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Bible Quotation For Today/The Mastard Seed Parable & the Depth Of Faith
Matthew 13/31-35: "Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’"

Bible Quotation For Today/The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
First Letter to the Corinthians 09/13-18: "Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting! If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 29-30/15
Syria's 'holy war'ظSami Nader/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Teacher Savagely Whips Coptic Christian Boy 40 Times/Raymond Ibrahim/October 29/15
Terrible Advice for Muslim Women Panicking about ISIS/Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/October 29/15
Turkey: Kurds Threatened Before Election/Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute./October 29/15
Israel’s defensive democracy is no democracy/Yossi Mekelberg/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
Debating the Middle East beyond Iran and ISIS/Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
The Yemen conflict will require more U.N. involvement/Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
Israel goes back to business as usual in post-Iran deal era/Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Is Iraq’s Dawa Party on verge of division/Ali Mamouri/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Rouhani shifts gears on economy/Alireza Ramezani/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Even fatwas don't bring Egyptians out to vote/Rami Galal/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Congress muted ahead of Turkish elections/Julian Pecquet/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
What Turkey's Elections Will NOT Change/Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/October 29/15
Pro-ISIS Activists React Joyously On Twitter To Canada’s Elections/By: Elliot Zweig/MEMRI/October 29/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 29-30/15
Russia asks Lebanon to provide military intelligence
Lebanese businessman, Nizar Zakka, missing in Iran
STL President Concludes Trip to Lebanon
Fassouh Building Owner Sentenced to Jail, Ordered to Pay Compensation to Collapse Victims
Report: Waste Incinerator Admitted as Industrial Oven, Start Works in a Week
Berri Proposes 'Way Out' for Trash Crisis
Shehayyeb Meets Salam: Hizbullah, AMAL Have Performed their Part in Trash File
Berri: Bekaa Security Plan Activated, Backed by Amal and Hizbullah
ISF Arrests Prominent Jabal Mohsen Gunman
A delegation from The World Council of Cedars revolution Meets UN Ambassador T.R.Larson Special envoy for the Implementation of UNSCR 1559

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 29-30/15
Saudi denies coalition hit Yemen MSF hospital
Iran considered nuclear weapons during 1980s Iraq war, ex-president says
Torrential rain wreaks havoc in Iraq
Tunisian customs officer dies after setting self on fire
Two Palestinians shot dead in new knife attacks
U.S. reports 13 air strikes against ISIS in Iraq
Iraq’s ruling coalition threatens to withdraw support for Abadi’s reforms
Russia carries out first strikes in Syria’s south
Syrian opposition, rebels not invited to Vienna talks
Michelle Obama to visit Qatar, Jordan to discuss girls’ education
35 killed in strikes on Syria hospitals: Doctors without Borders
Yemen to request joining GCC after restoring stability
No immediate increase in Syria anti-ISIS campaign
German diplomat to take over Libya peace efforts
Kerry: Vienna talks chance to save Syria from ‘hell’
Turkey may hit Syrian Kurds ‘to block advance’
Saudi-led coalition drops weapons for allies in Yemen

Russia asks Lebanon to provide military intelligence
Now Lebanon/October 29/15
Moscow asked for the coordinates of LAF and Hezbollah positions on Lebanon’s side of the border.
BEIRUT – Moscow has asked Lebanon to provide military intelligence on its flashpoint border with Syria, according to a London-based daily.
Alaraby Aljadeed reported Thursday morning that Russia had requested the coordinates of Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Hezbollah positions on Lebanon’s side of the border as well as intelligence on armed groups present on the Syrian side. Hezbollah since the spring of 2013 has conducted a series of offensive on behalf of the Syrian regime against rebel groups located near Lebanon’s border starting from Qusayr in the north stretching downward to Zabadani east of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese army, in turn, has bolstered its defensive positions in the eastern border region, regularly shelling militant positions. Alaraby Aljadeed did not report that the Russian move was made in consideration of potential aerial strikes along Lebanon’s border, saying instead that Moscow wanted the information as part of its defensive measures for its military positions north of Lebanon. “Russia made the request because it intends to form a broad security wall to protect the Russian naval base in Tartous,” the article said. Russian diplomatic sources in Beirut told Alaraby Aljadeed that Russia requested military information from Syria’s neighboring states “within the framework of countering terrorism and the need for cooperation between various states in that field.” However, the sources stressed that the request had not passed through the Russian Embassy in Beirut “but through the open military channels between the two countries.”Lebanese political sources confirmed to the London-based daily that Lebanon had received similar requests after international coalition strike began against ISIS. Normally, [such] requests pass through the competent security apparatuses without the need to refer to the… government,” the source explained. Russia began its aerial bombardment campaign in Syria on September 30, striking rebels in the Homs, Hama, Latakia and Idlib provinces while also claiming to have hit ISIS targets further east.Despite Moscow’s claim it was hitting ISIS, most of its airstrikes have been conducted in coordination with Syrian regime ground operations against rebels in the northwest of the country.

Lebanese businessman, Nizar Zakka, missing in Iran
Now Lebanon/October 29/15/
Nizar Zakka left his Tehran hotel on September 18 to catch a flight to Beirut, but never arrived to the airport.
BEIRUT – A Lebanese businessman specializing in information and communications technology (ICT) has gone missing in mysterious circumstances in Iran after attending a conference in the capital Tehran. Nizar Zakka’s NGO, the Arab ICT Organization (IJMA3), issued a statement Tuesday that the Lebanese national had disappeared after attending a conference organized by the Iranian government. “On September 18, 2015, Mr. Zakka left his hotel in a taxicab bound for the airport in Tehran to return to Beirut. He did not board his flight and did not arrive in his home country of Lebanon as planned,” the statement, prepared by Attorney at Law Antoine Abou Dib, said. Zakka—the secretary general and founder of the Arab ICT Organization—had arrived in Iran’s capital three days before to attend the 2nd International Conference & Exhibition on Women in Sustainable Development upon the invitation of the Iran’s Vice President for Women and Family Affairs. The Lebanese businessman—who according to his LinkedIn profile resides in Washington DC—is considered a top ICT expert in the Middle East, and heads not only the Arab ICT Organization but also serves as the vice chairman of the World IT Services Alliance (WITSA) as well as the CEO of the Professional Computer Association of Lebanon (PCA). Abou Dib explained that he and the Arab ICT Organization “informed the Lebanese Embassy in Tehran that Mr. Zakka was missing and asked for assistance from the Government of Lebanon in locating Mr. Zakka.”“We have filed several requests with the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lebanon asking assistance in locate him, without success,” he added. “We therefore respectfully ask the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese Embassy in Tehran and the Iranian authorities to assist us in locating Mr. Zakka, and to confirm that he is safe and will soon be permitted to return home.”Meanwhile, the IranWire journalism initiative reported that while attending the Tehran conference, Zakka had participated in roundtable discussions attended by a number of Iranian government officials, including the country’s Industry, Agriculture, Labor, and Social Affairs ministers. Lebanese TV and print outlets have yet to cover the case, with the Lebanon Debate website saying on October 28 that Zakka’s family was in the process of preparing a statement or press conference on his disappearance. Lebanon Debate reported that Zakka’s family had appealed to Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil to raise the issue with Iranian officials during his mid-October trip to Iran, but added that they had received “sufficient answers” regarding his disappearance. The outlet also explained Zakka’s lawyer, Majid Dimashq, had chosen not to immediately bring media attention to the case as he pursued his efforts to investigate the Lebanese businessman’s disappearance.

STL President Concludes Trip to Lebanon
Naharnet/October 29/15/The President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Judge Ivana Hrdličková, concluded a trip to Lebanon on Wednesday, after holding a number of meetings with Lebanese government officials, diplomats, as well as representatives of the civil society and the media.
During her second visit to Lebanon since taking office earlier this year, President Hrdličková met Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Minister of Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil, Minister of Justice Ashraf Rifi, Director General of the Ministry of Justice Judge Mayssam Noueiri, Prosecutor-General Samir Hammoud, and General Abbas Ibrahim, Director General of the General Security. The STL President also participated in a panel session celebrating the 70th anniversary of the United Nations (UN Day). “As the United Nations celebrates 70 years of impressive achievements, we are reminded that their motto here is the ‘UN Family for Lebanon’. In the same spirit, we are the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and we work closely with our Lebanese colleagues, particularly in the judiciary, to assist this beautiful country which is facing many serious challenges”, said the President. The President also gave a lecture at the American University of Beirut, and inaugurated the fifth Inter-University Program on International Criminal Law and Procedure (IUP-ICLP). IUP-ICLP is organised by the STL in cooperation with eight prominent Lebanese universities and the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague. In addition to meeting with the heads of the Beirut and Tripoli bar associations, President Hrdličková also met with Beirut-based Lebanese, Arab, and international media, and briefed them on the latest judicial developments at the STL.

Fassouh Building Owner Sentenced to Jail, Ordered to Pay Compensation to Collapse Victims
Naharnet/October 29/15/The owner of a building that collapsed in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh neighborhood three years ago was sentenced to two years in jail, media reports said on Thursday. They said that he was also ordered to pay compensation of L.L. 1.945 billion to the victims affected by the Fassouh building collapse. Twenty-seven people were killed and 12 wounded in the building collapse. The seven-storey building collapsed in less than a minute, preventing the residents from escaping. Then Interior Minister Marwan Charbel had said that the building’s old age was among the factors that contributed to its collapse. The incident had raised fears of the occurrence of similar ones given the abundance of old buildings in the country and people’s ignorance of proper construction safety rules.

Report: Waste Incinerator Admitted as Industrial Oven, Start Works in a Week
Naharnet/October 29/15/Education Minister Elias Bou Saab stated on Thursday that preparations to set a waste processing incinerator in the Metn town of Dhour al-Shweir continue and that it will be completed within one week, As Safir daily reported. “Efforts to prepare an incinerator to process the waste of Dhour al-Shweir and the neighboring towns are ongoing and they will be completed within one week,” said Abou Saad, assuring that the incinerator is environmentally friendly. “It turned out that a private power generator used to supply power to one neighborhood generates a proportion of contamination ten times more than that caused by an incinerator,” he added. Abou Saab pointed out that the cost of processing one ton of waste through an incinerator is $60 while the government is currently paying $160 for a ton. Reports have said that the incinerator has been admitted to Lebanon with papers describing it as an "industrial oven," to avoid any measures against its entry since it did not receive the approval of the Interior and Environment Ministries. The reports added that the former Minister Fadi Abboud had contributed to facilitate the entry of the incinerators being the former president the Association of Lebanese Industrialists.

Berri Proposes 'Way Out' for Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 29/15/Speaker Nabih Berri expressed the willingness of the Amal movement and Hizbullah to shoulder the burden of the trash that originates from the areas under their influence, which could end the almost five-month trash management crisis, As Safir daily reported. “Unfortunately, some parties have insisted on involving the waste file in sectarianism,” Berri told the daily on Thursday. “I have therefore suggested that Hizbullah and Amal movement bear the responsibility of waste disposal that rises from areas under their influence based on decentralization and strengthening the role of municipalities,” added the Speaker. “This way, there are no longer any justification to say that some parties are bearing the burden of this file and others are evading it.” Berri had stated that he basically did not want to intervene in the controversial trash file because there was a cabinet decision waiting for implementation in that regard. But the hurdles that faced the solutions have compelled him to make a suggestion that still waits implementation, the daily said. Berri pointed out that if his “suggestion was approved, then the cabinet shall call for an urgent meeting within 24 or 48 hours to approve a comprehensive solution to the trash crisis and other pressing issues.” On Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and Health Minister Wael Abou Faour met with Berri in Ain el-Tineh. After the talks, Shehayyeb said: “Minister Abou Faour and I will conduct some contacts today so that we can reach the shore of safety tomorrow in the deadlocked garbage crisis.”For his part, Berri's political aide Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, who attended the talks, said the speaker “proposed new ideas that require convening the cabinet within 24 hours.”“The ideas are compatible with the plan” proposed by Shehayyeb and a team of experts, Khalil said. Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country.Heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Shehayyeb Meets Salam: Hizbullah, AMAL Have Performed their Part in Trash File
Naharnet/October 29/15/Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb submitted on Thursday a report to Prime Minister Tammam Salam on the progress made in impelemting his proposal aimed at tackling the country's trash disposal crisis. He said after talks with the premier: “Hizbullah and the AMAL movement have performed what is asked of them in this file.” The minister had been waiting a reply from the two parties on establishing a landfill in the eastern Bekaa region. Shehayyeb added that he is working with the concerned committee to end the crisis, hoping that they will achieve their mission in the upcoming 48 hours. “We have overcome several problems and contacts are ongoing with all sides,” he stated. He later held talks on the issue with Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel. “We hope that pledges over the trash crisis will be turned into actions,” he said after meeting the MP. He revealed that the Kataeb had made a proposal on the waste management problem, which he will refer to Salam later on Thursday Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. Heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Berri: Bekaa Security Plan Activated, Backed by Amal and Hizbullah
Naharnet/October 29/15/Speaker Nabih Berri stated that the twentieth dialogue session between Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal was successful, adding that a decision to activate the security plan in the eastern Bekaa valley has been reached, As Safir daily reported on Thursday. “An agreement has been reached to activate the security plan in Bekaa with the full support of Amal and Hizbullah,” Berri told the daily. “The security forces are required to firmly and quickly control the chaos in the area. I reiterated that there will be no cover for violators. It is unfortunate that the number of victims as the result of chaos in Bekaa seem like we are waging a confrontation with the Islamic State,” he lamented. Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal officials have been meeting in Ain el-Tineh under the auspices of Berri since December to defuse sectarian hostility linked to the war in Syria. Last week, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq met Berri and the two men highlighted the necessity to implement the security plan in the Bekaa in light of the exacerbating theft, kidnapping and killing incidents.The Bekaa security plan was kicked off in February and was aimed at clamping down on criminals in certain areas, such as the town of Brital, which are known to be a safe haven for car-theft gangs and drug dealers, as well as networks that kidnap people in return for ransom.

ISF Arrests Prominent Jabal Mohsen Gunman
Naharnet/October 29/15/The Internal Security Forces announced on Thursday the arrest of a prominent gunman in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood in the northern city of Tripoli. They said in a statement that they had detained Aa. Aa. In Tripoli's Qobbeh neighborhood on charges of forming an armed group aimed at carrying out terrorist attacks. In addition, the suspect, also known as Hawwa, is wanted for inciting internal strife, destabilizing civil peace, murdering and wounding citizens, and opening fire from a weapon. He has since been referred to the concerned authorities for investigation. The neighborhoods of Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh in Tripoli frequently used to get embroiled in armed sectarian clashes. Divisions between the two sides increased further with the eruption of the Syrian uprising in 2011, with Jabal Mohsen supporting the Syrian regime and Bab al-Tabbaneh backing the rebels. First steps to achieving a reconciliation between the two sides were made in March with a series of “consultative” talks being held at the residence of late former Prime Minister Omar Karami, about a year since the adoption of a state security plan in the city.

A delegation from The World Council of Cedars revolution Meets UN Ambassador T.R.Larson Special envoy for the Implementation of UNSCR 1559
A delegation from The World Council of Cedars revolution Headed by Tom Harb,(Secretary General) and DR Walid Pharse Special advisor to WCCR met at the United Nations with Ambassador Terje Roed-Larsen (S.G. Special envoy for the Implementation of UNSCR 1559)
Delegation discussed security situation in Lebanon in light of Syria wars, Iran and Russian intervention as well as ISIS and Nusra clashes with Hezbollah on borders.
The delegation communicated a security plan to Ambassador Roed-Larsen to be forwarded to the UN Secretary General.A plan that would protect Lebanon or large parts of Lebanon under 1559 from the militias wars on its soil.
The delegation also discussed a possible international participation in the new security plan.
The delegation then met with the missions of three members of the UN security council USA, France and Russia.
All three missions reassured the delegation that they are working on protecting Lebanon from the war in Syria.
At the Russian mission. The delegation urged Moscow to put pressure on its allies Iran and Hezbollah to adhere to a new security plan for Lebanon to avoid a major security collapse.
At the French mission the delegation explored Paris willingness to be part of the international backing of the security plan proposed
And at the US mission the delegation sought an American backing for such a plan, as part of the campaign against ISIS.
The WCCR delegation felt that the current constitutional void cannot be solved except via a new security plan for the whole country in view of the regional developments.

Syria's 'holy war'
Sami Nader/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
An Oct. 16 statement by the Russian Orthodox Church declaring Russia's intervention in Syria a “holy war” has sparked considerable debate and concern in Lebanon and other parts of the Arab Mashreq given the possible repercussions for the existence and role of Christians in the area. The church's position was quickly countered by a Muslim campaign calling for Islamic jihad. Jabhat al-Nusra Sheikh Abu Hassan al-Kuwaiti offered 1 million Syrian pounds (approximately $5,300) to anyone who abducts a Russian soldier, while Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of International Union for Muslim Scholars, complained, “If we defend our homelands and our homes in the name of Islam, which we believe in, we are accused of terrorism, yet Russia is bombing Syria and the opposition under the auspices of holy war.” The buzz in Lebanon about the statement comes as no surprise. After all, Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country with a prominent Christian community in terms of its political representation and historical role.This is not the first time that religious authorities and movement leaders have tackled the sanctity of wars in the region. The history of the ancient Mashreq is riddled with examples. More recently, during a speech in 2014, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, raised the banner of “Sacred Defense” in summing up the “story of the Iranian people’s resilience.” Much earlier, in January 2009, Osama bin Laden had called for jihad to stop an Israeli war on Gaza. On July 2 of this year in Yemen, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi implored his supporters to wage holy jihad to confront the military campaign led by Saudi Arabia, which is heading a coalition to support Yemeni government forces. In other words, the region has been the site of numerous calls for jihad by Sunnis as well as Shiites.
What has surprised everyone about the Russian statement is its being issued by a Christian religious authority. This is unusual for the Middle East and brings to mind the Crusades, fought between the 11th and 13th centuries and backed by the Catholic Church. The place of the Crusades in the collective memory of the peoples of the Mashreq is common knowledge, as is awareness of the deep and still raw wounds they left behind.
The Russian Orthodox statement nonetheless produced a few positive echoes among Christians in Syria and in particular in Lebanon, where some members of the community, mainly members of the March 8 coalition, which includes the overwhelmingly Christian Free Patriotic Movement, support the Bashar al-Assad regime. Regardless of the reasoning behind this support for Assad — be it out of a conviction that the regime is needed to protect minorities from extremist groups or due to motives related to political conflicts in Lebanon — according to the local press, some of Assad’s Lebanese supporters are betting on Russia’s intervention to position a pro-Syrian candidate for the Lebanese presidency. Thus for them, this issue is not only whether the Russian church's position is to justify or cover Moscow’s pro-regime actions. The Russian military intervention is being used in the Lebanese political equation, as evidenced by pictures of President Vladimir Putin being raised during a Free Patriotic Movement demonstration Oct. 11.
Countering the Russian church's position on the sanctity of military operations in Syria, Elias Audi, metropolitan bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church for the archdiocese of Beirut, declared in an Oct. 18 sermon, “Those who kill shall not be blessed. Human life is the preserve of the Lord, and he who kills humans in some way intends to kill the Lord.” He further stated, “The church does not bless wars and does not qualify them as sacred. It does not sanctify wars and does not accept such statements.”
In the same vein, Tarek Mitri, a prominent Orthodox intellectual close to the church, issued a set of positions against the church as a propaganda tool for the politically powerful and highlighted Moscow's contradictory positions on foreign intervention. On Oct. 2, Mitri, also a former government minister and director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, tweeted, “Russian intervention is to defend Assad or bring him to negotiation in a position of strength. Defense of Christians is domestic propaganda.” A few seconds earlier, he had tweeted, “Russian Church used a peace language against the 2003 US war on Iraq. It uses today the language of ‘holy war’ in support of Putin in Syria.”
Antoine Courban, an anthropologist who signed a petition by Orthodox intellectuals published Oct. 17 denouncing the Russian Orthodox statement, told Al-Monitor, “The Eastern Orthodox Church does not believe in the sanctity of wars, as opposed to the Russian Orthodox Church, which blessed the taking up of arms, probably based on the thought of St. Augustine.” The fourth-century philosopher-bishop introduced the idea of just war to theological philosophy, and the Catholic Church used it to justify its crusades.
The aftershocks of the Russian Orthodox statement traveled beyond Christians, troubling other minorities as well. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Oct. 24 saluted Metropolitan Audi and Georges Khodr, Greek Orthodox bishop of Mount Lebanon, who, according to him, “represent the conscience of the Eastern Orthodox Church, its free voice and broad horizon at a time when isolation and extremism are sweeping across the whole world and the Arab and Islamic region in particular.” Jumblatt further asserted, “The Islamic State [IS] cannot be confronted with a Christian IS.”
Whatever the doctrinal position of the Russian Orthodox Church, its sanctification of the war being waged by Putin in Syria represents politics par excellence. Its primary intent is to serve the Kremlin leader, and it was probably made upon his request. That said, the positions voiced in Lebanon, for and against the statement, have also been political. The statement by the Eastern Orthodox Church members was not aimed at sparking a (figurative or literal) “byzantine” debate, but at protecting Orthodox Christians from the religious wars plaguing the Islamic Mashreq communities. The church is no doubt aware that minorities are the weakest in this deadly international game and the most likely to pay a price. If Putin loses, revenge will be the name of the game, and minorities could face reprisals. If he wins, grudges will be settled, and grudges in the Arab world are ticking time bombs.
**Sami Nader is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Lebanon Pulse, an economist, Middle Eastern affairs analyst and communications expert with extensive expertise in corporate strategy and risk management. He currently directs the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, focusing on the economics and geopolitics of the Levant, and is a professor for USJ University in Beirut.

Teacher Savagely Whips Coptic Christian Boy 40 Times
By Raymond Ibrahim on October 29, 2015 in From The Arab World, Muslim Persecution of Christians
Coptic Solidarity
An Egyptian teacher of Arabic language whipped a 10-year-old Coptic Christian boy with 40 lashes using an electric wire last week in a Cairo school.
10-year-old Babawi Farag in better times.
The doctors who later examined the boy’s wounds “could not believe that a teacher could do this,” said the child’s father.
The incident occurred on October 21, during the Coptic student’s last class of the day, Arabic language. Then, the teacher told the pupils to remain silent until they had copied all the Arabic phrases he had written on the board. When Babawi, the Coptic boy, asked the student in front of him to move his head so he could see the board, the teacher proceeded to lock the door and flog the Christian boy 40 times with a large electrical wire all over his body.
According to the father, who spoke with MCN, the boy received a “fatal beating.” He passed out and was drenched in his own blood. After being inspected by doctors, he was also found to have damage to his bones and kidney.
No one from outside seemed to hear the boy’s continuous screams and the other students were too afraid to intervene said the father, who works as a security guard.
Because the Koran is the basis for Arabic language studies in Egypt, it is likely that the Arabic phrases on the board were derived from Islam’s holy book. In this context, perhaps the teacher became especially irate because, of all students, it was the “lowly” Copt who was being “blasphemous” by talking.
Interestingly, a few weeks earlier, Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian television personality, made some remarks relevant to this case.
After pointing out that it is good to teach the Koran to Coptic Christians in public schools, as it is essential for mastery of the Arabic language, Eissa said: “But here we come to the real question: Why isn’t Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospel—which is one of the greatest and brightest of statements, full of wisdom and justice—also being taught?”
He then stressed that, if Copts should be taught the Koran, so should Muslims learn from the New Testament: “And if you disagree, then you are unjust, unfair, and unpatriotic.”
Knowledge of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount may have gone a long way in restraining the Arabic language teacher’s violent rage.
The abused Coptic boy’s father has since filed a report with police, spoken to school authorities, but, according to him, “Until now, no legal steps have been taken against the teacher.”

Saudi denies coalition hit Yemen MSF hospital
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Thursday, 29 October 2015/Saudi Arabia on Wednesday denied that coalition air strikes hit a hospital in Yemen run by medical charity MSF after the attack was condemned by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The hospital in the northern city of Saada was hit late Monday, but MSF (Doctors Without Borders) said there were no casualties. The Saudi mission to the United Nations said in a statement that “the Arab coalition aircrafts did not attack the hospital” and were not in Saada at the time. Coalition forces had been given the exact coordinates of the hospital which were placed “within the forbidden targets,” the Saudi statement said. “Accordingly, this hospital could not have been targeted by the coalition forces,” it added. The Saudi mission said a thorough investigation was under way and expressed its “deep regret” that Ban had blamed the coalition “without waiting for full and accurate information about that regrettable incident.” In a statement issued Tuesday, Ban condemned the air strikes which he said had been carried out by the Saudi-led coalition and called for an investigation. The U.N. chief renewed his call for an end to the fighting including the air campaign launched by Saudi Arabia in March to push back an advance by Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen. A U.N. bid to launch peace talks in June failed over demands for a Houthi withdrawal from seized territory, but this time, much effort is put in ensuring there is agreement on the agenda.[With AFP]

Iran considered nuclear weapons during 1980s Iraq war, ex-president says
By Sam Wilkin, Reuters Dubai Thursday, 29 October 2015/Iran considered pursuing a nuclear deterrent when it began its nuclear program in the 1980s, during an eight-year war with Iraq, a former president has been quoted as saying. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's comments comes at a sensitive moment, as Iran implements an agreement reached with world powers in July aimed at curbing its nuclear programme, to allay Western fears it was trying to build an atomic bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, is investigating whether Iran's nuclear programme ever had a military application. It is due to issue a report by Dec. 15. Throughout the negotiations, Iran insisted its programme had only ever been for peaceful purposes. In an interview with Iran's Nuclear Hope magazine this week, Rafsanjani suggested that officials were thinking about a deterrent capability when the nuclear program first began but it never took shape. "When we first began, we were at war and we sought to have that possibility for the day that the enemy might use a nuclear weapon. That was the thinking. But it never became real," Rafsanjani said in the interview, which was carried by state news agency IRNA on Tuesday. Iran fought a devastating eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the aggressor, had a nuclear programme throughout the war. He never developed a nuclear weapon but used chemical weapons later in the war. "We were still at war and Iraq had come close to enrichment before Israel destroyed it all," Rafsanjani said, referring to an Israeli air strike against Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. "Our basic doctrine was always a peaceful nuclear application, but it never left our mind that if one day we should be threatened and it was imperative, we should be able to go down the other path," he added. Rafsanjani was parliament speaker during the war and became president shortly after. The 80-year-old cleric now heads the Expediency Council, a powerful unelected body, and some observers consider him a candidate to become Supreme Leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But he has been targeted by conservatives after clashing publicly with Khamenei. In June, the hardline judiciary upheld a ten-year prison sentence against his son, a businessman, on corruption and security charges. Rafsanjani also said he had travelled to Pakistan to try to meet Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who later helped North Korea to develop a bomb, but did not meet with him. Khan was at the center of the world's biggest nuclear proliferation scandal in 2004, when he confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Torrential rain wreaks havoc in Iraq
By AFP Baghdad Thursday, 29 October 2015/Torrential rain caused chaos across several parts of Iraq on Thursday, with the water causing thigh-high flooding on some Baghdad streets and damaging camps for the displaced. The storm that hit Baghdad on Wednesday evening was unusually violent and the first after a long, dry summer. The poor condition of infrastructure in Baghdad, the Arab world's second largest city with an estimated population of more than eight million, resulted in spectacular flooding. Social media was awash with pictures and footage of the devastation, that left many people unable to reach their workplace and led the government to declare Thursday a holiday. In one video, the staff in a Baghdad hospital could be seen wading knee-deep in water, in another cars were shown drifting away with the current on flooded streets. Residents of some Baghdad neighbourhoods spent most of the night bailing rain mixed with sewage water from the ground floor of their homes. “Forget the furniture, I am afraid of the diseases this can spread. Shame on our past leaders, who allowed everything in this city to rot,” said Ahmed, from northwestern Baghdad. A wave of protests erupted this year in Iraq over the poor quality of services, including the lack of electricity when summer temperatures topped 50 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit). In areas around the capital, rivers of mud wrecked the tented camps set up for the people displaced by conflict in the western province of Anbar and other regions of Iraq. The governor of Anbar, a vast province west of Baghdad where much of the latest fighting between government forces and the Islamic State group has focused, urged the authorities to help. Several camps for internally displaced people in Anbar were badly affected by the downpour and governor Suhaib al-Rawi said the bridge leading to safer provinces should be opened. Weather forecasts predicted more thunderstorms for Friday and next week.

Tunisian customs officer dies after setting self on fire
AFP, Tunis Thursday, 29 October 2015/A Tunisian customs officer has died after setting himself on fire, officials said Thursday, in an apparent protest mirroring that of a graduate which sparked a popular revolt. The 54-year-old died in Monastir on Wednesday night after suffering "third-degree burns all over his body," said Radhouane Harbi, head of the Fattouma Bourguiba hospital's emergencies unit. Mongi Belkadhi, spokesman for civil protection, told AFP the man had on Tuesday sprayed his uniform with petrol and set himself alight outside a hotel in the touristic area of the eastern coastal city. A customs official told private television channel Nessma that the man had been on sick leave and had said he wanted to return to work. The government department that employed the man was not immediately available for comment. In December 2010, young university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi who eked out a living as a fruit seller set himself alight to protest police harassment and unemployment in the central town of Sidi Bouzid. His act, from which he died weeks later, ignited the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that later spread to several Arab capitals and brought down autocratic regimes. In October, a Tunisian street vendor died after he also set himself on fire in second city Sfax in what media reports said was protest at authorities seizing his merchandise. City officials said the young man had been arrested as he tried to sell 3,000 packs of contraband cigarettes. Poverty and unemployment as well as demands for democratic reform were at the heart of the uprising that forced longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down in January 2011.

Two Palestinians shot dead in new knife attacks
By AFP Occupied Jerusalem Thursday, 29 October 2015/New knife attacks on Israelis in the West Bank left a soldier lightly injured Thursday, while two Palestinian assailants were shot dead by security forces, police and the army said. In one incident a Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli border guard near a shrine known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque, in the volatile city of Hebron. “A Palestinian attacked and stabbed a soldier. Security forces responded and shot the attacker. The soldier sustained light injuries,” the army said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that the attacker, aged 24, had died. In the second incident a Palestinian allegedly tried to stab an Israeli soldier in Hebron, where several knife attacks have taken place in recent days. “Moments ago forces thwarted the second attempted stabbing today in Hebron. The Palestinian assailant attempted to stab an IDF soldier at a security post,” read an army statement. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attacker had been shot dead. Both incidents were followed by clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli security forces, according to an AFP journalist on the scene. A wave of such knife attacks and shootings has left nine Israelis dead since early October. The death of the attackers takes the number of Palestinians killed in the recent unrest to 62. Many of those killed have been shot in anti-Israeli protests. One Israeli Arab attacker has also been shot dead. While a spate of protests and attacks in Jerusalem has eased, tensions have flared in Hebron, where near-daily clashes pit youths against Israeli soldiers enforcing the decades-long occupation of the West Bank. Protests in recent days have erupted over Israel's policy of withholding the bodies of attackers, one of a series of measures to try to dissuade attacks on Jews, which began in early October as tensions over the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem boiled over. Palestinians have long feared Israelis seek to change the rules governing the site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied seeking to allow Jews to pray at the compound, which they refer to as the Temple Mount. Only Muslims are allowed to pray within the compound, while non-Muslims can visit but not pray there.

U.S. reports 13 air strikes against ISIS in Iraq
Reuters, Washington Thursday, 29 October 2015/The United States and its allies conducted 13 air strikes against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants in Iraq on Wednesday, according to a military statement released on Thursday. The strikes hit ISIS weapons, boats, fighting positions and other targets near six Iraqi cities, including Ramadi and Mosul, the statement said. No attacks on the militant group in Syria were listed. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing ISIS militants since last year.

Iraq’s ruling coalition threatens to withdraw support for Abadi’s reforms
By Ahmed Rasheed, Reuters Baghdad Thursday, 29 October 2015/More than 60 members of Iraq’s ruling coalition will seek to withdraw parliamentary support for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s reforms if he does not respond within 72 hours to their demands for wider consultation, parliamentarians said.
Growing political tensions could undermine efforts to tackle an economic crisis and form a united front in the war against ISIS militants, who pose the biggest security threat to Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Members of the State of Law coalition delivered a letter to Abadi on Tuesday urging him to consult more widely before ordering reforms. A meeting with the premier scheduled for Wednesday night was cancelled after lawmakers decided to wait for a written response from Abadi, they told Reuters. “If we do not get a written answer, the next step will be going to parliament and pushing for a decision to withdraw the authorization for reforms from Prime Minister Abadi,” said one lawmakers from the bloc, who declined to be named. So far, there are no signs that MPs intend to seek a parliamentary vote of no confidence to remove Abadi, a British-educated engineer who returned to Iraq after Saddam was ousted. Abadi’s spokesman declined to comment, describing the matter as party-related. He previously characterized the lawmakers’ comments as personal views unrepresentative of the coalition’s official position. Abadi announced a reform campaign in August after protests erupted over graft and poor water and electricity services in Iraq, a leading OPEC oil producer. Parliament then voted unanimously to approve the measures, which seek to scrap senior political offices that have become a vehicle for patronage for some of the most powerful people in Iraq.
But the reforms, which are also intended to combat graft and incompetence that have undermined the battle against militancy, have met with resistance from some politicians who regard them as unconstitutional and an verreaching of Abadi’s powers. Some of the measures have been implemented, while others appear to have stalled. Iraq’s three vice presidents, whose positions were to be cut, remain in place.
Growing frustration
Another MP who signed Tuesday’s letter said there was growing frustration among Abadi’s political partners - in and out of the State of Law - who say he takes critical steps without consulting them. “Every decision taken by the government on reforms should pass through multiple circles of discussion,” said the lawmaker, who also declined to be named. “Taking unilateral and improvised decisions - and that is what Abadi is doing now - could lead the country into a dark tunnel.” When he took office in September 2014, Abadi was seen as a consensus builder who could heal divisions between Iraq’s Shites, Sunnis and Kurds. Many of the lawmakers who signed the letter are supporters of Abadi’s predecessor, Nour al-Maliki, whom critics branded as a polarising and authoritarian figure, allegations he denies. Senior officials have said they are not consulted about Abadi’s reforms and often learn about them through the media. Several MPs said Abadi’s decision this month to cut the salaries of government employees, prompted by a decline in revenues caused by a drop in oil prices, had encouraged the coalition members to confront Abadi. Small protests over the cuts have been staged in several Iraqi cities.
A third MP, who also requested anonymity, said many of the signatories belonged to Abadi’s Dawa Party and the Badr Organisation, a political organization with an armed wing led by Hadi al-Amiri, one of the most powerful figures in Iraq. He said four or five topics were raised in the letter, but declined to detail them. Asked if the issue could lead to conflict between Abadi and the State of Law, the third lawmaker said: “If he doesn’t respond in writing, I think it will.”

Russia carries out first strikes in Syria’s south
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Thursday, 29 October 2015/Russia appears to have carried out strikes in southern Syria's Daraa province for the first time in an apparent expansion of its aerial campaign, a monitor said on Thursday.
“Warplanes that are believed to be Russian carried out strikes on the Hara, Tal Antar, Kafr Nasaj and Aqraba areas of northern Daraa” last night, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. “This would be the first time that Russian planes have carried out strikes in Daraa,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The Britain-based monitor had no immediate details on casualties or damage in the strikes. The area targeted is controlled by an array of opposition groups including moderate and Islamist rebels and the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. There have been clashes there between opposition and regime forces, but the province has not seen the kind of large-scale ground operation launched by government forces in coordination with Russian strikes elsewhere in the country since Moscow's air campaign began on September 30.
Russian strikes
Also on Thursday, it was reported that nearly 600 people have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria less than a month since the beginning of Moscow's campaign. A total of 595 people have been killed in Russian strikes since September 30, two-thirds of them fighters with opposition forces including militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The other third, some 185 people, were civilians, including 48 children, the Britain-based monitor said. Russia has carried out strikes throughout Syria, with only four of the country's 14 provinces untouched by the aerial campaign since it began, according to the group. [With AFP]

Syrian opposition, rebels not invited to Vienna talks
Reuters, Beirut Thursday, 29 October 2015/Neither Syria’s main political opposition body nor representatives of the armed opposition have been invited to international talks on the country’s war, an opposition politician and a rebel leader said. The Syrian government in Damascus has meanwhile yet to issue any official comment on the meeting in Vienna on Friday that will bring together about a dozen countries including Saudi Arabia and Iran, which back opposing sides in the conflict. The Syrian opposition has objected to Iran’s participation in the talks - the first time it has attended such a meeting on Syria - because of its military support for President Bashar al-Assad. George Sabra, a member of the Syrian National Coalition, told Reuters the failure to invite Syrians showed a “lack of seriousness”. Asked whether the coalition had been invited to the talks, he said: “That didn’t happen.” “It is a big weak point in the meeting, because it will discuss the issues of the Syrians in their absence.”Tehran and Moscow have provided crucial support to Assad’s government, while his regional opponents including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey demand his departure. Assad has stuck by his long-held position that “eliminating terrorism” must come first, after Moscow called on Syria to prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections. Assad says all the groups fighting him are “terrorists.” Bashar al-Zoubi of the Yarmouk Army, a group affiliated to the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that representatives of the armed opposition had not been invited to the Vienna meeting. “Iran is part of the problem and not the solution, and its participation in the meeting will prove that to the world,” Zoubi said. “This meeting was accepted by Saudi Arabia and Turkey to expose Iran.” The coalition’s Sabra reiterated his objection to Iran’s participation, saying it could not play a mediation role. “It’s officers are fighting every day on Syrian fronts,” he said.

Michelle Obama to visit Qatar, Jordan to discuss girls’ education
AFP, Washington Thursday, 29 October 2015/Michelle Obama will travel to Qatar and Jordan next month to continue her longstanding efforts to promote girls' education, the White House said Wednesday. The U.S. first lady will visit a school in Amman built with technical and financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and plans to commend Jordan's "generosity and commitment to educating all children living within its ?borders," a statement said. Due to the conflict in neighboring Syria, a number of Jordanian schools have welcomed Syrian students to their classrooms.
Jordan is hosting more than 600,000 Syrian refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Obama will also visit the ancient city and archaeological site of Petra in Jordan, which President Barack Obama visited in 2013. In Doha, the first lady will speak at the World Innovation Summit for Education. She will also visit the U.S. military's Al Udeid air base.

35 killed in strikes on Syria hospitals: Doctors without Borders
By AFP, Beirut Thursday, 29 October 2015/A “significant increase” of air strikes on Syrian hospitals recently has killed at least 35 patients and medical staff and wounded 72, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday. The escalation of attacks by air forces the group did not identify, which began in late September, had targeted 12 hospitals in Idlib, Aleppo and Hama provinces, including six supported by MSF, a statement said. “Overall, six hospitals were forced to close... and four ambulances destroyed,” said the international medical aid group. “One hospital has since reopened, yet access to emergency, maternity, pediatric and primary health care services remains severely disrupted.”The statement said “tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes” as a result of the attacks. “After more than four years of war, I remain flabbergasted at how international humanitarian law can be so easily flouted by all parties to this conflict,” said Sylvain Groulx, MSF chief for Syria. Russia launched air strikes in Syria on September 30 in support of long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad, whose own forces have been bombing his opponents for years. And a U.S.-led coalition has also been carrying out an aerial military campaign in the country for more than a year. Both say they are targeting the extremist ISIS group that has seized large chunks of Iraq and Syria. More than 250,000 people have died in the Syrian war, now in its fifth year. Some 6.5 million more are displaced inside the country and another 4.2 million have fled abroad in one of the largest displacement crisis of modern times.

Yemen to request joining GCC after restoring stability
Huda al-Saleh, AlArabiya.net Thursday, 29 October 2015/Yemeni Minister of Planning Mohammed Maytami said Yemen will apply to join the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) after security is restored in the country. In an interview with Al-Arabiya, the minister said Yemeni President Abdrabbu Mansur Hadi will submit an official request to join the GCC after political stability is achieved and development and construction plans are launched. “Yemen is today (fighting) a huge political battle. When (we) are done with it, joining (the GCC) will be the next step within the (context) of strategic (plans),” the minister said. On the timing and process of joining the GCC, he said official procedure requires certain steps that begin with the Yemeni President Hadi filing an official request. “This measure will be discussed at the right time,” Maytami said. He said Yemen is currently cooperating with its Gulf partners to discuss joining the GCC secretariat, adding that all Gulf countries welcome this move and that Gulf officials’ statements voice the importance of Yemen’s inclusion in the GCC. The strategy of joining the GCC follows the same model of the European Union, which is rehabilitating some countries to further empower them, Maytami said, adding that work is underway with Yemen’s Gulf partners to prepare a comprehensive vision via a construction and development plan. The planning minister said a specialized commission in Yemen is working on meeting Yemen’s needs via a program that addresses healthcare, education, energy and housing services. “This program is the basic pillar towards achieving (the aim) of joining (the GCC),” Maytami said. The minister also voiced the importance of integrating Yemen with its Gulf surrounding saying this is part of regional and Gulf security. “The security and political challenges Yemen confronted affected the local situation and also threatened regional and Gulf stability,” he said, adding it’s therefore important for Yemen to join the GCC.

No immediate increase in Syria anti-ISIS campaign
AFP, Washington Thursday, 29 October 2015/The U.S.-led coalition attacking ISIS militants showed no immediate sign of increasing strikes in Syria, figures released on Wednesday showed, even though the Pentagon chief has said America would intensify its campaign. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Tuesday said the coalition would conduct extra bombing runs against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, but only two strikes have been conducted in Syria the last six days. The diminished tempo comes as Russia finishes the first month of its own Syria bombing campaign, and observers have suggested the U.S.-led coalition is worried about flying close to areas of Russian action. The Pentagon has repeatedly denied this.“It has nothing to do with the Russians, nothing whatsoever,” coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said. “There has been a reduction in strikes, but it’s tied to operations. ... It’s really more about the ebb and flow of battle.”As of Wednesday, coalition aircraft had carried out a total of 2,680 air strikes in Syria. The campaign started in June last year, and has also unleashed 7,712 strikes in Iraq. Pentagon figures show the coalition launched 359 air strikes in July. The number dropped to 206 in August, then just 115 in September. There have only been 92 this month; the most recent two of these were against relatively low-value targets: an ISIS vehicle and two mortars. Carter said the coalition would support additional ground raids and air strikes, and focus on supporting rebels in Raqqa.

German diplomat to take over Libya peace efforts
AFP, United Nations Thursday, 29 October 2015/U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plans to appoint German diplomat Martin Kobler, who led the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to head a struggling peace effort in Libya. Ban on Wednesday informed the Security Council of his decision in a letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP. Kobler will succeed Bernardino Leon as special envoy for Libya just as efforts to end years of turmoil in the North African country have run into hurdles over the formation of a unity government. Libya’s internationally-recognized parliament and the Islamist-backed assembly have rejected the latest U.N. proposals for power-sharing. A former German ambassador to Iraq and Egypt, Kobler has led MONUSCO, the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping mission, for the past two years. The 62-year-old former chief of staff to Germany’s ex-foreign minister Joschka Fischer joined the United Nations in 2010, serving as deputy envoy to Afghanistan and later special representative in Iraq, from 2011 to 2013.
Ban gave the 15-member council until Friday to raise any objections to the appointment, which is expected to then be formally announced. A unity government in Libya is seen as the best chance to tackle migrant-smuggling from Libyan territory across the Mediterranean and the rise of the ISIS.
Libya has had two administrations since August 2014, when a militia alliance that includes Islamists overran the capital, forcing the internationally recognized government to take refuge in the east of the country. The country descended into chaos after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, with the two sides vying for power as well as several groups battling for control of its vast resource wealth. The new U.N.-backed government would be headed by Fayez el-Sarraj, a deputy in the Tripoli parliament, and include three deputy prime ministers, one each from the west, east and south of the country.
The Security Council has threatened to impose sanctions on those who block a peace deal or undermine any political transition in Libya.

Kerry: Vienna talks chance to save Syria from ‘hell’
AFP, Washington Thursday, 29 October 2015/U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Wednesday that this week’s international talks on the war in Syria will not find an immediate political solution but nevertheless represent the best hope available. “While finding a way forward on Syria will not be easy - it’s not going to be automatic - it is the most promising opportunity for a political opening we have seen,” he said in a speech on Middle East policy just before he was to set off for Vienna. “My friends, the challenge that we face in Syria today is nothing less than to chart a course out of hell.”
Kerry was to meet with his counterparts from a dozen world powers in the Austrian capital for a series of bilateral and multilateral talks on Thursday and Friday to find consensus on a political way forward in Syria. Speaking to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kerry noted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ally Iran is to take part for the first time, along with Damascus’ other main military backer Russia. Washington is at loggerheads with Moscow over its stance, accusing Russian forces of concentrating their air campaign on moderate opposition groups opposed to Assad’s rule rather than on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group. “But it is also clear that Russia and the United States share an amazing amount of common ground on this,” he said, arguing that both want “a united, secular Syria” in which citizens can choose their own leader through elections. “We agree that all of these steps can only be achieved, and Syria can only be saved, through a political settlement,” he said, arguing that “one man” -- Assad -- cannot be allowed to stand in the way of peace. Two previous rounds of talks on Syria -- dubbed Geneva I and Geneva II, in June 2012 and January-February 2014 -- agreed on the principle of forming an interim unity government and sidelining Assad. But Assad, with support from Iran, Russia and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, has clung on, while the United States and its Arab and Turkish allies have continued to support and arm mainly Sunni rebels. “Ultimately, to defeat Daesh, we have to end the war in Syria, and that is America’s goal,” Kerry said, using a term for the ISIS based on its Arabic acronym. The Vienna discussions are expected to be the first time all major international players in the conflict, linked to the nearly five-year war, will participate. Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the Middle East had previously opposed the involvement of Iran, which they blame for fomenting unrest in several parts of the Middle East, including Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Turkey may hit Syrian Kurds ‘to block advance’
Reuters, Istanbul Thursday, 29 October 2015/Turkey will “do what is necessary” to prevent U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish rebels from declaring autonomy in the town of Tel Abyad near the Turkish border, including conducting further military operations, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday. NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS militants in Syria, but it sees advances by autonomy-seeking Kurds, led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as a threat to its own national security, fearing they could stoke separatism among Turkish Kurds. Turkish jets recently hit the Syrian Kurds’ armed People’s Protection Units (YPG) targets twice after they defied Ankara and crossed west of the Euphrates River. “This was a warning. ‘Pull yourself together. If you try to do this elsewhere - Turkey doesn’t need permission from anyone - we will do what is necessary,’“ Erdogan said, signaling he could defy Washington’s demand that Ankara avoid hitting Syrian Kurds and focus its military might on ISIS targets. Erdogan, in remarks broadcast live on the Kanal 24 television station, also accused the PYD of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the area and said Western support for the Syrian Kurdish militias amounted to 'aiding terrorism.' Backed by U.S.-led air strikes, YPD fighters captured Tel Abyad in June from ISIS, and this month a local leadership council declared the town part of the system of autonomous self-governing “cantons” run by the Kurds. “The PYD is committing ethnic cleansing here (of) Arabs and Turkmen,” Erdogan said. “If the Kurds withdraw and don’t form a canton, there’s no problem. But if the mindset continues, then what is necessary will be done or we face serious problems. Turkey does not want to see an autonomous Kurdish entity resembling Iraqi Kurdistan emerging on its southern flank, said Erdogan, speaking days before a Turkish parliamentary election that has aggravated political and security tensions. Within Turkey, the armed forces have resumed their 30-year fight with militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which wants autonomy for the Turkish Kurds and also has close links with their ethnic brethren across the border in Syria. The United States and Europe, like Turkey, classify the PKK as a 'terrorist organization' but regard the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish groupings as valuable allies in the fight against ISIS and other extremists.

Saudi-led coalition drops weapons for allies in Yemen
By Noah Browning Reuters, Dubai Wednesday, 28 October 2015/Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition bombed the Iran-allied Houthi movement across Yemen on Wednesday and dropped weapons to Islamist militias battling the group, a day after being accused of bombing the hospital of an international medical aid charity. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries have been bombing the Houthis and their army allies loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh since late March. At least 5,600 people have been killed, but the alliance has made little headway in restoring Yemen's exiled government to the Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa. The coalition dropped weapons in the southwestern city of Taiz, Yemen's third largest which has become a major front in the coalition's northward push toward the capital. "Coalition forces supplied the resistance with a quantity of high-quality weapons which landed in the south of the city in an area under our control," a senior militia leader told Reuters. The United Nations and aid groups have expressed alarm at a worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which even before the war struggled with widespread poverty and hunger. They say civilian targets, including markets, factories, houses, schools and hospitals, have been bombed.
"My heart bleeds"
"The world is rightly concerned about the toll, especially to civilians, from this war," Yemen's Riyadh-based vice president, Khaled Bahah, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "Any civilian death is a tragedy for which my heart bleeds, and the forces allied with us are taking extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties and target only military objectives."Air strikes also hit military bases and Houthi combat positions in Taiz, Sanaa and the Western Red Sea port of Hodaida, residents said. Many of the raids targeting facilities that have already been hit dozens of times throughout the mostly inconclusive seven-month war.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said military gains by the coalition and its allies over the summer and a willingness by the opposing side to adhere to U.N. resolutions mandating that they leave major cities may soon end the conflict. "One of the indications that the campaign is nearing its end is the fact that ... Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis are accepting U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216 and entering into talks the U.N. on that basis," al-Jubeir told a news conference on Wednesday in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
"We also see the gains that have been made on the ground. Most of Yemen's territory that was captured by the rebels has been recaptured," he added.
But while no date or location for U.N.-backed talks has been set, the stalemate on the ground looks set to continue.

Terrible Advice for Muslim Women Panicking about ISIS
Tarek Fatah/The Toronto Sun/October 29, 2015
Originally published under the title "Gwynne Dyer vs. Farzana Hassan."
Military historian Gwynne Dyer thinks ISIS does not pose a risk to the West. Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan begs to differ.
The Toronto Reference Library hosted a talk by author Gwynne Dyer about his new book on Monday, but it quickly turned into an animated discussion on Islamism.
In Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East, Dyer argues the birth of ISIS and the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria does not pose any substantial risk with regard to terrorist attacks on Western countries.
Facing the London-based author on the panel was Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan. She not only disagreed with Dyer's surprising analysis of the lack of an Islamist threat, but suggested it was based on naivety and a lack of recognition that the doctrine of armed jihad is endemic to orthodox Islam, to which many Muslims adhere.
Hassan held her own, despite hisses from a largely partisan crowd when she said she was proud to write for the Toronto Sun and that she considers the current rise of the international jihadi movement as a "civilizational struggle" against medieval forces, who envision a worldwide caliphate and are serious about their goal.
Toronto's literati cheered Dyer as he defended the right of Islamist women to wear the niqab.
It was excruciating to sit in the audience and watch Toronto's literati and intellectual class cheer Dyer as he defended the right of Islamist women to wear the niqab, as if it was some sort of liberating symbol.
Toronto artist and graphic designer Charles Fisch best expressed my frustration when he tweeted: "What's wrong with White liberals? Cultural Relativism, Political Correctness, Naiveté."
It seemed Dyer was surprised to face a critique of his work at the hands of a Muslim woman instead of the usual "we are victims of Islamophobia" rhetoric.
Notwithstanding the fact that most Islamists in the West are second generation and born here, Dyer suggested the next generation of Muslims in the West will reinterpret Islam and the doctrine of jihad to suit the West.
While not losing her smile, Hassan appeared livid. "We do not have to reinterpret the doctrine of armed jihad as you would like us Muslims to do," Hassan said. "We have to repudiate this doctrine."
For a moment, the nearly 500 people sat in stunned silence. Then a handful clapped in a feeble display of solidarity with the brave Muslim woman on the stage.
When the question and answer session began, the president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, poet and author Munir Pervaiz, asked Dyer if he had visited a single mosque in Canada and heard what was being preached to the congregation.
How does it feel to tell a Muslim woman who has faced Islamist death threats that she should 'not panic' about ISIS?
A nonplussed Dyer answered that 50% of the mosques in Canada were under the influence of Saudi Arabia, without answering whether he had ever been in a mosque or not.
Pervaiz later told me he was alluding to a Friday congregation just last week in Mississauga, where an Arab cleric told the congregation, "Liberalism, secularism and modernism need to be disavowed as they are equivalent to the three pagan goddesses Prophet Muhammad destroyed when he conquered Mecca."
"Dyer should know ISIS is not a pussy cat; it's a man-eating tiger," he added.
The event ended with Dyer walking away in a huff, so I didn't have a chance to ask him a question for this column. Here it is:
"How does it feel to tell a Muslim woman who has faced death threats by Islamist thugs inside Canada that she should 'not panic' as ISIS is no threat to the West?"
**Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Turkey: Kurds Threatened Before Election
Uzay Bulut/Gatestone Institute./October 29, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6777/turkey-kurds-threatened
The pro-government newspaper Sabah claimed that dragging dead bodies in the streets was "routine practice" around the world, a security measure to check if the body was booby-trapped.
"If we wanted to, we could round up all of them, kill them and say they committed suicide." — Ismet Sezgin, former Minister of the Interior, 1993.
What Turkey is engaging in appears an attempt at historicide, just as al-Qaeda and ISIS have done in Bamiyan and Palmyra and throughout Iraq – and as the Palestinian Authority did last week with the help of a duplicitous UNESCO by labeling the Jewish holy sites of Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs as Muslim sites.
How are Kurds supposed to trust such a government and its army when even their dead are exposed to attacks, torture and attempts at obliteration?
In Turkey's election on June 7, the pro-Kurdish party came in third, evidently thwarting the plans of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to attaining the supermajority of 367 seats to be President-for-Life -- or Sultan. In an apparent attempt to rectify this supposed miscarriage of the democratic process, Erdogan called for another, snap election on November 1, seemingly to try once again to get his permanent Sultanate.
Recently, presumably as a "message," Turkish officials released a jarring video -- part of which appeared to have been filmed from inside the police vehicle -- that showed the body of a Kurdish protester, shot dead, being dragged through darkened streets behind a police vehicle by a rope tied around his neck.
The men in the video, all believed to be police officers, can be heard swearing at the body. One of the men is congratulating his colleague on shooting dead "the terrorist" -- who just so happened to be a relative of Leyla Birlik, a deputy of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Sirnak.
The victim being dragged was a 24-year-old actor, Haci Lokman Birlik. He was murdered by Turkish security forces during clashes with pro-Kurdish groups in circumstances that remain unclear.
Birlik had made and performed in a short movie entitled "Bark" ("Home"), about the lives of Kurds in Kurdistan, which had received awards in national and international film festivals.
An autopsy revealed that the police had used at least 28 bullets. "His chin was torn to pieces," according to an MP of the HDP party, Faysal Sariyildiz. "There were bullet marks all over Birlik's belly and face: His belly and feet were all in pieces. I could not stand the sight any more. I left the autopsy room".
Other photos appeared on social media, showing police officers posing in front of the police station with the dead body of Birlik, and taking photographs.
The pro-government newspaper Sabah claimed that dragging dead bodies through the streets was "routine practice" around the world -- a security measure to check if the body was booby-trapped.
Turkey's state institutions and many media outlets do not treat even dead Kurds with respect, so why should anyone assume would it to show any respect to live Kurds? Many Turkish officials and media outlets not only display the dead bodies of tortured and murdered Kurds, but even help to dishonor them. On August 15, for instance photographs appeared of the disrobed corpse of a female Kurdish PKK fighter, Kevser Elturk, aka Ekin Van, and have since gone viral. She had been shot dead by the Turkish forces in the Kurdish province of Mus, stripped and photographed naked.
A day later, the Turkish army was in full swing again. On August 16, three Kurdish PKK fighters lost their lives in a clash with Turkish soldiers in the Kurdish province of Kars. The Turkish soldiers then took off the soldiers' trousers and took photographs of the men, presumably to humiliate them, their families and the Kurdish people.
On July 25, when the dead bodies of 13 members of the Syrian Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) and its female wing, YPJ (Women's Protection Units) -- and a German national who died in Syrian Kurdistan fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) -- were brought to Turkey's border gate in the Kurdish province of Sirnak for burial, the Turkish authorities refused to give the dead bodies to their families. The dead bodies were waiting to enter Turkey in a refrigerated truck.
Relatives of Syrian Kurds who were killed in battle wait at the border for Turkey to allow the bodies to enter the country.
People organized protests and peaceful sit-ins. Kurdish MPs and officials, including Masoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, spoke with Turkish state authorities and demanded they give the dead bodies to the families. After ten days, the families were finally allowed to take them. Thousands of people attended their funerals.
Burying their sons and daughters, however, does not mean their remains will be allowed to rest in peace. In 2013, for example, a cemetery for 43 PKK guerillas in the Kurdish province of Mardin in Turkey's Kurdistan was destroyed, and the body of a PKK member was taken.
"The moment the people left the funeral, the soldiers attacked the cemetery," said Ayse Gokkan, then-mayor of the town. "The surrounding area of the cemetery, its wire fences, and briquettes were destroyed. The grave of a guerrilla was opened and his body was taken out without the knowledge of his family. Even when we went to the cemetery, helicopters were flying 15 meters over our heads. The incident is saddening as well as provocative. It is an act that does not know any human feelings."
In recent months, cemeteries with PKK members have reportedly been bombed and demolished in the Kurdish towns of Lice, Varto and Dersim, among others. During the bombardment, a cem house (an Alevi place of worship) in Dersim was also destroyed.
Attacking dead Kurds, however, has long been a tradition in Turkey.[1] The Turkish government has been hostile not only to dead Kurdish fighters, but also to dead Kurdish civilians. According to the "interactive map of mass graves in Turkey" drawn by the Human Rights Association (IHD), in 2013 there were 348 mass graves in Turkey's Kurdistan -- and 4201 people in those graves.
In its detailed report in 1993, Helsinki Watch said:
"During 1992 there was an extremely disturbing increase in the number of suspicious deaths in southeast Turkey. Hundreds of people were killed by unknown assailants; many of those people were leaders or in positions of responsibility in the Kurdish community -- doctors, lawyers, teachers, political leaders, journalists, human rights activists, businessmen. These were not victims of robberies or people shot in the crossfire between security forces and the PKK. These were civilians who were deliberately targeted for assassination.
"During a February 14 [1993] press conference for national and foreign journalists at the Diyarbakir Airport, Turkish Minister of the Interior Ismet Sezgin, discussing the problems in southeast Turkey, said: 'If we wanted to, we could round up all of them, kill them and say they committed suicide.'"
As a result of these deadly state policies, much of Turkey's Kurdistan is covered with mass graves. You can see people still looking for the bones of their members. Even the relatives of the murdered, such as the "Saturday Mothers," have been exposed to violence and intimidation.[2] The burial places of many Kurdish leaders are also hidden by the state.[3]
The question is: Why does Turkey attack or torture even the dead Kurds and their relatives? Why did it throw the dead bodies of so many Kurds in mass graves? And why do Turks attempt to destroy even the Kurdish cemeteries?
These attacks and murders seem aimed not only at intimidating and subjugating the Kurds, but at denying Kurdish existence: not leaving even a trace of it --- as the state has been doing since it was established in 1923.
These attacks seem aimed at destroying the Kurdish identity of Kurdistan, the ancestral land of Kurds.
Cemeteries connect a community to its past. They are reminders of the local history of a place, and the culture of the people who have lived there.
The cemeteries, some of which hold the remains of Kurdish activists, are also reminders of the enormity of the sacrifice of many Kurds and their national struggle.
What Turkey is engaging in appears an attempt at historicide, just as al-Qaeda and ISIS have done in Bamiyan and Palmyra and throughout Iraq -- and as the Palestinian Authority did last week with the help of a duplicitous UNESCO by labeling the Jewish holy sites of Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs as Muslim sites. They have been trying permanently to delete the memories of entire nations.
How are Kurds supposed to trust such a government and its army when even their dead are exposed to attacks, torture and attempts at obliteration?
These actions reveal the intolerance of many Turks towards Kurds -- and towards even the dead bodies and cemeteries of Kurds. Kurds who want to preserve their identity and culture seem to arouse the fury of many Turks to such an extent that even their cemeteries are subject to attacks.
The resolution of the Kurdistan issue will start by respecting the Kurds -- when the state stops being devoted to "defeating and destroying" and instead adopts a policy of "live and let live." If the Turkish government and army cannot stand even the dead Kurds and their cemeteries, how will they achieve peace with the living Kurds?
It is to be hoped that the Kurds will turn out -- unintimidated -- for the election next week.
Uzay Bulut, is a Turkish journalist, born and raised a Muslim, and based in Ankara.
[1] "During the 1990s, in numerous cases, the state did not allow families of guerrillas to bury the dead bodies of their sons and daughters who were killed during the clashes," wrote anthropologist Dr. Ramazan Kaya in his book "The Formation of Kurdishness in Turkey: Political Violence, Fear and Pain."
"The state itself was burying them in mass graves or in mysterious places...." he wrote. "Nevertheless, sometimes the dead bodies of guerillas were taken to the main streets and squares and people were asked to come to identify the bodies. In many cases, parents were afraid to claim that the bodies were those of their children. The display of the dead and sometimes mutilated bodies of guerillas as a new policy of the state, differing from the previous one of hiding the bodies, can be interpreted as a strategy of intimidating people.
"At those times when people were allowed to have funerals in the 1990s, it was a common policy of the state to forbid the families of guerrillas and murdered political activists and supporters to have organized crowded funerals. However, in some cases, mothers and widows talked in the interviews about how the fear of the state and of being marked as pro-PKK would discourage even some of their relatives, friends, and others from attending the funerals of their sons and husbands. Today, they still have resentment toward those relatives and friends.
"In some cases, the bodies were buried under state control and just the family of the murdered would be allowed to be present during the funeral and the burial at the cemetery. This was what happened to Meryem, whose husband died under torture after being arrested eighteen years ago. She narrated how the state did not give them the body of her husband for three days, but kept it at the gendarme station."
[2] The Saturday Mothers, mainly composed of mothers of victims, has become the symbol of struggle for demanding justice for the Kurds and Turks murdered by the Turkish state.
Since May 1995, holding photographs of their "lost" loved ones, they have gathered at noon every Saturday for half an hour at the district of Galatasaray of Istanbul. The scholar Berfin Ivegen wrote:
"In the 171st week, 25 people were taken by the police and the following week this number increased to a hundred.
"Ill-treatment by the police continued for 30 weeks. In the 200th week of this action, on 13 March 1999 the mothers decided to take a break from the demonstrations because of bad treatment, beatings and abuse."
"In the old days, the Saturday Mothers were beaten by police and arrested," wrote the journalist Caleb Lauer. "Today, they are ignored."
[3] For example, that of Seyid Riza, the leader of the Kurdish movement in Turkey during the 1937-1938 Dersim massacres in which thousands of Kurdish civilians were killed by the Turkish army. According to
Prof. David L. Phillips:
"As many as 70,000 people may have been killed. Widespread atrocities were reported, including the alleged bombing of Kurdish villages with poison gas. Torture was widespread. Women and children perished in caves when the army bricked up entrances and lit fires to suffocate families in hiding. When they attempted to flee, Turkish troops were waiting with bayonets. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk proudly acknowledged issuing the order for Turkish troops to wipe out the Kurdish population of Dersim.
"The military governor of Erzincan province invited Seyid Riza, the Alevi Kurdish leader of Dersim, for talks on September 10, 1937. When Seyid Riza and his delegation arrived, they were shackled and sent to a detention center in Elazig. Seyid Riza, his sixteen-year-old son and compatriots were hung on November 15." (Source: "The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East", by David L. Phillips, Transaction Publishers, 2015.)
**Riza was buried in a secret place; its whereabouts are still unknown.
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Israel’s defensive democracy is no democracy
Yossi Mekelberg/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
When I was a political science major, back in the 1980s, together with many of my peers we complained about the constant erosion of democratic values in Israeli society. These were the days of deep political divisions in Israel, in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. We resented the attempts to silence those, who objected to the unnecessary and disastrous war north of the border and the occupation that violated Palestinians’ human rights and obstructed their right for self-determination. One of our most admired professors had much sympathy for our political stand. Nonetheless, he made a habit of reminding us, that considering the lack of democratic traditions of most of the countries that our parents emigrated from, Israeli democracy, despite its faults, must be regarded as a small miracle. Intellectually I understood it; however, I refused to accept it. Internalising this argument would have been the same as accepting that the country was allowed to be some sort of a second tier democracy, permitted special allowances due to the origins of its citizens. In the absence of a firm constitution, the standards of behaviour, which one expects of a democracy, fall victim to politicians’ whims and opportunism.
In the three decades that have elapsed since I have revisited the notion of Israeli democracy many times, sometimes even with my own students. I have observed with great concern, the gradual deterioration of the democratic values of the Israeli society. This continuous corrosion, including muzzling freedom of speech, is closely correlated with internal social trends within the Israeli society, and to a large extent keeping millions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation or blockade. One manifestation of this erosion in recent years is the Israeli government’s attempts to advance legislation, which would anchor restrictions on freedom of speech in law and curb political activity deemed harmful to Israel’s security or character.
Only last week the cabinet’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill that would bar entry to Israel to anyone who supports boycott, divestment or sanctions (BDS) against the Jewish state. Though the bill was initiated by MK Yinon Magal of the extreme right party in the coalition Bayit Yehudi (the Jewish Home), it was supported by the more ‘moderate’ elements in the government. This bill, which needs the approval of the Israeli parliament the Knesset, adds to other anti-democratic legislative initiatives such as the nation-state law and another bill seeking to tax or eliminate foreign funds to NGOs focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In many cases these bills never become a law, but this reflects a dangerous discourse that attempts to undermine pluralism and questions the equality of the rights of minorities in Israel.
Marginalization
There is no escape from the fact that the nation-state law was aimed at marginalizing everything that is not Jewish, leaving the Arab population that comprises one fifth of the entire Israeli population wondering what the future holds for them. If this proposed legislation ever becomes a bill, Israel may end as a mishmash of Zionist nationalist chauvinism with Jewish theocratic underpinnings. Scholars, as much as jurists who observe Israeli polity, have defined the country’s democracy as a Defensive Democracy. Commonly this term denotes a democracy which defends itself against its potential wreckers, mainly those who use the democratic system to gain power only to destroy it. In Israel, defending democracy entails much broader and more troublesome aspects. It for instance provides a license to violate human rights in the name of combating terrorism, or prevents anyone that questions the Jewishness of the country from being elected to the Knesset.
This is where the danger lies for Israeli democracy. In the absence of a firm constitution, the standards of behaviour, which one expects of a democracy, fall victim to politicians’ whims and opportunism. The debate about the pros and cons of imposing BDS on Israel is legitimate. Nevertheless, preventing those, who support these ideas from entering the country, is a crude infringement on freedom of expression. Moreover, it prevents a vibrant and intelligent debate on the issue between those who support it and those who oppose it. Ironically, though not surprisingly, a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute demonstrates that the majority of “… Jewish Israelis are familiar with basic human rights and civil rights, and also rather supportive of them.” Sixty-three percent of the Israeli Jewish population thinks that Jews should not have greater rights than Arabs. Nevertheless, nearly half of them do not want to live next to an Arab, and seventy-four percent assert that the decision about peace and security should be determined by a Jewish majority. These figures reflect an enduring and perturbing discrepancy in the Jewish Israeli society between supporting democratic values in the abstract, while rejecting the translation of them into a daily reality. This gap is evidently fuelled by political leadership, mainly from the right, but not exclusively so, which thrives on encouraging fear of the other. Debate is replaced with incitement and long term policies with knee-jerk reaction. Legislation, which endeavours to silence the more liberal minded, peace advocates or even those from abroad who criticise Israel, ends in severely harming the future of the country and its reputation around the world. Israel’s success and prosperity has been largely achieved due to it being a relatively open and democratic state and despite the sin of the occupation and other lapses. Allowing creeping discriminatory and anti-democratic legislation and discourse to thrive, is a slippery slope towards ending the dream of Israel as Jewish and democratic.

Debating the Middle East beyond Iran and ISIS
Joyce Karam/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
In the last four years, and as unprecedented tectonic changes swept over the Middle East and North Africa, regional policymakers looked towards Western analysts and think tanks in attempting to understand the new reality. This approach might be finally changing, as new regional think tanks among them is Beirut Institute are gaining foothold, by introducing a more pro-active indigenous strategy in addressing the region’s future. Rethinking regional politics cannot happen absent of its youth and women. As its name would suggest, Beirut Institute is based in the Lebanese capital but has managed through its first annual summit earlier this month in Abu Dhabi to bring forth a global network of policymakers, youth activists, from as far as Australia and as close as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The idea was to “brainstorm ideas in light of events and changes in the Middle East, post-Iran deal and Russian repositioning, and to go beyond the security prism”, the institute’s founder Raghida Dergham and my colleague at Al-Hayat told me this week.
Breaking stereotypes
Unlike many conferences on the Middle East, Beirut Institute Summit (#BIS2015) was not monolithic in its agenda or participants. It is indigenous in its structure and the voices it brings to the forefront. Key names in the Arab art scene, such as directors Nadine Labaki and Jihane Nojeim, shared the stage with former US military General David Petraeus and technology guru Ken Lee. There were also Saudi, Emirate and Libyan women who defied in their statements for liberalism, every stereotype about their lives and vision. Politically, the debate at Beirut Institute Summit was blunt and far reaching. At the four closed policy circles for the 120 participants, there was no time wasted on assigning blame or looking backwards. A frank regional and U.S. self assessment was put forward to “find solutions, and preempt crisis rather than wait for the next Marshall plan” says Dergham. Iranian, Egyptian, Russian, and Saudi experts exchanged views with those on the “other side” such as ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda or former President of Slovenia Danilo Türk. In the open sessions, the diversity and spontaneity of the crowd stood out on stage. There was retired U.S. diplomat Robert Blackwill lamenting the Arab Spring as “profoundly damaging to the Arab world, it undermined the regimes which helped create stability", and later two opposite sides of the Washington political spectrum analyzing the Barack Obama policy on Syria. Petraeus criticized the decline of U.S. role and called for safe zones in Syria, while former White House coordinator Phil Gordon acknowledged its failure but called for a new approach. Iraqi Kurdish politician Barham Salih advocated a new “regional paradigm”, while Bahraini business leader Khalid Janahi called for direct dialogue between Iran and the GCC countries. Former Saudi head of Intelligence Turki Al-Faisal proposed a comprehensive ceasefire in Syria and “going to the Syrians to decide their future.” “We wanted to provoke new thinking, to push the envelope” says Dergham. This new approach was also vivid in the youth and art panels. Labaki decried self censorship in the region, while Nojeim voiced hope in the transformation of the region through its youth and activists. Dergham explains the emphasis on youth and women for being “natural agents in confronting extremism, and as evidence that regional challenges are not just about assigning women a quota or laying out geopolitics.” Dergham’s journey in journalism is seen by many as a testimony to Arab women success and latitude.
Intra-Regional dialogue
The two-day-summit in Abu Dhabi concluded in a declaration and will be followed up by key recommendations handed to policymakers worldwide.
Some of these recommendations will possibly incorporate ideas from the final declaration including the call “decisive multi-lateral action to bring end to the current conflict in Syria” by undertaking “immediate action to address the humanitarian crisis, including specific and increased assistance to the refugees and the establishment of humanitarian safe-zones.” It also calls for “creation of a legitimate vision for post-conflict Syria, underwritten by a GCC fund to support the critical need to rebuild infrastructure, social services, and the critical elements of the state that have been destroyed by the years of conflict.”
It brought new focus to intra-Arab structures and disagreements, urging “efforts to strengthen intra-Arab relations, moving beyond the traditional impediments to our collaboration to deepen our economic, social and cultural relationships, including through necessary reforms.” It also reiterated the call for a two state solution and went a step further in working towards “joint peace treaty between Israel on the one hand and Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.” Other individual ideas such as reestablishing the U.S.-Egyptian alliance, setting out a clear plan for Libya could make their way to the recommendations list.
Beirut Institute’s first summit has already left its mark on the regional policy debate by blending in grassroots voices with renown global analysts and policymakers. Rethinking regional politics cannot happen absent of its youth and women, and that’s the message that resonated loud and clear in Abu Dhabi.

The Yemen conflict will require more U.N. involvement
Manuel Almeida/Al Arabiya/October 29/15
In recent interviews and press conferences, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Yemen, the Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheik Ahmed, has explained the U.N.-brokered plan to bring Yemen’s warrying parties to the negotiating table. It involves a step-by-step diplomatic process with various rounds of separate preparatory meetings to take place in Muscat and Riyadh. Only then will Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the leadership of the northern Houthi rebels meet face to face in Geneva. Technicalities aside (although quite important in this case considering how bad things went in previous talks in Geneva), the question everyone is asking is what are the chances of success of this latest diplomatic push. Yet another question that should be asked is what role the U.N. could play in the event the coming peace talks bear fruit. The U.N. and its member states should consider the deployment of a robust peacebuilding force to assist Yemeni government forces. The U.N. Secretary-General and the permanent members of the Security Council have pushed for a political solution since the conflict began, while imposing targeted sanctions on the spoilers of the political transition process. U.N. Security Council resolution 2216 of April this year provides the key framework for the peace talks, including the withdrawal of militias from Yemen’s main cities. In case of a diplomatic breakthrough, the need for a deeper U.N. involvement in Yemen will be manifest.
Another failure of diplomacy?
Big obstacles to a peace deal remain in place, first among which are the Houthis’ control of Sanaa and the need to convince the rebel group to withdraw from Sanaa and disarm. Another chief hindrance is the presence of the still influential and always unpredictable Ali Abdullah Saleh in the Yemeni capital. The former president has proved to be willing to do anything, including using of all his financial resources amassed illegally for years, to retain a key position of influence if not de-facto control over the country’s affairs. However, the receptivity of all parties to hold a serious round of peace talks, especially from the alliance between Houthi leadership and the Saleh loyalists, reflects at least implicitly a recognition their military aggression has proved a dismal choice. In recent months, the Houthis have suffered military setbacks on various fronts (in Aden, Marib, Taiz among others) and lost thousands of fighters, while recent reports have revealed how grim the atmosphere is in the Houthi strongholds in the north bordering Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, the Saleh camp is showing signs of fragmentation. In a recent interview to a Lebanon-based TV channel, Saleh himself spoke in a far less bellicose tone than usual and expressed his willingness under certain conditions to step down as head of Yemen’s long-time ruling party, the General People’s Congress. As much as anything of this sort from Saleh needs to be treated with caution, it does reveal pressure is building up. Last week, the GPC replaced Saleh with President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi as party’s chairman. These developments, coupled with the worsening humanitarian situation, the rising financial and human costs of the war, and the growing international pressure for a political solution, make a political deal more attractive to all parties and thus likelier than it was just a couple of months back.
More U.N. involvement
If the most positive of scenarios is eventually confirmed, with a peace deal and the withdrawal of Houthi militias from Sanaa, the natural priority for the U.N. would be to take advantage of the lifting of the blockade imposed by warrying parties to play a leading role in addressing the dismal humanitarian crisis across the country. Nevertheless, implementing the peace deal in such a complex situation will be a monumental challenge, most likely beyond the reach of any national unity or provisional Yemeni government. Here is also where the U.N. should jump in with determination. Pertinently, Ould Cheik Ahmed has already noted the importance of further involvement of the international community and neighbouring countries to assist in the transition process and the implementation of the peace plan. The U.N. envoy, who has previous experience in Yemen, mentioned in particular the idea of setting up an international mechanism to monitor the respect for the ceasefire rules by the various groups on the ground.
However, after such a destructive and violent conflict, remaining grievances among so many different armed groups with diverging interests and allegiances will inevitably affect any political transition. Plus, the dangerous local al-Qaeda branch has taken advantage of the chaos to spread its tentacles across much of the country. It would thus be an irreparable mistake to assume that overstretched government forces alone would manage to keep the peace, oversee an effective disarmament process in a country with such a heavily armed population as Yemen’s, rebuild the national army and fight terrorist groups.
If the conflict subsides, the Saudi-led coalition could continue to assist government forces in this process, but given the central role the coalition forces have played in the conflict, it would be very difficult for them to play the part of neutral peace enforcer. As risky and unappealing it might be, the U.N. and its member states should consider the deployment of a robust peacebuilding force to assist Yemeni government forces in the disarmament of militias and in guaranteeing that any peace agreement will stand. This conflict has already shown the cost of allowing the political process to derail. Repeating that mistake again would be too high a price for Yemenis to pay.

Israel goes back to business as usual in post-Iran deal era
Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
The post-nuclear deal era has finally and belatedly arrived. It was officially launched Oct. 27 with the visit of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon to Washington. Israeli security sources call this visit “fateful” regarding Israel’s ability to cope with future repercussions of the controversial deal with Iran. After Ya’alon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the United States, where he will meet with President Barack Obama in November. Both of these visits are supposed to help Israel “make a fresh start” in the unstable relations that prevail between Washington and Jerusalem. Obama and Netanyahu will never like one another in this life, but the prime minister’s office and, mainly, the Defense Ministry hope that it will be possible to turn over a new leaf and try to forget what was, and focus on what will be — or to be more precise, to focus on what Israel hopes will be in a coming 10-year period.
Almost all the senior officials in Israel’s security system, in the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Ministry thought that Israel should have come to terms with the nuclear agreement as soon as the ink dried and not wage the furious and desperate rearguard battle that was conducted in the attempt to block the agreement in the US Congress. This “scorched earth” battle waged by Netanyahu and Ya’alon was called “a dangerous gamble” by higher-ups in the Israeli security system, due to its potential for harming Israel’s special relationship with the United States. The gamble failed. Now, Netanyahu and Ya'alon will try to prove that they did not lose too many Israeli assets or strategic interests with this bet. They will try to quickly move on to a "business as usual" mode, attempting to demonstrate that nothing significant was harmed in the multibranched, indispensable web of connections and assistance that Israel has in the United States.Prior to Ya’alon’s arrival in Washington, the requisite “compensation package” request had been put together in Israel; it is this package that Ya’alon (and Netanyahu in his wake) will ask for from the Americans. It all starts with money: In the last decade, Israel received about $3 billion a year in military assistance from the United States. Of this, Israel is obliged to spend 80% to purchase US defense equipment from American companies. Israel hopes to increase this sum significantly over 10 years beginning in 2017. It is anticipated that Israel will ask for $4.5 billion a year, with the goal of closing on $4 billion; this constitutes an increase of a third over the current assistance. According to Israel, this uptick is required in order to address the repercussions of the nuclear agreement in the region, and mainly to cover the actions that Israel will have to take vis-a-vis a significant Iranian empowerment and intensification of the "terror war" Iran conducts against Israel through its various proxies.
But it’s not only money that is at stake: Israel will try to increase and deepen its intelligence and strategic cooperation with the United States. It will try to do the following: receive increased funding for new air defense Iron Dome batteries; enlarge American funding and involvement in the Magic Wand (also called David's sling) system that creates layers of protection from rockets, missiles and ballistic missiles at different heights; purchase another squadron of F-35 fighter jets; and receive a quantity of super-penetrating bunker-busting bombs, radar instruments, cyber technologies and numerous additional tools designed to preserve Israel’s “qualitative edge.” Israel needs to maintain its qualitative edge not only vis-a-vis Iran and enemies of its kind, but also toward the Gulf states, headed by Saudi Arabia, as these also receive generous American “compensation packages” following the nuclear agreement.
In other words, the objective of these two visits is to try to preserve Israel’s position as the United States' most important strategic ally in the Middle East. This preference for Israel has been held in great doubt over recent years after Netanyahu’s attempt to assist Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential elections and the unprecedented deterioration in the Obama-Netanyahu relationship in the years since. The bad blood between them reached its height in Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in March, which was set up without Obama's prior knowledge.
Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement Oct. 12 that he would not run for president succeeded in injecting new energy into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But it was received with much grief by Netanyahu's environs in Jerusalem. Netanyahu had counted on Biden to run for president; Netanyahu shares a long-term, deep relationship with the vice president. Despite certain criticisms and disagreements between them, the two share mutual respect and speak the same language. In other words: Netanyahu could have lived with Biden as president, while the same thing cannot be said about Clinton. Netanyahu views the Clintons as his sworn strategic enemies; this hails back to the days of President Bill Clinton, who shares much of the credit for Netanyahu’s big defeat to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the 1999 elections.
But there’s something else as well. The people in Netanyahu’s entourage had anticipated that Biden’s presidential run would have encouraged Obama to maintain a “quiet front” with Netanyahu until the end of Obama's term of office. Obama is much more beholden to Biden than to Clinton, and he knows all too well not to quarrel with Israel before elections. To improve Biden’s chances and pacify the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama could have approved a significant increase in security assistance to Israel and deepen cooperation. But now, that will not happen.
Work-level meetings in Tel Aviv and Washington preceded this week’s meetings between Israeli-US security teams taking place in Washington. Beyond monetary assistance and intelligence cooperation lies another critical issue on the agenda: coordinating operations and responses with everything connected to continued tracking of Iran — in the nuclear domain as well as others. Israel really wants to reach clear, written agreements with the administration with regard to managing the intelligence follow-up of the implementation of the nuclear agreement and the series of procedures that will be adopted should the Iranians violate this agreement. Israel is aware that reimposing sanctions could take a long time. They want to receive a green light from the White House well in advance to employ additional measures in the event of a violation. This could include a military assault in the event the Iranians are “caught” violating the agreement, whether by slowly “sneaking” toward a bomb or “quickly breaking” out to the bomb, at some point.
According to all the predictions, Israel is likely to have a hard time in Washington. Obama, whose confidence in Netanyahu has reached an all-time low, has no intention of helping the Israeli prime minister bring home such a prize. Coordination on this level, say American sources, could have been attempted by Netanyahu in earlier stages, when the president first proposed starting the discussions and negotiations between the two states. But as was first publicized by Al-Monitor in May, Netanyahu rejected the extended American hand and continued his all-out war against the president, with the goal of convincing Congress to block the agreement. Now, it seems, Netanyahu will have to pay the price.

Is Iraq’s Dawa Party on verge of division?
Ali Mamouri/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
Political rifts and partisan splits are nothing new to the Shiite Dawa Party, the dominant organization in Iraq's governing coalition since 2005. The differences within the party since Haider al-Abadi took office as prime minister in September 2014 are unprecedented, reflecting a national and regional conflict among Shiites. The Dawa Party was founded in the 1950s by clerics and religious university students intent on fighting communism and establishing Islamic rule. The Muslim Brotherhood greatly inspired the party’s basic ideology, and the party’s founders had close ties to the Iraqi Islamic Party, which was considered the Muslim Brotherhood’s Iraqi branch. The Dawa Party is also associated with the Brotherhood-inspired Hizb ut-Tahrir. Taleb al-Rifai, a Dawa Party founder, cited these linkages in interviews with Rashid al-Khayoun for the book “Amali as-Sayed Taleb al-Rifai” (Dictations of Sayyed Taleb al-Rifai). Most Islamic political organizations from this earlier era tended to be pan-Islamic in their goals, ignoring the Sunni-Shiite division.
Historically sharp differences have occasionally emerged within the Dawa Party because of the dialectical nature of the relationship between its affiliated academics and clerics. The party experienced divisions during the decades it spent opposing successive leftist and nationalist regimes in Iraq, largely driven by differences among various politico-religious leaders, resulting in such formations as the Asefi-Dawa Party, Kourani-Dawa Party and the Islamic Dawa movement. When pressure by the Baathist Party forced members to flee to Iran and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s, their divisions and differences emerged there as well. In 2003, the party rose to power within the Iraqi Governing Council, but the old fractiousness remained.
Despite sharp internal differences, none of the Dawa Party's branches broke from the larger camp calling for Islamic rule. Before Abadi took office, the differences had been more about political tactics, than ideology, such as how to work with Iran in confronting former President Saddam Hussein and whether to joint the Iranian military forces or preserve their independence. Also, in light of the pragmatism espoused by many Dawa Party members, the dissident cadres of the party that broke away have not hesitated to join forces with their former party when partisan interests required it. This is one of the reasons the Dawa Party has managed to hold on to the reins of power since 2005. For instance, the Dawa Party-Iraq Organization and the National Reform Movement supported the Dawa Party in every elections held since 2003. At the moment, however, ideological and political disagreements among Dawa Party leaders could be interpreted as foreboding signs for the party.
Prime Minister Abadi took office after a long political struggle. His predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, insisted on a third term for himself, but part of the Dawa Party leadership, in addition to other political parties, opposed his candidacy. Maliki had become a burden in the eyes of some Dawa members because most of the other political movements refused to back him, and the party would not be able to form a government without entering into a coalition with other movements. Unable to get rid of Maliki on their own, his Dawa opponents resorted to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to address the crisis surrounding the premiership, asking him to issue a decision to settle the dispute among the Shiite political class. On June 25, 2014, Sistani responded, stating, “I believe a new consensual prime minister acceptable to all parties must be elected immediately — a prime minister who can deal with all the political components of the country to save it from the dangers of terrorism, sectarian war and division.”
Sistani’s statement suggested that he opposed Maliki’s nomination as well and wanted the Dawa Party — the largest bloc in the National Alliance, winner of the 2014 parliamentary elections — to nominate a candidate acceptable to the other parties. Thus, Abadi became prime minister through Sistani's indirect support. After Abadi took office, Sistani received him in Najaf on Oct. 20. The ayatollah had refrained for three years from receiving Maliki in protest of his mismanagement of Iraqi governance. The Dawa Party is at the moment divided into two parts. Abadi’s bloc wants to preserve close relations with the United States, keep some distance between Baghdad and Tehran, avoid hostile relations with Saudi Arabia and bring about national reconciliation, including good relations with the Kurds and Sunnis. Maliki’s bloc, however, has explicitly aligned itself with Iran, is hostile toward Saudi Arabia and the United States to the extent of suggesting Abadi approach Russia and is unwaveringly pro-Shiite, including backing for Shiite militias. On Oct. 27, the Maliki bloc withdrew its support from Abadi following the prime minister's apointment of Imad al-Khersan as secretary-general of the Cabinet on Oct. 20. Khersan is an Iraqi American who worked with the US occupation administrator Paul Bremer as an American official after 2003.
The animosity between Abadi and Maliki has become conspicuous. In March, Abadi accused Maliki of having been reckless with the blood of the Iraqi people, a reference to the heavy loss of life inflicted by the Islamic State and other extremists during Maliki’s tenure. More recently, on Oct. 3, Abadi supposedly referred to Maliki as the “leader of necessity” who during elections squandered billions of dollars of Iraqi funds, dispensing the nation's wealth in the hope of attracting votes. Iraqis had also used the same term to describe Hussein. After several warnings from Maliki, Abadi's office issued a clarification Oct. 7 stating that “commander of necessity” was a reference to Saddam, not Maliki. Maliki’s office preferred to interpret the statement as an apology rather than a clarification. Observers of Abadi's first year in office have surely noticed the harmony and convergence of views and statement between Abadi and Sistani. Meanwhile, during the year that saw clashes between the top two Dawa Party leaders, Maliki and the Iranian leadership reached a rapprochement. This portends a potentially significant Shiite rift, pitting the Dawa camp with ties to Sistani against the camp close to the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In light of this split, it is unlikely that the party can continue to operate as a single unit, as they no longer share the same coherent ideology and have different political behaviors. In that case, the two camps might consider gradually settling matters by separating and forming two entities.
Ali Mamouri is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Iraq Pulse, a researcher and writer who specializes in religion. He is a former teacher in Iranian universities and seminaries in Iran and Iraq. He has published several articles related to religious affairs in the two countries and societal transformations and sectarianism in the Middle East.

Rouhani shifts gears on economy
Alireza Ramezani/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
TEHRAN, Iran — After months of resisting calls for an economic stimulus package, President Hassan Rouhani has finally changed his stance on the matter. This will be the second such short-term plan initiated since he took office in August 2013. The first 18-month plan was aimed at curbing galloping inflation and fighting recession by committing to fiscal discipline. However, the current plan, which is scheduled to last six months, seems to be a shift away from the administration’s central approach of using a contractionary monetary policy to achieve single-digit inflation by March 2017.Last month, speculation that the Iranian economy has begun faltering again following four consecutive quarters of growth forced four key ministers to write a letter to the president, warning him of a looming financial crisis in the country. Crippling sanctions have yet to be lifted and a credit crunch has already put overwhelming pressure on banks, on which all industry sectors — and even the government — are reliant for project finance. Thus, bitter realities on the ground coupled with pressure from conservative media as well as some figures from inside his own administration appear to have finally pushed Rouhani to give up his contractionary monetary policy, which has so far decreased inflation to 15% from more than 40%.
Chronic inflation has been the root cause of economic backwardness in Iran, and the Rouhani administration took office with determination to confront this issue once and for all, despite criticism. However, the new stimulus package is a shift from Rouhani’s original goals, as it envisages a cut in commercial banks’ legal reserve requirements from 13% to 10% — a move that will certainly increase both the money multiplier and the money base. The Rouhani administration also seeks to inject money supply estimated at 75 trillion rials ($2.5 billion) into development projects to stimulate growth. Critics are now warning that these decisions will reverse efforts to lower inflation to the 14% target by March 2016. In fact, the expanded money supply and other efforts aimed at encouraging the private sector to borrow for projects are likely too little to stimulate the economy — but large enough to ignite inflation expectations. Indeed, the credit set to be released by banks into the Iranian economy “doesn’t address the fundamental factors that have depressed the economy,” argues Mehrdad Emadi, an economist at the BetaMatrix consultancy in London. A new survey conducted by leading economic daily Donya-e Eghtesad shows that a majority of Iranian economists (86.4%) believe an expansionary monetary policy has no or little impact on growth. Most of the 44 surveyed prominent economists say the main reason for the recession is not the fiscal discipline of past years, with only a minority backing the idea that stimulation of demand will be an effective way to boost growth.
Despite the criticism, administration officials are confident that they will be able to minimize the inflationary impact of their new policies. Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayebnia has said the government is trying to pay part of its huge debt to banks through a debt market, in an attempt to avoid a rise in inflation. This could indeed be the only positive point of the new stimulus package, as government debt can be sold as participatory, sukuk and treasury bonds — all of which are tradable in a secondary market. According to Tayebnia, the aim of the debt market is to liquidate the assets of creditors, paving the way for the central bank to adopt an open market policy. “Our aim is to organize the government debt in a bid to resolve financial straits and achieve the growth targets,” he argues.
The fact of the matter is that the Rouhani administration has not been fortunate enough to prove that continued fiscal discipline would result in the fulfillment of its goals. The global economy has shrunk more than expected this year, affecting the Iranian economy. Furthermore, plunging oil prices and lower international demand for Iran’s mineral products have put more pressure on the national budget, threatening the fragile recovery. On the other hand, the weak domestic consumption of durable goods like cars and home appliances have added to the government’s financial problems. A majority of Iranian consumers are still waiting for sanctions to be lifted to make such purchases, contributing to the weak demand. According to Tayebnia, the administration’s revenues dropped by 6% in the first half of this fiscal year compared to the same period last year, leaving the government in a desperate struggle to keep industries afloat until the end of this Iranian fiscal year, March 2016, when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is expected to be implemented and major sanctions removed. A couple of weeks before the administration unveiled its new stimulus package, the International Monetary Fund predicted that the Iranian economy will expand by 4.4% in 2016, as Iranian banks resume transactions with global counterparts and multinational companies dare to invest in Iran in the absence of major sanctions. In this vein, the administration’s economic stimulus package may be aimed at buying time until sanctions are lifted. It could also be a maneuver ahead of the crucial parliamentary elections in late February, with Rouhani hoping that his allies and supporters will win enough seats to hold a clear majority in the parliament. Whatever the case may be, the next few months look set to be rocky for the economy — and the administration.

Even fatwas don't bring Egyptians out to vote
Rami Galal/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
CAIRO — The first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections, held Oct. 18-19, opened the floodgates once again for religious and political fatwas. The surprising thing, however, is that Egypt’s official religious institutions alongside Al-Azhar’s senior scholars have had the upper hand in issuing these fatwas that continue to be highly censured by the political Islam movement. The Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf dedicated the Oct. 16 Friday sermon to call upon citizens to vote in the coming elections.Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawki Allam issued a statement Oct. 17 calling those who refrain from voting "sinners." Abdullah Nagar, a member of the Islamic Research Academy, issued a fatwa stating, “Not participating in the electoral process is tantamount to abandoning prayer.” His words have gone viral over social media. In the same vein, an alliance of five Al-Azhar groups — including Al-Azhar Free Sons, the World Federation of Al-Azhar Scientists, the Egyptian Syndicate of Preachers, the Union of Young Imams and Preachers Abroad and Scientists Against the Coup in Europe — issued a fatwa Oct. 15 stressing the sacredness of participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Abdul Hamid al-Atrash, the former head of Al-Azhar’s Fatwa Committee, told Al-Monitor, “Those who wish to issue a fatwa have to first study the doctrines of the four imams, the senior scholars for Sunnis, who are Abu Hanifa, Ibn Milik, al-Shafi’i and Ibn Hanbal. They have to be pious and devout Muslims and not inclined toward fame and public appearances.”
He added that participating in the electoral process is a national duty with religious significance, because the parliamentary elections have a significant role in the stability of the country. Therefore, no one should abstain from voting without an excuse. And if they believe that candidates should not be elected, they can always cast blank votes, but at least they will have participated.
“The fatwa saying that abstaining from voting is like abandoning prayer is too much and involves excessive intimidation, as performing prayer is the second pillar in Islam and cannot be compared to elections. [Prayer] should not be politicized for mundane reasons, as Islam regulates all spheres of life, including politics,” Atrash said. He added, “The civil and secular forces made a mistake when they called for the separation of religion and state, especially under Muslim Brotherhood rule. Whereas today there have been fatwas to the contrary, which caused confusion among voters as to what should be done now.”
For his part, Nagar told Al-Monitor, “Sharia regulates all aspects of life. The upcoming parliament will achieve stability for the country, and abstaining from voting is likely to lead to serious consequences, disrupting the state. “Man-made laws differentiate between public and private laws; so do religions. God has rights and worshippers have theirs. For instance, when worshippers abandon prayers, they wrong God. Similarly, abstaining from voting will have adverse consequences on worshippers, who would have sinned as they refrained from testifying that there are some candidates who would serve their country well. Therefore, boycotting elections is a more flagrant [violation] than abandoning prayers in the eyes of God.” Nagar said, “In my fatwa, I called for participation in the election, not for voting for certain candidates supporting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood used fatwas for libel and slander against him.”
He added, “Had these elections been held under the Muslim Brotherhood, I would have issued a fatwa saying that those who cast their ballot will go to hell, because the Muslim Brotherhood is the hand of the US and Israel in spreading chaos in the Middle East.” “The Brotherhood’s advocates terrorized me intellectually on social networking sites, while they are now raising their voices in the world as they are not allowed to demonstrate. How are they now demanding the very same thing they had been opposing? All I did was speak my mind, but they did not like my opinion.”Ali Abu Al-Hassan, former head of Al-Azhar's Fatwa Committee, told Al-Monitor, “The main goal of elections is to build a state, which is done through an elected council. However, this is closely linked to the candidates. If they were corrupt, this will not help build a state, and thus boycotting the elections ought to be valid.”Abu Al-Hassan said that both sides have their own reasoning. While the first camp, the state's religious scholars, see the upcoming parliament as beneficial for the country, the second camp, the opposition scholars, deemed it otherwise and chose to boycott elections. Thus, neither ought to claim that its fatwas truly represent Islam. The head of the Economics and Political Sciences Department at Cairo University, Hassan Nafaa, told Al-Monitor, “Employing religion in politics was not limited to the political Islamic movement, as the state employs religion in politics according to its needs.”
He added that the clerics who have strong ties with the state justify its every move by referring to Quranic texts, just as extremist groups do. Religious texts are used to accuse the state of being un-Islamic. Religion has become an easy tool accessible to everyone, without any control. The state puts forth the rules only to be the first to break them, and others only follow suit. Nafaa also said that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the only party to oppose the current ruling regime — there is also the young people of the January 25 Revolution. They believe that the current ruling elite will lead to autocracy and that Sisi will end up doing what he wants, so there is no need to go to the polls.

Congress muted ahead of Turkish elections
Julian Pecquet/Al-Monitor/October 29/15
US lawmakers are largely staying silent ahead of this weekend's snap elections in Turkey despite growing fears of an authoritarian drift. Only a few dozen House lawmakers have signed on to a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to help "ensure the integrity" of the elections. Meanwhile, several lawmakers have introduced bills highlighting the NATO member's stepped-up involvement in the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. "Nobody wants a rupture with Turkey," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a frequent critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's support for Islamists in Syria and his rhetoric on Israel. Engel said he was not aware of the letter to Obama. The low-key effort, from Reps. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., and Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., had attracted 65 signatures, mostly from relatively low-ranking members, as of Oct. 26.
"We ask that the United States continue to support and encourage free, open, and fair elections in Turkey," the letter states. "In light of recent events, concerns have been raised about the Turkish government's commitment to the democratic process. Recently, leading Turkish satellite, cable, and Internet broadcasters have announced they will no longer broadcast news channels critical of the government." Simultaneously, high-ranking House Foreign Affairs Committee member Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, introduced a resolution last week praising Turkey for allowing US aircraft from operating from Incirlik air base and for its "well-established record of conducting free and fair elections." And Rep. Alexander Mooney, a Republican from the coal-producing state of West Virginia, introduced legislation earlier this month urging the Obama administration to start talks on a bilateral trade deal focusing on energy.
Neither the House nor the Senate foreign affairs panels are expected to send anyone over to monitor the elections. Paradoxically, America's hands-off approach comes as Turkey itself is getting more involved in US affairs. Ankara's embassy in Washington has recently hired a British law firm as part of its legal attack against Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, according to documents filed this week with the US Department of Justice. The embassy has agreed to pay the Amsterdam & Partners LLP up to $50,000 per month to "provide advice and representation relating to potential claims under treaty, US law and/or international law held by the Republic of Turkey against individuals and/or entities in the United States." Ankara has launched what it calls a "global investigation" into Gulen's movement, Hizmet, accusing it of running a "parallel structure" in Turkey determined to overthrow the democratically elected government. Gulenists say the claims are nonsense and aim to silence Erdogan's critics and independent judicial authorities investigating alleged corruption by Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP). "We have been retained by the [Turkish] Republic to expose allegedly unlawful conduct by the Gulen network worldwide,” founding partner Robert Amsterdam said at a press conference in Washington on Oct. 26, according to Today's Zaman. Amsterdam also registered as a lobbyist on the Turkey account this week.

What Turkey's Elections Will NOT Change
Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/October 29/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6787/turkey-elections
Davutoglu said that there is a "360 degree difference" between the Islam he defends and the Islam that the Islamic State defends. A confession? Since in elementary mathematics two things that are 360 degrees from each other means they are on the exact same position. "[W]herever there is an oppressor we will be [with him]." – Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's Prime Minister. Speaking of IS, whose two suicide bombers killed over 100 people in the heart of Ankara on Oct. 10, Davutoglu used the adjective "ungrateful" for jihadists. Ungrateful? Ungrateful for what support or favors jihadists may have taken from Turkey?Gezici Research, found that 58.6% of Turks believe that Davutoglu's government did not take necessary pre-emptive security measures at the site of a peace rally where IS jihadists killed over 100 people and injured hundreds of others. Some of the polled were more direct: More than 20% said the AKP and Erdogan were behind the attack.
The budget for Turkey's intelligence agency will rise by 47% from 2015. And the budget for the Directorate of Religious Affairs 2016 will be larger than those of 12 ministries combined.
Regardless of how Turks will vote in snap polls on Nov. 1, there are a few certainties: a) The Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2001 and now run by his prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, will lead the election results, b) Turkey's unpleasant polarization along religious-secular and ethnic Turkish-Kurdish lines will deepen, c) Turkey's self-ridiculing Islamist polity will mostly remain in place, and d) The AKP will either rule in a single-party government or have to share power in a coalition alliance; but it will not disappear. All this is because of the personal ambitions of one man: Erdogan.
Recently, at an address to party supporters in Strasbourg, France, the presenter announced Erdogan's name as "the representative of the ummah [global Muslim community]." More recently, a pro-Erdogan columnist for the daily Yeni Akit, Abdurrahman Dilipak, said that Erdogan would become the new caliph once he has won the executive presidential powers he much desires. That, fortunately, looks like a remote possibility, at least as far as the Nov. 1 election is concerned: To amend the constitution in favor of an executive presidential system -- effectively a one-man show -- Davutoglu's AKP must win at least 330 seats in parliament, compared to a mere 258 in previous elections on June 7.
Davutoglu is no more than Erdogan's "Medvedev," who rushes from one election meeting to another. The poor man must have exhausted himself, evidenced by that his making a few jaw-dropping statements that his supporters said were merely slips of the tongue. In one such speech, he said that there is a "360 degree difference" between the Islam he defends and the Islam that the Islamic State defends. A confession? Since in elementary mathematics, two things that are 360 degrees from each other means they are on the exact same position. In another speech, he said that, "wherever there is an oppressor we will be [with him]." Both amusing lines can be shrugged off as being mere gaffes. But Davutoglu said something else that was not a slip of the tongue, probably a reflection of his subconscious anger. Speaking of the Islamic State (IS), whose two suicide bombers killed over 100 people in the heart of Ankara on Oct. 10, Davutoglu used the adjective "ungrateful" for the jihadists. Now, wait there. Ungrateful? Ungrateful for what support or favors jihadists may have taken from Turkey?
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (left) says there is a "360 degree difference" between the Islam he defends and the Islam that the Islamic State defends.
One opinion poll and a scandalous claim may be the explanation.
A Turkish pollster with accurate predictions for Turkey's past three elections, Gezici Research, found that 58.6% of Turks believe that Davutoglu's government did not take necessary pre-emptive security measures at the site of a peace rally where IS jihadists killed over 100 people and injured hundreds of others. Some of the polled were more direct: More than 20% said the AKP and Erdogan were behind the attack.
A far more serious claim was put forward by opposition members of parliament. Eren Erdem and Ali Seker from the main opposition social-democrat Republican People's Party claimed that the August 2013 chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, which killed hundreds of civilians, was carried out not by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime but by IS, and that Turkey had produced and delivered the poison gas used in the attack under instructions from the Turkish government. The MPs also claimed that the government ordered a Turkish prosecutor to close the file in a probe into allegations of supplying poison gas to IS. If true, the AKP's act amounts to one act in any legal definition: A crime against humanity.
Erdogan, Davutoglu & Co. have struggled all their lifetime to Islamize Turkey along Sunni supremacist lines. They have no intention of leaving the job unfinished. Hence, their powerful grip on power. Their budget draft for 2016 has all the hints of the country they want to build.
According to the government's medium-term economic program, Turkey's intelligence agency (MIT), and the Directorate of Religious Affairs will see dramatic rises in their shares of the 2016 budget. MIT's budget will rise by 47% from 2015. And the budget of the Directorate of Religious Affairs for 2016 will be larger than those of 12 ministries combined.
Welcome to the NATO ally Turkey!
**Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Pro-ISIS Activists React Joyously On Twitter To Canada’s Elections
By: Elliot Zweig*MEMRI/October 9/15
Introduction
The October 19, 2015 federal elections in Canada, in which Justin Trudeau led his Liberal party to victory and assumed the post of prime minister-designate after nearly a decade of Conservative rule, has elicited the usual diplomatic reactions of congratulations from world leaders and ambassadors. Less known, but perhaps of greater significance, is the reaction by what can be described as “online ambassadors” of the Islamic State (ISIS) and other jihadi fighters and online activists via their social media, and particularly on Twitter.
Under the Conservative government of former prime minister Stephen Harper, Canada was part of the Western coalition fighting against ISIS, particularly in the aerial bombing campaign against it. Canada has also been a focus of ISIS propaganda and calls for attacks against it; in October 2014, two soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Quebec and on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Addressing these and other attacks, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani threatened further attacks against Canada and the West, stating, “Indeed, you saw what a single Muslim did with Canada and its parliament of polytheism.”
Additionally, numerous Canadians have joined ISIS forces, among them John Maguire, aka Abu Anwar Al-Canadi, who in an ISIS video released in December 2014 blamed the attacks on Canadian participation in the anti-ISIS coalition: “Oh people of Canada… what is preventing you from being able to put two and two together and understanding that operations such as [the recent attacks] are carried out in direct response to your participation in the coalition of nations waging war against the Muslim people?… Those leaders … whom you have elected to represent yourselves in the running of your country’s affairs have gone far out of their way to involve themselves in the global war against the Islamic State… So it should not surprise you when operations by the Muslims are executed where it hurts you the most, on your very own soil.”
One of Prime Minister-Designate Justin Trudeau’s campaign promises, and indeed a focus of his first post-election press conference, concerned the withdrawal of Canada’s fighter jets from the U.S.-led mission against ISIS. He asserted, however, that Canada would maintain and even potentially expand its efforts in training anti-ISIS Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, echoing his campaign statement in June: “We would engage Canada’s military in something we’ve demonstrated tremendous ability at in Afghanistan and elsewhere – training up local troops doing the fighting on the ground.”
Following the election, and Trudeau’s announcements, there was a flood of reactions by known jihadis and ISIS supporters on Twitter, which included individual tweets as well as discussions. The following are examples of this jihadi activity on Twitter following the election.
Prominent ISIS Activist Sally Jones: Obama Begged Canada To Remain In The Air War, But Canadians “Know Whats [Sic] Good For Them”; Tweets Allegedly Share Personal Info Of Drone Operators
Syria-based British ISIS hacktivist Sally Jones (@OumHussainBrit), the widow of prominent ISIS hacker and fighter Junaid Hussain, tweeted on October 20: “Canadian fighter jets to withdraw from fighting ISIS – yeah because they know whats good for them :).” Jones herself has emerged in the last month as a major ISIS hacker and online antagonist of the West.
Source: @OumHussainBrit, October 20, 2015.
The same day, tweeting from another account, @UmmHu55ain_, after her previous account was terminated (one of four accounts she has opened in the last week following repeated terminations), Jones posted a series of tweets on the Canadian elections as well as alleged information about the commander of the Predator drone squadron that killed extremist Yemeni-American sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011. After reposting one of the above tweets, she stated: “Released – the address of the Commander of the Predator Squadron that murdered Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son.”
Source: @UmmHu55ain__, October 20, 2015.
ISIS Supporter Celebrates Canadian Withdrawal
ISIS supporter @xcv98 expressed joy at the new prime minister’s announcement, writing: “Allah is great. Canada withdraws from the alliance against the Islamic_State after the election of new prime minister Justin Trudeau.”
Source: @/cxv98, October 21, 2015.
In Discussing Trudeau Victory, Twitter Users Debate Post-Election Policy, Show Knowledge Of Canadian History And Politics, Celebrate ‘Antiwar Political Victory’
Prolific pro-ISIS cyber-security activist Abu Adam Al Maghrebi (@wilayatFezzan) tweeted on Election Day: “Reports coming in that Canada’s Liberal Party will be taking a majority position in tonight’s elections.” The next tweet read: “If they win the elections, they will eventually withdrawy [sic] from the anti-IS coalition.”
Source: @WilayatFezzan, October 19, 2015.
Others commented on Al Maghrebi’s tweets, including AbuAiysha (@WilayatAnbar):
Justin albequw: “I highly doubt they will withdraw cause at the end of the day Canada is a u.s. lab [sic] dog and the u.s. is owned by the yahuud.”
AbuAiysha: “Trudeau’s father was also the PrimeMinister.”
AbuAiysha: “Your right, Liberals said ‘we will support fight against IS but won’t send our jets’”
Ustaz Hussein: “Trudeau was a decent man, his son is like him. This will be a huge antiwar political victory in Canada.”
#WilayatFezzan, October 19, 2015.
ISIS Supporter: “If Corbyn Is Elected, UK Stands To Go That Way Too”
On October 20, ISIS supporter @misterdaeshi tweeted: “Trudeau takes Canada off the list of countries bombing IS. If Corbyn is elected, UK stands to go that way too.”
Source: @misterdaeshi, October 20, 2015.
Pro-ISIS Computer Engineer: “Canada Runs Away”
On October 21, a pro-ISIS self-described computer engineer who tweets under the handle @jan_1_16 wrote, in response to the news: “#Baiji #ISIS You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided. O Allah separate them and don’t leave any of them. Canada runs away.” The tweet included a news story from BBC Arabic about the election.
Source: @jan_1_16, October 21, 2015.
Pro-ISIS Twitter Activist: “The Crumbling Of The Crusader Alliance Continues”
On October 20, pro-ISIS Twitter activist “Lovelydoc_42,” whose account indicates that he may be originally from Belgium, tweeted: “Allah Akbar and thanks to Allah, and the crumbling of the Crusader alliance continues. #Canada stops its strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.”
Pro-ISIS Account Celebrates Withdrawal From Bombing Campaign, But Notes: “Doubt The New Kuffar PM Will Stop Harassing Us”
On October 21, the prominent pro-ISIS account @Saifalkanadi_ tweeted, “Canada new PM to pull the country out of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against #ISIS,” and added: “doubt the new kuffar PM will stop harassing us here.”
ISIS Supporter: Canadian Withdrawal Dooms Anti-ISIS Efforts
Additionally, ISIS supporter @Monotheist21, whose account has since been shut down, tweeted the news of Canada’s withdrawal from the anti-ISIS mission, and added that ISIS would destroy the crusaders’ alliance.
Screen grab of @Monotheist21.
ISIS And Canada – The Future
The long-term effect of PM Trudeau’s promised withdrawal of Canadian fighter planes from the bombing campaign against ISIS remains to be seen, both on the ground as well as in terms of terrorists’ online discussions about Canada. This is particularly true in light of Trudeau’s commitment to continue Canadian efforts in training Kurdish militias. But the initial jihadi online reaction to his election and to his promised policies reflects feelings of elation and a sense of triumph at a perceived defeat of Canada and the anti-ISIS coalition. It also must be borne in mind that although the Canadian leadership has changed, ISIS is still not likely to remove its ongoing focus from Canada.
* Elliot Zweig is Deputy Director of MEMRI
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