.Three rebels and two loyalists were killed on Saturday in fierce fighting in Kirsh, a town on the main highway to Taez from the southern port of Aden where Hadi's government is based, military sources said. The government delegation is to press for the swift implementation of a package of confidence-building measures agreed at the last -- abortive -- round of peace talks in Switzerland in December. They include the release of prisoners and the lifting of blockades and other obstacles to the the delivery of relief supplies. The warring sides already carried out two prisoner exchanges last month.The hard-won negotiations in Kuwait opened on Thursday evening following the delayed arrival of representatives of the Shiite Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Dozens of Arrests in Egypt ahead of Anti-Government Protest
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Egypt has arrested dozens of activists ahead of an anti-government demonstration planned for Monday, a group of lawyers said. The group published a list of 59 people they say were detained since Thursday, arrested at cafes and at their homes in Cairo, adding "the arrests continue". Opposition groups -- including the April 6 movement, which spearheaded the popular uprising that ousted former leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011 -- have called for the rally mainly in protest at the government's deal to hand two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. The controversial move by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has provoked outrage among many Egyptians who accuse him of "selling" the islands in the Straits of Tiran in return for Saudi investment. On April 15, more than 1,000 people demonstrated in central Cairo in the biggest protest in two years demanding "the fall of the regime", with police firing tear gas to disperse them. That protest was called for by both secular and Islamic activists, and while originally about the islands became a wider demonstration against the Sisi government. Demonstrations not approved by the police have been banned. Among those arrested in the past 24 hours was prominent rights activist and lawyer Haitham Mohamedin, according to fellow lawyer Rajia Amrane. Sisi, who won elections in 2014, is reviled by Islamists and secular dissidents, but many Egyptians say they need a strong leader to revive the country's economy after years of unrest. He had enjoyed unwavering loyalty in much of the Egyptian media since he took office, but criticism of the president and his police force has grown in recent months.

Egypt Court Postpones Morsi Espionage Verdict
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/An Egyptian court postponed on Saturday its verdict and sentence in the trial of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who is charged with spying for Qatar. The head judge of the criminal court said the verdict was postponed to "May 7 to continue consultations," in brief remarks aired on television. If he is convicted it would be Morsi's fourth sentence. He has already been sentenced in three separate trials to death, a life term and 20 years in prison. Qatar was one of Morsi's main backers and Cairo accuses Doha of supporting the Islamist's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement. Morsi -- the country's first freely elected president -- had barely finished his first year in office when the military overthrew and detained him in July 2013. At the time it announced he would eventually be tried on vague charges of espionage and for a mass prison break during the 18-day revolt that overthrew his predecessor Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The prosecution charges that Morsi and 10 co-defendants leaked "classified documents" to Qatar. The documents allegedly contained secrets on "national security," and were allegedly traded with Qatari intelligence for a million dollars.  A court in 2015 sentenced Morsi to death over the prison breaks and attacks on police stations during the 2011 uprising. He had been detained along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders days after the protests started on January 25, 2011. Thousands escaped from prisons after protesters attacked and torched police stations across the country. Morsi was also sentenced to life in prison for "espionage" on behalf of Iran and other countries, as well as the Hamas and Hizbullah groups. Another court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for clashes that erupted outside his presidential palace in December 2012 between his supporters and opponents, which killed up to 10 people. The clashes, after Morsi issued a decree placing his decisions above judicial review, set off spiraling protests that prompted the military to overthrow him. Since then, a military and police crackdown on his supporters has killed more than 1,000 protesters and imprisoned thousands of Islamists. Hundreds, including other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, have been sentenced to death, although many have appealed and been granted new trials. The Brotherhood has been blacklisted as a terrorist group.

Israeli Fighters Scramble to Intercept Undeclared Airliner
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 23/16/Israel scrambled fighter planes Saturday to intercept an unidentified passenger aircraft entering its airspace and escorted it to land at Tel Aviv, the Israeli military told AFP. Israeli media reported that the aircraft turned out to be an Air Sinai flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. "Earlier this morning, two Israel Air Force aircraft accompanied a foreign aircraft planning to land at Ben Gurion airport which did not identify itself when entering Israeli airspace," a military spokeswoman said. "The aircraft landed safely at Ben Gurion airport as planned," she added, without giving further details. Last month, an EgyptAir domestic flight was hijacked and forced it to land on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where an Egyptian is currently in custody awaiting extradition proceedings. And in what Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has acknowledged as a jihadist bombing, a Russian plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in October killing all 224 people on board.Israeli public radio said that in Saturday's incident the Air Sinai aircraft was flown by pilots new to the route and unfamiliar with the usual radio identification procedure when approaching Israel. "The Egyptian company was asked to make the procedures clear to its pilots," the radio said. News website Ynet, however, said that the pilot's radio silence was "apparently due to a technical fault." Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel.

Ex-U.S. Marine general James Mattis says Iran nuclear deal ‘fell short’
National Council of Resistance of Iran/Saturday, 23 April 2016/Retired U.S. Marine Corps General James Mattis on Friday took the Obama administration to task over the White House’s nuclear development deal with Iran's regime. Gen. Mattis, a former U.S. Central Command chief known for his blunt, plain-spoken command style, took that same tact in levying his strong criticisms of the Iran deal during a speech at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday, The Washington Times reported. He characterized the deal struck between Washington and Tehran as an “imperfect” agreement that does not eliminate, but simply delays, Tehran’s efforts to become a nuclear power. “It [was] not a friendship treaty,” the retired four-star general said. “It’s an arms control agreement that fell short.”President Obama inked the deal with Iran’s regime and other world leaders last July, in which Tehran agreed to freeze its efforts to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for the rollback on some of crippling sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies. “Iran will cheat … that’s the sense you get when reading” the terms of the nuclear agreement, Gen. Mattis said, adding that the Iranian regime is “not a nation state, but a revolutionary cause intent on mayhem.” Gen. Mattis suggested Congress create an oversight committee, consisting of members from the intelligence, foreign affairs and armed services panels, to ensure the mullahs' regime continues to comply with the deal. He also suggested Washington bolster its ties with regional intelligence agencies, like those in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to ensure American officials are fully informed on Tehran’s nuclear activities.

Iran regime hangs prisoner in southern port city
Saturday, 23 April 2016 /National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI - The mullahs' regime has hanged a prisoner in the port city of Bandar Abbas, southern Iran. The 31-year-old prisoner, identified only by the initials H. M., was hanged on Wednesday, April 20, in Bandar Abbas Central Prison, according to the Iranian regime's judiciary in Bushehr Province. The hanging bring to at least 35 the number of people executed in Iran since the start of last week, while European officials have been paying visits to Tehran. Three of those executed were women. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said in a statement last week that the increasing trend of executions “aimed at intensifying the climate of terror to rein in expanding protests by various strata of the society, especially at a time of visits by high-ranking European officials, demonstrates that the claim of moderation is nothing but an illusion for this medieval regime.”Ms. Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was in Tehran last Saturday along with seven EU commissioners for discussions with the regime’s officials on trade and other areas of cooperation. Her trip was strongly criticized by Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI who said: “This trip which takes place in the midst of mass executions, brutal human rights violations and the regime's unbridled warmongering in the region tramples on the values upon which the EU has been founded and which Ms. Mogherini should be defending and propagating.”Amnesty International in its April 6 annual Death Penalty report covering the 2015 period wrote: "Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before.""Iran alone accounted for 82% of all executions recorded" in the Middle East and North Africa, the human rights group said. There have been more than 2,300 executions during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as President. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran in March announced that the number of executions in Iran in 2015 was greater than any year in the last 25 years. Rouhani has explicitly endorsed the executions as examples of “God’s commandments” and “laws of the parliament that belong to the people.”

NGO: International action needed to stop Iran regime’s military presence in Syria
Saturday, 23 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI - The Brussels-based European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) in a statement on Saturday urged the international community to act urgently to stop the Iranian regime's military presence in Syria.
The following is the text of the statement by EIFA President Struan Stevenson:
23 April 2016
The international community should act decisively against the presence of the Iranian military in Syria
Iran's army entering the war in Syria is a blatant violation of international law and must be met with an overwhelming response and action by the international community.
With the Syrian revolution against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad entering its sixth year, Tehran has escalated the presence in Syria of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), together with regular Iranian military units, who are waging a brutal campaign against the Syrian people and the moderate opposition.
In recent weeks, a significant number of special commandos of Iran's regular army have been killed in Syria, pointing to their extensive presence in that conflict. The failure of the IRGC, especially in the Aleppo's zone and their massive casualties in recent months in Syria, has reportedly caused Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei to dispatch his regular army to bolster pro Assad forces in this criminal war.
In addition to the IRGC and the Iranian army, tens of thousands of Iraqi criminal militias, including Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries, have been engaged in the massacre of the Syrian people under the command of Iran.
Struan Stevenson
President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA)
(Struan Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014 and was President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq from 2009 to 2014)

IRAN: Plot against the life of political prisoner Ali Moezzi
Friday, 23 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/Call for the formation of an international fact-finding mission
The Iranian Resistance calls on all international human rights organizations especially the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to life and arbitrary detentions, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran to act urgently to address the situation of political prisoner Mr. Ali Moezzi, who is at risk of physical elimination, and it demands the formation of an international fact-finding mission to investigate the clerical regime's medieval prisons and the deteriorating conditions of prisoners, especially political prisoners. In the afternoon of April 20, 2016, political prisoner Ali Moezzi, father of two PMOI members, who is in Section 8 of the notorious Evin Prison, was poisoned and had a headache, and due to lack of medical attention, his condition deteriorated. Hours later, the torturers took him to Evin’s clinic just to save face but returned him to the ward at 2:00 am without serious care or determining the cause of his poisoning.Eliminating political prisoners with drugs and food poisoning is a conventional method in the clerical regime. Political prisoner Shahrokh Zamani, suspiciously died in Gohardasht Prison last September 13. Valiollah Feiz-Mahdavi, Amirhossein Heshmat Saran, Afshin Ossanloo and Mansour Radpour, are among other prisoners who died in custody in suspicious circumstances. The regime’s coroner's office has tried to justify their deaths by providing delusive reasons.Mullah Sadeq Larijani, head of the clerical regime's Judiciary, in reaction to the US State Department annual report on human rights violations in Iran, denied suspicious deaths of political prisoners and called it an "irrelevant allegation".Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

Iran political prisoner Amir Amirgholi in poor health after 13 days of hunger strike
Saturday, 23 April 2016/National Council of Resistance of Iran/NCRI - Iranian political prisoner Amir Amirgholi, who has been on hunger strike for the past 13 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, is in poor health. He is suffering from physical weakness and a severe drop in blood pressure.
The regime’s fundamentalist courts have sentenced him to 21 years of imprisonment under the bogus charge of "insulting the holy sanctities," "insulting the Supreme Leader," "gathering and colluding to act against national security," "disturbing public order by participating in illegal gatherings" and "propaganda against the regime."Mr. Amirgholi has gone on hunger strike in protest to being held in the dangerous prisoners’ ward instead of the ward for political prisoners. Mr. Amirgholi, an advocate of children's rights, was arrested by the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) on December 1, 2014 over his support for the people of Kobani, northern Syria. He was tried before a ruthless hangman-judge in Branch 15 of the so-called Islamic Revolutionary Court. Earlier, Mr. Amirgholi’s father had warned about his son's condition in Evin Prison. He had stated that: "Ward 8 of Evin Prison has the poorest amenities. In addition, due to [medical] problems in the pancreas area, he (Amir) has to be under constant medical supervision and his blood sugar must constantly be tested but unfortunately, during his one-and-a-half year imprisonment, he has not gone under medical testing or any treatment. We are concerned about him".Mr. Amirgholi was previously arrested and expelled from university because of his student activism in 2008. He is now serving his 17th month behind bars in Ward 8 of Evin Prison.

To Putin or to Pout
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
The much vaunted “cessation of hostilities” in Syria is collapsing, under the relentless violations of the Syrian regime’s conventional forces and its auxiliary Shiite Jihadi fighters, mostly in the form of aerial bombardment of civilian targets, designed in part to make it impossible for the representatives of the opposition forces to continue the “peace talks” in Geneva. And once again, senior American officials from President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on down, are reduced to invariably and impotently appeal or beseech or urge Russian officials to lean on Assad to soften his industrial scale brutality against Syrian civilians. Every time President Vladimir Putin moves and creates facts on the ground, and leaves behind a trail of blood and tears from the Ukraine to Syria, Obama analyses, and muses and then stoically pouts. Ever since the cessation of hostilities was put into effect in late February, everything the Syrian regime has done on the ground demonstrates convincingly that it intends to exploit the lull in the fighting to improve its position militarily and logistically, to move decisively when the time is ripe “for the kill” against the rebel held areas of Aleppo, the country’s largest city, and the most important strategic prize in Northern Syria. In recent days Assad’s killer air force rained barrel bombs on crowded markets in the historic rebel held town of Maarat al-Nu’man, and the town of KafrNabl, in Noethwestern Syria killing and wounding scores of civilians. KafrNabl, also known as Kafranbel, became famous during the uprising, for its sharp and witty banners written in eloquent English about the stamina and the yearnings of the Syrian people under fire and the silence of the world.
One of the remarkable results of the reduced terror from the skies in recent weeks was the quick resurrection of the spirit of defiance and the grass root peaceful activism of the early stages of the uprising in towns like KafrNabl and others which are under the control of the oppressive al-Nusra. Local Coordination Committees, representing the resilience of civil society, sprung up with full force, and people resumed their public protests against both the murderous Assad regime and the abominable al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra. At the urging of Moscow, and with significant Russian areal support, the Syrian regime regained control over the city of Palmyra in central Syria – In fact President Vladimir Putin predicted the defeat of the Islamic State ISIS in Palmyra few weeks earlier – as well as waging attacks against positions held by Jabhat al-Nusra another terrorist group not included in the cessation of hostilities. The purpose of these tactical moves was ostensibly to improve Assad’s chances of becoming a potential even if undeclared partner in the International campaign against ISIS, something that might resonate with Western capitals, in the wake of the Paris, and Brussels attacks which were sponsored by ISIS.
Rhetoric vs. reality
Publicly, the US government continues to support a peaceful outcome to the war in Syria that would lead, through a transitional period to a post-Assad Syria. But privately, the Obama administration is counseling the Syrian opposition groups to lower their expectations of the impending departure or demise of their tormentor, hauled up in his splendid isolation in Damascus, with rare public forays with his Desdemona as a décor for a mass killer, as we have seen him recently voting in his latest sham elections. No serious Syrian or outside observer believes that the Obama administration will end its timidity regarding Russian-Iranian-Assad machinations in Syria. President Obama gave us yesterday his latest musings on the Assad-Putin duo, while expressing his concerns over the fate of the cessation of hostilities: “keep in mind that I have always been skeptical about Mr. Putin’s actions and motives inside of Syria. He is, along with Iran, the pre-eminent backer of a murderous regime that I don’t believe can regain legitimacy in his country, because he has murdered a lot of people”. The analyst-in-chief is correct obviously, but in reality this prognosis cannot hide the fact that the Obama administration is gradually moving to Putin’s position on Syria, particularly regarding Assad’s fate, where the Russians would like him to remain in power during the envisioned transition. In fact the US and Russia intend to codify that in a new constitution. It is nothing short of a flight of fancy to think that a constitution for a new Syria can be drafted with Chemical Assad still in power.
Fighting and negotiating
Both the United States and Russia for different reasons would like to see a somewhat viable peace process (again, that much abused term) at Geneva. The Americans hope that the process would begin with the release of prisoners from Assad’s dungeons, and humanitarian assistance reaching the besieged and starved communities that Assad has subjected to the worst medieval forms of punishment. The Obama administration would like to see a “process” that would allow political talks to proceed while a tenuous calm would prevail in Western Syria, so that the American military and its international and local partners will concentrate their war on ISIS. President Obama knows that ISIS will survive him, but he would like very much to decapitate the leadership of the fake Caliphate, and add the pretend Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to the trophies that he collected in his war against al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Just as President Obama escalated the drone and Special Forces war against al-Qaeda following the “Christmas Day bombing attempt” in 2009 of theNorthwest Airline Flight 253 over the city of Detroit by Omar Farouk Abd al-Mutalab, a Nigerian recruited and trained by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), he has been escalating the war on ISIS following the bombings in Europe and San Bernardino.
If Abd al-Mutalab had succeeded, President Obama could have conceivably kissed his second term goodbye, hence his escalation against al-Qaeda which was both a national security imperative, as well as a necessity for Obama’s political survival. Clearly, Obama believes that decapitating ISIS and bleeding it is a national security imperative, but also Obama is genuinely concerned that another ISIS organized or inspired attack against the homeland will tarnish his record as the hunter of ISIS. Russia’s military intervention came at a time when Assad’s forces were spread too thin. Just as the military interventionof Iran and Hezbollah saved the Syrian regime in 2013, Russia’s massive bombings of Syrian opposition groups, mostly in the Aleppo and Idlib areas, where there are no ISIS controlled towns, has strengthened Assad’s position, but it did not alter fundamentally the balance of power on the ground so far, because the Syrian regime’s lack of manpower has prevented it from enlarging the area under its control. Putin’s announcement of the “withdrawal” of Russian forces was meant as a reduction of forces, to signal to Assad that Russia’s military role has limits, and that any ground campaign against Aleppo should be conducted by Syrian, Iranian and Shiite forces.
A twin headed-monster
It is almost inevitable that the cessation of hostilities will collapse, and with it the Geneva “process”, because the Assad regime and its main protector Iran, as well as Russia are determined to deal the moderate Syrian opposition a severe blow by trying to occupy the whole city of Aleppo, hoping that this would be a game changer. If this happens, Assad will then insist with Russian support to be a tacit, if not a serious ally in the war on ISIS. This nightmarish situation is mostly the result of Washington’s refusal to understand the symbiotic relations between the Assad regime and ISIS and act accordingly. From the beginning of the uprising Assad was determined to make it a conflict between the so-called “secular” Syrian state and Islamist extremists, hence his calculated release early on of a large number of hardened Islamists from Syrian jails. The US lost its credibility as a serious foe of the Assad regime, when it refused repeatedly to challenge, deter or punish the regime even after its use of chemical weapons against civilians. Washington’s insistence on getting signed commitments from the small number of Syrian fighters it trainedthat they will engage ISIS in battle and spare the regime’s forces was the last straw.
The Syrians, who have been struggling against the Assad tyranny for five years, are also willing to struggle simultaneously against ISIS and other Islamists who would like to take Syria into the dark side. The enemy in Syria is a two-headed monster. One head is in Damascus, the other is in Raqqa.
By the sword
Only the sword will finish the regime in Damascus, or will force it to seek a negotiated outcome that will lead to its political demise. No serious Syrian or outside observer believes that the Obama administration will end its timidity regarding Russian-Iranian-Assad machinations in Syria.
Obama will continue his limited war against ISIS hoping to degrade it and prevented from attacking the homeland during the remaining months of his tenure, and wishing his successor good luck in destroying the Caliphate. President Obama and his peripatetic secretary of state seem hapless and impotent when dealing with Putin.Syrians will remember Obama’s pout for a long time to come. Putin stormed Syria, and like the ancient invaders from the East he scorched the earth, and bled everything standing; men, women, trees and stones. And after the seventh month, he rested while observing with admiration his desolation then claimed withdrawal. Putin’s trail of blood and tears in Syria will be remembered like those of Tamerlane and Hulagu.

It’s a wrap: Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia
Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
Now that US President’s Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia is completed, it’s now time for an accurate assessment of the event itself and the results. On the surface, Obama’s summit meeting with GCC leaders and individual one on one meetings with key rulers came off as a robust showing of American-GCC unity in the face of regional threats and a pathway forward in the remaining time in office of the current administration. In addition, the discussions were meant to set forth a foundation for the next US administration who ever that winner may be taking office in January 2017. That future needs to be thought about now. While there was a wide-ranging umbrella of issues discussed during the US-GCC Summit’s three sessions between all parties there is clearly a hierarchy of important and immediate issues. To be sure, the US-GCC Summit’s findings illustrate a robust set of joint action items between America and the GCC states. The summit, attended by heads of all six Gulf states, pledged to continue coordinating closely on issues of mutual concern including through meetings of foreign and defense ministers. They also agreed to hold an annual summit-level meeting and open an office in Washington to advance cooperation, and endorsed additional security initiatives.
The recalibration of US-Saudi relations, and by extension the GCC, is a necessary historical and evolutionary move
From the GCC point of view, the most important result from the US-GCC summit was Obama’s comments on Iran which is pleasing to Gulf ears who are unhappy still with the Joint Comprehensive Plan for Action (JCPOA). The American president said he had “serious concerns” about Iran’s continuing belligerent behavior including missile tests and illicit weapons shipments being interdicted in the seas off of the Arabian Peninsula. In addition, the continuing process of the US-GCC Working Group to meet twice a year is also a positive message. These efforts are slated “to advance cooperation in counterterrorism, streamlining the transfer of critical defense capabilities, missile defense, military preparedness and cyber security.” In this context, the leaders announced future plans for a significant US-GCC military exercise to be held in March 2017. With the Kingdom’s lead in forming the Islamic Military Alliance (IMA), the US is positioning the next administration to assist this new NATO-like trans-regional security organization. Thus, American support for a Sunni alliance may be reverberating positively. US-GCC thinking on the situation in the Levant remains on the same track. Obama called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside not only because he has killed his own people but also because it was hard to see him being the head of a government that would end the fighting. On the situation in Iraq where the US is a major stakeholder together with GCC countries, Obama said that political paralysis was impeding US-led efforts to defeat ISIS and reconstruct that war-torn country. Clearly, action is required and the Americans want the GCC to do more. According to a Jordanian official, Saudi Arabia literally is now ordering Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi to visit the Kingdom to discuss Iraq’s future but ultimately to push Iran out of Iraq.
Most importantly, counter-terrorism cooperation is moving in to high gear. Obama pointed out that intelligence sharing between the US and the GCC was vital in the fight against terrorism to help promote collective security. This coordination on the counter-terror fight is becoming more and more important as wars rage in the Levant and in Yemen. US help to the GCC states in prosecuting the fight against terrorism is taking on new urgency specifically in Yemen regarding AQAP. America is helping the UAE with training program for attacking and eradicating the Yemeni al-Qaeda affiliate and its hold on Hadramawt province and the port of Mukalla.
Transformation
One other point regarding the US-GCC Summit need to be illuminated. The recalibration of US-Saudi relations, and by extension the GCC, is a necessary historical and evolutionary move. There is no doubt that multilateral relations are undergoing a transformation. Although Obama himself went out of his way to suggest that the so-called “old” Saudi-US “friendship and deep strategic partnership “was still intact” there is a progression of utmost significance. The Kingdom is making clear that Saudi Arabia is seeking a recalibration of the bilateral relationship. While the Obama Administration recognizes that Saudi Arabia’s launch of economic reforms, led by King Salman’s son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is a critical moment in the Kingdom’s history, there needs to be the proper combination of mutual veneration and continuous communication in the coming months and years.

Mideast education funds matter, but so does R&D
Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
This week, the UAE’s Abdul Aziz al-Ghurair Fund for Education announced a $1.1 billion fund dedicated to underprivileged youth in the Middle East. The fund will provide 15,000 young people with access to tertiary education at the region’s top universities, as well as mentoring schemes and access to internships. This comes at a time when the region is struggling to provide young people with the opportunities they deserve. This has created the world’s largest untapped market of young, unemployed yet ambitious individuals yearning for change. The Middle East has the world’s highest unemployment rate, with 46 percent of young women and 24 percent of young men actively seeking jobs without success. The region is struggling to provide a promise of a stable future for young people. The lack of access to education, limited opportunities, and absence of core skill development opportunities means even those who graduate from university do not have the right skills for employment. The employment model itself is heavily based on nepotism, leaving some of the best talents unrecognized. Inevitably, this nepotism has created a layer of distrust between young people and industries.
Working with employers
There is also an absence of outlets to train and develop vital skill sets that are useful in everyday life. While the mentorship scheme this particular fund offers is helpful, and while it is important for education funds to exist, they must not be used to pump young people with a piece of paper out of universities and into the wild. Just as this education fund is working with leading universities across the Middle East - including the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the American University of Sharjah (AUS) - it is equally important, if not more so, to work directly with employers to ensure equal opportunity for job-seekers.
Investing in R&D means continued employment opportunities. It is a snowball effect that the region needs. It is important to remember that while internships are useful in developing skills and exposing young people to working life, unpaid internships marginalize young people who come from less privileged backgrounds. This would include the very people this fund aims to support. Therefore, strong emphasis must be placed on paid internships that are not limited to shadowing or basic admin errands, but rather developing grassroots projects, just as one does in the workplace.
Obtaining a university degree is a drop in the ocean to grow the region’s economy. It is important to recognize that for many countries in the Middle East - including Morocco, Egypt and Jordan - industries that require university degrees, such as technology, are relatively underdeveloped.
This means obtaining a degree is not the key to success, and young people are more likely to end up unemployed by way of being overqualified if they have a degree. Research conducted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2015 showed that young university graduates in the Middle East are up to three times more likely to be unemployed than their uneducated counterparts.
Other types of education
Public expenditure on tertiary education per capita as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is noticeably higher for tertiary education than primary education. In Kuwait, this is 118 percent at the tertiary level and 14 percent at the primary level. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) country average is 20 percent at the primary level and 28 percent at the tertiary level, according to the World Bank. The great skew and concentration on tertiary education can almost be counterproductive to a successful economy, as investment comes too late. While it is important to invest in tertiary education, internships and mentoring schemes, it is equally important to invest in the Research and Development (R&D) sector in the Middle East. This includes funding university research to streamline manufacturing and service industries. This would complement the region’s fastest-growing economic sectors: oil, gas, banking and finance. Investing in R&D means continued employment opportunities. Undergraduates can only help the economy grow so much before it stagnates again, whereas investing in postgraduate research provides employment opportunities for more people, while producing research that creates even more jobs. It is a snowball effect that the region needs. The Abdul Aziz al-Ghurair Fund has started the snowball - it is up to business people and industry leaders to offer opportunities so it carries continued momentum.

If rural China sneezes, won’t the world catch a cold?
Ehtesham Shahid/Al Arabiya/April 23/16
Let us imagine a boat with 100 people onboard. It has men and women scattered all over, just about maintaining the delicate balance necessary to sail through choppy waters. Then a few individuals – egged on by the captain and lured by material comfort on the other side – choose to make a move. As the number swells up on one side, the ship starts to rock, jeopardizing its own survival. At a completely different level, this is what appears to be happening in China today. It is now established that more than 55 percent of the country’s 1.38 billion population lives in urban areas, making it a nation of town and city dwellers. A human migration of that scale in China is expected to have a ripple effect elsewhere as the country comprises 18.72 percent of the total world population with its urban population expected to exceed one billion by 2030. Concerns are routinely voiced as we live in a far more connected world and we are getting to a stage where a China sneeze can lead to at least some parts of the world catching cold. This flight of human capital from rural areas goes beyond just increasing pressure on urban space. There has indeed been human impact of China’s new urbanization, which will only worsen if not addressed immediately.
It’s the economy stupid!
But what is triggering this scenario? It is apparent that, faced with shrinking exports and slowing growth, China is trying to push ahead with a massive plan to uproot 100 million farmers and turn their fields into urban dwellings. The idea is to create a giant new middle class and boost demand.
Such drastic measures always come at a cost though. In this case it is the vast countryside lagging far behind in terms of income growth, public services and job creation. Reports have emerged from China suggesting that land disputes owing to rapid urbanization are making people angry over the disproportionate profits authorities make from. This is also causing social and cultural upheaval. The trouble is not just uneven distribution of human population, and the resultant ecological misbalance, the trouble is this is part of a well-defined policy – to realize the government’s goals of boosting consumption amid slowing economic growth.
If China fails in its experiment of building an “urban army” of consumers, at the cost of its rural population, then the world will probably has to pay the price for it In other words, it is the government, not the economy, which is dictating resettlement. It is a trap that has been in the making for a while now. If the world can no longer consume all that China produces, the country has no choice but to nurture its own citizens to become consumers. This entire model is based on the expectation of a certain rate of growth in the country. If that is achieved, it will indeed lead to jobs, schools, factories, and shopping malls. The country would have successfully built a brand new consumer population out of poor, uneducated farmers. However, if things do not go according to plan, and a sharp downturn happens, it can reduce these very cities into ghost towns and farmers into an army of the unemployed. Here’s hoping China’s tryst with population migration doesn’t go its one-child policy way, which, ironically, focused on urban China, allowing population to grow more rapidly in the countryside. Now that there are more people in villages and more products and services in the cities, bringing the thirsty to the pond appears to be the obvious choice. Best case scenario suggests these urban centers will give rise to an unprecedented market economy, leading the world to prosperity. But if it fails to achieve its targets, a spiral effect seems to be the only outcome. You don’t have to be an economist to imagine that if China fails in its experiment of building an “urban army” of consumers, at the cost of its rural population, then the world will probably has to pay the price for it.

The Self-Contradictory Liberals
Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/April 23/16
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7755/liberals-hypocrisy
Many liberals -- not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, white people and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, often in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.
These liberals repeatedly contradict their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.
It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish.
Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought and even gave their lives.
Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.
It is no secret that politicians on both the "right" and "left" lie, dissemble, equivocate, misrepresent, misinform, falsify, whitewash and cover up. Not even the noble and honest Cicero was immune to fudging and shifting sides. It is the nature of politics. For much of the time we put up with it until it grows so far-fetched, we can no longer shut our eyes and let ourselves be lulled into further acquiescence. We all put up with this, do our best to spot the lies, or rely on investigative journalists to dig beneath the surface of what governments claim or their opponents hide.
But something strange has been happening to people calling themselves liberals. (Note: The term "liberal" differs enormously between the U.S. and the UK. Americans use it to describe anyone from the Democratic Party through to those even farther to the left. But the British use it for people from the political centre towards the right, and it has no connotations of far left extremism. It is used here in the American sense.) The far left -- the Marxists, Trotskyites etc. -- the campus extremists, even the new leadership of Britain's Labour Party have started to contradicting their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women.
All sides of the political spectrum share many ideals in their original form: advocacy of human rights, equal justice under the law; the rights of racial and religious minorities, homosexuals, workers, women. They also share an opposition to racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism. These are ideals in any democratic nation -- views demonstrated by modern legislation across a host of democratic parliaments.
But many liberals appear to distort all this. They take extreme positions, guided by three linked but often confused issues: political correctness, cultural relativism and moral relativism. There seems to be a deep-seated belief, not only that all cultures possess and practice different values (the original premise of neutral cultural relativism in anthropology); or that, God forbid!, Western values are better than non-Western ones. Many liberals appear, instead, to think, that non-Western values are better or certainly no worse, than Western ones.
The idea that Western states, heirs to imperialism and still practitioners of indirect colonialism, have imposed their values on the rest of the world, makes the values of the "victim" -- the "oppressed" and the "occupied" -- superior to those of the West. But it is precisely Western values and laws that have been responsible for the very concept of human rights, for efforts to free former colonies, to bring aid to Third World countries, to grant rights to minorities, to introduce high-quality education, to advocate for women's rights, and more.
No other former imperialists, not least those of the many Muslim empires throughout history, have acted in this way towards the subjects of their former colonies. Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed liberals have responded to this commitment to human rights by charging the West with some form of original sin requiring Europeans and Americans to carry a heavy weight of guilt (as documented so well by the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner in books such as The Tyranny of Guilt).
One of the greatest examples of the excessive focus on the West is universal condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade, supposedly divorced from the Muslim/Arab slave trades, which continues without protest from these liberals in some places to this day. This, even though the Islamic trade was larger and longer-lasting than the Western one. Mauritania today holds anti-slavery protestors in prison, despite slavery there having been outlawed since 1981.
It is not hard to see why so many liberals– not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, whites and other supposed public enemies -- are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, toleration, diversity, and multiculturalism.
If this sounds a little abstract, here are some examples to show this confusion at its worst.
As a telling example of hypocritical behaviour, for many years now, a range of LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders) organizations have campaigned against the state of Israel. They have marched, carrying rainbow banners, alongside far-left extremists and far-right Muslims, shouting abuse against Israel and calling for an end to the "occupation" of the West Bank.
The annual National Conference on LGBT Equality, Creating Change, is an event held by the US National LGBTQ Task Force, based in Washington D.C., one of the most important bodies in the struggle for gay rights. The 2016 Creating Change conference was held in the Hilton Chicago between 20 and 24 of January.
Writing about this event, leading human rights and pro-LGBT activist and lawyer Melanie Nathan declared that, "This week will go down in history as one of the saddest and most destructive, ever, in the lives of LGBTQ Jews. We became the target of antisemitism disguised as protesting alleged 'Israeli oppression.' Anyone who truly understands the history, the context and milieu will clearly access the bottom line and that came in the form of the chant that served to helm the onslaught by LGBTQ protesters at the Creating Change 2016 Conference, who yelled: 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea'." As is well known, the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean, meaning that Israel will be replaced by a large Palestinian state from which Jews will have been ethnically cleansed.
A pro-Israel LGBT organization, A Wider Bridge, had planned to host an all-inclusive Shabbat reception on Friday 22nd, with the aim of introducing delegates to visiting Israeli LGBT guests. On the 18th, however, conference organizers caved in to anti-Israel demands and banned the reception. Many people strongly objected to this divisive move; on the following day the banning decision was reversed. Clearly, trouble lay ahead, and, true to form, an enormous band of Anti-Israel demonstrators from the LGBT community disrupted the reception, chanting the rhyming slogan above while carrying printed and home-made posters saying "Zionism sucks," "No Pride in Apartheid".
That Palestinians sometimes beat and kill gay men is irrelevant to their way of thinking, as is the moral inconvenience that homosexuality is illegal in all Muslim states, and punished there by imprisonment, execution, or mob violence. These facts are of no apparent interest to those determined to slander Israel at all costs.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East -- and most of Africa and Asia -- where gay rights are guaranteed by law, where Gay Pride parades are held, and where gay tourism is encouraged. Yet, surprisingly, LGBT groups in the West never march or demonstrate to condemn countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others where gay men are hanged from cranes, beheaded, stoned or thrown from high buildings.
LGBT attacks on Israel and the distortion of gay rights as "pinkwashing" -- claiming that the state of Israel uses its freedoms for all its gay inhabitants in order to whitewash its supposedly evil persecution of the Palestinian people -- represent something psychologically troubling. Israel should be a major source of pride and admiration for LGBT people. Yet the very idea of rights for the LGBT community is simply cast aside in favour of deeply distasteful, profoundly misguided, and frequently anti-Semitic agitation that calls for the destruction of the world's only Jewish state. Liberal politics, post-colonialism, and a staggering inverted moral relativism work together to cancel out all the good that Israel does and all the safety it offers to all its citizens.
The charge of "pinkwashing" carries an even broader message. It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere "whitewashing" to cover Israel's original "sin" of being Jewish -- whether it be the remarkable international aid it provides in disaster-stricken regions or even the work of Israeli volunteers rescuing and feeding refugees in the enemy state of Syria, the 17 field hospitals and surgical centres Israel runs to help Syrians, its many advances in life-saving medical treatment, or the protection it affords to many persecuted minority religious communities from Christians to Baha'is. This blanket condemnation of Israel also carries another message: that whatever crimes other nations commit -- from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Sudan, or whatever acts of terror Muslim groups or Palestinians carry out -- these may be passed over in silence or even supported. And they are. There is even another clear message: that even the most positive side of the people we hate is really just a cover for sinister conspiracies. This view falls in line with the conspiracy theories familiar from Tsarist Russia, the Third Reich, Soviet Russia, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq. Those are never healthy models to follow, above all for those who think of themselves as moral or enlightened.
Supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Palestinians, members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, member states of the UN, and hundreds of other anti-Israel and anti-Zionist campaigners, supposed intellectuals, and politicians repeatedly argue that Israel is an illegal colonial entity, and that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law. In fact, Israel's presence in the West Bank is perfectly legal.[1]
If there are allegations that Israel has taken land by force and claimed sovereignty contrary to international law, it has not. All Israel's wars have so far been defensive. Either Israel was attacked first or has responded to a legitimate casus belli (legal cause for war) such as the closure by Egypt of the Strait of Tiran in 1967). There are allegations that Israel carries out "ethnic cleansing;" it does not -- and much more.[2]
But when Israel's supporters point out that its opponents are referring to lies that have no relevance to Israel -- and when these supporters list UN resolutions (notably resolutions 181, 242, and 338), League of Nations rulings establishing the Palestine Mandate, and a host of other documents designed to enforce international law -- Israel's opponents shout and declare all these legal instruments to be invalid -- for no apparent legal reason, but presumably that they demonstrate the falsity of their own claims. In other words, they show themselves to be not in the least respectful of international law. International law seems respected by them only if it can be distorted to be used as a weapon against Israel.
On the face of it, liberals often claim to share values that the rest of us hold, too. They declare themselves to be anti-racist, they call for rights for women, for sexually anomalous people, for the restoration of rights for people living in former colonies, for the rights of formerly oppressed people to self-determination, and much else that is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But they seem never satisfied by the straightforward promotion of these rights through democratic processes. They appear to prefer angry demonstrations, occasional rioting, and even sometimes terrorism.[3] Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought.
Take racism: Liberals rightly work against discriminating against people of colour. But when it comes to the Jewish people, history's most abused and persecuted ethnic and religious community, the pretence of being anti-racist is dropped and hardline liberals explode into racist fury, adopting all the techniques of far-right anti-Semites. In Europe, large numbers of liberal activists have joined forces with ultra-conservative Muslims to march through the streets of Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere chanting "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas," or listening as their terror-supporting Muslim allies sing "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud: Jaysh Muhammad sa ya-ud" (which loosely translates as "Remember the Battle of Khaybar, O you Jews: the army of Muhammad is coming back." Khaybar refers to the 629 A.D. assault led by Muhammad against the last Jewish tribe in Arabia.
July 2014: Demonstrators in The Hague, Netherlands chant "Death to the Jews", while flying the black flag of jihad. (Image source: Twitter/@SamRaalte)
Were these left-wing demonstrators to chant and march and threaten to exterminate any other race, they would be known for the racist thugs they really are. But Jews are apparently fair game. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.
This clear anti-Semitism by the liberal-Islamist alliance is given another ironic twist that seeks to cover its racism by placing the argument on what appears to be a purely political footing. Although the UN Charter and other mainstream instruments call for the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, as in Ireland, Turkey, South Africa, India, Pakistan and elsewhere liberal support for self-determination is betrayed by an almost total refusal to recognize the rights of one ethnic (and ultimately indigenous) people: the Jews. Of the post-imperialist states, one alone is singled out for opprobrium: Israel. Rhetoric about Israelis being imperialists, colonizers or fascists, leads one to think that Israel's enemies know nothing about the vast Ottoman empire that was the last legitimate regime to control the territories from which Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories all spring. The "Palestine will be free" marchers evidently know nothing much about history. Israelis -- just like citizens in their neighbouring states -- are a people freed from the tyranny of the Muslim Ottomans and awarded a new destiny precisely because Europe's imperial powers, the League of Nations, and the United Nations, relinquished their right to rule in favour of Jewish sovereignty.
Today's new anti-Semites ignore or are wholly ignorant of the long and unprecedented history of the Jewish diaspora.[4] No other people has longed for self-determination for so long or with such sustained intensity.
To leave Israel for a moment, we can find an important anomaly among liberal feminists who actively support the wearing of the Muslim veil and even choose to turn a blind eye to the misogyny of Islamic law, forced marriages, child marriages, female genital mutilation, honour killings and the stoning of women accused of adultery. This is, perhaps, the most hideous example of hypocrisy and double standards -- finding fault with even the most trivial of Western attitudes to women while doing nothing to protect Muslim women simply because it supposedly is "racist" to condemn Muslims. It appears that the fear of being called racist is more important to many than a genuine concern for the human rights of a group that is clearly oppressed. A Western man calling women "chicks" may expect the full force of feminist wrath, but a Muslim man who beats his wife because the Qur'an advises him to, is exonerated because wife-beating is part of his different and purportedly inviolable culture.
Writing in Tablet magazine last year, Heather Rogers relates how she at first dismissed criticism of misogyny within Muslims communities because "Westerners have no right to tell Muslims how to live" and downplayed arguments about the rate of Islamic honour killings. It was only on later reflection, she said, that she began to pose questions such as, "Why aren't more non-Muslim feminists speaking up about violence against women in Muslim-majority countries?" She then gives an example of how liberal feminists distort matters. "In searching the Internet," she writes, "I begin to find the vestiges of a discussion of the subject among Leftists, which suggests some reasons why many non-Muslim feminists choose to stay silent. One controversy is to do with an essay Adele Wilde-Blavatsky wrote in 2012 for The Feminist Wire, an online women's studies journal. Her piece says the hijab is a symbol of male oppression. A storm ensued. One response, signed by 77 academics, writers, and activists, said the essay was an assertion of Wilde-Blavatsky's "white feminist privilege and power." Instead of facilitating a discussion, however, The Feminist Wire editorial collective took down the comments, pulling the essay along with them."
Rogers then cites the 2010 case when Amnesty International fired the head of its Gender Unit, Gita Sahgal, who had protested the charity's alliance with a former Taliban fighter and misogynist, Moazzem Begg, an extremist who still refuses to condemn the stoning to death of women. Sahgal's credentials as a secular Asian woman defending the rights of Muslim women in general were and are undeniable. But Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women's rights -- a remarkable step for the world's best-known human rights agency.
It is surprising, yet all too predictable, to find pro-peace organizations and political leaders supporting violent and intolerant opinions and groups. The simplest example is the current leader of Britain's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn regards war as a last resort and has been active in a number of anti-war movements, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the hyper-pacifist Stop the War Coalition, which informs his current position in parliament. He continues to oppose renewing Trident, Britain's nuclear missile capacity. We have to assume that Corbyn is, in principle, opposed to the use of violence except in extreme circumstances. How, then, is it that he has described the brutal terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah -- the latter declared on 11 March to be a terrorist state by the Arab League -- both of which have an open agenda of committing genocide against Jews, as "my friends"? He explains this as "diplomatic language in the context of dialogue." Dialogue? This answer confirms that Corbyn has read neither the Hamas Covenant nor Hezbollah's Risala maftuha (Open Letter). How does a man of peace enter into dialogue with Hamas? Here are two sentences from its Covenant/Charter:
"Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." [Author's emphasis]
I have an Arabic copy of the Covenant in front of me: the translation is perfectly correct.
Here, from the Hizbullah Open Letter, is much the same thing:
Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev's and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity. [Author's emphases]
Dialogue, anyone? In his obsession with dialogue, Corbyn has gone further. In a notorious interview with Stephen Nolan on Radio Ulster last year, Corbyn was asked six times, "Are you prepared to condemn what the IRA did?" -- referring to their use of terrorist violence. Each time he refused to give a straight answer. As Nolan himself put it at the beginning of the interview, quoting from a Daily Telegraph article in June: "This is a man who sympathised with violent Irish republicanism in the 80s, invited IRA representatives to the Commons a fortnight after the Brighton bombing in 1984 and at a Troops Out meeting in 1987 he stood for a moment's silence for eight IRA terrorists killed in an SAS ambush." He is also a man who invited Hamas and Hezbollah representatives into the UK parliament. Even The Guardian, regarded by many as anti-Israeli, has castigated Corbyn for this and his other associations with terrorists and anti-Semites.
It does not stop there. During an interview with one of Britain's most eminent political journalists, Andrew Marr, Corbyn called for dialogue with Islamic State. A week later, in The Spectator, Toby Young wrote an article entitled, "Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left are wilfully blind to the evils of Islamist Nazis." Of course, Corbyn himself did not volunteer to fly out to Raqqa to have a cosy chat with Islamic State's self-proclaimed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a spirit of dialogue.
What is the reason for this staggering naïveté? You can find some of the answer by looking at again at the Hamas Covenant and Hizbullah's Open Letter. Here are some sentences from the former:
The Islamic Resistance Movement [i.e. Hamas] found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place.
Here is a single statement from the latter:
As for our friends, they are all the world's oppressed peoples.
In other words, both Hamas and Hizbullah supposedly exist to fight for the rights of the oppressed, Franz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth," the victims of Western imperialism and colonialism, of American arrogance, of a worldwide Jewish/Zionist/Masonic conspiracy. What socialist would not reach out to condemn his own people and his own culture, would not repudiate his own history, merely to reach out to these victims? If Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic State, al-Qa'ida, the Iranian regime, and all the other promoters of violence proclaim themselves to be the champions of the downtrodden masses, are they then to be applauded, rewarded and financed?
It is not just the "hard left" that does this. The broad liberal press, newspapers -- such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Independent, Haaretz -- together with a broad consensus of politicians and church leaders, are always happy to tell us that when terrorist groups maim and kill innocent civilians it is not their fault, for the conditions of oppression under which they live have purportedly given them no choice other than to fight back; that the Palestinians have given up hope, that they and their children have no other choice but to shoot and stab their way to yet more years of failure, despair and security measures.
Most of us in the West have much to thank many real liberals for: the abolition of slavery, the cause of civil rights and anti-racism, recognition of the rights of homosexuals, empathy for the disabled, free education, the campaign against religious intolerance, and much more. Liberals share these achievements with many others from the "right" and centre, with Jewish and Christian ethical standards, with a growing sense of a shared humanity as set out in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But many pseudo-liberals have betrayed these same values and proven themselves unworthy of the work of their own ancestors -- men and women who would never have sat side by side with terrorists, lied about Israel, fostered anti-Semitism or tolerated the abuse of women and children.[5] In all likelihood they would never have denounced the values of Western civilization, or valued the monstrous over the humane.
**Dr. Denis MacEoin is an academic and journalist specializing in Islam and the Middle East.
[1] The occupation is perfectly legal in international law under UN Resolution 242 (1967), and was reaffirmed in the Oslo II Accord, Article XI. See Alan Baker, "The Legal Basis of Israel's Rights in the Disputed Territories," Jan. 2013.
[2] For a very full and wholly tendentious list of these "violations" see here.
[3] Liberal support for terrorism has recently been demonstrated by the new leader of Britain's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, who has famously described Hamas and Hezbollah as his "friends."
[4] For a broad discussion of this, see Kenneth Marcus, The Definition of Anti-Semitism, Oxford U.P., 2015, chapter 6
[5] For a detailed and eloquent account of how the political left lost its way through the twentieth century and the early twenty-first, see Nick Cohen, What's Left? London, 2007.
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Palestinians: When in Doubt, Try Intimidation
Khaled Abu Toameh//Gatestone Institute/April 23/16
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7894/palestinians-intimidation

The Palestinians argue that security cameras on the Temple Mount would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshippers who protest against visits by Jews. What they seem to have forgotten is that these "protesters" regularly harass Jewish groups and individuals touring the Temple Mount.
While Mahmoud Abbas claimed he was in favor of the plan to install the security cameras, his Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials continued to incite against the plan
The straw that broke the Jordanian back was a leaflet that was distributed at the Temple Mount during Friday prayers two weeks ago. The leaflet urged Muslims to smash any cameras installed at the holy site.
In one blow, Palestinians have managed to undermine Jordan's historic role as "custodian" of the holy sites in Jerusalem and humiliate King Abdullah, who was the mastermind of the camera plan.
Succumbing to Palestinian intimidation, Jordan has dropped its plan to install surveillance cameras at the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), or Temple Mount.
The cancellation of the plan is seen as a severe blow not only to Jordan, but also to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in October 2015, brokered the agreement to install the cameras at the site.
Kerry announced then that Jordan and Israel had agreed to round-the-clock video surveillance, with the goal of reducing tensions at the Temple Mount.
Since then, however, the Palestinians, who have unleashed a wave of violent attacks on Israel in a purported response to Israeli "provocations" at the Temple Mount, have been campaigning against the plan to install the security cameras there. This week, it turned out that this campaign of intimidation was not in vain.
The Palestinians argue that the cameras would be used by Israel to identify and arrest Muslim worshippers who protest against visits by Jews to the Temple Mount. What they seem to have forgotten is that these "protesters" regularly harass Jewish groups and individuals touring the Temple Mount. The "protesters" are known as murabitoun (the Steadfast) and their main mission is to stop Jews from touring the Temple Mount. Some are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), while others are on the payroll of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
How Kerry will respond to this spit in the face remains to be seen. Not a sound was heard from him throughout the months of the Palestinian campaign to scuttle the plan.
With the U.S. deafeningly quiet on the subject, the Jordanians were left alone to deal with the Palestinian intimidation.
As the Palestinian threats intensified, Jordan's King Abdullah dispatched his foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, to an urgent meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
At the meeting, Abbas did his old bait-and-switch trick. Claiming that he was in favor of the plan to install the security cameras at the Temple Mount, his Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority officials continued to incite against the plan.
Abbas's foreign minister, Riad Malki, denounced the plan as a "new trap." He warned that Israel would use the cameras to arrest Palestinians under the pretext of "incitement."
Malki is here referring to the male and female Muslim worshippers whose mission is to harass and intimidate Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount. Thus, the PA foreign minister wishes to maintain the right to threaten Jews at the Temple Mont without being documented or caught on camera.
Palestinian Arab young men with masks, inside Al-Aqsa Mosque (some wearing shoes), stockpile rocks to use for throwing at Jews who visit the Temple Mount, September 27, 2015.
The Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by Sheikh Raed Salah, joined the chorus of critics by issuing its own threats to thwart the camera plan.
The straw that broke the Jordanian back was a leaflet that was distributed at the Temple Mount during Friday prayers two weeks ago. The leaflet urged Muslims to smash any cameras installed at the holy site. Who was behind the leaflet remains unclear, but sources in East Jerusalem blamed Palestinian activists and members of the Islamic Movement in Israel. The latest threat came as Jordan announced that the cameras would be installed at the site in the coming days.
Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour made no bones about the decision to drop the plan: it was, he stated, a direct response to Palestinian "opposition" and "reservations." He also noted that Israel had agreed to the installation of the cameras.
"At the beginning, Israel tried to hinder the project through various means," Ensour said. "But we were able to overcome that." He said that Jordan was nevertheless "surprised" by the reaction of the Palestinians to the cameras initiative.
Jordan has made clear that it was the Palestinians, and not Israel, who foiled the installation of more than 50 surveillance cameras at the Temple Mount as a stop towards easing tensions there.
Yet, no reaction from Kerry.
In one blow, Palestinians have managed to undermine Jordan's historic role as "custodian" of the holy sites in Jerusalem and humiliate King Abdullah, who was the mastermind of the camera plan. They managed to do so largely thanks to the failure of the U.S. Administration to follow up on the implementation of the Kerry-brokered agreement.
We are seeing an old movie. Once again, the Palestinians have strong-armed their way to disaster. Their incessant intimidation fails to achieve a truly worthy goal: a better life under a non-dictatorial regime.
Once again, the Palestinians have prevailed -- and in their win, they lose yet again.
*Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based Jerusalem.
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