LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

August 08/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.august08.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today

How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13/31-35/:"At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem."Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord." ’

God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true
First Letter of John 01/01-10/:"We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."
 

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 07-08/16
Shame on our Lebanese Olympic Head Delegation/Elias Bejjani/August 07/16

Lebanon’s long war/Mohamed Kawas/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Lebanon’s national dialogue highlights region’s complexities/Dalal Saoud/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Why real estate prices in Lebanon are falling/Bassem Ajami/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
An open letter to the youth of Lebanon/Hagar Hajjar Chemali/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Iran’s new propaganda: Claiming to expel al-Qaeda officials/Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Aleppo is being ethnically cleansed/Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Wither the Arab League/Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Iran confirms execution of nuclear scientist leaking information to US/Ynetnews/Associated Press/August 07/16
The life or death battle for Aleppo/Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Why I do not see anything wrong with Anwar Eshki’s visit to Israel/Ahmad Adnan/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
As Riyadh pursues more aggressive strategy in turbu­lent region, prospect of Saudi support /Ed Blanche/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Yazidis mark second anniversary of being targeted by Islamic State/Katherine Keenan/Jerusalem Post/August 07/16
The Phone Call That Saved Israel/Matti Friedman/The Wall Street Journal/August 07/16
Fighting Hate Speech -- British Style/Judith Bergman//Gatestone Institute/August 07/16
Palestinians: The "Country" Where Crime Is an Official Job/ Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/August 07/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on on August 07-08/16

Shame on our Lebanese Olympic Head Delegation
Olympics Spat as Lebanese Stop Israelis Joining Them on Bus
Lebanese Olympic team scolded by IOC for refusing to let Israelis on bus
Lebanese Olympics team stops Israelis from boarding shared bus
Lebanese Olympic team scolded by IOC for refusing to let Israelis on bus
Intensive Top-Level Political Consultations Expected Next Week
Fadlallah: Aleppo Battle Pivotal, Talks with Aoun Only Way for Presidential Solution
Hand Grenade Explodes at Ain el-Hilweh Camp
Civil Defense Volunteers Rally in Baalbek Demanding Civil Servant Status
Lebanon’s long war
Lebanon’s national dialogue highlights region’s complexities
Why real estate prices in Lebanon are falling
An open letter to the youth of Lebanon
Azzi: No president in absence of consensual solution in region
Abou Faour: Presidency bud remains unripe
Army shells militants in Arsal outskirts
Khalil: Presidential vacuum left a negative impact on all institutions, Army can solely safeguard State's image

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on August 07-08/16

Syria Regime Forces Redeploy after Rebels 'Break' Aleppo Siege
Air raids kill 10 near Syria hospital
Israel minister says Iran has respected nuclear deal
German politicians concerned over Ankara’s influence on Turks
Erdogan: I will open ‘new page with my friend Putin’
White House releases secret drone ‘playbook’
Palestinian denies funneling charity money to Hamas
Egypt bids farewell to Nobel Prize winning chemist
Iran: political prisoners call for halt in executions
Express: ‘Morality police’ step up brutal patrols in Iran

Links From Jihad Watch Site for on August 07-08/16
Iranian scientist gives info to US on Iran nuke program, Hillary discusses him in emails, Iran hangs him for treason
Belgium: Machete-wielding Muslim causes evacuation of neighborhood in Liege
Muslim cleared in Charlie Hebdo massacre tries to join the Islamic State
Lebanese Olympians refuse to ride in bus with Israelis
Imam thanks Pope for saying Islam is a religion of peace
India: School bans national anthem, says it’s un-Islamic
Obama’s Cash Payments to the Mullahs — on The Glazov Gang
Iran humiliates Obama with footage of $400 million ransom for hostages
Germany: Jihad attackers had repeated contact with Islamic State jihadis in Saudi Arabia
Boko Haram’s new top dog to old one: Mission was to kill “only Christians”
Syriac Catholic Patriarch: West “naive and complicit” in destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity
Egypt: After years of torture and harassment, Christian convert returns to Islam

Latest Lebanese Related News published on on August 07-08/16

Shame on our Lebanese Olympic Head Delegation
Elias Bejjani/August 07/16
منع الفريق الرياضي اللبناني الفريق الإسرائيلي من مشاركته نفس الباص في البرازيل هو عمل ولادي وسخيف وليس فيه رائحة البطولة
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/08/07/elias-bejjani-shame-on-our-lebanese-olympic-head-delegation%D9%85%D9%86%D8%B9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B6%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A7/
Sadly, the unacceptable, childish and unethical conduct of the head of our Lebanese Olympic delegation participating in The Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Mr. Salim al-Haj Nakoula has been by all Olympic standards a mere shame and disgrace.
Apparently he did not honour the Olympic games’ spirit, aims or regulations and acted as if he is still living in the stone age or in a war zone.
For heaven’s sake why should he ferociously and stupidly refuse to let the Israeli Olympic delegation board a bus the Israeli and the Lebanese teams were officially supposed to share, and what did he actually achieve?
Quite frankly, He achieved nothing but a humiliating official reprimanding response by the International Olympic Committee.
As far as we are concerned, our Lebanese Olympic head delegation’s conduct is totally irresponsible, hostile, bizarre, and accordingly strongly condemned.
Simply it was stupid, uncalculated and shameful.
This conduct shows with no doubt that our beloved Lebanon is occupied and that the occupier is the oppressive Iranian Mullahs’ regime via its terrorist, denominational and criminal armed proxy, Hezbollah Iranian Militia.

Background
Olympics Spat as Lebanese Stop Israelis Joining Them on Bus
Associated Press/Naharnet/August 07/16/The Israeli and Lebanese Olympics teams became involved in a heated argument about access to a bus to the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Games.Both sides acknowledged Saturday that Israeli athletes were blocked from boarding a bus packed with the Lebanon team on Friday but they are at odds over the reasons for the actions of the head of the Lebanese delegation. Israel portrayed it as a hostile act, maintaining that organizers had told them to use the bus to reach the Maracana Stadium.
"The organizing committee saw the blunt behavior of the head of the Lebanese delegation and immediately arranged a different bus for us," Gili Lusting, head of the Israeli delegation, said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The behavior of the head of the Lebanese delegation contradicts the Olympic Charter," he added. Sailing coach Udi Gal said Lebanon chef de mission Salim Haj Nicola "physically blocked the entrance and wouldn't let us on" after the driver opened the door. "We wanted to stand up for ourselves but you can't cause trouble," Gal, a former Olympic sailor, told Israel's Channel 2 television. Haj Nicola insisted that he had the right to prevent another team's athletes from joining them on the transport reserved for them. "I asked the bus driver to close the door but the guide with the Israeli team prevented him from doing so," Haj Nicola told An Nahar newspaper. "I then stood at the door of the bus to prevent the Israel team from entering and some of them tried to go in and pick up a fight."Haj Nicola told the AP that it was "only a small problem.""This problem is finished," he said by telephone. "We are here only for sports."It is a decade since Israel was embroiled in a month-long war with Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon. The 2006 conflict killed about 1,200 Lebanese, including hundreds of civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. The border between the two countries has been largely quiet since then.

Lebanese Olympic team scolded by IOC for refusing to let Israelis on bus
Jerusalem Post/August 07/16/The head of the Lebanese Olympic delegation was reprimanded by the International Olympic Committee on Sunday after refusing to let the Israeli delegation board a bus the two teams were supposed to share.As a result, according to the original Facebook post by Israeli sailing coach Udi Gal, event organizers tried to scatter the Israeli athletes on several different buses. He called this “unacceptable for security and representative reasons.”During the hearing on the matter, the IOC committee warned Salim al-Haj Nakoula the head of the Lebanese delegation, that they would not accept any further instances like this.Al-Haj Nakoula responded that the whole incident was the result of a misunderstanding. A source from the Lebanese Olympic committee told Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen on Saturday that the refusal to allow the Israeli delegation to ascend the bus on Friday was a group decision of the Lebanese Olympic delegation. A separate source also said that Lebanese athletes are "committed to the national position in refusing to be in the same place as the Israelis." He added that Lebanon will remain part of the resistance against Israel. Gal’s post set off an internet firestorm after he described the incident on his Facebook account on Friday. "2016 Olympics...shame on you," he wrote. "The Israeli delegation was preparing to board a bus to the opening ceremony, which was to be shared with the Lebanese delegation. The Lebanese, upon comprehending that they were to share a bus with the Israelis, addressed the driver in refusal and demanded that the door to the bus be shut. Event organizers then attempted to scatter us on different buses - something that is unacceptable for security and representative reasons." "We insisted that we board the bus designated for us - and that the Lebanese should de-board if so they wish. So the bus driver opened the door. But this time, the head of the Lebanese delegation blocked the entrance to the bus with his own body. Event organizers - attempting to prevent a diplomatic incident - then organized a separate ride for us. But the diplomatic incident already occurred - shame!"He added: "How can it be that something like this occurs on the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony? Does this not directly oppose what the Olympics represent and stand for...I cannot begin to express my feelings, I'm in shock from the incident."

Lebanese Olympics team stops Israelis from boarding shared bus
Ynetnews/August 06/16/Sailor Udi Gal, a member of Israel's Olympics delegation, says members of the Lebanese delegation refused to let the Israelis ride the bus with them to the Maracana stadium, where the opening ceremony was to take place.
The Rio 2016 Olympic Games began on a sour note for the Israeli delegation, but not one relating to the actual competition. When the delegation was ready to board the bus to the Maracana stadium in the Brazilian city, they were physically prevented from doing so by the Lebanese delegation, already aboard, according Israeli sailor Udi Gal. “The 2016 Olympics – a disgrace!!” wrote Gal in a Facebook post. “(When) Israel’s Olympic delegation got ready to board the bus for the opening ceremony, it turned out the bus was shared with the Lebanese delegation. Once the members of the Lebanese delegation realized they were (sharing the bus) with the Israeli delegation, they asked the driver to close the door, with their delegation leader heading (the effort).”Gal claimed that the organizers tried to calm things down. “The organizers tried to split us up to different buses, something which was not possible security and representation-wise,” he wrote, “I insisted and we insisted that we get on the intended bus, and if the Lebanese don’t want (to ride with us), they are welcome to get off (of it). The bus driver opened the door, but this time the head of the Lebanese delegation blocked the entrance with his body. The organizers tried to prevent an international incident and sent us aside to a special (vehicle).”Gal was surprised the organizers gave in to the pressure, writing, “How is it that they let something like this happen, and on the opening night of the Olympic Games? Isn’t this the opposite of what the Olympics represent and (don’t the actions by the Lebanese delegation) work against it? I cannot describe the way I feel. I’m enraged and shocked by this event.”Lebanese delegation head, Salim al-Haj Nakoula gave the Lebanese press his version of the story on Saturday. In an interview given to the An-Nahar newspaper, Nakoula claimed that each delegation was to have its own bus. “There are over 250 buses dedicated to transporting the delegations from the Olympic village to the opening ceremony. After we boarded Bus 22, which was dedicated to the Lebanese delegation, I was surprised by the Israeli delegation’s approaching and wanting to get on the bus with us,” he said.
“I asked the driver to shut the door, but the guide who was there with the Israeli delegation prevented him from doing so. I had to stand at the entrance to the bus to block it, and prevent the (Israeli) delegation from coming in,” Nakoula said. He claimed that the Israelis were trying to cause an incident on purpose. “They have a bus of their own like all delegations. Why did they want to get on the Lebanese delegation's bus?” he asked. Head of the Israeli delegation to the Rio 2016 games, Gili Lustig, responded to Nakoula by saying, “The organizing committee was the one that determined the travel arrangements, and which bus we would take to the ceremony. The organizing committee saw the rude behavior of the Lebanese delegation head and immediately provided an alternate bus. The behavior of the Lebanese delegation head is in conflict with the Olympic truce. As far as we are concerned, the whole thing is behind us and we’re ready for the competitions.”
Lusting mentioned that the organization committee apologized for the incident. “They pointed us at a bus with ten Lebanese people in it. It was an unwise decision from the start and it’s too bad they didn’t think of that before. This king of incident could have been prevented. We certainly don’t believe in boycotts. The committee’s people tried to talk to the Lebanese, who refused to accept us. It should be said that the busses were joint: They’d fill a bus, and move on. They asked that we not make a scene ahead of the opening ceremony.”
Lebanese Minister of Youth and Sport Abdel Motaleb Hannawi told a Lebanese news site that this was not the first time Israel has attempted to embarrass a Lebanese delegation in this kind of circumstance. He praised the delegation’s behavior, Nakoula’s specifically. “His stance was principled and patriotic,” he said. Nakoula became the hero of the day in Lebanon after the incident was publicized. The Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar news networks, both associated with Hezbollah, gave Nakoula praise, with the latter also interviewing him. Hezbollah supporters and officials praised him on social media, with one Al-Manar broadcaster tweeting, “The Israelis were sent away from the bus because normalization (with Israel) is not to be had in any form, and because the Lebanese identity (is that of) resistance. Be proud to be Lebanese.”
**Nadav Zenziper, Oren Aharoni, and Roi Kais contributed to this report.

Lebanese Olympic team scolded by IOC for refusing to let Israelis on bus
Jerusalem Post/August 07/16/The head of the Lebanese Olympic delegation was reprimanded by the International Olympic Committee on Sunday after refusing to let the Israeli delegation board a bus the two teams were supposed to share. As a result, according to the original Facebook post by Israeli sailing coach Udi Gal, event organizers tried to scatter the Israeli athletes on several different buses. He called this “unacceptable for security and representative reasons.” During the hearing on the matter, the IOC committee warned Salim al-Haj Nakoula the head of the Lebanese delegation, that they would not accept any further instances like this. Al-Haj Nakoula responded that the whole incident was the result of a misunderstanding. A source from the Lebanese Olympic committee told Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen on Saturday that the refusal to allow the Israeli delegation to ascend the bus on Friday was a group decision of the Lebanese Olympic delegation. A separate source also said that Lebanese athletes are "committed to the national position in refusing to be in the same place as the Israelis." He added that Lebanon will remain part of the resistance against Israel. Gal’s post set off an internet firestorm after he described the incident on his Facebook account on Friday. "2016 Olympics...shame on you," he wrote. "The Israeli delegation was preparing to board a bus to the opening ceremony, which was to be shared with the Lebanese delegation. The Lebanese, upon comprehending that they were to share a bus with the Israelis, addressed the driver in refusal and demanded that the door to the bus be shut. Event organizers then attempted to scatter us on different buses - something that is unacceptable for security and representative reasons.""We insisted that we board the bus designated for us - and that the Lebanese should de-board if so they wish. So the bus driver opened the door. But this time, the head of the Lebanese delegation blocked the entrance to the bus with his own body. Event organizers - attempting to prevent a diplomatic incident - then organized a separate ride for us. But the diplomatic incident already occurred - shame!" He added: "How can it be that something like this occurs on the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony? Does this not directly oppose what the Olympics represent and stand for...I cannot begin to express my feelings, I'm in shock from the incident."

Intensive Top-Level Political Consultations Expected Next Week
Naharnet/August 07/16/The next few weeks will witness intensive consultations, mainly between some political leaders and heads of parliamentary blocs, in a bid to reach consensus over an electoral law, a media report said on Sunday. An Nahar newspaper attributed the expectations to ministerial sources, who said that the issue of parliamentary elections can have an impact on the domestic situation similar to that of the presidential vote. “Should no efforts be made from now until September 5, the repercussions of surrender to paralysis would torpedo national dialogue,” the sources added. Three consecutive days of national dialogue in Ain el-Tineh have failed to make any breakthrough in the current political stalemate, while new reform-related issues have surfaced, such as the creation of a senate and the implementation of administrative decentralization, which both were stipulated by the 1989 Taef Accord. Speaker Nabih Berri has scheduled a new dialogue session for September 5. Prior to the consecutive dialogue sessions, Berri had proposed a so-called “package deal” involving parliamentary elections under a new electoral law before electing a new president and forming a new government. Should the parties fail to agree on a new law, the parliament's current extended term would be curtailed and the elections would be held under the 1960 law which is currently in effect, Berri says. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Fadlallah: Aleppo Battle Pivotal, Talks with Aoun Only Way for Presidential Solution
Naharnet/August 07/16Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah on Sunday described the battle for the northern city of Aleppo as a “pivotal battle,” while reiterating the party's stance that dialogue with Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun is the “only way” to resolve the presidential void crisis in Lebanon. “What the resistance (Hizbullah) is doing nowadays in Syria and its permanent readiness to defend Lebanon against the Israeli enemy are the things that have created a protection and stability shield for our entire country, including for those who oppose and criticize the resistance,” said Fadlallah in a speech in the southern town of Ainata.“Had it not been for this shield, Lebanon would have been facing situations similar to those in the rest of the countries across the Arab world,” the lawmaker added, referring to countries that witnessed Arab Spring uprisings. “Nowadays, we are offering sacrifices at the core of the battle in Syria, in order to protect the holy sites, the lives of our people, the resistance project and Lebanon,” Fadlallah said. “Similarly to July 2006, when a lot of Arabs, Lebanese and foreign countries united against the resistance, a lot of forces are uniting today in the Aleppo battle, because it is a pivotal battle that will decide the fate of the war in Syria,” the MP explained. Syrian rebels said Saturday they have broken a three-week government siege of second city Aleppo, turning the tables on Russian- and Hizbullah-backed regime forces who are now on the defensive. The key northern province of Aleppo is a microcosm of Syria's chaotic multi-front war that has killed more than 280,000 people. Rebel and regime forces have fought to control the provincial capital since mid-2012, transforming the former economic powerhouse into a divided, bombed-out city.
Opposition fighters, Islamists and jihadists have waged fierce assaults since July 31 to end the siege by government forces of some 250,000 people in eastern Aleppo. On Saturday, rebels successfully broke the siege by opening a new route into the city from the southwest, opposition officials said. Separately, Fadlallah said “Hizbullah is seeking to resolve the political crisis (in Lebanon) through speeding up the election of a new president.” “Our presidential candidate is General Michel Aoun and they must negotiate with him as the only way to resolve the presidential crisis,” the MP added, noting that “at the same time, Hizbullah will keep seeking an electoral law based on proportional representation in order to ensure fair representation.”Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Hand Grenade Explodes at Ain el-Hilweh Camp
Naharnet/August 07/16/An explosion shock the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp overnight, state-run National News Agency reported Sunday. “The blast resulted from a hand grenade that was hurled in the Akbara neighborhood,” NNA said.
No casualties were reported. By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the twelve Palestinian refugee 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. But the camp is also home to more than 54,000 registered Palestinian refugees who have been joined in recent years by thousands of Palestinians fleeing the fighting in Syria. More than 450,000 Palestinians are registered in Lebanon with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA. Most live in squalid conditions in 12 official refugee camps and face a variety of legal restrictions, including on their employment.

Civil Defense Volunteers Rally in Baalbek Demanding Civil Servant Status
Naharnet/August 07/16/Civil Defense volunteers staged a sit-in Sunday at the southern entrance of the Bekaa city of Baalbek, demanding that they be turned into full-time civil servants. The sit-in lasted around ten minutes, state-run National News Agency said. Speaking on behalf of the protesters, Omar Solh vowed that the volunteers would “continue their protests until the implementation of the decree granting them civil servant status, which was taken five months ago.”“We have returned to street protests to say that the decision that was taken was fictional,” Solh added. “We call on the relevant officials to finalize this issue,” Solh urged, warning that the volunteers might suspend their rescue and firefighting missions.“Unfortunately, we would be obliged to do so,” he said. “Out sit-in today is a message but we will block roads next time,” Solh cautioned.

Lebanon’s long war
Mohamed Kawas/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri proposed a broad agreement to not just fill the long-vacant presidency, but also appoint a new prime minister and government, and amend the election law ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections. Berri’s opponents questioned whether this proposal actually came at the behest of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and aimed to change the rules of the political game in Lebanon where power is split between Christians and Muslims to one in which power is split among Christians, Sunnis and Shias. Berri sought to pre-empt his detractors by stressing he and his allies are committed to the 1989 Taif agreement, which ended Lebanon’s civil war and drew up the current political system, and had no intention of undermining Lebanon’s constitution.Supporters of the March 14 political bloc led by former prime minister Saad Hariri called for the protection of the Taif agreement and the current constitution, saying that the election of a new president must be the priority.
At the same time, March 14 politicians said that, given the lack of movement on the issue over the past two years, perhaps Lebanon should drop the requirement that the president be a Maronite Christian, particularly as the only remaining candidates are part of the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance, including controversial figure Michel Aoun. Parliament has been virtually paralysed during this presidential crisis and the political conflict that has accompanied it. Since the 2008 Doha agreement, paralysis and disruption have been a part of Lebanon’s political system that has affected everyday life. The formation of a government and the operation of Lebanon’s ministries and institutions have become subject to this disruption, to the point that it has become normal. The same goes for the election of a new president, namely the legislature’s disruption of parliament and the disruption of the operation of the cabinet.
The constitution is supposed to regulate government appointments and distribute this according to the well-known sectarian quota system. The Taif agreement was based on the local, regional and international balance of power in 1989. Those who are calling for the constitution to be amended argue that this quota system must be changed to reflect the balance of power today. But those who oppose this argue that constitutional amendments cannot be imposed by force or under the threat of Hezbollah’s illegal arms. The same applies to the calls for Lebanon’s election law to be amended. How can this take place under threat of Hezbollah? The issue goes beyond Lebanon’s borders. Lebanon’s political elite are well aware they are operating against the backdrop of a regional clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran and an international one between the United States and Russia.
The presidential vacuum in Lebanon means that an acceptable solution must be found at home but this is virtually impossible given the geo-strategic situation. Ultimately, an agreement among all parties is needed if there is to be a stable government and political system in Beirut. The Taif agreement was not amended before, even during the era of Syrian tutelage over Lebanon, but this was due to reasons relating to regional and international conditions. Those conditions still exist. As for the national dialogue, ultimately no consensus was reached, whether on the election of a new president, amending the Taif agreement, the constitution or changing the election law. Local media were quick to point out that the political elite were unable to reach an agreement to elect a new president. Berri likely knew this and knew that his proposal would never pass. Those calling for constitutional amendments also knew this would likely not happen either. But that does not necessarily mean that it will not happen at all. This will be a long war that will not be decided by any single battle.

Lebanon’s national dialogue highlights region’s complexities
Dalal Saoud/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
BEIRUT - A fresh attempt to con­vince Lebanon’s political rivals to shelve their dis­putes and come up with solutions to the coun­try’s multiple crises has failed, to no one’s surprise. National dialogue sessions, Au­gust 2nd-4th in Beirut and hosted by House Speaker Nabih Berri, became another reminder that the political parties, which are divided over al­most every issue, are not ready to make concessions. Although they admitted the grow­ing dangers threatening Lebanon’s stability, the dialogue members wrapped up their meetings with no tangible results. The prospect of the election of a new president in the near future is still far-fetched and disagreements over a new electoral law persist while — on perhaps a positive note — the issues of admin­istrative decentralisation and the es­tablishment of a senate were put on the table.
To some, the fact that the rivals, including senior members of pro- Saudi Sunni Future Movement led by former prime minister Saad Hariri and of Iran-backed Shia Hez­bollah, headed by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, met around the national dialogue table was enough to defuse Sunni-Shia tensions and maintain the country’s fragile stability.
Though it is partly true, much more is needed to avoid the collapse of the country. “Lebanon is a microcosm that re­flects what goes on in the region,” said Hilal Khashan, chairman of the political studies department at the American University of Beirut. “The Lebanese can talk among them­selves, even though they realise it won’t be possible for them to agree on anything as long as the region is in a state of disarray.”True, the economy is weak and the machinery of the state is hardly functional, Khashan noted, “yet there is an international and re­gional understanding on preventing their collapse.”
Western and regional powers have made it clear to Lebanese leaders that they need to reach an internal understanding themselves.
“Presently, there is no power, whether regional or international, that can or is willing to impose a specific settlement on the Lebanese concerning the presidential elec­tions or the new electoral law,” said Kassem Kassir, a political analyst well informed about Hezbollah and an expert on Islamic movements.
Kassir explained that Berri “felt the heat” of the growing tension and wars in the region and thus called on the Lebanese rivals to meet “to avoid reaching the point of no re­turn”. With each party betting on devel­opments in the region to boost its position and secure more gains in­ternally, time is running short.
“We still have six to seven months but, if we don’t produce a new elec­toral law or elect a new president, we will be heading to a constitution­al crisis that would lead to renewed demands for holding a new constit­uent conference (to change the cur­rent political system),” Kassir said.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since May 2014 because par­liament has been unable to convene due to a lack of quorum to choose a successor to former president Michel Suleiman. Hezbollah parlia­mentarians and their Christian al­lies of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) have boycotted the votes in an attempt to force the election of their candidate, FPM leader Michel Aoun. In any case, a settlement would require concessions from both par­ties, which are delaying that mo­ment, awaiting a breakthrough in the Syria war or the Saudi-Iran dia­logue — each for its own advantage. Nothing indicates that Tehran and Riyadh are any closer reaching agreement. On the contrary, they are increasing the pressures on each other. “It is the time for each one of them (Iran and Saudi Arabia) to im­prove its bargaining position. More escalation looms on the horizon and it will get worse before it can get better,” Khashan said. “Distrust of Iran runs deep in the Arab psyche. [Iran] needs to convince Arabs that it is abandoning its politics of mis­chief.”
Iran, he said, wants recognition as a “paramount regional power”, not only in the Gulf but also in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The Saudis totally distrust the Iranian leadership who turned down repeated efforts in the past to “usher in mutually ben­eficial relations” with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
“Iran is bent on imperial expan­sionism and Saudi Arabia is deter­mined to arrest its surge,” Khashan said. Kassir said the Saudis could sof­ten their position if Iran facilitates an agreement to end the Yemen war that is satisfactory to them, helps achieve a settlement in Syria, makes concessions in Bahrain and most importantly assures them about its role in the region. “But Yemen is the key for any Saudi-Iranian dialogue,” he said. “However, the region needs a ma­jor settlement whereby the Saudis would feel they are a strong party and Iran, which is to respect that, will have its own niche.”
Until then, the Lebanese want their leaders to end the political deadlock before possibly being forced to act under the impact of a major security development — as many security and political sources fear.

Why real estate prices in Lebanon are falling
Bassem Ajami/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Beirut - The real estate sector and its derivatives represent 20% of Lebanon’s gross domestic product. This makes it reasonable to assume that what happens in that sector provides a strong indication on the direction of the Lebanese economy. Many argue that the real estate bubble in Lebanon has burst. They point to empty apartment buildings as proof that the property market that once thrived in the heart of the Middle East is no more. Optimists deny there was a bubble in the Leb­anese real estate market, insisting the drop in prices is exaggerated. Technically, a “bubble” occurs when there is a wave of frantic buy­ing, mostly involving borrowed money, which drives the prices up without a reasonable explanation. This is true for real estate and most other commodities. “The asking prices of apartments under construction in Beirut has dropped 1.2% in 2015,” said Karim Makarem, director of Ramco, a property agency in Beirut that has been in the business since 1973. He dismissed talk of a bubble as unre­alistic. The elements of a bubble are not there, he said, adding: “There is no serious leverage in the prop­erty sector and demand will always be there, even if it slows down at times. Life will go on.”
Makarem recalled how the mar­ket survived the 1975-90 civil war and recovered stronger than before. “The same will happen now,” he in­sisted.
Dan Azzi, the former chief execu­tive officer of Standard Chartered Bank, stated a far less optimistic view recently. He told a July con­ference in Beirut on the Lebanese economy that the real estate sector was a classic bubble and that “it is at the beginning of a major correc­tion”.
There is excessive supply and lim­ited demand. Demand, he added, is split into three sources: local, Leba­nese expats in the Gulf countries and Gulf nationals. Azzi said that myths and over-optimism played a major role in cre­ating the bubble. “Today we are at the start of the curve, which I will call the destruction of myths and dreams. Such myths include the il­lusion that ‘this never happened here before’,” Azzi said. Apart from the fact that a real-es­tate crash has happened in Lebanon before, he said, people forget that there is always a first time. Azzi gave the ominous example of a Japanese in Hiroshima who was convinced on the eve of August 5th, 1945, that his city would not be dev­astated by a nuclear bomb “because it never happened before”.Azzi described how the local de­mand for property was restricted by the limited income of Lebanese people, while the demand by ex­pats in the Gulf countries had been adversely affected by the drop in oil prices, which resulted in lay-offs of many Lebanese workers in those countries. The third source of demand, from Gulf nationals, has eased as many of them put their properties on the market, having lost interest in Lebanon altogether. Leverage is an important element of any economic bubble. It was the major cause of the 2008 housing crisis in the United States that led to global recession. Optimists in­sist that restrictions imposed by the Lebanese Central Bank on mortgage lending prevent leverage from be­coming too dangerous. Others are critical of the bank’s policy, while some dismiss such restrictions as easy to circumvent. The Central Bank demands that the buyer provide a down pay­ment of at least 30% of the price of property while commercial banks provide the rest as a low-interest loan. To help move the market, the Central Bank also offers subsidised loans as high as $500,000, which are subject to certain restrictions aimed at preventing speculation. Jihad al-Hukayem, a real estate expert, is critical of the Central Bank policy “Why offer such high subsi­dised loans to one person while the same loan can be divided among three buyers to purchase less ex­pensive housing?” he asked. Still, some developers offer mortgage plans outside the bank­ing sector that are less restrictive, yet more dangerous. One develop­ment company initiated a program in 2014 that offered so-called teaser loans. With a down payment of 5,000, clients could purchase apart­ments under construction valued at $300,000, provided 30% of the price was settled by delivery date, scheduled for the end of 2017. Azzi maintains that some lenders get around the law by accepting less than 30% down payments while on paper they maintain that 30% had been paid. This is not only leverag­ing but sub-prime lending, he said. Hukayem said property prices are not determined by the asking price, but by the last selling price. He said the reason for the fall in prices was the reduction in the costs of build­ing material and the drop in value of the euro. “However, the main reason is the drop in oil prices below $65 a bar­rel,” he said, adding that the effects of the fall had not yet been felt in Lebanon. He agreed with Azzi that the market was at the beginning of a downturn in prices. “Prices in Lebanon in general, not only in real estate, are on the way down for the coming five years,” he said, adding it was better to rent rather than purchase an apartment.
Bassem Ajami, a Lebanese-British journalist, has been reporting on Lebanon and the region for 25 years. He lives in Beirut.
 

An open letter to the youth of Lebanon
Hagar Hajjar Chemali/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
I can imagine it’s tough to see your country change before your very eyes – trash piling up, no prospects for a President in the near future, and so many refugees that you barely understand the dialect being spoken next to you. It’s hard to envision your future in this country, let alone that of your children. I have a message of tough love for you: if you aren’t careful, then the Lebanese flag will become nothing more than something discussed in history books. As Lebanon’s youth, you have a unique opportunity to reclaim your country by participating in its democratic system – as flawed as it might be – to change the course of Lebanon’s future and consequentially your own. Since its civil war, Lebanon has been dealt an unfair hand: it has been the playground for warlords and regional political power games, and its resources have often been seized through corruption. Indeed, Lebanon rests on some major tectonic plates – both figuratively and literally. Lebanon’s economy has been on the verge of collapse for years, surviving in large part due to global capital inflows, external aid, and debt relief. That’s hardly a recipe for economic or developmental sustainability, especially when Lebanon faces a heavy burden on its shoulders due to its neighbor’s sectarian chaos. To quote my friend and scholar Hussein Ibish, “Lebanon is not a failing state, but a fading state.”But Lebanon has a significant amount of potential too, enough for its citizens not to give up on it. Albeit its flaws, Lebanon is a democracy – a dysfunctional one, but still a democracy – that was created to allow for the participation of its diverse people. And I think there’s one thing we can all agree on – the Lebanese succeed no matter where they are. Every year, I go to a gala event hosted in Washington, D.C. by the American Task Force for Lebanon that honors accomplished Lebanese-Americans. And every year I am increasingly proud of what I see – those that have contributed to medical and scientific discoveries, those who have built multi-million dollar companies, and the seven current Lebanese-American congressmen and senators. This is just a short list. You all have an incredible amount of potential but you shouldn’t have to leave your country to achieve success.
I know you feel frustrated – you hate that your religion bars you from being promoted, that your government’s politics are poisoning you
It’s easy to blame others…I know what you’re thinking. It’s easy to blame the government or even the United States, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or others. But the onus is on you, Lebanon’s citizens and especially its youth. And I know you feel frustrated – you hate that your religion bars you from being promoted, that your government’s politics are poisoning you through the trash, or that you have to tip the customs guy at the port an exorbitant sum just to get your shipment on time. It feels as though Lebanon has inherent flaws or norms that make it impossible for things to change. However, the effort earlier this year by a diverse group of Lebanese to create a new political party and the traction that party gained reflects the kind of potential you all have and the potential opportunity that lies ahead. Change doesn’t come quickly (after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?), but together you can change it and you should.
There a number of ways you can participate and fight for your country: try to run for office and get involved with your local municipality; write about your views and work to expose endemic corruption; create petitions and lobby your government to change policies to support increased investment and high-skilled job creation in Lebanon, to name a few examples. The Lebanese are resilient – it’s time to let that resilience translate into fighting for the future of your country and subsequently yours.

Azzi: No president in absence of consensual solution in region
Sun 07 Aug 2016/NNA – Labour Minister, Sejaan Azzi, said that there was no new data regarding the possibility of the election of a President in the absence of a consensual solution in the region.

Abou Faour: Presidency bud remains unripe
Sun 07 Aug 2016/NNA - Public Health Minister, Wael Abou Faour, said that the presidential bud remained unripe because no political decision was taken in this regard.
Abou Faour's words came Sunday at a book signing ceremony in Kfeir village in the presence of a number of political figures. He hoped that Jumblatt's call would find an echo among political forces to promote further reconciliation among the Lebanese and to pave the way for the election of a new president.

Army shells militants in Arsal outskirts
Sun 07 Aug 2016/NNA - Lebanese Army artillery pounded on Sunday afternoon armed militants in the area of Wadi al-Khail in the outskirts of Arsal, NNA correspondent in Baalbek reported.

Khalil: Presidential vacuum left a negative impact on all institutions, Army can solely safeguard State's image
Sun 07 Aug 2016/NNA - MP Anwar EL-Khalil considered, on Sunday, that the "presidential vacuum has caused negative repercussions affecting all institutions in the country," adding that "the Lebanese Army and military institutions alone are capable of preserving the State's image and authority."Khalil's words came during the luncheon banquet held at his Hasbaya residence in honor of South Council Head, Kabalan Kabalan, which he organized on behalf of House Speaker Nabih Berri. The event was attended by prominent political figures and senior officials. Khalil praised Kabalan's role in "transforming the notion of administrative work from a mere job to a national responsibility." He paid tribute to the South Council's important and lively contribution at the developmental level, namely through its various executed projects in the region. Kabalan, in turn, thanked Khalil for his thoughtful gesture and great generosity "which springs from sincere friendship and kindness."He added: "The South Council is a comprehensive developmental workshop in service of the Southern community's infrastructure, advancement and progress at various levels."

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on August 07-08/16

Syria Regime Forces Redeploy after Rebels 'Break' Aleppo Siege
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/August 07/16/Syrian regime forces redeployed Sunday to try to avoid being surrounded in neighborhoods they control in Aleppo, after a rebel alliance said it had broken a three-week government siege. A coalition of rebels and jihadists surged through regime territory on Saturday to open a new route into the northern city's besieged eastern neighborhoods, home to an estimated 250,000 people. The operation triggered celebrations in eastern districts and sparked fears in regime-controlled western areas of the divided city of food and fuel shortages.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the rebel action was one of the most significant setbacks for government forces since the conflict erupted in March 2011. "Despite more than 600 Russian strikes, the regime forces were not able to hold on to their positions," he said. Steadfast regime ally Moscow has provided air support for forces loyal to President Bashar Assad since September 20. Official media denied that the siege had been broken but implicitly admitted that regime forces were on the defensive and that pro-government areas were facing shortages in the country's ravaged second city. State television said on Sunday: "Our forces have redeployed after absorbing the attack of thousands of mercenaries, and the army has found a new route to allow food and gas in." "The army has found an alternative way to move food and fuel supplies" into western Aleppo, it said.The Observatory reported intermittent air strikes and clashes Sunday on the city's southern edges, where rebels overran buildings in a military academy the previous day.
Food trucks enter Aleppo
Rebel units on Saturday pushed northeast into the Ramussa district where they linked up with other insurgents who had fought from inside the city. Footage posted by rebels showed their fighters embracing and celebrating the end of the government siege, in place since July 17. On Sunday, rebel forces brought seven pick-up trucks full of fruit and vegetables into eastern districts of Aleppo to be distributed to local markets, an opposition fighter said. Video footage seen by AFP showed crates of plums, tomatoes, watermelons and vegetables lined up along a road. An AFP journalist said hungry residents quickly bought up the supplies. The Observatory's Abdel Rahman said the route into eastern districts is open only to fighters. "Not a single civilian has left the eastern districts because the road is too dangerous and not secured," he said. The rebel advance now puts the estimated 1.2 million people in government-held districts under opposition encirclement, he added. "The western districts of Aleppo are now besieged. There are no safe routes for civilians in government-held districts to use to get into or out of the city," he told AFP.
Food prices skyrocket
Families in western neighborhoods have meanwhile rushed to stock up on food and water in preparation for a siege. "Unfortunately, after the road was cut, the price of a loaf of bread immediately shot up from 200 to 800 Syrian pounds," said Walaa Hariri, a 48-year-old mother of three from the Furqan district. "I sent my sons to school but they are all nervous, and the teachers replaced their regular lessons with courses on what to do if there is shelling," she said. A man aged 37 who declined to be identified said he has "faith in the army, but I can't help being scared.""Food is already getting more expensive and the coming days risk being very difficult," he added. The battle for Aleppo is among the fiercest so far in Syria's chaotic multi-front war, which has killed more than 280,000 people. Rebel and regime forces have fought to control the provincial capital since mid-2012, transforming Syria's former economic powerhouse into a divided, bombed-out city. SANA said 10 civilians were killed on Saturday in rebel shelling of two government-held districts, and the Britain-based Observatory reported the death of a girl in opposition fire on Sunday. Pope Francis on Sunday denounced the "unacceptable" number of civilian victims in Aleppo, mentioning in particular the number of children killed in the conflict. The Observatory said at least 130 civilians have been killed since the opposition alliance launched its offensive on southern Aleppo on July 31. More than 700 fighters from both sides were killed in the onslaught, most of them rebels because of the regime's air superiority, it said. Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with protests against Assad's rule but has since evolved into a brutal war that has drawn in world powers.

Air raids kill 10 near Syria hospital
AFP, Beirut Saturday, 6 August 2016/A barrage of air strikes on Saturday near a hospital in northwestern Syria killed at least 10 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The monitor said the raids targeted the town of Milis in Idlib province, which borders Turkey and is controlled by a rebel alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syrian branch. The Britain-based monitor said three children and two women were among the dead, adding that the raids were carried out by either Russian or regime warplanes. The Idlib Media Center, which publishes news on developments in the province, said a hospital was hit in the raid by unidentified aircraft and that at least six people had been killed. The World Health Organization said Syria was the most dangerous place for health care workers to operate last year, with 135 attacks on health facilities and workers in 2015. In late July, four makeshift hospitals and a local blood bank in Syria's battered Aleppo city were hit by air raids in a single day. More than 280,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011 and millions have been forced to flee, including around five million who have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Israel minister says Iran has respected nuclear deal
AFP, Jerusalem Sunday, 7 August 2016/Israel’s energy minister on Sunday criticized a landmark nuclear accord between the Jewish state’s arch-foe Iran and world powers but said Tehran had so far respected the deal. The agreement, which was signed in July 2015 and came into force in January, saw Tehran accept curbs to its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions by world powers. “It’s a bad deal but it’s an accomplished fact and during the first year we spotted no significant breach from the Iranians,” said Youval Steinitz, who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “But it's still too early to conclude that this 12-year deal is a success,” he told public radio. Steinitz’s comments came after US President Barack Obama on Thursday defended the accord. Israel’s defense ministry, led by hardliner Avigdor Lieberman, on Friday compared the deal with Iran to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex parts of then Czechoslovakia. Netanyahu the same day repeated his country's rejection of the Iran deal but stressed that Israel and the United States remained great allies. For several months the US and Israeli governments have been negotiating the terms of a new 10-year defense aid pact to replace the current one, which expires in 2018 and is worth more than $3 billion (2.7 billion euros) per year. The Netanyahu government wants the United States to increase the annual amount of military assistance it provides.

German politicians concerned over Ankara’s influence on Turks
Berlin, Reuters Sunday, 7 August 2016/German politicians voiced concern on Sunday about the growing influence of Ankara on people with Turkish roots living in Germany. Germany has seen violence in the past between nationalist Turks and militant Kurds and officials fret that tensions in Turkish society following last month’s attempted coup could spill over onto its soil. Thousands of demonstrators from Germany’s Turkish community turned out in Cologne last Sunday to show their support for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at a rally that ratcheted up diplomatic tensions between Ankara and Berlin. “People of Turkish origin who live here must abide by our laws and our customs,” Merkel ally Volker Kauder told the Funke Media Group in comments published on Sunday. “I therefore view with concern attempts by the Turkish government and the ruling AKP party to influence people with Turkish roots living here in Germany,” he added. Bernd Riexinger, co-leader of the radical Left party also warned about increasing strains among the Turkish population in Germany. “Erdogan supporters are already exerting a lot of pressure on dissidents in Germany,” he said. “This must stop. There must not be threats among us.”Germany is home to around three million people of Turkish origin. In Turkey’s last national elections, 60 percent of them voted for Turkey’s ruling AKP Party, according to the organization of Turkish Communities in Germany. Gokay Sofuoglu, chairman of Turkish Communities in Germany, told Reuters last month that a hotline number was circulating on social media that supposedly called on people to notify Turkish authorities about Erdogan opponents. Kauder appealed to Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), which represents more than 70 percent of Muslims living in Germany, to make clear to its members that Germany’s constitution and law were above religion. “In my opinion we should not allow an association like DITIB, which evidently the mouthpiece of President (Tayyip) Erdogan is, to shape Islamic Religious Education in schools,” he added.

Erdogan: I will open ‘new page with my friend Putin’
Agencies Sunday, 7 August 2016/Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan expects talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to open "a new page" in bilateral relations, he told the Russian news agency TASS in an interview published on Sunday. "This will be a historic visit, a new beginning. At the talks with my friend Vladimir (Putin), I believe, a new page in bilateral relations will be opened. Our countries have a lot to do together," TASS quoted Erdogan as saying. Erdogan is due to travel to Russia on Tuesday Meanwhile, more than 1 million flag-waving Turks gathered in Istanbul on Sunday for an anti-coup rally to mark the end of nightly demonstrations since the July 15 abortive military insurrection that left more than 270 people dead. The Yenikapi meeting area by the Marmara Sea waterfront in Istanbul's European side was transformed into a sea of red and white, the colors of Turkey's flag. The "Democracy and Martyrs' Rally" was billed as a cross-party event representing Turkish unity in the wake of the failed coup, in which a group of renegade military officers attempted to seize power with tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.No official estimate has been provided, but Turkish media said millions were attending. Religious leaders and two of Turkey's three opposition parties were attending, sitting next to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who arrived on board a helicopter with his wife Emine. The pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party, or HDP, wasn't invited. The event kicked off with a minute of silence for those killed while opposing the coup, followed by the Turkish national anthem and a recitation of prayers. A 60-meter (200-foot) stage was set up for the event, framed by two platforms and draped with massive national flags and banners depicting Erdogan and Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. A roll call of those who died opposing the coup was read out as the event began. Construction cranes suspended giant Turkish flags beside the meeting area, while flag-draped boats and yachts zipped back and forth along the water. Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government has been encouraging nightly anti-coup rallies in all of the country's 81 provinces as well as in certain foreign locations such as Cologne, Germany. The event was being simultaneously broadcast on giant screens in all of Turkey's provinces, and crowds of thousands gathered to watch in the country's major cities. "Today is a special day, which is making all of the gatherings held for 15, 24 days, more precious," said Mustafa Yavuz Aycil, a 44-year-old Istanbul resident attending the rally. "I also had to be here today because as you see all of the crowd is showing its reaction to the coup." Nearly 15,000 police were providing security at the event. Anti-aircraft batteries were also set up at the event grounds, while two helicopters circled overhead. Thousands of buses and more than 200 boats were commissioned to bring attendees to the area, where they passed through one of 165 metal detectors before being given hats and flags. Those wounded during the attempted coup, and the families of those who died, were given special passes for a seated area. Erdogan urged people to bring only the Turkish flag instead of party banners. "There we will stand together as a single nation, a single flag, a single motherland, a single state, a single spirit," he said Saturday in comments carried by Turkish media. An Ottoman marching band entertained the crowd before the official start of the event, with 240 members representing the number of those authorities say gave their lives fighting off the coup. Turkish media also said a giant screen was to be set up in Pennsylvania, the U.S. state that is home to Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who moved there in self-imposed exile in the late 1990s. The Turkish government says Gulen is the mastermind behind the failed coup and is seeking his extradition. The cleric denies any involvement. The government has launched a sweeping crackdown in the coup's aftermath, targeting followers of Gulen's movement. Nearly 18,000 people have been detained or arrested, mostly from the military, and tens of thousands of people have been suspended or dismissed from jobs in the judiciary, media, education, health care, military and local government. The scope of the crackdown has alarmed European countries and rights groups, who have urged restraint. Erdogan has lashed out at such criticism, and complained of a lack of support from the West for his government for surviving the coup.

White House releases secret drone ‘playbook’
AFP, Washington Sunday, 7 August 2016/The US government has released a once-secret policy document once dubbed "the playbook" that shows how officials select drone targets in areas outside war zones and the key role the president has in the process. The 18-page Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG), published Saturday by the American Civil Liberties Union, provides more details than the government had previously revealed on how drone strikes are approved. "Actions, including lethal action against designated terrorist targets, shall be as discriminating and precise as reasonably possible," the PPG states. President Barack Obama typically must personally sign off on plans to strike terror suspects who are located outside war zones in which America is officially fighting. Such zones include Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Strikes in combat theaters such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are controlled by the military. Each case for action is subjected to legal review before it goes to the National Security Council and then the president. The policy document says that "absent extraordinary circumstances," a drone strike on a high-value target will only be taken if there is "near certainty" no civilians will be killed, and says the United States should respect another nation's sovereignty in weighing drone strikes. The partially redacted document was released as a result of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, which has long sparred with the government over America's secretive drone program. "The PPG provides crucial information about policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatants, and about the bureaucracy that the Obama administration has constructed to oversee and implement those policies," ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. "The release of the PPG and related documents is also a timely reminder of the breadth of the powers that will soon be in the hands of another president," he added. Justice Department lawyers turned the document over to the ACLU late Friday, and the rights group released it publicly on Saturday. The Obama administration last month provided fatality estimates for 473 strikes between 2009 and 2015 that were conducted outside principal war zones. Officials claimed anywhere from 64 to 116 civilians were killed in the strikes, and up to 2,581 combatants -- but critics have constantly said the government underestimates civilian deaths. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price stressed that the PPG offers protections to civilians that "exceed the requirements of the law of armed conflict."He added that "near certainty" that the target is present, and that non-combatants will not be killed, was the "highest standard we can set."
"The president has emphasized that the US government should be as transparent as possible with the American people about our counterterrorism operations, the manner in which they are conducted, and their results," Price said in a statement. "Our counterterrorism actions are effective and legal, and their legitimacy is best demonstrated by making public more information about these actions as well as setting clear standards for other nations to follow."The PPG also outlines what should be done in the event a suspect is captured, stressing that in "no event" will a detainee brought to Guantanamo Bay -- the US military prison Obama has so far failed to close.

Palestinian denies funneling charity money to Hamas
Reuters, Gaza Sunday, 7 August 2016/A Palestinian representative of US based Christian charity World Vision denies Israeli allegations that he funneled millions of dollars in aid money to the Islamist militant group Hamas, his lawyer said on Sunday. Mohammad El Halabi, World Vision’s manager of operations in the Gaza Strip, was arrested by Israel on June 15 while crossing into the enclave, which is under the de facto rule of Hamas, a group on the Israeli and US terrorism blacklists. Briefing reporters on Thursday, a senior Israeli security official said Halabi, who has run the group’s Gaza operations since 2010, had been under surveillance. The Israeli official said Halabi confessed to siphoning off some $7.2 million a year, about 60 percent of World Vision’s Gaza funding, to pay Hamas fighters, buy arms, pay for other activities and build fortifications. “Mohammad El Halabi denies all these accusations. He denied it all,” Jerusalem-based lawyer Mohammad Mahmoud, who was assigned to represent El Halabi by the charity group, told Reuters by phone on Sunday. Mahmoud said he met his client during a court session last week, and these were his first comments made publicly. World Vision had already said it was “shocked” by Israel’s allegations, and while it had no reason to believe them to be true, it would review the evidence. Hamas has denied any connection to Halabi. After the case was made public, Australia suspended aid to World Vision. The US State Department, according to one official, is concerned by the allegations and following the investigation closely. On Sunday, dozens of Palestinians who used to benefit from World Vision aid in Gaza rallied in solidarity with Halabi, demanding his release.

Egypt bids farewell to Nobel Prize winning chemist
AFP, Cairo Sunday, 7 August 2016/Nobel prize-winning Egyptian-American chemist Ahmed Zewail received a funeral with military honours attended by Egypt's president and top state officials Sunday in Cairo. Zewail, who served as a science and technology advisor to US President Barack Obama, died Tuesday in the United States. He was 70. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Al-Azhar's Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, Defence Minister Sedki Sobhi and renowned Egyptian-British surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub were among those who attended the procession. Live footage on state television showed the scientist's coffin shrouded in an Egyptian flag and drawn by horses on a carriage flanked by men in military uniform. The coffin was then carried in an ambulance to a second procession from a university he founded at the Zewail City of Science and Technology before his expected burial in the family tomb nearby. Zewail, a naturalised US citizen, won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999 for his groundbreaking work in the study of chemical reactions in extremely short timescales. He was the third Egyptian to win a Nobel prize and the country's first scientist to do so. His work showed that it is possible with rapid laser technique to study in slow motion how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction. According to the Nobel Prize website, Zewail's work led to the birth of the research area called femtochemistry, "which enables us to understand why certain chemical reactions take place but not others". His discoveries offered scientists greater insight into chemical and pharmacological processes with implications across a range of disciplines including human health, electronics and high precision machinery. In 2009 Zewail was appointed to Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and later that year he was named the first US science envoy to the Middle East. Until his death Zewail worked at the California Institute of Technology. He was a member of several prestigious scientific institutions including the National Academy of Sciences and the US American Academy of Art and Sciences. He was a fellow of London's Royal Society.

Iran: political prisoners call for halt in executions
Sunday, 07 August 2016/NCRI – Political prisoners in Iran’s Gohardasht (Rajai-Shahr) Prison of Karaj, west of Tehran, have smuggled out an open letter addressed to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Human Rights Council following the mass execution of at least 25 Sunni political prisoners in the notorious jail last Tuesday. The political prisoners have called on the UN to act urgently to halt executions in Iran.
The political prisoners’ letter said: “We are certain that especially in the past few weeks you have been informed of a large number of executions and mass killings. Despite the fact that we are yet to be informed of the exact number of executions, all the doors and windows are locked, and we are deprived of any phone calls, all the reports indicate a large number of executions. Conditions inside the prison have become intensely secure and there is a possibility of this wave of executions engulfing many other prisoners.”
“If your organization and other international entities fail to show any reaction we will be facing a much higher number of executions. Especially without respecting even minimum human rights for their families (method of informing, not allowing a final visit, providing wrong addresses and …) while sending prisoners to the gallows in the most vicious manner.”
“This reached a point that various prison administrative agents became terrified and said they have no role in all this. This is very similar to the methods used during the 1988 massacre of thousands of prisoners, coinciding with its anniversary these days. Therefore, we the prisoners of Gohardasht (Rajai Shahr) Prison demand urgent measures regarding this serious threat,” their letter added.
The signatories of the open letter included:
1. Saeed Masouri
2. Reza Akbari Monfared
3. Hassan Sadeqi
4. Shahin Zoghi-Tabar
5. Mohammad Akrami Pour
6. Amir Qaziani
7. Abolqasem Fouladvand
8. Saeed Shirzad

Express: ‘Morality police’ step up brutal patrols in Iran
Sunday, 07 August 2016/NCRI - Elaheh Azimfar, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the NCRI’s representative for international organizations, has told Britain's Express that the closing down of clothes shops by the mullahs' regime under the pretext of ‘not conforming to the Islamic standards’ is yet another ludicrous act of suppression against women in Iran. The following is the text of the article published on Saturday by The Express:
The Express
IRAN’S WESTERN CRACKDOWN: Morality police raid clothes shops in ban of un-Islamic clothing
SHOPS selling un-Islamic clothes have been raided and shut down as morality police step up brutal patrols in Iran.
By KATIE MANSFIELD
Sat, Aug 6, 2016
The crackdown on Western outfits in the Islamic Republic has seen factories and shops being targeted - and comes after a leading cleric bizarrely accused the fashion of causing rivers to run dry. At least 15 women’s clothes shops have been closed down by morality police in Hamedan in a renewed drive to wipe out improper clothing.
Four factories and shops have also been shut down in Isfahan, central Iran.
Islamic codes of behaviour and dress are strictly enforced in the country with women expected to cover their heads, wear trousers and a long sleeved coat or tunic that reaches to the mid-thigh or knee. Manufacturers have been ordered to change their designs by officials and the black market for smuggled foreign clothing has experienced problems with demand. The Tasnim News Agency, which is linked to the regime's Revolutionary Guards Force, reported the crackdown. Ebrahim Khatabakhsh, the head of the clothes manufacturers’ union in Isfahan, said: “Clothes production and distribution lines in Isfahan that do not conform to the standards of the Islamic Republic of Iran are being dealt with.
"Some of these production units have been ordered to adapt their clothing with Iranian-Islamic culture and standards. There are less smuggled foreign clothes being seen in Isfahan these days."Morality police are carrying out a series of raids and surprise inspections across the city. Mr Khatabakhsh said: “Currently joint inspections are being carried out in the mornings and afternoons until all the areas have been inspected.”
The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), which is campaigning for more human rights in the Islamic Republic has slammed the measures.
Elaheh Azimfar, from the NCRI, said: “Closing down the clothing production and distribution units by the clerical regime under the pretext of ‘not conforming to the Islamic standards’ is ludicrous and yet another act of suppression against women in Iran.
“It is important to realise that such acts are totally irrelevant to Islam and Islamic standards.
“The truth is that faced with an extremely discontented society, the regime sees no choice but to resort to further acts of suppression.
“Despite the intensification of the crackdown, there is growing opposition among the Iranian people, particularly women and youth. “This explains why the regime is looking for new ways of restricting people, and women have always been the foremost victims of this fundamentalist regime.” The crackdown is the latest in a spate of repressive measures in Iran. A senior cleric claimed women dressed in Western clothes were causing rivers to run dry and ordered the police to take action. Seyyed Youssef Tabatabi-nejad called on the morality police to stamp out un-Islamic behaviour and blamed social media for encouraging immodesty. Women who fail to veil themselves correctly are reprimanded in public.
Last week a group of women were arrested for riding bicycles in the north-western city of Marivan, in Iran’s Kurdistan Province. A number were arrested and others forced to sign written pledges not to cycle in public. Eyewitnesses said security forces informed the women, who were planning a sports event, that under a new government directive women are banned from cycling in public.

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on on August 07-08/16

Iran’s new propaganda: Claiming to expel al-Qaeda officials
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Iran is attempting to spread news that it is sending some al-Qaeda officials to other countries with the aim of improving how it is perceived in the international media. Al-Qaeda's ties to Iran have been proven in four instances. The first was last March, when a New York District Court ordered Iran to pay more than $10.5 billion in damages to families of people killed in the 9/11 attacks and to a group of insurers. The second is an Iranian foreign ministry's statement admitting that al-Qaeda officials had passed through Iran. The third is late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's documents which prove Iran's absolute support and official cover up for al-Qaeda. The fourth is developments related to arresting the group's officials, such as al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith who was detained while holding an Iranian passport.
Iran's recent act of expelling al-Qaeda officials to other countries only aims to cloud the attention of observers of the situation
Iran has had many aims behind harboring al-Qaeda officials such as exploiting the group to perform operations against neighboring countries, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, raising negotiation ceilings with Western countries, mainly the United States, and protecting itself from the group’s attacks. Al-Qaeda has not targeted any Iranian site inside or outside Iran. The biggest proof of these aims is Iran's negotiations with the West regarding Saif al-Adel and extradition of Abu Hafs al-Mauritani to Mauritania. Iran's recent act of expelling al-Qaeda officials to other countries only aims to cloud the attention of observers of the situation, as al-Qaeda will not give up on Iran and vice versa. However, Iran's desire to steer clear of rigorous media coverage have expedited Iran’s own media propaganda, so much so that it is sending al-Qaeda officials to other countries in the East and West.
It is Iran that is nurturing al-Qaeda. This is as clear as day. **This article was first published in Okaz on Aug. 7, 2016.

Aleppo is being ethnically cleansed
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
Aleppo has been under siege from Assad’s forces and their Russian allies for many, many months now. And while the rebels in the city have on occasion been successful in fighting back, government forces have always managed to return with a vengeance. Aided, in no small part it has to be said, by Russian air power. But it seems that now the resistance in the city must be on the verge of collapsing. Starvation has long since set in, while Russian aerial bombardment is a daily reality - not least against hospitals and other basic, civilian infrastructure. For a long time, the inhabitants of the city have remained steadfast, unwilling to abandon their city, and fearing that the “humanitarian corridors” put in place by the besiegers are some kind of trap . Yet they are now left with hardly any resources to put up resistance. Trap or no trap, the corridors offer at least some chance of survival. Whereas remaining in the city looks increasingly likely to end in tragedy. For parents having to look after their children, the calculation of how to best see them through this crisis is shifting. Of course, the UN and the West are as sceptical of the corridors as the citizens of Aleppo themselves. Neither Assad nor his Russian allies have shown any compunction about bombing civilians in the past - The Syrian Committee for Human Rights has documented as many as 68 ‘massacres’ in July alone.
Missing the point
But this is all to rather miss the point. Of course, we should have no doubt that if Assad and the Russian believed that killing more civilians would help their cause, they would do so without hesitation. The point is, though, that Aleppo is now in a situation where more massacres are no longer needed. I believe that the strategy is not necessarily to lure the citizens of Aleppo out into the open and attack them, but rather, it is to simply remove from the city those who oppose Assad’s regime. From the city, and perhaps even the country. And to move them onwards, ideally, towards Europe. The exodus from Aleppo has not yet started. It may not start for a few weeks yet. But chances are that sooner or later, it will happen. And when it does, we in the West must be ready for it. In other words, even the brutal alliance of Assad and Russia are either unwilling, or unable to just kill every last ‘rebel’ in the country. And just as well, they do not need to kill everyone. They just need to make sure that the more militant elements who can and are inclined to put up resistance are removed from the country, while the others can be cowed into submission. And if they manage to push the remaining people of Aleppo onwards towards Europe, Putin will no doubt count that as a double win. The refugee crisis has already caused more instability in the European Union than the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Greece debt saga combined, and from the point of view of Russia, anything that can pile on the pressure in Brussels and in the other European capitals can only be a good thing for Putin’s geo-political ambitions. The exodus from Aleppo has not yet started. It may not start for a few weeks yet. But chances are that sooner or later, it will happen. And when it does, we in the West must be ready for it. The politics of the continent are fraught, and the nationalist, xenophobic backlash against the Syrian and Iraqi refugees has been strong. But, in the best case scenario, there will be at least one more wave of migrants to come, and we must pave the way for welcoming and integrating them once more. If we succeed, our societies will be better for it. If we start to fail we are setting ourselves up for decades of very ugly politics in what we would like to think of as the civilized, developed world.

Wither the Arab League
Abdullah Hamidaddin/Al Arabiya/August 07/16
There is a consensus among Arabs and even non-Arabs that the Arab League needs a major overhaul. A review of its history in the past quarter-century reveals what little impact it has had on inter-Arab relations and on resolving major Arab issues. One stark example of the state it has reached is its recent summit. Though publicized, few Arabs knew of it, and those who knew did not care. A quick Google search for “Arab summit 2016” reveals the lack of attention and interest from Arabs and non-Arabs alike. Morocco was supposed to host it earlier this year, but decided it was not worth the effort, passing the honor to Mauritania. To be fair, many international organizations are not doing much better. The failure of the Arab League is not an Arab thing. It is symptomatic of a much deeper, global problem. The United Nations is a clear example of a dysfunctional organization that has not been able to achieve its purpose of world peace and order.
Collective action
International organizations are as effective as the willingness of their sovereign member states to act collectively. Collective action between states that have so many competing interests needs creative solutions, a delicate balance between immediate and long-term benefit, and trust. All three are lacking in today’s world, including the Arab world. Some say the Arab League can facilitate Arab collective action. For example, in recent days two events encouraged or organized by the Arab League took place. One was the 90th Boycott Israel conference that took place in Egypt. The second was a meeting of the Arab League’s Committee of Senior Arab Officials on Nuclear and other Weapons of Mass Destruction. The failure of the Arab League is not an Arab thing. It is symptomatic of a much deeper, global problem. Furthermore, it seems the Arab League intends to support a bid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to file a lawsuit against Britain in international courts for issuing the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Such cases show that the Arab League can facilitate collective action, but they also point to a major defect in its workings: it facilitates collective and futile rhetoric against an external enemy. Arabs need the Arab League. It is a recognized international organization with a seat at tables of major issues facing the world and Arab countries. Its institutions have gained legitimacy and experience. It is a platform for communicating Arab interests to Arabs and to the world. More importantly, we need it because the challenges facing Arab countries - and the world - are no longer local. The environment, refugees, poverty, education and transfer of technology - to name but a few - are major issues that need collective action. Even unemployment, once thought to be a local matter, is now recognized as a global problem that requires collective action. We need the Arab League, but we need it to change. We need it to acknowledge that it is futile to unite the Arab world behind a political agenda. We need to it to generate collective action to solve the day-to-day problems of individuals living in the Arab world. We need to unify Arabs against social, economic and environmental challenges instead of unifying them to combat history. We need to it reimagine who we are as Arabs, rather than insisting on archaic visions of pan-Arabism. We need it to be an extension of the aspirations of Arabs, or we do not need it at all.
 

Iran confirms execution of nuclear scientist leaking information to US
Ynetnews/Associated Press/August 07/16
Iran confirmed on Sunday that it has executed an Iranian nuclear scientist who gave the US intelligence about the country's contested nuclear program. The official IRNA news agency quoted a spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi, confirming the execution of Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist caught up in a real-life US spy mystery who later returned to his home country and disappeared. He did not say where or when the execution took place, but said Amiri's initial death sentence had been reviewed by an appeal court and that he had access to a lawyer.
Amiri "provided the enemy with vital information of the country," Ejehi said. Amiri, who worked for a university affiliated with Iran's defense ministry, vanished in 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia, only to reappear a year later in a set of online videos filmed in the US. He then walked into the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and demanded to be sent home, returning to a hero's welcome in Tehran.
In interviews, Amiri described being kidnapped and held against his will by Saudi and American spies, while US officials said he was to receive millions of dollars for his help in understanding Iran's contested nuclear program. Now, a year after his country agreed to a landmark accord to limit uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, he is reported to have been hanged without any official word on his case. "I am a simple researcher who was working in the university," Amiri said on his return to Tehran in July 2010. "I'm not involved in any confidential jobs. I had no classified information."
News about Amiri, born in 1977, has been scant since his return to Iran. Last year, his father Asgar Amiri told the BBC's Farsi-language service that his son had been held at a secret site since coming home. On Tuesday, Iran announced it had executed a number of criminals, describing them mainly as militants from the country's Kurdish minority. Then, according to Iranian pro-reform daily, Shargh, an obituary notice circulated in Amiri's hometown of Kermanshah, a city some 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Tehran, announcing a memorial service on Thursday and calling him a "bright moon" and "invaluable gem."
Manoto, a private satellite television channel based in London believed to be run by those who back Iran's ousted shah, first reported Saturday that Amiri had been executed. BBC Farsi also quoted Amiri's mother saying her son's neck bore ligature marks suggesting he had been hanged by the state.
State media in Iran, which has been silent about Amiri's case for years, did not report his death until Sunday. The Associated Press could not immediately reach his family. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear what would have prompted Iranian authorities to execute Amiri, years after his first disappearance. However, since the nuclear deal, hard-liners within Iran's government have been increasingly targeting dual nationals for arrest in the country and cracking down on journalists, artists, human rights activists and others. US officials told the AP in 2010 that Amiri was paid $5 million to offer the CIA information about Iran's nuclear program, though he left the country without the money. They said Amiri, who ran a radiation detection program in Iran, stayed in the US for months under his own free will. Analysts abroad suggested Iranian authorities may have threatened Amiri's family back in Iran, forcing him to return. But when he returned to Iran, Amiri said Saudi and American officials had kidnapped him while he visited the Saudi holy city of Medina. He also said Israeli agents were present at his interrogations and that that CIA officers offered him $50 million to remain in America.
"I was under the harshest mental and physical torture," he said. Amiri's case indirectly found its way back into the spotlight in the US last year with the release of emails sent by US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state. The release of those emails came amid criticism of Clinton's use of a private account and server that has persisted into her campaign against Republican candidate Donald Trump. An email forwarded to Clinton by senior adviser Jake Sullivan on July 5, 2010, appears to reference Amiri. "We have a diplomatic, 'psychological' issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out," the email by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read. "We should recognize his concerns and frame it in terms of a misunderstanding with no malevolent intent and that we will make sure there is no recurrence.
"Our person won't be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave so be it."Another email, sent July 12, 2010 by Sullivan, appears to obliquely refer to the scientist just before his story became widely known. "The gentleman ... has apparently gone to his country's interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure," Sullivan wrote. "This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours."

The life or death battle for Aleppo
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
The way in which Russia and Iran are exploiting the battle for the Syrian city of Aleppo is clear. After all, this is a battle in which Russian air strikes and Iran-backed militias are playing a leading role. The aim is to present US President Barack Obama’s outgoing administration with a fait accompli, especially as US policy towards Syria and the region at large will certainly change, one way or another, whether the next US president is Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Will Iran and Russia succeed in displacing Syrians from Aleppo? That is the main question as they seek to benefit, as much as possible, from Turkey’s domestic crisis and Obama’s desire to placate Tehran to protect what he views as the greatest foreign policy achievement of his administration, the Iran nuclear deal.
Clinton has sought to differentiate herself from Obama over Syria, advocating a far harder line than the US president whom she served under as secretary of State, including calling for the establishment of so-called safe zones and providing moderate Syrian rebels with heavy weaponry. If Syrian rebels were to have access to heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft missiles, it would be a game changer, particularly in the battle for Aleppo. If Hillary Clinton were to become president, she would take a completely different tack on the Middle East and Syria than Obama, She understands that the Syrian crisis is one of the biggest tragedies of the 21st century and until it is resolved the Middle East will only become more dangerous.
The Democratic Party nominee for president understands that Washington does not have to bend over backward to ensure that Tehran is happy with the nuclear deal as this is something that is greatly in Iran’s interests. A change of US policy in Syria does not mean that Tehran will rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It is all posturing. As for Trump, Clinton’s Republican Party rival, nobody can guess what he might do once he becomes president. Trump has not spoken much on US policy towards Syria but he has been an outspoken critic of the JCPOA. This means that Trump, unlike Obama, would not link Washington’s response to Syria to Tehran and the nuclear deal. Syria is a maelstrom of competing interests between Washington and Moscow, Tehran, Ankara and others, while it is the Syrian people who are suffering. Obama’s policy of disengagement with the Middle East left a dangerous vacuum that rival powers sought to fill. This led to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), which is a blight on the region and a threat to the world. Whether Clinton or Trump succeeds Obama in the White House, Syria will still be facing one of the biggest crises in the modern world. The crisis in the country, and the region, has gone way past the point where it could quickly and easily be resolved.
The damage that Syria has suffered is irreparable, whether we are talking about the scale of destruction, the death toll or the sheer number of people who have been internally or externally displaced. Who is left to rebuild the country after all this?
It is hard to imagine any effective US policy towards Syria that is not in coordination with Europe and Arab countries that are concerned with what is going on there, while it is just as hard to imagine any mechanism to reach such unprecedented coordination. All the while the battle for Aleppo is continuing, more Syrians are dying and the prospect for a solution — political or otherwise — becomes increasingly small. What does the future hold for Aleppo, one of the oldest cities in the world? If this destruction continues, there will be no Aleppo to fight over.

Why I do not see anything wrong with Anwar Eshki’s visit to Israel
Ahmad Adnan/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Social media were on fire with criticism of Saudi ex-general Anwar Eshki’s visit to Israel. Before the visit, those who were outspoken against Eshki’s visit were applauding Turkey’s reconcilia­tion with Tel Aviv, claiming it would help the people of Gaza. These people obviously do not understand the meaning of the term “double standard”. Responding to the controversy, Eshki stressed he was visiting the Palestinian territories, not Israel. He said his visit came at the invitation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and that his aim was to view, first hand, the suffering of the Palestinian people and to attend the wedding of the son of well-known Palestinian activist and detainee Marwan Barghouti in Ramal­lah. Eshki confirmed that his meetings with Israeli officials — including diplomat Dore Gold and Major-General Yoav (Poli) Mordecai of the Israeli Defence Forces in West Jerusalem — were in coordination with the PA. In fact, he thanked Mordecai for helping to facilitate Palestinians in Jerusalem being able to pray in the city’s al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan.
Just to inform all those who objected to this trip, this was not Eshki’s first visit to the Palestin­ian territories, but his second. Other well-known Saudi and Arab figures, including Secretary-Gen­eral of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Iyad Madani, have made the same visit without any objection. Based on Eshki’s comments, I do not find anything wrong with this visit and I believe that Saudis should follow the Turkey model in dealing with the Palestinian cause. Opening dialogue with Israel does not meaning working against the Palestinians but could contribute to peace and lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state or, at the very least, contrib­ute to improving the conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has gone through many different stages. In the 1950s and 1960s Arabs equated Zionism with Judaism and refused to acknowl­edge the horrors of the Holocaust due to hatred of Israel and some kind of perverse solidarity with the Palestinians. We later saw a general failure to even recognise or acknowledge the state of Israel, including Arabs boycotting travelling there, which ultimately cut off Palestine and the Palestin­ian people. This is a dangerous policy, which some are trying to enforce even today, that has resulted in the eradication of Palestinian culture and art and isolated the Palestinian people from their Arab surroundings and inexorably linked all aspects of Palestine with the Palestinian cause. Isn’t it sad that Arabs are more aware of the details of Western capitals but know nothing about Islam’s third holy city and the rest of Palestinian territory?
This boycott of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories allowed Israel to callously expand its settlements and gain greater control of Palestinian territory and particularly Jerusalem. If this continues, there will be no territory on which to create a Palestinian state.
There is no religious justifica­tion to boycott Jerusalem, regardless of whose authority al-Aqsa mosque technically falls under. Muslims previously visited the mosque without problem when it was under the control of Christians following the Cru­sades. There is no political justifica­tion for this either. Whether Arabs or Muslims pass through Israeli checkpoints or not, or have Israeli stamps on their passports or not, bears no consideration to Israel’s standing in the international community. This useless boycott is not helping the Palestinians or the Arabs and is particularly not helping the Arab Israelis. This is a problem that will not be solved first by peace treaties and politi­cal negotiations — the change must first and foremost take place in minds and hearts. Normalising the idea of Arabs visiting Jerusalem and Palestine helps all sides and increases tolerance and mutual respect. Visiting Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories is a legiti­mate right for any Arab or Muslim and it is wrong to criminalise this in the court of public opinion. The Arab response to Israel over the past 60 years has led from one disaster to the next and only served to weaken Palestinian prospects for freedom and independence. This must stop.

As Riyadh pursues more aggressive strategy in turbu­lent region, prospect of Saudi support

Ed Blanche/The Arab Weekly/August 07/16
Beirut - One of the first things that Iran’s new armed forces chief, Major-General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, pledged when he was appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was to reassure his countrymen that simmering insurgencies on the Islamic Republic’s periphery were “under complete control”. However, he stressed that these “anti-revolutionary groups” are increasingly operating from “the soil of neighbouring countries” — a clear swipe at Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival as the paramount power in the Middle East and a hint that Tehran’s patience is wearing thin as the confrontation between these two titans of the Muslim world veers towards open conflict. The power struggle between these two states — one a Sunni Is­lamic monarchy and the other a Shia republic — is being fought by proxy in Syria. But, as Riyadh throws its tra­ditionally cautious policymaking to the winds and pursues a more aggressive strategy in the turbu­lent region, the prospect of Saudi support for Tehran’s internal op­ponents — the ever-restive Kurds in the west, the Arabs in the south-west and the Sunni Baluchis in the south-east — seems likely to inten­sify. On July 9th, the former director of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelli­gence Presidency, Prince Turki al- Faisal, called for “the downfall of the Iranian regime”. The plea was made at a Paris conference of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an op­position group that helped Ayatol­lah Ruhollah Khomeini secure his Islamic revolution in 1979 and then turned against him. The prince’s call to arms was of­fensive enough for Tehran but to do so at a gathering of the clerical regime’s sworn enemies, how­ever past their prime they may be, incensed the Iranian leader­ship. Mohsen Rezaie, a former Is­lamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander and currently secretary of the powerful Expedi­ency Council, said this proved Ri­yadh was actively supporting ter­rorism in Iran, primarily through its consulate in Erbil, capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave.
Rezaie claimed that the Saudis had infiltrated “two terror cells” into Iranian Kurdistan, a long-time flashpoint, all of whom had been killed by Iranian security forces.
He was apparently referring to a mid-June clash with fighters of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), one of several insurgencies Tehran is having to contend with throughout its bor­derlands. The threat is likely to grow as Kurdish groups in Iraq, Turkey and Syria are empowered by the war against the Islamic State (ISIS). That seems to be spreading to Iran’s long-restive Kurdish minor­ity as well. Those are potential al­lies for Riyadh to pressure the Is­lamic Republic in the increasingly toxic regional power struggle. “The fight against a common en­emy has begun to unite Iran’s dis­parate Kurdish groups, though var­ious factions will inevitably jostle for dominance,” observed the US-based global security consultancy Stratfor in a July 29th analysis.
“Meanwhile, as the Kurds have gained prominence on the battle­field, external powers have taken a greater interest in them. Com­bined, these factors help to explain the revival of Kurdish insurgencies in Iran.”Internal security threats in Iran tend to be under-reported because of regime restrictions but that en­gagement was only one of many skirmishes in recent months be­tween non-Shia Iranian insurgent groups and the IRGC. On June 29th, the semi-official Fars news agency reported the IRGC killed 11 Kurdish “coun­ter-revolutionary bandits” and lost three of its own men in the Sarvabad region of Iranian Kurd­istan. The IRGC said it killed 17 insurgents in earlier fights in West Azerbaijan province, which, like Kurdistan, borders Iraq, where IR­GC-controlled militias are battling the ISIS, Iran’s other key enemy. The left-wing PDKI claims it killed 20 IRGC personnel. The group, which waged a deadly in­surgency in 1989-96, resumed its fight for autonomy from the Shia regime in the autumn of 2015.
Another faction, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), announced in April that it, too, was going back on the warpath. On July 12th, PAK’s deputy chief, Hossein Yazdanpan­ah, appealed to Riyadh for help. It is not clear, despite Tehran’s accusations, to what extent Saudi Arabia is helping these insurgent groups but, given Riyadh’s increas­ingly toxic relations with Tehran, Saudi support is likely to grow. Iran’s highly effective security apparatus is likely to contain these forces, for now at least. The Saudis may well be support­ing insurgents in Iran’s overwhelm­ingly Sunni Sisten-Baluchistan province who recently escalated their long rebellion that, only a couple of years ago, looked like it had been all but extinguished in a ruthless IRGC campaign. Four Ira­nian border guards were killed July 6th in the region that borders Pa­kistan. There is trouble too in south-eastern Khuzestan province, an Arab-majority region that borders Iraq and is of vital strategic impor­tance to Tehran since it produces 80-90% of Iran’s oil. The Arab in­surgency there also would be open to Saudi interference. The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, the region that has been the invasion corridor for Persians to invade the Arab world since time immemo­rial, claimed on June 13th to have sabotaged an oil pipeline. If the Saudis seek to intervene in such a sensitive region, they would, of course, invite retaliation from the Iranians. Riyadh is vul­nerable in that regard because, just as Arab Khuzestan contains Iran’s strategic energy supplies, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province, where the minority Shias are dominant, holds most of the kingdom’s oil.
Khamenei’s appointment of Bagheri, one of Iran’s youngest generals with a background in the murky world of intelligence and an advocate of special operations beyond the Islamic Republic’s bor­ders, suggests that this clandestine struggle is likely to escalate. Bagheri, 51, “enjoys close re­lations with the IRGC’s al-Quds Force, the elite branch responsible for extraterritorial operations, and he reportedly planned and helped execute missions deep inside Iraq in the 1990s, targeting Kurdish groups based there,” observed Far­zin Nadimi, a Washington-based specialist in Iranian security and defence affairs. “He is expected to put more stra­tegic emphasis on tailored special operations and the intelligence collection aspects of the Quds Force and other special branches,” Nadimi wrote for the Washington Institute think-tank. “His appointment could there­fore mean more military opera­tions in northern Iraq and perhaps even in Pakistan’s portion of Balu­chistan, targeting Iranian Kurdish and Baluchi insurgent hideouts and training camps.”

Yazidis mark second anniversary of being targeted by Islamic State
Katherine Keenan/Jerusalem Post/August 07/16
Local government leaders, dignitaries, and non-profit organizations convened in northern Iraq this past Wednesday to honor the memory of the thousands of victims of Islamic State’s brutal takeover of the region in August 2014. Multiple ceremonies took place, with some being as simple as lighting a candle while writing the date of “The Black Day” in the sand. Others were more elaborate, such as a ceremony hosted by the University of Duhok, where Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani was in attendance, in addition to prominent spiritual leaders within the Yazidi community, a religious minority that has been heavily persecuted by ISIS.
“There was one mother who was remembering the days when they were all trying to escape and stay alive,” says Lisa Miara, founder of non-profit organization Springs of Hope. “She said Daesh came into her village and in her panic, she left her home and she forgot her baby there. Can you just imagine the survivor guilt?” Miara began Springs of Hope with the purpose of reaching out to this persecuted minority, whom she believes has been brushed aside in the midst of tragedy.
“For me, I heard rhetoric,” says Miara, who was in attendance at the University of Duhok memorial ceremony.
“I heard two ambassadors really patting themselves on the back for what their nations have done. What have their nations done?” Two years ago, the Yazidi families of Sinjar stood no chance when ISIS fighters unexpectedly attacked in the middle of the night, bringing with them a wave of unspeakable violence that led to the massacre, rape, and enslavement of thousands.
Now, most Yazidis don’t have homes to return to, even though Sinjar was retaken in 2015 by US coalition-backed Kurdish forces. Instead, many are housed in refugee camps near Duhok, with the hope of one day rebuilding the city that was brutally ripped away from them.
“Some of the Yazidis who have gone back to the Sinjar, this tends to be the younger ones, they’re really pressing that this area become autonomous,” says Miara.
In remembrance of “The Black Day,” members of the Yazidi population gathered at Lalish, where a temple sacred to their faith is located. A group of Yazidi youth chanted in front of the temple, expressing their need for humanitarian aid as they donned scarves with the number “8-3” painted across them, memorializing the date the ISIS rampage occurred.
“Where you see the pain and frustration is when I ran into the Yazidi kids at Lalish. They were shouting, they were demonstrating, they wanted to be heard,” says Miara.
Although the Yazidi community has survived thus far, there are still those who are currently captives of the ISIS slave network, most of whom are women. Many family members who were spared this fate are left waiting for their mothers, sisters, or daughters to return home. Some do return, and through organizations like Springs of Hope, survivors are clothed, mentored, and trained in valuable skills such as sewing to rebuild their lives.
“They have to be empowered, particularly the women that have come out of Daesh,” says Miara. “They need that attention. They need care, they need to be loved, they need their safe place.”

The Phone Call That Saved Israelصهر جمال عبد الناصر كان جاسوساً لإسرائيل
Matti Friedman/The Wall Street Journal/August 07/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/08/06/matti-friedmanthe-phone-call-that-saved-israelnassers-son-in-law-was-israels-most-crucial-spy-in-the-leadup-to-war-in-1973/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-phone-call-that-saved-israel-1470428479

Nasser’s son-in-law was Israel’s most crucial spy in the leadup to war in 1973.

In the late afternoon of Thursday, Oct. 4, 1973, a phone rang in London. On the line was a tense man who wanted to speak to “Alex” about “a lot of chemicals.” Alex’s name wasn’t Alex and there were no chemicals. What the caller was saying, in an agreed-upon code, was that a cataclysmic war was about to break out in the Middle East. By the end of the weekend thousands would be dead.
The man on the phone, Ashraf Marwan, was an official at the pinnacle of the Egyptian regime, an aide to President Anwar Sadat and the son-in-law of the late, revered leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was also a spy for Israel—one whose appearance was the kind of thing “that happens only once in a thousand years,” according to one of the Israeli consumers of his secret reports. The murky man in question, the nature of the game he was playing and the series of events that culminated with his fateful phone call on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, are the subjects of Uri Bar-Joseph’s eye-opening book, “The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel.”
Mr. Bar-Joseph, a professor of political science at Haifa University and an intelligence expert, picks up the trail of the elegant and ambitious young Marwan in the Nasserist Cairo of the 1960s, where he embarked on a promising marriage to Nasser’s daughter, Mona. From there we follow him to swinging London, where he was looking for money, excitement and possibly revenge against his humiliations by his powerful father-in-law, who seems to have considered Marwan a careless bon vivant unworthy of his daughter.
In the summer of 1970, he walked into a phone booth, dialed the Israeli embassy and offered his services. Years later, in 2007, his unusual life ended in a mysterious plunge from a London balcony. In between Marwan became, as Mr. Bar-Joseph writes, “one of the most important spies the world has seen in the last half century.” His handlers called him “the Angel.”
The narrative’s chronological hinge is the 1973 phone call and what happened two days later, on Oct. 6, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on two fronts on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Israel’s unpreparedness for that war was the country’s greatest intelligence failure, one that contributed to the deaths of more than 2,500 Israeli soldiers and destroyed the careers of many leaders, including the army chief of staff and Prime Minister Golda Meir.
In the years leading up to the war, Marwan had access to all the right information about Egypt’s preparations for battle and seems to have given most of it to his Mossad handler in exchange for American dollars. The material included precise battle plans (a 38-minute opening bombardment of the Israeli forts along the Suez Canal; five infantry divisions crossing the canal at five points along its length), as well as more general strategic insights. The most important of these was that Egypt wouldn’t risk a war before receiving better attack aircraft and missiles from the Soviets—a key condition that came to shape Israel’s calculus in the early 1970s. This idea, which became known as the “Concept,” convinced Israeli intelligence officers that no matter what other warnings they received, until Egypt obtained the new weaponry there was nothing to worry about. Marwan’s contribution to this idea was “decisive,” Mr. Bar-Joseph writes.
The Egyptians subsequently altered their plans and jettisoned that condition. But when Marwan reported the changes in late 1972, he was ignored, according to Mr. Bar-Joseph. Israeli intelligence instead clung to its outdated understanding of the enemy’s intentions, insisting the chances of war were “low” almost until the first troops swarmed across the canal.
What was Marwan’s direct impact on the outcome of the fighting? Mr. Bar-Joseph’s book makes a strong case that without the Egyptian’s phone call, Israel’s emergency call-up of the reserve army would have been delayed by at least four hours. That would have given the Syrians time to seize a key junction in the Golan Heights and decide the battle on the northern front in their favor. As it happened, rag-tag reservists in barely functional tanks arrived just in time to save the junction and force a Syrian retreat. “In retrospect, Ashraf Marwan was single-handedly responsible for enabling Israel to prevent the Syrian conquest of the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War,” Mr. Bar-Joseph writes. “Israel would have sustained not only far more casualties than it did, but also a greater loss of territory by the time a cease-fire was called.” That’s significant, even if it doesn’t quite make the Angel the “spy who saved Israel,” as the book’s subtitle has it.
“The Angel” is a lucid and compelling glimpse into the world of espionage and the functioning—or malfunctioning—of leaders at a perilous moment. Spy stories are great stories. But like all such stories, this one left me questioning how much any of this stuff really matters. Are spies really the covert movers of major events, as spies and their biographers tend to think? Or perhaps the British general W.H.H. Waters was on to something when he observed after World War II: “My view always was—and experience has only tended to confirm it—that the results of a secret service are usually negligible.”
Some intelligence is useful but most is inaccurate, irrelevant or misleading on purpose, and figuring out which is which is often possible only when it’s too late. Much of Marwan’s information was good, but at least some of it wasn’t. It’s true that he warned of war in October 1973, but he also warned of war a few times before, and when nothing happened it “lulled Israeli leaders and the IDF into a kind of complacency,” as the author puts it.
The “Concept” that the agent helped create about Egyptian intentions was accurate until it wasn’t, with disastrous consequences. Israel would probably have been better off not knowing about it in the first place. There remain some in Israel and Egypt willing to swear that the Angel was actually a double agent who worked for Egypt all along, and though the author convincingly disagrees, the charge does illustrate how muddy these waters really are.
Even without Marwan, we learn, Israel had “plenty of crucial indicators that Egypt and Syria were about to attack.” Aerial photos had been showing a dramatic enemy buildup for weeks, and intercepted conversations in Russian revealed that Soviet military advisers and their families were being flown out of Egypt in a hurry. If the intelligence men hadn’t believed they had secret insight into the minds of Egypt’s leaders, might they have been more willing to trust what their eyes and ears were telling them?
One wonders if Israel’s belief in angels ultimately helped anyone see more clearly in 1973. It’s quite possible that wiser decisions would have been made if those suitcases of Mossad dollars had been spent on something else—or if the country had no spies at all.
—Mr. Friedman is the author of “The Aleppo Codex” and “Pumpkinflowers.”

Fighting Hate Speech -- British Style
Judith Bergman//Gatestone Institute/August 07/16
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8540/uk-radicalisation-hate-speech
The review found that chaplains at some prisons encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism.
In June, a Muslim cleric told the BBC that a manual used by imams to teach prison inmates about Islam risks "turning people into jihadis." A section of the program on jihad says that taking up arms to fight "evil" is "one of the noblest acts."
Tommy Robinson was recently pictured at the Euro 2016 football championships in France wearing an anti-ISIS T-shirt and holding up a flag with "F**k ISIS" written across it. Upon his return to London, Bedfordshire Police immediately charged Robinson with inciting racial hatred.
So, offending a murderous terrorist organization such as ISIS is apparently no longer protected by the rules of free speech and is now considered "inciting racial hatred" against Muslims.
In April, leaks from the review of extremism in prisons, which was commissioned by former British Justice Secretary Michael Gove and conducted by former prison governor Ian Acheson, revealed that Islamic hate literature -- misogynistic and homophobic pamphlets and hate tracts endorsing the killing of apostates -- is freely available on the bookshelves of British prisons. The hate literature is distributed to inmates by Muslim chaplains, who themselves are appointed by the Ministry of Justice.
According to the Daily Mail, a Whitehall source said that the material was kept in prison chaplaincy rooms and was available for anyone to come in and pick it up. The leaked review also found that chaplains at some prisons encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism.
The review will finally be released to the public in August, after a long delay due, according to the Daily Mail, to the findings of the review sparking an urgent internal alert, because of the risk of "severe reputational damage" to the Ministry of Justice. Chris Phillips, the former head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, a police unit that works closely with the government on its counter-terrorism strategy, warned last year that staff shortages in prisons were making it harder to tackle Islamic radicalization, because extremists were not properly monitored. Then Home Secretary Theresa May rejected the claim by saying that the government was looking at "and continue to look at" preventative measures.
One former prison officer told the BBC that the "problem within prisons now is getting to a critical point", with "many Muslim prisoners basically taking over the law of the prison."
In June, a Muslim cleric told the BBC that a manual used by imams to teach prison inmates about Islam risks "turning people into jihadis." Sheikh Musa Admani, who according to the BBC is a chaplain and expert in interpreting Islamic texts, and has worked extensively on anti-radicalization programs in the UK and abroad, told the BBC that the so-called Tarbiyah programme, used in English and Welsh prisons since 2011, could turn people towards violence and should be withdrawn. A section of the program is on jihad, and it says taking up arms to fight "evil" is "one of the noblest acts." According to the BBC, the Tarbiyah program was co-written by a number of imams and Ahtsham Ali, a prisons adviser to the Ministry of Justice. According to Sheikh Musa Admani:
"This document sets out the steps and then addresses various forms of jihad and then goes on to emphasise a particular type i.e. the killing and the fighting. It incites people to take up arms... It prepares people for violence. It could turn people when they come out of prison, supposedly rehabilitated, back into violence."
Notably, all this is happening despite the fact that the British government's anti-extremism Prevent strategy requires prisons to stop extremists radicalizing inmates. Clearly, that is not going very well.
Ian Acheson presented his findings from the review for the first time on July 13 at a meeting in the Commons Justice Committee. According to the Daily Mail, Acheson said that he found staff lacked the training to confront and deter Islamist extremist ideology, and were often fearful that they would be accused of racism if they did.
Judging by Acheson's words, the review is damning of the National Offender Management Service (the institution in charge of prisons): "The service had made no provision at all to forecast the return of jihadi fighters from Afghanistan or ISIS-controlled territory or anywhere else... I found that quite astonishing."
He also said that there were countless examples of extremist literature being present, while the recruitment, training and supervision of prison imams was "seriously deficient."
Acheson spoke of an "institutional timidity" in "confronting this problem front and central" adding that the "extremism unit" at the National Offender Management Service "lacked an actual strategy to deal with extremism."
He also said, "It seemed more concerned with briefing and collating information than providing robust operational support to the front line."
British authorities are indeed in trouble, if a fear of being called "racist" interferes with their willingness to deal with Islamism.
Hate speech, moreover, is not only being preached in prisons. The young and impressionable are also getting their fair doses at British universities where, in the words of the Express, "Red-carpets [are] laid out for Islam hate preachers at universities and no one challenges them." According to the Express, 27 events at UK universities had radical speakers in just four months, a rise of 35% in just the last year. This welcome exists despite the requirement of all universities to comply with the government's anti-extremist program, Prevent.
According to the Express, the messages peddled at these academic events were contemplations such as "Jews are evil", and a man wanting to marry a Muslim woman, if he did not pray, "should be executed." Those universities in the British capital that hosted the most extreme events were London's School of Oriental and African Studies, King's College, Kingston University, the Institute of Education and University College London.
Among those given a platform at these universities were former Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg, director of the lobbying group CAGE, which opposes the British government's anti-terror program, and South African politician Julius Malema -- convicted of a hate crime for claiming a rape victim must have had a "nice time."
In 2014, at least 70 events with Islamic hate preachers took place at British universities.
Under the Prevent strategy, British universities have to put in place policies to stop extremists radicalizing students and ensure they have measures in place to recognize and respond to signs of radicalization among their students. That, too, does not seem to be working very well.
While the British authorities do not seem equipped to deal with Islamic hate speech, they are impressively efficient when it comes to dealing with what they perceive as "Islamophobia." British police acted promptly when Tommy Robinson was recently pictured at the Euro 2016 football championships in France wearing an anti-ISIS T-shirt and holding up an English Saint George Cross flag with "F**k ISIS" written across it.
Upon his return to London, Bedfordshire police immediately charged Robinson with inciting racial hatred and brought an application for a "football banning order" against him. Robinson, a Pegida UK organizer, previously received a three-year football ban, which expired in 2014. He has not been known to be involved in football disturbances since. The application against him claimed that he "poses a significant risk of both violence and disorder... This is especially so in terms of his established capacity to organise disorder from an anti-Muslim perspective... Despite... recently reported 'good conduct' at Luton Town Football Club, significant concerns remain regarding his intentions and influences upon others to inflame racial hatred in a country where tensions are already high."
Offending a murderous terrorist organization such as ISIS is apparently no longer protected by the rules of free speech and is now considered "inciting racial hatred" against Muslims. Does this, then, mean that British police assume that all Muslims identify with ISIS and are thus in some way victims of "racial hatred" when someone wears a T-shirt or holds up a flag that says "F**k ISIS"?
Not only do British police know how to deal swiftly with other people's "Islamophobia", they also know how to censor their own speech, when need be, in order not to come across as "Islamophobic." At one of the UK's largest shopping centers, during a terror drill designed to be similar to the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, the Greater Manchester police had the fake suicide bomber shout "Allahu Akbar" before detonating a mock device.
A video still from the mock terrorist attack staged on May 9, 2016 by the police in Manchester, England.
For this realistic scenario -- after all, that is what Muslim terrorists shout before they detonate themselves or their bombs -- the Greater Manchester Police were subsequently criticized: The mayor of Greater Manchester and the area's police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, said the operation had been "marred by the ill-judged, unnecessary and unacceptable decision by organisers" to have those playing the parts of terrorists shout the Islamic phrase. "It didn't add anything to the event, but has the potential to undermine the great community relations we have in Greater Manchester."
The new British government has its work cut out for it.
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Palestinians: The "Country" Where Crime Is an Official Job
 Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/August 07/16
 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8643/palestinians-crime
 "[W]hoever was imprisoned for five years or more is entitled to a job in a PA [Palestinian Authority] institution. Thus, the PA gives priority in job placement to people who were involved in terrorist activity." – Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in testimony to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, July 6, 2016.
 In 2016, not less than $300 million (between 7% and 10% of the budget) was allocated to prisoners, their families, and to "martyrs' families."
 In June, an independent report commissioned by the Britain's Department for International Development concluded that by enabling the PA to pay salaries to terrorists, British aid to the PA had made anti-Israel terror "more likely." DFID dismissed the report.
 Palestinian society is totally built and organized on the basis of "resistance". It is a society where jobs, fame and money go to people who are in, or who have spent years in, Israeli jails. There, legitimacy goes to people who are considered "martyrs."
 Crime is not supposed to pay in any country, but for Palestinians in the West Bank, crime helps you become a public officer.
 In this small piece of land, headed by Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), every killer of a Jewish Israeli citizen is called "martyr." This word "martyr" means that each time a Palestinian stabs a Jew, he accomplishes an act of pious virtue. And because the killer is a good Palestinian Muslim, his family becomes eligible for regular payments from the Palestinian Authority's "martyr's fund." This fund is used financially to compensate Palestinian prisoners and the families of "martyrs."
 After a 17-year-old Palestinian, Mohammed Tarayra, stabbed to death a sleeping 13-year-old Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, in her bed in the town of Kiryat Arba, the terrorist's house was decorated with Fatah and PLO flags. No doubt the family will be soon on the list of payments from the Palestinian "martyr's fund."
 According to an analysis by Bloomberg's Eli Lake:
 "The origins of these payments goes back a long way. Before the Palestinian Authority was established in the 1990s through the Oslo peace process, the Palestine Liberation Organization paid the families of 'martyrs' and prisoners detained by Israel. That practice became standardized during the Second Intifadah of 2000 to 2005. The Israelis even found documents in the late Yasser Arafat's compound that showed payments to families of suicide bombers."
 The money the Palestinian killers make is not small change. Evelyn Gordon reported in Commentary:
 "The PA has for years paid above-market salaries to the perpetrators of anti-Israel terror attacks. The salaries range from 2,400 to 12,000 shekels a month ($600 USD to $3,000 USD) and are paid for the duration of the perpetrator's jail sentence in Israel (people killed while committing attacks get other benefits). The lower figure is roughly equivalent to the average – not minimum – wage for people who actually hold jobs in the West Bank, and about 40 percent higher than the average wage in Gaza; figures at the higher end of the range are the kind of salaries most Palestinians can't even dream of. In short, the PA has made terror far more lucrative than productive work."
 Yigal Carmon, president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), submitted testimony to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on July 6, 2016. He gave interesting details.
 First: the payments are highly structured by law.
 "This financial support for prisoners is anchored in a series of laws and government decrees, chiefly Laws No. 14 and No. 19 of 2004, and Law No. 1 of 2013..." According to these laws, the PA must provide prisoners with a monthly allowance during their incarceration, and salaries or jobs upon their release. They are also entitled to exemptions from payments for education, health care, and professional training. Their years of imprisonment are calculated as years of seniority of service in PA institutions. It should be noted that whoever was imprisoned for five years or more is entitled to a job in a PA institution. Thus, the PA gives priority in job placement to people who were involved in terrorist activity."
 Technically, the PA transfers the funds through two PLO organizations:
 The National Palestinian Fund, which transfers moneys for the prisoners and released prisoners (further to be disbursed by the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs).
 The Institute for Care for the Families of Martyrs, which transfers moneys for the families of martyrs.
 What are the amounts?
 Prisoners and families: "[T]he PA invests significant sums in underwriting the expenses of the prisoners and their families - $137.8 million according to the PA's 2016 budget (about 7% of which is for officials' salaries and operating expenses).
 Families of "martyrs": The PLO's Institute for Care for the Families of Martyrs... allocated just under $173 million for families of martyrs and the wounded within the homeland and outside it. The Institute's operating expenses comes [sic] to about $1.5 million. ... The budget also states that the Institute provides allowances "without discrimination" -- in other words, also from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so on.
 In 2016, not less than $300 million (between 7 and 10% of the budget) are going to be allocated to prisoners and families and to "martyrs' families."
 The United States and the European Union, which finance the Palestinian institutions year after year, deliberately close their eyes to the "martyr's fund" to which they contribute.
 PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake, speaking at a rally in November 2013, defends the use of EU aid money to pay "salaries" to imprisoned terrorists, saying "The Europeans want their money that comes to us to remain clean -- not to go to families of those they claim to be terrorists. [They] need to renounce this occupation mentality." (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)
 But things might begin to change. Warning signs are in the air.
 1) The recent Report of the Middle East Quartet (European Union, United States, Russia and the UN) does not talk money but "incitement to terror" -- which is exactly the same thing.
 "Continuing violence, terrorist attacks against civilians, and incitement to violence are greatly exacerbating mistrust and are fundamentally incompatible with a peaceful resolution."
 The Quartet added:
 "Palestinians who commit terrorist attacks are often glorified publicly as "heroic martyrs." Many widely circulated images depict individuals committing terrorist acts with slogans encouraging violence."
 This Quartet report is not a pro-Israel banner: It criticized harshly settlement policy, even in Jerusalem, and accuses the Israelis of denying the Palestinian economy any possibility for development. The one, however, who was really angry after the Quartet report was not Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Quartet report apparently infuriated Mahmoud Abbas because, for the first time in many years, the settlement policy of the Israeli government was not pointed to as the main and unique obstacle to peace.
 As Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat claimed, the Quartet allegedly sought "to equalize the responsibilities between a people under occupation and a foreign military occupier." To "equalize responsibilities" is for the Palestinians exactly the problem. They do not want to make any gesture, move or even a smile for peace. In a Middle East torn by a multiethnic war between Arabs against non-Arabs, Muslims against non-Muslims and Shiites against Sunnis, who could imagine that these Sunni Arab Palestinian people can claim suddenly and publicly: "Hey, Israel my friend, we are ready to make peace with you Jews and recognize Israel as a Jewish state." Unthinkable (from an Islamic point view, of course).
 2) International pressure is on the move. On May 4, 2016, for example, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported that "In a meeting with [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas, Norway's Foreign Minister Børge Brende stressed that the current support program for prisoners should be abolished."
 On May 22, 2016, PMW also reported from the official PA daily, Al Hayat al Jadidah:
 "Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs: Israel and a number of Western countries [are] trying to revoke the prisoners' financial rights on the pretext that they engaged in 'terror'...."
 3) The Israeli government that, for a long time, was not paying attention to the issue, has changed its stand on the "martyr's fund" problem. According to Bloomberg, "On Friday, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that he would begin withholding part of the tax revenue that Israel sends to the Palestinian Authority -- equal to the amount paid to 'martyrs.'"
 4) Frank Lowenstein, the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, told Bloomberg that "the U.S. has recently started withholding funding" for the same reason. "We have robustly complied with legislation passed in 2014 that requires us to deduct from development assistance to the Palestinian Authority for Palestinian payments to individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism," he said.
 5) U.S. Senator Dan Coats (R.Indiana) told the Jerusalem Post on June 29, that "the Senate is acting to shut a loophole that allows Palestinian leadership to use US aid dollars to provide monthly stipends to people convicted by Israel of murder or terrorism." The State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill should be voted on next year.
 The amount of development assistance that has been already withheld is classified.
 Currently, the difficulty is for American and Israeli officials to press European governments to adopt an equivalent position on this delicate issue. It will not be easy. At the end of June 2016, the European Parliament gave a standing ovation to Mahmoud Abbas in Brussels -- the same Mahmoud Abbas who began his speech in Brussels by saying:
 "We are against incitement. But, just a week ago, a week, a group of rabbis in Israel announced, in a clear announcement, demanding their government, to poison, to poison, the water of the Palestinians... Is this not incitement? Is this not clear incitement, to the mass murder of the Palestinian people?"
 All the MEPs in Brussels jumped on their feet to acclaim and applaud this pure anti-Semitic lie. The day after, Abbas was forced to retract it; he admitted there was no factual basis for such a statement.
 Britain could help to break the European adoration of the "good Palestinian" who "wants peace" -- by subsidizing terror attacks -- contrary to the "bad Israeli" who is said to "steal land," by defending it when it is attacked.
 In June, an independent report commissioned by the Department for International Development (DFID, a British governmental body dedicated to fight poverty) concluded that by enabling the PA to pay salaries to terrorists, British aid to the PA had made anti-Israel terror "more likely." DFID dismissed the report, but the uproar in Parliament was huge.
 It is not impossible to convince the EU -- even France which has been conducting hostile diplomatic actions against Israel just to seduce the powerful French community of Muslim voters -- to stop incentivizing terror attacks. As U.S. Senator Coats said, "Some things are simply too immoral to be tolerated."
 So the question is: can the PA stop paying the "martyrs" and make peace with Israel? The answer is NO.
 The linkage between paying "martyrs" and making peace is central. Palestinian society is totally built and organized on the basis of "resistance." It is a society where jobs, fame and money go to people who are in, or who have spent years in, Israeli jails. There, legitimacy goes to people who are considered "martyrs." The failure of reforms introduced by former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his inevitable dismissal were due to his lack of "expertise" in terror matters. Gatestone's Khaled Abu Toameh wrote last year:
 The reason most Palestinians did not vote for Fayyad is because he had not played any role in the 'revolution' against Israel. In this culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. Fayyad did not participate in any armed attack on Jews and never supported the armed struggle against Israel. Nor did he send his son to throw stones or firebombs at Israelis. That is the real reason why people like Fayyad lack popular support.
 Bloomberg's Eli Lake wrote the same thing differently:
 "One problem is that the payments to terrorists' families are exceedingly popular these days" writes Bloomberg. "Ziad Asali, the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, told me that in recent years the media and politicians have elevated these payments to something "sacred in Palestinian politics." Asali said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and others are too weak to stop it. "This is where we find ourselves now. The vast majority understand there has to be an end to violence; it's not serving the Palestinians in any way," Asali said. "But I think nobody really has the stature and clout to confront these issues publicly."
 But foreign donors have to understand something important: they have to cut foreign money for "martyrs," but this does not in itself bring peace. It would just replace a certain type of violence with another type of violence: open revolts against Abbas, who would be considered a traitor; violence against the corrupt Palestinian Authority system; new Palestinian terrorism financed by hostile countries like Iran and perhaps some others.
 Even if a minority of Palestinians think that the terror reward money is a dead end, the shortage of this same money opens the door to another dead end.
 In this 21st century, with no "good guy," no model to follow in the Middle East, Muslims need the war on Israel.
 We have not finished with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 **Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.
 © 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.