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Bible Quotation For Today/The Parable Of the Sower/Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty
"Matthew 13/01-09: "That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen".

Bible Quotation For Today/Wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?
First Letter to the Corinthians 06/01-11: "When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels to say nothing of ordinary matters? If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a believer and before unbelievers at that? In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud and believers at that. Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 25-26/15
What if Russian body bags start turning up in Moscow/Mohamed Chebarro/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
If the opposition is an illusion, then the Syrian army is a myth/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
What’s the difference between Moscow and Assad/Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
A call for action on U.S.-Arab relations/Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
Gregg Roman on the 'Inextricable Connection' between Islamists and Hitler/Al-Jazeera English/October 25, 2015
The Shi'ite Leopard: Iran's Religious Persecution/Denis MacEoin/Gastone Gate/October 25, 2015
The Holocaust is OVER/by Shoshana Bryen/Gatestone Institute/October 25, 2015
Analysis: Iran’s hostage-taking of Americans shows it can’t be housebroken/Benjamin Weinthal/J.Post/October 25/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 25-26/15
Report: Salam May Resign if Garbage Disposal Plan Not Adopted Next Week
Asiri: We are Seriously Dealing with Assassination Threats
Zoaiter Takes Blame for Garbage-Flooded Streets as Rain Exacerbates Trash Crisis
Rain produces rivers of trash in Lebanese capital
Environment Minister Blames 'Political Forces' for Growing Trash Crisis
Abou Faour Says Shehayyeb to 'Expose' Obstructors if Waste Plan Not Implemented
Working Children Given a Path Off Lebanon's Streets
Report: LF-FPM to Continue Efforts to Reach United Stand on Legislative Session
“Cabs turning away guide dogs a rampant problem in Toronto: Advocate,”

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 25-26/15
Palestinian girl shot dead trying to stab Israeli police
Washington ‘to cut aid’ to Palestinian Authority
Kerry lays out steps to ease Israeli-Palestinian strife
Netanyahu: Al-Aqsa surveillance cameras in ‘Israel’s interest’
Saudi Court Confirms Death Sentence against Shiite Cleric
An Israeli Arab flies paraglider into Syria to join ISIS without being intercepted
Kerry, in Saudi Arabia, meets with King Salman
Lavrov and Kerry discuss Syria, chance of political solution
Saudi, Egypt have ‘similar’ stance on Syria
No election talks, Assad wants to defeat ‘terrorists’
Erdogan: We won't let Kurds ‘seize’ northern Syria
Libya finds 29 bodies of apparent migrants on beach
Assad: 'Eradicating Terror' Will Produce Political Deal
Turkey says won't let Kurds ‘seize’ northern Syria
‘I apologize:’ Tony Blair admits Iraq war mistakes
Europe split on migrant crisis ahead of talks
Death toll in Libya anti-peace deal rally shelling hits 12
5 dead as heavy rains pound Egypt’s Alexandria
Yemeni forces make gains in Taiz

Report: Salam May Resign if Garbage Disposal Plan Not Adopted Next Week
Naharnet/October 26/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam is beginning to “weigh his options” in light of his realization that solutions to the garbage disposal crisis may have reached a dead end, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday. A ministerial source told the daily: “Salam will not remain an hour more in his position on Thursday if the trash disposal plan of Agriculture Akram Shehayyeb is not adopted.” Speaker Nabih Berri had asked Salam to wait before taking any step “because he is exerting efforts to overcome obstacles hindering the plan.”He is also pressuring the premier against resigning in order to avert vacuum in the “executive authority in Lebanon.”Media reports in recent weeks had been speculating the Salam would step down from his post following the ongoing failure to resolve the garbage disposal crisis that erupted with the closure of the Naameh landfill in July. The government approved in September Shehayyeb's trash plan that called for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the temporary expansion of two landfills and the reopening for seven days of the Naameh dump south of Beirut. However the implementation of the plan faced wide rejections of residents and municipalities from outside the capital who refuse to receive the trash other than those of their regions.

Asiri: We are Seriously Dealing with Assassination Threats
Naharnet/October 26/15/Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri stressed that the kingdom's embassy in Lebanon is coordinating with Lebanese security agencies to “determine the seriousness” of the recent allegations of assassination threats.He told the Saudi Okaz newspaper Sunday: “Threats against me, any member of the diplomatic mission, or Saudi expatriates are taken seriously.”He added that all members of the mission are carrying out their duties in a normal manner, saying that the Lebanese security authorities have bolstered the security measures at the Saudi embassy in Beirut.
The members of the mission have been offered additional protection near their residences, Asiri revealed. British media reports said earlier this week that the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be the target of assassinations in order to create sedition. Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq stressed Saturday that the government will provide the necessary security for the ambassadors and their embassies in light of reports.

Zoaiter Takes Blame for Garbage-Flooded Streets as Rain Exacerbates Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/Minister of Transportation and Public Works Ghazi Zoaiter took blame on Sunday for the trash that flooded the streets of the country following the heavy rainfall in the morning, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3). He told the station: “I assume responsibility in my position as minister of public works, but I have for months warned of an environmental disaster after the first rainfall.”The garbage that has been piling up on the sides of the streets in Lebanon in the past months flooded the streets of the capital and other areas, exacerbating traffic and floods as trash plugged gutters. Zoaiter lamented the current situation in Lebanon, saying that he is “willing to cooperate with all sides in any way possible so that the people do not pay the price.”He added however that municipalities had resorted to dumping garbage in the streets, noting that they too should be blamed for the ongoing crisis. He urged the concerned ministerial committee to take a decision regarding the garbage disposal crisis soon, “because we are only at the beginning of the winter season.”In the evening, anti-trash civil society activists staged a sit-in at the Riad al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut before marching to Prime Minister Tammam Salam's residence in Msaitbeh. "The government's corruption has led to the current garbage crisis ... Officials must resign if they can't address the crisis," protest organizer Ayman Mroueh said in Riad al-Solh. "The negligent political authorities are the Lebanese people's enemy," he added. Outside Salam's residence, the activists demanded accountability and measures from the government, vowing to escalate their protests if the premier does not move to address the crisis. "We tell the Lebanese to wait for our moves and be with us on Thursday for a protest whose details will be announce in the right time. We want to tell the ruling class that enough is enough," a protest organizer declared. The country has been in the grip of a months-long trash crisis caused by the government shutting down the country's main landfill in Naameh without finding an alternative. Political bickering and the refusal of various municipalities to accept Beirut's trash have prolonged the crisis. The crisis has ignited mass protests against the government, which has failed to provide a number of basic services and is widely seen as corrupt and dysfunctional. Activists from the You Stink movement, which has been leading the protests, shared videos on their Facebook page of plastic trash bags and other garbage floating down a narrow street lined with cars. The Beirut River, where garbage had been piling up on the banks for months, resembled an open sewer. Activists from You Stink braved rain and volunteered to help clean it on Sunday, which could revive the anti-government campaign in the country. In September, the government approved an emergency plan devised by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and a team of experts which calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting of two “sanitary landfills” in Akkar and the Bekaa, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill south of Beirut.

Rain produces rivers of trash in Lebanese capital
By AFP, Beirut Sunday, 25 October 2015/Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis. Residents and activists posted photographs and video online showing water from torrential showers carrying accumulated waste down streets in the early morning outside Beirut and beyond. VIEW MORE: Video shows ‘rivers of rubbish’ in Lebanon On the edge of the capital, activists from the “You Stink” campaign, which has protested the government’s failure to solve the crisis, collected and sorted garbage that was washed into the Beirut river. And elsewhere, residents and municipal workers used bulldozers to push dispersed trash back into piles after the rains stopped. The scenes come three months into a crisis precipitated by the closure of Lebanon’s largest landfill in July, and the government’s failure to find an alternative. The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the “You Stink” activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations. The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste. But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites. Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps. “You Stink” activists wearing protective suits and facemasks sorted trash that had washed into the Beirut river from piles where it has been dumped along its banks on Sunday.“We are proud to be ‘waste workers’ in this country, for trash, corruption, and the corrupt,” the group wrote on its Facebook page. It accused Lebanon’s politicians of doing nothing “while the country drowns in their trash as a result of rampant, criminal corruption and inaction.”

Environment Minister Blames 'Political Forces' for Growing Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 26/15/Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq on Sunday blamed the political forces for the worsening garbage crisis in the country, after heavy rains turned streets in parts of Lebanon into rivers of trash. Mashnouq reminded that he had asked the council of ministers two months ago to “declare an environmental state of emergency in Lebanon, out of fear of the possible fallout from the garbage crisis, whose solutions are still being obstructed by the political forces.” “The political forces did not heed my repeated appeals and today we are facing the situation that we had warned of,” the minister added. He cautioned that the country will witness “unlimited threats from the disaster if the political forces do not take an immediate positive stance.” Noting that “Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb have spared no effort to address the problem,” Mashnouq warned that “the political forces' obstacles are leading Lebanon into the unknown.”Mashnouq had on August 31 suspended his participation in a ministerial panel addressing the crisis amid massive street protests sparked by the trash collection problem. Civil society activists have voiced repeated calls for the minister's resignation since the eruption of the unprecedented crisis on July 17. After Mashnouq suspended his role in the waste management file, Salam tasked Shehayyeb and a team of experts with finding a solution to the garbage collection problem. An emergency plan devised by Shehayyeb and his team was approved by the government in September. It calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting of two “sanitary landfills” in Akkar and the Bekaa, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill south of Beirut. Shehayyeb's proposals were met by angry protests by residents and activists in the regions that were cited in his plan. Fresh protests were organized Sunday in downtown Beirut and outside Salam's residence in Msaitbeh after heavy rains caused floodwaters to mix with mounds of uncollected garbage, raising public health concerns. There are fears the uncollected waste and the rain season could spread diseases such as cholera among the population.

Abou Faour Says Shehayyeb to 'Expose' Obstructors if Waste Plan Not Implemented
Naharnet/October 26/15/Health Minister Wael Abou Faour warned Sunday that the arrival of the rain season will further exacerbate the garbage crisis' health risks, noting that Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb will “expose” obstructors if his emergency waste management plan does not get underway soon. “Minister Shehayyeb will conduct a final round of deliberations and he will expose facts if the plan does not get implemented soon,” Abou Faour said. “We have reached the disaster that we had long warned about and the health risks have increased, especially in the long term, due to the expected precipitation,” the minister cautioned, stressing that “the priority is for re-collecting the trash that was scattered” by Sunday's heavy rains. Abou Faour also noted that his ministry will have to carry out a lot of measures to “avoid the worse,” warning of the “health and environmental hazards” and “the impact on water and crops.”Earlier in the day, heavy rains caused floodwaters to mix with mounds of uncollected garbage, raising public health concerns. There are fears the uncollected waste and the rain season could spread diseases such as cholera among the population. The country has been in the grip of a months-long trash crisis caused by the government shutting down the country's main landfill in Naameh without finding an alternative. Political bickering and the refusal of various municipalities to accept Beirut's trash has prolonged the crisis. The crisis has ignited mass protests against the government, which has failed to provide a number of basic services and is widely seen as corrupt and dysfunctional. Activists from the You Stink movement, which has been leading the protests, shared videos on their Facebook page of plastic trash bags and other garbage floating down a narrow street lined with cars. The Beirut River, where garbage had been piling up on the banks for months, resembled an open sewer. Activists from You Stink braved rain and volunteered to help clean it on Sunday, which could revive the anti-government campaign in the country. In September, the government approved an emergency plan devised by Shehayyeb and a team of experts which calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting of two “sanitary landfills” in Akkar and the Bekaa, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill south of Beirut.

Working Children Given a Path Off Lebanon's Streets
Naharnet/October 26/15/For two years, Syrian teenager Ibrahim scraped together a paltry living selling lottery tickets and tissues on the crowded streets of Beirut, but that seems like a lifetime ago now. The 18-year-old's life turned around after three months' training at a flower shop as part of an apprenticeship program for vulnerable Lebanese and Syrian youths organized by an international humanitarian group. "Among the flowers, I forget what happened to us. I forget our worries," Ibrahim said, gently arranging a bouquet. He was one of 24 Syrian and Lebanese youths who took part in a training scheme organized by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that took them off the streets and provided them with a small stipend. IRC requested that the names of youths be changed for this story. At a flower shop in the Cola district of the Lebanese capital, Ibrahim has learned how to clean and water flowers, then arrange them into beautifully designed bouquets. "It really boosted my morale learning the basics of flower arrangement," he said quietly. "In the streets, I used to hear really bad things. But here, I've learned mutual respect and a new trade." At least 1,510 children, three-quarters of them Syrian, live or work in the streets of Lebanon, according to a report by UN agencies, NGOs and Lebanon's labor ministry published this year. The report's authors said the real number of children on the streets could be up to three times higher than that.At least 43 percent of those on the street beg for money, and 37 percent sell small items, like tissue paper or chewing gum. Others carry grocery bags, shine shoes or operate small parking lots, with most making between $3 and $12 daily. A number are exploited in illicit or illegal professions -- including prostitution -- earning between $21 and $36 per day. Whatever their job, working and living on the street exposes children to danger and exploitation, including street accidents and sexual assault, according to experts. IRC's Sara Mabger said the apprenticeship project sought to "give street youth an opportunity to learn a specific skill that will help them in their life, but also to minimize their hours of working in the streets".Lebanon hosts more than one million Syrian refugees, many living in poverty and forced to send their children to work to make ends meet. Raed, 16, arrived from Syria's second city Aleppo with his family three years ago. He once shined shoes or sold things along the Beirut waterfront for cash to help support his father and five younger siblings, who live in the impoverished Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. But in the program, he also learned to tend flowers, at a shop in the Jnah area of Beirut, and now he imagines one day owning his own storefront. "I memorized all the names of the flowers, and I like chrysanthemums and liliums the best," he said with a smile as he sprayed rows of greenery sitting on shelves in the shop. "I hope that when I return to Syria, I can open my own flower shop." Local clothing stores, sweet shops, and cafes have taken part in the initiative. Fadi Jaber, the 36-year-old manager of Jaber Flowers, said IRC proposed he take in Raed "to take him off the street and teach him the basics of the business, and we welcomed the idea." "If he wants to work in this field, he will return to his own country with a trade, instead of wasting his future in the street," Jaber added. The program caters to Lebanese youth too, including 20-year-old Assaad, from a poor district of the northern city of Tripoli. He has apprenticed at a modest bakery in central Beirut, helping to prepare bread for a steady stream of customers. "I learned how to prepare the dough, how much salt you should use, and how to lay the bread out after baking," he said. "Working here is better than staying at home or being in the street."The man he is learning from is 30-year-old Syrian Qassem Mohammad, who owns the bakery and has lived in Lebanon for many years. "I left Syria when I was young, but I found someone who gave me an opportunity. And in turn, I wanted to give this opportunity to someone who needs it," Mohammad said. Although there is no guarantee participants will stay off Lebanon's streets, the organizers hope to receive enough funding to support those who want to continue training. And for many, like Raed, the choice is clear. "I swore I would never go back to the street again," he said.

Report: LF-FPM to Continue Efforts to Reach United Stand on Legislative Session
Naharnet/October 26/15/The Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement will continue their contacts to reach a united stance on the upcoming legislative session, reported the daily An Nahar on Sunday. LF chief Samir Geagea and Change and Reform bloc MP Ibrahim Kanaan had held talks to that end on Saturday. The two sides are exerting efforts to reach an agreement over the “legislation of necessity,” which is advocated by the FPM, revealed an informed source to An Nahar. “The legislation of necessity deals with major national issues such as the parliamentary electoral law and the law on restoring nationality and we are willing to discuss other issues that fall under this criteria,” Kanaan had explained on Tuesday after the Change and Reform bloc's weekly meeting. The source added that the LF and FPM have not changed their position on attending or not attending the legislative session, saying that it hinges on whether “legislation of necessity will be adopted.”

“Cabs turning away guide dogs a rampant problem in Toronto: Advocate,”
Gilbert Ngabo, Toronto Metro News, October 19, 2015/Kaye Leslie can’t count the number of times she’s hailed a Toronto cab and been turned away. “I once had a guy drive off quickly as I was getting into the car,” she said. “It’s very upsetting and quite dangerous.”
Leslie, an advocate with The Seeing Eye who has limited vision, said cabbies refusing to pick up people with guide dogs are a problem running rampant in the city. “It’s like saying, ‘Sorry I don’t take blacks or women,’” she said. “If you can’t accommodate people you shouldn’t be driving a cab.” A leader at one cab company is promising to hit the streets for a solution. Kristine Hubbard, operations manager at Beck Taxi, has promised to team up and test the waters first-hand with a woman who says she was turned away multiple times. The pair intends to carry out a sting the next time Ann Gallery visits the city. Gallery complained to Beck — along with Uber and Diamond Taxi — after being turned away by cabs because she was accompanied by her guide dog in training, Maddie. Gallery, who’s from B.C., said she’s had no response from Diamond, and Beck has been able to track down the driver who gave her the snub. Uber, meanwhile, has fired the person responsible…

Palestinian girl shot dead trying to stab Israeli police
By AFP, Jerusalem Sunday, 25 October 2015/A Palestinian girl was shot dead by Israeli border police on Sunday when she attempted to stab officers in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, police said. “A Palestinian woman acting suspiciously approached border police forces. She was requested to identify herself when she suddenly drew a knife and approached the forces yelling. The forces shot at her and neutralised her,” a police statement said. Police later pronounced the Palestinian dead and identified her as 17-year-old Dania Irshaid. Police said none of their forces were harmed in the attack, which took place near the shrine known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. However several witnesses disputed the official version of events. One of them, Abdu Khader, said he was only metres (yards) away when he saw Irshaid approach the checkpoint, wearing a white headscarf. “She presented her backpack to soldiers who proceeded to search it,” he told AFP. “I heard them calling her and saying ‘Where is the knife? Where is the knife?’ She took a step back but there were a dozen soldiers behind her. They shot seven or eight times,” he said.Raed Abu Rmileh posted a video on YouTube which shows the body of a woman clad in black lying on the ground surrounded by uniformed officers, her white headscarf covered in blood. “She was at the checkpoint. A soldier called her to go through her bag. She put her bag on the ground and then we heard shooting. The soldiers said she had a knife” but no weapon is visible in the video, he told AFP. The Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement said it had collected eyewitness accounts saying the same thing: that she had first been shot in the legs, that she tried to walk backwards with her hands in the air, but that she was killed with seven or eight shots. Police maintained their version of events, and said they had recovered a knife at the scene. The flashpoint city of Hebron has been the site of several attacks against Israeli security forces and settlers in the recent wave of violence. In September the army was forced to defend itself over questions swirling around the death of an 18-year-old Palestinian woman in Hebron they said had tried to stab a soldier when she was shot. Activists distributed photos purporting to show the fully veiled woman with no knife visible at the checkpoint. The pictures however do not capture the moment of the shooting and no firm conclusion can be drawn from them. The Israeli military maintained its initial version of events and local media published a photo distributed by the military of a knife on the ground that the woman allegedly used.

Washington ‘to cut aid’ to Palestinian Authority
AFP, Amman Sunday, 25 October 2015/The United States is cutting economic aid for the Palestinian Authority, partly because of "unhelpful actions" by the Palestinians, a U.S. diplomat said on Saturday. News site al-Monitor earlier said the U.S. State Department intends to reduce aid for the West Bank and Gaza in fiscal 2016 from $370 million to $290 million. A U.S. State Department official, travelling with Secretary of State John Kerry on a trip to Amman, confirmed there would be a cut. "The decision to reduce assistance to the Palestinian Authority was made this past spring," he told reporters. "There were several factors contributing to this decision, including unhelpful actions taken by the Palestinians and constraints on our global assistance budget."The cut was not directly linked to the wave of violence that is currently gripping Israel and the Palestinian territories, the official said.
The source added, however, "we have made clear our concern about inflammatory rhetoric over these past few weeks".Al-Monitor, which was quoted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said the cut followed mounting criticism in the U.S. Congress about Palestinian "incitement". Kerry was in Amman on Saturday where he held talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on how to brake the latest bloodletting. The visit is part of a diplomatic scramble to defuse tensions many fear could herald a new intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Kerry lays out steps to ease Israeli-Palestinian strife
By Reuters Amman/Jerusalem Sunday, 25 October 2015/The United States on Saturday proposed steps, including 24-hour video surveillance, to end weeks of violence over a Jerusalem site holy to Muslims and Jews. Speaking in Amman after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Israel had embraced “an excellent suggestion” by the king, who is the custodian of the site within Jerusalem’s walled Old City, for round-the-clock monitoring. Kerry said Israel had also given assurances it had no intention of changing the status quo at the al-Aqsa mosque compound that is the third holiest site in Islam. Muslims refer to the site as the Noble Sanctuary, or Haram al-Sharif, Jews call it Temple Mount. In a detailed statement, Netanyahu said Israel recognized “the importance of the Temple Mount to peoples of all three monotheistic faiths... and reaffirms its commitment to upholding unchanged the status quo of the Temple Mount, in word and in practice.” He echoed Kerry’s statement that Israel would enforce its long-standing policy under which Muslims may pray at the site but Jews, Christians and members of other faiths may only visit but not pray, and that Israel had no intention of dividing up the compound. Kerry said that Israeli and Jordanian officials would meet soon to work out the details of the video monitoring. Authorities from both Israel and the Jordanian waqf, or Islamic trust, that administers the site, will also meet shortly “to strengthen security arrangements” at the compound, he said. Netanyahu said Israel welcomed greater coordination with the waqf. Violence has flared in Israel, Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, in part triggered by Palestinians’ anger over what they see as Jewish encroachment on the compound. At least 52 Palestinians, half of whom Israel says were assailants, have been shot dead by Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza since Oct. 1. Nine Israelis have been stabbed or shot dead by Palestinians. In the latest incident, a Palestinian was shot dead on Saturday after he tried to stab an Israeli security guard at a crossing between the West Bank and Israel, Israeli police said. “Today I hope we can begin to turn the page on this very difficult period,” Kerry said, standing beside Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who welcomed his announcements.Netanyahu said Israel respected the “importance of the special role” played by Jordan as reflected in the 1994 peace treaty between the two countries and of the “historical role” of Jordan’s King Abdullah as custodian of the site.
“PROVOCATIONS”
A U.S. official told reporters it had not yet been decided who exactly would conduct video monitoring of the site, saying this would be discussed by Israeli and Jordanian technical officials when they meet. An Israeli official who declined to be named, said: “Israel has an interest in placing cameras across the Temple Mount in order to refute the claims that it is changing the status quo. “We are interested in showing that the provocations are not coming from the Israeli side,” he added. Standing beside Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Amman, Kerry said the cameras “could really be a game-changer in discouraging anybody from disturbing the sanctity” of the site. In addition to the shooting of the Palestinian at the West Bank crossing, a 25-year-old Palestinian protester died of wounds he suffered last week when he was shot by Israeli troops during a border clash near the Gazan town of Khan Younis, a Gaza health official said. On Friday, Israeli authorities lifted restrictions that had banned men aged under 40 from praying at al-Aqsa, a move seen as a bid to ease Muslim anger. Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of numerous rounds of peace talks to secure them an independent state. The last round of negotiations collapsed in 2014. From Amman, Kerry flew to Riyadh, where he met King Salman of Saudi Arabia and other senior officials. Those talks were expected to focus on efforts to end Syria’s four-year civil war and on the crisis in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has led an Arab military intervention since March to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government and fend off what it sees as creeping Iranian influence

Netanyahu: Al-Aqsa surveillance cameras in ‘Israel’s interest’
By AFP, Jerusalem Sunday, 25 October 2015/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that an agreement to put 24-hour security cameras around Jerusalem’s sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound was in Israel’s interest. In remarks relayed by his office Netanyahu said the cameras would serve “firstly, to refute the claim Israel is violating the status quo (and) secondly, to show where the provocations are really coming from, and prevent them in advance.” Israel has been accused of seeking to change longstanding rules that govern the holy site which is revered in both Islam and Judaism, and which is a key source of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Tensions raised over clashes at the mosque compound, known as Temple Mount to Jews, have spiralled into a wave of daily knife attacks and shootings on Israelis as well as deadly protests. Netanyahu also repeated that Israel did not plan to change the agreement, referred to as the status quo, that states non-Muslims are allowed to visit, but not to pray at the site. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II -- whose country is the custodian of the site -- that the surveillance measure would be a “game changer in discouraging anybody from disturbing the sanctity of the holy site.” And Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said the cameras “will indeed make a difference and a very strong difference at that.”“I heard the Jordanian foreign minister’s positive reaction,” said Netanyahu. “I hope it helps calm things, at least regarding the Temple Mount.”

Saudi Court Confirms Death Sentence against Shiite Cleric
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/The Supreme Court in Saudi Arabia has confirmed the death sentence against Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a leader of anti-government protests, one of his brothers said on Sunday. "After the confirmation of Sheikh Nimr's death sentence by the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, his life is in the hands of King Salman who can endorse the sentence or suspend the execution," said Mohammed al-Nimr. He warned his brother's execution "could provoke reactions that we do not want," as Sheikh Nimr had "supporters in the Shiite areas of the Islamic world."Mohammed al-Nimr said he expected the king to "prove his wisdom" by halting the execution of his brother and six other Shiites. Among those sentenced to death, "three, including my son Ali, were minors at the time of arrest" for involvement in anti-government protests that erupted in the Eastern Province in the wake of the Arab Spring, he told AFP. The case of Ali al-Nimr, in particular, has aroused strong reactions around the world, with many asking the Saudi authorities to grant the young Shiite a stay the execution. Iran, the arch-foe of Saudi Arabia, on Sunday warned Riyadh not to execute the cleric. "The execution of Sheikh Nimr would have dire consequences for Saudi Arabia," said Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian. "The situation in Saudi Arabia is not good and provocative and tribal attitudes against its own citizens are not in the government's interests," he said in a statement. Sheikh Nimr had called in 2009 for separating the Eastern Province's Shiite-populated Qatif and al-Ihsaa governorates from Saudi Arabia and uniting them with Shiite-majority Bahrain. Last year a special court in Riyadh sentenced him to death for "sedition," "disobedience" and "bearing arms." Saudi Arabia's estimated two million Shiites, who frequently complain of marginalization, live mostly in the east, where the vast majority of the OPEC kingpin's huge oil reserves lie.

An Israeli Arab flies paraglider into Syria to join ISIS without being intercepted
DEBKAfile Special Report October 25, 2015
In a major security breach, an Israeli Arab, 23, was able to fly by paraglider across into Syria from the southwestern village of Mevo Hama Saturday, Oct. 24, southwestern Golan without being intercepted - although an IDF spotter had reported the event. The pilot came from the Israeli Arab town of Jaljuliya east of Kfar Saba near the West Bank. His defection, apparently to the Islamic State, was clearly organized in advance. His landing in Syria was secured by a party from the jihadist group who came to pick him up.
The massive air-and-ground search operation the Israeli military scrambled came too late.
“We believe he planned this move to the other side, and joined a group there," Brig.-Gen. Moti Almoz told reporters during a conference call Sunday morning, after a gag order on the story was lifted. Another IDF statement said that Israeli forces are still trying to ascertain the person's intentions
debkafile’s military sources count this event as a particularly grave security lapse for the following reasons:
1. The Shin Bet was clearly taken unawares of a conspiracy for the Israeli Arab’s flight.
2. No one discovered that a paraglider was being assembled in secret at Mevo Hama or had it brought there unnoticed. And who helped him launch it?
3. How did he set up communication with ISIS-Syria without being detected by Israeli security?
4. How did the preparations on the Syrian side to receive the pilot escape the attention of IDF military intelligence?
5. Why was no one on the spot authorized to shoot the paraglider shot down before it flew across the border? By the time the report went through channels, the bird had flown.
ISIS claims it has taken an “Israeli pilot” captive.
Our military sources add that the paraglider operation was set up by a hostile element to test Israel’s defenses in three areas:
The efficiency of IDF spotter posts across the Golan. The glider was indeed sighted and reported.
Israeli Air force operations in Golan – which were indeed found with holes that can be used for penetration.
Israel’s air defense on the Golan. This episode exposed the absence of a commander with authority to act with dispatch to foil an unforeseen event.
In other words, Israel’s defenses were wide open to attack Saturday.

Kerry, in Saudi Arabia, meets with King Salman
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Sunday, 25 October 2015/Saudi Arabia’s King Salman met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as he arrived in Riyadh on Saturday for talks on recent developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Syrian war, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir had met with Kerry before he made his way to the Dhiraya Farm, the king's country residence. Washington and Riyadh are part of a U.S.-led coalition that last year launched an air campaign targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group which controls swathes of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq. The Saudi talks follow a meeting Friday in Vienna between Kerry and the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia on ways to end the Syria conflict. But the Vienna talks failed to make any breakthrough and Kerry said at the time he hoped to reconvene another "broader" meeting on Syria as early as October 30.

Lavrov and Kerry discuss Syria, chance of political solution
Reuters, Moscow Sunday, 25 October 2015/Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the Syria crisis during a phone conversation on Sunday requested by the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry added that Lavrov and Kerry had continued their discussions on the prospects for a political resolution of the Syria crisis with the involvement of the Syrian authorities and "patriotic opposition", supported by the international community.

Saudi, Egypt have ‘similar’ stance on Syria
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Sunday, 25 October 2015/Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubair said on Sunday both Cairo and Riyadh have a “similar” stance on Syria during his visit to Egypt, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. In a joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart, Jubair reiterated Saudi stance that there is “no place” for embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a future and post-civil war Syria. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said there were “no differences” between Riyadh and Cairo on Syria and emphasized that they both have a “similar” position. Jubair's statement comes after his comments on Thursday saying that Assad's clinging to power is working as a “magnet” by allowing foreign militants to recruit more fighters, and he must go to rid Syria of ISIS. Meanwhile, the foreign minister said international talks to find a solution to the conflict in Syria had yielded some progress but more consultations were required. “I believe that there has been some progress and positions have moved closer on finding a solution to the Syrian crisis, but I cannot say that we have reached an agreement. We still need more consultations ... to reach this point," he told a news conference in Cairo after meeting his Egyptian counterpart. Moscow says Assad must be part of any political transition and that the Syrian people will decide who rules them. Washington has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to then exit the political stage. In a flurry of diplomatic activity around the Syria crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Riyadh on Saturday and the two countries agreed to boost support for Syria’s moderate opposition while seeking a political resolution to the four-year-old conflict.(With Reuters)

No election talks, Assad wants to defeat ‘terrorists’
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Sunday, 25 October 2015/“The elimination of terrorist groups would lead to a political solution sought by Syria and Russia, President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday during a meeting with a Russian delegation in the capital Damascus, Syrian state media reported. State news agency SANA’s initial report on the meeting made no mention of a proposal floated by Russia for new presidential and parliamentary elections. “Eliminating the terrorist organizations will lead to the political solution that we strive for in Syria and Russia,” Assad was quoted as saying. Assad also expressed his appreciation for Russian air strikes. His comments came during talks with a Russian parliamentary delegation visiting Damascus just days after Assad went to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin. Assad said Russia's role was “writing a new history because this war will determine the future of the region and the world, and victory against terrorism will protect not only Syria but all countries.” Earlier the Russian news agency RIA cited a lawmaker who attended the meeting as saying Assad was ready to take part in presidential elections if the Syrian people supported the idea. “He [Assad] is ready to conduct elections with the participation of all political forces who want Syria to prosper,” Russian lawmaker Alexander Yushchenko said by phone after meeting Assad. A Russia lawmaker who met Assad on Sunday said the embattled Syrian leader’s priority was to fight and defeat terrorism and then hold parliamentary and presidential elections. Asked whether Assad was ready for early elections, Sergey Gavrilov said his impression from Assad was that “the first aim (is) the struggle with and victory over ... terrorism, and after that the elections - parliamentary and president elections.” Gavrilov was speaking in English to Reuters in Damascus. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview broadcast on Saturday, called for Syria to prepare for both presidential and parliamentary elections. (With Reuters and AFP)

Erdogan: We won't let Kurds ‘seize’ northern Syria
By Humeyra Pamuk, Reuters Sunday, 25 October 2015/Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Kurdish groups on Saturday of trying to grab control of northern Syria, saying Ankara would not allow this to happen. In a speech in southeast Turkey, Erdogan also blasted Russia's President Vladimir Putin for hosting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this week, in comments that were his most critical yet towards his Russian counterpart. On northern Syria, Erdogan denounced the merging of the Syrian town of Tel Abyad last week into an autonomous political structure created by the Kurds. "All they want is to seize northern Syria entirely," Erdogan said. "We will under no circumstances allow northern Syria to become a victim of their scheming. Because this constitutes a threat for us, and it is not possible for us as Turkey to say 'yes' to this threat."Tel Abyad, on the border with Turkey, was captured in June from ISIS by Kurdish YPG militia with help from U.S.-led air strikes. Last week, a local leadership council declared it part of the system of autonomous self government established by the Kurds. Syrian Kurds have established three autonomous zones, or "cantons", across northern Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011. They deny aiming to establish their own state. Turkey is alarmed by territorial gains for the Kurds in Syria's civil war, which it fears could stir separatism among its own Kurdish minority. For the past three decades Ankara has been trying to end an insurgency by fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union. The PKK has been staging almost daily attacks in the southeast since July, when a ceasefire fell apart. Turkey accuses the Syrian Kurds' political arm, the PYD, of deep links to the PKK. It has been incensed by the role the Kurds have carved out for themselves, with U.S. support, in the fight against ISIS in northern Syria. Erdogan also slammed countries who provided assistance to the PYD, although he did not name them, and said it harbored 1,400 PKK members. Earlier this month, the YPG Kurdish militia announced a new alliance with small groups of Arab fighters, and the group was air-dropped small arms and ammunition by U.S. forces in northeast Syria. Washington has indicated it could direct funding and weapons to Arab commanders on the ground who cooperate with the YPG. Erdogan also criticized Putin for hosting Assad in Moscow earlier this week, questioning how he could "welcome on a red carpet someone who has spilled the blood of 370,000 people".Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to thank Putin for his military support, his first foreign visit since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011.The surprise trip came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamist militants and rebels in Syria that has bolstered Assad's forces.

Libya finds 29 bodies of apparent migrants on beach
By AFP, Tripoli Sunday, 25 October 2015/The bodies of 29 people thought to be migrants have been discovered on beaches around a city 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of Tripoli, the Red Crescent said. “Local residents told us about bodies on the beaches around Zliten,” spokesman Mohamed al-Misrati said. “We discovered 25 bodies, then another four.” Misrati did not give any further details about the nationality of the deceased, but the Tripoli authorities’ official news agency reported that they were from Africa. The Red Crescent was expecting to recover several more bodies this Sunday, the press agency quoted Misrati as saying. The North African country, with its 1,770 kilometres of poorly patrolled coastline, is a popular jumping off point for migrants seeking to reach Europe. The most popular destination is the Italian island of Lampedusa, barely 300 kilometres away.

Assad: 'Eradicating Terror' Will Produce Political Deal
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 26/15/Syrian President Bashar Assad said Sunday his country must "eradicate terrorism" to find a political solution to its civil war, as he reportedly expressed a willingness to hold new elections. Meeting with a Russian parliamentary delegation as Moscow steps up efforts for a political deal, Assad emphasized the need for greater security. "The eradication of terrorist organizations will lead to the political solution that Syria and Russia seek and that will satisfy the Syrian people and preserve Syria's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity," state news agency SANA quoted Assad as saying. The visit by Russian lawmakers came just days after Assad's own surprise trip to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin. That trip -- and ramped-up Russian diplomacy following it -- have led to speculation that Moscow is pushing for a new political agreement to end the conflict that began with protests against Assad's rule in March 2011. But the shape of any such deal remains unclear, with Syria's opposition firmly against Moscow leading peace efforts while pursuing an air campaign it launched in support of Assad on September 30. A member of the Russian delegation said Sunday that Assad had expressed a willingness to hold new parliamentary and presidential elections, and would run again as president. "He is ready to conduct elections with the participation of all political forces who want Syria to prosper," Russian lawmaker Alexander Yushchenko told AFP by phone from Damascus.Assad said he was ready to take part in the polls "if the people are not against it," Yushchenko added.
Opposition dismisses new vote
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Syria needed to begin preparing for new elections. Syria last held parliamentary elections in May 2012, and is due to hold its next legislative vote in 2016.But a presidential vote was held just in June last year, with Assad re-elected for a seven-year term with 88.7 percent of the vote. That election was dismissed as a "farce" by the opposition and its supporters, with voting held only in government-controlled areas and millions of the displaced and refugees unable to vote. It is unclear whether new elections could be held under different circumstances, and Syria's opposition has already said holding a vote now would be absurd. "The Russians are ignoring the real facts on the ground, with millions who have been displaced inside and outside Syria, where cities are destroyed every day," said Samir Nashar of the Syrian National Coalition opposition group. "What elections are they talking about holding under such circumstances?"Rebel forces were equally dismissive of Lavrov's offer Saturday of Russian support for "patriotic" opposition forces fighting against the Islamic State group. While Russia says its aerial campaign launched last month is targeting IS and other "terrorists," moderate and Islamist rebels say they have been the real focus, not the jihadists. "Russia is bombing the Free Syrian Army and now it wants to cooperate with us?" said Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Saoud, a spokesman for Division 13, a Western-backed rebel group.
HRW urges Russia investigate raid
Russia's strikes have allowed Syrian regime forces to launch ground operations in several provinces, including Aleppo, where clashes continued on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said some 43 regime forces and 28 IS fighters had been killed in the last 48 hours in the province, fighting for control of a key government supply route cut by the jihadists on Friday. Elsewhere, the Observatory said Russian war planes had carried out strikes in Hama province, where Syrian regime forces are trying to secure part of the Aleppo-Damascus highway. Human Rights Watch meanwhile urged Russia on Sunday to investigate two air strikes in Homs province that killed 59 civilians earlier this month. The group said the two strikes on October 15 were believed to be Russian and had killed at least 32 children. And in Israel, the army said an Arab Israeli had crossed into Syria using a paraglider, apparently intending to join opposition forces. The army said the man had taken off from the southern section of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adjacent to southern Syria. Some 45 Arab Israelis have joined jihadist forces in Syria, according to Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency.

Turkey says won't let Kurds ‘seize’ northern Syria
By Humeyra Pamuk Reuters, Istanbul Saturday, 25 October 2015/Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Kurdish groups on Saturday of trying to grab control of northern Syria, and said Ankara would not allow this to happen. In a speech in southeast Turkey, Erdogan denounced the merging of the Syrian town of Tel Abyad last week into an autonomous political structure created by the Kurds. "All they want is to seize northern Syria entirely," Erdogan said. "We will under no circumstances allow northern Syria to become a victim of their scheming. Because this constitutes a threat for us, and it is not possible for us as Turkey to say 'yes' to this threat."Turkey is alarmed by territorial gains for the Kurds in Syria's civil war, which it fears could stir separatism among its own Kurdish minority. Tel Abyad, on the border with Turkey, was captured in June from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group militants by Kurdish YPG militia with help from U.S.-led air strikes. Last week, a local leadership council declared it part of the system of autonomous self-government established by the Kurds. Syrian Kurds have established three autonomous zones, or "cantons', across northern Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011. They deny aiming to establish their own state. The YPG's capture of Tel Abyad linked up the Kurdish-controlled canton of Kobane, which was besieged by Islamic State last year, with the bigger canton of Jazeera, which is further east and borders Iraq. Turkey has for the past three decades been trying to end an insurgency by fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union. The PKK has been staging almost daily attacks in the southeast since July, when a ceasefire fell apart. Ankara accuses the Syrian Kurds' political arm, the PYD, of deep links to the PKK. It has been incensed by the role the Kurds have carved out for themselves, with U.S. support, in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria. Erdogan also slammed countries who provided assistance to the PYD, although he did not name them. "Right now there are 1,400 PKK members in PYD. There is no point ignoring this, this is a fact," said Erdogan. "But all these countries who seem friendly towards us are trying to make this look the opposite way. Whatever arms assistance they (PYD) receive, it is coming from these countries. We know very well whose arms." Earlier this month, the YPG Kurdish militia announced a new alliance with small groups of Arab fighters, and the group was air-dropped small arms and ammunition by U.S. forces in northeast Syria. Washington has indicated it could direct funding and weapons to Arab commanders on the ground who cooperate with the YPG.

‘I apologize:’ Tony Blair admits Iraq war mistakes
By Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Sunday, 25 October 2015/Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has apologized for aspects of the Iraq war in an upcoming television interview, British media reported Sunday. His comments, in a yet-to-be-aired interview CNN that has been reported by the Mail on Sunday, have prompted allegations of an attempted "spin" ahead of the release of Britain’s Iraq war probe – the Chilcot Inquiry. In the interview, Blair allegedly expressed regret over the failure to adequately plan for the aftermath of the war in 2003, which saw the toppling of Saddam Hussein.He also reportedly conceded that the Iraq war was partly to blame for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Blair also discussed the false intelligence suggesting the country had weapons of mass destruction, which was used to justify the invasion. “I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong … I also apologize for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime,” Blair was quoted by the Mail on Sunday as saying. Blair was asked by CNN host Fareed Zakaria if the war was "the principal cause" of the rise of ISIS, he was reported to have said: 'I think there are elements of truth in that.""Of course you can't say those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015," he added.
'He's said this before'
Following the report on Blair's apology, a spokeswoman for the former PM was quoted by The Guardian as saying: “Tony Blair has always apologized for the intelligence being wrong and for mistakes in planning. He has always also said, and says again here, that he does not however think it was wrong to remove Saddam. “He did not say the decision to remove Saddam in 2003 ‘caused ISIS’ and pointed out that Isis was barely heard of at the end of 2008, when al-Qaeda was basically beaten. “He went on to say in 2009, Iraq was relatively more stable. What then happened was a combination of two things: there was a sectarian policy pursued by the government of Iraq, which were mistaken policies. “But also when the Arab Spring began, ISIS moved from Iraq into Syria, built themselves from Syria and then came back into Iraq. “All of this he has said before,” the spokeswomen added. According to the UK’s ITV News. Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister for Scotland has accused Blair of participating in a "spin operation" to prepare the ground for criticisms that may surface from the Chilcot Inquiry.
Leaked email
Last week, a leaked White House memo allegedly proved that Blair backed military action a year before seeking a vote in parliament. The revelations focused on a memo allegedly written by former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell on March 28, 2002 to then president George Bush a week before the U.S. leader’s meeting with Blair at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary,” wrote Powell, in a document the Mail on Sunday published on its website. “He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success,” Powell said, referring to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was eventually ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion. The Mail on Sunday said the memo and other sensitive documents were part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal. A separate quote from Powell assured Bush “the UK will follow our lead in the Middle East”, while other statements suggest Blair’s willingness to present “strategic, tactical and public affairs lines” to strengthen public support for the Iraq war. Blair, who served as prime minister between 1997 and 2007, has repeatedly denied rushing to war. Under his leadership, Britain made the second biggest troop contribution to the Iraq invasion, and British forces were stationed in the country until 2011. (With AFP)

Europe split on migrant crisis ahead of talks
By Reuters Sunday, 25 October 2015/European leaders traded threats and reprimands on Saturday as thousands more migrants and refugees streamed into the Balkans on the eve of European Union talks aimed at agreeing on urgent action to tackle the crisis. Concern is growing about hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe, many from war zones in the Middle East, and camping in western Balkan countries in ever colder conditions as winter approaches. More than 680,000 migrants and refugees have crossed to Europe by sea so far this year, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania said they would close their borders if Germany or other countries shut the door on refugees, warning they would not let the Balkan region become a “buffer zone” for stranded migrants. “The three countries, we are standing ready, if Germany and Austria close their borders, not to allow our countries to become buffer zones. We will be ready to close borders,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov told reporters. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has invited the leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia to Sunday’s mini-summit. The aim of the meeting is to agree “common operational conclusions which could be immediately implemented.”German media have reported that Juncker will present a 16-point plan, including an undertaking not to send migrants from one country to another without prior agreement. Slovenia, which said on Friday it would consider putting up a fence on its border with Croatia unless a solution is found on Sunday, said the EU “must ease the burden on the most exposed countries.” It called for “EU action that would stop the uncontrolled migration flows on the outer borders of the EU.”Almost all the migrants are entering the EU via its poorer members in south-eastern Europe and heading north to seek asylum in countries including Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. Leaders of the richer Western states worry that large-scale immigration will boost support for the xenophobic far-right. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Eastern European countries owe it to their partners to do more to stem the inflow, and demanded a fairer distribution of asylum seekers among member states. “Eastern Europe has done too little to resist the refugee stream,” told public television on Saturday. “We have invested a huge amount in them, and now they are doing too little.”The EU’s eastern members have resisted calls for refugees to be divided between the bloc’s 28 members. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has erected a fence along his country’s southern frontier, effectively handing the problem on to neighbouring Croatia and Slovenia. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany must prepare to receive as many as 800,000 refugees this year, despite opposition from some of her governmental allies. Juncker praised Merkel for ignoring public opinion in her efforts to tackle the refugee crisis, which she describes as a bigger challenge for Europe than Greece’s debt woes. “This isn’t about short-term popularity but about substance,” he told German media group Funke. For exhausted refugees and migrants making their way across the continent, falling temperatures and worsening weather are adding to their difficulties. “We want to go to the Netherlands. I just want this ordeal to stop,” said Hamrein, 20, from Syria, as she held her feverish six-month-old son near the Slovenian village of Rigonce. She was among about 2,000 migrants and refugees waiting in a muddy field waiting to cross to a nearby camp. Many lit fires and wrapped themselves in blankets as early morning temperatures sank close to zero.

Death toll in Libya anti-peace deal rally shelling hits 12
By AFP Tripoli Sunday, 25 October 2015/The death toll for the shelling of a rally in Libya’s second city Benghazi protesting against a U.N.-proposed peace deal has jumped to 12, medics said. At least 12 people died and 39 were wounded after a volley of shells hit the rally attended by hundreds of people, the LANA news agency close to the internationally recognised Libyan government reported Saturday. Those present were demonstrating against a proposed power-sharing deal put forward by Libya’s U.N. envoy, Bernardino Leon. On their Facebook pages, the Benghazi Medical Centre announced eight dead, while the city’s Al-Jalaa hospital announced four had died. Medics initially said five people were killed. There was no immediate word on who was behind the shelling. Libya descended into chaos after the October 2011 ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with two governments vying for power and armed groups battling for control of its vast energy resources. A militia alliance including Islamists overran Tripoli in August 2014, establishing a rival government and a parliament that forced the internationally recognised administration to flee to the country’s remote east. On October 8, after almost a year of arduous negotiations, Leon put forward a list of names to head a power-sharing government, but both sides rejected the proposed appointments. Friday’s shelling came two days after Leon insisted he would press on with efforts to clinch a political deal.The U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) condemned the attack. “UNSMIL calls on Libyans to reject violence as a means to settle political differences and stresses that peaceful expression of political views is one of the basic rights in a free society,” it said. A unity government in Libya is seen as the best chance to tackle the rise there of the Islamic State of Iraq And Syria (ISIS) group and migrant-smuggling from Libya across the Mediterranean to Europe. “Only through unity can terrorism be confronted and violence brought to an end,” UNSMIL added. Fayez el-Serraj, a member of the internationally recognised parliament who has been put forward as prime minister in the latest proposal for a unity government, agreed. “We need to work to overcome our political differences to stand up, hand in hand... against terrorism,” he said. The Tripoli authorities also condemned the attack, calling it a “criminal and terrorist act carried out by those who have been cracking down on Benghazi for a year and a half.” The UN last month accused the army of Libya’s internationally recognised government of deliberately trying to sabotage the peace talks with a new offensive in Benghazi.

5 dead as heavy rains pound Egypt’s Alexandria
By AFP, Cairo Sunday, 25 October 2015/Torrential rains lashed Egypt’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria Sunday, killing five people, including two children and the captain of a ship who was trapped in his car by floodwaters, officials said.A man and two children were electrocuted to death when a cable from a tramway fell into a street flooded with water, the health ministry said in a statement. And the captain of a ship drowned as he was unable to get out of his car which filled with floodwaters. A 25-year-old man was also electrocuted after he fell into a pit full of electric cables. An AFP photographer said the downpour began in the early morning and quickly flooded several streets in Egypt’s second city as well as the corniche. Temperatures dropped sharply on Sunday across several governorates in Egypt, including Cairo, bringing also heavy rains and strong winds.

Yemeni forces make gains in Taiz
Reuters, Dubai Sunday, 25 October 2015/Yemeni forces loyal to the internally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi made gains on Sunday in the southwestern city of Taiz after days of intense battles with Houthi militants, a local official and residents said. The Iran-backed Haddi supporters, who have been backed by air strikes from a Saudi-led coalition since March, made particular progress around the presidential palace, they added, a complex that has changed hands several times and been largely destroyed by fighting. Medical sources said 13 Houthi militants had been killed in the fighting in Yemen’s third largest city as well as eight fighters loyal to Hadi. Reuters could not independently verify these accounts. The Arab coalition is trying to restore Hadi’s government and fend off what it sees as creeping Iranian influence. The Houthis are allied to Iran and also have support from forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Several residents said that Hadi loyalists had managed to wrest control of a number of mountain peaks on the southern approach to Taiz, long regarded as Yemen’s cultural capital. At least 5,400 people have been killed in the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula and the United Nations says the humanitarian situation, exacerbated by the Saudi-led Arab blockade of Yemen’s ports, grows worse every day. The United Nations envoy to Yemen said on Friday he was arranging face-to-face negotiations between the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels but warned that a disastrous humanitarian conflict had left most of the country in dire need. The Saudi-led coalition has gained ground in southern Yemen, but Houthi forces remain in control of much of the country despite the almost daily air strikes. Hadi’s government has officially returned to Aden after southern fighters and Arab coalition forces drove the Houthis out in July. But a suicide attack earlier this month forced the government to relocate back to Saudi Arabia, while efforts were being made to restore security to the southern port city. Sudanese forces that arrived in Aden last week to reinforce Arab coalition troops in the city, have deployed around the airport and at the city’s four ports, while Hadi supporters have begun to enforce moves aimed at preventing gunmen from moving around with weapons. A security official in Aden told Reuters on Sunday that armed tribesmen raided the central prison in Aden, killing a guard and wounding another, in order to free a prisoner held for an earlier attack in the city.

What if Russian body bags start turning up in Moscow?
Mohamed Chebarro/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
Russia’s intervention in Syria has changed the stalemate preferred by all parties to the crisis.
Yet it is unlikely that this intervention, seen by many as a smart coup by Moscow against Western and Arab countries opposed to the Syrian regime, will produce anything conducive to a political settlement. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s words after meeting his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow also indicate that nothing has changed or will change. Anti-Assad strategists may see no harm in seeing a few downed Russian warplanes to send a message to Moscow that a settlement means compromise, and that everyone is likely to lose a bit in order to save what is left of Syria and its people.
Russia’s efforts seem to be focused on propping up Assad for the short term, though this is disguised as a push to saving the Syrian state. Moscow must factor in that for its intervention to be fruitful, it must one day be seen as a potential neutral broker capable of bringing together a mosaic of interests to the negotiating table. The air campaign so far demonstrates that Russia is singling out opposition-held areas, not strongholds of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Moscow’s hasty deployment has blocked various plans to establish no-fly zones in northern and southern Syria. It has also done away with establishing safe havens to protect Syrians mainly from regime barrel bombs and ISIS, and to stem the flow of refugees. The clear imbalance created by Moscow’s deployment is unlikely to be contained unless weapons capable of clipping Russian wings are given to the opposition.
Military assistance
Countries such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are likely to find themselves increasingly pressured if Moscow manages to bolster pro-Assad forces to the extent that its starts to turn the tide in opposition-held areas. So far, however, nearly a month of continued Russian airstrikes and air cover for pro-Assad forces have failed to present a clear winning momentum in the fight against ISIS or the many armed opposition groups. Through the downing of a few Russian warplanes with surface-to-air missiles, the Kremlin would be sent a clear message that the Middle East is not Georgia or Ukraine. The first waves of attacks were halted after heavy casualties suffered by pro-regime forces, seemingly due to anti-tank guided missiles. The second in command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed, as were leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. These successes indicate that Syrian rebel groups received detailed intelligence and maybe coordinates that allowed them to inflict heavy casualties. Until Putin is persuaded that a genuine political settlement should take precedence over bombing, anti-aircraft weapons should be provided to opposition groups in Syria. They must be deployed in a controlled manner, and used to alert Assad that his civilian-killing air force is redundant, and to show Russia that its propping up of the regime against all odds is untenable and cannot ensure Moscow’s long-term interests in the Middle East.
Duplicity
The duplicity of supporting Assad and singing from the hymn books of Iran and Israel to promote the establishment of religious entities will backfire, even if it is camouflaged as an anti-terror campaign. Moscow must not fool anyone that it is working hard to negotiate a settlement that includes forces it has always labelled as terrorists, as their bases are prime targets for Russian airstrikes. Moscow cannot assume one day the role of executioner, and the second that of peacemaker. Through the downing of a few Russian warplanes with surface-to-air missiles, the Kremlin would be sent a clear message that the Middle East is not Georgia or Ukraine, as the stakes in Syria are higher for religious, ethnic and demographic reasons. I am not an advocate of war, but leaving Syria and its people to their fate to face Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, Iraqi, and now reportedly Cuban troops will only give Assad and his cronies, and their tactical allies ISIS, a new lease of life, and the region and beyond more destruction and refugees. The conflict is at a crossroad, and Russia’s intervention is a disaster that could spin out of control regionally and beyond. U.S. President Barack Obama seems to have chosen the wrong conflict to hang up his gloves.

If the opposition is an illusion, then the Syrian army is a myth
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
Statements on the Syrian Arab Army have resurfaced, and there have been recent Russian and Syrian reports on the army's battles against the opposition in Syria. In reality, the armed group these reports refer to is made up of a mixture of foreign powers who are carrying out most of the fighting in Syria on behalf of the Syrian regime. These foreign parties mainly include members of the Lebanese party Hezbollah, of the Iraqi League of the Righteous and of the Iranian Quds Brigade. They also include Afghani Shiite Fatimid militias and others who have been recruited and trained to serve the Iranian regime’s aims of fighting in Syria and in other conflict zones in the Middle East. These are the parties comprising the Syrian Arab Army. This is the army the Syrian official statements have recently referred to and which the Russians claim they are intervening in Syria to support.
Where is the Syrian Arab Army?
The Russian foreign minister once taunted the Free Syrian Army, asking for its address to write to it. He did so to voice doubt it actually exists and to imply that those fighting Bashar al-Assad are terrorists and that everyone who belongs to the opposition is actually affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. Two days ago, the Russian envoy to Saudi Arabia described the Syrian opposition as fragile. The Saudis confidently responded to that by asking Moscow to point to the Syrian Arab Army which they claim to be supporting on ground. There are now a few thousand soldiers and a few hundred officers and generals left in the Syrian army, which was once made up of around 250,000 soldiers
For more than a year and a half now, military experts have confirmed that there’s no trace of this army as many have either defected from its ranks since the revolution erupted or have been killed during the war. This is in addition to the fact that many of those who have continued to serve in the army have been marginalized because most of them are Sunnis whose loyalty to the regime is doubted, and are hence supplied with little amounts of fuel and ammunition as the regime fears they may defect and escape to the opposing camp.
Who is now in the Syrian Arab Army?
The Syrian regime has thus filled the vacuum by resorting to popular forces for defense – as per the Iraqi way. However this did not yield any fruitful results as most of these forces are not trained and are mainly formed of youths who belong to minorities, such as the Alawite sect to which Assad belongs. Most of these forces’ members have preferred to escape military service, and many of them have thus fled Syria.
Today, the Syrian Arab Army, or Assad’s army, is mostly formed of forces which are gathered and managed by Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani who spoke of the presence of 100,000 fighters that were brought to Syria to defend the Assad regime. The opposition Free Syrian Army includes different parties and factions, and most of them are moderate and patriotic, and although it also includes religious extremist parties, none of these opposition parties include foreign fighters like ISIS and al-Nusra Front do. The FSA was mainly born as part of the Syrian opposition project, which comes under the umbrella of the political coalition council that includes all of Syria’s religious and racial components. Sunnis, Kurds and Christians have served as its chiefs and its leaders include Alawites, Druze, Trukmen and others. However, Assad whom the Russians and the Iranians defend, no longer represents anyone, not even his small Alawite sect upon which he inflicted the biggest massacre against its sons as he forced them to engage in battles during the past four horrific years. There are in fact Syrian traffic police in Damascus; however there’s nothing called “the Syrian army” in the sense which the Russians keep mentioning. Even their Iranian allies avoid using the term “Syrian army” as they consider themselves Syria’s armed forces. When the different parties, i.e. the Gulf, Turkish, Russian, American and European governments, who are involved in the struggle in Syria talk about the future role of the Syrian army and security forces, they mean symbolic concepts of the state’s official institutions. There are now a few thousand soldiers and a few hundred officers and generals left in the Syrian army, which was once made up of around 250,000 soldiers.
Syrian security infrastructure has been destroyed
It’s not only the Syrian army which has evaporated. During the past four years of the war, the structure of the security forces’ institutions and intelligence apparatuses, which were once described as among the strongest in the world, have been destroyed. Therefore, the Russians and Iranians must not try and paint a false picture regarding what’s happening in Syria. The truth is no longer a secret due to the several parties fighting there. There is currently no state, no system, no legitimate president, no security forces and no army in Syria. Above all, we are aware that the Iranians, and not the Russians, are the biggest winners from a Russian involvement in Syria which is mainly targeting Syrian opposition forces and not terrorists like ISIS. The Russians are trying to create a balance by eliminating the armed Syrian national opposition so the world, including Turkey and Gulf countries, is forced to support the so-called regime in Damascus in order to fight foreign fighters in ISIS and other terrorist groups. This is the result which will finally serve the interest of Iran who, by then, will have seized Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and also have dangerous influence over the Gulf region.

What’s the difference between Moscow and Assad?
Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
Russian airstrikes reportedly struck a Syrian-American Medical Society-run field hospital, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff members, in Sarmin, Idlib province on October 20th. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova predictably dismissed the claims as “fake,” and launched a petty diatribe against the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights Director Rami Abdel Rahman, one of the people who initially reported the strikes. But the SOHR was not the only party that reported the carnage and the attack was not the first incident of Russia striking a medical facility in war-torn Syria.
Russia has reportedly targeted multiple medical facilities and hospitals – sites that should be sacred and untouchable to all warring parties despite Bashar al-Assad’s own history of destroying them.
Russia will not help end this bloody conflict
The outright denial by Moscow is only the latest claim in continued attempts to spread propaganda that utterly contradicts the apparent reality on the ground. In a new Reuters analysis, their team’s assessments concluded that a stunning 80 percent of Russian strikes have failed to target ISIS-held areas.
Moscow’s apparent inability or unwillingness to accurately report on the targets of its own attacks underscores the risk and foolishness of believing Russia will help end this bloody conflict. According to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Russia has targeted at least seven medical facilities or hospitals since beginning its aerial offensive on 30 September in Syria. On 2-3 October alone, PHR reported that Russian jets bombarded three hospitals in Hama governorate, Idlib, and Latakia. According to a press release published by the same group, the airstrike that hit al-Burnas Hospital in Latakia destroyed the site’s capability to provide obstetrics and gynecology care and was since, “only able to provide some emergency services.”The basic plea to acknowledge that the remaining medical facilities in Syria must be deemed totally off limits is one that Russia cannot disregard. The Assad regime attacks on health care workers and the sites at which they operate are well-documented; since the conflict has begun hundreds of medical personnel have been killed while the country’s health care system has unraveled. Such barbaric, criminal attacks cannot be conducted by yet another party involved in the conflict.
U.S. attack on Kunduz hospital
As documentation regarding Russian attacks on medical facilities comes to light, the United States must face its own deadly attack on an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The U.S. airstrikes that unjustifiably bombarded the hospital, killing at least 23 people, should be subjected to a thorough inquiry. But the important inquiry and the shame of such an attack should not prevent the U.S. from publicly pressuring Russia to halt its attacks. The U.S. should step up efforts to document and confirm the Russian strikes on Syrian medical facilities and demand that an independent investigation be conducted with UN oversight.
Moscow’s apparent inability or unwillingness to accurately report on the targets of its own attacks underscores the risk and foolishness of believing Russia will help end this bloody conflict. With an overwhelming number of reports detailing macabre scenes consistently emanating from Syria since 2011, the risk of collective empathy fatigue is real; but the potential horror of the remaining health care centers being obliterated or rendered useless should not be ignored.

A call for action on U.S.-Arab relations
Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor/Al Arabiya/October 25/15
The following is a speech by Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor at the 24th Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers’ Conference organized by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations at the Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington DC on Oct. 15, 2015. I would like to start by thanking the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, led by Dr. John Duke Anthony – Founding President and CEO, for inviting me to speak at the 24th Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers’ Conference. I thank you for having me. In face of what is happening in our world, there could not have been a more relevant topic to discuss than the topic selected for this year’s conference: ‘the future of U.S.-Arab relations.’The relationship between the United States of America and the Arab countries is at a turning point. For decades, the alliance between the U.S. and the Arab countries, mainly the GCC States, has proven to be paramount for regional and global stability, prosperity and peace. We recognize with gratitude, and cannot deny that we have greatly benefited from your knowledge for decades. As per the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the volume of trade between the U.S. and the GCC countries is worth hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars every year. Americans in the United Arab Emirates form one of the largest Western communities in the UAE; around 50,000 U.S. nationals reside in my country.However, what the previous administrations have done to the Arab world in the last decade, particularly to the Sunni populations, leaves a dark stain on this great nation’s history.
America has nurtured the Ayatollah Khomeini to replace its former best friend the Shah of Iran.
Under false pretenses, the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq. When American troops pulled out, they handed Iraq to Iran on a silver platter, and this former great Arab nation, the Cradle of Civilization, was turned into a cradle for terrorism. I cannot understand why the Obama administration is championing our common enemies and their expansionist agenda in our region. Washington turns a blind eye to the Palestinian tragedy. Right now, we are witnessing the U.S.’s lack of decisive action against one of the most ruthless criminals of our century – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – and the empowerment of Iran, the patron of terrorism in our world, and most importantly, turning a blind eye to the continuous Palestinian tragedy. The daily suffering of our Palestinian brothers and sisters is marginalized – it rarely makes the daily news. But the U.S. State Department was fast to make a statement on Monday “condemning in strong terms the terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians which resulted in the murder of three Israelis”. I never take the death of a human being lightly – any human being, whether Palestinian or Israeli. But the fact of the matter is that Israeli forces are murdering Palestinian families in bulk on a daily basis, even burning them in their homes, and the American authorities have not once condemned those criminal acts. I will not comment further on the Palestinian issue today. I leave this issue to you, ladies and gentleman, to consider what differentiates one man from another man? It is the decision making! It is the ability to make difficult choices when no one else can. That is what leadership is! And that is what is lacking right now!
Syrian refugee crisis must be dealt with at the source
We are currently facing one of the biggest challenges of our time, and that is the issue of refugees around the world.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the number of refugees and the internally displaced has reached its highest point since World War II. The annual cost of this displacement, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, has reached almost U.S. $100 billion.
It is no surprise that many of these people are concentrated in the Middle East and in particular in Iraq and Syria. A third of the world’s refugees come from those two nations alone. Twenty-one percent of the world’s refugees are Syrians. More than 9.5 million have been displaced. That amounts to nearly half of the Syrian population – men, women and children. This is a human tragedy! Hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians have flooded to Europe, risking their lives for a chance of a better life. This tsunami of desperate people is unlikely to ease anytime soon. Do you think they want to leave their country? Their homes? Their family members? No! These people have no choice. This is a last resort, and they have given up hope completely.
Unfortunately, the reception the refugees are met with, in some parts of Europe, is not much better than the conditions they are running away from. And some of the European leaders are refusing to host Syrian refugees for fear of jeopardising Christian history. It is a real disappointment to hear such statements from leaders in Europe in the 21st century. The fact that Syrians are being turned away based on their religious belief is totally unacceptable! The discrimination is blatant and unforgiving! I am not here to point fingers, but rather to tell those who are fostering the hate feelings against those unfortunate refugees in camps that they are attacking the wrong enemy. Their enemy is not the women and children seeking refuge from a bloodthirsty leader. I should take this opportunity to salute Pope Francis for his call for mercy for the Syrian refugees in Europe.
Instead of dealing with this escalating crisis, this human tragedy, why are we not dealing with the source of the problem? We are looking at solutions to deal with its ramifications, rather than eliminating it at its root.
If Bashar al-Assad was dealt with in 2011, or when he used chemical weapons in 2013 against the Syrian people, then we would not be dealing with a world epidemic. Didn’t President Obama draw a red line to the Assad regime, and all the players on the ground, when sarin gas and other chemical weapons were being utilised? What the previous administrations have done to the Arab world in the last decade, particularly to the Sunni populations, leaves a dark stain on this great nation’s history. I quote what President Obama said in 2013, “It’s about humanity’s red line. And it’s a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw.”
With all that is happening to Syrians so far, has this not crossed yet any “humanitarian red lines” for the U.S. and The World? Two years later, and after continuous use of chemicals weapons in Syria, the world still fails to take any action and materialize on its promise. Are five years not enough for the international community to intervene? While world leaders are making plans to host refugees in their countries, all they offer is a temporary solution. But you must know that Syrians do not want to be refugees in Europe even more than Europe’s reluctance to host them! What they need is to go back home to Syria. A ‘safe zone’ should be created within Syrian land, where Syrians can have a safe shelter from the butcher Assad while a solution is being found. A safe zone protected by the NATO. And the criminal Bashar al-Assad should be led to the International Criminal Court. Assad cannot be negotiated with. He should not be allowed an easy exit! He should be tried for all the crimes he committed against his own people. Assad must pay for more than 350,000 innocent lives he has taken! This is what the Syrian people need from you! If justice is not carried out against Assad, you will never be forgiven.
What will happen after sanctions on Iran are lifted?
Let us not forget Syria is not the only troubled country in the Middle East. Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen are not any better. And the common denominator in all these problems is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s malicious fingerprints are left all over the region by supporting terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, militant groups and destabilizing forces in Iraq, and most recently the Houthis in Yemen. If Iran has managed to create all this turbulence and damage despite sanctions, what guarantees can ensure that it does not do more harm once sanctions are lifted? Iran officially supports terrorism. It does not only back Shiite terrorist groups but Sunni ones, such as Al-Qaeda itself. This is not an assumption, but a fact stated in official reports prepared by the U.S. Department of State. Most importantly, the Iranian regime, which regards the United States as the “Great Satan”, has for decades been involved in state-funded terrorism against America and its allies in the region. All that has happened despite the crippling economic sanctions over Iran. Imagine what will happen if the sanctions are lifted!
If an Arab country were perceived to be hostile to the U.S. or the international community, it would be attacked without hesitation. On the other hand, this administration is treating its ‘favorite enemy’ with a velvet glove instead of the iron fist it deserves. Both the U.S. and Iran have displayed exceptional commitment to the nuclear deal, and now a nuclear framework has been agreed. It is easy to understand Iran’s willingness to compromise when sanctions have bit hard. But why the Obama administration has made supreme efforts to shake hands with America’s long-time enemy is perplexing. The P5+1 – Iranian nuclear deal is set to enrich and empower Tehran once economic sanctions are lifted. President Obama says Iran’s new wealth will be used to improve lives in Iran, rather than to fund Hezbollah, the Shiite Yemeni Houthis, or other troublemakers under the Iranian wing. One needs to be naïve at best to believe that. According to a Daily Telegraph report, Ali Khamenei – Iran’s Supreme leader, controls “a financial empire” estimated to be worth $95 billion. That alone should tell you that Iran has no intention of prioritizing the needs of its people over its regional troublemakers.
Iran’s ayatollahs have been oppressing religious and ethnic minorities ever since they took power in 1979. Look at how they have treated Ahwazi Arabs in the occupied province of Arabistan, that they now call Khuzestan. Although Arabistan provides Iran with 80 percent of its oil requirements and half of its gas, Ahwazi Arabs are persecuted and oppressed on daily basis. They are not entitled to their basic human rights. Their identity is being destroyed. They are forced to study in Farsi if they are lucky enough to go to school – a meagre 50 percent chance for boys, and 20 percent for girls. Over 30 percent of Ahwazis under the age of 30 are unemployed. They have no access to drinking water. Their streets are open sewers, and they are deprived of electricity and gas. And more often than not, Arab farmers are stripped of their agricultural land. There is no country on earth, which oppresses its population underfoot, both politically and socially, while keeping over almost 11 million illiterate and 15 million struggling below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Iran spends $15-30 billion every year to support terrorists across the region, according to a recent report. Its proxy Hezbollah has hijacked Lebanon and turned it into a hub for terrorism in the Middle East. Whether it is the military or the political wing, there is no difference, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization created and nurtured by Iran to destabilize the Arab world. It goes without saying that the United States is far better off on the side of its long-term and stability-seeking allies, the GCC countries. Contrary to Iran, our countries track down and punish terrorists and financers of such groups. I would love to know why this entity, which has been hostile to Western powers and their allies since its inception in 1979, is being rewarded for its terrorist associations and its regional will to power! Or is this hostility between Iran and the West just a farce to fool us? Unfortunately, America no longer inspires the world. I say that with deep regret. When President Obama signed up to the Iran nuclear deal, he placed the Middle East and the Gulf in danger from an enriched, empowered, and legitimized Tehran.
Upcoming U.S. election
As the American people prepare to elect a new president, a man or a woman who will influence the future of the world, it is important that voters begin scrutinizing the presidential candidates through a new lens – one that is serious, positive, and objective. Americans should stop judging a man by his cover and dig deep to see who possesses the necessary tools as well as life experiences. Voters should not care about their candidates’ personal lives, or what candidates do in their homes, behind closed doors. That is nobody’s business. Instead voters should look for a shrewd businessman, with economic know-how, a candidate who will create jobs for them. Money is power, and money comes from smart and healthy economies. Americans need employment. Americans need opportunities. They need investments in infrastructure. Most of all, they want to enjoy a healthy economy. They have tried the speakers who made empty promises or announced unrealistic policies – who have failed to return America to its former glory.
The U.S. is a powerhouse of leaders, but this time instead of selecting a politician for president, it is best to vote for a successful businessman with a positive approach to run the country. Some might say that the presidential election is an American matter, and as an Arab, I should not interfere. Allow me to correct them! The choice of President, and his policies, will affect the whole world. The world needs leadership. The American president needs to gain the admiration of your own people as well as ours. America’s light of truth and justice should shine bright again! To conclude, I invite you to please join me for a moment of silence to honor the UAE military men and women who sacrificed their lives in the line of duty in Yemen recently. May God bless their souls. A large number of our finest UAE soldiers were killed while defending their Yemeni brothers and sisters from Iranian-sponsored Houthi rebels. We Emiratis are a population tied together by tribal roots and family connections. Every single Emirati life is precious to us, and we will not forget the sacrifice of our heroes. Our shared grief has joined us together as never before. We are very proud of the martyrs, there are defenders of the oppressed. I am very proud of my country. The United Arab Emirates never skirts its duty and has proved its courage time and time again. My country is committed to the region’s security and fighting terrorism. Our hands are always open to help our friends and neighbors, be it with financial support or assistance in preserving their freedom.
We are determined to prevail over the threat of the Iranian thugs. Our resolve to fight on the side of right will never falter. We will never permit terrorist plotters to be victorious when the future of our nations is at stake.We extend our hands to our allies, and it is my deepest hope that the United States of America, our long-time friend and ally, stands with us again in our common fight against terrorism to make our world safe again. God bless America. And God bless our troubled Arab World. Thank you very much.

Gregg Roman on the 'Inextricable Connection' between Islamists and Hitler
Al-Jazeera English/October 25, 2015
Middle East Forum director Gregg Roman appeared alongside Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, and Sakarya University professor Norman Finkelstein on Al-Jazeera English on October 22 to discuss Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial statement that Palestinian Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini contributed to Nazi planning of the Holocaust. See video below right.
Excerpt
moderator: Gregg, do you think Netanyahu expected such a backlash? Gregg Roman: No, but I also think there were several points in Netanyahu's speech that were not factually accurate, like Mr. Finkelstein said. For instance, he said the mufti died in Cairo in 1974 from cancer. He actually died in Beirut. But I think the real element of what we have to look at here regarding the mufti's involvement, not just with the Holocaust but [with] Palestinian and Arab incitement against Jews, is the history of the mufti's meetings with Hitler. In February 1941, an invitation was extended from Hitler to the mufti in Jerusalem [to come to] Berlin. The meeting didn't take place until November 28, 1941. This is all available in the German foreign record ... The mufti and Hitler met in Berlin. There were four agreements that came to be. And of those agreements, one would be the use of the mufti's propaganda trying to rally Arabs in coming for a Middle Eastern Holocaust that was going to be planned. And this is also part of the historical record. I would even ...
moderator: All right, but hang on a second Gregg. Let me ask you, why would the prime minister of a country, why would the prime minister of Israel, be standing in front of the world and making factually incorrect statements?
Roman: Sometimes politicians make factually incorrect statements. However, I don't think he was trying to point to the historical record as his general point. I think what he was trying to point to was the linkage between the mufti, his ideological heir Yasser Arafat, and subsequently Palestinian incitement that's going on today, as being of the same lineage as the mufti's hatred toward Jews. That's the wider issue of what he was trying to bring up. The context in how he did it may have been incorrect. However, I have to say, the element, pathos of what he was talking about was correct.
Middle East Forum director Gregg Roman (left) and Mouin Rabbani on Al-Jazeera English
Mouin Rabbani: ... Trying to trivialize this by saying that politicians make factually inaccurate mistakes. Well, suppose that, for example, Mahmoud Abbas were to get up today and say, "actually, the Holocaust was not Hitler's idea, it was proposed to him by David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann in order to justify the creation of the state of Israel." Imagine the outrage. We wouldn't have someone like John Kerry saying both side need to tone down the rhetoric. Imagine the outrage if a Palestinian leader had said something similar. So, to seek to trivialize this is, I think, quite obscene.
I also do think, however, it raises an opportunity for another important discussion we need to have. And that is the role of the Zionist movement in the 30s and the 40s. Now, Netanyahu is the heir to that faction of the pre-state Zionist movement eventually known as revisionism, which was in fact inspired by fascism, albeit an Italian variant led by Mussolini. Um, and during World War II, in 1941, one faction of that movement, which was eventually led by Yitzhak Shamir, made an approach to Nazi Germany, during the Holocaust I should add, proposing an alliance with Berlin against the British, who then ruled Palestine. So, there's a long history here. Netanyahu today is the heir and the leader of that wing of the Zionist movement.
Roman: ... So let me address the incitement narrative that I was asked about by the interviewer.
moderator: Yes, please.
Hitler and Husseini in Berlin, November 1941
Roman: The roots of Palestinian incitement come from Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former grand mufti of Jerusalem. In his ... [Damascus memoirs], written only in Arabic and not translated into English until 2014, when a book came out called Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, we see that the grand mufti himself describes the protocols of his meetings with Hitler [inaudible] ... trying to claim responsibility for incitement that took place in North Africa and in the Middle East, even taking responsibility for the Farhud, which was the June 1941 pogrom against Jews in Baghdad.
There is an inescapable and inextricable connection between Islamists in the 1940s and the Nazi movement. And to make the claim that there was any kind of effort to have an 'unholy alliance' between Zionism and Nazism is absurd. The conversation that took place between Shamir and ...
Rabbani (interrupting): It's documented. It is in the public record. Roman: ... that conversation that we're talking about was not an alliance against the British, it was an effort to try to extract Jews from Europe so they wouldn't die in the gas chambers.
http://www.meforum.org/5578/roman-al-jazeera

The Shi'ite Leopard: Iran's Religious Persecution
Denis MacEoin/Gastone Gate/October 25, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6671/iran-religious-persecution
Despite promises of amelioration from Iran's current President, Hassan Rouhani, the situation for Christians has not improved at all.
Rouhani, came to power as a proponent of human rights and reform, and has been considered a reformer and moderate in the West ever since. He made countless declarations of his intention to pursue a human rights agenda and guarantee equal rights for all Iranians: Every one of those promises has been broken, yet the U.S. continues to put faith in Rouhani as an honest broker.
"Christians continue to be arbitrarily arrested... [They] disappear for weeks at a time... Detainees are sometimes told they must to convert to Islam or their families will be killed." -- Ruth Gledhill, journalist
Even though many Sufi Muslims are fervently pious in their devotion to the faith of the Shi'a, clerics in Qom declared Sufis to be apostates and attempted to expel them from the town and to take over their religious centre.
The document organized the methods of oppression used to persecute the Baha'is, and contained specific recommendations. When Iranian judges offer the Bahai's life in exchange for abandonment of faith it is a clear admission of a purely religious motive.
Why do so many Western states and the UN condemn Israel while bending over backwards to accommodate every demand Iran makes in its bid to build nuclear weapons, expand its terrorist influence, and threaten the West?
In the wake of the infamous nuclear deal with the hard-line Iranian regime, countries around the world, led by U.S. President Barack Obama, are busy trying to bring the Islamic Republic, so long sanctioned and held at arm's length by decent people, in from the cold. Business deals beckon, great claims are made of coming dialogue and a slackening of the tensions of the Middle East. We are told that war has been avoided.
But has the Shi'ite leopard, overnight, truly changed its spots? It still executes more people per capita than China, it still supports and conducts terrorist activities in several countries, its leaders still preach hatred for America, Israel, and the West. In reality, nothing has changed, yet the theocratic, human-rights-denying regime is now to be everybody's best buddy.
An important indicator of Iran's unfitness to be counted among the nations as a legitimate actor must be its treatment of its many minorities, above all its religious minorities. As with Saudi Arabia, the theocratic character of the state is most clearly exposed when it comes to its treatment of religions and sects that are not held by the majority. A strict interpretation and application of Islamic law unfailingly leads to disrespect for and harshness towards non-Muslims.
Iran's current president, Hassan Rouhani, came to power as a proponent of human rights and reform, and has been considered a reformer and moderate in the West ever since. During his election campaign, he made countless declarations of his intention to pursue a human rights agenda. On April 11, 2013, he said: "All Iranian people should feel there is justice. Justice means equal opportunity. All ethnicities, all religions, even religious minorities, must feel justice." In a Press TV interview that August, he repeated that his administration would guarantee equal rights for all Iranians: "no authority should differentiate between various ethnicities, religions, minorities and followers of different faiths." Every one of those promises has been broken, yet the U.S administration continues to put faith in Rouhani as an honest broker.
Twelver Shi'ism, which has been the official faith of Iran since the 16th century, has itself been a persecuted religion wherever its adherents have lived under Sunni rule. It was imposed on the population of Iran by the Safavid dynasty (1502-1736), and during the nineteenth century, its clerical hierarchy grew steadily more powerful. Despite setbacks in the twentieth century, the clerical elite came to supreme power during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Since the Shi'a are a minority in the Islamic world overall, they are deeply conscious of a need to clamp down on any other religious movements that might threaten to destabilize their rule.
Ironically, Iran is also home to a variety of religious communities, the most notable being the Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sufis, and the indigenous Baha'i religion. Jews, who had lived in Iran for some 2,500 years, numbered between 60,000 and 80,000 in 1978; after the revolution the following year, two-thirds of the community went abroad. The 2011 census showed less than 9000 Jews left in Iran. It has just been reported that the last synagogue in Borujerd, once home for a significant Jewish community, had to close because there was not a minyan, a minimum prayer quorum of ten men.
Iran's regime has tried to portray itself as tolerant towards Jews, but its fanatical hatred for Israel and Zionism has often exposed the community to accusations of espionage, arrests, and executions. Outwardly, Iranian Jews are not particularly molested, and are represented by a single Member of Parliament. They operate synagogues and ritual baths, celebrate festivals, and are granted the status of dhimmi people: protected by an Islamic government in return for discriminatory debasing requirements. The tolerance, however, is apparently skin deep, with anti-Zionism lying near the surface.[1]
The second of Iran's dhimmi faiths, Christianity, has not fared as well. The total number of Christians in Iran (of all denominations) has been estimated at between 200,000 and 250,000. Ninety percent of these belong to long-standing indigenous churches, for Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans. They do not seek converts and are relatively unmolested. But churches that have links to foreign countries are treated harshly. According to Minority Rights International:
"The Protestants, and particularly evangelical groups, face the most difficulties from amongst the Christian communities in Iran. Human Rights Watch estimated their numbers at around 10,000-15,000 in 2002. Churches have been closed down, the use of Persian in sermons banned, the publishing of Bibles restricted and Muslims strictly prohibited from attending sermons, with previous converts from Islam being put under particular surveillance. A number of Christian leaders have been killed or found murdered since the early 1990s: Assemblies of God Minister Bishop Haik Hovsepian Mehr was found stabbed to death in 1994; Reverend Mehdi Dibaj, pastor of the Church of the Assemblies of God, a convert from Islam 41 years previously, was released from prison in January 1994 but found dead by the authorities on July 2 that year; Reverend Tateos Michaelian, found murdered in July 1994; pastor Mohammad Bagher Yusefi, disappeared and was found dead in 1996, and pastor Ghorban Dordi Tourani was found dead in 2005.
Respected religious affairs journalist Ruth Gledhill has argued that, despite promises of amelioration from the current President, Hasan Rouhani, the situation for Christians has not improved at all. By the end of 2014, over 90 Christians were behind bars. Gledhill writes:
"Christians continue to be arbitrarily arrested and interrogated because of their faith. Some face 'severe physical and psychological torture' during detention, and simple prayer or Bible study meetings are regarded as political activities that threaten the national security of Iran.
"Christians disappear for weeks at a time while they are interrogated. They are held in solitary and questioned nightly, for hours at a time, beginning just after midnight. A key goal of the security services is to find and remove any New Testaments from the homes of Christians. Detainees are sometimes told they must to convert to Islam or their families will be killed."[2]
Despite such threats, it has been claimed by some missionary organizations that thousands of Iranian Muslims are converting to Christianity, resulting in a growth rate of 20% per annum. Mohammed Zamir, a church leader in the UK for expatriate Iranians, has stated that hundreds of thousands of Iranians are converting to Christianity, out of control of the authorities. These claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. The longest-lasting and most indigenous faith in the country is, of course, the ancient Zoroastrian religion, founded by the Iranian prophet Zardosht (Zarathustra, Zoroaster) somewhere between 1700 and 500 BCE, but traditionally dated to around 600 BCE. Until modern times, the religion has remained largely confined to Iran and India (where Zoroastrians are known as Parsis, having moved to the sub-continent from Iran from the 8th to 10th centuries to avoid persecution by the Muslim newcomers).[3] Although the Qur'an mainly speaks of Jews and Christians when it refers to "the people of the book" (Ahl al-kitab), one verse (22:17) speaks of the Magis (al-Majus): "As for the believers [the Muslims], those who follow the Jewish religion, the Sabaeans, the Christians, the Magians, and the idol worshippers, God will decide between them on the Last Day."
After the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran between 633 and 651 CE, it became a matter of urgency to define the status of the Zoroastrian population. Exegetes and jurists agreed that they should be treated as scriptuaries and not pagans, which led to a degree of toleration for them and their religious practices.
Under the Islamic regime, however, this toleration has been severely strained. In November 2005, Ayatollah Ahmed Jannati, chairman of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, disparaged Zoroastrians and other religious minorities as "sinful animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption." When the Zoroastrians' solitary parliamentary representative protested, he was hauled before a revolutionary tribunal. There, mullahs threatened execution before sparing his life with a warning never to challenge their declarations again. A frightened community subsequently declined to re-elect him. Writing in 2011, Sanskrity Sinha commented that "Zoroastrianism in Iran is on the verge of dying an ignominious death, with only a few thousand living in a country where their rights are suppressed."
Sufism is another indigenous community that has suffered greatly at the hands of the Islamic regime. Sufism is the mystical trend in Islam, and in the Sunni world, across North Africa, the Middle East, and far beyond. In some periods, the many Sufi brotherhoods (tariqat) were followed by as much as 90% of the population. Sufism has been attacked in modern times, especially by the Saudi Wahhabis, and its numbers have greatly fallen. In Iran (and in regions such as Tajikistan, Afghanistan and northern India, saturated with Persian influences), although there were few orders, the culture was deeply embedded with Sufi mysticism. Persian poetry, for example, is considered one of the greatest canons of verse in the world. [4]
The Islamic regime will never dare ban the works of these poets, considered the highest achievement of Persian culture. But in a bizarre move, it has clamped down hard on Iran's best-known Sufi order, the Ne'matollahis.[5]
Today, even though members of it are fervently pious in their devotion to the faith of the Shi'a and their twelve holy imams, the Sufis, especially the Gonabadi branch, have been persecuted. In 2006, for instance, clerics in Qom (where the important Khomeinist seminary is situated) declared Sufis to be apostates and attempted to expel them from the town and to take over their Shi'i-style religious centre. Dervishes from across Iran travelled to Qom, held several days of protests around the centre, and declared their desire for peace, their commitment to the Shi'i faith, and their loyalty to the revolution.
In spite of this display of devotion, police suppressed the protest. Over 1,000 Sufis were arrested and the religious centre was burned to the ground. The anti-Sufi campaign then moved to other cities such as Bojnurd and Isfahan, where more centres were destroyed. In 2009, the shrine of Sufi poet and philosopher Dervish Naser 'Ali, situated in a local cemetery in Isfahan, was looted and then destroyed. Protesters who gathered outside the Majlis (Iran's parliament) were disrupted when police arrested sixty of them.
That same year, the Green Movement for democracy in Iran was violently suppressed. It had been supported by the Gonabadi Sufis. Since then, lawyers, website managers, and others have been imprisoned, tortured and killed. On September 10, four Gonabadi activists were arraigned in Shiraz for trying to appeal their earlier convictions. Their website describes this: "At the court hearing in the case of four dervishes, Mr. Saleheddin Moradi, Mr. Farzad Darviah, Mr. Behzad Nouri and Mrs. Farzaneh Nouri that was held in Branch 16 of the appeals court of Shiraz, the representative of the prosecution contemptuously emphasized the necessity of their penitence, to discontinue... website activities... and also the maximum punishment for the mentioned dervishes."
The attack on the Sufis of Iran reveals something particularly dark about the Islamic regime. Sufi mysticism, with its close ties to the most central aspects of Persian culture -- poetry, calligraphy, music, miniature painting, the rose, the nightingale, the garden -- is vital to the healthy working of Iranian society, yet the regime that asserts its right to protect the people under its rule has turned on it.
Not far from that denial of Persian values stands the greatest persecution of all: the ongoing attack made on Iran's largest indigenous religious minority, the Baha'is. "The Baha'is of Iran," according to Payam Akhavan, Professor of International Law at McGill University, have long been the canary in the mineshaft as far as human rights are concerned. Their treatment is the litmus test of the direction the leadership intends to take the country."
This is a subject that has resulted in a vast outpouring of articles, reports, government debates, websites, legal appeals, protests, speeches and encyclopaedia articles. Although there have been many executions, this is not a story like that of Islamists killing Christians in the Middle East. It is something more chilling than that. It's best parallel is the persecution of Jews in Germany in the 1930s, before the move to a "Final Solution" -- a slow, steady, calculated, often bureaucratic campaign of attrition.
Baha'ism (the Baha'i Faith) is a monotheistic religion that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century out of a Shi'ite sect known as Babism.[6]
Today, it is estimated that there are about five million Baha'is across the globe, with their largest numbers among Hindu converts in India and Western converts in Europe, North and South America. The Baha'i temple in New Delhi, with over 100 million visitors, is considered by UNESCO to be one of the most visited buildings in the world. Although small in numbers, the Baha'is are racially, nationally, and religiously diverse, well organized and well integrated.
Where Babism was militant and grew embroiled in clashes with state troops in several places, Baha' Allah abrogated jihad, advocated world peace, equality of the sexes, world brotherhood and other teachings ultimately derived from Western sources. His religion, built on a mixture of Shi'i and Sufi beliefs, was nonetheless progressive in nature, at ease with modernity, and divorced from political intrigue. This combination of religious heresy and Western social themes brought it directly in conflict with the clergy of the day and through the twentieth century. Baha'is were martyred, imprisoned, and faced with daily suspicion and animosity. For all that, their stress on education and their openness to science and professional pursuits meant that they prospered as doctors, lawyers, teachers, academics, and technicians. Some even held positions at the Shah's court. More complicated is that many Iranian Jews converted to Baha'ism, despite this exposing them to harsher treatment.[7]
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, things changed greatly for the worse. After the fall of the Shah, Dr. James Cockcroft interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini and asked specifically about the Baha'is:
Cockroft: Will there be either religious or political freedom for the Baha'is under the Islamic government?
Khomeini: They are a political faction; they are harmful. They will not be accepted.
Cockroft: How about their freedom of religion– religious practice?
Khomeini: No.[8]
So began the first major persecution in the Middle East in modern times.[9]
In the first ten years after the Revolution, over 200 Baha'is were murdered or executed, while hundreds more were tortured and imprisoned. Tens of thousands lost jobs, access to education, pensions, and other civil rights for no other reason than that they belonged to a religion that claimed there had been two new prophets after Muhammad. It was thought by many that the regime would finally carry out a genocide of the community, then numbering around 300,000.[10]
Among thousands of incidents, two stand out as indicative of the violent tactics underlying the Revolution, its institutions, and its laws. The single greatest example of violence towards Baha'is occurred in 1983 in the southern city of Shiraz. A few years earlier, in February 1979, the suburb of Sa'diyeh had been rocked by an anti-Baha'i pogrom that left over two hundred homes and businesses looted and burned. In 1981, five Baha'i leaders, and in 1982 another three, were executed. In October and November 1982, mass arrests were carried out by local members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The stage was set for further violence.[11]
After a prolonged persecution, at the beginning of June 1983, in accordance with Islamic tradition, the 22 remaining Baha'i detainees in prison were offered four last opportunities to convert to Islam and save their lives. They all declined.
Ten women who were hanged had been charged with the crime of teaching children's classes. The classes, known as Dars-e Akhlaq, "Morality lessons," are similar in nature to Christian Sunday schools or Jewish religious classes for children. They teach moral behaviour that could come straight from any Judaeo-Christian ethics curriculum. All ten had been tortured and interrogated for months before their execution. The youngest, Mona Mahmudnizhad, seventeen at the time of her death, has become a symbol of Baha'i martyrdom.
It is reported that while in prison Mona was bastinadoed on the soles of her feet with a cable and forced to walk while bleeding. One account states that she kissed the hand of her executioner and then the rope itself, before putting it around her own neck. Her father was arrested and executed at about the same time. During the trial of another young victim, 23-year-old Roya Eshraqi, a veterinary student, the judge said "You put yourselves through this agony only for one word: Just say you are not a Baha'i and I'll see that... you are released..." Ms. Eshraqi is said to have responded, "I will not exchange my faith for the whole world."
U.S. President Ronald Reagan asked the Iranian government to show clemency. He was ignored.
What is clear again is the purely religious character of the persecution. Khomeini's claim that the Baha'is "are a political faction" and the frequent claims that they are spies could not be farther from the truth. Baha'is are forbidden by their own doctrines to take part in any form of politics and are even dissuaded from voting in elections. They do have teachings about a future world government and international economics, but have no interest in party politics and are commanded to be loyal to whatever country they may live in. Baha'is can be sanctioned by their own institutions for breaking these rules. The Iranian government knows this perfectly well, and when judges offer life in exchange for abandonment of faith it is a clear admission of a purely religious motive.
Although clerics have called for genocide, it has became official policy to suppress the Baha'is in a more careful fashion.[12] It is highly likely that the international protests about the fate of the Baha'is may have convinced the regime that a total liquidation of the community would produce a storm of condemnation that they might find hard to weather.
In February 1991, a confidential circular[13] was issued by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a body set up by Khomeini in Qom, whose members were at that time all appointees of Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamene'i. The Council has extraordinary powers. Its rulings must be treated as laws and may not be overruled. Stamped "confidential," the circular was signed by Hujjatu'l Islam Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, Secretary of the Council, and approved by Ayatollah Khamene'i, who added his signature. The circular addressed "the Baha'i question" and signalled an increase in efforts to suffocate the Iranian Baha'i community in a more "silent" fashion. The document organized the methods of oppression used to persecute the Baha'is, and contained specific recommendations on how to block the progress of the Baha'i communities both inside and outside Iran. The document stated that the most excessive types of persecutions should be avoided and instead, among other things recommended, that Baha'is be expelled from universities, "once it becomes known that they are Baha'is," to "deny them employment if they identify themselves as Baha'is" and to "deny them any position of influence."
The systematic exclusion of Baha'i professors and students from the universities started soon after the Revolution, but became clear by 1983. In response, the Baha'is themselves tried to remedy the situation by establishing in 1987 the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education, a clandestine university that operated underground and continues nowadays mainly through the internet. Its curriculum is broad; many graduates have been credited by American and European universities for higher studies. The teachers are generally made up of Baha'i lecturers and professors who have been dismissed from their posts in the regular Iranian universities. Over the years, the university has been closed down on several occasions, many teachers have been arrested, and many remain in Iran's prisons, serving long sentences.[14] The Bahai Institute of Higher Education in Iran has, however, received considerable support from universities, academic institutes, governments, and other bodies (such as Amnesty International) around the world, which have repeatedly petitioned the Iranian government to legalize it and permit Baha'is to attend national universities.
The Baha'is, like the Jews, have always considered education to be a primary function of a healthy society. In 1973, when the national literacy rate for women under 40 in Iran stood at 15%, the figure for Baha'i women was 100%.[15] The first Girls school in Iran was opened by Baha'is in 1899, closed down, then re-opened in 1911 as the Tarbiyyat-e Banat in Tehran, with a secular curriculum and American Baha'i women teachers. It was immensely popular, and by the 1930s there were dozens of Baha'i schools for both girls and boys. They were the best schools in the country, the academies to which many of the middle and upper classes sent their children. But in 1934, the government under Reza Shah shut them down permanently.[16] Today, Baha'i children in regular schools, the dabestans and dabirestans, suffer ill treatment. According to the Baha'i International Community, "Baha'i school children at all levels continue to be monitored and slandered by administrators and teachers in schools. Secondary school students often face pressure and harassment, and some have been threatened with expulsion. Religious studies teachers are known to insult and ridicule Baha'i beliefs. In a few reported cases, when Baha'i students attempt to clarify matters at the request of their peers, they are summoned to the school authorities and threatened with expulsion if they continue to 'teach' their Faith."
In one of the cruellest phases of this persecution, the Islamic government has behaved in an identical fashion to the Islamic State terrorist organization. Across Iraq and Syria, IS has destroyed churches, shrines, ancient monuments, and cultural artefacts of deep significance in human history. The Iranian regime has demolished all the holy places of the Baha'i faith in Iran, shrines and buildings associated with their prophets, martyrs, and early followers. In Shiraz, a charming early 19th-century dwelling known as the House of the Bab, where the first of the two Baha'i prophets revealed his mission to his first followers, was summarily bulldozed shortly after the Revolution, and a mosque built on the site. This little house, which the author visited several times while living in Shiraz in the 1970s, was of historical and religious significance, with its exquisite Persian carpets, stained glass windows, and genial atmosphere.
The regime has not stopped at shrines. Over the years, many Baha'i cemeteries have been dug up and the corpses in them disinterred and scattered. As recently as April 2014, Shiraz's Revolutionary Guards commenced the destruction of a historic Baha'i cemetery. International pressure halted this destruction for a while, but a few months later, in August, the work of demolition began again, and a concrete foundation was laid for a complex of recreational buildings. Among the 950 Baha'is who had been buried there were the ten women hanged in 1983. Incidentally, Baha'i law prohibits burial more than an hour's distance from the place of death. (This is in conscious contradiction of the Shi'i practice of keeping corpses for months or years before sending them to be buried at one of the shrine centres in Iraq.)
The destruction of a historic Baha'i cemetery in Shiraz, Iran, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp. (Image source: Baha'i World News Service)
This insidious process of attrition operates across the board. Baha'is face the monitoring of their movements, activities and bank accounts; the denial of their pensions and inheritances; exclusion from employment in most sectors; the closure of their shops and businesses; the prohibition of their access to publishing or copying facilities for the printing of Baha'i sacred and general literature; and the confiscation of property. Muslims who associate with Baha'is are intimidated. Anti-Baha'i writings and broadcasts are common. From January 2014 through May 2015, the Baha'i International Community documented more than 6,300 items of anti-Baha'i propaganda in Iran's official or semi-official media. A report on the media campaign to demonize Baha'is is available here.
A particular injustice that has received considerable comment around the world is the current imprisonment of seven Baha'i leaders. They were arrested in 2008 and given to a twenty-year prison sentence in 2010. Their sentence was passed by Mohammad Moghiseh, head of Branch 28 of Tehran's Revolutionary Court. Moghiseh is one of six regime judges accused of being behind recent crackdowns on dissidents, journalists and others. According to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, an Iranian human rights activist in Norway, "This group is among the most notorious judges in Iran. They are known for their politicised verdicts, unfair trials [and] sentencing prisoners based on confessions made under duress." Gissou Nia, of the US-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre (IHRDC), said: "It seems that in the courtrooms of Salavati, Moghiseh and Pirabbasi, there is [something] counter-intuitive at play -- that is, the shorter the hearing, the longer the sentence." She added: "Those cases that have made their way before this trio of revolutionary court judges, and have resulted in long terms of imprisonment or, even worse, death, read like a who's who of the most high-profile miscarriages of justice in the Iranian legal system."
The condemned, five men and two women, were elected members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran. The Baha'i religion has no priesthood and a very limited clerical class. All the main Baha'i institutions at local, national and international level are created through open elections (without electioneering), and individuals take on their responsibilities as a religious duty. In other words, these seven Baha'is are volunteers who took on administrative functions in a time of very great danger for their faith and themselves. Known as the Yaran (Friends), they embody the injustice, irrationality, and cruelty of the Iranian regime.
Writing on the day of their final trial in Canada's Globe and Mail, Howard Adelman (professor emeritus of philosophy at York University and founder of the Centre for Refugee Studies) lists the seven and provides short but pertinent information on who they are:
Fariba Kamalabadi, 46, whose physician father was arrested in the 1980s, tortured and imprisoned, was an honours student denied entry to university but who became a developmental psychologist while raising three children. On the first anniversary of Ms. Kamalabadi's arrest, her youngest, Alhan, wrote an open letter expressing the "mountain load of pain and sorrow" she carried during "a year of being far from a mother."
Jamaloddin Khanjani is a 75-year old industrialist, a father of four and a grandfather of six.
Afif Naeimi, 47, is a brilliant student who was denied entry to medical school but who became a successful industrialist. He is a father of two.
Saeid Rezaie, 51, is a Baha'i scholar and an agricultural engineer with a farming equipment business. He has three children.
Mahvash Sabet, 55, is a teacher and principal who was dismissed from public education for being a Baha'i. She served as director of the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education for 15 years. She has two children.
Behrouz Tavakkoli, 57, is a former lieutenant in the Iranian army and social worker who specialized in the care of people with disabilities. He lost his government job after the Islamic Revolution because he was a Baha'i. He has spent previous time under arrest in solitary confinement. He has two sons, one a student and the other an engineer living in Canada.
Vahid Tizfahm, 35, is an optometrist and a former member of the Baha'i National Youth Committee. He has one son.
The head of their legal team, Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, has stated that her clients have been convicted of "spying for America and Israel, acting against national security and [engaging in] propaganda against the [Islamic Republic's] system", adding: "I read the dossier and fortunately or unfortunately, found in it no cause or evidence to sustain the criminal charges upheld by the prosecutor." In an interview with Washington TV, she described the difficulties she and her fellow lawyers faced:
"When I and my colleagues accepted to act as their defense lawyers, they had not been allowed to see their families for over a year. And for some time too, they were not allowed to meet with us. After a year and a half when the investigation ended, I and the rest of the lawyers were permitted to read the dossier and we met them on one occasion in prison."
The seven leaders are confined in Section 209 in Evin, Iran's most notorious prison. The campaign for their release continues. A detailed summary of the injustices meted out to them has been penned by American jurist Dr. Christopher Buck J.D., and is available here. In it, Buck argues with detailed use of quotations that the trial and sentencing were in contradiction of Iran's constitution, but argues that the protections offered in that document are always suspended if anything is deemed contrary to "Islamic criteria".
All of the above could be expanded on over a dozen articles or more. But I would like to end on a positive note. Iran, a country whose clerical leadership has for decades instructed the population to chant "Death to Israel" in its mosques and on its streets, terrorizes its religious minorities and threatens its Baha'i population with slow extinction. Israel, on the other hand, the one country in the world that almost every other country condemns as an evil Zionist entity, is the only country in the Middle East that offers full-time protection to its own religious minorities, be they Christians, Muslims, or Baha'is. Israel hosts the two holiest Baha'i shrines, the seat of the supreme Baha'i legislative body, the Universal House of Justice, gardens, a cemetery, their international archives, and other foundations. One day, a Baha'i temple as original in design as the other temples on five continents will be built atop Mount Carmel. Every year, thousands of Baha'i pilgrims from around the world come to perform visitation at the shrines. The Baha'i World Center has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and is today one of the most popular destinations for tourists to Israel.
This single fact alone is the clearest evidence of how wholly different Iran is from Israel: Iran is a murderous theocracy while Israel is a thoroughly tolerant democracy. Why, then, do so many Western states and the UN, condemn Israel while bending over backwards to accommodate every demand Iran makes in its bid to build nuclear weapons, expand its terrorist influence, and threaten the West?
The Iranian leadership must now feel invulnerable; it seems that no matter what they do, the Western powers will let them get away with it. This sense of invulnerability, if not checked, will mean even harsher treatment of religious minorities and quite possibility a fast-track impetus towards a genocide of the Baha'i population, as well as the accelerated murder of others.
Denis MacEoin has a PhD in Persian Studies from King's College, Cambrdge. He has written many books, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries about the Baha'is and their predecessors.
[1] Dr. Esther Webman, director of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, has said the tolerance is a mere façade.
[2] Citing a 2015 report, The Persecution of Christians in Iran, from the UK all-party Christians in Parliament group.
[3] Regarding Iran, in a 2009 report, the U.S. State Department declared that "the [Iranian] Government estimates there are 30,000 to 35,000 Zoroastrians, a primarily ethnic Persian minority; however, Zoroastrian groups claim to have 60,000 adherents."
[4] The majority of these great poets – whose work has been translated into many languages – were Sufi mystics: Rumi (1207-1273, today known as America's favourite poet), Hafez (1325-1389), Sa'di (1210-1291), Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), Attar (1110-1221), Sana'i (d. 1131/41), and dozens more. Every Iranian home has a copy of Hafez's Divan alongside a copy of the Qur'an. Iranians, even peasants, will quote at length from this mystical poetry. Traditional singers use poetry for their lyrics. That most exquisite of all Persian arts, calligraphy, is seen everywhere in renditions of famous poems. In the famous city of Shiraz, the tombs of Hafez and Sa'di are daily visited by pilgrims from around the country. A series of radio programmes without parallel in the West, Barnama-ye Golha (The Flowers Programme), was broadcast in Iran for twenty-three years, from 1956 to 1979 (when the regime imposed a general ban on music), discussing the links between Persian poetry and musical traditions.
[5] The Ne'matollahis, and specifically on its chief branch, the Gonabadi-Ne'matollahis. The Ne'matollahi order was founded by Shah Ne'matollah Vali (1330-1431), an Iranian Sufi shaykh and poet. Soon after the establishment of the Shi'ite Safavid dynasty in 1501, the order declared itself Shi'i. Today, the Gonabadi branch, which emerged in 1861 following the death of the last overall Ne'matollahi shaykh, is fervently pious in its devotion to the faith of the Shi'a and their twelve holy imams.
[6] The fullest account of this movement is to be found in Denis MacEoin, The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism, 738 pp., Brill, Leyden, 2009. Readers should also consult, Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850, 477 pp., Cornell U.P., Ithaca, N.Y., 1989. Its two prophet-founders, Sayyid 'Ali Muhammad Shirazi, the Bab [the Gate] (1819-1850) and Mirza Husayn-'Ali Nuri, Baha' Allah (Baha'u'llah) (1817-1892) were born Shi'i Iranians. The Bab, shot by a firing squad in Tabriz in 1850, is buried in the famous golden-domed shrine on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Baha' Allah, exiled to Ottoman Syria, is buried in a shrine outside the city of Acco.
[7] See Mehrdad Amanat, Jewish Identities in Iran: Resistance and Conversion to Islam and the Baha'i Faith, I. B. Tauris, London, 2011.
[8] James Cockcroft, "Iran's Khomeini," an exclusive interview by Jim Cockcroft, SEVEN DAYS, February 23, 1979, Volume III, Number 1, pp. 17-24.
[9] The most comprehensive accounts of this phenomenon are three major reports by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a non-profit organization based in New Haven, funded by the US State Department as well as the Canadian government, private foundations and other donors. The reports are available online: "A Faith Denied", "Crimes Against Humanity", and "Community Under Siege". Their work has been reinforced by Dr. Nabila Ghanea's 2003 book, Human Rights, the U.N. and the Baha'is in Iran, a 640-page report by an experienced human rights expert.
[10] In a 1982 study of the persecution, Iran's Secret Pogrom, British author Geoffrey Nash predicted such an outcome.
[11] In its Executive Report at the heads of its lengthy report on these incidents, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center provides this summary: In February 1983, the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz accidentally sent an internal circular intended for distribution within the Revolutionary Guard Corps to the offices of a local newspaper, Khabar-i Junub. The circular stated that the Court had issued an order for the execution of twenty-two members of the local Baha'i community. The victims were not named. The newspaper published this information following it up with an interview with the Head of the Revolutionary Court, Hojjatolislam Qaza'i, ominously headlined: "I Warn the Baha'is to come to the Bosom of Islam." At the time one detainee had already been executed in January. Three more prominent Baha'i detainees were executed in March 1983.
The Khabar-i Junub article provoked an international outcry. The Islamic Republic regime responded by exploiting the foreign pressure as evidence to support its narrative that the Baha'i Faith was the artificial creation of the superpowers with the aim of undermining Iranian society. In a widely reported speech in May 1983, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, dismissed international protests with the comment: "Were these people not spies, you would not be raising your voices."
Six male detainees were executed on June 16. Ten female detainees were hanged in Shiraz's Chawgun Square on June 18. Of the two remaining male detainees who died in 1983, one was executed at the end of June and the other died while in prison custody.
Although the Iranian authorities have never explicitly named the Shiraz twenty-two, the IHRDC has identified twenty-two Baha'i detainees who died in 1983 in the custody of the Shiraz authorities. Twenty-one were executed and one victim died in prison after months of abuse. We believe that it is reasonable to conclude from the existing evidence that it was the original intention of the Shiraz Revolutionary Court that all twenty-two be executed for their refusal to recant their faith.
[12] Moojan Momen, "The Babi and Baha'i community of Iran: a case of 'suspended genocide'?", Journal of Genocide Studies, volume 7, number 2, June 2005, pp. 221-241, available at:
[13] UN Doc. E/CN.4/1993/41, Commission on Human Rights, 49th session, 28 January 1993, Final report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, paragraph 310. See also "Iran's secret blueprint for the destruction of the Baha'i community."
[14] Friedrich W. Affolter, "Resisting Educational Exclusion: The Bahai Institute of Higher Education in Iran", International Journal of Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education 1 (1) 2007: 65–77.
[15] See Tahirih Tahririha-Danesh, "The Right to Education: The Case of the Bahá'ís in Iran", in Tahririha-Danesh, Bahá'í-Inspired Perspectives on Human Rights, Juxta Publishing Co., 2001, pp. 216–230.
[16] See Soli Shahvar (Haifa University), The Forgotten Schools: The Baha'is and Modern Education in Iran 1899-1934, I. B. Tauris, London and New York, 2009.
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The Holocaust is OVER
by Shoshana Bryen/Gatestone Institute.
October 25, 2015
This minute, the UN is labeling one of the oldest existing symbols of Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel -- the Tomb of Rachel, wife of the biblical patriarch Jacob -- as a Muslim holy site.
The UN had not a word, however, about the Muslims who burned the Jewish holy site at Joseph's Tomb last week. This omission raises a different question: the same Joseph is also a prophet in Islam; why are they firebombing his tomb?
Abbas has been lying about threats to the status quo on the Temple Mount, and proposing his own change: The Jews, he said, have no right to "desecrate" the mosque with their "filthy feet."
Watch a beautiful little girl with a large knife tell her approving father, "I want to stab a Jew."
In 2000, the New York Times wrote about Arafat's summer "war-game camps" in Gaza, teaching Palestinian children how to prepare for battle. That is fifteen years of learning to kill Jews and creating child soldiers: a violation of the UN Convention on Child Soldiers, and one reason so many young Palestinians are primed for violence.
In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of teenagers in Gaza participated in these "summer camps" to learn from their Hamas teachers to kill Jews.
If what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, however, is allowed to turn our attention from the current threats to the Jewish State, we will have granted Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem a belated victory they do not deserve.
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, set off a firestorm on October 21 by saying that the Mufti of Jerusalem had actually planted the idea of exterminating the Jews in Hitler's mind; that Hitler would have simply ousted them from Europe.
Scholars, academicians, politicians, friends and enemies of Jews, Israel, and Netanyahu leapt to the barricades. The Washington Post had the story on the front page. Twitter and blogs have overflowed with it. The Chancellor of Germany found it oddly necessary to say, "Germany is responsible for the Holocaust."
But enough about who, between two long-dead anti-Semites, was the worst. It is a distraction and provides cover for today's racists and those who would destroy Israel.
Palestinian agitator Saeb Erekat used the tumult to weigh in. In the latest Palestinian effort to rewrite history, he said, "Palestine's efforts against Nazis, are deep-rooted part of our history."
Palestinian Authority (PA) strongman Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier at least since his PhD days (and now in the 10th year of his four-year term, so he cannot be called "President") did not say anything on that subject. He does, however continue to incite Palestinians to kill Jews. Right now, today, this minute.
Abbas has been lying about threats to the status quo on the Temple Mount, and proposing his own change: The Jews, he said, have no right to "desecrate" the mosque with their "filthy feet." He then assures those Palestinians who go out to kill Jews -- because they understood the recommendation to be officially sanctioned -- that, "Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God."
Also, right now, today, this minute, the United Nations is labeling one of the oldest existing symbols of Jewish patrimony in the Land of Israel -- the Tomb of Rachel, wife of the biblical patriarch Jacob -- as a Muslim holy site. The U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Estonia voted against this surreal piracy. But 26 other countries voted in favor of a resolution, totally fraudulent, that condemned Israel for aggression and illegal measures taken against the "freedom of worship and access" of Muslims to Al-Aqsa mosque and Israel's "attempts to break the status quo since 1967."
The UN had not a word, however, about the Muslims who burned the Jewish holy site at Joseph's Tomb last week. This omission raises a different question: the same Joseph is also a prophet in Islam; what are they doing firebombing his tomb?
In addition, right now, today, this minute, the State of Israel is under physical and political attack, and its best ally, the United States, is largely absent. Secretary of State John Kerry admonished, "We continue to urge everybody to exercise restraint and restrain [sic] from any kind of self-help in terms of the violence, and Israel has every right in the world to protect its citizens, as it has been, from random acts of violence."
No self-help? Kerry specifically said it; he meant that if the government shows up and kills the terrorist before he kills, fine, but he does not want Israelis to take their defense into their own hands. That is not the way defense is done in America, and it is not the way it is done in Israel. The United States is abandoning a core American value in pursuit of the chimera of Israeli-Palestinian "peace."
Right now, this minute, young Palestinian children are being marinated in Jew-hatred by their parents and by their society. Watch a beautiful little girl with a large knife tell her approving father, "I want to stab a Jew." Watch a Palestinian children's TV program in which a girl of about 10, her hair covered, draped in a Palestinian shawl, tell other children that the "martyrs" are "grown up kids." She compares their number to the number of dead Israelis. "It's almost like a game," she says.
In 2000, before the so-called "second intifada," the New York Times wrote about Yasser Arafat's summer "war-game camps" in Gaza, teaching young Palestinian children how to prepare for the battle they would fight. That is fifteen years of learning to kill Jews -- and fifteen years of creating child soldiers: a violation of the UN Convention on Child Soldiers, and one reason so many young Palestinians are primed for violence. Any Palestinian now under the age of, say, 23 could have had that "training." In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of teenagers in Gaza participated in these "summer camps" to learn from their Hamas teachers to kill Jews.
Even before that -- since the Palestinians created their own school curriculum 21 years ago, in 1994, under the Oslo Accords -- Palestinian children have been exposed to lies, incitement to violence and raw anti-Semitism, in the schools of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. Palestinians under the age of 30 spend most of their formative years in schools that deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel and that deny any connection of the Jews to the land.
We are currently seeing the results of the long-term abuse of Palestinian children by their parents and teachers -- abetted by the United Nations.
There have been many calls for the U.S. to defund the Palestinian Authority, either completely or in part. This week Congress, in rare bipartisan agreement, took up part of the challenge, stripping $80 million from $370 million of U.S. economic aid to the Palestinian Authority.
History provides a framework for understanding today's politics. The Mufti of Jerusalem was not only a kindred spirit of Hitler; he spent much of the war in Berlin as the guest of like-minded practitioners of Jew-hatred. If what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, however, is allowed to turn our attention from the current threats to the Jewish State, we will have granted them a belated victory they do not deserve.
© 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.

Analysis: Iran’s hostage-taking of Americans shows it can’t be housebroken
Benjamin Weinthal/J.Post/October 25/15
Obama has showed himself to be prickly and hyper-sensitive about his administration’s failure to secure the release of the US hostages.
Iran’s refusal to release American hostages gets at the heart of some of the skepticism voiced by critics that the July nuclear deal will help the Islamic Republic reenter the international community. US President Barack Obama envisioned in a post-nuclear deal that Iran would “take some decisive steps to move toward a more constructive relationship with the world community.”Iran’s blunt response was to convict the American-Iranian Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian in a Star Chamber setting earlier this month. Rezaian is widely believed to have been framed based on trumped-up espionage charges by Iran’s regime. His only “crime” was journalistic news gathering. As a result, the expectation that Iran could be housebroken because of the over $100 billion in sanctions relief it will receive due to the nuclear deal is already limping on both legs at this nascent phase of the deal. The shaky formula behind the deal between the US and its world partners (France, UK, Germany, China and Russia) with Iran consisted of a quid pro quo: lucrative economic incentives – the lifting of sanctions on Iran – in exchange for the mullah regime’s curtailment of its illicit nuclear program.
In a Friday Washington Post opinion article, Naghmeh Abedini, whose husband, Pastor Saeed, is imprisoned in Iran, captured the defects of the Iran deal. “Finally, when the United States agreed to a nuclear deal with Iran in the summer, there was much hope and anticipation that Iran would do the right thing and release my husband and the other Americans it was holding hostage. The reality: The deal did not produce freedom for our loved ones... The truth is Iran cannot be trusted.” “Mr. President, it’s past time to bring the Iranian hostages – including my husband – home,” wrote Abedini. Her husband was jailed in 2012 for practicing his Christian faith.
He, along with three other Americans – Rezaian, Bob Levinson and Amir Hekmati – have been incarcerated longer than the first wave of US hostages during the 1979 Embassy crisis in Tehran. Obama has showed himself to be prickly and hyper-sensitive about his administration’s failure to secure the release of the US hostages. In response to CBS News reporter Major Garrett’s question as to why Obama was “content, with all of the fanfare around this [nuclear] deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, the strength of this nation, unaccounted for, in relation to [the] Americans” imprisoned in Iran, Obama responded, “That’s nonsense, and you should know better.”
The Obama administration uses a peculiar terminology when describing the US prisoners. “We continue to call on Iran to immediately release the detained US citizens,” Secretary of State John Kerry said. “Detained” suggests that they are being held temporarily, rather than the combined 15 years of incarceration served by the four Americans. Kerry has doubled-down on his decision to not link the release of US hostages to the Iran nuclear deal. “I think it was the right strategy to pursue,” Kerry said, after the conviction of Rezaian. For critics of the Iran deal, Kerry’s position is perplexing. After all, the US agreed to allow Iran to procure conventional weapons. While the deal was supposed to be narrowly focused on Iran’s nuclear program, Obama agreed to remove the UN embargo on conventional weapons sales within five years. After eight years, the UN sanction on missile sales will be lifted.
All of this helps to explain the headline of a Christian Science Monitor article on Friday: “Why the nuclear deal has empowered Iran, for now.” A European diplomat told the publication, “What you have to expect is a stiffening of the Iranian position, a hardening really.”
Iran’s recalcitrance is not merely limited to hostage-taking, but to its refusal to stop arming Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s war machine, as well as to its support for the Lebanese terrorist entity Hezbollah. Thus far, more carrots have not domesticated Iran. It appears to be a case of “Everything old is new again.”
Benjamin Weinthal is a fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Analysis-Irans-hostage-taking-of-Americans-shows-it-cant-be-housebroken-429982

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