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Bible Quotation For Today/For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 04/21-25: "The Lord Jesus says: ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’".

Bible Quotation For Today/Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person
First Letter to the Corinthians 03/10-23: "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’, and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’ So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 22-23/15
Muslim Invasion of Europe/Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/October 22/15
Turkey vs. Free Press/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/October 22/15
Dividing Jerusalem? Repercussions of the Latest Violence/David Makovsky/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
Turkey's Divisions Are So Deep They Threaten Its Future/Soner Cagaptay/Guardian/October 22/15
Netanyahu on the Holocaust - How desperate can he get/Chris Doyle/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
Netanyahu needs a Holocaust history lesson/Abdallah Schleifer/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
Putin holds Assad in one hand, a Syria political bargain in another/Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
Extremism does not emerge in a vacuum/Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
How will hajj stampede impact Iran-Saudi relations/Abbas Aslani/Al-Monitor/October 22/15
Egypt’s Salafist leader says he's learned from the Muslim Brotherhood's mistakes/Walaa Hussein/Al-Monitor/October 22/15
Can Iraq meet US, Russia halfway/Mustafa al-Kadhimi/Al-Monitor/October 22/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 22-23/15
Report: March 14 Forces to Hold Expanded Meeting ahead of Legislative Session
Head of French Senate in Lebanon to Meet Top Officials
Salam: I Will Take Appropriate Action if Solutions to Trash File Fail
14-Year-Old Lebanese Developer Wins Apple's WWDC 2015 Scholarship for Speeding App
SCC Holds Strike Same Day as Parliament Bureau Meeting to Demand New Wage Scale
Mashnouq on Attending Mustaqbal-Hizbullah Talks: Patience Does Not Mean Surrendering
Safwan Family Survivors Return Home as 7 Relatives Laid to Rest
General Security Arrests Senior Ain el-Hilweh IS Official
French Senate Chief Vows Support for Lebanon as He Begins Official Visit

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 22-23/15
U.S. Says 70 Hostages Freed, 5 IS Militants Captured in Iraq Rescue
Two Killed in Sword Attack on Sweden School
Saudi Carries Out 137th Execution This Year
Europe Moves to Thwart Recruitment of 'Foreign Terrorists'
Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada commemorating the events of October 2014
Kerry meets Netanyahu, sees some ‘optimism’
American killed in northern Iraq rescue operation
Acid attack on toddlers sparks outrage in Turkey
Turkish teen detained for ‘insulting’ Erdogan
Erdogan: ISIS, Syrian intel, PKK behind blast
Two alleged attackers shot in Jerusalem after trying to board Israeli bus
Ex-Israeli PM sued over deadly raid on Gaza flotilla
Saudi Arabia reiterates calls for U.N. reforms
U.N. issues summary of protection forces as Palestinians requested
U.S., allies demand U.N. action after Iran missile test
Germany stresses holocaust responsibility after Netanyahu’s claim
Abdullah bin Faisal named new Saudi ambassador to Washington
13 dead as Russia strike hits Syria field hospital
Qatar says it could intervene militarily in Syria
Mufti Advised Hitler on Holocaust, Says Middle East Forum Scholar

Report: March 14 Forces to Hold Expanded Meeting ahead of Legislative Session
Naharnet/October 22/15/Preparations are underway among political powers to attend the legislative session that Speaker Nabih Berri is pressing to hold, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Thursday. Sources from the March 14 alliance said that the camp is expected to hold an “expanded meeting” of its members before Monday “in an attempt to come up with a unified stance over the agenda of the session.”The parliament's bureau is set to convene on next week to devise the legislative session agenda. The session itself will likely be held at the beginning of November. Its agenda will most likely include draft laws on international loans and grants, as well as affairs linked to the economic situation in the country, prominent parliamentary sources told the daily. Berri had on Wednesday urged rival politicians to agree to attend a legislative session “as the current situation can no longer persist as it is threatening the collapse of the state and increasing dangers on the economy.” His visitors told the daily that he is making the necessary preparations to hold the session and he will chair a meeting of the parliament bureau on Tuesday to approve its agenda.

Head of French Senate in Lebanon to Meet Top Officials
Naharnet/October 22/15/Head of the French Senate Gerard Larcher is expected to arrive in Lebanon on Thursday to hold talks with a number of top officials, reported the daily An Nahar. It said that the official is scheduled to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Tammam Salam and a number of other politicians during his three-day trip. The French embassy in Beirut stated that the visit is part of the “strong ties of friendship between France, Lebanon, and diplomatic authorities between the two countries.”While in Lebanon, Larcher is set to launch the Beirut Francophone Book Fair. “This visit will serve as an opportunity to confirm France's support to Lebanon against the challenges it is facing on all levels, especially in harboring Syrian refugees,” said the daily.

Salam: I Will Take Appropriate Action if Solutions to Trash File Fail
Naharnet/October 22/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam stressed on Thursday that the trash management crisis is being obstructed by political disputes and that he will take the necessary action if a change is not made. “Tackling the trash crisis is being hindered by political tensions. I will take the appropriate action if a radical change is not made,” said the PM to a delegation of students from the Saint Joseph University. On the obstacles hindering the cabinet's work and whether he has a time limit in his mind for the continuation of the cabinet, Salam said: “I am still exercising patience here and I am still trying, but when I reach a dead end I will take a stance. “I have reiterated more than once that it is useless to have a cabinet that is unable to convene,” added the PM, referring to the paralysis governing the cabinet. “The most important subject facing us today is the trash file which is still a subject of dispute between the political forces. If it turns to me that they (political forces) do not want a solution I will be forced to name things as they are.”A trash crisis erupted in July when the Naameh landfill was closed. Efforts to solve the controversial file have failed so far despite a waste plan stipulated by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb.
“I have been accused of trying to control the jurisdictions of the Maronite president and others of neglecting those of the Sunni PM. I have adhered to my impartial stances and i always will. However things are no more acceptable and if I come to a conclusion on the need to give up my functions , it would only be to push the political forces to assume their responsibilities,” Salam concluded.

14-Year-Old Lebanese Developer Wins Apple's WWDC 2015 Scholarship for Speeding App
Naharnet/October 22/15/Lebanon's Jake al-Mir was the youngest developer to be awarded Apple's WWDC 2015 scholarship for developing an app on speeding and driving, reported the Kuwaiti daily al-Anba on Thursday. The only Arab at the event, Jake al-Mir developed the “NoSpeed” app to tackle the problem of speeding and decrease car accidents, especially in Lebanon. He highlighted the significance of the app in that it functions even when the mobile phone is locked. It works by sending the driver a notification whenever he exceeds the speed limit, therefore also helping people avoid speeding tickets. He explained that it took him nine months to develop the app, noting that 3,287 people die everyday from car accidents. “NoSpeed” is available on the Appstore. A student at Keserouan's College des Soeurs des Saints Coeurs, al-Mir had previously developed another app, a game, “Emoji Escape”, which is also on the Appstore. On his future aspirations, al-Mir told al-Anba: “I would like to have my own company, not just aimed at developing apps, but also at manufacturing technological products.”“I would also like to work for Apple,” he added.

SCC Holds Strike Same Day as Parliament Bureau Meeting to Demand New Wage Scale
Naharnet/October 22/15/The Syndicate Coordination Committee announced that it will hold a general strike next week on the same day that the parliament bureau is set to convene to tackle the agenda of an upcoming legislative session. A member of the committee explained to al-Joumhouria newspaper on Thursday that it chose the same day to “pressure the bureau to include the new wage scale draft law as the first article of the legislative session.” “The wage hike should be the first article of the agenda,” he stressed. The bureau is scheduled to convene on Tuesday, while media reports predicted that the legislative session will be held in November. The SCC warned that it will take “the greatest forms of escalation should the session be held and should the parliament bureau fail to put the wage hike at the top of its agenda.”This escalation includes holding an open-ended strike at administrations and schools, said the SCC member. The committee, which is a coalition of private and public school teachers and public sector employees, has staged numerous strikes in recent years to demand the adoption of the new wage scale. The salary hike has been at the center of controversy since it was approved by the government of ex-Prime Minister Najib Miqati in 2012. Several parliamentary blocs had refused to approve the draft-law over fears that it would have devastating effects on the economy.

Mashnouq on Attending Mustaqbal-Hizbullah Talks: Patience Does Not Mean Surrendering
Naharnet/October 22/15/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq sought to quell claims that he may not attend the next round of dialogue between the Mustaqbal Movement and Hizbullah, saying that such a decision would be his alone and not someone else's, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Thursday. He told the daily: “Patience does not mean surrender.” “I have waited a whole year to announce a central stance on issues and I hope this is clear,” he said in reference to his recent criticism of Hizbullah. “I issued a warning to all the Lebanese. When we want to leave the dialogue, then we will leave through our own freewill, not through taking pride in acts of abandonment that they have practiced against us in four years,” the minister continued. “We have seen how such acts have affected the country,” he remarked. Mashnouq warned on Friday that the movement might quit the government and the ongoing dialogue if the political deadlock continues in the country.Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday voiced his party's commitment to the government and dialogue, adding: “We refuse to be blackmailed. Those who wish to stay in the dialogue sessions and the government are welcome, and those who wish to leave, are free to do so.”

Safwan Family Survivors Return Home as 7 Relatives Laid to Rest
Naharnet/October 22/15/Two members of the Safwan family who have survived a near-drowning incident off the Turkish coast in an illegal migration attempt arrived at the airport at midnight, the state-run National News Agency said on Thursday. Maher and Moussa Safwan, 18 and 23, arrived at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut on Thursday at midnight on board the Turkish Airlines, NNA added. Later on Thursday, seven victims from the family were laid to rest in the Beirut southern suburb of Ouzai. Efforts continue to find two more members of the family, Wael and Malek, who are still reportedly missing, while Iyad Safwan is still being interrogated by Turkish authorities. On Wednesday, a Turkish Airlines plane landed at Beirut's airport, carrying the bodies of seven Safwan family members who drowned Saturday while trying to reach Europe illegally from Turkey. The seven were identified as Fayez, Mariam, Milani, Maya, Leen, Mustafa, and Houriya. Reports have said that a ship transporting Lebanese and Syrian migrants to Europe departs the port of the northern city of Tripoli on a daily basis. The Lebanese are mainly residents of the North. Once in Turkey, the migrants make their way to Europe, unnamed sources said. Lebanese migrants from the North have exceeded 2,000, while this number tops 4,500 when departures from Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport are included.

General Security Arrests Senior Ain el-Hilweh IS Official
Naharnet/October 22/15/A high-ranking official of the Islamic State extremist group has been arrested in Lebanon and he has confessed to plotting a wave of attacks in the country, the General Security said on Thursday. The militant, a Palestinian national, confessed to being “the religious official of the terrorist IS group in the Ain el-Hilweh (Palestinian refugee) camp” in southern Lebanon, the security agency said in a statement. He also confessed to forming an IS cell along with his brother and another Palestinian refugee. The two accomplices were arrested in the same operation, according to the General Security statement. The IS official's brother meanwhile confessed that he had visited the Syrian city of Raqa -- the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State group -- with the aim of “coordinating security operations inside Lebanon.” “He met with senior leaders of the IS group and they set up a central operations room in the Ain el-Hilweh camp and intended to link it to all IS terrorist cells operating in Lebanon's Palestinian camps,” the statement said. “They plotted to target Lebanese army posts and checkpoints with suicide bombers, to assassinate Lebanese and Palestinian political figures, and to booby-trap cars to blow them up in Dahieh's neighborhoods, especially during occasions and ceremonies, including the Ashura commemorations,” the General Security added. The botched scheme had been intended at “stirring sectarian sedition and undermining coexistence.”“Following interrogation, they were referred to the relevant judicial authorities and efforts are still underway to monitor and pursue the rest of the group's members as well as the instigators and collaborators,” the agency said.'

French Senate Chief Vows Support for Lebanon as He Begins Official Visit
Naharnet/October 22/15/Head of the French Senate Gerard Larcher arrived in Lebanon on Thursday for talks with a number of top officials. “We know that the region is going through very difficult circumstances and the presence of France and the French Senate alongside our Lebanese friends is a duty during dire times,” said Larcher at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport. “Lebanon can depend on its French friends in the French Senate,” he added. He said his visit will tackle “the political situation in Lebanon and the region.”“For us, Lebanon is not only a country, but also a symbol,” Larcher went on to say. Noting that Lebanon “hosts the biggest number of Syrian refugees,” the French official urged “collective support” from the international community for the Lebanese authorities as they face “a very difficult situation.” Larcher later held separate talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji. His talks with Salam addressed “means to strengthen bilateral ties between France and Lebanon and to activate the work of parliamentary committees in both countries as well as the general developments and the Syrian refugee crisis,” state-run National News Agency said. Larcher is also scheduled to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri, Maronite Archbishop of Beirut Boulos Matar and a number of politicians. The French embassy in Beirut had declared that the visit is part of the “strong ties of friendship between France and Lebanon.” While in Lebanon, Larcher is also expected to launch the Beirut Francophone Book Fair. “This visit will serve as an opportunity to confirm France's support to Lebanon against the challenges it is facing on all levels, especially in harboring Syrian refugees,” An Nahar newspaper said.

U.S. Says 70 Hostages Freed, 5 IS Militants Captured in Iraq Rescue
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/October 22/15/A U.S.-backed rescue operation freed 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in Iraq and captured five militants, the Pentagon said Thursday, confirming that a U.S. servicemember was killed. "This operation was deliberately planned and launched after receiving information that the hostages faced imminent mass execution. It was authorized consistent with our counter-ISIL effort to train, advise, and assist Iraqi forces," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said, using an alternate acronym for IS.

Two Killed in Sword Attack on Sweden School
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/October 22/15/A masked man brandishing a sword killed a teacher and a student and seriously wounded two other people at a school in Sweden Thursday before being shot and killed. Pictures taken by students and circulating in the media showed the assailant wearing black clothes and a Darth Vader-like mask, with school children initially thinking it was a prank or a Halloween costume. The attacker, who went from classroom to classroom, struck at a school for six to 15-year-olds in the southwestern town of Trollhattan, shocking a nation where such violence is rare. One teacher was found dead at the school -- described in the media as a "problem school" -- while a second victim and the assailant died in hospital several hours later. Police investigator Thord Haraldsson confirmed the second victim was a young male student. "The assailant knocked on two classroom doors and he attacked the two students who opened the doors," he said. Hospital staff had previously confirmed that two boys, aged 11 and 15, were in critical condition with stab wounds, while another teacher who was seriously wounded in the attack was also undergoing surgery. The assailant was a 21-year-old man from Trollhattan who was shot by police at the scene and later died from his wounds in hospital. Police were alerted to the incident at 10:10 am (0810 GMT) and have already identified the attacker. However they have not disclosed any further information about him and the motive for the attack remains unclear.
"When we first saw him, we thought it was a joke. He was wearing a mask and black clothes and (carrying) a long sword. Some students wanted to take their picture with him and feel the sword," one student identified only as Laith told Swedish television SVT. When the man started attacking people, he quickly realized it wasn't a joke and fled as the assailant went from classroom to classroom looking for victims. Another student, 14-year-old David Issa, told AFP he was sitting in the school's cafe when he saw the attacker approach.
'Black day for Sweden'
"We were sitting in the (school's) cafe and then this guy came up who was wearing a mask and carrying a sword and he stabbed my teacher. I panicked and ran away," he said. "Then the police came. And he started stabbing others in the classrooms, banging on the classrooms and stabbing people in there," he said. Aster Caridad, a 15-year-old student at the school, said one of the two wounded students was her friend. "The teacher ordered us not to leave the classroom as someone was murdered and others (were) injured," she said. "I never expected or even imagined this could happen in my school," she added. Police said several knives were used in the attack. They said there was "a lot of confusion" at the school, and pupils and teachers remained inside the building several hours after the attack. According to its website, the Kronan school has around 400 pupils, including many newly-arrived immigrants. Swedish media described it as a "problem school". It had been criticized by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate for its lax security and on account of a number of disruptions which prevented the pupils from learning. Teachers had complained to the inspectorate about the school library and cafe being open to the public and creating an insecure environment for the children, Swedish news agency TT reported. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven was to visit the town on Thursday. "This is a black day for Sweden," he said in a statement. "My thoughts go to the victims and their families, the students and staff, and the entire community. No words can describe what they're going through right now."Crisis teams were at the school assisting parents and students.But some parents outside were unhappy at the way the school handled the attack. 'Lock the door' "No one from the school called me. I found out what happened from a neighbor when I was carrying out the trash. I got into my car and came here," one father told TT after being reunited with his young daughter. The girl, who was identified only as Emilia, said the headteacher had come into her classroom and told them to stay inside and lock the door. "We didn't know what was happening," she said. Trollhattan is an industrial town of 57,000 and home to the former Swedish carmaker Saab which filed for bankruptcy in 2012. School attacks are rare in normally-tranquil Sweden. A 1961 school shooting in Kungalv, in southwestern Sweden, left one person dead and six others injured. No other mass shootings have occurred since then, though at least one attack has been foiled, in the southern city of Malmo in 2004. Other threats have been issued but not followed through.

Saudi Carries Out 137th Execution This Year
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/October 22/15/Saudi Arabia on Thursday carried out its 137th execution this year, putting to death another of its citizens for murder. Mohammed al-Qahtani had been convicted of gunning down a fellow Saudi with an automatic weapon in an argument, the interior ministry said in a statement. Most executions in the kingdom are carried out by beheading with a sword, in what the ministry says is a deterrent. Rights experts have raised concerns about the fairness of the trials. According to AFP tallies, Qahtani was the 137th Saudi or foreigner put to death by the kingdom this year, compared with 87 in 2014. He was executed in Riyadh.London-based Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia had the world's third-highest number of executions last year, far behind China and Iran, but ahead of Iraq and the United States. Under the kingdom's strict Islamic legal code, murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death. The case of a Saudi youth facing execution for taking part in pro-reform protests has triggered particular international concern. During a visit to Riyadh last week, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told reporters he "called for clemency" for Ali al-Nimr, a member of the minority Shiite community on death row. Nimr was just 17 when arrested in February 2012.

Europe Moves to Thwart Recruitment of 'Foreign Terrorists'
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/October 22/15/A group of EU countries signed an agreement to counter "foreign terrorist fighters" on Thursday, making it an international crime to travel abroad -- or even plan a trip -- to join militant groups. "For the first time in international law, we have an instrument that criminalizes early preparations for acts of terror. It is the vital, missing piece of the jigsaw," said Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the 47-member Council of Europe, which drew up the new law. The amended Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism makes it a criminal offense to plan or raise money for a trip abroad, if the person intends to participate in any "terrorist offense, or the providing or receiving of training for terrorism."Helping someone else to travel abroad to join a militant organization also becomes a criminal offense. Seventeen EU members including Britain, France and Germany signed the new convention on Thursday. "All of this shows our commitment to send a positive signal to all would-be terrorists: Europe is closing in, we are not waiting for you, we are coming for you," said Jagland. The protocol was put together in a record seven weeks due to the threat posed by foreign fighters joining the ranks of jihadists in Syria and Iraq, he told assembled officials. "Rarely has such a treaty received such unanimous support from the beginning."The agreement must now be ratified by national parliaments, and will automatically come into force once six states have done so. U.N. experts said this week that the Islamic State group is paying supporters up to $10,000 (8,800 euros) for each person that they recruit to fight in war-ravaged Syria and Iraq.

Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada commemorating the events of October 2014
Ottawa, Ontario/22 October 2015
http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2015/10/22/statement-prime-minister-canada-commemorating-events-october-2014
Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement to commemorate the events of October 2014:
“One year ago today, terrorist attacks were carried out against fellow Canadians at hallowed national sites of commemoration and democracy.
“Let us pause on this date to remember Corporal Nathan Cirillo who fell while standing guard at the National War Memorial as well as those injured on Parliament Hill. Let us also remember the deadly assault on Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who was targeted simply for wearing his uniform two days earlier in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. Canadians continue to honour and remember these proud members of our Canadian Armed Forces.
“On this day let us also pay tribute to all the security forces, medical personnel and brave citizens who risked their safety to stop the attackers and help those injured.
“It was inspiring to see how Canadians came together in the aftermath of these attacks, offering each other support, condemning terrorism, and showing the courage and resolve that make our country great.
“As we remember the victims and heroes on this sombre anniversary, let us be thankful for the freedom and peace we continue to enjoy in Canada.

Kerry meets Netanyahu, sees some ‘optimism’
Reuters, Berlin Thursday, 22 October 2015/U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday gave him a “cautious measure of optimism” that tensions between Israelis and Palestinians could be defused. “I would characterize that conversation (with Netanyahu) as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be ... a way to defuse the situation and begin to find a way forward,” Kerry said in Berlin. "If parties want to try, and I believe they do, want to move to a de-escalation, there are a set of choices that are available,” he added at a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks since the start of October, while 48 Palestinians, including 24 attackers, among them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.Meanwhile, the “Quartet” of Middle East peace mediators will meet in Vienna on Friday to urge Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tone down their rhetoric and calm down the situation on the ground, the EU’s top diplomat said on Thursday. “I can announce here that tomorrow in Vienna we will have a Quartet principals meeting,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a joint news conference with Steinmeier in Berlin. Meanwhile, Mogherini said she discussed concrete steps with Netanyahu on Thursday to calm tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. “I passed him a message of the need to explore together ways to stop violence, to calm down the situation, to show leadership and restraint, also on the rhetoric,” Mogherini said after meeting Netanyahu in Berlin. “We discussed concrete ways to de-escalate the situation on the ground and to guarantee the status quo in the holy sites,” she told reporters. Nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks since the start of October, while 48 Palestinians, including 24 attackers, among them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.

American killed in northern Iraq rescue operation
By Reuters, Washington Thursday, 22 October 2015/A U.S. serviceman has been killed after trying to rescue hostages from ISIS in Iraq, CNN reported on Thursday, citing an unidentified U.S. official. He was killed after U.S. Special Forces rescued about 70 Kurdish hostages in northern Iraq. This would be the first U.S. combat fatality on the ground in the fight against ISIS, CNN said. One U.S. source told CNN that the operation took place in Hawija in the northern province of Kirkuk. A U.S. official told AFP: “It was an Iraqi operation” with the U.S. military in an “advise and assist” role, adding that the aim was to “free hostages.”Other U.S. media outlets also reported on an operation in Hawija without giving any numbers on U.S. military casualties. According to The New York Times, the operation saw the mobilization of U.S. helicopters, as well as Kurdish and U.S. Special Operations forces. The United States has deployed 3,500 troops in Iraq in the context of an operation targeting ISIS. These troops are meant to train, advise and assist Iraqi forces. There are no further information about the operation or the identities of the hostages.(With AFP)

Acid attack on toddlers sparks outrage in Turkey
By AFP, Istanbul Thursday, 22 October 2015/Turkey was in shock on Thursday after a man threw acid at toddlers at a popular restaurant in Istanbul, injuring seven, media reports said. A three-year-old was left scarred and partially blind while another six children suffered burns after the man sprayed them with acid in the playroom of the Develi restaurant in the city's upscale Atasehir dictrict, the Hurriyet daily said. "Families are asking: 'who is this psycho?'" read the headline on Hurriyet, the country's best-selling newspaper, while renowned journalist Oguz Karamuk voiced widespread outrage with the Tweet: "it's truly horrible. God save us all". Lawyers for the high-end meat restaurant said the attacker had been identified but was still on the run. The establishment said that there was no footage of the assault as their 120 security cameras were not working at the time. News of the attack went viral on social networks, with many users asking why none of the cameras were active and warning children may not be safe in public playrooms. The Vatan daily said the attacker was the ex-boyfriend of the playroom's babysitter, who it said was the real target of the acid. Acid attacks are very rare in Turkey. In 2008, two schoolgirls in Mersin in the south of the country had acid thrown on their legs by attackers who said the skirts they were wearing were too short.

Turkish teen detained for ‘insulting’ Erdogan
By AFP, Ankara Thursday, 22 October 2015/A 15-year-old schoolboy has been detained by police in Turkey for allegedly “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, local media reports said Thursday. The teenager, identified by the initials U. E., spent Wednesday night in a police station after being stopped by officers outside an Internet cafe, Cihan news agency said. He was set to be brought before a court on Thursday which would decide whether to charge the minor or fine him. The agency did not give details of the boy’s alleged “insult”. It is illegal under Turkish law to insult the president and those found guilty face up to four years in jail. The arrest in December of a 17-year-old accused of insulting Erdogan sparked outrage in the country and abroad, fuelling concerns about freedom of speech in Turkey. In that case the teenager was given an 11-month suspended sentence. Since Erdogan’s election as president last August -- after 11 years as prime minister -- the number of prosecutions for insulting the head of state have risen and target artists and journalists as well as schoolchildren. Earlier this month the editor of a leading English-language daily newspaper, Today’s Zaman, was detained on suspicion of insulting Erdogan in a series of tweets.

Erdogan: ISIS, Syrian intel, PKK behind blast
By AFP, Istanbul Thursday, 22 October 2015/Turkey’s president on Thursday pinned responsibility for the deadly Ankara bombing on a “terror collective” comprising the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, Turkish and Syrian Kurds and the Syrian intelligence service. Over 100 people were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the capital’s central train station on October 10, and Turkish authorities have said the ISIS jihadist group is the “number one suspect” for the attack. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing a union confederation meeting, said “the attack in front of the station reveals how terror is practised collectively. It's a collective terrorist act.” “The PKK, Daesh, the Mukhabarat, the PYD are all involved. They planned this operation together,” he said, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the ISIS group, Syria’s state-controlled military intelligence service and Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The blasts, which came less than a month before a hotly-contested general election, targeted a pro-Kurdish and liberal peace rally which had called for an end to hostilities between Turkish security forces and Kurdish rebels. Pressure has piled on Erdogan ahead of the November 1 poll, with opposition figures blaming him for security lapses over the Ankara bombing and failing to crack down on ISIS. On Monday, the government confirmed that one of the suicide bombers was Yunus Emre Alagoz, brother of the man suspected of a similar attack in Suruc that killed 34 people in July. The second suicide bomber has yet to be formally identified but is believed to hail from the same city as Alagoz. The government has said it is exploring ties between attacks on Suruc, Ankara and the city of Diyarbakir. Five people were killed in Diyarbakir in June after a bomb exploded during a pre-election campaign rally for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). One man was arrested for involvement in that attack. A total of 768 people have been arrested over suspected links to ISIS since the Suruc attack in July.

Two alleged attackers shot in Jerusalem after trying to board Israeli bus
By AFP Occupied Jerusalem Thursday, 22 October 2015/Two alleged Palestinian attackers were shot west of occupied Jerusalem on Thursday after attempting to board a bus carrying children then allegedly stabbing an Israeli, police said. One of the alleged attackers was killed, while the second was in critical condition. The two men were blocked from entering the bus in Beit Shemesh by the driver and others. They then stabbed and moderately wounded a 25-year-old Israeli man near the bus station, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Police did not provide further details on the bus, including whether it was a school bus or not.Beit Shemesh, about 30km west of occupied Jerusalem, is a predominantly Orthodox Jewish city. Since October 1, at least 49 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed, including alleged attackers. Eight Israelis have been killed in attacks. One Israeli Jew and one Eritrean have also been killed after being mistaken for attackers. Violent protests have erupted across the Palestinian territories, sparking questions of a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Ex-Israeli PM sued over deadly raid on Gaza flotilla
By AFP Los Angeles Thursday, 22 October 2015/The family of a U.S. citizen who was killed during a raid by Israeli troops in 2010 on a Gaza-bound flotilla are suing former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, claiming unlawful death and torture. Attorneys representing the Turkish family of Furkan Dogan told AFP that Barak was served papers in the civil case late Tuesday after giving a speech at an event near Los Angeles. Dogan, a U.S. citizen born in New York, was among nine people killed in the raid on six Turkish boats that had been attempting to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. Israel at the time said that it had sent repeated warnings to the flotilla before launching the raid. The incident soured once-close relations between Israel and Turkey. “On board the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces extinguished the life of a 19-year-old boy holding a video camera,” said Hakan Camuz, a representative of Dogan's family. “He was shot five times. The last shot was to his head at point blank range. He deserves justice.” A U.N. panel that reviewed the case determined that the raid was “excessive and unreasonable” but also laid blame on Turkey. The human rights lawyers that filed the suit against Barak have also been pushing the Hague-based International Criminal Court to investigate the incident. “From Nuremberg and Tokyo to the Balkans, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, there is a tradition around the world of holding military leaders accountable for their crimes against civilians,” said attorney Rodney Dixon. Barak or members of his entourage could not be immediately reached for comment.

Saudi Arabia reiterates calls for U.N. reforms
By Saudi Gazette New York Thursday, 22 October 2015/Saudi Arabia has repeatedly called for the reforms of the U.N. Security Council and its working methods so that it can effectively carry out its basic tasks of maintaining peace and security, said Kingdom’s permanent representative to U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi. He mentioned the efforts to reform the Security Council since 1993, but said that “we have not been able to find comprehensive and workable solutions.” Mouallimi said that a majority of member states agree that there is a major flaw in the working of the Security Council which undermines its credibility and effectiveness. “This is clear in the deadlock faced by the Council on many issues including the Palestinian and the Syrian crises,” he said. The Saudi diplomat reiterated his country’s readiness to cooperate with the rest of the member states of the Security Council to tackle the procedures for Council’s reforms, which include voluntary change of right of use of the veto, collective pledge not to obstruct accountability for war crimes and acts of genocide, and raising the level of transparency and openness, including the issue of the selection of secretary general. On May 2, 2013, a group of over 20 U.N. member states launched a new initiative to improve the working methods of the U.N. Security Council. The group chose the acronym ACT to highlight its goal of pressing for greater Accountability, Coherence and Transparency in the Council’s activities. To achieve this, ACT aims to in¬crease both the involvement of non-Council members and the accountability of the Council to the entire U.N. membership. The group comprised 22 members from various regions: Austria, Chile, Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, Gabon, Hungary, Ireland, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Maldives, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzer¬land, Tanzania (observer) and Uruguay.

U.N. issues summary of protection forces as Palestinians requested
By Reuters United Nations Thursday, 22 October 2015/U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday released a summary of past international protection regimes for disputed territories as requested by the Palestinians, though he made clear he was not recommending one for holy sites in occupied Jerusalem. The report was issued after Ban held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. After two days of Ban’s discussions in the region, there were no signs weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence were ending. The 42-page report does not focus on the successes and failures of the various protection regimes but merely describes their structures and legal bases. It was Abbas who originally requested the report’s release. The Palestinians have been calling for an international protection force to be deployed at Jerusalem’s holy sites. In a cover letter accompanying the report, Ban told the 15 Security Council members that “this paper does not propose any particular system ... for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”Diplomats said on condition of anonymity that the French had suggested that the Security Council ask the U.N. to prepare a report weighing options for a protection regime for Jerusalem’s holy sites, but the U.S., Israel and others opposed it. The chief Palestinian U.N. delegate, Riyad Mansour, told reporters last week he hoped circulation of the protection regime report would encourage Security Council members to consider a force for the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, a site that is holy for both Jews and Muslims. The historical summary of protection regimes goes as far back as the early 20th century. One of the first examples is the Free City of Danzig, which after World War One was a predominantly German city in the territory of Poland. The report released on Wednesday describes how Danzig was placed under the protection of the League of Nations, the U.N.’s failed predecessor, under the Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement that came after the war. The report mentions Palestine, which after World War One was administered by Britain on the basis of a League of Nations mandate. Britain in 1947 handed the issue to the U.N. General Assembly, which prepared a report on the issue of Palestine that called for a partition. The summary report also refers to Jerusalem, which had a special international regime administered by the U.N. That regime ended in 1967 when Israel took control of all of Jerusalem during the six-day Arab-Israeli war.

U.N. chief ‘pessimistic’ on Israel-Palestinians
By The Associated Press United Nations Thursday, 22 October 2015/U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered the Security Council a grim assessment on Wednesday of prospects for defusing the latest wave of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, a British diplomat said. British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said council members were “struck by the pessimistic tone” Ban took during the closed video briefing. Ban spoke to council members after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during a surprise trip to the Middle East. Rycroft said Ban “thought there was a very wide gap” between the two sides “both on the short term, on how to deescalate, and on the longer term to go back to a genuine political process leading to a two-state solution.”Rycroft said the U.N. chief told the council that “all of those with influence need to use it to de-escalate the situation.”The unrest began last month after clashes erupted at occupied Jerusalem’s holiest site, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Rycroft said it was “very important that the whole international community including the Security Council use whatever is in our power to halt the escalation of violence.”But he expected no concrete action to emerge from a Security Council ministerial meeting on the Middle East planned for Thursday, though he added “we continue to live and hope.”Ban’s briefing coincided with his decision to send the council a 42-page document on U.N. historical precedents for “the protection” of people. It was prepared by the U.N. Secretariat in response to a letter on July 21, 2014 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas requesting that “the territory of the state of Palestine be placed under an international protection system by the United Nations,” with the central aim of “ensuring the protection of the Palestinian people.” The Palestinians have been pressing for the report to be sent to the Security Council. In a letter on Wednesday, the secretary-general said he decided to share the report with the council in response to inquiries and “the interest that has been generated.”

U.S., allies demand U.N. action after Iran missile test
By Reuters United Nations Thursday, 22 October 2015/The United States, Britain, France and Germany called on Wednesday for the United Nations Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee to take action over a missile test by Tehran that they said violated a U.N. ban. In a letter containing details on the launch, they said the ballistic missile was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.”The letter, seen by Reuters, was sent to the committee after the United States raised the issue in the 15-member Security Council. “We trust that this information will assist the Committee in its responsibility to examine and take appropriate action in response to violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” they wrote. Iran said earlier this month that it had tested a new precision-guided ballistic missile.Diplomats have said it was possible for the sanctions committee to blacklist additional Iranian individuals or entities if it determined that the missile launch had breached the U.N. ban. However, they said Russia and China, which have opposed the sanctions on Iran’s missile program, might block any such moves. “The United States will continue to press the Security Council to respond effectively to any future violations ... Full and robust enforcement of all relevant U.N. measures is and will remain critical,” U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said in a statement on Wednesday. Iran has disputed the Western assessment that the missile was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. “None of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s missiles has been designed for a nuclear capability,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA. Ballistic missile tests by Iran are banned under a 2010 Security Council resolution that remains valid until a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers is implemented. Under that deal, reached on July 14, most sanctions on Iran will be lifted in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Once it takes effect, Iran will still be “called upon” to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years. U.S. and European officials have said it is unlikely the deal will be fully implemented before next year. The deal allows for supply of ballistic missile technology to Tehran with Security Council approval, but the United States has pledged to veto any such requests. The missile test is not a violation of the nuclear deal, U.S. officials have said. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday conditionally approved the nuclear deal but warned it would be violated if any of the six world powers imposed any sanctions on any level and under any pretext.

Germany stresses holocaust responsibility after Netanyahu’s claim
AFP, Berlin Wednesday, 21 October 2015/Germany on Wednesday stressed its inherent responsibility in the Holocaust, after Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu stirred controversy over his claim a Palestinian leader gave Hitler the idea of exterminating Jews. Asked to comment on Netanyahu’s allegation, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said he would not speak directly on the claim. But he added: “I can speak for the federal government, that we Germans recognize that the murderous racial fanaticism of the Nazis was the historical origin of ... the Shoah. “I see no reason to change our view of history in any way. We know of the inherent German responsibility in these crimes against humanity,” he added, just hours before Netanyahu was to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. In a speech on Tuesday, Netanyahu suggested that Hitler was not planning to exterminate the Jews until he met Palestinian nationalist Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in 1941. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time. He wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu told the World Zionist Congress. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: 'If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said: ‘Burn them.’”Netanyahu on Wednesday backtracked on the claim, denying that he was exonerating Hitler of the responsibility for the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were slaughtered.

Abdullah bin Faisal named new Saudi ambassador to Washington
By Dina al-Shibeeb Al Arabiya News Wednesday, 21 October 2015/Saudi Arabia on Wednesday appointed Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki as its new ambassador to Washington, filling the post which was vacant for seven months, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said. The 64-year-old new ambassador is an engineer who was born in the Saudi city of Taif in 1951. He had his primary, intermediate and secondary education in Saudi Arabia before pursuing his higher education in engineering in the UK. The new ambassador was governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) between the years 2000-2004. His career debut was in the kingdom’s two main industrial cities in 1975. He later became Secretary General of the Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu (RCJU) in 1985. In SAGIA, he was renowned for supporting privatization strategies, observers say he has always worked towards a more economically open Saudi Arabia and was for his country’s membership in the World Trade Organization. Sultan Al-Bazie, director of the Saudi Arabian Society for Culture and Arts, worked with Prince Abdullah when he was a media consultant at SAGIA. “He [Prince Abdulla] showed an important side of his personality and that was when he was keen to constantly share information, articles from various fields to inspire us,” Bazie told Al Arabiya News. The director said while the prince is passionate to show the cultural side of Saudi, “he completely realizes what is happening in the Saudi foreign policy.”Bazie expects Prince Abdulla to be a “clear, honest face for the Saudi foreign policy especially in an important capital such as Washington.”Like his previous Saudi ambassadors in the U.S., Bazie said the prince will continue improve relations between Washington and Riyadh. Prince Abdullah is the Kingdom’s 9th ambassador to the U.S., his predecessor was Adel Jubeir, who vacated his post after becoming the Saudi foreign minister in April 29. The first Saudi ambassador to Washington was Assaad Faqih followed by Abdullah al-Khayal, Ibrahim Suwail, Ali Reda, Faisal al-Hojaylan, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Prince Turki al-Faisal, and Adel al-Jubeir who served from 2008 till 2015. Saudi Arabia has also announced the appointment of new ambassadors to other countries including Jordan, France, Germany and the Maldives.
Infographic: Saudi ambassadors to the U.S

13 dead as Russia strike hits Syria field hospital
By AFP Beirut Wednesday, 21 October 2015/At least 13 people including medical staff were killed when Russian warplanes struck a field hospital in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday. “Thirteen people were killed in Russian air strikes on Tuesday on a field clinic in the town of Sarmin, including a physiotherapist, a guard, and civil defence member,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Sarmin lies in the northwestern province of Idlib, which has been regularly targeted by Russia’s military since the beginning of its air war in Syria on September 30. The clinic was run by the Syrian-American Medical Society, whose staff confirmed that strikes had “severely damaged” the facility. “Yesterday at around 1:00 pm (1000 GMT) a SAMS facility near Sarmin, Idlib was hit,” a SAMS staff member told AFP. “Our initial reports from the ground show that we have lost two hospital staff, a physiotherapist and a nurse,” the staffer said in an emailed statement. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she did not specify whether the strikes were conducted by Russian warplanes. Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its armed forces had targeted Sarmin, but did not mention the hospital.
Russia has conducted more than 500 strikes against what it says are Islamic State group fighters. But Moscow has come under fire for targeting non-extremist groups and inflicting civilian casualties. On Tuesday, the Observatory said at least 127 of the 370 killed so far in Russia’s aerial war are civilians. It documented Russian bombardment of field hospitals in coastal Latakia and central Hama on October 2. In an online statement, SAMS said Russian air strikes the same day hit a field hospital it operated in Hama, “causing severe damage to the facility” and wounding staff. Journalist and activist Maamun al-Khatib told AFP that Russian raids had struck two hospitals in the northern province of Aleppo in the past week. More than 250,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict began in March 2011, and more than 11 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

Qatar says it could intervene militarily in Syria
By Reuters, AFP Dubai/Moscow Wednesday, 21 October 2015/Qatar, a major supporter of rebels in Syria’s civil war, suggested it could intervene militarily following Russia’s intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad but said it still preferred a political solution to the crisis. The comments by Qatar’s foreign minister, made in a CNN interview on Wednesday, drew a swift reply from Assad’s government with a senior official warning that Damascus would respond harshly to such “direct aggression”. Gulf Arab backers of Syrian rebels such as Qatar have been unsettled by Russia’s three-week-old air strike campaign that has allowed Assad’s forces to wrest back some territory to help secure his strongholds in western Syria. Qatar has been a leading supporter of anti-Assad rebel groups, providing arms and financial and political backing.Asked by CNN if Qatar supported the Saudi position that does not rule out a military option in Syria as a result of Russia’s intervention, Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said: “Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is. “If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it,” he added, according to a text in Arabic carried by Qatar’s state news agency QNA. His comments were also carried on CNN’s Arabic website. In response, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was quoted by Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television as saying: “If Qatar carries out its threat to militarily intervene in Syria, then we will consider this a direct aggression ... Our response will be very harsh.”Attiyah also said Qatar preferred to solve regional crises through direct political dialogue. “We do not fear any confrontation, and thus we will call for dialogue from a position of strength because we believe in peace and the shortest path to peace is through direct dialogue.” Qatar is a small but wealthy gas exporter that played a major role in supporting Islamist opposition groups during Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 in Libya and Syria.
Lavrov and Kerry to discuss Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Friday in Vienna to discuss the Syrian conflict together with their counterparts from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Moscow said Wednesday. Russia’s foreign ministry made the announcement after a phone call between Lavrov and Kerry and following the surprise visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow on Tuesday. “The main focus was the situation in Syria in the context of preparations for the meeting between the (Russian) minister and Secretary of State in Vienna on October 23 where they will be joined by Saudi and Turkish foreign ministers,” the ministry said in a statement. Moscow also said that Lavrov proposed that a meeting of the “Quartet” of Middle East peace mediators -- Russia, the United States, the European Union and United Nations -- be held the same day, given the “extremely tense situation” in the Middle East.

Mufti Advised Hitler on Holocaust, Says Middle East Forum Scholar
MEF/October 21, 2015/Noted Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz responds to criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schwanitz, a leading expert on ties between Nazis and Islamists, says al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was instrumental in the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe. "The Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was a war criminal whose collaboration with Adolf Hitler played a key role in the Holocaust," says noted Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz. Philadelphia, PA – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn criticism for comments about the role of al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in conceiving and perpetrating the Holocaust. Indeed, leading Nazi aides testified that al-Husaini was one of the instigators of the genocide. In his Damascus memoirs, the mufti admitted how he advised Hitler and other leading Nazis, and that he acquired full knowledge of the ongoing mass murder. Middle East Forum scholar, historian, and author Wolfgang G. Schwanitz added, "It is a historical fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was an accomplice whose collaboration with Adolf Hitler played an important role in the Holocaust. He was the foremost extra-European adviser in the process to destroy the Jews of Europe."Although Schwanitz hadn't previously heard the dialogue between Hitler and al-Husaini as told by Netanyahu, he says it is absurd to ignore the role played by al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, a war criminal, in encouraging and urging Hitler and other leading Nazis to exterminate European Jewry. According to the foremost expert on the ties between Nazis and Islamists, there is much evidence that al-Husaini's primary goal was blocking all of the ways out of Europe. He pushed Hitler to slam the last doors of a burning house shut. In their 2014 book Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, published by Yale University Press, Schwanitz and co-author Barry Rubin delve into the deep ties between Hitler and the Grand Mufti: At their meeting [on November 28, 1941, Hitler and al-Husaini] concluded the pact of Jewish genocide in Europe and the Middle East, and immediately afterward, Hitler gave the order to prepare for the Holocaust. The next day invitations went out to thirteen Nazis for the Wannsee Conference to begin organizing the logistics of this mass murder. The highly acclaimed book also examined the Grand Mufti's efforts to prevent Europe's Jews from finding refuge in the land that would become Israel: And since any European Jews let out of Europe might later go to Palestine, al-Husaini made it clear that if Hitler wanted Muslims and Arabs as allies he must close Europe's exits to Jews. At the same time, al-Husaini and Arab rulers also told Britain that if it wanted to keep Arabs and Muslims from being enemies, it must close entrance to Palestine to all Jews. By succeeding on both fronts, al-Husaini contributed to the Holocaust doubly, directly, and from the start.
About the Middle East Forum. The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, is dedicated to defining American interests in the Middle East and protecting America from Islamist threats. It achieves its goals through intellectual, activist, and philanthropic efforts. For more information, visit http://www.meforum.org.
http://www.meforum.org/5574/schwanitz-husaini

Méfions-nous du TOC !
Farès SOUHAID | OLJ
22/10/2015
Il n'y a pas plus sourds que ceux qui ne veulent pas entendre. À titre d'exemple : ceux qui persistent à parrainer des aberrations politiques, comme par exemple afficher leur joie devant les frappes aériennes russes en Syrie.
En Europe, on parle de « trouble obsessionnel compulsif » (ou TOC), pour désigner un phénomène où les obsessions sont des pensées ou des images intrusives qui surgissent à répétition et qui sont difficiles à chasser de l'esprit. Ce trouble peut devenir un phénomène de masse quand la société entière se braque contre un sujet qui l'obsède, en l'occurrence l'extrémisme musulman. La majorité des populations ont ainsi développé un TOC à l'égard de Daech (ISIS), « digne » représentant de cet extrémisme.
Partout dans le monde, le groupe islamiste hante la conscience collective des gens, leurs programmes électoraux en Suède, au Danemark et même au Canada, sans parler de l'Europe du Sud, qui développe une islamophobie prononcée face aux flux migratoires qui la touchent de plein fouet.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC devant une vidéo YouTube montrant un homme en noir, grand de taille, en train de décapiter un jeune Américain ou Européen.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC devant la possibilité d'une invasion par Daech de nos capitales, nos métropoles, nos villes et nos villages.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC... et nous votons extrême droite en Europe.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC, au point de brandir le fanion de Richard Cœur de Lion du XXIe siècle, le tsar Poutine, lors d'une manifestation chrétienne à Beyrouth.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC, quitte à mettre tous les musulmans dans le même sac, comme si nous voulions œuvrer, de plein gré, à écarter nos partenaires musulmans de la bataille menée contre l'extrémisme.
Nous sommes atteints d'un TOC à partir du moment où nous considérons que la violence est musulmane, et que le chômage et la crise économique seraient la conséquence de la présence de 200 000 réfugiés arabes dans un environnement européen de 400 millions d'habitants.
Il est indispensable de dissocier la réalité, autant qu'elle puisse être grave, de la fiction découlant de l'amplification médiatique, laquelle est responsable de la création du phénomène de TOC.
TOC, TOC, TOC... Imaginons ensemble ce qui se serait produit si les atrocités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale avaient été retransmises sur YouTube, Twitter ou Facebook, entre 1939 et 1945 ! Six millions de juifs envoyés dans les fours crématoires sur des ordres « catholiques » !
Imaginons ensemble si, pour un TOC de l'autre côté, on parlait de « christianophobie » à chaque fois qu'il faudrait désigner une aberration politique, sociale ou culturelle née en Occident et diffusée dans cette partie du monde !
Imaginons ensemble cette plongée, aussitôt, dans cette spirale vertigineuse, ou, pire, ce trou noir, entraînant le monde entier dans un cycle de violence incontrôlable, où le TOC deviendrait le seul critère de nos actions individuelles et collectives !
Il est impossible d'être « troublé » et de prendre des décisions sages.
Il est impossible d'être « obsessionnel » et d'élargir notre horizon.
Il est impossible d'être à la fois « compulsif » et bâtisseur.
Ce dont nos esprits ont besoin, c'est de sagesse. Pas de TOC !
Farès SOUHAID
Coordinateur général du 14 Mars

Muslim Invasion of Europe
Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/October 22/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6721/muslim-invasion-europe
The Syrian government sells passports and birth certificates at affordable prices. Many migrants have no passport, no ID, and refuse to give fingerprints.
Because Islam is the heart of the culture of people formerly colonized, Europeans rejected criticism of Islam, saying it would blend smoothly into a multicultural Europe. They did not demand the assimilation of the Muslims who came to live in Europe. Much of the time, Muslims are not assimilated -- and often show signs of not wanting to assimilate.
Any criticism of Islam in Europe is treated as a form of racism, and "Islamophobia" is considered a crime or a sign of mental illness.
European people still have the right to vote, but are deprived of most of their power: all important political decisions in Europe are made behind closed doors by technocrats and professional politicians in Brussels or Strasbourg.
Europe has renounced force, so to many, it appears weak, vulnerable and easily able to be overpowered.
The sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands more Muslims most likely prompts Europeans to think that the nightmare will get worse; they see, powerlessly, that their leaders speak and act as if they have no awareness of what is happening.
Central European leaders and people, who have already lived under authoritarian rule, seem to be thinking that entering the European Union was a huge mistake. They came to what was then called the "free world." They do not seem willing to be subjected again to coercive decisions made by outsiders.
Illegal Muslim migrants will live on social benefits until the bankruptcy of welfare states.
In all 28 countries of the European Union, birth rates are low and the population is aging. People under thirty account for only 16% of the population, or 80 million people. In the 22 Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran, people under thirty account for 70% of the population, or 350 million people.
The flow of illegal migrants does not stop. They land on the Greek islands along the Turkish coast. They still try to get into Hungary, despite a razor wire fence and mobilized army. Their destination is Germany or Scandinavia, sometimes France or the UK. Some of them still arrive from Libya. Since the beginning of January, more than 620,000 have arrived by sea alone. There will undoubtedly be many more: a leaked secret document estimates that by the end of December, there might be 1.5 million.
Journalists in Western Europe continue to depict them as "refugees" fleeing war in Syria. The description is false. According to statistics released by the European Union, only twenty-five percent of them come from Syria; the true number is probably lower. The Syrian government sells passports and birth certificates at affordable prices. The vast majority of migrants come from other countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Nigeria.
Many do not seem to have left in a hurry. Many bring new high-end smartphones and large sums of cash, ten or twenty thousand euros, sometimes more. Many have no passports, no ID, and refuse to give fingerprints.
Whenever people flee to survive, the men come with whole families: women, children, elders. Here, instead, more than 75% of those who arrive are men under 50; few are women, children or elders.
As Christians are now the main targets of Islamists (the Jews fled or were forced out decades ago), the people escaping the war in Syria should be largely composed of Christians. But Christians are a small minority among those who arrive, and they often hide that they are Christians.
Those who enter Europe are almost all Muslims, and behave as some Muslims often do in the Muslim world: they harass Christians and attack women. In reception centers, harassing Christians and attacking women are workaday incidents. European women and girls who live near reception centers are advised to take care and cover up. Rapes, assaults, stabbings and other crimes are on the rise.
Western European political leaders could tell the truth and act accordingly. They do not. They talk of "solidarity," "humanitarian duty," "compassion." From the beginning, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that illegal migrants were welcome: she seemed to change her mind for a moment, but quickly slid back. In France, President François Hollande says the same things as Angela Merkel.
After the heartbreaking image of a dead child being carried on a Turkish beach was published, thousands of Germans and French initially spoke the same way as their leaders. Their enthusiasm seems to have faded fast.
The people of Central Europe were not enthusiastic from the beginning. Their leaders seem to share the feelings of their populations. None spoke as explicitly as Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. He said out loud what many of his countrymen seemed to think. He spoke of "invasion" and asked if there were another word to describe the massive and often brutal entry into a country of people who have not been invited to do so. He added that a country has the right to decide who is allowed to enter its territory and to guard its borders. He stressed that those who enter Europe are from a "different culture," and suggested that Islam might not be compatible with European Judeo-Christian values.
Western European political leaders harshly condemned his remarks and the attitude of Central Europe in general. They decided to take a hard line approach, including: forcing recalcitrant countries to welcome immigrants, setting up mandatory quotas that define how many immigrants each EU country must receive, and threatening those countries that declined to obey. Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, said that Europe was built in a spirit of "burden sharing," and that EU breakup was a risk that could not be excluded.
An acute division, in fact, is emerging between the leaders of Western Europe and the leaders of Central Europe. Another division is growing between the populations of Western Europe and their leaders.
Those who rebuilt Europe after World War II thought that an enlightened elite (themselves) could make a clean sweep of the past and build a dream society where peace and perpetual harmony would reign.
Because they thought democracy had brought Hitler to power, they decided to restrict democracy.[1] Because they thought nationalism was the cause of the war, they decreed that nationalism was harmful and that the cultural identities in Europe had to disappear and be replaced by a new "European identity" that they would shape.[2]
Because Europe had a colonialist past and Europeans had believed in the superiority of their cultures, they claimed that Europe should redeem its guilt and affirm that all cultures were equal. And because Islam was at the heart of the culture of people formerly colonized, the Europeans rejected all criticism of Islam, and said that it would blend smoothly into a multicultural Europe. They did not demand the assimilation of Muslims who came to live in Europe in increasing number.
Because the Europeans thought poverty had led to the rise of Nazism, they built welfare states that were supposed to eliminate poverty forever.
Because two world wars had started in Europe, the Europeans decreed that from now on, Europe would renounce the use of force, and solve all conflicts through diplomacy and appeasement.[3]
We now see the results.
European people still have the right to vote, but are deprived of most of their power: all important political decisions in Europe are made behind closed doors, by technocrats and professional politicians, in Brussels or Strasbourg.
Cultural identities in Europe have been eroded to such a point that saying that Europe is based on Judeo-Christian values has become controversial.
Any criticism of Islam in Europe is treated as a form of racism, and "Islamophobia" is considered a crime or a sign of mental illness.
Islam has not melted into a smooth multiculturalism; it is creating increasingly distressing problems that are almost never brought to light.
Muslim criminality across Europe is high. Consequently, the percentage of Muslims in prisons in Europe is high. In France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, the prison population is 70% Muslim. Many European prisons have become recruitment centers for future jihadis.
Muslim riots may occur for any reason : police upholding the law, a Soccer League celebration or in support of a cause.
Welfare states have created a government-dependent class in Europe of many people who live permanently on social benefits. These people are often Muslim. Much of the time, they are not assimilated – and often show signs of not wanting to assimilate. Many reside in virtually autonomous, so-called no-go zones (e.g. France, the UK, and Germany).
Europe has renounced force; to many, it therefore appears weak, vulnerable and easily able to be overpowered.
Populations of Western Europe increasingly think that the dream society that had been promised has turned into a nightmare. The sudden and often brutal arrival of hundreds of thousands more Muslims most likely prompts Europeans to think the nightmare will get worse. They see, powerlessly, that their leaders speak and act as if they have no awareness of what is happening.
Central European leaders and their people, who have directly experienced authoritarian rule, seem to be thinking that entering the European Union was a huge mistake. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they became members of the EU to join what was called then the "free world." They do not seem willing to be subjected again to coercive decisions made by outsiders.
After living under the Soviet yoke, they preserved their desire for freedom and self-government, and evidently will not now agree to give them up. They know what submission to Islam could mean. Bulgaria and Romania were occupied by the Ottoman Empire until 1878. Hungary was under the boot of Ottoman rule for more than a hundred and fifty years (1541-1699).
Polls show that a majority of Muslims living in Europe want the application of sharia law and clearly reject any idea of assimilation.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in Europe have joined fundamentalist Islamic organizations. Thousands have joined jihadist movements and are now fighting in Syria or Yemen. Many have returned and are ready to act against Europe.
Illegal Muslim migrants are likely to join the Muslims already living in Europe; and they will remain Muslim. They will live on social benefits until the bankruptcy of welfare states. They will reside in the "no-go zones," and the "no-go zones" will continue to grow. Their occupants come from countries where Christians and women are mistreated; in Europe, they are already mistreating Christians and women.
They come from countries where Western civilization is despised and where hatred of Jews is inescapable -- and this remains so among Muslims already living in Europe. For more than two decades, almost all assaults against Jews in Europe were committed by Muslims.
Many of those who arrive, according to European intelligence sources, are already radicalized.
A project to overwhelm Europe by a huge wave of migration was already described by the Islamic State in documents discovered this February. It is hard to rule out that the Islamic State plays a role in what is happening. Turkish authorities are ignoring the massive departures taking place from their coast. If they really wanted the current process to stop, they could stop it. That is clearly not what they do. The Islamic State could not survive without Turkish help. Daily flights on Turkish Airlines bring illegal migrants to Istanbul; they continue unhindered to Europe. The Russians, in their military intervention in Syria, similarly does not seem interested in stopping what is occurring.
Angela Merkel said in Strasbourg, on October 7, that migrants entering Europe today are attracted to Europe, for the reasons Europeans migrants who arrived in America a century ago were attracted to America: to "realize a dream," presumably of opportunity.
In all 28 countries of the European Union, birth rates are low and the population is aging. People under thirty account for only 16% of the population, or 80 million people. In the 22 Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran, people under thirty account for 70% of the population, or 350 million people.
Jews are fleeing Europe in increasing numbers. "Native" Europeans are starting to flee as well.
In 1972, in his book "The Camp of the Saints," French writer Jean Raspail described flooding Europe with Muslim migrants crossing the Mediterranean. At the time, the book was a work of fiction. Today, it is reality.
Out with the old, in with the new... European officials estimate that 1.5 million migrants, mostly Muslims, will arrive in the European Union this year. Jews are fleeing Europe in increasing numbers. "Native" Europeans are starting to flee as well.
[1] Christopher Booker, Richard North, The Great Deception, The Secret History of the European Union, Bloomsbury Academic, 2005.
[2] Neil Fligstein, Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe, Oxford University Press, 2009.
[3] Wolfram Kaiser, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
© 2015 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Turkey vs. Free Press
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute/October 22/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6742/turke-free-press
"What I'm going through can face all journalists out there. They can use laws to put you in prison just for mentioning the word 'PKK' in your news story. They take this as 'praising the terrorist organization.'" -- Ocak Isik Yurtcu, former editor of Ozgur Gudem. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"We expose their war crimes; and they respond by blocking us." -- Ramazan Pekgoz, editor, Dicle News Agency.
Of the 580 issues of Ozgur Gundem, criminal cases were opened in relation to 486 of them. Its editors-in-chief were sentenced to a total of 147 years in prison.
One cannot help asking: Why does Turkey try to destroy free speech that much? What is it that all those Turkish governments have been trying to hide?
"These bans take place because the state does not want the incidents in Kurdistan to be exposed." -- Eren Keskin, editor-in-chief and lawyer for Ozgur Gundem.
In 103 years in Turkey, 112 journalists and writers have been murdered, mostly Armenians and Kurds. -- The Platform of Solidarity with Arrested Journalists (TGDP)
Ever since clashes between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) intensified in late July, the pressure of the government against the Kurdish media, including bans on Kurdish news outlets as well as psychical violence against journalists, have become increasingly widespread.
On October 4, for instance, Turkish police in the Kurdish province of Diyarbakir detained two Kurdish journalists: Murat Demir of Ozgur Gun TV (Free Day TV) and Serhat Yuce of Dicle News Agency. The police seized their cameras and equipment. A police officer put a gun to Yuce's head and took both into custody. The journalists were released after five hours, but fined for "violating the curfew" imposed on the town.
On October 6, Turkish police abducted Filiz Zeyrek, a female journalist working for the Kurdish JINHA (Women's News Agency), in the southern province of Adana and drove her around for half an hour while interrogating and photographing her. The police then released her at a park.
Earlier, on September 28, Turkish police armed with assault rifles raided the offices of the Dicle News Agency (DIHA), the newspaper Azadiya Welat (Freedom of the Country), Aram Publishing House and the Kurdi-Der (Kurdish Language Association) in Diyarbakir, and arrested 32 journalists. The police seized their ID cards and phones, and eventually took the journalists to police headquarters. One of the reporters, Dicle Muftuoglu, said the police broke down the door, did not show a search warrant and did not allow the journalists to call their lawyers. The journalists were released late at night.
In the meantime, since late July, more than 100 pro-Kurdish websites have been totally blocked -- including Dicle News Agency, Ozgur Gundem newspaper, Firat News Agency, Hawar News Agency and RojNews.
This month, the website of another Kurdish news agency, JINHA (Women's News Agency), which focuses on women's rights issues in Kurdistan and the Middle East, has also been blocked by Turkey's Presidency of Telecommunication (TIB).
Turkish authorities claim that most of the sites have been banned because "they are close to the PKK or support terror acts," according to the newspaper Hurriyet.
"Security institutions make demands. And action is taken according to these demands. ... The bans start at the direction of the security institutions. These institutions report the sites they have chosen to the Presidency of Telecommunication (TIB). First, a decision of administrative closure of those sites is made; then, in 24 hours, the decision is presented to the court for its approval."
The authorities say that, "the security institutions specify the sites used by terror organizations and the sites that praise or propagate terror acts. Then based upon this specification, the administrative process gets started."
Last month, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) ceased broadcasting all of the TV channels on Digi Medya 1 and 2, as well as Guc Medya 1 and 2 satellite providers.
Fourteen of these are pro-Kurdish TV channels – including Ozgur Gun TV (Free Day TV.)
RTUK claims that it has ceased broadcasting the channels because "they have not complied with the right of publication." However, the editors of some of the blocked Kurdish sites told Gatestone Institute that they do not agree with the excuses of the state authorities.
Faysal Dagli, chief editor of BasNews, said:
"The banned outlets are either Kurdish language sites that have ties with Kurdistan, or that are dissident, and might cover incidents the government does not want the public to hear about. In this current phase, when a cycle of violence has been restarted, these kinds of operations by the state are a familiar method of dimming facts that refer to the state. The government controls such phases through its own media. What matters to them is to restrict the influence of the dissident or 'uncontrollable media' at times when unexpected events are taking place, or else to prevent news from coming out of Kurdistan. The Turkish army's recent bombardment of the Kurdish village of Zargala in Qandil reveals this purpose."[1]
Ramazan Pekgoz, editor of Dicle News Agency, said:
"Since July 24, our four web addresses have been blocked. When we expose what is really going on, we are subjected to attacks and censorship. Before the ban, we covered an incident in which Kurdish workers were tortured by a Turkish police officer in Yuksekova. In 2011, our reporters were the first to cover the Roboski massacre. We also covered the Kurdish extrajudicial murders and massacres in 1990s. But every time the war in the region intensifies, they ban us...This has been the state mentality for years. In 1990s, they murdered our colleagues. They bombed our offices, and closed down the papers that worked with us. Today, they block our web content. We expose their war crimes; and they respond by blocking us."
Erkan Capraz, chief editor of Yuksekova News, said:
"Whatever happens in Kurdish cities, we report them in accordance with journalistic ethics. So we are shocked that we are faced with such a censorship. We already knew that journalists in Turkey are not free and there are restrictions to the freedom of expression. We have been brought to court several times. We somewhat understand these trials and investigations. Sometimes a prosecutor or a citizen is disturbed by some news reports and makes a complaint about that outlet and an investigation is opened against the reporter or the editor. But before that ban, there have been no complaints or complainants against us. The Turkish prime ministry has sent a list to the Presidency of Telecommunication (TIB) based on an intelligence report and wanted it to close down the websites in that list. I do not think there could be such a practice in any country other than Iran.
"But it is so wrong to deprive our hundreds of thousands readers from our outlet. This is a disgrace to the freedom of expression and of the press. Our readers ask us why we have been blocked. There is only one explanation we can make to them: 'We have exposed the truth.' Turkey is committing a huge crime by blocking our outlet now. We will continue our legal struggle. If necessary, we will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. This lawlessness should be exposed to the entire world."
The ban on the Yuksekova News website was removed on October 20 -- after 87 days.
Mehmet Oguz, chief editor of the Turkish page of Rudaw, noted:
"In recent weeks, there have been new events in Turkey such as the war between the PKK and the Turkish army and Turkey's participation in the global coalition against ISIS. And after these developments, house raids and arrests of Kurds are on the rise. What attracts my attention is that the 'new Turkey' (the term Erdogan uses to define Turkey under his rule) is acting with its old reflexes. In times of crises, censorship is the first thing they think of. They did so in 1990s as well.
"The Turkish mainstream media outlets use the same language against Kurds and have taken the stance of a Turkish 'commando'...
"As the Kurdish media has been banned, all these things incidents make us ask: Is there something that is going on secretly?"
Apparently, pressures, prohibitions against media and even murders of journalists have been a state tradition.
The Platform of Solidarity with Arrested Journalists (TGDP) reported that in 103 years in Turkey, 112 journalists and writers have been murdered. The TGDP notes that most of the murdered journalists were Armenians or Kurds.
The Armenian journalists were massacred mostly during the 1915 Armenian Genocide; Kurdish journalists were massacred mostly between 1990 and 1994. (See the list of TGDP.)
Armenian intellectuals -- including journalists, editors, writers or publicists -- were also slain during the deportation campaign of the Armenian Genocide. On April 24, 1915, they were arrested in Constantinople (Istanbul). Some of them died on the way to their exile, others died after reaching it.
The last Armenian journalist murdered in Turkey was Hrant Dink, known for his advocacy of human rights and minority rights in Turkey. As editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Dink had written and spoken about the Armenian Genocide and had been under prosecution for violating Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code -- making it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions -- and "denigrating Turkishness." Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007.
One of the main targets of the Turkish state has been Ozgur Gundem, particularly known for its extensive coverage of Kurdish matters and the conflicts between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party).
Since Ozgur Gundem was founded on May 30, 1992, "authorities led a concerted campaign of arrests, bans and trials against Ozgur Gundem, eventually forcing the paper to close in April 1994," according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. "In addition to the legal harassment, journalists at the paper were frequent targets of violent reprisal by unidentified assailants."
During that period, Turkey held more journalists in prison than any other country. In 1992, 14 journalists and two newspaper distributors were murdered.
And in 1993, nine journalists and 13 distributors were murdered.
In 1994, seven journalists and two distributors were murdered.
Of Ozgur Gundem's 580 issues, criminal cases were opened in relation to 486 of them, and its editors in chief were sentenced to a total of 147 years in prison.
Ocak Isik Yurtcu, one of the former editors-in-chief of the paper, became the symbol of the pressures against the Kurdish press. The sentence against Yurtcu amounted to 15 years' imprisonment.
While serving his sentence in prison, Yurtcu said in an interview:
"My problem is not unique. ... What I'm going through can face all journalists out there. They can use laws to put you in prison just for mentioning the word 'PKK' in your news story. They take this as 'praising the terrorist organization.' How can you write about the Southeast without mentioning the PKK?"
After Ozgur Gundem was banned, the paper often changed its name in order to be able to continue the publication, but courts kept on issuing bans on publishing papers that followed the same line as Ozgur Gundem.
The successors of Ozgur Gundem were also victims of attacks: On 3 December 3, 1994, three bombs hit the printing facilities of Ozgur Ulke, one of the successors of the paper, and its offices in Istanbul and Ankara. One member of staff was killed and 23 injured.
Today, the website of Ozgur Gundem has been blocked in Turkey.
Eren Keskin, one of the chief editors of Ozgur Gundem and a human rights lawyer, told Gatestone Institute:
"I oppose it when these pressures against the Kurdish media are [depicted as being] restricted to the rule of Tayyip Erdogan. This did not start with Erdogan or the AKP. Ever since the Turkish Republic was established, the Kurdish media has been under pressure. I was the lawyer of Ozgur Gundem for years. So these unjust practices should not be evaluated by just looking at what is happening today. The state ideology towards the Kurdish people, Kurdish political movement and Kurdish media has never changed. And these bans take place because the state does not want the incidents in Kurdistan to be exposed. This has been the state policy for decades; it is nothing new."
Abdurrahim Boynukalin (center of left image), a Turkish Member of Parliament from the ruling AKP Party, leads a mob in front of the offices of Hurriyet newspaper, September 6, 2015. At right, the shattered windows of the building's lobby, after the mob hurled stones.
Ever since the Turkish state was founded in 1923, Turkey has never had freedom of the press.
The first government ruled by the Republican People's Party (CHP) -- through its Law on the Maintenance of Order enacted in 1925 and the Press Law in 1931 -- closed down or censored many newspapers with various political inclinations, arrested many journalists and banned many foreign newspapers and magazines from entering Turkey. The Law on the Maintenance of Order gave the government the "right" to close down newspapers.
The minister of interior then, Sukru Kaya, described the "press policy" of the government: "The press is to comply with the political regime of the place where it is based. Just as every regime seeks for a type of citizen suitable for itself; it also seeks for a type of press suitable for itself."
During the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's first president, at least 130 newspapers, magazines and books were banned. During the rule of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes (1950-1960, from the Democrat Party), 161 were banned.[2]
"It is not enough to say that there was no freedom of the press in that [one-party] era," wrote the historian, Professor Mete Tuncay. "In the Ottoman autocracy, too, the press was not able to write what the government did not want. In the one party era [during the CHP administration of republican Turkey], however, the press could write only what the government wanted it to write."[3]
The Greek-language media has also become almost extinct in Turkey.
During the government-instigated attacks against the Greek Christians of Istanbul in 1955, Muslim Turks in the city attacked everything owned by Greeks -- their homes, offices, businesses, cemeteries, churches, and schools, among other things. And the Greek-language press of Istanbul was no exception.
"The offices and printing presses of eight newspapers were destroyed," wrote the author Speros Vryonis Jr. "All three principal dailies, the Apoyevmatini, the Tachydromos, and the Embros suffered heavy losses. The first two had both their offices and printing establishments completely wrecked. In the case of the Embros only its offices were destroyed since it had no printing press of its own."
Due to many aggressive and discriminatory state policies against Greek Christians -- including the 1955 attacks and the 1964 expulsions of Greeks from Turkey, the Greek population of Istanbul and Anatolia has dropped tremendously.
Today, Apoyevmatini, Turkey's only Greek-language newspaper, faces closure. Mihail Vasiliadis, its editor-in-chief, said there were about 120,000 Greeks in Istanbul during the 1930s and 1940s, at which time the newspaper had a circulation of 35,000. But today, there are only 605 Greek families in the city, and 600 of those are Apoyevmatini subscribers. Vasiliadis explained that he has had difficulty even covering rent payments.
For decades, it seems that Turkish state authorities have tried to silence all dissident voices in the media -- particularly Kurdish, Greek and Armenian journalists. One cannot help asking: Why does Turkey try so hard to destroy free speech? What is it that all those Turkish governments have been trying to hide?
**Uzay Bulut, is a Turkish journalist, born and raised a Muslim, and based in Ankara.
[1] The website of Basnews was among the outlets banned on July 25, but the ban was removed on August 10 after the court ruling was adjudicated.
[2] "Censor During the Republican Era (1923- 1973)", by Mustafa Yilmaz and Yasemin Doganer, Siyasal Kitabevi, 2007.
[3] "The Establishment of the One Party Rule in Turkish Republic (1923-1931)", by Mete Tuncay, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları (History Foundation Publications), 2000.

Dividing Jerusalem? Repercussions of the Latest Violence
David Makovsky/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
Poll results and political statements offer ample insight into how Israelis and Palestinians view the city's future, but public concerns about violence would be the most likely driver of any concrete change on the ground, such as rerouting the security barrier.
Amid the wave of stabbing attacks largely emanating from Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have set up checkpoints at the entry to many of those districts. They have also erected concrete dividers along the border of the southern neighborhoods of Jabal Mukaber and Zur Bacher, which abut the Jewish district of East Talpiot. Additionally, there are plans to erect a barrier between Isawiyah and the French Hill neighborhood. The question is whether these dividers will be removed once the crisis abates, or whether they are a precursor to Israel moving its security barrier away from the municipal boundary dividing East Jerusalem from the West Bank, rerouting it through certain eastern neighborhoods.
Much of the recent violence emerged after unsubstantiated allegations that Israel was about to change the status quo procedures on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, an area that is holy to Muslims and Jews but used exclusively for Muslim prayer based around al-Aqsa Mosque. A growing number of Israeli Knesset members have made personal visits to the area amid right-wing complaints that Jews were barred from praying there. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu subsequently demanded that they stop, and he continues to insist that the government has not made any moves toward altering the status quo. Yet Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who normally supports nonviolence, urged his people to "defend the mosque," telling a Palestinian television audience on September 10 that he welcomed "every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem." Netanyahu has since charged Abbas with "incitement."
BACKGROUND
After the 1967 war, Israel gerrymandered twenty-eight Palestinian villages into a reconstituted Jerusalem that was triple the size of the city's prewar configuration; the gerrymandered areas are now politically designated as East Jerusalem. With this move, the city's total municipal area expanded from 14.7 square miles to 41.7. Israel then annexed the entire city and gave Palestinians who lived there residency permits allowing them to access all Jerusalem neighborhoods -- a right not accorded to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Afterward, Israeli politicians on the right and left pledged never to divide Jerusalem. Yet in the minds of most Israeli Jews, this principle largely meant retaining control of the Old City (home to vital religious areas such as the Western Wall and adjacent Temple Mount) as well as Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Today, about 40 percent of Jerusalem Jews live in eastern districts taken in 1967. In terms of geography, the largest Jewish neighborhoods (e.g., Ramot and Gilo) are located in northern and southern Jerusalem.
ISRAELI ATTITUDES
An October 14 poll commissioned by Maariv newspaper illustrated how Jewish residents view Jerusalem, painting a more complex picture than simply maintaining Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. When asked about the fate of Palestinian neighborhoods, 66 percent of Jewish respondents said that they should not be part of Israeli Jerusalem. Such sentiments echo past declarations by Israeli officials on both sides of the aisle. For example, former prime minister Ehud Barak defended the Jerusalem concessions he made at the 2000 Camp David summit by noting that when Jews prayed for the city's restoration during two millennia of exile, they were not praying for the Arab neighborhood of Shuafat. And right-wing parliamentarian Avigdor Liberman has repeatedly declared that Israel's demographic balance would be better off if it did not incorporate Palestinian neighborhoods.
When Israel built the first sections of the West Bank security barrier in 2003, the walls in the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Kafr Akeb and Qalandiya were erected inside the city's municipal boundary. This did not create significant public outcry among Israelis because they typically did not visit these Palestinian areas. Yet it did create a social services vacuum, since neither the Jerusalem Municipality nor the Palestinian Authority had jurisdiction over the area.
In general, ambiguity has clouded efforts to invest civilian infrastructure in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Observers believe that Israel is holding these neighborhoods as bargaining chips for potential talks with the PA over the West Bank's final disposition. Outside the context of negotiations, Israel has been reluctant to address the idea of deploying new barriers inside rather than on the perimeter of these neighborhoods.
Yet with the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and deepening enmity between Netanyahu and Abbas, it is unclear whether final-status negotiations will ever materialize, spurring questions about whether Israel will unilaterally readjust the barrier's contours. Likud Party parliamentarian and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter has denied that the latest security measures have any political significance. Speaking with Israel Radio on October 19, he said that the new dividers between Palestinian and Israeli neighborhoods were a "security line," not an attempt to permanently partition the city.
When it comes to the West Bank security barrier, Israeli policy has been driven more by public sentiment than by politicians. In the 1990s, for example, the late Ariel Sharon had written against building such a wall, believing that it would divide the historic land of Israel. As prime minister in 2002-2003, however, he could not resist the public clamor for safety -- Israelis demanded a barrier to stop West Bank Palestinians from perpetrating suicide bombings. If the current security situation in Jerusalem deteriorates further, a similar public-led dynamic could potentially reshape Israel's barrier policy in the city's eastern neighborhoods, particularly given the poll results showing majority opposition to incorporating Palestinian districts.
PALESTINIAN ATTITUDES
It remains far from clear that East Jerusalem Palestinians want to be gerrymandered into the West Bank, whether now or as part of a future peace settlement. Some polls indicate that these residents favor East Jerusalem's higher standard of living and enjoy their open access to the rest of the city. In a mid-June survey by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, 53 percent of Palestinians in East Jerusalem said they would prefer to be citizens of Israel with equal rights (see David Pollock, "Half of Jerusalem's Palestinians Would Prefer Israeli to Palestinian Citizenship").
The new checkpoints will no doubt create frustration among Palestinians, in part by lengthening their commute times to work. This could lead some to argue that the Israeli security measures will create backlash. Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see whether those Palestinians who prefer a more open city decide to use the theoretical threat of a rerouted Jerusalem security barrier as a lever against those perpetrating violence.
CONCLUSION
In the absence of peace negotiations due to the complete impasse between Netanyahu and Abbas, the Jerusalem stabbing attacks could reshape public attitudes to the point of forcing political consequences. It is safe to say that any such public-led process would be driven more by the people's measure of their security needs than by vague formulations of a unified city. In reality, some parts of East Jerusalem mean much more to Israeli Jews than others.
**David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at The Washington Institute.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/dividing-jerusalem-repercussions-of-the-latest-violence

Turkey's Divisions Are So Deep They Threaten Its Future
Soner Cagaptay/Guardian/October 22/15
President Erdogan needs to focus on fighting the terrorist threat, not his political opponents.
It is highly likely that the twin bombs that killed at least 100 people in Ankara last Saturday were the work of Isis. The best Turkish and American intelligence suggests this. Yet, since the massacre, the Turkish government and the opposition have been blaming each other for being complicit in the carnage.
Isis has a strategic game here: it is aware of Turkey's deep polarisation and, by not taking responsibility for the bombing, it hopes to deepen the chasm and even provoke conflict. The country's polarisation is rooted in 13 years of rule by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP). An ultra-conservative and rightwing politician, Erdogan has produced economic growth and his successes have built a loyal, conservative voter base. Erdogan's supporters, constituting about 40% of the electorate, adore him. In December 2013, when Erdogan faced corruption allegations, his supporters started showing up at AKP rallies shrouded in kefen (the white cloth in which dead Muslims are shrouded before being buried), symbolising that they were committed to go as far as sacrificing their lives for him.
But if his supporters will die for him, his opponents hate him. This is in no small part due to the dark side of his electoral strategy, which has won him total victory until this past election. In order to maintain power, Erdogan brutalises his opponents politically: jailing dissidents and journalists, intimidating unsupportive businesses through targeted tax audits or sending police to crack down violently on peaceful opposition rallies. Erdogan's electoral strategy is based on one premise: beat up those who dissent from the AKP's conservative worldview to shore up the party's rightwing base. This tactic explains his decision in July to declare war on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), just after the Kurdish community, previously a bastion of AKP support, abandoned the party in droves in the June election. What ultimately brought the Kurds together was Erdogan's "wait and see" policy on Kobani, a Syrian-Kurdish enclave controlled by a PKK-aligned Syrian-Kurdish group, when it came under Isis attack in September last year. His refusal to intercede in the conflict to prevent the bloodshed appalled his conservative Kurdish base, driving them away from the AKP. Having abandoned Erdogan, the Kurds have become fair game for his political oppression. They now join a growing list of other groups that have suffered: liberals, leftists and Alevis (who belong to a liberal branch of Islam). However, Erdogan's oppression of the Kurds is a dangerous one: unlike other groups in the anti-Erdogan block, the PKK will fight with weapons. Previously, when most Kurds supported the AKP, Ankara only had to focus on the military aspect of fighting the PKK to win the popular battle. Now that appears unlikely. And with the inclusion of the Kurds, the anti-Erdogan block is now as powerful as the pro-Erdogan block.
The election outcome also disrupted Erdogan's plans to change the country's parliamentary democracy into a presidential one, with himself at the helm. Erdogan stepped down as Turkish prime minister in August 2014 due to an AKP statute which limits elected office to party officials to three terms, and subsequently took the post of presidency. Although the Turkish constitution says that the prime minister is head of government and the president, a non-partisan figure, is head of state, Erdogan has been running the government and the AKP from behind the scenes. In July, he intervened in coalition talks between the AKP and the main opposition party, Republican Peoples Party (CHP), leading to their collapse. And he had the final say in determining party leadership at the AKP's convention last month. Accordingly, a third of the AKP's new 50-seat central governing board, which will take the AKP into elections on 1 November, has close personal or business ties to Erdogan. Polls indicate that snap elections would not change much in the parliament or for Erdogan. Political polarisation trumps all other concerns and few people in the pro- and anti-AKP camps are likely to change their minds. This leaves Turkey with no functioning government, potentially violent political conflict and two -- to put it mildly -- bad neighbours, namely the Assad regime and Isis.
Turkey can avoid a bleak future. Given the country's deep divisions, the only way out is for Erdogan to return to the powers defined for his office by the Turkish constitution: a non-partisan president who is not in charge of government. There is no evidence that Erdogan will accept this or that doing so would heal the damage he's done, especially when it comes to Syria. Turkey will remain exposed to the civil war there and Russian intervention in favour of the Assad regime will further complicate its position. Three of the four most deadly terror attacks in Turkey's history have taken place in the last two years -- killing at least 185 Turkish citizens -- and all three are due to the fallout from the Syrian war (one linked to the Assad regime, two to Isis).
In this regard, I am deeply worried by the Isis threat. When Turkey joined the US coalition against Isis in August, the question became not if, but when, Isis would attack. What compounds the problem is that Turkey also faces an Isis problem from within. The Ankara bombings were carried out, it seems, by Turkish citizens who had gone into Syria to fight for Isis and become radicalised, only to return to Turkey to take part in suicide bombings against fellow citizens. In Ankara, Isis specifically targeted an anti-government peace rally, organised by various leftist groups, similar to the July attack in Suruc, a Turkish town on the border with Syria, when it bombed a pro-Kurdish anti-government rally, killing 33 people. Following the Suruc bombing, the PKK blamed the Turkish government for the attack and executed off-duty police officers in retribution, ending a two-year ceasefire with Ankara. With this attack, Isis was able to end the peace talks between the government and the PKK, as well as starting the Turkish-Kurdish war. Isis intentionally targets opposition rallies in Turkey to give the impression that the government will not protect those Turks who are against Erdogan, serving its goal of destabilising the country. With the Ankara bombing, Isis seems intent on triggering conflict between the pro- and anti-Erdogan camps that are already distrustful of each other. If such a conflict starts (and I hope that I am wrong), Turkey will split in the middle, and all citizens will lose, including the Kurds, liberals, leftists, conservatives and Erdogan himself. Turkey would be well served to unite against Isis now.
**Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turkeys-divisions-are-so-deep-they-threaten-its-future

Netanyahu on the Holocaust - How desperate can he get?
Chris Doyle/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
Why now? Why at this dangerous moment of acute Israeli-Palestinian tension did Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, chose to revise the most sensitive moment in history, to place a Palestinian, as the central instigator of the vilest industrial bloodletting in human history. In a speech to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu claimed that in 1941, the then Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin Al-Husseini "flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, "If you expel them, they'll all come here." "So what should I do with them?" he asked. He said, "Burn them." For sure the Mufti was deeply anti-Jewish. He had long lost his standing among most Palestinians by the time he started embedding himself with the Axis powers. Yet in the minutes of the Mufti’s one and only meeting with Hitler in November 1941 (months after plans for the final solution were already in place), there was no mention of killing all the Jews. World famous holocaust historians such as Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University, have trashed the idea as historically inaccurate.
This Holocaust revisionism by Netanyahu is arguably even Holocaust denial, by asserting that Hitler actually only wanted to deport Jews but the Mufti persuaded him otherwise. For such a savvy, sharp and experienced media operator, fully aware of Jewish history and suffering, could this be accidental? Not for a second. The message - the Mufti, the embodiment in this view of all Palestinians, was in effect worse than Hitler. Netanyahu is arguing effectively that Hitler was a reluctant Jew killer who needed a Palestinian to plant the seeds of this in his head. It is also as many have argued a disgraceful abuse of the Holocaust for clear political purposes.
Historic responsibility
Netanyahu was forced into what was not a retraction at all or even an apology, but more of an explanation. Bibi has rarely ever admitted he was wrong about anything so he claimed that he “didn't mean to absolve Hitler of responsibility but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation wanted to destroy the Jews even without territories, without occupation, and without settlements.” Somehow the Mufti has been promoted to the “Father of the Palestinian nation”, a novel title for sure. But note - Netanyahu did refer to a Palestinian nation, a first as far as I can recall. The German reaction shows just how breathtaking Bibi’s comments were. A spokesperson for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was compelled to confirm "We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.” Yes, Germany officially had to remind an Israeli Prime Minister that Germany has the historic responsibility for this genocide. Netanyahu was attempting to push the narrative that Palestinians are historically anti-Jewish and that incitement is not a recent issue but one that preceded the state of Israel and certainly the occupation of 1967. In other words, he wants to challenge the idea that incitement is not a product of 48 years of occupation but in fact the cause of occupation and conflict.For such a savvy, sharp and experienced media operator, fully aware of Jewish history and suffering, could this be accidental? Not for a second. This was a set piece speech.
Selling a line
Ultimately, this like the whole issue of incitement itself is a massive distraction and clearly Netanyahu wants to divert everyone from the core issues. From the outset Netanyahu, his ministers and associated hasbaristas have tried to sell the line that the current escalation of violence is all due to Palestinian incitement and that it was Mahmoud Abbas the Palestinian Prime Minister who was the arch culprit. And just to add another example of abusing the Holocaust for political ends, the Israeli Energy Minister claimed that “the level and intensity of the incitement and the level of anti-Semitism is the same level as Hitler.” And yes there has been inexcusable anti-Jewish statements and literature (above all from Hamas sources) as there have been unacceptable anti-Palestinian statements even by Israeli ministers. Step forward the first spoiler to this - the Israeli internal security service no less. Shin Bet made clear that Abbas had not been inciting violence and “is even instructing his security forces to prevent terror attacks as much as possible."Undeterred Israeli ministers continued as if this had not been said. The trouble is that this incitement argument simply did not get any traction internationally and for good reason. International agencies, human right groups and the United Nations for more than two years have warned that Israel had escalated its use of lethal force, increased the humble of home demolitions and expanded settlements at a phenomenal rate. The U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry said that this was due to the settlements issue.Actually the settlements issue is just one part of the issue but John Kerry cannot say that. He cannot even utter the word for fear of the outcry. It is of course - occupation. Across the West Bank the occupation has intensified, more lands and water have been taken from the Palestinians. And like nearly every foreign occupation in history, it engenders and triggers a violent reaction.
Stabbing of Israeli civilians is wrong. Period. Yet Netanyahu wants the world to believe that this is all due to Palestinian incitement. The reality is that the young Palestinians of the post-Oslo generation no longer listen to any Palestinian leader not least the octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas. He could not incite them to get out of bed let alone throw stones.For both Palestinians and Israelis what has incited anger has not been words, it has been actions. Israelis are furious with the stabbings, as they are with the rocket attacks on their cities and towns and in the past, the suicide bombings. This is understandable. What has incited Palestinians amongst many things is the occupation, including the attacks on them, the disproportionate bombing and blockade of Gaza, the mass arrests, the night raids and the daily denial of their rights and freedoms. Netanyahu did not convince the world over the last month that incitement was the key, so his reaction is to scream louder and stretch the boundaries of credibility even further. It shows how desperate he is. He has no definable strategy to end the stabbings and restore any measure of calm even if he wanted to. It has all the hallmarks of another leader stuck in his ivory tower for too long - he is Israel’s second longest serving Prime Minister. He is so overconfident in his oratorical ability to persuade he believed that he could turn Congress against the Iran deal and now sell a revision of the Holocaust to the world and even the Jewish people. But speeches are not strategy and Netanyahu has nothing to fall back on. For its own sake, Israel needs new leadership as well as a new course.

Netanyahu needs a Holocaust history lesson
Abdallah Schleifer/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
Well, we all got it wrong. Millions of us. Turns out, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem this week, it was a Palestinian, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who “gave Hitler the idea of exterminating Europe’s Jews.”
Haj Amin al-Husseini, in flight from the British for his role in the 1936 Arab Revolt in Palestine, eventually ended up taking refuge in Nazi Germany and broadcasting on Radio Berlin. Haj Amin al-Husseini had only one meeting with Hitler in November 1941, and according to Netanyahu until that meeting Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews; he only wanted to expel them. It was Haj Amin al-Husseini, according to Netanyahu, who persuaded Hitler to kill them instead. I believe this is unmitigated nonsense. Back in 1939, with Germany poised to invade Poland, Hitler warned France that if they declared war against Germany, at what Hitler described as the instigation of world Jewry, “the result would be the destruction of the Jewish race.” So more than two years before Hitler met the Mufti, the “Final Solution” was on the table.
Netanyahu, according to historian accounts and the documentation of the deaths, has lied.
And in the summer of 1941 – five months before the meeting with the Mufti – Germany invaded Russia and special extermination units of the elite SS Corps known as Einsatzgruppen began the mass murder of Eastern European and Russian Jews. According to Holocaust scholars, this was start of the “Final Solution” coming into motion. Within a year, the use of machine guns, rifles and pistols, the German Einsatzgruppen had reportedly killed around a million Jews, this was even before the use of poison gas chambers began. So why did Haj Amin al-Husseini meet Hitler in Berlin in 1941? According to German press reports at the time, the Mufti had tried to persuade the Nazi leader to declare his support for the creation of an Arab state. Netanyahu, according to historian accounts and the documentation of the deaths, has lied, but this time so outrageously that in an immediate reaction, Israeli historians, and opposition politicians have joined Palestinians in denouncing Netanyahu as a liar – or more politely, for engaging in “a dangerous historical distortion.”
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, in a statement described Netanyahu’s remarks as “morally indefensible and inflammatory.” Erekat said that by “blaming the Palestinians for the Holocaust “ Netanyahu had completely absolved Adolph Hitler’s heinous and reprehensible genocide of the Jewish people…the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolph Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.” Given the reaction, Netanyahu has quickly backed away from his remarks saying he wasn’t trying to absolve Hitler. But Netanyahu’s remarks were not made in a political vacuum. He was trying to deflate the obvious, increasingly-global shared insight that the 48-year-old occupation of the West Bank – and the ever increasing settlements on stolen Palestinian land, the redirection of much the West Banks’s water resources, the imprisonment of over 5,000 Palestinians – are at the very heart of the increasing violent individual attacks by young Palestinians and as if in retaliation, the increasing excessive, and often murderous force, in breaking up Palestinian protest demonstrations in the West Bank. Netanyahu is more than just implying that Palestinian leaders have always sought to incite the murder of Jews before the occupation of the West Bank, the confiscation of land and the building of settlements.
No political vacuum
As for that violence, the core of what may be a third intifada (uprising) is in Jerusalem. Predominantly young Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem have been attacking Israelis - civilians and soldiers - in what could be described as suicide knifings, since they have mostly resulted in the death of the attackers.
The attackers have no connection with Palestinian political movements, nor have any of the organizations ordered them. This is in contrast to the suicide bombings that characterized the second intifada. When Hamas decided suicide bombing was counter-productive, they came to a halt.
These attacks are spontaneous acts of despair that escalate by example. No doubt the escalation was stimulated by the increasingly aggressive Israeli intrusions into the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), a sacred walled site containing shrines, Al-Aqsa mosque, tombs and religious schools.
Those intrusions are always protected by Israeli security forces, and of late have included MPs. Israelis, like any other foreigners, can visit the Haram, but like any other non-Muslims they are not to pray there. However, Israeli religious nationalists participating in these group visits take pride in the ways they evade the status quo and discreetly pray. So the presence of Israeli MPs in these visits was so embarrassing that Netanyahu ordered them to stop. Without background, which routinely is not provided by news reports, it is probable that Westerners cannot understand why Palestinians - particularly those under occupation and annexation - are so fearful of Israeli intentions, as the organized intrusions have become larger in recent years. This generation shares a reasonable conviction that Israeli governments have taken step after step to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Putin holds Assad in one hand, a Syria political bargain in another
Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
At the first glance, Russia’s Vladimir Putin receiving Syria’s embattled President Bashar Al-Assad in Moscow looks no more than an act of defiance to legitimize his regime’s rule. But scratching deeper into the Kremlin’s double-thronged strategy in Syria, the move meets its objectives of boosting Assad while seeking to become the main interlocutor for a political solution to the conflict. As Russia intensifies its air strikes in Syria backed by pro-Iranian militias on the ground, its tactical game in the long run is to distinguish itself from Iran on the negotiating table and emerge as a geopolitical force in orchestrating a settlement. Putin’s strategy is in seeking to make major advances for the Assad regime in the short run, while also attempting to assure key players in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) who see Iran and not Russia as the main threat in Syria, and whose role is critical to any long term settlement.
Holding Assad’s hand
While it’s morally bankrupt, Putin’s bet has not changed in the last four years in Syria. His political and logistical support has gone from day one of the crisis to the Assad regime despite the massacres, the destruction and mass exodus of Syrians out of their country. The Assad regime after all is Moscow’s historic ally who shares its fears of democratization in the Middle East, of an increased U.S. role and of the rise of Islamists. In Syria, Putin is assuring the GCC by the simple fact that he is not Iran and that his objective is preserving the regime and Russia's interests (not Tehran's).
In that sense, Assad’s visit to Moscow Tuesday on his first foreign trip since 2011 is a testimony to the close political and military relations between his regime and the Kremlin. The visit also serves as a message of mutual reaffirmation of legitimacy, from Assad to Russia regarding its military campaign, and from Putin to Syria’s embattled leader on his political standing.
But Moscow’s meeting was not just about trading legitimacy, it was an opportunity for Putin to reemphasize, while holding Assad’s hand, the need for a political settlement. Putin referenced this phrase five times in the transcript released by the Kremlin. The Russian leader said : “On the question of a settlement in Syria, our position is that positive results in military operations will lay the base for then working out a long-term settlement based on a political process that involves all political forces, ethnic and religious groups.” Assad, on the other hand, did not speak about a “political settlement” but that “any military action must be followed by political steps.” For Russia, introducing a political settlement is key to avoid getting dragged into a military quagmire in Syria similar to its past in Afghanistan. Moscow’s calculus is in gaining the upper hand through the military operations by breaking the more moderate opposition and forcing a settlement that favors its interests inside the Assad regime. Such outcome is hopeful at best, given the trajectory of the war in the last four years, and the fact that other players who stepped in to change the calculus (Hezbollah) got dragged instead into the quagmire.
Putin to GCC: I am not Iran
In attempting to become the key interlocutor for any political settlement in Syria, Putin is betting on key advantages: his leverage inside the Assad regime; the decline of U.S. role; assuring the GCC countries. It is no coincidence that Saudi King Salman was the first to hear from Putin following his meeting with Assad. Putin’s call to Salman is the second in three weeks, and follows the Sochi meetings this month with Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman and with Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces. While the GCC view on Assad is at complete odds with Russia, Gulf officials would rather negotiate with Moscow than with Iran about his fate and Syria’s. Russia’s own relations with Saudi and UAE has seen improvement following its tacit support for the war in Yemen, and its more vocal backing for Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Sisi and the military establishment in Cairo.
In Syria, Putin is assuring the GCC by the simple fact that he is not Iran and that his objective is preserving the regime and Russia’s interests (not Tehran’s). While Gulf officials see Assad as illegitimate and call for his departure, the threat of a more muscular Iran from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen is viewed in most the GCC region as the pressing priority. This message about Iranian dominance was communicated by Saudi Arabia to Assad’s right hand security aide General Ali Mamlouk last July in Jeddah, 20 days after Mohammed Bin Salman’s first visit to Russia. Whether Putin or the Syrian regime itself can peel off Iran’s dominance in Syria at this stage is a an open question. Tehran has only increased its influence since Bashar Assad assumed power in 2000 and approaching military dependency following crisis.
For the GCC, however, it sees little to no loss in testing Putin’s proposition at brokering a settlement. Coming on the heels of the Iranian nuclear deal as well, and continues unease with the Obama administration, the GCC is also diversifying its strategic relations with Russia and China, on the political and economic levels. At the same time key GCC countries are upping their support for the same rebel groups that are being targeted by Russia. In other words, the race for gaining ground leverage is defining the current phase in Syria ahead of another round of negotiations. For now, Putin’s gambit in hosting Assad while activating channels with the GCC attempts to preserve his longstanding interests in Syria, avoid a military quagmire through seeking a political bargain acceptable to key Arab states, all while establishing more clout and geopolitical influence in the Middle East.

Extremism does not emerge in a vacuum
Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya/October 22/15
The current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and reprisals has already been dismissed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as only the latest upsurge of terror the Israelis have had to contend with. Sadly, as in previous cases, this ongoing tragedy is unlikely to generate the kind of scrutiny the problem warrants. Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the plight of the Palestinians’ and the radicalization of many of its youth is treated today by many governments the world over as either an unsolvable and thus unworthy issue or a negligible, local security one. The rise of ISIS, the most threatening breed of transnational militant jihadism the region has ever witnessed, contributes to that perspective. After al-Qaeda, ISIS has brought back the focus of experts and analysts on the root causes of extremism and militant jihadism and how al-Qaeda is in many ways a precursor of ISIS. However, practically absent from most discussions on the origins of transnational jihadism is the role Palestinian refugees played in the development of that ideology. It is evident Netanyahu and his cabinet are determined to deny Palestinians their own state and at the very least turn a blind eye to settlement expansion.
Before Afghanistan
Most accounts about the rise of transnational jihadism trace it back mainly to the 1980s and the flow of jihadists (and would-be jihadists) from across the Muslim world to Afghanistan to fight the invading Soviet Union troops. The so-called Afghan Arabs were an almost insignificant reinforcement to the fearless Afghan Mujahedeen, backed logistically and financially by several governments. Although many of the Afghan Arabs never took their defensive jihad beyond that particular fight, after the conflict a few of them did shift their focus to the “infidel” governments across the Arab and Muslim worlds and their supporter, the United States. One of these jihadists was Osama Bin Laden, who founded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s. A more comprehensive reading of the origins of transnational jihadism has been provided a few years ago by Hazim Al-Amin, a Lebanese journalist, with the book Al-Salafi Al-Itim (“The Orphaned Salafist”). Rather than focusing on Afghanistan, Al-Amin’s book shows how the militant extremist ideology al-Qaeda came to embody finds its roots in the Palestinian refugee communities scattered across the Arab world. Uprooted from their homeland between 1948 and 1967 and stripped of a national identity, these refugees found in radical interpretations of Islam an inclusive transnational identity and a vehicle to take their battle beyond the borders of Palestine.
The Palestinian ideologues
It was due to Saleh Abdallah Sarryia, a Palestinian born on the outskirts of Haifa, that a militant jihadist group would first set foot in Egypt. After moving to Baghdad in 1948, where he was arrested after the group he founded reportedly targeted Iraqi Jews and sought the overthrow of the Iraqi government, he went on to Cairo. There, in his meetings with local leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sarryia often expressed his disappointment with the Brotherhood’s conciliatory position toward the Egyptian government. In 1974, Sarryia and his followers in Egypt were responsible for the failed take-over of the Egyptian Technical Military Academy located in a Cairo suburb. His manifesto, Risalat Al-Iman (Message of Faith), placed a far greater emphasis on the mission to topple infidel Arab regimes than on the liberation of Palestine.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the former emir of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and current leader of al-Qaeda, remembered hearing one of Sarryia’s sermons: “As soon as I heard the speech by this visitor I realized that his words carried weight and meaning on the need to support Islam.”The sermons and texts of another stateless Palestinian from the West Bank and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdallah Azzam, were a key influence on the volunteers joining the jihad in Afghanistan. Azzam, Bin Laden’s mentor, moved from the Palestinian military camps run by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Jordan to Saudi Arabia, where he taught in university for a year. In 1981, he applied for a position at the Islamic University in Islamabad, with the intention of being closer to the jihadists fighting the Soviets next door in Afghanistan.
In Pakistan, he established the Maktab Al-Khadamat (Services Office), tasked with welcoming the jihadists heading to Afghanistan and collecting donations coming in from Arab and Muslim countries. It was in the summer of 1984that an alleged meeting between Azzam and Bin Laden created Jihad magazine to promote the activities of the Office. Roughly a decade later, their collaboration would give birth to al-Qaeda. Another Palestinian, Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi (also known as Isam Al-Barqawi), was a scholar originally from Nablus. Maqdisi’s books and fatwas made him one of the most influential militant Salafist preachers in the Gulf. For a while in the late 1980s, he moved from Kuwait to the capital of Pakistan’s northwestern frontier province of Peshawar, where he met a young thuggish jihadist, known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After the Gulf War, Maqdisi moved to Zarqa, the city home to the largest Palestinian community in Jordan and that was gradually transforming into a center of Salafist jihadism. Both Maqdisi and Zarqawi would be arrested in Jordan and spend time in prison together, where Maqdisi became Zarqawi’s teacher.
From Zarqawi to ISIS
Originally from eastern Jordan, young Zarqawi had also spent his teenage years in the 1970s in Zarqa. Once the emir of Jordan’s Palestinian Salafist community, Zarqawi was the leader of Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, a group that would later become the Iraq-based al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. He was responsible for the brutal bombings of three hotels in Amman in 2005 and, most infamously, for a savage campaign of indiscriminate attacks in Iraq that only ended when he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2006. Zarqawi’s thirst for blood provoked tensions in his relationship with al-Qaeda’s leadership. Zarqawi’s organization would carry the title of the most brutal jihadist group that ever existed until the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq, which sprang in part from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In The Orphaned Salafist, there are many other examples of Palestinian refugees who were either pioneers in the ideology of transnational Salafist jihadism or lured into its claws in its early stages, including Abu Qatada. Another Jordanian national of Palestinian origin, Abu Qatada would become one of the most influential preachers of today’s radical Salafist ideology. It is evident Netanyahu and his cabinet are determined to deny Palestinians their own state and at the very least turn a blind eye to settlement expansion. But they should be reminded the extremism that plagues the Arab world does not emerge in a vacuum. The grievances arising from injustices such as the Palestinians’ plight are the lifeline of radical organizations, which in turn provide a cover for the brutalities committed by tyrants such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. It is a vicious circle.

How will hajj stampede impact Iran-Saudi relations?
Abbas Aslani/Al-Monitor/October 22/15
TEHRAN, Iran — When President Hassan Rouhani took office two years ago, there was some hope among Iranians that relations with Saudi Arabia could improve. But after the death of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, such hopes have faded as the new rulers in Riyadh continue to fail to show sufficient flexibility and eagerness about engagement with Iran. Indeed, things have turned out for the worse with the recent string of developments marring relations between Tehran and Riyadh. The last incident, the hajj stampede in which hundreds of Iranians were killed, caused great controversy and has deteriorated the situation. It will surely have domestic implications for both Iran and Saudi Arabia — and also internationally, as both countries seek more active and influential roles in the region.For Iran, after some time of internal debate on how to deal with the kingdom, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could now score the initiative by taking the lead on foreign policy. Indeed, if there previously were differing voices in Iran on how to behave toward the Saudis, one can now see unity between the Rouhani administration and the wider political establishment’s positions toward Riyadh. This is happening against the backdrop of ongoing serious discussions in Tehran about the quality of engagement with the West.
Until recently, figures close to the Rouhani administration, and in particular the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were seeking more engagement with the Saudis. The cornerstone of their approach was the assumption that such interaction could lessen the tensions in Iran’s relations with the Saudi royal family. This approach has been criticized at home, mostly by conservatives who argue that more engagement with the Saudis is possible in case Riyadh changes its approach toward Iran and some regional issues. Given recent developments, and above all the war in Yemen and the hajj stampede, critics of outreach to the Saudis — backed by Iranian public sentiment, which is tilted against Riyadh — now have the upper hand in Tehran. Yet, of note, those favoring better relations with Riyadh have adapted to the situation and have now modified their positions and are on the same page as their conservative rivals.
When it comes to international implications of the hajj stampede for the Iranians, one needs to take note that the lack of a strong reaction against the Saudis could result in considerable damage to Iran’s image in the region, where Tehran is seeking to gain a better position after the nuclear deal. Indeed, a soft Iranian approach over the tragedy could be interpreted as passivity, which in turn signals a weaker Iranian position in dealing with the Saudis. A country that eyes a more active role in the region cannot succeed in its endeavor if there is an impression of it not being strong enough to handle its own bilateral issues with a competitor like Saudi Arabia. However, a timely and good reaction could have the opposite effect.
In some aspects, the hajj stampede and escalated tensions with Saudi Arabia have pushed Iran’s other international concerns into a corner. One of those concerns was the question of possible Iran-US interaction on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The Iranian delegation, led by Rouhani, arrived in New York amid the stampede. The burden of dealing with the catastrophe was so great that it significantly occupied the time and energy of the Iranian delegation. Had the incident not occurred, the high-ranking Iranian diplomatic team could have focused on other issues in their meetings with international counterparts. Instead, the hajj stampede put Iran in “reaction” rather than “action” mode. Among the issues that were expected to attract media attention on the sidelines of the General Assembly was the possibility of an encounter between the Iranian and US presidents. This did not happen. However, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US President Barack Obama’s handshake in New York stirred up the atmosphere, though it was not the main focus at the time it took place in late September. Some members of the Iranian parliament engaged in fiery rhetoric against Zarif over the handshake, but preoccupation with the hajj stampede led Zarif to face a lesser intensity of criticism compared to when he went on a 15-minute stroll with his US counterpart in Switzerland in January.
For Saudi Arabia, the recent tragedies within its borders and Riyadh’s reaction to regional developments have caused controversy, meaning that the situation could worsen the power struggle within the royal family, and also the challenge of how to run the country. In terms of international consequences for the Saudi royal family, “lack of prudence” and “mismanagement” as stated by the Iranians as the root cause of the hajj stampede can to some extent hit the image of Saudis among Muslim nations. On the other hand, the Saudis have gotten more aggressive in their foreign policy after the United States ignored them in its nuclear deal with Iran. Besides, due to Washington’s policy of “leading from behind,” the Saudis are now expecting less US support in dealing with regional issues. As a result, any further radical Saudi behavior in dealing with other regional issues can deteriorate the situation. There are points where Iranians and Saudis can see the consequences of their pitiful bilateral relations. Yet, with the unity in Tehran on how to deal with Riyadh, any chance of improved Iranian relations with Saudi Arabia will depend upon a change in Saudi behavior. This could also conversely imply that any reactions from the Iranian side in case of any new action by the Saudis could be stronger. On the other hand, escalation of tension could lead to a Saudi decision to exclude Iranian pilgrims from the hajj. This could ultimately result in both countries likely finding each other mired in ever more tension and more proxy conflicts. The end result? A more volatile region.
Abbas Aslani
**Abbas Aslani is an Iranian journalist who writes on foreign policy. He is currently serving as Director General of the World and Foreign Policy Department of Tasnim News Agency. Previously he had the same position in Fars News Agency. He has also worked with or contributed to other Iranian media sources and has been covering the Iran nuclear talks for the past few years. On Twitter: @abasinfo

Egypt’s Salafist leader says he's learned from the Muslim Brotherhood's mistakes
Walaa Hussein/Al-Monitor/October 22/15
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — In a modest house, the ground floor of which has become a medical clinic serving the poor inhabitants of Alexandria’s Sidi Bishr neighborhood, Al-Monitor interviewed the deputy head of Egypt’s Salafist Call, Sheikh Yasser Borhami, who also is a physician and Salafist preacher.
Borhami’s fatwas have been received with much shock and controversy by Egyptian and Arab media outlets. On Aug. 7, he objected to the new Suez Canal investment certificates, which he declared were haram, and he issued a fatwa on Feb. 25, 2012, against standing for the national anthem or saluting the flag. He turned Egyptian public opinion against him with a purported fatwa on Dec. 14, 2013, allowing the destruction of churches. In the interview, Borhami revealed details about those fatwas, and also spoke of the lessons the Salafist organization took from the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise and fall in Egypt.
The text of the interview follows:
Al-Monitor: You were one of those who called for a yes vote on the 2014 constitution. What is your assessment of the problems related to implementing said constitution, particularly after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stated that it was drafted in good faith? Borhami: Some provisions of the constitution were too general, leading to many complications associated with their implementation, as was the case with the implementation of Articles 243 and 244 thereof, which stipulate the necessity to represent workers, farmers, youth, Christians, persons with disabilities and expatriate Egyptians on electoral lists. Political parties had great difficulties forming lists that include all these components, as the number [of seats] on the lists is 15 and the seats of the classes that ought to be represented in exceptional cases is 16. With regard to Sisi’s statement that it was drafted in good faith, my opinion is that those who drafted the constitution did not take into account that some would exploit existing constitutional loopholes to try to sabotage the political process.
By the way, the current constitution is not new, but an amended version of the 2012 constitution, as agreed upon in the road map drafted with the armed forces after the June 30 [2013] Revolution. The next parliament may need to adopt further constitutional amendments in case we find difficulties implementing the current constitution’s articles. These may include the issue of allowing the current Egyptian president a third term in office when his second term ends, without granting future presidents the same right, so as not to force such a choice upon the generations to come. Al-Monitor: How do you view the “No to Religious Parties” campaign, which has been collecting signatures with the aim of excluding you from political life?
Borhami: The steps undertaken by the campaign do not worry us at all, because the Egyptian Constitution did not prohibit the formation of religiously motivated parties, especially considering that under Article 2 of the constitution, Islam is the official religion of the Egyptian state, with Sharia being the main source of legislation. Al-Monitor: Many of your fatwas were met with objections by the imams of Al-Azhar, such as the fatwa allowing the destruction of churches. What is your opinion about that? Borhami: I am a disciple of Al-Azhar, and I never issued a fatwa allowing the destruction of churches. There exists a constitutional social contract between us and Christians, according to which we must live together. We remain committed to its implementation whether convinced or unconvinced by it. The Salafist Call has, on various occasions, encouraged peaceful coexistence with Christians in Egypt, for it protected their property and commercial establishments in Alexandria during the lawless period of 2011. We also helped repatriate Christian families who were driven out of their homes, as a result of confrontations with Muslim families.
Barring Suez Canal investment certificates is based on previous fatwas issued by Al-Azhar’s Fatwa Committee itself. We therefore requested that Islamic "sukuks" [financial certificates] be offered in parallel with bank-issued investment certificates. As for the fatwa permitting a man to abandon his wife to rapists in order to save himself, that was woefully distorted. It related to absolving from sin those incapable of defending themselves and who fled in order to preserve their own lives; it had nothing to do with abandoning wives to people of that sort. Al-Monitor: Why did the Salafist Call retract its fatwa barring the candidacy of women and Copts to parliament and go on to include a number of them on its electoral lists? Borhami: Indeed, I am not fully convinced about the participation of women and Copts. But a law was adopted in that regard and I am committed to said law. I am against standing at attention for the national anthem, for that is haram. But since a law in that regard was passed, it would be unwise for me to remain seated and face a six-month prison term under the new law. Throughout the ages, fatwas changed with the times. Some Muslim scholars, such as Imam Al-Shafi’i, recounted three different stories with regard to a single fatwa, and even the Egyptian Fatwa Committee issued fatwas prohibiting bank interest, followed by others allowing them.
Al-Monitor: How did the Salafist Call deal with the decision barring veiled women from teaching at Cairo University and Egyptian Culture Minister Hilmi al-Namnam stating that Egypt was a secular state? Do you still dream of establishing an Islamic state? Borhami: According to the president of the university, Gaber Nassar, the decision related only to material requiring verbal interaction. But we fear that this might be the beginning of a return to the persecution of veiled women, in contravention of the constitution that guaranteed personal rights and the rights of women. Unfortunately, bearded men and veiled women have suffered from persecution in Egypt, which we hope will not be repeated. With regard to the culture minister, we requested that the president intervene to dismiss him because he violated the constitution, with our stipulating that Egypt is a Muslim state. Implementing that in reality is not a dream but a duty, and the 2014 constitution contains provisions requiring the amendment of any legislation that violates Sharia.
Al-Monitor: Will the Salafist Nour Party compete for a majority in the next parliament? What lessons have been learned from the experience of the Brotherhood?
Borhami: We have learned a lot from the Brotherhood experiment, and are participating with two electoral lists comprised of a total of 220 candidates. Some expect us not to win more than 11% of the seats, but I expect us to gain 15% to 20%, which does not bother us since that is in line with the normal growth rate of a 4-year-old party. Furthermore, we are not qualified to assume the reins of power. In addition, the party has no intention of forming a Cabinet, and the utmost outcome would be for it to participate therein through a certain number of portfolios. Al-Monitor: How do you assess the current state of human rights in Egypt? Borhami: Without a doubt, the human rights situation in Egypt is bad and getting worse. We have recorded grave excesses and objected to them when they occurred, among them the manner used to disperse some demonstrations, such as at Rabia al-Adawiya Square, the consequences of which still plague our society today. There are those who are trying to marginalize one sect of society, but in truth are only isolating themselves because no one will accept such socially dangerous proposals. In addition, many remain behind bars under lengthy prison sentences, not to mention the violations committed in police stations and prisons. Thus, reopening the Egyptian human rights dossier shall be one of our goals in the next parliament.
**Walaa Hussein is the editor-in-chief of the parliamentary news division at Rose al-Yusuf. An expert in African affairs, Hussein has collaborated with the Nile Channel, writing and preparing newscasts.

Can Iraq meet US, Russia halfway?
Mustafa al-Kadhimi/Al-Monitor/October 22/15
The conflicts in Iraq and Syria are becoming increasingly convoluted by the day. Russia's engagement has been an additional complication to the overlapping battles.This international interference is undoubtedly a major challenge to the regional countries, whose security, political composition and political undertakings are vulnerable, as is the fragile concept of citizenship within their borders. Iraq is one of those weak countries in the region that did not deal with the developing situation in a way that would protect its interests and distance it from repercussions of the religious conflict raging between the major countries in the Middle East. The Iraqi joint operations command (covering the army, Popular Mobilization Units and internal security forces) said in a statement Sept. 27 that Iraq has signed security and intelligence agreements in coordination with various countries as part of the fight against the Islamic State (IS). The countries include disparate parties such as Russia, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Germany and France, in addition to members of the US-led coalition against IS, in which 60 countries are participating.
The press office of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sept. 30 that Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia agreed to set up a joint information center in Iraq. Russian airstrikes against Syrian opposition forces coincided with that announcement. On Oct. 1, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced his country was ready to carry out air raids on IS positions in Iraq as well. Lavrov had said May 21 that Russia would meet Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian demands for Russian support to expel terrorists from their territories. As the Russian raids started Sept. 30 in Syria, Iraqi MPs demanded that Abadi officially call on Russia to carry out airstrikes in Iraq as well. However, the United States issued an ultimatum Oct. 20 that Iraq must choose between support from the United States or Russia. Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi had visited Moscow on Aug. 31 to reach security agreements and sign arms deals with Russia to restructure the Iraqi army. Russia indeed expressed during the meeting its readiness to provide new weapons to Iraq, including bombers.
Although some political parties and citizens have demanded that Iraq's military and security cooperation with Russia be extended to the point of becoming an alliance, it is not easy for the Iraqi government to make such a decision. There is no internal agreement between the political partners, and Iraq also is cautious about falling into the ongoing polarization and conflicts in the region and subsequently losing US support if Iraq further allies with the Russians. In terms of internal reactions, the Sunni National Forces Union said Oct. 8 through MP Abdel Qaher al-Samarrai, “The new quartet alliance may confuse the political process and produce overlapping between major powers in the Iraqi arena and lead to tension between some countries in the region such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan toward this alliance.”So far, Abadi seems to have resisted the pressure placed by Shiite forces and parties, such as the Popular Mobilization Units that announced Sept. 20 that “the Baghdad-Damascus-Tehran-Moscow alliance is a natural and legal right for Iraq.” These forces stressed the need for full participation in the Russian alliance and to speed up the official request that Russia take part in attacks on IS in Iraq.
Yet Abadi is taking his time and does not want to risk his relations with the West at this sensitive stage. He has contented himself with the intelligence cooperation and arms deals with Russia, and he has refrained from going beyond this point to avoid losing the United States as a strategic ally of Iraq.
Abadi is reasonable in being cautious, because the Iraqi political situation is vulnerable and would not tolerate further internal divisions, which would take place in the event of a radical change in the Iraqi international alliances. In addition, Abadi does not perceive the new Russian alliance as a guaranteed alternative to the Western one, and he does not desire that Iraq be turned into a field for a new battle between the world powers, which would lead to dire consequences.
At the same time, Abadi does not believe he can manage without an external party to help Iraq restore its territorial integrity and get rid of IS. This is particularly true in light of Russia's strong participation in fighting IS and US confirmation that the fight will be long. As a result, Iraq faces a major challenge of how to organize its international relations in the war against terrorism. This challenge may lead to more effective options for Iraq if Abadi is able to deal with the US-led coalition and Russian alliance in a harmonious and noncontradicting context. This would serve as a starting point for a comprehensive solution in the region in the not-too-distant future. Such an opportunity is possible in light of the common challenges that all international parties are facing with terrorist organizations in the region. US President Barack Obama implied in his opening address at the counterterrorism summit Sept. 29 in New York that US-Russian cooperation is possible. Obama expressed a US willingness to work with Russia and Iran to settle the war in Syria, and he pointed out that IS can be defeated if international and regional conflicting parties can reach a political agreement.
In light of the complex landscape, Iraq must use its foreign diplomacy and awaken a US and Russian desire to work together against IS, so that Iraq can avoid a new conflict between the US-led coalition and Russian alliance. Yet such a task requires that Iraq use its capabilities, in regard to its historic importance and engagement in the regional crises and priorities, to produce a US-Russian meeting point. Questions remain: Why hasn't Iraq assumed such a role in the conflicting interests among Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? How can it achieve a complex consensus such as a US-Russian agreement?
Those are logical questions, but they do not take into account that the facts on the ground in the region have changed since IS emerged as a regional and international threat, and that the mentality of the Iraqi governing system has also changed under Abadi's administration, which has been attempting to find common ground for dialogue. The ball is in Iraq's court, even though observers assume otherwise. Iraqi leaders are concerned that their country could be turned into an arena for dangerous international conflict, or into a place for negotiations between the different conflicting parties. Iraq's internal political disputes, should they remain, will lead to the failure of the war on terrorism and undermine any chance to garner support from major countries in the ongoing war against IS in Iraq.
****Mustafa al-Kadhimi is an Iraqi writer specializing in the defense of democracy and human rights. He has extensive experience documenting testimonies and archiving documentaries associated with repressive practices. He has written many books, including "The Iraq Question, Islamic Concerns" and "Ali Ibn Abi Talib: The Imam and the Man". Most notably, his "Humanitarian Concerns" was selected in 2000 by the European Union as the best book written by a political

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